Richard and Neville spent the next few days practicing and learning about his new style of magic, finding ways to integrate it to the normal magic .
Each day after their classes, unless Richard had transfiguration practice, they would both go to the small cherry grove and try to understand the full abilities Neville was able to tap into.
The grove grew amazingly fast as well, the young trees growing up close to eighteen feet without either of them doing anything, with dense amount of leaves that created a canopy above their heads. Every day, the layout inside the grove was a little different than it was the previous day.
Though Richard refrained from mentioning it to Neville, he could feel it. The grove had a magic of its own.
"So we confirmed that you can tell the properties of plants without knowing what they are. How about controlling them? Do you think you can control non conjured plants to do stuff?"
"I don't know. I didn't try controlling. But when i did it with the conjured trees, it worked."
Richard and Neville walked along the corridor, conversing with eachother when Richard noticed students infront of them remaining still.
"Why aren't they moving?" Richard asked someone in front who quickly shushed him.
Richard stood on his tip toes, to see a cat hung by its tail near a wall which had something written on it with blood.
"Well..whats going on?"
"Filch's cat is petrified." Richard replied to Neville as he got back down. His shoes made a sound as they moved in the wet floor. But Richard's mind was already in a different place.
'And just like that, a new game starts.'
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While the hubub about the petrified cat was slowly swallowed by the excitement of the upcoming Quiddich games, Richard once more delved into his own plans.
He had two primary objectives he wanted to achieve this year. One, to strip the basilisk bare to the bone for anything he could profit and get his hands on the sword of Godric Griffindor.
But that had to wait. If the world did indeed flow according to its supposed path, then he just had to wait. Doing nothing was after all considered as doing something.
Of course Richard didn't stay idle. He was instead moving in a different approach from his usual training.
"Engorgio"
He pointed his wand at the small match, making it tremble a little as it grew a little.
"Reducio"
It shrunk once more.
"Accio"
The match twitched and slowly rolled towards him before stopping.
"Despulso"
Then it moved away from him again.
Richard was not just trying on a simple set of spells. No, he had an entire notebook filled with spells and he was doing every single one of them. One by one. He had gone through about twenty and that was barely a half of them.
It took another couple of seconds as Richard went through every single one of the spells he had written down. Then he slowly put away his wand before laying on the ground flat o his back, his mind able to focus as his unfocused gaze looked at the white clouds slowly drifting through the brilliant golden evening sky.
This life to him was a dangerous game. A very dangerous, high risk game with high rewards. And he was playing against was no mere opponent. The world played against him , and he had a lot of strong pieces. Voldemort, Dumbledor, the ministry and maybe even time slipping wizards with who knows what abilities and artifacts that could incite bloodspill through generations while casually treading the line between life and death.
At the moment, he was in a stalemate. As long as he didn't disrupt the flow of the story, the world would flow naturally. But, to make the world source his, he had to destroy the entire story. He had to make the story of Harry Potter his story. And the moment he breaks that stalemate, Richard knew the entire setting of the game would change.
"I really do not understand the purpose of what you are doing at the moment." Tonks stated as she kept watch from distance. She looked different, a bit younger with more generic features as opposed to her usual pink hair. But Richard knew that was her. He had known it from the moment she had appeared in Hogwarts using the vanishing cabinets.
"You already have a lot of powerful spells. You know how to use ancient magic for Merlin's sake." She continued. "And you can use those spells wandless. So why are you trying to learn little tricks like these?"
"Because I am not an idiot." Richard replied, answering the question and admonishing Tonks at the same time.
"Why are you so blinded by the power of ancient magic to a point that you cannot see the true value of current magic? Why do you think it is superior?"
"I mean, its better right? Mum and dad told me loads of stories about ancient magic that can cause miracles."
Richard stayed on the ground, his eyes now closed as he tried to relax his weary mind. "You glaze the ancient magic too much. "
Richard who had touched the very laws of the magic of this world for the briefest moment knew the truth about these different types of magic better than anyone.
"Ancient magic is strong." He admitted. " They are more powerful than your normal magic, they are more mysterious and they break the way we believe the world exist. But they are uncontrollable. Volatile."
Neville's awakening reminded this to him. That magic would have killed him, had Richard not intervined. It was similar to a force of nature that could only be guided, not controlled.
"These magicks manifest with the talent of the wizard. Those without enough talent either never obtain this powers on their own or they will be consumed by their own power. Sunken and suffocated by their own magic."
He reminisced the time he had tried to adjust himself to the implanted circuits.
He opened his eyes, and lifted his Ironwood and dragon heartstring wand as he looked at it with unconsealed wonder. "On the other hand, with this little friend, wizards are able to manifest their very thoughts into reality."
He looked at Tonks.
"You point this at something and say come, it comes. Say go, and it goes. Tell it to turn into an animal and the dead earth will come to life, hate someone enough to kill them, a wave and bang! Life ends like body died a natural death. No injuries, no blood loss. They simply die."
Tonks stayed silent. She had always looked at ancient magic as if it was always better than their current ones. The curses in the Egyptian tombs, the heirlooms from the old families...they were all so complex that she had never considered the wand she carried with her to be stronger than them.
"You don't know what you have in your hand. The wand you have was how human wizards buried the greedy goblins, giants and centaurs. Each and every one of those creatures had their own brand of ancient magic, but where are they now? What you got on your eleventh birthday was what allowed wizards reduce every other magical race that had so many talents, so many bloodline abilities to nothing but names in the annals of the history."
Richard stopped for a moment, the animated fire in his voice died down as he slowed down his breath, his voice taking a soft turn. "Ancient magic, the way of the old world is without a doubt strong, but never underestimate what evolves and presists to the future. Anything that survives through generations is definetely something that has an edge above those that do not. That is the way of natural selection. It's may not always be the strongest that survives, but the one that fits."
And as such, it would be wise for him to not abandon wand magic. Especially now that he had started making his moves.