Chapter 95

Ethan was curious about the forbidden section, as he was sure he would manage to find an interesting read in there. However, to access a book from the forbidden section, one either needed to go through a tedious process where one would have to prove they had a tangible use for whatever book they were taking, or steal it.

Neither options were available to Ethan, as he did not care enough about the books in there to go as far as breaking the rules to read them, and the procedure to read one of them the normal way was usually only allowed for students that were at least in their fifth year.

No, instead of the forbidden section, Ethan was in the library for his own personal research. What he was researching was not any one particular form of magic, like Transfiguration or Charms, but magic on a wider scope.

He used to be generally ignorant about the ways of magic, and he still was, relatively. However, he was starting to get a better grasp on it.

His research was helping in that direction too. Of course, he was not about to come to a conclusion with a single reading session, but Ethan did not go only once either.

Quickly, weeks had passed since school had started, and most of his time had been spent reading.

And as much as he felt like his brain was about to be fried from the constant reading, he did manage to finally somewhat organize magic as a whole.

Because of the esoteric nature of magic, most people did not bother creating names for things they discovered, and even when they did, everything would be kept in a disorganized way because creating a system of understanding for something was mostly useful for teaching others.

One example for this was Quidditch. For the longest time, it had hundreds of different rules because most of them had been thought of on the spot during games, and added. It was only in 1750 that all the rules had been gathered into 9 large rules that encompassed everything.

But traces of that earlier chaotic organization of rules could still be found, as there were more than 700 different types of fouls registered.

And it was the same for magic. There were no publicly established system of understanding set for magical senses, because it was not something that was widely taught. Mind arts were somewhat similar as well, as the whole magical discipline was highly individualistic.

This all worked because everyone had their own way of going shuffling through information. In a way, everyone had a sort of instinctual way to sort through their knowledge, and not lose track of what they learned.

Putting people's subconscious abilities into words was not the easiest of endeavours, but where Ethan had clearly defined levels of magical perception, other people could use it just fine without naming it, or defining levels.

But Ethan was different from most people. It was not that he could not work in the same way, he might actually be able to do so even more efficiently considering his strong mind, but he still preferred everything to be structured, simply because that was the way he was.

With al this in mind, Ethan had managed to pinpoint seven big magical schools, or practices:

Transfiguration, Charms, Runes, Rituals, Mind, Divination and Soul.

The fact there were seven of them probably had a bigger meaning, since it was a special number, but Ethan did not know anything about Arithmancy.

Of course, these seven magical schools had not been narrowed down randomly. Instead, all magic fell under them.

In other words, there was not a single spell or way to use magic that did not use at least one of these forms of magic.

Each of these forms of magic also had sub categories, like Transfiguration had Transformation, Untransfiguration and so on, and Divination had Arithmancy.

But that did not mean that all spells had to fall under one particular magical school. Third Eye of Destruction, for example, which was the spell Bill had offered Ethan to thank him, relied on both Divination Magic and Mental Magic.

Ethan called these kinds of spells Fusion Magic.

This was still all mostly theoretic at the moment, as there were still forms of magic Ethan had no experience with. But to his current knowledge, he felt like it was pretty good.

Some magical practices had been harder to fit into this system, such as Potions and Alchemy. However, further research had shown him that Potions was actually deeply related to Ritual Magic, and might just be one of its declinations.

It did work with some of the more esoteric forms of magic though, such as Miyuki's Illusion Magic. He was not sure yet what exactly it was since Miyuki used it instinctively, but he knew for sure that it was partly Mental Magic.

Ethan had not constructed this system out of boredom either. This deeper understanding of magic allowed him to answer many of the questions he had, and should eventually make creating his own spells easier.

Back during his first Charms Class, Ethan had asked Professor Flitwick what was the point of repairing an object through a Charm like Reparo when the same could be done with Transfiguration, and probably better too. There might even be more magical forms through which it could be done.

It was that strange redundancy that made no sense to Ethan. But now, thanks to his research, and his experience within Ramesses' tomb, he was starting to understand a part of it.

In essence, repairing an object through a Charm or a Transfiguration really did not change anything. Using magical nodes as an analogy, Transfiguration would be rearranging the nodes within the object while Charm would be adding another layer of nodes on top of it to force change.

Although the two went at it differently, from what Ethan understood, the end result was the same.

And yet, these could not be called redundant, because different types were being used, which had implications. First off, not every material responded to different types of magic the same way. Some things would be much easier to repair through Transfiguration than Charms, and the other way around.

Secondly, if a wizard was skilled enough, nothing stopped them from using more than one type of magic. Ethan was not yet sure whether Fusion Magic could really be said to be stronger than 'purer' magic, but it undoubtedly added a layer of complexity.

For repairing an object, this might not change much, so sealing might be a better example this time.

Unravelling a magical effect through another type of magic was inconvenient, and much harder. If a door was locked by a Charm, the easiest way to open it would be to use another Charm, Alohomora. Trying to use Transfiguration to open that door would make things much harder.

And in the exact same way, if a door was locked with Transfiguration Magic this time, opening it with Alohomora would be needlessly hard.

Extrapolating this, if that door was locked by a Charms Master, who used the best spell they knew, then anyone seeking to open that door would need to have a level of skill in Charms that was at least close to him.

As for opening the door with another form of magic? They would need to have an expertise in that magic that was much greater than the sealer's mastery of Charms.

With that in mind, what if the door was sealed without one type of magic, but five of them, as that door had been back in Ramesses' temple?

Quantifying everything, if that Charms Master had a skill level of 100, then to open that door someone would need to either have a level of 90 in Charms, or of 150 in other forms of magic.

But if the lock used five different types of magic at once, according to what Ethan had read, then to open that lock one would need to have a level of around 18 in each of the five.

If everything was totalled up, 18*5=90, so technically, that second seal using Fusion Magic was not any harder. And it should still be able to be circumvented if any single one form of Fusion Magic was at 150.