Death is but the Next Great Adventure

Revelations

In the last chapter: Harry finally successfully cast a patronus in the form of a great white owl. When Harry returned to Hogwarts, a conflict arises between Harry and Michael. Michael, Terry, and Morag confront Harry and Michael accidentally pushes him down the stairs and kills him. Harry scares the daylights out of the three when he comes back to life, and Harry begins learning soul magic.

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Necromancy, as it turned out, was not exactly what Harry had been expecting. From the introduction in Death's book, Harry gathered a few key bits of information about the form of magic. For one thing, soul magic and necromancy—in the world of magic, at least—were synonymous. Since the soul is considered neither dead nor alive, it's considered to be a representation of the point between life and death, and the duality of the two is the basis for 'necromancy.' You cannot have one without the other.

Soul magic—or necromancy—was actually a far broader classification of magic, centering more on the elemental than wands and spells. It involved rituals, invocations, materials, sacrifices, and the consequences of doing a spell wrong were more severe.

The first 'chapter' kept Harry busy for a good month and a half. It didn't have to do with actual spell work, it was more a series of complex cleansing rituals he had to perform on himself and when those were finished, he needed to do a few more rituals to strengthen his mental, emotion, physical, and metaphysical constitutions.

The rituals were far more . . . gritty than he'd been expecting. The modern form of magic that he was used to using (spells, charms, hexes, etc.) were so clean and precise; they'd been developed and evolved over centuries to be made easier, safer. These rituals, however, felt arcane in nature. Drawing circles of complex runes, using raw materials or potion ingredients as the conduits of magic rather than a wand, long periods of constant chanting until something finally gave, the pure exhausting act of conjuring up and holding onto emotions in their most volatile or raw states.

At one point, Harry literally had to strip down and scrub the gritty concoction of sand, dirt, sea water, and blood into his skin to replicate his rebirth and symbolically represent his continuous journeys between life and death. Interesting in theory, not so fun in practice.

All of these rituals of course took place in the chamber. Which meant that he only had a small window to actually perform them, add onto that the time it took to discretely gather all of the materials he needed and possible times that the ritual was most effective and you have very little time to sleep and it taking exceedingly long to complete the initial round of rituals.

The rituals did little that was really noticeable. Mostly, they left Harry feeling drained, lethargic, and rather content—like how one might feel after a refreshing nap or full night's sleep. He did notice, however, that the more powerful the spell, the more those pleasant and rewarding feelings came and the longer they stayed. When Harry asked Death, the being just blandly explained that because he was doing things the 'right way' he was having a very positive reaction to the magic and that it was 'rewarding' him. Whatever that meant.

After the purification and strengthening rituals, the next little bit before Harry could begin delving in to actual spells, were totems. The significance of totems spanned across oceans and millennia, being found in all sorts of cultures throughout time. In general, totems could be anything as long as it was believed to have spiritual significance. For Harry's purposes, though, there was only one he really needed to move forward.

One totem to serve as a grounding or focal point when performing the magic. One to represent Harry's relationship with both life and death. More than any of the ingredients for the rituals, the materials for the totem were the most difficult to procure. First, to serve as the chain or cord that would allow Harry to wear the totem like a necklace, he needed a lock of hair from a woman who had died in childbirth. The natural paradox of the creation of life from death holding incredible magic, even if it came from a magicless muggle.