Ritual at Seven

*****Flashback*****

Before Seventh Birthday

I could sense how my reserves with getting worked like a muscle, and ever since I began diligently practising magic this way, I could sense my magical reserves grow denser. There was no fixed core in our body, unlike the dantian in cultivation novels, but magic flows through our body like blood does.

But the Tenketsu points, or Chi points are accurate, and do affect our magical wielding ability. I tried the Chakra handsigns from Naruto, but they had no particular significant impact that way. So I decided to practise releasing magic from each of the 451 Tenketsu points. It was a joy to feel the slight numbness and ticklish sensation, when magic accumulates at a particular Tenketsu point.

Because the magic flows through our body, there are no magic suppression handcuffs possible. The best that is done, are the Runecrafted handcuffs which absorb the magical energy from the person who is handcuffed, and release it into the atmosphere.

That is why, apprehending criminals and keeping them secure is so difficult. I also practised my Legilimency, and I am proud to say, I am an expert Legilimens by age nine. I could also perform the spell wandlessly, and silently, which allowed me to try my hand on the unsuspecting muggles in the Rock Festival in the Netherlands.

I can also apparate and side-along apparate someone, as wide as about 300 miles. I could also silently apparate and use apparition during combat.

I had decided to try and assassinate a few inner circle of the death eaters, but no matter what, as a child, I was physically weak.

About six months before my seventh birthday, I convinced all four of my grandparents to teach me ritual to enhance me. I wanted rituals which enhanced my mind, body and soul.

I found a lot of them; some Sumerian, Accadian, Indian, and a few shamanic rituals from the African and North American tribes. There were Wodoo rituals which sacrificed various entities and imbue the person performing the ritual with the desired property.

But, I knew my grandparents were not particularly on the dark side to allow me to dabble in those practises. For now though, I had obtained an Unhatched Hebridean Black Dragon Egg, a Thunderbird Chick, a Basilisk I bred and a small Kraken hatchling.

Krakens were giant squids, which had had chitinous exoskeleton for their main body and long harpoon like tentacles.

This ritual was all about the balance. Balance of elements, balance of light and the dark, balance of the sense and self, balance of the strengths and weaknesses.

I performed the ritual on my seventh birthday which gave me a numerolgically strong ties to the ritual. I did all the arithmancy calculations myself too. The dragon egg was laid exactly seven days ago, by controlling the gestation period of the mother dragon.

The Basilisk was hatched seven months ago on the seventh day from the Full Moon.

The Kraken egg was kept in stasis, and hatched seven days ago with the Thunderbird Chick, who was the first egg I obtained for the ritual.

I planned to use Horned Serpents, Nundu, or Phoenix for the ritual, but I had to make do, with what I found and acquired with the numerological advantage in mind.

When the ritual was completed, which was actually a skinchanging ritual, I did the enhancing ritual I had planned for the night.

For seven days and seven nights, I completed one ritual after the other, while only feasting on the flesh of the sacrifices I offered. It was important in terms of symbology. It meant I cleansed myself in the offering, and I imbued myself with the abilities and strength of the sacrifice I made.

On the eighth day, I simply slept off the entire day, because I was too tired to do anything else; and woke up in the evening hungry enough to eat the first thing I saw.

We had a feast, as I ate four adult men's worth of meal, which was swallowed down my gullet with at least three litres of water.

I was ravenous for the night, and the next day had an equally ravenous meal. I was now actually a lot taller and stronger than I should have been. I knew the skin changing ritual and the seven rituals had enhanced me a lot, but the primer on the rituals said, that the rituals affected various people in a variety of ways.

In my case, I could control my body with acrobatic ease; see, hear and smell around a kilometer wide area around me, change into a dragon, Thunderbird, Kraken and a Basilisk at will, albeit only their small children form. As I was a kid myself, and the ritual used were either eggs or hatchlings themselves. That only meant, I would grow stronger with age.

I also could feel instinctively that I could control air, fire and lightning spells with remarkable ease. I hadn't had an opportunity to try with water, but I knew I could control water elemental spells very well. But I had to wait to practise with a wand to do that.

This might seem like a overwhelming advantage, but the ritual was an obscure one, and extremely difficult to find. Not to mention, it was a ritual which needed to be tweaked to suit a particular individual, and to attain the purpose, with which the ritual is to be performed. And lastly, it was in an ancient language, in an ancient tome in Marrakech, which we found coincidentally when I went on a Shopping "Crawl" in the Magical Bazaar.

***Flashback in the Flashback***

It was a surreal place, with so many shops with trinkets sold in stalls. There were a lot of delapidated shops, which actually had decent extended space inside, and quite spacious too.

Apparently, the European Magical world prohibits sale of Expandable Space applied to anything other than the moleskin pouch, trunks and tents. That is why finding Suitcases and smaller backpacks which had larger spaces charmed into them was not possible in Europe. But here, they were sold quite cheaply, IF you don't look like a tourist.

The shopkeepers here know that anyone who is not local, is a tourist with good money! And they RIP you off like a Whale Farting!

But I knew their language, and their dialect. And I bargained like a Chinese Housewife. I balled low, and prepared to walk off, if they don't budge from their prices. And I got a lot of sweet deals along with curses calling me Miser brat.

I also roamed around the black markets, and that was where I found the motherlode of antiquities- RIPOFFS! There were a lot of fakes and frauds hidden in the black market. But identifying what I wanted was not difficult, when I knew the language, and my grandfathers could use Legilimency.

We made quite a good deals, and returned a little lighter in coins, but carrying much more valuables articles than the price we paid for them.

Among them, were the Ritual Tomes, the Dark and forbidden Spells which was banned in ICW nations, Scrying Texts from Gauls, and even a ritual to curse someone's bloodline, not unlike the Maledictus curse.