Playing with Shadows

Looking around Randolph's home, I searched for a suitable place to practice manipulating the obscurus. After some reconnaissance, I found an ideal spot behind the shed, a bit away from the house and the surrounding area.

I needed to be away from the house when doing this, as I was really stepping into new territory here. If one little experiment or idea turned bad, I didn't want to end up destroying part of Randolph's house or, God forbid, one of his brooms. Although he claimed they were all defective, he looked at his brooms as if they were his children. If I blew one up, I'd probably end up homeless.

Sitting down on a rock, I looked at my hand and willed the obscurus energy towards it. It took a moment before the energy reached my hand, and then another moment for it to coat it with its energy.

Looking at the black fog with bluish energy streaming through it around my hand, a single thought slipped out of my mouth.

"Way too slow…"

The delay between me willing the energy to my hand and then it being coated was far too long. If I were ever attacked and needed to retaliate, I needed it to be instant, or at least near-instant, for this to be a feasible way to defend myself. When I attacked Dron, I had time to prepare, but if Dron had turned around at any point, he could have easily neutralized me with a spell.

Honestly, looking back, my escape was pure luck. I put all my hope in the Blackfangs starting a fight with the Blighthearts, and the etched brick in the cell was a desperate attempt to give the Blackfangs some proof for conviction. I knew deep down it was not going to resolve everything, but I wanted it to be a catalyst that sparked the gathering of more evidence.

Then there was Dron. I had planned early on to utilize him in some way to get me out of the manor, but I had to place faith in his fear over obedience. If he was more loyal to Jason than afraid of him, he might have refused to move or do anything. I really went with the flow and just hoped it would all turn out fine.

When Dron apparated me out, he got distracted by the fight. If that hadn't happened, I would have still been a prisoner. I can't let myself end up in a situation where luck dictates everything again. I want to be able to control the situation more with my own power.

The only way to do this was to improve upon this ability, and it seemed the only way to improve was to persistently maneuver the obscurus energy around my body so it started to become a natural process to me rather than a process I placed mental energy into. 

When the control I had reached a pinnacle point, I felt as though I'd be able to achieve more than just coat my fist with the energy.

The idea of imbuing my fists was inspired initially by how the Blackfangs seemed to wield their martial magic. Instead of imbuing a spell into a sword, I was imbuing my own hand with the obscurus. 

If this idea could be developed further, I wanted to eventually be able to imbue other parts of my body and create unique effects from that, and the end goal was to imbue spells with the energy to see what synergy that created.

Imbuing spells was harder than imbuing my body though. The best visualization I have for doing this imbuing so far was the obscurus' energy wrapping around my fist. 

To try and visualize that same phenomenon with a spell that was intangible was incredibly hard to picture, after all, I couldn't see spells at all. As this dilemma crossed my mind, I felt an idea surface.

"I wonder…"

Withdrawing the obscurus' energy from my fist, I redirected it towards my eyes. Maybe augmenting my eyes with the energy would help with 'visualization' in some manner. 

As the energy flowed into my eyes, I felt a slight bloating pain, as if I was filling a water balloon to the limit. In the next moment, my vision started to go black as if ink had been splashed directly onto my eyes, and soon everything went dark.

"Oh, fuck."

As I basically went blind for a moment, I panicked and instantly stopped what I was doing. My heart was beating fast, thinking I had just blinded myself. Luckily, as the energy withdrew from my eye, the slight bloating pain vanished, and my vision returned.

Sweat trickled down my face as I felt a looming fear for a moment, a stark reminder that the energy I wielded wasn't a 'kind' force but originally a 'malevolent' one.

"That was really fucking dumb…"

I already knew this energy was difficult to deal with, and that I'd have to experiment somewhat, but injecting that energy into my eyes was a bit of a leap. I somewhat hoped deep down that putting 'magic' in my eyes would improve my sight and let me see magic, but that was an incredibly naïve thought, it seemed.

"They make these parts seem so easy in the novels I used to read…"

I should probably start safer first before I decide to blind myself again. If I had put any more energy into that little 'test,' I really could have blinded myself.

"Control is what's needed most… let's just start by working on reducing the delay."

Looking down at my hands, I imbued them with the obscurus and then withdrew the energy after. Repeating this process, I fell into an almost meditative state, purely focusing on this ability.

It only felt like a few minutes had passed, but before I knew it, the sky started to lighten slightly. As the surroundings started to brighten, I felt the fatigue of my night's practice wash over me. Such fine control was very mentally taxing.

"Ah… I better at least get some sleep."

Standing up, I headed back towards Randolph's house. I had the vision of what I needed to do now; I just needed to keep at it…

.

A few weeks passed since I first started to help Randolph with making brooms and when I started to hone my control over my obscurus.

As I practiced in the night, I felt my control grow slowly. I wasn't in too much of a rush currently, but the goal was to have my control over the obscurus at a near-perfect level before I left Randolph's house one day.

The idea did spring into my head at one point, that I should go to a magic school somewhere. Hogwarts was an option, and it would come with some advantages. However, considering what went down there and the fact that anything I did there could potentially implicate me into the 'story' of this world left me feeling a bit tepid. 

I wanted strength and knowledge before I took the risk of really involving myself.

There were other options besides Hogwarts, of course. Thinking of each school, the closest was Beauxbatons, based in France. It seemed like a good choice in my head. However, the languages spoken there were from all over Europe, and it made me worry about how I would manage to learn anything if all sorts of languages were used in teaching.

I was lucky enough with Randolph. I had asked him when I first met him how he spoke English so well, and he stated that he learned the language mainly for business reasons. Being the owner of a broomstick company, that logic did make a lot of sense.

I still had just under a year before the new term started so I didn't need to fixate so much on school for now, I'd cross that bridge when it came to it. The main things I needed to focus on were rebuilding my strength in my body and refining my control over the obscurus.

As another night came, I went to my usual spot and practiced once again manipulating my obscurus. I coated my fists with the energy and then punched out at a tree. The contact made my fists sting with pain, and I barely damaged the tree with my raw strength. However, the energy coating my fist caused an effect on the bark of the tree, decaying it away.

"Seems as though the main effect of this energy is decay and destruction in some manner…"

The bark eroded for a minute or so before the energy dissipated.

"Guess no energy in this world can be truly persistent… nearly 2 minutes it took for it to disappear."

With these tests, I was gaining the understanding I needed. Seeing the decaying effect of the energy really made me smack myself over what I first tried with imbuing my eyes, as that was truly dumb of me.

Sitting back down on the rock near the center of the clearing, I took the jewel I got from the dark forest out of my pocket. Looking at the pitch-black jewel in my hand, I slowly guided some of my obscurus' energy towards it. As the energy seemed to enter the jewel, the black jewel started to show some turbulence within. Blue streams of energy that appeared at random started to become more common.

I kept on doing this, and it felt as though the jewel, despite its small size, had no limit. Nothing happened, and it seemed to just absorb the energy greedily until I stopped. The synergy it had with this energy, though, was undeniable. 

Any magical tool I made this into would synergize with me undoubtedly, it felt like.

"It's getting late again…"

Looking up at the sky, the night that once loomed seemed to be disappearing again as the slight glow of sunrise penetrated the clearing I was in.

Heading back into Randolph's house, I felt content.

I was progressing, slowly but surely.