Ch. 18 Magical Christmas

I had to think of a way to procure 3 gifts. On top of my head, I had two ideas. First, was to go to the room of lost things and try and pick something up from there. Which I was against, since I had no clue on to know whether the object was cursed or not. My plan was to just look for jewels or directly galleons if possible at the end of they year and without touching them hopefully give it directly to the goblins they might cheat me since I don't know much about their value but I could care less as long as I had enough galleons to do things I wanted. Second option was troublesome but the safer route it would require some assistance or rather borrowing from a senior but I think I could manage that. Personal charms please don't fail me now.

What was the brilliant idea? of course it was books. There were quills that would write everything you say, with one of the 4th year students. I just had to convince them to lend it to me. It would be a lengthy and a lot of work required but I had no other options. I didn't have anyone I could write to, to purchase something for me and there was no online shopping here. I was not going to gift my only friends nothing during our first Christmas together. Deciding the books was the easy part. Roger would get one based on quidditch tactics and personal improvements. Alice would get charms and jinx's for personal defense as she keeps on complaining how the defense classes were terrible and for Lavender, I wanted to give something extra but I couldn't think of anything. My transfiguration was not good enough to manage something special for her yet. I decided I would give her one of maybe the rarer kind of books available to me. It was foundation of charms and how to improve on them. Wizards and their long-titled books but this book was really detailed and helped me as well in better understanding charms and the difference between let's say a charm which makes you eat slugs and transfiguration. It was based on the principle or banishment and summoning charm or some complex variation of it.

Now talking about Christmas, itself. I had a very stupid plan on going. 21st December midnight, was a very very special day for a lot of reasons. The Christmas leave would begin on 21st meaning most of the castle grounds or at least more than half of it would be empty. Why on 21st is because 21st midnight is considered to be sort of very magical and for good reasons indeed. I had read extensively on the subject. Apparently before the huge muggleborn propaganda thing the castle would celebrate a night of quiet and feast in the morning of 22nd December until the whole muggle things happened. Why well on 21st December would be the night where old magical and mundane people alike would thank the gods for their good harvests on the mundane side and having a good year on the magical one.

Everything fit in just way to perfectly, there were just way too many coincidences here. 21st December was said to have the longest night. The day of the winter solstice. In scientific terms the earth was at the maximum distance from the sun at on of the elliptical orbit's farthest points. Hence, the cold longest night the sun begins to shine brighter in terms of magical literature which matches the scientific theories. Most of the wizarding world worship the sun god during these times. It was funny how everything just matched all in just a gap of few days. I never really thought about this in the old world. How all the religious occasions or festivals were matched by some sort of supernatural phenomena during ancient times and scientific occurrences later on.

Looking into winter solstice and yule also led to certain very interesting topics. One of them was the effect of sun and moon on magic. There were various magic phenomena related to the effects they have on us. One of the most obvious being obviously lycanthropy. How people would loose their senses and become wolves during the period of time where they could view the moon in it's entirety. I still don't have enough experience to look into it further. The sun was associated with obviously light and nourishment. Hence people worshiping for good harvests. Alternatively, this day since the sun is the farthest it could be considered a good day for performing 'shady' *cough cough* rituals.

Since before the light lord or the stupidity of the ministry ritual magic was prominent and I found a decent number of books about it in the ROR. Ritual magic was not dark or light. It was same like any other branch of magic. It was neutral based on how you use it; it could turn dark or light or any other shade of color you wanted. The basic principle I could understand the core or in the simplest terms all ritual magic was based on equivalent exchange. The exchange however was anything but simple and definitely not equivalent in terms of how my or any ordinary thinking would work. I didn't have a time to look deeply into it. One thing did catch my attention though.

The ritual magic associated with yule or the winter solstice. It couldn't be called a ritual it was basically just simple prayer. The runes involved in it were obviously way to complex for me. Even sitting with a book on basic runes I could barely make out a quarter of them. The ritual involved in drawing a circle with the most magic conducting substance i.e. blood of the strongest magical beast you could find. Then writing runes across the circle by entering the circle during the beginning of the solstice and thanking whatever entity you believed in for the past good year and ask them for luck for the coming year. No live sacrifice was required or anything like that It looked like a simple thanking ceremony. Some of the basic runes I could identify from the runes set up was 'wealth', 'year' , 'god?' there was also 'sun' rune which might mean it was specifically designed for the sun god. Either way I was not sure about this whole thing.

I decided finally that I was not going to go through with it. It was incredibly reckless and stupid. I would just try and do a tone downed version of it. No runes. Even though I had set of runes that could work like the 'good luck' 'wealth' and 'protection' rune. All of them would be asking things and I simply wanted to thank mother magic. 'thanking' was a rune I couldn't find. I didn't even know how they would work together. I didn't have any foundations in these types of things. Next year maybe if I was able to completely learn runes I might give it a shot. This year I would just go without the runes. The plan was simple just grab one of the magical creatures. Thanks to our lovely gamekeeper who I talk to every now and then.

During the night of 21st December, I somehow managed to get a magical snake's dead body. I also felt disgusted by it but it was either that or a baby acromantula spider. which was not actually baby sized in any way. I honestly choose the snake because I felt less disgusted by it. It was just a common magical snake found in abundance in the forest. Making my way towards ROR asking for a room suitable to perform ritual magic. Which provided me with a large gap in the middle with a knife placed at the center of it. I looked through the basics of the ritual again the size of the circle and what to do exactly I wasn't actually performing a ritual so it was going to be okay I assured myself.

At midnight, I slowly cut the snakes' dead body. Using the blood made the appropriate circle. Sitting in the middle of it channeled some magic from myself into the circle. Now would be the time to inscribe the runes but I was not going to do that. So instead I just decided to say my prayer. Feeling stupid I just decided to say out loudly "Thank you mother magic for a wonderful year. Please look after me for the coming year as well." I felt the magic drain out of me. I didn't panic for some reason? It felt natural. I just passed out then and there.