13 Life and Runes

Chapter 13 –

In the top floor, of the stony tower on the west side of Hogwarts castle, Nathan Frye, was getting dressed humming the famous tune of "Hedwig's theme song" while contemplating his days at Hogwarts. It had been a month since he'd arrived. He had started exchanging letters with his mum, from the fifth day at Hogwarts. Apparently, she'd been worried when he had not sent it off the very next, he'd arrived there.

In his letters, he'd described how he'd faired in his classes and introduced the names of the new friends he'd made. She'd been delighted to know that Jeremy lived not too far from their own home. It was a short drive by car, due south, across Creake Abbey and they'd arrive in the town Jeremy lived in. She had already planned on taking a short drive down to the place to meet with his parents and get acquainted with them.

Nathan had asked her to send along copies of the Daily Mirror along with Edna, every week so that he could stay in touch with the happenings of the non-magical world. He didn't want to cut himself off from the non-magical world and had decided to use the newspapers to establish a functional timeline of events that happen there so that he could account for the gaps in knowledge that he had in regards to his knowledge of the future.

He had also vastly increased his skill and understanding of magic, using his free time in the Room of Requirements. He spent most of his evenings, there training both magically and non-magically. He had made ample use of the Room's capabilities of providing a swimming pool to train his body there, via making laps of the pool. Plus, it was fun. He'd completed his magical training up to halfway through the fourth-year curriculum and was sure that he'd finish the OWLs level material by the end of the year.

In his day-to-day classes, he was touted as one of the smartest in the year, which initially garnered him a lot of jealous looks, especially from the Slytherins, but due to his close friendship with Carlisle, Mary-Anne, and Jeremy, he'd been able to avoid the majority of the bullying that children were wont to do, apart from the snide remarks.

On many incidents, Cassius Warrington would try to goad either him or Carlisle into confrontations, due to his jealousy at their performances in class. Nathan had been performing so well, in fact, that he'd decided to hold back, and only answer questions when called upon. That was mainly because during the first charms lesson, with Prof. Flitwick, he'd been able to levitate his feather, on his first try, earning him fifteen points, and then he'd proceeded to help the others among his friends, achieve the same result, earning him another whopping twenty-five points each, for each friend he helped. That on its amounted to eighty-five points earned by just him alone, in under three days.

Nathan had found that Jeremy had a rather poor aptitude for Potion Brewing, as Jeremy couldn't grasp that vast amount of focus and attention were necessary in the art. Potions was not chemistry. No matter how much one memorizes the books, and learns the result of mixing various ingredients in the multiple different ways, one would never be able to properly prepare a potion without keeping a sharp mind on it, and lacing the magical effects with intent.

If a non-magical was handed powdered root of asphodel and he was asked to mix it with an infusion of wormwood, he wouldn't get the Draught of Living death. Without the wizard's magic and intent, it would just become a coagulated mixture of dried powder and tree sap. As with every other magic, that Nathan has come across, Intent and power rule supreme. And that was something that Jeremy couldn't quite understand, despite the various times he'd tried to help him. That is also the reason a magical afraid of his own shadow, constantly expecting failure from his potion, will fail in preparing it, no matter what he tried. Unless the person is able to convince himself, psychologically, that he can do it, he won't be able to.

The ingredients in said potion are nothing more than adequate sacrifice, to satisfy the law of equivalent exchange, That most basic law of Alchemy, the patented next step from potions.

The problem with Jeremy, Nathan noticed, was that he just didn't want to learn potions, he found it be not a subject that used much magic, and hence boring for him to waste his time after, and that was not something Nathan could change.

Finally, finishing dressing himself, Nathan looked in the mirror and adjusted his messy brown hair. He was ready for whatever the day held for him.

oOOOOOOOOOOo

"Are you sure?" Jeremy asked.

"Uh-huh! I saw her right there! I know she went right through there!" Nathan replied.

"Well! What are you waiting for then! We have to get her!" Jeremy exclaimed, nonplussed.

"Quiet down you two, we didn't even want to be here in the first place, and you've dragged us along regardless," Carlisle interjected.

"Speak for yourself Carly, I for one, am enjoying watching these two go after Tonks, her last attempt at pranking that nincompoop friend of yours set off on me too. And now Nathan's getting me my just desserts!" Mary-Anne commented.

"Uhh, they've corrupted you too!" Carlisle bemoaned.

"Hush, admit it, you enjoy it too."

"Well... yes, I mean, no! There's nothing fun about this, we should let her have her time to enjoy herself, and go back to doing better things."

"Stop lying to yourself, Carly. Join us in the dark side!"

"Now look who's the one being all loud! And seriously Mary-Anne? Star Wars!? Now!?" Nathan commented.

"What? It was a good movie!"

"Look she's coming out from the class! It's time! Jeremy, you activate the flash while I'll cast the magic on her, then Carly, Mary you run off towards her, grab her wand and head in that direction, while Jeremy and I, will use this passageway to hide and meet you at the Great Hall" Nathan instructed.

