Chapter 75: The Refraction Phenomena
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5 September 1992, Hogwarts
Did Lockhart end up with the Diary back in July and that was the consequences of it? If it was any other artefact, Harry would have noticed it, but the diary was a tricky little bugger.
Speaking of the diary, he needed to start developing a way to survive the Basilisk's glare. It was mostly done out of precaution, but he would rather not risk it. After all, he loses nothing by being prepared.
School had started for a few days and the entire student population wasn't sure what to think about the new Defense Professor. Lockhart was adored by the younger years because of his stories, and he was a good enough orator to make things stick slightly, but NEWT students just thought that he was somewhat average. They were used to figuring things out by themselves after years of mediocre Defense Professors, but they honestly had no comments. The man just mainly stuck to the ministry curriculum, and the books were mildly helpful.
Honestly, after the first read, the books weren't all that interesting. Don't get him wrong, they were far more interesting than the original books, and the magic used was very well explained, but even then, it was primarily stories, even if they were real ones. It was like someone had used Auror reports while explaining the magic of each spell to teach defence. Yeah, it was interesting, but an actual textbook would have been more educational as it will include far more magic.
Still, with the number of horrible Defense Against the Dark Arts Professors, Lockhart was still one of the few that wasn't horrible and that was suspicious. Harry was sure the man was a fraud and this sudden rise in competence could theoretically be because of the Diary's influence. According to the stories, Tom Riddle always wanted to be the Defense Professor and aiding a fraudulent professor was something a petty teenage pre-dark lord would do just to prove a point. Although Riddle's desire for the position could have been because of the influence over the next generation it would have given him. In a way, he wanted to be the next Dumbledore, something that the headmaster wouldn't allow as long as he was in power.
All in all, Harry had enjoyed his first week at Hogwarts this year. Much of that enjoyment had actually come from the relative normality that had made up pretty much the entirety of the week. Binns was as boring as ever, Snape was as much of an ass, and the junior professors were just as useless as ever. Honestly, Harry barely even remembered their names.
The most eventful things that had happened had been Ron Weasley's and Neville Longbottom's howlers, his early morning flying session with Cassius, his first lesson under the not-so-fake after all Gilderoy Lockhart, and of course, Harry's attempts at figuring out where the damned Diary was.
The Potter scion had successfully put a small counting rune connected to a piece of parchment, which increments whenever someone enters each common room, on decrements whenever someone leaves. He did the same to the Great Hall, which he tied to each student's house, and one for each of the classrooms also with the same property.
What most people don't know is that being sorted isn't just about wearing a different coloured tie and just participating in the competition. The castle itself marks each sorted student to allow them to enter certain parts of the castle. They can be circumvented, of course, and the castle itself has this mischievous nature that would allow a few students to get past the wards, but the truth was that there was a reason no one could sneak into the Ravenclaw common room, even if it's only protected by a riddle. The riddle will only be spoken when a Ravenclaw asks it, and even then, there are other protections. It's the same reason why the Hufflepuff common room was still protected, even if it didn't even have a password just a special knock.
If you knew what you were doing, you could technically be able to tell the house of a student with the magic, however, for some reason the castle only allowed the wards to activate in public places. So, yeah, putting it in the bathroom with the entrance was a bust, so Harry stuck with his method. It was frustrating because he wouldn't have needed to do all of this if the castle just let him do it at the location of the entrance. It wouldn't have even let him put it outside the entrance to the male and female dormitory.
Harry had snuck into each common room with his cloak and tried to do it, allowing him to pinpoint the gender of the possessed student as well. His enchantments just wouldn't hold. It was why he was stuck labelling the entrances to the common rooms, technically outside of it. If he had to guess, Harry would say that the castle allows students to add their own touch, and their own little mark during their education as long as it's in a public location. The common rooms, the bathrooms, and whatnot were just off limits, but the corridors and empty classrooms were alright. It was limiting, and frustrating, but he could make do. The small marker he put in the bathroom just wasn't permanent, it wasn't even a spell, just a trigger of movement that was almost unseen, that wasn't even connected to the bathroom, but to a small artefact that Harry enchanted, not the other way around, which the castle seemed to accept for some reason. It was very confusing, to be honest, but at least he had a basic system that he could refine at any time.
He could technically put it at the entrance of the bathroom, but that was honestly weird, and it was very possible that whoever was possessed by the Diary would be able to notice the frankly basic ward in an empty corridor that held no magic. In a common room, they could easily ignore it as a precautionary issue from the school, but in front of the exact bathroom that was the entrance to the chamber, Riddle would know that someone knew about the chamber and about its entrance, and that would spell a lot of unnecessary trouble. Doing it by elimination was simply better. This would have been so easily solved if he had the damn Marauder's map if it even existed. According to the stories, the Weasley Twins have it, and Harry didn't know where they hid what must be their most precious treasure. It could technically still be in Filch's office, so Harry had to plan to break in there and see if there was anything useful.
