Julian was not about to pretend that many of his achievements had nothing to do with his bloodline, because that would have been false, but he also knew he had put in a great deal of effort to make the most of what he possessed. His ability to understand and speak every language had already become the second most useful talent he had, surpassed only by his constantly active magical sense. Through it, he had gained access to an entire runic language that belonged to him alone, and on top of that, he could read every book in the library no matter what language it had been written in. Lately, he had even started expanding that gift further by practicing how to write those languages and by learning to recognize whenever he was speaking in one that was not his own.-
His magical sense, meanwhile, gave him an unusually deep comprehension of how magic functioned on the inside, no matter the form it took. Over the past week alone, he had spent at least an hour each day working on his abilities to manipulate electricity and fire, and it had been far more difficult than anyone would have guessed. Hidden beneath his robes, his arms were marked with several blisters and burns, far more than any of his friends realized. Truthfully, the damage was severe enough that it looked as though someone had tried to torture him.-
Every day, after he finished treating Dusk's injury, he used healing balm on his own arms, much to the bird's irritation. The issue for Julian was never bringing the elements forth. That part came easily. What he struggled with was control. Releasing a strong but wild attack was simple, though it drained his mana reserves heavily. His real problem was the same flaw he had uncovered over the summer when he had experimented with splitting wand cores. His control over magical output while casting was terrible. He was like a toddler who only knew how to turn a faucet in one direction and could not do anything more refined than that.-
Despite how things looked from the outside, he did not simply get his way in every situation, because the truth was that he was barely improving at all. This was the price of gaining power faster than his skill could keep pace with it. It was also why he had changed his plans about raising his ability until it matched the size of his magical reserves. 'Before I so much as consider that, I need to improve my control over energy little by little, or I might end up killing someone by accident with a spell.' he thought while sitting beside the fireplace in Hagrid's hut.-
He listened as Hagrid ranted angrily about the disgusting insult Malfoy had used against Hermione and warned Julian that Lucius Malfoy might decide to make trouble for him over it. "I'm not worried about Malfoy in the slightest since he took a major hit to his finances after the Black fortune was pulled out of his grasp. Insulting me is the same as insulting Sirius too, and right now he can't afford to do that." Julian said with a smirk. "Besides, I deliberately left a few members of the Slytherin team unburied so they could run off and fetch a teacher to dig the others back out." he added with a shrug.-
(Snape Pov)
Snape was in an especially foul mood when several members of his house's quidditch team interrupted him in the middle of brewing one of the lost potion recipes he had received as a Christmas gift the year before, a draught intended to clear the mind. Their interruption had ruined the batch. The sudden distraction had made him add too much powdered dandelion. Under normal circumstances he could have salvaged it if he were free to devote all of his attention to the brew, but after hearing the students' explanation, that was no longer an option.-
He found himself almost impressed by the sheer strength of the transfiguration used to bury the rest of his house's team. But what troubled him most was the triple significance behind the exact form that transfiguration had taken. First, there was the enormous lion's head that had swallowed them whole, an unmistakable warning from Gryffindor itself. Second, there was the oppressive aura the students described, one he recognized all too well. It was the sensation produced by a wizard whose power exceeded your own, the same thing the dark lord Voldemort had wielded so openly to assert dominance. The last element, however, was the implied threat in leaving them under the earth with nothing but a narrow hole for air.-
Julian had, in essence, made it clear that he could kill any of them while they were completely incapable of resisting him. Snape found it thrilling to witness such a gifted individual showing signs of becoming the next archmage in the mold of Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and Voldemort, though Julian carried qualities from the first two. The boy had already shown that he could be slow to anger like Dumbledore, yet when the situation called for it, he could be terrifyingly ruthless like Grindelwald. In the end, Snape's opinion of Julian rose another step, because the boy possessed every trait Snape believed a truly powerful figure ought to have.