10. Ritual of Cemented Passion

— Clara POV —

Soon, my seventh unofficial birthday came. The party this time was a bit bigger, mostly friends of my parents, though there were also 4 ritual specialists in attendance. They would go on to guide me through the Ritual of cemented Passions, though before that there was cake and the normal gifts, this year again no other stone or similar things. The best gift this year was a very rare book on empathy and its combination with mind arts, as in a one of its kind, from Mrs. Celine with a small card saying: „For the weird kid, who helped me create a masterpiece."

At 22 o'clock I left the house together with the 4 ritualists, which then proceeded to apparate me to an unknown place, where the first Ritual of cemented Passions is undergone, deeply seated in our traditions. While those 4 didn't swear any oath to me directly, they did swear the past, directly to Gaya, to never talk about anything in this room. While I did know out of a traditions book, that 2 were male and the other 2 were female, I couldn't see and feel anymore, as they placed a lot on their anonymity. Their oaths were implemented, not to secure the passions of the seven year olds, but because they would be naked for the ceremony/ritual, in body as well as mind and soul.

The ritual in itself is a huge stone array, carved out of a marble floor and filled in with a black material of unknown origins, with a small meditation mat in the middle and 4 others, each in one cardinal direction, just a little bit outside of the arrays effective range, to power it. There also were a lot of torches and other things.

All of the four people spoke at once: „Take a seat in the middle and start meditating, after you have put down any and all items on you. Also disable your occlumency shields for the duration of the ritual, or it will probably missfire." I did as I was told and started meditating. In the process of this ritual I didn't feel anything, except the feedback about the magic being used at that moment, which was a huge amount which was the purest form of natural mana I had ever felt up to this day. THis magic did nothing except unlocking and inscribing a small little gate in my very soul, with exactly 4 different things, which I knew all to well.

As it turns out, I had the permanent passions of knowledge, the unknown and potential, while also having a rare temporary passion, which I didn't yet know what it did. While I say it is rare, it is just rare to manifest at the first ritual, which was calibrated to awaken permanent ones instead of temporary ones. Rituals for temporary passions were way easier and a lot less draining and exhausting. Temporary passions are like quests from Gaya itself, which is why most Ollivanders undertook a lesser form of the Ritual of cemented Passions, also named Ritual of temporary Passions, each year or two at their birthdays.

My three other passions were troublesome to say the least, but also easily satisfied for the next few hundreds of thousands years. I will get a problem with my passions the moment I reach omnipotence, which was impossible, or if I stop following and striving for one of them.

While many would ask, what is so special about this ritual I can only say this. In these few hours, there was used more mana per second than the current planet earth posses. Don't ask me how that is possible either, as I just knew what my hypersensitivity and instinct told me.

Another funny thing was my second skin, which got also got a passion, which is not unheard of, as that is the reason why everyone must be naked to undergo these sort of rituals. Its passion was supporting my hypersensitivity, which will not be a problem. I also didn't go for the medium intensity yet, as I didn't want to do it before this ritual.

After the ritual finished, I just stayed there, meditating and instinctually trying to grasp at the residual mana around us and absorbing it, as I could feel the other 4 passed out on the floor. Maybe… that was my bad? Nah, don't care. They will wake up at some point, but until then I will sit and meditate her. As I learned later, Andy waited a whole month for me to be out, as you normally should just leave the room after finishing the ritual. He was not amused to say the least.

Now I got something out of this month, as the purity of my soul, mind and body advanced from 0% to a staggering 2%, which is quite a lot for someone as young as me. Most adults have a purity of about 25% though, so I was still far behind, but building this foundation is the important part.

After that I went right back to arithmancy, this time calculating everything I needed for the staff I planned. I started with its height, radius, its inner volume, the thickness of its walls, followed by its outer design, without any functions yet. For this alone I needed a year, though it was also the hardest part of the whole equation. The perfect height for my plan was two kilometers, with a total radius of ten kilometers, including the wall thickness of nine point nine kilometers at the side and 100 meters at the bottom and top end.

This meant, that the space inside was a theoretical volume of 5.65% of 1 cubic kilometer or 22619 olympic pools, which is more than enough, especially as I found a potential trick to make it possible for the space to grow, through the restrictions on only one type of item entering do still apply, sadly.

The trick came from Mrs Celine as my knowledge was way to shallow. While I won't go into details, the idea is, that the spaces edge gets separated into three different panes, where we will then shrink the middle one, while not shrinking the inner one, before vanishing the middle pane. After that you fuse the remaining panes into another, strengthen it to the needed thickness, before repeating the steps. I myself didn't understand more than that though, so something to look into in the future. The caveat was, that the original space can't be more than a cubic meter, so I went from a theoretic 22619 olympic pools down to 0.1% of one olympic pool, which while sad, was still enough for the next few years of use.

Luckily the design needed to be carved after it was shrunk down to a new max height of two meters and a radius of seven centimeters. At this point the design of roses is added, so that the whole foci part is littered with the design of one big interconnected rosebush. This is done through first carving the rosebush out of the material and then animating it to cling or better yet fuse it into the staff itself, through adding the design to the „memory" of it. Don't ask me how exactly that works either, as I found that fusion technique in an antique book, which was way out of my league. In this step a permanent rose at the top is added, which will hold the semi-permanent wardstone.

The next calculations were about making the rose bushes semi-concious, not unlike my second skin, just without any connection to my three cores, as the finished foci will take care of that, so that it can automatically retrieve, „display", activate and deactivate the wardstones while also being able to grow, depending on how much material I feed it, which works through a not so hard spatial layering technique, though it also has a resource limit, though that depends on weight and is therefore very hard to reach, as its maximum capacity is at a thousand tons and as graphene is very light, I will probably don't reach that weight, furthermore I will still need to lift that damn thing. I also scrapped the idea of using buckypaper as coating, as it would just make it too damn complicating and limit the potential of the finished foci. The roses also replaced the two tripods, as they can also turn into a tripod or pretty much anything I want, depending on my mental commands. This also allowed me to add another function, as it can now extend a rose to carve arrays into the ground, depending on my instructions. This was a gut feeling idea though, so it may not work out in the end.

A year later, I finished it and also brought the plan to a crafter in my extended family, who initially didn't want to do it, though I coaxed him into it. The renumeration this time was just a damn lot of galleons, which my parents graciously sponsored as a birthday gift for my eighth and ninth birthday.

I also designed and manufactured the first prototype blank wardstone, which should be added and keyed into the pocket space of the foci part. It was just a 1 centimeter radius ball, made out of palladium microalloy glass treated to be able to handle basic wards, which every beginner of that subject learns in their first few hours. The only problem was getting the materials, though Andy recommended an Ollivander for that, so I could just owl him for everything I needed as long as I had enough galleons to pay.

The crafter said he will owl us, after he is done, which will take approximately one year.