# Chapter 64
"So what's everyone so terrified of with this spell?" I said, with barely contained satisfaction — outright delight, really — addressing Sirius Black, who was casting distinctly wary sideways glances in my direction. And yes, he had every reason for that reaction. I hadn't expected it myself — hellfire turning out to be, well… not exactly *easy* to master, but… yes. It had gone rather well.
One of the most "unruly" spells in existence, famous for being deadly and dangerous primarily to the very wizards who cast it, had proven surprisingly manageable. Summoning the fire itself was almost elementary — not on the level of *Lumos* or *Wingardium Leviosa*, but a full corporeal Patronus had been harder to call up than hellfire was. In terms of raw summoning, at least.
The control, though — yes, that was where the real trouble lived. From the very first moment the fire appeared, its willfulness was unmistakable. The first time I had barely, barely held on. And this despite the fact that I'd come fully prepared, having wound myself up to expect exactly this, braced to pour every ounce of effort into maintaining control.
Even so, the first attempt had been clumsy and exhausting. All thanks to the stupidly misleading descriptions of this spell. Seriously — wizards write about this fire as if it possesses its own soul, its own will, its own mind. Which, I'll admit, had some basis in the purely sensory experience of hellfire, in how it *felt*.
And the special effects it produced were something else entirely. But they were just that — special effects. The magical fire had no actual will, and certainly no intellect. That was what had thrown me off at the start. I'd come prepared to fight and tame a foreign will within the flames — and spells of that nature did genuinely exist, typically under herbology or magical creature work. Those were, in fact, the very spells I'd been drilling as preparation for hellfire.
Which, to be fair, had helped in certain ways. Only the underlying principles were somewhat different, and hellfire demanded firmness in something other than what the various treatises on the subject described. It wasn't about metaphorical willpower or self-restraint, as some of those texts had insisted with complete seriousness.
No — it was far simpler than that. What this spell needed was precise, ironclad control over magical output. In its raw state, hellfire literally pulled magic from the caster, trying to burn hotter, stronger, and wider with every passing second. That effect was woven into the very core of the spell — which was precisely what made it so devastatingly effective as a tool of pure destruction.
And it was that same effect that made ordinary wizards unable to hold it in check, turning them into its natural victims. Good sensitivity to one's own magic was rare. Good *control* over one's magic was rarer still — something genuinely uncommon.
"How the hell do you do that?" Sirius muttered.
I had exactly that control — which was why, by the second day of my admittedly patchy training sessions — the weekends were, after all, originally meant for simple trips to Hogsmeade, not extended practice — I was already handling hellfire better than Sirius himself. Which was why he was grumbling under his breath right now, in a way that genuinely amused me. His envy was aggrieved and bewildered, but there was something warm and honest in it too.
"I'm talented," I said, with a self-satisfied snort. "Only the mountains are taller than me."
I casually tried to sketch the outline of those mountains behind my back. With hellfire, naturally. It didn't curl toward me like a trusting puppy, but it wasn't anything impossibly complicated, either.
Managing the fire was only marginally harder than my practice with wandless spells and telekinesis — essentially a *Wingardium Leviosa* taken to a whole new level of difficulty. Yes, it was hard. For an ordinary wizard, from what I understood of local capabilities, it would have been the absolute pinnacle of the craft. But I was managing.
The experience of living without magic in my previous body, strange as it sounded, had given me a remarkably heightened sensitivity to magic in this world. Which, when I thought about it, was perhaps my single greatest advantage here. Setting aside the adult consciousness in a child's body, the fairly high aptitude for learning I'd carried over from my past life, the workaholism that came naturally to me, and the raw magical potential I'd inherited fully from Harry himself.
Honestly, a combination of individually unremarkable but perfectly complementary and mutually reinforcing talents had produced a truly stunning result. No exaggeration. I could be proud of myself. Not because of some stupid, shallow sense of superiority over my peers — that kind of pride had never appealed to me — but…
Lately I'd learned to assess my own abilities and talents with clear eyes. Lady Greengrass, who had long since begun swearing openly at the endless stream of questions I directed her way, had genuinely drilled into my head just how extraordinary a person I was within the context of the wizarding world.
So running from that reality was no longer something I could do. Gradually I was building the foundation of confidence in my own strength — and that, too, was working in my favor. Because in magic, *everything* is connected. And if you sincerely believe in your ability to use a particular kind of magic, that magic will come to you more easily than it ever could otherwise.
Lockhart's example made it obvious that confidence alone — or in his case, pure arrogance — couldn't accomplish anything on its own. But confidence in one's abilities still mattered enormously. I'd understood that clearly while teaching Daphne nonverbal charms. But I'd only truly *felt* it in myself recently, after rethinking my place in the world — and from that point on, I'd begun mastering new charms, spells, and transfiguration formulas faster than before.
*Though if I'm being honest, a great many things piled on at once,* I reminded myself, reining in hellfire and making an effort not to deceive myself even in small things. The growing self-belief was certainly helping my magical work — I even consciously stoked a degree of genuine arrogance in myself at times, since a certain kind of mindset suited certain spells almost dangerously well. But in reality…
The rapid growth of my magical skills had a great many causes. Starting from broad reading and the accumulation of practical experience across the most varied fields of magic, and ending with the ability to get direct answers to every imaginable nuance of spellcasting from a genuine master of the craft.
