Pre-Chapter A/N:I think at this point, we just have to accept that I will inevitably show up with two chapters a week. As for when those chapters show up, I think it's best I not make any particular promises. If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
I woke up in the morning, chugged down the blue potion, ignoring the fact that it tasted like raw eggs and seemed to fight going down my throat for all its life. And I felt myself sharpen instantly. The normal haze that came from just having woken up disappeared almost instantly. It was like I had taken two shots of extra-strength espresso back to back. Cleaning and dressing with a single wave of my wand, I headed down to the beach to meet Nicholas. He himself was already dressed in his robes, looking out to the sea with a fondness in his eyes.
"Even two millennia and I still get spellbound at the beauty nature reveals," he said without turning to look at me. I followed his gaze, finding that yes, it was beautiful. The sun was rising in all its orange glory, and it cast itself down on the sea, the reflection somehow deepening the deep blue glow the sea sported.
"It is truly something," I said.
"Indeed. Now let us get to work."
"Okay. What first?" I asked, turning to him as he turned my way.
"We will use the time turners eight times in a twenty-four-hour period. I will calibrate our watches to work in concert with that."
"Eight times?" I asked. Perenelle had said four days in one.
"Yes. Once every twelve hours. This will be the first set of twelve. Now I have made some alterations to the villa with your Godfather's permission to make it impossible for us to run into our future selves. Future selves that I am sure are probably getting to work even as we speak," he said, and I nodded. That made sense.
"For the first twelve hours of every day, we will duel. Over and over again. I will remove the imperfections in your dueling style and teach you how to think about a duel competently. And then for the next twelve hours, we shall retreat to a more academic setting. There, we will advance your understanding of alchemy to something resembling passable. For the twelve hours after that, you will be expected to practice spells, transfigurations, and other forms of my magic, and then for the last twelve hours, you will rest. Eight hours of sleeping, and four hours of leisure time. Then we return to the first set again," he said.
"That sounds intense," I said.
"You were the one who said you want to get better, no? If you want to be strong enough to hold your own against Ojin when the time comes then this is the way," he said.
"I wasn't complaining. Just commenting," I said.
"Indeed. Now go take your position so we can begin," he said, gesturing to the other end of the beach.
I took my dueling stance, expecting Nicholas to say something, anything to begin the duel. Instead, he remained there, not moving an inch. Almost like he was meditating or something. Only when I heard a rustling behind me did I realise that we had begun. I jumped to the side, rolling along the sand and jumping back to my feet a second later. A massive crab of all things had aimed its pincers at me from behind and almost got me in that attack. How the fuck had he managed to keep it so silent.
The sand around Nicholas swirled, forming several spears that shot at me like bullets. I turned to them, forcing a shield charm that blocked them first of all. Then the ground at my feet exploded upwards. I flew in the air with the motion, finding myself falling towards the waiting maw of some sort of worm.
"Fulgur," I snarled, bringing my all to bear. The lightning bolt struck bright and fast, flying straight into the worm's gaping maw and forcing it to fall back to the ground, dead. A slash of my wand slowed down my momentum so I began landing slowly.
Only for two birds, each one the size of a horse, to come at me from either side.
'Ventus,' I mentally incanted, using the blast of wind to push me backwards and out of the way of the approaching birds. And then I felt something slam into my stomach, sending me falling back to the sand. A cushioning charm was the best I could manage before I landed. I rolled to avoid the next spell he would send, but when I turned my gaze to him, he was there in the same position we'd started with. His wand still pointed straight downwards and making no movements. The sand around me swelled with his magic coming to life and trying to restrain me.
I blasted the first two tendrils to smithereens. And then I sent three blasting spells straight at Nicholas. Well, more like one right at him. And the other two at either side, expecting him to dodge.
He did not. The same crab that'd started the attack at me was in the way in a matter of seconds, taking the first of my blasting curses on its carapace and allowing the other two to fly to the sides. I wrenched my wand to the side, taking control of the crab and sending it flying to the side. The sand exploded outwards from either side again.
Two snakes.
"Stop," I snarled in parseltongue, watching Nicholas' intrigued expression. The snakes both came to a stop, but then both of them opened their mouths, unleashing what had to be hundreds of bees right at me. Fuck.
"Fiendfyre," I hissed, calling the flames from hell by instinct as much as it was with intent, and wrapping it around my body to destroy the bees. I still felt a few stings— each one hurting something fierce as they got into my range before I could cast the spell.
