"Purity is not the absence of filth, but its conscious expulsion, its avoidance. The magic in the body is like a river: if its flow is clogged with debris — everything that feeds on it will perish. And if it stagnates — it turns into a swamp."
— Wasat Black, Master Ritualist, 17th Century.
***
The "Magical Body Cleansing" ritual — Magicae Corporis Lavare. The ritual was created by a certain master ritualist — Wasat Black. A distant ancestor, known for his obsession with systematizing magic. In his time, he compiled the Wasat Table for determining the influence of planetary alignments on subtle rituals, and also left a huge impact on the entire science of curse-breaking. For the family, in the Black library, he left an entire chain of rituals intended for a growing wizard.
Unfortunately, we would gain access to the subsequent rituals from Kikimora gradually, as we visited Black House and received "goods" from the living portrait of our grandmother. As for Wasat's rituals, intended strictly for the Blacks… this ritual could have become extremely popular among pure-blood families, but Wasat bequeathed it solely to his descendants. Its history isn't that ancient: according to Mother, Wasat developed the ritual in the late 17th century when one branch of the family fell under a particularly nasty curse cast by enemies due to a blood feud. Apparently, by all estimates, the curse was supposed to last five or six generations, but the trouble was that it only affected children at birth. Some died in the womb, and several children, including Wasat's own son, died before even finishing Hogwarts.
So, the ritualist created this chain of rituals so that, ultimately, it would not only help strengthen the entire magical system but also weaken the curse, which was almost on the level of ancestral curses. The weaker the magical channels and the less time the curse has to take root, the easier it is to remove. That's why ancestral curses usually don't manifest in youth: simply by putting down undetectable roots, they become entrenched enough to be impossible to eradicate or weaken.
Generally, ancestral curses are problematic because even if the curse is destroyed in the recipient, it can still be passed on to children, albeit in a weakened form. That's why, for several generations, every Black underwent this chain of rituals.
In the end, thanks to Wasat Black, the family managed to cleanse the curse within a couple of generations, simultaneously getting rid of several other already weakened curses. It was Wasat who was the first to understand the tricky nature of early curses, and although he left the chain itself to the family, he made his name in history. He formulated and proved the unified theorem of root curses — the "Theorem of Root Curse Destruction."
Of course, over time, the Blacks stopped bothering with Wasat's chain, which consisted of 12 complex rituals that needed to be calculated according to dates and performed on time. Since then, the "Magical Body Cleansing" was performed only for children who were sickly or weak from birth due to some curse.
In essence, the first ritual in the chain removed minor jinxes, weakened long-term curses if any were attached, cleansed the magical channels, making them smoother and more responsive. It also prepared the growing wizard's body for the subsequent stages in the ritual chain.
What exactly came next, Mother didn't know in detail. She admitted that this ritual chain hadn't been performed on her, but Bellatrix, the eldest of the three sisters, had gone through the entire chain.
We were sitting in the ritual room when Mother told me all this. I listened, trying to absorb every word, and reflected: rituals are a rarity even among pure-bloods, despite my boasting that these bans on blood and dark magic didn't apply to us. Over time, few families had people who understood rituals, and there were reasons for that.
First, not every family has access to ready-made ritual schematics. Even fewer families are so extensive that they always have several skilled members ready to help their kin. And only a very small part dare to use them on children. For most, it's pure madness: why take the risk if the child is healthy? To slightly strengthen the body and magic, but with potential side effects — not really worth it. That's probably what many thought. If finding a ritualist is harder than finding a Seer… well, maybe I'm exaggerating, but the point is clear.
Sometimes I think everyone around me is a fool, and only I know how to use my brain, but then I remember my own mistakes, and then — that half the learned men I read about in that world were wizards here, or maybe there too, but I didn't know, because I was a Muggle.
In the end, I'd give myself a mental slap, because one should never forget that compared to many, I am that very fool and I know much less than others. But one thing I decided firmly for myself: if I do gain leadership over the House of Black, I will use all this to the fullest. Perhaps among the Muggle elite, raising a martial arts master or a professional assassin doesn't make sense, but in the magical world, I don't want to be like my father.
Yes, I agree, he became an excellent manager, politician, and businessman, but what is that worth in the face of Dumbledore or Voldemort? Yes, there is risk in rituals, but only the weak stop before risk. Power doesn't come by itself. Although I understand the importance of having a head on your shoulders and the ability to manage money and power, if a wizard can destroy a city or two single-handedly, he can convey his point much more effectively than if he couldn't.
