Familiar info dump

The following day in homeroom class, everyone was enthusiastically talking about the weekend and what they did, when the professor walked in,- "Quiet down, quiet down now, today we will be learning about familiars and why you have them and why adults usually don't, besides a few notable exceptions."

As the room became silent she continued- "Familiars or magical companions, sometimes treated as just pets which is fine, are given to young witches and wizards to better help protect them during their vulnerable years.

During your second year after your magic has matured enough and you formed a sufficient enough bond with your familiar, you'll have the chance to form magical contracts with them in order to strengthen your bond as well as gain benefits.

So not to worry for those who don't feel comfortable with their choice, they have a full year yet to decide or to find the right one, but even then they shouldn't rush it if they can't find one, it's an important decision.

Anyways the familiar will gain a reliable source of magic to help speed up its growth while the caster will gain its familiar's unique traits/abilities. While this is not as useful to an adult who has a wide range of magical abilities, it can mean the difference between life and death for young students such as yourselves who are still learning and not yet capable of easily defending yourself when needed.

Now having said that, I don't mean to alarm anyone, nowadays with the war now behind us, you don't need to be overly concerned about your protection. Especially in Hogwarts, it's among the safest places in the world, especially with Headmaster Dumbledore here to protect us, no one would dare come here and stir up trouble.

So it's also okay not to have one, while you will miss out on a great opportunity, it's not completely necessary to force yourself to get one and bond if you don't want to. You can grow just as well on your own without any familiar help and won't be any worst for it. Just that a familiar can makes things much easier.

Some of you may be wondering why then it was recommended in the letters to get an owl. That's because as I said earlier Hogwarts is one of the safest places in the world and you have nothing to fear here. Owl familiars have a variety of uses besides just sending letters or delivering mail, when one contracts with an owl they can gain better eyesight for night vision, better hearing, and can even help with studying, yes that's right, it can help you with studying, an increase of intelligence is not at all uncommon when one contracts with an owl, which is why parents who are self-assured with Hogwarts safety will get you an owl to help with your studies instead."

She took a breath to let that all sink in before continuing- "Now let's talk about Magical Bonds, They are a more intimate version of the Magical Contracts you can do, while the contracts can give you the basic abilities of the familiar as well as provide them a magical source of nourishment in compensation, this usually can only give you one maybe two traits/abilities if you're lucky.

Before I explain further, I must warn you Magical Bonds are very dangerous and can drastically harm the caster should their familiar fall in battle. A huge backlash will occur that can not only cripple a wizard, in the worst cases you could lose your ability to wield magic ever again... This is why you'll likely never see one in your life, but it's important to know in case you accidentally do it without realizing it. When one reaches a certain level of trust and fondness with a familiar you could accidentally stumble into it without realizing how bad it could be. The feeling of wanting to give everything and receive everything is hard to deny to those who have felt it.

Magical Bonds are a very intimate connection with your chosen familiar. I told you about the downside now let's talk about the upsides. First and foremost, you must have an undeniable trust between you and your chosen familiar to even perform it. Once completed your lives will be forever tied together, if your familiar had a short life it will no longer matter because it will not die of age unless you die, it's limits of growth will also change, this is unique on a case by case basis but they will at the very least grow stronger then any normal version of their species.

At this time it is unknown whether a witch or wizard gains the same benefit of life should they contract with a long-lived species that live longer than wizards.

Benefits that the wizard will gain however are of course different depending on which species you bond with, but at the very least you will gain all their abilities to use as you see fit, so it's usually not worth it, again even though I'm informing you of this, it is highly recommended that you don't do something so foolish, all those who have done it so far that we know of have all had horrible ends."

The entire classroom gulped just imagining how each of them suffered and died.

Meanwhile, Trenton's head was spinning with the possibilities, he wasn't sure if he would ever form a Magical Bond with Rocky, but doing a contract was a no brainer. He wondered if he would really gain the ability to grow big and shrink at will like Rocky, a grin soon appearing on his face as he pictured himself as a giant, how cool would that be.

After class everyone left thinking about their familiars and what to do as they all, without exception, made their way to the familiar house to check in on their pets or to check on the pets of others to see if they wish to stick with what they have.

Their kid-like imaginations running wild, completely forgetting the part about why adults didn't have them. All these abilities for the most part would be useless when one grows up and becomes a master magician. Only the very rare and special magical creatures would still be used by adults, but this was extremely rare for many reasons, not only are they hard to find, but they are even harder to form bonds with.

Dumbledore was lucky enough to have bonded with a phoenix, but Voldemort who was obsessed with living forever had to settle for a magical snake when he couldn't force a bond on the Basilisk despite having the ability to order it around thanks to his bloodline, it had to want to bond with him. When his ambitions came to light, he was further barred by Dumbledore and closed the chamber to afraid of being found out while he was still growing. It was a shame to when Voldemort figured out later that with his Horcruxes he could gain the benefits from bonding without any of the major downsides.