Chapter 27

While the children bit their lips, wrinkled their foreheads, and fiddled with their feathers, I hastily made artifact goggles. So this is what you are, child of magic. Interesting aura, very unusual energy. At first glance, everything is the same as everyone else, but the tiny, imperceptible nuances leave no doubt who is in front of you. Especially if you know how and what to look for. I sent a few simple curses at Hermione and watched with interest as they are simply and artlessly dissolved. It was hard to put something like that into words. It's like what acid does. You can't compare it to a cleansing ritual.

It's more like alternating periods of heating and freezing, a kind of locally limited aura pulse variant. At least now it is more or less clear how the clans manage to cleanse themselves of everything that has accumulated over the centuries. By the way, everything I've read about them before wasn't too similar to what I've seen. However, there is a possibility that each child of magic is an individual, or they are divided into some groups by the type of influence. Not many of them. There's a reason wars have often been fought over such a valuable trophy. Troy was torn apart over Helen.

How many battles have been fought that didn't make Muggle history? Many! And how many of those that were won simply disappeared? Dozens, even hundreds! It's a good thing they can't be identified without knowing where to look. Granger could have disguised herself perfectly with a few ordinary protective amulets. I should give her some literature to read.

I don't know how it would work in reality, and if there would be love between the girl and the sixth Weasley, but once the elders realized who Hermione really was, it wouldn't be a problem for them to get her. Love potions, a full-blown magical wedding ceremony, and that was it. Not even a golden cage. Unfortunately, the real world is much more grounded and cynical.

Well, we'll just have to wait and see. Judging by the way the storages are filled with magic, I'll have to spend not one, but two years at school. After all, four stones scattered around the courtyard have a much stronger effect than one. From the outside, it's not that noticeable, and it's not that easy to feel, even I with my heightened sensitivity can only sense something indefinable on the edge of feeling, but the fact is that the charge is noticeably slower. It's only been a short time. It's good that the main mana streams are being drawn from the walls and those from the source are being recharged. But that was the plan, it would be hard not to feel the sagging background of the courtyard.

The results of the tests passed by the students made me scratch my head. In principle, something like this was to be expected, but I was not prepared for what I saw. No, in terms of the knowledge required by the school program, it was tolerable, especially in the fifth and seventh years, it feels like most of the summer was not lazy to flip through the textbooks and old notes to reread.

But Morgana fuck all of you, children do not know the elementary basics of life safety in the magical world, and they demonstrate illiteracy, pardon the tautology, all of them. Even pure-blooded aristocrats of who knows what generation are only aware of the most general points, and then only very vaguely. I've heard it in passing. How?! Why?! It's as if someone had cursed a whole country. But that's impossible. It would require divine power on the one hand and suicidal tendencies on the other. Magic will punish such a mass violation of its laws so severely that even the postmortem will be painful.

When I thought about what was going on, I was forced to conclude that it was a classic feast during the plague. The statute of secrecy was adopted only because of the usual pride. Well, well, well, I didn't want to move from the megalopolis to a remote village in the past either, and it's for sure that I treated collective farmers and other rural dwellers with contempt.

The magicians had the typical white man's contempt for bare-chested Papuans. If not worse, as beasts, and considering the time of the Statute's adoption, it should be said, cattle. And in many ways useless. A sorcerer doesn't need slaves and serfs for nothing, one house-elf can replace a whole village, and it's much easier for a sorcerer to do in five minutes what dozens of men will work hard for a month. You don't even need simple swineherds, just an Imperio on animals and no problem. It's only the muggles who have benefited from this separation. Deprived of the opportunity to get help from witches and sorcerers, they had to learn to use their brains. To develop the arts and sciences. Progress began to gain momentum, and here it is already going by leaps and bounds, having reached nuclear batteries and flights into space.

And what about the magicians? Nothing, they have stagnation, swamp, local squabbles and resting on their laurels. A small, closed world, no different on a domestic and social level than it was a few centuries ago. Had it not been for Grindewald and his war, nothing would have changed for another hundred years. Until the Muggles invaded the wizarding world. Now, blasphemous as it may sound, war is the engine of progress. The wizards of the Ancestral Domain did a great job creating superhumans.

How many mages and squibs were in their custody, how many ordinary women worked as incubators, who knows? But the result is clear. The number of Muggleborns and Half-Bloods has increased dramatically. Like mushrooms after a rainstorm. But there was a problem. Even if a child went to a normal school early, how much would he know by the time he was eleven? Six, in rare cases seven years of schooling.

The very basics of the scientific picture of the world will take hold. In general, there are a lot of nuances, the first generation, born in the forties in most normal Muggle, and often did not receive a magical education. The second generation, born in the sixties, had already gone back and forth, and only the third wave of children, born in the eighties, went to normal school.

Even someone as smart as Hermione couldn't learn magic and get a normal education at the same time. Still, her memory wasn't perfect. Good, even great, but not perfect. She does not know anything about artifacts and other methods of memorization, which allow to imprint information in the head once and for all. The main thing is the desire to learn. Which, of course, the vast majority of children over the age of eleven do not have. In the best case, the realization of the need for education comes at the age of sixteen to seventeen, and that is not all.

 I am basically a unique case, which is confirmed by seven master rings. The Room of Requirement is certainly something, but an ordinary Muggleborn, even one as well-read as Miss Granger, would hardly have achieved my successes. Knowledge and power, perhaps, if he hadn't been lazy. But to become a master of many disciplines? I doubt it.