Oh yes. It was difficult to overstate Agatha Greengrass's contribution to my magical education. That near-saintly woman had stoically endured a relentless torrent of my questions and clarifications, questions to which she often had no ready answers — but through mutual discussion of this or that magical concept, we would more often than not arrive at some answer, or at least a theory, which we could almost always test immediately in practice.
Even if the theories we developed together proved correct only about fifteen or twenty percent of the time — meaning that to anyone with real expertise, we must have occasionally looked quite foolish — the simple act of magical inquiry kept giving me something invaluable.
Above all, a gradually deepening understanding of the fundamental principles underlying different kinds of magic. To which was added, piece by piece, experience in genuinely specialized spellwork, and a simple habit of launching a full-blown mental assault on any question that interested me.
Lately it had reached the point where I could copy various simple charms after observing them only once — feeling out how another wizard gave them shape. Seriously, something like an instant clothes-pressing charm and all its variations I could master immediately, essentially pulling the spell apart into its components, working out what each piece did, and then reproducing it — or occasionally improving on it slightly. Which sometimes ended in scorched or shredded trousers, but that was a minor detail.
The important thing was that I was feeling magic better and better with every passing day, developing a clearer sense of the principles of spellcraft as a phenomenon in itself. And it intoxicated me, genuinely. It drove me to go deeper and deeper into this endless abyss of magic, this great mystery that revealed new faces and colors with every new step forward.
It was truly magnificent. So magnificent, in fact, that even after mastering hellfire, I couldn't find it in myself to celebrate in any meaningful way. The event passed for me somehow… not ordinarily, of course, but without any particular fanfare.
Simply another difficult and unusual spell added to my arsenal. Good. Excellent. Now I needed to sharpen it to the point of reflexive use in genuinely dangerous situations, and to fix certain behavioral patterns in my own mind. However bizarre such plans might sound, mental magic also left its mark on my perception and on the speed with which I absorbed new magic.
"Ahem. Yes, I suppose I have gotten rather carried away," I said, making an effort to dial back the fire of my own obsession, noting almost as an afterthought that the stationary shield — which had once demanded my full concentration and a meaningful portion of my magical reserves — was by now completely mastered, optimized, and barely even registered anymore.
Not to me, and not to those around me. My control over magic had made itself known here as well, reducing the external signs of the protective charms to nearly nothing. Which had me thinking about learning to maintain two simultaneous stationary defenses at once.
As it stood, my current "citadel" was enough to hold against a couple of Stunning Spells, Disarming Charms, or one good solid *Confundus*. Those were, in fact, precisely the spells my shield had been designed to counter. But I already wanted more. I was already ready to move toward that more — especially since my reserves were more than sufficient to sustain a couple of additional shields of varying types and applications.
There simply wasn't enough time for everything at once. I had been utterly overloaded lately, maintaining my own pace of learning only by virtue of adolescence — during which magical power grew at a furious rate, and the body itself could endure truly wild mental and physical strain, which through magic also tended to work in my favor.
So yes. I had gotten carried away. Lost myself completely in magic. Found a capable mentor willing, without hesitation, to answer any question I had well beyond the boundaries of the Hogwarts curriculum — and simply felt genuinely alive, happy, and at peace with my life.
Found my place in the world, if one could put it that way.
And then — come crashing back down to earth, running headlong into the realization that my magical binge had not managed to stop the flow of time. Winter had arrived outside. The first lasting snow had settled on the streets. Christmas and the Yule Ball tied to it were drawing closer and closer, and I was being forced, at least for a time, to surface from my intoxication with magic and return to real life.
Not that I'd been entirely absent from it before. I hadn't intended to slight Daphna or the other girls, or my small circle of friends and acquaintances, by ignoring them — even in a state of genuine inspiration and, well, complete obsession. My friends were good ones, and I had long since grown accustomed to feeling responsible for them, being the oldest of the group.
The dance practices, for one thing, had often helped greatly to release the tension and pressure that built up in me. And the occasional attempts by Daphna or Ginny to get a little hands-on with one certain modest hero of ours — ahem — had also been received by me in a fairly positive light.
Not enough that I'd started seeing my friends through a romantic or physical lens. But I could no longer think of them as simply children, either, fully aware that the girls around me were gradually becoming exactly that — *girls*. Still young, still slightly awkward in how they expressed their interest, but girls, for whose healthy development I was in any case obliged to show some response to their more than obvious attention.
Ahem. Yes. I had been deliberately shaping young witches to suit my own preferences and standards. First by reflex, and then — after sufficiently rapid progress in something closely resembling genuine magical empathy — with full awareness of what was happening. After that, I'd gone about the shaping rather more thoughtfully and deliberately.
I understood that it could all end badly. Adolescent infatuation was capable of shattering even the tightest-knit group. But I kept doing what I'd been doing before.
I simply couldn't — and didn't want to — change anything in my way of being, couldn't push any of my friends away or focus exclusively on Daphna alone. She was my full and proper fiancée, yes — but even she turned a blind eye to Ginny's flirtations. Or regarded them with outright indulgence.
And I was fairly certain I had trained Heiress Greengrass to behave that way myself, without fully understanding how or when — but with a complete understanding that things would only grow more complicated from here.
Or perhaps more interesting. Depending on how one chose to look at it.
And on whom one chose to set one's sights.
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