A Game Changing Rune

(Seras POV)

It had been a few days post-birthday celebrations, and after a few long lessons with my godfather, I was given a short reprieve. I found myself in the library, once again drawn to the world of runes. Reproducing the enchanted paint brushes from my mother with runes instead of spells was quite the fun exercise.

The paintbrush that made the paint shimmer had been a relatively simple challenge. I could reproduce a similar effect using a few different visual runes, tweaking the parameters until it matched perfectly.

The instant life paintbrush was also not that hard. I just made it so that the runes that would usually make the completed painting come to life were placed into the paint itself. My first attempt lacked a delay, resulting in a cute cat painting becoming wildly deformed as it animated mid-creation.

The color-changing paintbrush, however, was a significant challenge. Due to my natural occlumency—which likely came from me forcing magic into my brain in the womb—the paintbrush was unable to connect in the way it needed to read my thoughts. The occlumency that has kept my reincarnation a secret for so long was now stopping me from using an artifact that reads surface thoughts. It was a worthwhile trade-off, but still frustrating. I decided to put this project on hold until I had greater control over my mind. I would have to ask Snape for books on occlumency and legilimency after our next lesson.

With that project on the back burner, I decided to broaden my runic knowledge through more study. Luckily, I had received an ancient runebook from my father for my birthday. I placed it on the empty bookshelf in my room, marking the beginning of my personal library. This book was bound in dark leather and bore no title on its spine, but its age and aura of mystery called to me; what can I say, but I'm a sucker for a bit of mystery. Somewhat nervous that it would fall apart like dust in my hands, I carefully pulled it from the shelf and opened it, revealing a collection of ancient runes and their descriptions.

The book's descriptions, titles, and even the author's note were all written in ancient runic script. I could already tell that this was going to be a lot of work for somebody with only a passing understanding of the language. I had been so focused on the magical part of the characters that I completely ignored the linguistic part of them. There was almost something calling to me in the book itself, a strong magical aura could be seen through the yellow pages. I instantly flipped to the exert that exerted this force. I then came to the realization that I couldn't read what it said, so I returned to the library, book in hand, to find a translation dictionary. If I hadn't set up my library system earlier, this may have been a multiday process, but it was simply a ten-minute search. After accidentally finding a "Rus to English" dictionary due to a typo, I found what was needed and got to work.

The rune was a complex symbol, intricately designed with curves and angles that seemed to defy the typical simplicity of most runes. My translations were incredibly rough, but the broken-sounding English was understandable enough. The paragraphs detailed strange experiments with objects floating away, objects becoming too heavy to lift, and someone using it as an attractive force to pull a boulder closer to them and then themselves closer to the ground. The final paragraph expressed the author's confusion, noting how this rune made no sense despite its wondrous effects. The authors of this book had discovered a gravity rune.

Most magical runesmiths came from incredibly rich families, as it takes money to learn and practice runes. This led to most of the premier experts being from Pureblooded houses. Due to this, the top researchers of this field in each generation hadn't come into contact with muggle science. If they knew just how much could be done with control over gravity, they would be rolling in their graves.

The practical applications behind this rune are nearly endless. Enchanted objects could be made lighter or heavier at will; carrying a cube of tungsten would be like carrying a cube of feathers. Buildings could be constructed with materials that defied traditional weight limitations; the wizarding world could build a skyscraper ten times that of the Burj Khalifa if they had the materials and a powerful wizard willing to scribe this rune a hundred million times. My training of muscles could theoretically be improved as well, using gravity to compress muscle fibers while they heal and to allow greater force to specific areas while training. You could create robes that allow you to fly by switching off gravity at precise times and swing a sword with genuine tons of force behind it. This rune was the game-changer I had been searching for to take me up another level.

This led me to wonder about new things. Were there runes that allowed control over the other three fundamental forces? Electromagnetism is responsible for practically all phenomena encountered in daily life above the nuclear level. Control over this would make someone untouchable. The strong force is responsible for binding protons and neutrons together in the nucleus and holding quarks together. Mastery of this could make someone godlike. The weak force is responsible for radioactive decay and nuclear fission. With control over this, one could easily destroy the world. With the existence of the gravity rune, it's a wonder wizards haven't accidentally blown up the planet.