Rituals

Nick wasted no time at all and pointed his wand at the box in front of him "ALOHAMORA!" he said and the box opened right up. "Excellent work as always Mr. Iron , 10 points to Gryffindor!" Flitwick said with a smile. After that Nick did as usual and got up to start helping the others who were having trouble with the spell. He completely ignored the frustrated look he was receiving from Hermione as he made his way to the center of the room. His golden eyes flickered between each of the students as he calmly watched them.-

After watching for a few minutes he got the general idea of who was truly struggling with the spell and who needed only a small improvement to grasp it. Neville was surprisingly enough not amongst the former group and needed very little help so Nick simply didn't give him any. Walking over to Ron , Nick stopped what the boy was doing. "Slowly but firmly , there's no rush mate. like this." Nick said and slowly showed Ron the correct way to cast the spell. He then reset the lock and had Ron try but even though he failed the attempt was much better and Nick told him so.-

Positive reinforcement was crucial when dealing with students as it gives them that sort of rush of dopamine that makes them want to work harder to get more. This wasn't some sort of new concept either as it had been used for most of history even if the exact reason it worked wasn't fully understood by the one using it. Nick moved away from Ron and went over to the other side of the room where one of the male Slytherins were struggling with the spell.-

Nick didn't know the boy but still approached with a helpful expression "your pronunciation is slightly off like this AH-LO-HA-MORE-UH." He explained and the boy slowly sounded the spell out and Nick nodded and praised him for doing it correctly. With one more attempt the boy succeeded in unlocking the box with a look of delight. When he looked up however Nick was already further away helping another student. Flitwick had already secretly given Gryffindor another 20 points for Nick's work and couldn't help but marvel at the natural way he handled teaching. It wasn't some convoluted method of trying to get others to understand but rather dumbing it down to manageable size without coming across as condescending.-

Once class was over Nick split away from his friends and headed to the library to do some research in the "ancient" section. Specifically about a book he saw there previously that caught his attention when he first entered that area of the library , "A beginner's guide to rituals by R. S> Black". During his search into the basics of magic Nick had discovered a surprising lack of information on rituals as thought the entire topic had been erased from the library.-

He wasn't all that surprised about this however as a look at the list of banned magics for the ministry showed why that may be the case as ALL rituals were thoroughly banned. The sentence for performing even the simplest divination ritual was a minimum of five years in Azkaban. It seemed extremely harsh to punish someone with having to deal with happiness eating monsters like dementors just because of a harmless ritual. This isn't to say that Nick was doubting that there were some really dark and fucked up rituals just that there were also useful and good ones as well.-

Ironically this exact topic was mentioned in the book when Nick turned the page past the forewarning at the start. According to the author of the book it was typically sacrificial rituals that fell into the category of dark magic. The reason for this is that the principal behind sacrificial was basically equivalent exchange meaning if you were to give a wizards life you could receive great rewards. The sacrificial rituals shown in the book were much different than that however as they required things like certain plants or other materials and a couple had magical creature parts as ingredients.-

Nick found one sacrificial ritual that appealed to him greatly as it involved basically trading the heart of an animal they hunted , the eyes of an bird and the person who was conducting the rituals hair for a small boost to their reflexes. Reaction time often means the difference between life and death in a wizard battle so if Nick could tilt the scale into his favor by trading a few small things he would without any hesitation. The steps for the ritual were also very simple as he simply needed to draw a circle with a triangle in it before placing each of the ingredients in the corners before speaking the incantation that was it , nice and simple.

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