Chapter 88

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I was able to concentrate and remember skills I hadn't used since childhood, so I waved my hand, and a formless blob of flame burst from it, leaving scorch on the wall. The sensation was much weaker than in my childhood, but the amount of witchcraft was the same. I tried to summon the same sensations of warmth as I had in my childhood and waved my hand again. I waved my hand again, and a huge, man-sized clot flew into the wall, setting the stone ablaze and even leaving streaks of burning and sparkling that quickly extinguished.

It was clear - the power of the magic produced had increased with age, and the cost of similar effects had decreased. I took my wand in my hands and conjured up a simple Stupefy in front of the wall. I felt zero magic inside. No change. I concentrated and wished to create a more powerful Stupefy. It worked, but still no sensations. I caused a feeling of warmth in my chest and tried to direct it into my hand, but it didn't work out very well. However, I immediately tried to recreate the Stupefy.

At the tip of the wand, a sphere grew and exploded into blue clots. The clots flew swiftly and chaotically across the room, scattering blue sparks to the sides like snowflakes melting into thin air. Just when I thought it was pretty, I glanced over at something flickering on the side and glanced up sharply — just a glint of afternoon sunlight in the window. The blue clots seemed to go wild and rushed very sharply to where I was looking. There were seven of them. Seven powerful blows, like a hammer, shattered the dense stone of the wall a little.

"Perfectly," I looked thoughtfully and wonderfully at the work of my hands. "And what the hell was that?"

What could I say about the result of the experiment? Very incomprehensible. Apparently, under the pressure of forcibly pumped magic, the spell construct was formed incorrectly. I was very lucky that the output was something adequate, not just an explosion, gas, some lava, or spatial anomaly - anything can happen. This kind of experimentation should be set aside for a while and move on to the emotional pumping based on desire, rather than the pumping of magic by the method of primitive control.

This pumping method is quite feasible because if I use the spells I got from the Grimoire with the demon, I can visualize the process of creating a spell, its construct, without having any sensitivity at all. After all, somehow I'd created Vaglift, a shockwave when I clapped my hands together, or Fumgilt, a foggy haze. There, in general, was everything simple - I imagine that some magic is in me, visualize a construct, rune or contour of complex figures, or combined, or the intertwining of different threads. Then that magic that is in me just fills in a certain order the construct. I can't do anything else, but I can see how it is filled with the magic that I have in me. Everything is clear, even according to the scheme. But there is a "but" and not one.

The spells from the Grimoire are so deeply rooted in my mind, and perhaps even in my soul, that I can reproduce them almost on reflex as if I have been doing nothing but practicing them and learning all the subtleties for hundreds of years. But the problem is that this knowledge is incomplete. For example, there are a dozen more in the category of Misty Moroks besides Fumgilt. All of them are more complex, and some are its derivatives, but I have no idea how someone from Fumgilt came to these derivatives. It's like with a violin, the ability to play on which I could boast in a past life. In just a couple of seconds, a long way to develop this skill can be built in my head, failures, successes, long rehearsals, and training, how I was taught to hold and control the bow, and so on. It is with this rich experience that one associates the ability to play the violin and the notes that you extract from it, turning it into a melody, music. Here, however, this rich arsenal of often far from light, complex and powerful spells and rituals is not associated with anything at all. If the experience of playing the violin allows me not only to play what I have learned and practiced but also to produce new ones quite easily, to improvise, then here… Here I can produce only a certain melody, always exactly the same and not a gram of improvisation - deviation from the "notes" is equal to a failure, it is impossible to correct.

What does that mean? And it means only what I came to last year: I have to grow up to the level of these spells. That's exactly what I'm going to do now. The goal is a clear sense of all the nuances of the spell formation. Theoretically, there are several ways to achieve this, it seems to me. I remember exactly the visual process of Leviosa formation as performed by Flitwick. One could try to visualize the formation of the construct in parallel with the formation itself through the academically correct implementation of the spell. Such associations, even without sensitivity, on a subconscious level should help in the emergence and attachment of the necessary sensations to the fact of witchcraft.

There is, it seems to me, another option. The wand is a concentrator and a guiding vector through which magic leaves the body to form a spell. Let's consider it from some physical point of view. We can imagine that the environment has a certain resistance, not allowing magic to freely leave the body. On the other hand, the wand plays the role of a kind of gasket, an adapter, which in the contact zone of the two media practically levels the resistance of the environment, allowing magic to leave the body much easier. Why do movements generate magic? I think it has to do with a trivial increase in nervous and physical activity. The words are keys - I think the trick is breathing. I don't want to believe that words by themselves really have magical weight. I mean words without will or reason. Just words. And here the nuances of breathing, peculiarities of work of a breathing apparatus, associative chains, which emerge in a head while saying words, which sense is clear to you - it already yes, it can and should influence magic. But I got too carried away with theorizing. Flitwick is right - this is something that we can think, reason, and talk about forever.