The Tangled World!

Re-establishing Priorities

Once Harry realised that the invisibility cloak could grant him unlimited access to the restricted section, the temptation to go there as often as he could manage was irresistible. So it was that, on the last day before the end of winter break, he and Tracey were once again looking through the section's many shelves.

Harry left Tracey to her continuing attempts to understand alchemy while he wandered back over to the books on blood magic, this time with some writing materials in hand.

Harry tried to find the spells that were the least likely to backfire horribly if he made a mistake casting them (which did seem to be a very real concern with blood magic), and started copying them down.

The basic spells seemed like they would only need a pin or needle, while some of the others called for a quantity of blood that required daggers. Harry was not that anxious to spill his own blood, so he avoided those sections. Once he was satisfied with his selection, he moved back towards Tracey, being careful to avoid being seen by any of the older students.

Unlike the blood magic section, which was enormous, the alchemy section was much smaller and more isolated. Harry was quite sure that Tracey appreciated this, as it allowed her to read in her usual manner: haphazardly jumping between a minimum of five different books spread out around her. Harry was unsurprised to find her reading the alchemy books in the exact same way.

"Making any progress?" He asked.

Tracey gave a nocommital sound. "I think so? It's... really complicated, but I think I'm starting to understand the basics, at least..."

"And it only took you several days to get that far. Well, when you're done for today, let me know. I've got some things I'd like to try out."

Tracey slammed the book in her lap shut. "If you're going to start trying things out, then my research can wait! I want to watch."

Less than an hour later, Harry and Tracey were in an unused classroom in the dungeon's "endless corridor" (technically, all of the classrooms in the corridor were unused). This one was a perfectly normal classroom, except all of the desks and chairs were on the ceiling instead of the floor. (Harry and Tracey, in an act of curiosity, tried using levitation charms to see if the desks were affixed to the ceiling. As it turned out, they were not. They simply fell upwards, but only inside the room. The duo just shrugged and gave up on their testing after determining that much.)

Now intent on actually casting a spell, Harry pulled out a needle and pricked the centre of his right thumb. He then gripped his wand, making sure the small drop of blood that formed on the wound had direct contact with the handle.

The basic principles of blood magic were simple. While a drop of blood may be a small thing to give up, it was a large gesture symbolically. As such, the spilling blood and sacrificing of blood, no matter how little, was able to serve as a huge power source or amplifier for spells.

There were three categories of spells when it came to blood magic: mundane spells that gained a power boost from blood magic, spells that could only work with blood magic because of their power cost or symbolic nature, and mundane spells that could not be boosted with blood magic because the additional power would overload the spells and cause some sort of catastrophic explosion.

Harry was trying one from the first category, and swore that he would never try using blood magic to boost a spell without checking for compatibility first, at least outside of life-or-death situations. He didn't fancy the idea of blowing himself to smithereens.

Pushing that thought aside, Harry moved on to actually casting the spell. He focused on the sensation of his magic, and then tried to push the small drop of blood into his wand. It took him a while to get used to the bizarre sensation, but eventually, the wand had absorbed the whole drop. With the first step done, he thrust his wand out and shouted "Lumos!"