Let The Dark In

11

Magic is magic.

This is the conclusion Hermione reaches after several days of trying to feel or distinguish or resonate with magic. As far as she is aware, and she likes to think she’s more aware than the average Hogwarts student — after all, she’s the only person in the school who figured out through deduction that Professor Lupin is a werewolf; who has read Hogwarts: A History, not once, not twice, but three times cover to cover — but even by her meticulous standards of observation, she is convinced that magic does not consist of any identifiers. Magic simply is.

In classes she pays close attention to what the spells and enchantments around her feel like, trying to see if it’s different when she interacts with someone else’s spells, but she can’t sense anything unique. It’s a rush; that feeling of light, and when cast, the air feels coppery, but it’s not like it comes in flavours like ice cream. Her own spells often perform better, but there’s no personal signature or flair to them that makes her magic feel any different.

She doesn’t have an estate or artefacts or family magic to spend time around, and the Hogwarts Library is predictably void of information on how to make a family artefact, so she’s left trying to familiarise herself with her magic by delving inwards, before the magic is cast, trying to find a source within herself that’s rich enough to immerse in, to get to know. She’s hopeful that such a method is the answer to her conundrum.

However, she’s extrapolating wildly based on Malfoy’s breadcrumbs of information, even though she’s not quite convinced he even knows what he’s talking about with all his drivel about purebloods with their hereditary magical soul flames.

She reviews old research she’s done on magical theory and wandless magic, certain that it’s relevant. She’s been methodically deconstructing her entire understanding of magic since leaving the Come and Go Room.

Malfoy’s probably wrong about some things, and the books’ information is incomplete, but she thinks that if she combines the two, she may find real answers.

Price. Partnerships. Give and take. Malfoy’s not entirely wrong. She suddenly sees it everywhere. It’s mind-boggling that she never noticed it before.

The Wizarding world is littered with prices cleverly packaged so no one notices they’re there. Potion ingredients prepared and packaged at the apothecaries so that you don’t think about the fact that a bottle of newt eyes contains the eyes of dozens of newts, that a murtlap was snared and had its tentacles chopped off and pickled, that sloth brain is the brain of a sloth. That they are using a Magical Creature’s parts for power, for magical abilities that wizards cannot produce for themselves.

It’s not that Hermione didn’t know, just like she knows that beef comes from a cow and pork from a pig, that’s not the part that bothers her, it’s the coyness, the pretence that it’s not the Dark Arts.

Even a wand is a form of the Dark Arts, Hermione’s realised.

A wand starts with harvesting from a magical creature, and then that power endures in the form of symbiotic power exchange.

Wands key into the caster’s own magic, channelling and strengthening it in a way that’s hard to achieve wandlessly, but only after a wand has chosen a wielder; someone who is aligned with the wand’s own preference and desires.

A chilling tendril of uncertainty wraps around Hermione as she thinks about all the implications of it. After all, some wand cores such as unicorn hairs and Phoenix feathers are harvested voluntarily, from living creatures. Dragon heart-strings are not.

Dragon Heart-string cores are also known for being most prone towards dark forms of magic.

She can’t help but wonder if maybe those two things are related.