Melody Riddle and the Order of the Phoenix

Chapter 26: Seraphina's First Lesson

 "I thought I'd start you off with something new," Seraphina said thoughtfully, starting our first lesson of the year. We were in Severus' Potions classroom — for simplicity's sake considering it was a closer distance to where we slept. "Since it's something no other class is going to teach you and, honestly, you're going to be quite lost without learning it... Elemental Manipulation."

"And I have Mental Manipulation, right?" I asked. "What does the magic entail?"

Seraphina pointed her wand at the whiteboard, and the words The Five Elementals was scrawled across it. Earth, Water/Blood, Air, Fire, Mental. "Take notes," she said, "Because I'll only explain everything once. Make a few bullet points per subject and make sure you have enough room to write it all down."

I did as she asked, spacing each subject out so they had a page each. "Okay, I got it," I said softly.

"Earth elementals," Seraphina said as slowly as she could muster, pacing back and forth in the front of the classroom. "They are able to control anything with earth minerals such as granite, rocks, coal, sand, dirt, gems — even plants and trees can be manipulated if they're skilled enough. Anything made by Mother Nature. Man-made materials cannot be manipulated.

"They can grind rocks into spears and swords, sharpen gems so they can become daggers, call lava to explode out of a mountain, and create sandmen or snowmen to do their bidding for a certain period of time.

"However, uproot their feet off of the ground, and they're rendered utterly defenseless. If they are not touching the ground they are connected to, their abilities falter tremendously. Only some truly powerful Earth elementals are capable of connecting to their power without any part of their body touching land. Any questions?"

"What if they're in a house or, say, the castle? They can't connect to their power?" I asked curiously.

"No.... Unless they touch a potted plant, and use it to eat their classmates."

I laughed until something caught my train of thought. "But wait, water is a part of Earth too, isn't it? And the air as well? Both are created by Mother Earth."

"That's a tricky one isn't it?" Seraphina grinned. "Of course, I've never met one, but I believe another rare ability is one that might as well be called the Mother Nature Elemental. One who can control Earth, Water, Fire and Air."

"Really?" I asked, scribbling everything down as fast as I could. "Has there ever been an elemental who could use all five?"

"That's never been recorded," she said. "As far as history knows, it is impossible to have all five in one human body... most would say, anyway, that it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the world for someone to be so powerful.

"But, moving on, water elementals — that's me — can make water levitate, boil, melt, freeze, and evaporate. They can cause whirlpools, waterfalls, and waves in any body of water they're close to. In more dangerous cases, they can even rip water out of a person to cause immediate dehydration and death."

I winced at the thought, glancing warily at Seraphina on the off chance that she had probably killed someone that way before.

"Which brings me to my point that I told you last week about elementals that can control the water content in the blood. Making it freeze, boil or evaporate through the lungs. It allows me to also manipulate various fluids within a body, made easy by the fact that most bodies consist of anywhere between sixty to ninety percent water. In turn, it makes the technique I use to bring the dead back to life — temporarily and not very realistically — necromancy."