Argh. I hissed, spreading the flames outwards and incinerating the snakes as well even as the bees that had been too close to destroy kept stinging.
I killed the fiendfyre with an exhale before taking a step backwards. The bees followed, and I managed to almost nail one with a blasting curse. I hissed in frustration when the curse missed— just barely and then there was nothing I could do. My fingers froze around my wand, my legs did the same. I couldn't move anymore.
"That's enough poison in you to put down a nundu," Nicholas' voice rang out before I fell to the ground face first.
"That ritual you got is something for sure." I heard him say.
"Would have sworn that I would have to fight rogue fiendfyre while trying to save you at the same time. That would have been annoying." I heard Nicholas' voice from above me before I suddenly began to feel much better. My body began to loosen, the feeling of skin being replaced by stone disappeared, replaced by the loose, light feeling that I had taken for granted for so long.
"What the hell?" I found myself asking as I pushed myself to turn around, gazing right up at Nicholas' waiting form. There was some sort of rune glowing in the air around his fingers.
"Don't mind me. Just transmuting the poison in your blood into something far more harmless," he said.
"How the hell—"
"No cursing, Harry," he said, and I felt a brief flash of pain. The runes around his fingers flashed and changed for a second. And then he changed it again and I began to feel much better.
"How are you doing that?"
"Alchemy, of course. Hopefully at the end of our time together you will be capable of something similar. Well, not quite this seamlessly. Getting to my level does take more than just training and practice. Some things just have to take time," he said, and then his hand was reaching out for my own. Frail as he looked, when we clasped hands, he pulled me up without any difficulty— with a strength that belied all appearances.
"So are you ready for the next round?" he asked.
"How did you do that?" I asked instead of answering his question.
"You ought to be more specific, Harry."
"The snakes. How did you conjure the snakes with the bees inside of them and then the poison inside the bees?" I asked.
"Well, that's for me to know and you to find out," he said.
"Pretty sure that's not how being a teacher works," I replied.
"Is it not? Shame," he said, sounding far from apologetic.
I just stared, trying to silently pressure him into giving in.
"Okay, I'll tell you what. If you manage to force me to move even once today, then I'll make that our first magical lesson."
"Deal," I pounced almost instantly. Just getting him to move? Nothing about beating him. That would be easy.
It was not, in fact, easy. We dueled over two dozen times in the twelve hours we had. Some of the duels were short, some were long, but in none of them did I manage to force him to take a single step out of his chosen position.
"Okay so our first lesson is the most important part of alchemy. Equivalent exchange," he said.
"I know that much, we can skip it," I said.
"You do, do you? Tell me what you know then," Nicholas said, making a come hither gesture. I nodded, and deciding where to start, began to tell him what I'd studied on the subject already.
"Alchemy operates on a balance of gain and loss. It's similar to rituals in a lot of ways. Alchemy works by changing one thing to another, but both things must be equal for it to work," I said.
"Equal in what ways?"
"What ways?"
"Yes, how must they be equal? If I had one ton of lead and wanted to turn it to one ton of gold, how would that work? Just because they're the same in weight, would that be enough? Or would I need to make them equal by another metric? Would I need seventy tons of lead for one ton of gold assuming that gold is worth seventy times more than lead? What if the price of lead changes mid-transmutation and I suddenly have less than I need to make the transmutation I want?" he asked.
"Well, I assume they can be equivalent on any metric. Just as long as it makes sense, I suppose," I said.
"Any metric? So how would the magic know which metric I was using specifically. If I had seven tons of lead instead and wanted seven tonnes of gold instead of one tonne, how would it know I wanted it to focus on the weight of the component part rather than the difference in value?" he asked.
"Intent. You channel your intent into the transmutation, I presume." The only in-depth mention I'd been able to find of alchemy so far had been something in a book in the Room of Requirements had been a brief chapter in a much larger book that explained the bare bones of the art, and that seemed to be far from enough to settle Nicholas' mind.
"Well, I did, but that is not quite how it works," he said.
"So how does it work then?" I asked.
"What is the difference between equality and equivalence?"
I thought for a few seconds before answering.
"There is none. It's just two words that mean the same thing. Different ways of saying it, but same message being passed," I said.
