Chapter 7

The language tutoring was going quite well, I had ended up with a single teacher for all three of the languages I was learning in the end. He was a pleasant elderly man, who could have been suspected of being alive when middle English was still in use. It was one of the few explanations I'd found to explain his expert grasp of the language and his ability to relay that onto me.

I wondered if there were manifested magical talents for language learning. I knew there were potions, which I wasn't allowed to take due to my age, that helped the process of acquisition, so it would make sense for there to be a magical talent involving languages. Parseltongue was a thing after all, maybe some type of magical polyglottery?

Thankfully none of the genealogies I needed to read through in order to research the likeliness of a genetic factor being involved in magical strength were in middle English.

I was learning quickly yes, but I was hardly fluent.

I had created a graph depicting the magical power of different magical families. Magical power as a quantifiable number I drew out of the professions and lives of the people scrutinized.

It wasn't an exact science, and I only managed to quantify the magical power of about a tenth of the people I read about.

The most useful parts were the notations about their achievements at Hogwarts really, like for example how some had been held back a year for being unable to cast a spell that had nothing to do with finesse, but simple might.

And how others had entered highly magic intensive professions after school, aurors, dragon tamers etc.

The picture being slowly painted supported blood supremacy all in all. I'd taken mostly magical families because firstly, those were the ones I actually had books on. And secondly, the reason why muggleborns might have been unable to get access to more demanding, and more respected jobs might have also been connected with their, well, lack of connections.

There was a small, but noticeable dip in a families magical strength once younger blood (sometimes even muggleborn blood) was introduced. There were also some rises of course, because magic was hardly something completely predictable, but on average the magical power of a line sunk more often than it rose when mixed with non-pure blood.

I'd even found something interesting pertaining Voldemort during my research.

There had once been a magical family, descended from Slytherin himself that had also lived in Hangleton, which was now known as little Hangleton, a place that had also housed the Gaunts a few decades ago. The magical family had declined since the time of the founders, some curses and unfortunate squib births ruining it completely. Only a name remained. Redel. The middle English word that had since then transformed into riddle. If true, Voldemort was a result of more than just one line of Slytherin squibs.

And wasn't that a funny thought.

Another interesting theory pertaining magical strength I'd found in the library was that a person's magical power and understanding was not insignificantly affected by the magic present in their environment as they grew up.

The ages one to seven not being as important as the ages seven to fourteen also explained why muggleborns were not completely left behind. They did after all attend Hogwarts from eleven onwards and the osmosis effect seemed to rise exponentially until one reached fourteen. Which was also the age the magical growth usually ended completely. The seven years years from fourteen to 21 were used to stabilize the magical connection and heighten its efficiency.

Three phases that lasted seven years, it was unclear what the difference between the first and second phase were though.

It was a fun theory, there definitely seemed to be a correlation between grades achieved at Hogwarts and the magic present in the child's home. It was hard to test the theory on muggleborns though, since they never had the chance to grow up in a magic rich environment in the first place and it was quite hard to find them before the age of eleven.

Even in muggles, environment usually only made up about 20% of achieved potential, the rest being genetics. Sure magic was a different beast entirely, but it definitely had some basis in genetics and the correlation shouldn't be discarded.

All in all I didn't trust the environmental theory entirely, but neither did I distrust it enough to discard it, it wasn't like having your surroundings being magical was harmful.

The theory did make me think on how soon I could reach out to Hermione though.

She was very much a main character in the original books, that in addition to her being hailed as the smartest witch of her age definitely made her something I wanted to acquire.

Maybe some of her plot armour would rub off on me. I even had an interesting Idea I would bring up to my family in the near future that would justify a friendship between us.

But that would have to wait until I got into a position where I could make the proposal appear organic. Some finer tuned manipulations would need to find place first.

For now all I could do was become what was expected of me, namely a magical powerhouse and a political mastermind, when that became established in the mind of my family, I could start making bigger changes.

A plan started to crystallize in my mind.