Still, my successes are not based on genius and insight, but on the adaptation of Muggle achievements. And I was able to do that, in the first place, because of the training I received in my previous life. Unfortunately, even masters often lack a basic understanding of the structure of matter. Of course they know that it's dispersed and not always homogeneous, but that's all. What a molecule is to them, what an atom is to them, everything is the same.

In most cases it is not necessary, but for example, simpletons could artificially create the same diamond because they understood the deep processes of its formation, but magicians could not. That's because you can't make a diamond out of coal by accident, and applying the knowledge to a gem won't help, and not everyone will be able to do it. It takes a lot of effort.

Shock and awe at the neglect of matters in the field of magic on the one hand, and the influence of the role I played on the other, made me start writing a book. I titled it simply, in the spirit of Lockhart's "I Am a Teacher". The nimble pen stroked away, covering the pages with text and diagrams. The draft, written in a month, was more like a textbook.

But it had everything. From a detailed description of the basic rituals and methods of self-development to detailed ways of making artifacts and methods of enchanting spokes, hooks and needles with which to decorate clothing with useful embroidery. Of course, the basic schemes were attached, along with a description of exactly what they were for, what they protected against, what they did in general. Looking at the manual, I scratched the back of my head. And how do you put that into an artistic format?

The way out was suggested by Ginevra Molly Weasley. I didn't confiscate the Horcrux from the girl because it was very useful to her. I admit there was some interest in research, but the child's benefit was paramount. Voldemort's diary drew power from the little girl, actively drew it, much more than a dehydrated traveler who had reached a spring. There was only one thing. Ginny's energy, affected by the Seal of the Blood Traitors and burdened with a mass of curses, was like a rotting fruit. Accordingly, the affected parts were the first to fall. You could say that the Horcrux purified the child, for better or worse.

A most original and effective method. Tom's piece of Aura needed some building material to grow, so he had to choke on the inferior stuff. I feel a little sorry for him. The poor guy was choking on his own garbage, choking on it, but he couldn't help it. He would have been happy to fall into someone else's hands, but the spell on the diary had bound the girl tightly. That's why I didn't confiscate the Horcrux, let the villain do a good deed and maybe he'd straighten out his karma a little. Malfoy was lucky that the Lord did not resurrect in the second year. The blonde wouldn't have gotten away with a life-giving Cruciatus. He would have begged for an Avada, but I doubt Voldemort's mercy.

The idea of the book was simple. Make it a collection of stories. In each of them, a wise mentor in the person of the hero will save, advise, and simply show the students a way out of a difficult situation. Of course, you will have to struggle with detailed descriptions of the practical part, but it is solvable. I can always add a scene in which one of the participants reads another potion recipe or teaches how to cast a spell. Illustrations will help to place the necessary graphical information perfectly. So what if I show children performing a ritual?

That's a common thing. And the fact that what they drew is perfectly understandable and actually works, well, those are the details that do not deserve attention. In the unlikely event that someone is clever and conspicuous, I can always say: "Yes! A real pentagram and a real runic circle. But it's just to be safe! There aren't many idiots out there who decided to do a ritual taken from a book of fiction". And let them try to argue something reasonable. Of course, the volume of the book will be huge, but that's okay.

At least my masterpiece of the epistolary genre will not try to bite off my students' fingers, unlike some magozoology manuals. I hope that my creation will be much more interesting for young wizards and witches to read than a dry textbook. Of course, there is a lot of work to be done, but when has that ever stopped me?

In general, Gilderoy's books turned out to be a treasure trove of useful information, and the teaching method he used in the canon was, after some revision, almost perfect. Of course, acting out scenes with children was silly. But with golems in the form of various creatures, oh, that was another matter. A visual aid for the students, and very naturalistic and completely safe on the one hand, and a great practice that replaced my training on the other. I think by the end of the school year I'll be able to pass the Master of Transfiguration. I also had a lot of practice with spells. It's not easy to create an artificial boggart.

Of course, I didn't teach the kids any nonsense like breaking a Grindylow's fingers. We hit them with stingers that work well in water. And against all kinds of water creatures. Small spirits, ghosts, and weak ghosts were disembodied with appropriate spells. Zombies, infernals, and the like were burned. Sadly, the spells to put the undead to rest were part of the now banned necromancy. But they were much more effective.

Dark creatures were taught to be defeated by force of mind and will. Not to mention the deterrent spells. Not everyone could mentally crush a werewolf or withstand the effects of a vampire and other such creatures. And you still have to be able to hit them with a killing spell. Moreover, the creatures are resilient by nature, and even if they are torn in half, they can still punish a mage who has lost his vigilance. In general, they are much more reliable and easier to scare away, and it is best to subdue them before destroying them. To keep them from twitching.

Of course, I didn't teach they how to impose an Imperio, and it was unlikely that such a thing would be understood by my colleagues and the public. But the same ridiculousness refers to mental magic, and if you have the brains, it can be a very effective weapon. Why is it necessary to turn the unfortunate boggart into the strongest fear first, to present it in a funny way, and only then to use magic? Because the spell instills in the poor creature a new image, which it, by virtue of its nature, and accepts. You think he's afraid of laughter?

Not so, roughly speaking, wizards cynically and with maximum sadism perpetrate mental violence upon him. After all, the stereotype of behavior is also attached to the outside. Unconsciously, but still. Boggarts are basically harmless, and their ability is just a defensive reaction. They usually live in places where no one pokes around.