Harry Potter's sister ~~~ Fanfiction

Harry's finding part 74

Harry had finally gotten around to finding the Winston Lawrence's obituary from the Daily Prophets in the library, the author of the obscure Patronus paper he found in the Room of Requirement. Unfortunately it told Harry very little about the man that library books hadn't already told him. It did tell him that Lawrence was nominated for an Order of Merlin after he saved dozens of Muggles from a Dementor attack in County Down; whilst he was on holiday with his wife, his young son and his 3-week-old daughter. This was six months before he died. The Obituary came with a picture of the family at that time and of Lawrence's Patronus: a Golden Eagle.

It did not escape Harry's notice, that the Patronus Paper was started not long after the Dementor attack took place. It was Harry's guess that something happened in County Down which led to Lawrence having an epiphany about the charm.

Now that he'd been through much more Arithmancy, Harry was beginning to understand Lawrence's paper a bit more. Or to be more precise, less of it appeared to be complete and utter gibberish. In the paper Lawrence constantly referred to an "Elemental Stimulus" theory and his work showed a lot of number diagrams that he claimed supported this.

The only problems were that the number diagrams used equations that Harry didn't recognise, not surprising as he'd only done a few months of Arithmancy. There was also the fact that Harry didn't have the faintest idea what an "Elemental Stimulus" was, despite all the data that was on the paper. It appeared that Lawrence died before he had a chance to write a description of what it was. Harry had asked Professor Vector about it.

"Elemental Stimulus?" said Professor Vector he previous day when he went to talk to her. "I've never heard that term before. Are you sure it wasn't and Elemental Clef?"

"I'm sure." said Harry. "What's an elemental clef?"

"An elemental clef is a magical enhancement of sorts. If you look at this symbol here." She pointed to a poster on her wall that contained various squiggles.

"That's the elemental symbol for fire right?" said Harry.

"Very good Mr Potter." Said Professor Vector. "Yes a clef is effectively what we call an active symbol, that is, an emphasized symbol that is actively affecting the magic. If this symbol was active then it could influence the nature of fire based magic. For example if you could harness this symbol into an Incendio Charm, instead of conjuring fire you would conjure a substance that would be more comparable with liquid-hot magma."

"Ouch." Said Harry. "Is this related to Elemental Runes?"

"They're the same thing." Said Professor Vector. "That term though has become rather limited since it became apparent the symbol could be magically enhanced without Runes. The most basic way one can enhance magic elementally is by tying a spell to an Elemental Rune. However there are other ways. There is a long and complex incantation that can be used by the most skilled of sorcerers to enhance the strength of a spell. Someone with intimate knowledge of the Elements can modify that spell to enhance the elemental properties by tying in an Elemental Clef.

"So if I used this incantation in conjunction with a Flipendo Jinx it could be enhanced to turn my spell into a… fireball." Harry trailed off.

"Theoretically." Said Vector. "Although I sincerely doubt, without offence intended, that you would be able to cast this incantation. It is long, very difficult to remember and requires vast retained knowledge for just one Element. I imagine the only people here who could cast this spell would be Professors Dumbledore and Flitwick."