10. Studying & Pranks

The days seemed to be going by faster and faster, with Rufus having me get started on Occlumency, I took to my family's books. I started doing the exercises, mostly meditation and feeling the magic. It was an ongoing process, but hopefully it would bare fruits.

Between the Occlumency, classes and doing exercises with Felix, I started on another avenue of projects, namely Runes.

I was deeply fascinated by Runes, and the fact they reminded me of a programming language, because combining them, you can almost build a program. And have it perform specific tasks, based on the users actions or intent.

Among my things I had a rune carving kit, which I used to experiment with carving the runes. Since it was only a beginner's book, it was mostly about the basics of carving them, the alphabets and simple runes to try out. The first one I made was a light rune. There were hundreds of different runes, but creating a simple light that used the magic in the air, was only three. One to define to use ambient magic, one to produce the light, and lastly one for the color and hue. That would produce the equivalent of a normal lumos spell, alot more complicated than simply casting Lumos and having magic read your intent. It made sense why wands became so popular, in combat or just every day, it directed once magic and you no longer had to almost program even the slightest things you wanted to do. 

I experimented with different ways of carving them and I also found another rune which could act as activation based on intent. I also found that I couldn't just add another rune for powering it. It required another totally different one to make it more powerful. So with now 5 runes, I could carve the runes on a small glass crystal which I could make glow, and based on my intent it would activate and glow with the specific color, hue and power that I wanted. It was really cool, but also a very basic project. I found another rune set which when applied would make it alot more durable, so for the sake of my experiments I added those as well. The fact that I had made what could possibly be considered a magical flashbang did not occur to me, before much later.

With the weeks passing by I kept studying, sometimes with Eddie, but he was more interested in Quidditch, and playing games with the others in our year. So mostly I went at it alone with Felix. As Felix was growing older, though not much larger if any, he started to get more curious about his surroundings. So he would sometimes leave me to go on his own adventures, but always returned to me again.

One of his small adventures he returned to me completely pink, and looking like he had been electrocuted with his fur puffed out like one giant ball. He looked immensely pleased with himself as he strutted into our room, so I let him be. 

With all this going on, I continued to study what I had named my new Thestral Ward, I thought it really weird why it seemed so easy to figure out, reading through my books on beginner warding, it seemed most wards were originally invented by studying natural phenomena, so it might have something to do with why I could do Phoenix traveling. Was that why it always felt like I had a small flame inside me, always keeping me warm. Though it didn't feel good trying to use Phoenix travel while at Hogwarts, it was like the wards were working against me, which meant it felt really bad doing it. So while at Hogwarts it would remain an emergency way of traveling, the few times I had actually gotten it to work, so the experiments with that would maybe be delayed to the summer or maybe when I learned apparition.

The Thestral ward felt primal, like it was a part of magic, it was the same feeling I got with my flame, so it might be connected. I wondered maybe if primal magics were involved with making the Cloak from the Hallows. But it didn't quite fit with the Thestrals, although they were both connected to death somehow.

Besides that I started to study basic warding. The most basic ward was a bad intent ward, but it was not easy to do, the intent had to be very specific when casting the ward, but since it was only a single spell, the casting itself was not the hardest bit. Once I got the pronunciation right and the wand movements, I could cast it, but bad intent could be a million different things, so I still hadn't figured out how to cover all bad intent.

The intent with the ward would be to alert the caster if someone with bad intent towards you passed through it. Often used on your houses door, or floo entrance, it was a type of early warning system.

I applied it on the door to my room, it would last about two weeks for each casting, so I had to renew it, but it was good practice, though still limited, but usefull none the less.

I felt it activate a couple of times when Marcus passed through it, he used a couple of prank products on my bed those times, so it seemed to be working, somewhat, but he still ended up getting me a couple of times. He was difficult to get to know, so I still didn't have the best of relationship with him. But I could only hope me and Eddie could have a double room alone next year, or even singles, I still hadn't figured out the arrangement for the upper years, since they were on other floors, and would kick you out faster than you could sneak a peek.

In my studying I found a ward that would help with sleeping, it was normally used in hospitals, to help the patients get a good night's sleep, It didn't really put you to sleep, but it made you feel safe, warm, cozy, content. Whatever feeling you needed to go to sleep. 

Now taking this ward, I experimented with adding more power, and instead of simply just helping to get comfortable, it would induce sleep forcefully! Though again it was limited, warding is really hard to get right, and changing it even more! Both me and Eddie were able to resist it after a single try, but we still thought it might have possibilities as a slight pranking of others.

But instead of just hitting everybody, since I didn't feel right about pranking "victims", but only targeting those that had bad intentions towards others, we both thought that maybe adding my bad intent warding to it, and making it activate if you had bad intentions towards others.

So I spent about a month alone trying to make that, starting out it's really hard to change something, and add to it, but combining my rune work with intent and the sleep ward, I managed to change it, it was crude and underpowered and wouldn't do anything against an adult, but against children it should work just fine, at least first.

So a very early monday morning, where I actually managed to get Eddie to get up with me, because he actually thought it would be hilarious to place the ward. So up early we sneaked out and went down to the dungeons first, and around a bend from the Slytherin dungeon I placed the ward on the hallway and we ran for it. Hopefully it would work!

Lastly we ran to the end of the stairs that lead up to the Griffendor tower, and placed another, now we just had to wait for the chaos to hopefully unfold. Even Felix hanging out on my shoulder seemed to grin at our antics.

We went into the great hall, figuring that we would get to hear the result as everybody had to get down here one way or another for breakfast.

About an hour later, the first screams were heard, then panicked yelling, some nervous laughter and finally a couple of kids came running into the great hall towards the teachers table. It was a couple of Slytherins who first ran up to Professor Snape. I couldn't hear what they said, but Snape looked pissed. He stood up and with a billowing cloak walked through the great hall and towards the dungeons. Afterwards laughing Griffendors came into the hall, one of the Prefects went up to the table and talked to Mcgonagal, and after a short conversation, she visible sighed and walked down the platform and out the hall, most likely to dispell whatever had been placed.

Me and Eddie barely held it together, and as the news spread laughter could be heard throughout the hall. And since it was a relatively harmless prank that only put them to sleep, even some of the victims laughed it off. All in all I thought it was a successful prank.