"Maybe in every other respect, that could be true. That is not the case in alchemy though. I said equivalent exchange, not equal exchange. The properties of the object in question actually matter very little. The only thing that matters when you make a transmutation from an alchemical sense is whether the input and output have equivalent value to you, the alchemist."
"Wait. If that's the case, then how can any transmutation work? The only reason you'd switch something for another is if the thing you were trying to get was more useful to you. And if they need to be equivalent, how would the transmutation work then?" I asked.
"Easily. Input doesn't mean subject. You seem to be getting them confused. While there is some overlap, they are far from one and the same. The input in a transmutation is in most cases, more than just the subject of the transmutation. In fact you can have a transmutation where the subject of the transmutation does not even form one of its inputs. In those cases, things end up being a bit more interesting, and you have to correct for a few issues that might not seem apparent right now, but that is a matter for another day. The inputs for a transmutation are in most cases— the subject, the intention and willpower of the caster to force the change, the magic of the caster, and then part of the catalyst."
"Catalyst?" I found myself asking. It seemed like that book chapter had just contained nothing but falsities. Why would someone even do something like that?
"A catalyst, yes. Any transmutation needs a catalyst. What do you think the Stone does, Harry?"
"I assume it's a catalyst since you're bringing it up now," I said.
"Indeed. The philosopher's stone is the most powerful catalyst of them all. It is magically perfect. Generally, one would use a precious gem of some sort as a catalyst for a transmutation. However, every transmutation— depending on its power— takes a little bit of the catalyst. One of the things special about my Stone was the fact that no matter how large the transmutation was, it still remained itself. It could not be alchemically consumed because of its nature," he said.
"Oh. So I need to find a precious gem of some sort. Is it like a wand?" I asked. Would I need to test out various gems and then pick one that worked best with me? That sounded like one hell of a process.
"No. Any crystal would work. Of course, if you used something like agate to power a transmutation, don't be too surprised if you lost your arm or something in the process," he said.
"My-my arm?"
"Of course. Alchemy responds to the desire of the alchemist more than anything else. That makes it one of the most dangerous arts out there. So if you try something and don't have all the requisite bits, the magic will still try to carry out your will. So it can consume a part of you to complete the transmutation and reach balance. Most of the time, it would take something conceptual than a body part, but I have seen a would-be alchemist lose his whole body while trying to bring the dead back to life," he said.
"Okay this sounds more serious than the book made it out to be."
"Book? You found a book on alchemy?"
"Yeah. Well, not really a book on alchemy per se. It's more like a book that just happens to have a chapter of alchemy," I said, and then Nicholas began laughing.
"What?" I asked when the laughter continued, getting more and more hysterical with no sign of stopping anytime soon.
"Nicholas?" I called when he still hadn't stopped.
"I can't believe those are still around. Perenelle is going to have a fit when she finds out. She thinks she managed to find all of them."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, think about it this way. Is everything I've said to you completely new?" he asked. I thought back and answered honestly.
"No. Well not really. It's new, but familiar as well. Like the book got some things right, but a lot of it wrong."
"So you agree that it couldn't have been written by someone with no knowledge on the subject," he said.
"Don't tell me…"
"Well, if you think I was the one who made it then you're wrong. It was an apprentice of mine. A fool by most metrics. After his training, like with all of my apprentices, he swore an oath not to divulge the secrets I imparted into him. Except unlike any of my other apprentices, he felt that he knew better than I did how to structure an oath. So he tried to work around it to teach his brothers. Needless to say he died quickly and surely," he explained first, not sounding much saddened about the death of someone who he must have cared about at some point.
"Well, we later found out that he managed to teach some of it before the oath took him. In his case, he taught his brothers a few things and those brothers went to teach others, and before we knew it books were being written about alchemy with so much misinformation that those who tried to implement what they taught died more often than not. Eventually, Perenelle got disgusted enough that she took measures to destroy every single one of them," he said.
"Then why is it funny?"
"Because some idiot must have found one of the few books that survived and somehow decided that summarizing alchemy of all things in a single chapter was possible. It's a comical level of stupidity, and nothing's funnier than human stupidity," he said.
"Can we just continue with the lesson, we don't have forever," I said, not really wanting to get into all the thoughts I had about what he'd just said.
"Fine. Fine," he said, continuing his explanation.
A/N: And so we get the beginning of the training arc. Expect a time skip or two to get us through things. Next four chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.