Felix and Hermione sat opposite to each other, he tapped his index finger on the arm of the dark sofa, and the young witch who is separated by a small low table found herself in the thinking room without a sound.
”The professor’s casting is becoming more and more untraceable.” Hermione thought to herself, it had been over a year since she had first entered this place, from the very beginning when the colours and shapes were distorted and reversed, to the point where she could now be dragged in without a word, the professor’s mastery of this magic spoke for itself.
Hermione is very familiar with the place, she easily surveyed the furnishings of the room, and then, her brow furrowed.
The professor’s half of the space has not changed much: brown, black, dark green, interspersed with beige and soft gray, giving people a rich colour and highlighting the feeling of calm and heavy.
The dark chestnut brown carpet is soft and comfortable, with thousands of large books stacked on it, which complement the black wall-to-wall bookshelves, the square table with its dull sheen, and the heavy dark green drapery.
Of course, there is a growing amount of ancient rune symbols of various colours, they are like the rhythmic sprites throughout the house, bringing vitality and magical visual enjoyment.
Hermione can imagine what it was like when the professor came to the room alone – sinking himself into the soft sofa, beckoning a book, a mischievous rune symbol jumped in front of his eyes, he curled his fingers and flicked it away …
But now she always felt that something is not right today, is it the colour of the carpet under the feet darkened, or the green drapery that occasionally rolls up a corner becomes quiet?
Perhaps it’s just her seeing things?
“Miss Granger?” Felix gave a strange look at his assistant, who nervously looking around as soon as she entered.
Hermione is rather puzzled as well: “Professor, your thinking room gives me a strange feeling, like – thicker? Or solemn–” She stood at the junction of the two minds and looked suspiciously at the half of the space that belonged to her.
It had distinctly modern decor, with sunlight softly spilling down, light brown carpet, goose yellow curtains, and two pots of greenery on a small circular table in the center, nothing had changed from a year ago.
‘The weirdness is more obvious when you look at it this way in contrast.’ Hermione thought, and she also finally came up with a word to describe her feelings: “Dark style?”
Felix laughed dumbly, “What makes you think that?”
Hermione shook her head, “It just suddenly occurred to me, and it looks like nothing has changed, but some details make a difference.”
Felix understood somewhat, he said thoughtfully: “You have reminded me, this place is the external mapping of our inner world, it so happens that I have recently gained a new insight in this magic a few days ago.”
“Let’s begin today’s lesson, Miss Granger.”
Hermione put aside her doubts for the moment and sat back in her seat as she and Felix began to explore the succession of runes.
“Professor, starting from individual runes, to runic circuits, and the complex loops I’ve seen on the runic spheres, and today’s chestnut disk runes that overlap and nest with each other, does this mean there are more advanced runic structures the more complex they are?”
“If we look at the functional implementation, it is indeed true. Individual runes have single properties, and we humans always want to realize more and more complex functions, so we have no choice but to desperately study how to combine more runes together.”
“Let me give you an example,” Felix held a rune in his hand, “the flame, this magic rune itself contains quite a lot of possibilities, the effect I can produce with it, and you can produce with it must be completely different, because we have different levels of understanding of it.”
The magic rune in his hand kept transforming rapidly between rune and flame.
Hermione also quickly build a flame rune, her transformation speed is obviously more than a step slower, and after two or three changes, the structure of the rune is no longer stable, and finally, with a “snort” it turned into smoke.
“This understanding of rune itself, it is difficult to cheat, comprehension is comprehension, there is no shortcut. But if you simply want to increase the power of the flame, there are actually many ways -”
Felix grabbed some runes from the air, “For example, I want to enlarge the flame–” a magic rune connected to the initial one that signifies flame, the original palm-sized small fire instantly swelled to the size of a pumpkin.
“I also want to make it burn more violently …” he grabbed one more magic rune to add, as if fuel is poured, the pumpkin-sized ball of fire began to burn violently, accompanied by a “crackling” sound.
“By this point, this magic is already difficult to control, and I must emphasize that the thinking room is not real, what I can do here does not mean that I can replicate perfectly in the outside world … Back to the point, I also want to raise the temperature–”
A new magic rune is combined and a surge of magic is poured into the flame. The orange-red flame became vivid, quickly transformed to bright yellow, bright white, and then turned into one with a hint of blue.
Felix said in a relaxed tone: “If it is in reality, without any protection, we might have combusted ourselves, so the saying that ancient magic is dangerous is not false, from what I have seen in ancient books, too many people have been ruined by their first successful spell casting.”
“Moving on – actually at this moment we have acquired a powerful enough magic, but obviously we want more: to make it controllable, to accumulate power in magic, or to shape it …”
“If you understand magic well enough and are very skilled at mobilizing magic, some steps can be omitted. Theoretically, all magic in the world is the product of magic mobilization and transformation. But most people, including you, and also me, are far from being able to do it at will.”
Hermione looked nervously at the blue ball of fire that had reached a meter in diameter in the professor’s hand, the surrounding air began to distort, and despite knowing that everything here is constructed by thought, she couldn’t help but feel trepidation.
Felix waved his hand and made the blue fireball disappear, “Well, the fun is over. What you just saw was nothing more than a demonstration in thought, I couldn’t do it so easily in reality, I hope I didn’t give you the wrong idea.”
” I will repeat, ancient magic is very dangerous.”
Hermione obviously now accepted this statement, next, she practiced the ancient runes step by step, in addition to learning new content, she also needs to deepen her understanding of the runes, one of the criteria for understanding, is ” you can convert the runes into the corresponding magic meaning.”
She counted on her fingers, and only a few of them really reached the level of “understanding”, such as “Wild Bull Strength”, “Light” and “Fire”.
There is a long way to go!
Felix encouraged her by saying, “In the next Magic Rune Club assembly, I will disassemble ancient magic into small parts and integrate it into the teaching. If you progress fast enough, I will teach you that ancient magic part by part. The same goes for everyone else.”
Hermione’s heart pounded, but she knew that the professor had been very cautious about ancient magic, and the two had had only a few discussions about ancient magic in the past year or so.
Did this mean that the professor had recognized her ability regarding her studies and her level of magic manipulation?
She began to think about it: in her second-year first semester, she had been learning translation and practical magic runes, and had been exposed to runic circuits in the next semester, even managing to repair the broken beaded pouches before the end of the semester.
During the summer, she had been practicing engraving magic runes and runic circuits with a rune carving knife.
At the beginning of the new school year, she had already been exposed to the knowledge of rune transformation, focusing more on the understanding of magic rune itself, and she couldn’t help but fantasize: by the end of the third year, is it possible for her to master ancient magic directly?
Seeing Hermione’s energetic look, Felix added: “It’s the simplest ancient magic, don’t imagine anything lethal from it.” But this did not discourage her in any way.
Towards the end of the session, Hermione, in a rare moment of exhaustion, stood up and moved around, her eyes skimming over the room, the weirdness still so obvious, the more she looked at it, the more uncomfortable it became.
‘Although the professor said it is due to the change brought about by the new perception, but it still looks gloomy.’
She decided to change her mind and stood in a corner of the room and kept surveying it. Suddenly, her eyes lit up, and she picked up a pot of plants and placed it on the professor’s square table that is stacked with books, she then narrowed her eyes and smiled.
“This will look much smoother.”
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