Babys First Magical Creation

(Seras POV)

Now that I had finally been allowed into the library, I could start improving my knowledge, but I had one problem I really hadn't expected: I was too short to reach most of the books on the higher shelves. In this massive library, I was stuck at the ground floor, unable to do anything to reach the heights of knowledge that I wanted. Of course, this wasn't going to stop me from learning everything I could. I ended up picking up two books that might not seem important at first glance, "An Atlas of Mystic Map Making" and "The Enchanter's Canvas." This was due to a variety of reasons, but the first was that this is something I could do with the supplies my parents had given me for my birthday. The parchment and quills would not just be for note-taking but for my first steps into a certain form of artifact creation.

I initially wanted to jump right into magical cartography, but baby steps were needed. I made it about 20 pages into the book before it lost me; going right into a field of magic with no fundamentals would be incredibly difficult. So, I pivoted to magical portrait making. There were many complex runic charms that would need to be inscribed to get the map to start working, so hopefully, portrait making would be simpler. I was greatly discouraged to find that magical portrait making also needed the inscription of runes, but these were much simpler and relatively consistent for bringing basic drawings to life. To actually accomplish what I wanted to do with both of these projects would require a background in artifact runes. I put the books I had been excited about back on the shelf and pulled as many introductions to artifacts and introductions to runes books as I could find.

Runes are a way to inscribe magic onto an artifact, and there were so many different ones that can mean all different things. When they are combined, they interact in semi-logical ways. If you were to put a series of runes that increased the temperature of an object to be very hot and then added some that cool the object, you would get a warm object. They were a written language, but they were also similar to program coding. Both runes and programming code are written symbols that, when properly executed, produce specific outcomes or actions. Certain magical runes could also be used in a form of circuitry, channeling mana in a set path so that it would activate functions.

So I began to try and teach myself the basic runes that seemed useful for what I was going to do. I was looking for two runes in particular: a rune that acts as a switch and one that acts as an amplifier. With just these two runes, I would have something comparable to a magic transistor. There were clearly artifacts within the magical world that acted in a way that exhibits complex and conditional responses, so these runes most likely exist, but starting from these wasn't what was talked about in intro books. I was beginning to realize just how hard learning in the magical world with no guidance was. It seemed like logical planning to work your way up from the bottom was missing in many fields. Whether this was intentional to keep the system of masters and apprentices in place or simply due to the wackiness of the wizards of this world is up to speculation. When looking at these beginner artifact books, they all chose something at random to try and teach how to create. One simply talks about spells you could cast to make a pair of self-knitting needles, another the runes to inscribe onto a glass ball to allow a Remembrall to be created. The actual reasoning as to why a wizard should do what they do isn't touched on at all in these books. Much like many wizarding norms, people are just okay to repeat the past without any reason for innovation. My new goal was something that seemed possible: to set in stone a few basics of magical circuitry for the future, and for that I would need to get myself some material.

I was lucky enough that everything my parents had bought was the best available. Even for a child, the ink and paper they purchased had magical properties. It wouldn't be as good as tools designed for making magical artifacts, but if the amount of magical power used was small and the circuit was simple enough, a basic circuit could be born. I went to my room to the ornate vanity that my parents had given me and pulled a small clear gemstone off of it. I used the ink to create a rune I had seen in my studies on the bottom of the stone: the rune called Luminus, which had the ability to give off light when mana reached it. I created a basic circuit on the piece of paper, an incredibly useful activation rune called Absorptio, which takes in small amounts of mana from the world around it. I made another line with the magical ink to a rune that checked for touch. This rune was hooked to a switch rune; these two together allowed for touch to control whether or not the circuit would start. These were then wired to either side of the place where the gem would go on the paper. I was so proud of my creation that I ended up sitting in the dark for the next 15 minutes playing with the created light. It was a barely visible light, but it was there.

I then got my hands on another piece of paper and created the same circuit on the drawn piece of paper. This time, however, I included a rune that would amplify the amount of mana going through the circuit and to the light rune. This worked once again, creating a much brighter light before it went out about 30 seconds later. To improve this design, I would have to create a way to take in either more mana from the outside, maybe extra Absorptio runes, a set amount of mana from the user, or create a battery or other storage system for mana. I had taken my first steps into this new craft and was so proud that I even went to show Draco. It had been only a few days since we moved away from each other, yet I was starting to miss my annoying younger brother. I was so excited for when he gets old enough that I can lord my brilliance over him. I brought the circuit into his room while he was busy playing with his glow-in-the-dark Quidditch figure. At least this way, the light was already off. I tried to show him how the circuit would glow when I touched it, but he was not very excited by it. I don't know what I was expecting from the drooling child, but I had hoped for a little more.