The moment he stepped into the room; Harry relished the silence that came with it. In a castle full of magic, his Arcane Hearing was always hit with endless noise. He had done his best to ignore it, but it was still this little noise in his head that just wouldn't go away. It was far worse in sections of the castles that were obviously added afterwards. It didn't mean that the enchantment didn't work properly, only that it was fundamentally different, and to Harry, it just sounded like two different songs playing at once, instead of it integrating into one larger song instead.
The room itself was illuminated by completely non-magical candles, and like last time, there was a large stone, a monolith, really, in the middle of the rune, filled with what Harry recognized to be Celtic runes. The Potter scion didn't examine everything, but from the looks of it, it was a prayer for the Morrigan, the Celtic Goddess of Death, asking for peace of those who are beyond the veil. Whoever had set this up had pretty much copied an already working ritual the Celts had designed and were commonly using. Finding and sharing that ritual was impressive, but there was no originality in it. It was like a set of instructions were followed. It worked, but Harry couldn't help but feel disappointed by the fact that very little originality and ritual design were actually used.
Of course, the animal sacrifice thing happened, powering the ritual like the previous time. The candles were blown, plunging the room into darkness, other than the glowing runes on the monolith of course. And alongside this change in scenery, the primal magic that Harry had felt the previous year enveloped the room. Harry still couldn't make heads or tails of it. It was just multidimensional, on a plane that Harry just couldn't perceive. The song that it tried to convey was so complex, so beautiful, even in his limited perception of it. The magic was so fundamentally different from anything he had felt anywhere else.
It was deep and raw magic, the type, which was practised thousands of years ago, when humanity was young, and science was not even a whisper. A time when magic ruled sovereign and was present everywhere in the grass and the rivers. A time which did not exist anymore today.
As far as Harry could theorize, this was the closest thing he felt to True Magic. Wizards simply could not conceptualize the entire thing and decided to implement only facets of it. It was probably why this raw magic was so potent and complex, while magic cast by humans was easily three-dimensional. Our magic is humanity's interpretation of the Source, which is incomplete. The magic itself was filled with Darkness, with Death. After all, it was the day of the dead, and a life was sacrificed for this magic. It was oppressive yet welcoming. It was mostly peaceful.
With that realization, a small sense of clarity appeared to Harry, and he could finally hear something else in the raw death tainted magic of the ritual. There was something hidden inside the Death energy, something powerful. It was so much bigger on the inside than from the outside somehow. It was very hard to explain but it was a beautiful concept, complicated yet so sad. Life. Harry instinctively understood what this was. As a person who has experienced Death, he knows what Life feels like. It was beautiful, just amazing, filled with possibilities and choices. But it always ended the same way, with forgotten memories and tears, thus the sad. After all, everything's got to end sometime. Otherwise, nothing would ever get started.
The question was why there was so much Life, on a ritual based on a day of death. Or perhaps it was the Dead celebrating life in a way. When Harry focused even more on the feeling of life, he could almost hear a familiar melody that resembled his own. It was so full of wonder and love that it surprised him. He had never experienced such fiery passion before and he closed his eyes, trying to hold back the small tears just from the feeling. He had never felt anything more beautiful than this. Was this what his mother felt towards him? It certainly couldn't be anything else.
And just as he was going further and further, the raw magic practically dissipated, and Harry realized that he has been absorbing the death energy all this time without realizing it. His magical circuits were filled with magic that he knew exactly what to do with them. As the prefects were unlocking the magical crests of the first-years, Harry murmured an incantation, "Middland þu earfe mine foregane, ic ræġað þū, þæt þu þære me wisan. Aide and mestere me þā bēode þā fiercen stofne."
It meant 'Legacy of my ancestors, I call upon you to show me the way. Aid and advise me to weather the coming storm.' It was a small incantation in old English. There was a reason why people moved away from Latin and Old English. Words have power, and somehow these languages shaped magic, in a way. It was why the entirety of Europe which use wands, still use Latin spells. It was just more potent than any other common language to shape magic. Old English was the same, but since it was connected more to druidism than wand casting, it isn't really known.
As he expected, Harry's crest started to burn slightly, and it slowly absorbed the magic that he had gained from the ritual. It wasn't really painful, but the feeling of losing that much raw energy was uncomfortable.
Suddenly, the ritual room disappeared, and instead, Harry found himself surrounded by a land of shadows. There wasn't a sun in the sky and yet there was this glow that made Harry see shapes at the distance. No, the darkness was illuminating the path somehow. That paradox almost gave the Potter scion a headache by itself. The shadows themselves seemed alive, more akin to floating fluids, than reflections of light as they were in the mortal world. Harry followed the illuminated path until he saw a withered tree that didn't have a single leaf. There was no life around. Honestly, if that was the inner representation of the crest, then it definitely looked threatening.
Movement! Something was moving up on the tree. It was a raven. It cawed and floated down to the ground and shifted to a carbon copy of Harry but with silver eyes.
It was odd, seeing this imperfect reflection of his own face. The man's silver eyes were glowing like full moons, but there was something else bothering Harry about them. Ah, yes, they were old eyes, wise eyes, that just didn't look right on someone his age.
Deciding to take the initiative, Harry calmly asked, "Who are you?"
"My name is Ignotus Peverell, young Potter. And I believe we have much to discuss."
.....
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