17. Plans and Hobbies

— Clara POV —

The next nine weeks flashed by, a blur of learning and common school life. There were a few interesting things though. My blood curse got another sense, quite abruptly as a matter of fact, so that I can now sense magical presences and their inclination. Now why would that be a good part of the curse? Well, the amount of information you get about your environment roughly quintuples, as every mana particle has an inclination and presence, though I could only differentiate between dark, light and neutral ones at this point, with most environmental particles being neutral. Funnily enough, the magical cores of most youths were also neutral. The ones who weren't were also the youths which had the hardest times learning spells, not of a particular alignment but it was the missing control to offset that imbalance of their mana. The unlocking of that also shocked me awake in the middle of the night, though I could luckily suppress a scream while my second skin automatically regulated itself to easy mode, which was a life safer.

I also decided to learn more languages, starting with non-magical ones. I started with Italian, Greek and German, followed by Spanish, Latin and Polish. I can fluidly read and write those languages now and decipher most conversations with time, though I couldn't speak it yet. Currently I am working on old versions of those languages, accents and dialects, which there were a lot of. The next planned languages were Russian, Indonesian and Arabic I also realized that I should learn accents, past versions and dialects before moving to new languages.

It was also intentional, that I only learned three languages at a time, as three is a magical number and while I cannot prove anything, it may help in the long run.

While you may ask, how I learn dialects and accents through books, 279 years ago someone magical created advanced phonetics for exactly that and while I would need actual practice to replicate or imitate them, I will also need a native to do that or way more experience than I currently possess. But the knowledge was already there and also relatively easy to package into language packages, while I learned them. The hard part was connecting those packages with everything else, as currently they were stand alone without any connections except the few ones I made spontaneously to another language, if I found similarities. I also resolved myself to learn any non-magical language, before proceeding with programming languages, which weren't many but still. Only after I did that, will I try myself at magical languages, except if I am somehow forced to abandon that plan. The next step after that would be animal languages, starting with turtle, though I might just pick that up on the way.

Now through my new sense I found exactly three extremely dark and sinister artifacts in this castle. One in a kind of intangible state, deeply connected with the castle wards. The second sat in Harry Potter's scar and the third was somewhere in Gryffindor tower, though it sometimes wanders late at night. In this castle there is nothing like a range restriction, though that is currently at approximately fifty meters, as every strong magic used in this castle, this environment echos through most of the grounds, which got pretty annoying pretty quickly. I also informed the Professor Ollivanders about these discoveries, though I don't know what happened afterwards, as only one presence disappeared, being the intangible one. I don't know if it is contained or destroyed, though I hope for the latter.

Another realization I had about myself in this time is that I absolutely detest extreme physical exertion, at which my second skin immediately capitalized on, making my current life a living hell. While I slowly get used to the feelings these activities bring with them, it was in no way pleasant.

I had also planned seven small rituals for Halloween, though it was more one big one, implementing all seven smaller ones. All were offerings to gods of death of different cultures, which I channeled into a ritual for death itself, with the plea of being merciful on all those passed souls, even if they don't deserve it. I really don't know if it will work, if death is even a real entity, as the sole mention of it is in myths and legends, bit I still wanted to try. The existence of gods though was apparently proven, though most Ollivanders chose a singular god to believe in, one that aligned with their passions. I had also informed me a bit about that and narrowed my potential believes down to three gods. Athena, goddess of knowledge, strategy and fighting, Arachne, goddess of weaving and art and Metis the goddess of wisdom, intelligence and good advice, though Arachne was just an instinct and I am no longer that sure about that idea. In the end it will probably come down to Metis and Athena. That time still has time though.

Mosaic was maturing and growing well all this time, but still had trouble staying out of water. His appetite was growing immensely and fast, though he only ate vegetables till now. The amber was still in his shell, with not much progress since the last update, though I had already planned the next one. Either a mana crystal or a mental energy crystal. The idea was to use the bowl to compress my magic into solid form, akin to a jewel, but without any blood or external stimulant. Another idea for that one was a pure mana crystal where I gather mana out of air, purify it, compress it and then put it into the bowl, though that will take a few years to make, so I needed to automate that one. The basic concept behind it weren't really that hard. The problem was efficiency and speed. I will also need knowledge of runes, arrays and several different magical languages, so that idea needed to wait a year or two. The others could be done at this point in time, though it will still need a total of one month of time, which meant it would need a bit longer if I didn't do it in one sitting.

On a side note, I also had quite fun pranking people, well sneaking up on them, as they didn't seem to notice me that much. It started as unintentional gimmick, but I slowly fell in love with it.

I also started meditating with the sole purpose of finding my inner animal, for an eventual animagus transformation, though it proved tedious and my packaging of information slowed down drastically through that. There were different methods, like the potion for that, but most had the flaw of restricting later potential, as the potion for example restricted you to full body transfiguration and one singular animal, while something like a ward or ritual is only temporary and a learning crutch if you will it for better ways. Even though finding your inner animal through meditation had a lack of drawbacks, it needed a high starting point in the mind arts and also the problem of ease of transformation, as it needed a lot of praxis and experience and a bit of transfiguration know-how. It was also relatively harder to get a second or even third form, which with other methods is easier but also limited to two or three forms in the end, whereas inner animals don't necessarily have that limit, though it got harder and harder with each animal discovered or mastered. I had the very though, that it would be easier to find more animals, if your first transformation is as far removed from your original form as possible.

We also got a new potions professor. Horace Slughorn is the new head of house for slytherin and will also be responsible for teaching potions, until an alternative is found, though very reluctantly as he announced exactly that in all his first lessons.