My mother understood this too. She, although she spoke of possible consequences, still performed the ritual. For her, it was not an amusement, but a duty — both as a mother and as a daughter of the House of Black. And I was grateful to her. The ritual went well, although the sensations were far from pleasant: a strong burning and pain throughout my body, at times so intense I associated it with being skinned alive, though I imagine the latter is much more painful. I'm amazed how Mother, being so loving, managed not to succumb to maternal feelings and coolly complete the ritual. After all, the upbringing and intellect in Narcissa Black are stronger than her beauty and maternal tenderness.
I, however, felt neither fear nor doubt, either before or after the ritual. This was just the first step in a long chain. A step that would bring me closer to who I am meant to become.
***
Summer was drawing to a close, and I realized it had been much more eventful than I had expected.
Soon I was finishing my dueling training with Mr. Rowland Krieger. I'm afraid to even imagine how much money Father shelled out to hire such a skilled man. From the very first day, the German duelist asked me: did I want to merely master the art of dueling, as befits a young heir of an ancient house, or did I truly want to learn how to fight. I chose the latter — and that's why during the summer I often returned from the training hall with scrapes, burns, and cuts. Sometimes my robes were burned through, sometimes my hands were covered with red welts from near-miss Diffindo spells, but I never regretted it.
Also during the holidays, I reinforced old spells and mastered new ones. Diffindo became something like a magical blade for me — a fast, sharp, and, most importantly, merciless option. I learned to slice targets at different angles and, more importantly, to defend against my own spells, which, after the experience of fighting the teacher, hit me more often than his. I also mastered Incarcerous — ropes bursting from the air and binding the opponent hand and foot. In a couple of training duels, this saved me when Krieger cornered me. Silencio turned out to be a real find — just deprive the opponent of their voice for a moment, and their attacks slow down significantly, but that's only if the wizard can use non-verbal magic or at least dispel the spell without sound. And if not — the opponent is defeated.
In parallel, I delved deeper into household magic. Having learned several types of Warming Charms, Cooling Charms, and even the so-called Silentium Testudine — a Dome of Silence.
I also studied the spells Professor Flitwick had recommended to me before the winter holidays. Back then, I had somewhat forgotten about them, immersing myself in mental magic. Which I also practiced in the summer. Now I took up sorting: from books, I fully studied the topic of creating a kind of Memory Palace, like Sherlock Holmes's, which, thanks to magic, was possible in the real world.
From the useful stuff, I also studied other spells like Aguamenti, which produced a steady stream of water.
But I was most proud of my wandless magic. Unlike other components, which I considered to include the wand, removing the wand itself while creating a spell is extremely problematic. No, don't get me wrong: manipulating magic without a wand turned out not to be a difficult task, but any spell requires precision, or rather — focus. Releasing a spell from your hands is not the same as from a wand. And spells are demanding of magical focus. It's like comparing a sunbeam and a sunbeam under a magnifying glass: seemingly the same beam of light, but no. In one case, the light hits the entire surface; in the other — it's focused, allowing you to achieve the desired effect easier and faster, with less expenditure.
So, before, I could only push or lift one thing at a time, at most — something like a book. Now I was training two directions at once. First — quantity: I learned to lift three or four objects at once, hold them in the air, and even move them in different directions. Books, candles, goblets, dishes, etc. Second — weight: I tried to move chests, lift stone tiles in the hall, and while it was slow, I could see progress. I could already lift a heavy chair. And not some school chair, but a proper, expensive chair made of noble wood that's hard to even break.
Sometimes I managed to surprise Krieger himself. One day, I chained Expelliarmus and Stupefy so quickly that he was forced to defend himself, because almost at the same moment, several objects I had previously scattered around the training hall flew at him from two sides.
In my memory, it was the first time he genuinely acknowledged my attempt and praised me. Several times I managed to pull off combinations he didn't expect from me. He even spoke with Father about me having decent aptitude if I wanted to take dueling seriously. And the thought even appealed to me, although it couldn't be the sole goal in life — at most a hobby, or a way to make a name and gain fame.
Overall, I was proud to have achieved such results. I had worked long and hard for this. Talent is talent, but in training, I gave my all; outside of training, I honed my skills in wand and wandless magic. In one hand and the other. Of course, I didn't become ambidextrous, but I was already curious how effective it would be in duels to use both hands, or perhaps even two wands.