He also still didn't know what to do about Lockhart. Technically, if anyone noticed the enchantments, they could think that they were made years ago to make sure no student was missing but putting it on the entrance to a professor's room would be difficult to explain, especially if he was possessed by the Diary. So, what to do? Harry wasn't exactly sure what to make of that issue.
There was certainly a part of him that thought he was overthinking things, especially considering the utter mess of a detection system he had made, which wasn't efficient at all, and could be circumvented in many ways. He even ordered an Omniocular of all things, to try to figure out its enchantment to craft something of his own. He was still waiting for Hedwig to return with the package.
However, there was also a much larger, much more insistent part of him that was telling him he was most certainly not overthinking anything at all. In the end, he'd decided that as of now, he had made the best of his time to find out who has the cursed diary. It technically was functional, even if he could probably improve it since he rushed a lot of things, but he now had to focus on protecting him from the Basilisk. It was, unsurprisingly, extremely complicated.
This morning, Harry was planning to maintain his normal routine. He had just finished breakfast with Daphne, Blaise and Tracey. Now, he was off to the library to look for more information about the magical Refraction effect. According to the books Arcturus Black had given him, it was this very magical effect that was used to fight Basilisks. It wasn't perfect, but it was very complex in terms of magical theory.
The idea was simple when a spell touches a physical object, it tends to physically damage it, but if the object in question is spelled to be unbreakable, then one of three things happen. If the magic in the spell was higher than the one making the object unbreakable, the object is destroyed. If the magic is lower, then it's splashed around, and the enchantments are weakened. But curiously, if the object is transparent, the spell can go through it entirely, well, a part of the spell, while the other is refracted away, and the enchantment is barely affected. Someone had even tried to put it through a lens and the spell was somehow more focused. It was a very peculiar phenomenon that showed a certain similarity in the behaviour of spells and the behaviour of light.
Now, by using a series of enchanted mirrors instead angled to cause the most refraction possible, each one removes a slight fraction of power from the spell which affects the enchantment itself. The spell gets weaker and weaker with each mirror until by the end of it it's basically harmless and can be surpassed by the inherit magical resistance all wizards and witches possess. In a way, the mirrors are turned into absorbing material and reflective at the same time. It reflects the magic while absorbing what remained, and the combination of multiple mirrors could stop take away from the spell, while not affecting the light coming in, allowing people to see through it.
Of course, that's talking about huge mirrors with large spells, the Basilisk's glare is magical, hence it works the same way. However, instead of using cumbersome mirrors, using goggles with dozens of miniature mirrors would work. They're awfully large, but still very useful and grant basic protection from the king of serpents.
The bigger issue is that they tended to break with prologued eye contact, making the effects less potent, and sometimes even rendering them useless. The unbreakable enchantments were being overwhelmed by the glare, which was why, Harry had a small alternative plan to the enchantment. The last basilisk hunt was almost a thousand years back, and magic had come a long way since then, particularly jewel craft. Certain gems, when treated correctly, could hold a substantial amount of magic, enough to power wards for decades, and even centuries if they're filled entirely. It was a Goblin technique that was reverse engineered by a wizard a few centuries back, which actually sparked a Goblin Rebellion.
Harry was hoping on getting a few gems and directing the energy reflected, not towards the unbreakable enchantment, but to be converted and stored as raw magic to enhance the enchantments itself, and maybe even power something else in the long run. This, combined with the advances in spacial charms, could theoretically make the googles somewhat wearable and not affect combat scenarios.
It was a good plan, but the charms needed to do this project were just very advanced to even NEWT students. That's not mentioning the tiny runes that need to be inscribed on every small mirror and the expansion charms that need to be somehow unaffected by the spell as well. It was a huge undertaking and by far Harry's largest magical project so far. At least he had a plan in place, he needed to buy the materials and enough practice to make it happen.
Harry decided to go to the owlery and use one of the school owls to order a rune carving kit, specialized for small objects, a few alchemically treated rubies to store the magic, as well as Orichalcum to hold the enchantments and transfer the magic effectively. Damn, his vault was going to take a big hit after this.
Of course, Harry's streak of normality was unfortunately about to come to a rather screeching halt, when a grinning Malfoy, followed by his lackeys, made his way to him. The Potter scion suppressed a groan; he just knew that this wouldn't go well.
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Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.