"Right!" Jeremy nodded and went and hid behind the gargoyle at the end of the corridor, under a perfect disillusionment, in which the Metamorphmagus was about to turn into.

Nathan and his friends were setting up the perfect ambush to prank her, in retaliation for what she did during the previous day's breakfast hours. She'd set off a locally activated charm that made the group appear as the characters from Gilderoy Lockhart's autobiography, she'd set it up in a way that Nathan looked like Gilderoy, Carlisle looked like the Bandon Banshee, Mary-Anne had become a Vampiress and Nathan had been turned into the Wagga Wagga werewolf. The difference was, that they'd been made to look like the chibi versions of the monstrous characters depicted in the books.

While Nathan had noticed the prank and its magical effects, by gleaning the magic's intent, he'd let it go off. He'd come to regret that decision, almost instantly. Not because of the laughter that'd been generated from their peers, no. He regrated being compared to the fraud adventurer, Gilderoy Lockhart and for that, he was out for revenge. Naturally, his friends had banded up in this endeavor with him too.

As soon as the metamorphmagus was halfway through the corridor, Jeremy set off the flash using an overpowered Lumos, and the loud noisemaking charm, while Nathan applied the magic meant to make her look like a nice imitation of an angry red bird, by transfiguring her school outfit into a red chicken costume complete with thick bushy eyebrows.

Due to the sudden appearance of the flash and the remarkably nimble speed with which she'd lost her wand to Carlisle, she couldn't respond to her assailants and was left floundering. As soon her vision cleared, she didn't notice the state of her dress and as she couldn't see Nathan and Jeremy hidden in the passageway, she turned around and ran behind the girls, who'd claimed her wand.

As soon as the boys reached the Great Hall, they found that Carlise and Mary-Anne had just arrived in the hall, and lo and behold behind her walked in, Tonks completely oblivious to the Chicken outfit her school uniform had turned into.

"And that is how much now? Fourteen for me, and ten for her?"

"Yeah, I think that's about right." Jeremy nodded.

"Carlisle! Give me back my wand, and seriously Nathan? A wand stealing prank? Your standards are slipping little man." Tonks demanded as soon as she got within talking range. It seemed that she was still oblivious to the students pointing and giggling at her, enjoying the by play.

"Well, my dear Tonksie!" He waved his hand at her "I have to say, red and covered in feathers really, and I mean really, brings out the color and magic out of you. You should wear it more often, the chickens will love them."

Finally noticing the state of her outfit, she looked incredulously at him. "That's not fair! You teamed up with your buddies on me!"

"All's fair in love and war! And this is prank war! And you did invite this on yourself, by pranking all of yesterday." was Nathan's quick reply, Jeremy nodding by her side.

"Fine! I am getting Charlie involved in this, just you wait!" and with that she collected her wand from Carlisle, dismantled the transfiguration on her robes, huffed and walked out of the hall, amidst the increasing intensity of giggles and chuckles. Though if you'd look at the corner of her mouth, there was a smile that was gradually threatening to bloom.

"Well, that was fun." Carlisle let out, as she took a seat on the dining table.

"Take a look at Warrington over there, he looks like he's suck on a lemon, what's his problem?" Jeremy mused, diverting the attention of the group toward the Slytherin table.

"Ignore him, he wants attention and he's not getting enough at home, so he's looking for trouble."

"Right...…, anyway, what's our next class?"

oOOOOOOOOOOo

Time passed by slowly for Nathan and his friends, Halloween rolled by without any cause for concern. Nathan was on extra high alert on that particular day, due to most of the problems in Hogwarts happening around the time of Halloween. But it seemed that fate was only for Harry Potter.

Nathan had completed his OWLs level of magical training and had started dabbling into runes.

Runes, he found, are what can be considered the "written programming of the Universe.' It can do a lot more things that simple spells and phrases could not. As such, runes take a long time to make since interaction with each character needs to be considered. They also need to be carved or engraved since the energy running through the characters would deform simple writing.

Each line in a runic array has a meaning behind it, given by the direction in which the line was drawn, whether it was broken mid-way and continued at a later time, or whether there were other runes in the vicinity of the ones drawn prior to feeding them magic. And as such runes required delicate precision and skill to truly understand. And to effectively master the art, Nathan had to start small. Extremely small.

He had to basically, return to the drawing and learn calligraphy, and painting. And while he found painting cathartic and soothing to his soul, it also made for a slow learning process.

But, Nathan was adamant of mastering even this aspect of magic, for the solutions to problems it eventually offered, were vast.

Runes could be used to create pocket dimensions, as seen in the case of Mokeskin pouches, they could be used to enchant teleportation devices, like the vanishing cabinet Nathan had studied over the months, he could not yet ascertain the design structure behind the runic enchantments behind it, but he'd attempted it anyway. Runes opened a universe all on their own, where the laws of the universe could potentially meet a point synonymous to the conundrum of an infinite force applied on an unmovable object.

Nathan was practically salivating with the prospects. He couldn't wait to start experimenting.