Chapter 57: The Ancient Wizarding World
"It all started," Cedric explained to the rapt audience, "when a first-year dropped their locket behind the sofa in the common room. An older student was just about to transfigure a stick to get it out, when Hannah stepped forward. She started yelling some incantation none of us had ever heard, then she just… bent down, and lifted the entire sofa over her head." The memory of the sight still sent a shiver down his spine. "The first-year grabbed their locket, said a hasty 'thank you,' and then there was a massive thud as she dropped the sofa. It shook the whole room."
Ryan smiled. "Neville and Hannah showed an extraordinary aptitude for a certain… alternative… application of magic in my practical lesson," he said. "The strengthening charm was a small gift, a reward for their performance. I had no idea they would take to it so quickly." He then added, more thoughtfully, "It seems that the two major exams are only a measure of the average wizard's abilities. Some of us, it appears, have talents that fall outside the standard curriculum."
"A strengthening charm?" Harry asked.
"I've never heard of such a spell," Cedric added.
Ryan then recounted one of his own adventures, a tale of a long-lost ruin from a time when wizards were just beginning to walk the earth, a wild and untamed era of magic, with countless different schools of thought and a dizzying variety of techniques. His story painted a vivid picture of a world both dangerous and exciting, and his audience was captivated.
"What a pity that so much of that knowledge has been lost," Pablo Pierce said with a sigh.
"I had no idea there were other casting tools besides wands," Cedric added, his mind buzzing with new possibilities.
"If it weren't for Ryan," Hermione declared, "this knowledge would have been buried forever!" She wished, more than anything, that a book about that ancient era would magically appear in her hands.
"I don't think it's entirely lost," Penelope mused. "There are probably records of it in the library, but they're so obscure that no one knows where to start."
"Maybe their enemies wiped them out," someone else suggested. "I heard there were a lot of Dark Wizards back then."
All eyes turned to Ryan.
"Let me ask you this," he said. "What are the advantages of the wands we use today?"
"They're convenient," Penelope said.
"They're stable, and they reduce the risk of magical accidents for young wizards," Vaisey added.
"They're expensive, and they break easily!" the Weasley twins declared in unison.
"You're all correct," Ryan said with a nod. "I agree, Ollivander's wands are not exactly budget-friendly. But in an era with no formal schools, when magic was passed down from master to apprentice, and a single school of thought might only have a handful of practitioners, a stable and convenient casting tool meant survival. When the choice is between safety and danger, there is no choice. And so," he concluded, "the magical system that has survived to this day is the one built on the foundation of the 'little wooden stick.'"
The students were all saddened by this thought, by the loss of so much ancient and wondrous magic.
From his own readings of the fragmented texts that had survived from that era, Ryan knew that it had been a brutal time. It wasn't just young wizards who lived in constant danger; even adult wizards could be killed by a spell gone wrong. And the line between Light and Dark magic was almost nonexistent. Wizards used whatever spells were most effective. Voldemort, if he had been born in that time, would have simply been considered a wizard with "extreme" research methods. Take Herpo the Foul, the inventor of the Horcrux, the creator of the first Basilisk, the father of most of the Dark Arts we know today. By all accounts, his reign of terror had been even greater than Voldemort's. And who knew if Herpo the Foul was even truly dead? Ryan, knowing the properties of a Horcrux, had a nagging suspicion that he might still be out there, somewhere. He remembered finding a mention of Horcruxes in the Restricted Section in his second year, and a note that read: "Of the Horcrux, we will not speak. For more details, see 'Magick Moste Evile'." But he had never been able to find that book. He had, however, frequently run into Dumbledore on his late-night excursions. At the time, he had been annoyed. I'm not Voldemort, he had thought. Why is he so suspicious of me?
"This is the strengthening charm," he said, passing around a copy of the incantation. "Its only known effect is to increase the user's physical strength. It might seem like a useless spell now, but as you've seen, in the hands of the right wizard, even a simple charm can be extraordinarily powerful."
"Take Andros the Invincible," he said, "one of the wizards from ancient Greece. His Patronus was the size of a giant. And an ordinary Patronus," he said, and with a wave of his wand, a silvery eagle soared through the room, "is not." The older students, who had already learned the Patronus Charm, all nodded in agreement. The younger ones, who had only ever seen the name "Andros the Invincible" on a Chocolate Frog card, just looked confused.
"Ryan," Harry asked after the older students had explained the concept of a Patronus to the younger ones, "if Neville really is talented with this kind of magic, where can he go to learn more?"
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