Meanwhile, the summer, surprisingly, wasn't spent in isolation. I corresponded with Avery, Cassius, Blackmore, even with Graham. The first two wrote often, discussing everything from school gossip to plans for the next year. Blackmore was more serious, but we talked about dueling. In general, I was slowly getting him used to taking orders, for now just softly, for example: insisting on practicing our joint combinations or asking him to do something, write to someone, and so on. I saw that he was ready to move forward side by side with me, and I had to take advantage of the situation.
Even Amanda sent letters twice: she talked about her holidays and shared rumors in a veiled way. I wonder, is she trying to get closer to me… Nah, couldn't be… I think!
I also received letters from other people, but that was just routine correspondence.
Only with Avery, contact was briefly lost in August, but he was my closest friend, so it was fine. The thing is, he went to France with his family for a month on matters of family business and expansion. He promised to visit me in the summer, but it didn't work out — he'll be back just before the start of term.
In the end, thanks to these exchanges of letters, I didn't feel cut off from school — as if thin threads connected me to each of them, otherwise I would have felt like all my efforts to bind people to me were in vain.
Cassius was also training, but he was trained by his relatives, very harshly and rigidly. But Cassius held on, and I'm curious who would win in a duel after the summer: Cassius or Blackmore. Fortunately, from the second year, we have extracurricular clubs, one of which is the Dueling Club under the supervision of Professor Flitwick. I recall that in a couple of years, the Chosen One will be without such a club, so I hope: the dueling club will either be closed only in a couple of years when Harry arrives, or not closed at all, given the differences of this world from my After-Knowledge.
Anyway, back to my achievements. I also advanced in Transfiguration. Now I could freely use the general transfiguration spell — Transfiguro. Thanks to non-verbal casting, I turned items scattered around the training hall into more dangerous and heavier ones, for example, a sheet of paper into a sheet of metal. Thereby, I created, or rather tried to create, a real threat for the Duelist. But all summer, I never once managed to hit the teacher's body. Not a single scratch, not a single abrasion — I'm still far from such a master's level and will be for a long time.
And now, looking back, I realized: in one summer, I changed more than anyone… wait, last summer I literally became a different person. Pffhahaha.
The last days of August, Krieger and I trained especially intensely: it was as if he wanted to squeeze out of me everything he had managed to teach in these two months. Mornings began with spell redirection.
His "thing" had always been precisely this skill. The redirection itself, or, put another way, deflecting spells — because redirecting to a specific place is a different level altogether. If deflecting someone else's spell was difficult, then redirecting it to a place you want, or ideally reflecting it back at the sender, could only be done by true maestros who had dedicated years, if not decades, to honing this skill.
Hitting an opponent with their own magic — what could be more superb? I was only beginning to comprehend this art. Even with a simple Flipendo, it worked only half the time, and Flipendo is a slow spell. The beam of the spell had to touch my wand, the tip of which was protected by a sort of small Protego funnel, and I had to catch the direction, intercept the flow, and with a movement of the wand turn it — so the projectile would go not into me, but to the side, upward, or wherever it ended up. Sometimes it worked, and the magical mass slammed into the wall with a crash. But more often, I was thrown back onto the stone slabs. Krieger didn't spare me — he demanded repetitions until my hands began to shake.
This wasn't a spell, but literally a manipulation of one's own magic. You had to create a small funnel at the tip to receive the spell and deflect it. If anyone knew how much time it took me… but it would take others even longer, so I was satisfied.
I understood that this skill is almost impossible to perfect, but if you master it — it gives a decisive advantage. By the end of the summer, I had learned to sometimes deflect others' spells in random directions. For this, every day for half an hour, the teacher would just throw beam spells at me, which I tried to deflect. The only trouble with this skill is that many spells cannot be redirected. Mainly, this can be done with beam-based spells.
"Denk dran,"(Remember,) he repeated, "Umlenken ist nicht nur ein Trick, es ist ein Gefühl für den Moment. Wenn du den Moment erspürst, kannst du selbst Confringo reflektieren. Und wenn nicht — wird Confringo deinen Körper in Stücke reißen."
(redirection is not just a trick, it's a feeling for the moment. If you catch the moment, you can even reflect a Confringo. And if you don't — Confringo will tear your body to shreds.)