Serena Snape: Love of Magic - chapter 10

September 1, 1976 / Serena PoV

"Do you remember everything, Hag?" I insisted again.

"I'm old girl, not stupid! Yes, I remember everything! Now go away before I put a spell on you!" she growled once more, I snorted.

"You can try" I mocked, Mary growled at me, but continued working, I didn't stop moving my hands either, we were finishing bottling all the remaining potions, today was September 1st and I had to leave soon to take the Hogwarts express so I couldn't continue with the Wolfbane experiment.

"I already told you that your mind scares me, girl? A month and a half, it took you a fucking month and a half to create a potion against lycanthropy." I snorted, but smiled arrogantly at her.

"I'm Serena S-"

"Snape, yes, yes, I heard you," She growled and rolled her eyes playfully, "that doesn't change the fact that you came up with a potion as difficult as the one you made in such a short time, you're a monster with potions, girl."

"I'll take that as a compliment," I snorted.

"HA! It was"

"Of course it is," I sighed. "you know I don't want to repeat myself, but make sure the werewolves take their potion."

"Yes, yes, yes, I already told you that I know it, girl! We already started with the Y7 version a week ago, that would be two weeks of potion for when the full moon is, 2 days ago we started with the X6 version that required 10 days, tomorrow we will start with the Z9 so that it will be a week, and in 4 days the X2, 3 days before the full moon, yes, I know it, girl, now go to Hogwarts so you stop bothering me!"

"Well, and don't forget! I'm still surprised you were able to find so many werewolves willing to take unknown and potentially poisonous potions."

"We're in Knockturn, girl, you just have to know where to look, many of them will take any job as long as they get money, even more so when it's a supposed cure for their condition" I snorted, but didn't answer, unfortunately she was right, werewolves were heavily discriminated against, with Voldemort carrying out attacks in basically broad daylight and giving Greyback free rein, discrimination was increasing.

It had been a month and a half since my encounter with the marauders and my improvised plan to recreate Wolfbane, I didn't know where Mary had gotten so much money to buy the ingredients she had asked for but they kept coming and I certainly wouldn't be complaining, I could work as freely as I could so I made several versions, many of them failed but none potentially poisonous or lethal as they were tested on the werewolves the full moon of the previous month, during that time I was able to test a dozen versions of the Wolfbane potion and "take notes" to "correct" it luckily, even though the original recipe doesn't take effect if not taken 10 days in a row before the full moon, it had still shown signs of improvement for a few minutes before failing and losing consciousness against the wolf, so it was easy to argue the increased dosage days before along with a "refined" version, so I had insisted on testing several variations at different consumption times, obviously the working recipe was among them, I just had to wait until September 8th to hear about the success that I knew what would happen if there was no problem .

"I finished my part" I said once I finished arranging the bottles and labeling them correctly.

"It's about time girl! Now go!" I rolled my eyes and headed for the exit.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, try not to kick the bucket while I'm gone."

"Ha! I wish, girl! I still have decades left!" I snorted playfully, I could certainly believe her, Mary had more energy than me sometimes, with that I left the store and quickly headed to the Leaky Cauldron.

"Serena, haven't you left yet? You could miss the train, girl!" Tom exclaimed worriedly as soon as he saw me.

"There's still time Tom, and I was just leaving, I already have everything packed, I just had to finish something at the store" I smiled reassuringly at him "that said, I'll be using your floo powder"

"Of course, of course, they're in the usual place, good luck at Hogwarts!" I gave him a smile before tossing him the room key.

"Thanks for everything Tom" with that said I grabbed the floo powder and threw it into the fire "Platform 9¾!" I jumped into the fire without hesitation, a few seconds later I stepped out onto the platform as I grimaced, the ride had been… bumpy, I felt as if I was being stretched and twisted in all directions, it was not a pleasant sensation, next time I'll use my portals to travel. I shook the soot off my clothes and looked out at the crowd of people, students and parents waving goodbye, I ignored everyone and headed for the Express, it was a bright red monstrosity but I had to admit it did have a certain charm.

Once inside I looked for the first free seat, now, I had to figure out how to approach Hogwarts, there were really few that old Serena was intimate with, in fact, outside of Lily, Narcissa had been the only one friendly with Serena, she was certainly more than an acquaintance almost to the point of calling her a friend but not close enough as such, everyone else was simply Voldemort's followers and the only reason they'd hung around in a group was to prove a point, that I was interested in joining their group, something I didn't want, the wizarding war that was about to break out and I really didn't care, either side could fight all they wanted and I couldn't care less, the problem was that I was already involved, old Serena had wanted to join since third year and with Malfoy basically sponsoring her, she had succeeded to a certain extent .

I shrugged, they would have to accept a no from me, I didn't feel like thinking of a more delicate way to separate myself from the group and as I was now, I had full confidence that I could defend myself from any threat posed by a group of teenagers no matter what kind of curses they could cast, during the past month and a half I hadn't just been brewing potions, I had also been training, I had already gotten used to most of the Allomantic metals with certain exceptions, gold for example, I had tried it and while it hadn't been as unpleasant as I had thought, possibly thanks to Stress Defense, there were very few situations where seeing alternative lines would be really useful, maybe if it was more similar to Coil's parahuman power from the Worm series it would be more useful, but Allomantic gold was too restrictive.

Gold aside, physical metals had been the ones I had trained the most in, I got used to different levels of metal burning by pushing as hard as I could without duralumin, which was quite a lot, talents made getting used to the difference in base attributes really easy so practice flowed really well too.

I also increased the amount of my metal minds, using Bendalloy bubbles indiscriminately to refill minds was something I overused, the main problem with storing attributes was how unprotected you were during that time, especially things like reducing mental speed or health, would make any situation turn fatal in no time, so being in a safe bubble for a few hours while only 5 minutes passed outside to avoid any bad situation was something I was taking advantage of.

It was horrible to be honest, storing health alone, feeling sickly and weak was annoying, adding the lack of senses and shortness of breath was almost torture, at least having my mental speed reduced at that moment made me stupid enough to not process why I felt so bad, I was also grateful for the Company's phone and internet, the compressed time affected it little to nothing so I was able to surf the web and watch videos while I was incapacitated so it became more manageable.

Luckily the other attributes were easy to store and I could basically do them on a daily basis, so, I now owned a large amount of metals ready to compose whenever I needed them, I had also reached the point where I felt comfortable spending metal minds burning them to train for a few hours without thinking of them as a waste.

The last thing regarding metals, was atium and lerasium, I still hadn't been able to figure out how it was composed no matter how I studied it so I couldn't transmute other metals into divine metals, what I could do was some simple manipulation with alchemy, the form, I was able to transmute the bracers into beads to easily ingest and after much trial and error, I was able to refine pure atium, there were several rebounds that ended in explosions but it was worth it, refined atium had its uses, a shame that the bracers being an atium-electrum alloy resulted in a smaller amount of refined atium than I expected, but it was better than nothing.

Speaking of alchemy, I was now proficient enough with flame alchemy to be confident in using it effectively in a fight, I still used alchemy to transmute metals into others, I found that transfiguring one metal into another was of no use, I could neither allomantically burn them nor use them as metal minds, the magic used for transfiguration would interfere with the magic I stored or burn them and revert them to their previous form nullifying the process, oddly enough, I could transfigure objects into metals and could push or pull them with allomantic iron and steel, but only that.

That's not counting my magic proper, it was still Magia Baiser constantly, in fact I was now, I was still having trouble in my excited form, too many emotions to keep control over the magic without it boiling over, much like La Verita. La Verita generated so much magic that any attempt at control was simply futile, I had been able to greatly reduce the output and had increased my time limit, but it was like swimming uphill in a waterfall.

Aside from that, I was also able to replicate most of the magic Severus could use, the power, control, and talents made it easier to use them again, I certainly couldn't match up to him in a fight but that was also being quickly corrected, the only problem I had was the more... emotionally demanding curses, I couldn't generate the right emotions to make them work, like the Unforgivables, I had tried to use them in case I ever needed them, an instant death curse that ignored defense was a strong trump card no matter how illegal it was, but I hadn't managed to be able to use them no matter what I did.

Luckily I could use the Patronus Charm, though the happy memories of my old world were tainted by dysphoria and now sadness over what I left behind in that world, and old Serena had few to no happy memories, the memory and feeling of finally being a woman was strong enough to push back the charm, which by the way was a spider. I want to believe it was for the sake of its symbolism and not my powers as Magia Baiser, spiders are artists, exquisite, intelligent, acrobatic, patient and provide important control over the insect population, they are vital members of the ecology, they are useful and beautiful creatures, widely misunderstood, feared and hated with little justification, unfortunately I didn't know what type of spider my Patronus was so it was something to look into.

Getting back to my magic, the other thing I hadn't really been able to take advantage of and train yet had been my Ancient Magic and Parseltongue, no matter what I did there was no way to be able to use those powers properly, I had hoped to be able to find some books, at least about Parseltongue, maybe something imported from Greece, Herpo the Mad was Greek and many symbols of Ancient Greece used snakes, or Indian as many of the fanfiction would have one believe, or some whispers that it could be used magically, but it was all fruitless, there was no indication that something like Parseltongue magic existed, I hoped that at Hogwarts I could find the answer to both, I knew where to find the answer to both, I just hoped that one of them wasn't a waste of credits.

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