"That's right,"
Stan said, still rubbing his chest.
"That's right, that's right. They say he was very close to You-Know-Who… Anyway, little Harry Potter finished You-Know-Who off back then."
Harry nervously pulled his fringe down over his scar.
Instinctively, he searched for anything that might steady his nerves, and as if by coincidence, the most reassuring wizard possible was sitting right in front of him.
Sean quietly looked up, glancing at Harry facing him and Stan with his back turned.
Stan, of course, had no idea. He just kept talking:
"All of You-Know-Who's supporters got arrested, didn't they, Ern? Once You-Know-Who disappeared, most of them knew the game was up and stopped making trouble.
Only Sirius Black was different. I heard he thought that if You-Know-Who rose again, he'd be second-in-command.
Anyway, they cornered Black on a street full of Muggles, and Black pulled out his wand and blew up half the street, killed a wizard, and a dozen Muggles who just happened to be there.
Terrible, wasn't it? Want to know what Black did next?"
Stan lowered his voice theatrically.
"What?"
Harry asked.
"He laughed,"
Stan said.
"Just stood there and laughed his head off. Then when the Ministry reinforcements arrived, he went with them quietly, still laughing the whole time.
He must've been mad. Right, Ern? Completely mad, yeah?"
"Even if he wasn't mad when he went to Azkaban, he definitely is by now,"
Ern said in his deep voice.
"I'd rather blow myself up than set foot in that place. It's the punishment he deserved… after what he did…"
"They barely managed to smooth the whole thing over, didn't they, Ern?"
Stan went on.
"The whole street blown apart, so many Muggles dead.
How'd they explain it again, Ern?"
"Gas explosion,"
Ern muttered.
"And now he's loose again."
Stan said this while peering closely at Black's gaunt face in the newspaper photo.
"No one's ever escaped from Azkaban before, have they, Ern? Can't make sense of how he pulled it off.
Creepy, isn't it? Honestly, I can't imagine how he got past the guards at Azkaban. Right, Ern?"
Stan had a strange habit, something Harry and Sean both picked up on easily—every time he said anything, he had to drag Ern into it, as if his words wouldn't count unless Ern backed them up.
And to be fair, what he was saying was unbelievable enough. It scared Harry, and even Ern shivered.
"Talk about something else, Stan. There are two decent lads here.
Every time I hear about those Azkaban guards, my guts turn over."
Reluctantly, Stan put the paper aside.
Harry leaned against the Knight Bus window, feeling worse than he ever had.
He knew nothing about the wizard prison, but everyone who talked about it used the same tone of fear.
The Knight Bus rattled on through the dark, scattering hedges and rubbish bins, telephone boxes and trees in its path.
Harry lay on the feather mattress, deeply unsettled and full of dread.
"Sean, if Black gets away, the Ministry will catch him again, won't they?"
He leaned across one of the beds to ask the young wizard, who was still reading.
"They'll try their best,"
Sean said after a moment.
"And if they don't catch him? What'll Black do?"
Harry couldn't help asking.
Sean didn't answer. He just looked at Harry in silence, and Harry immediately understood something from those bright eyes.
"Miss, could I switch beds with you?"
Harry asked a witch with freckles. Her bed was the one blocking him from Sean.
Only after she reluctantly shifted over did the pounding in Harry's chest calm down a little.
Now that he was closer, Harry could finally see what Sean was writing.
On the neat page was an illustration of a wizard raising a wand, with a brilliant burst of light blazing from its tip.
As bright as the Knight Bus headlights just now.
Below the illustration was the familiar Green Notes style of breaking down the wand movement and pronunciation.
But strangely, Harry had never seen this pronunciation before, nor had he ever seen those wand movements.
"What spell is that… it looks kind of like Lumos…"
Not wanting to interrupt, Harry could only stare at the completely transformed spell diagram and guess quietly.
"It's the Blinding Light Charm,"
Sean said, his quill pausing.
"Oh—sorry for interrupting, Sean… but what's the Blinding Light Charm?"
Harry asked, startled.
"It's the first spell I've reshaped. I changed the original internal order of the Wand-Lighting Charm—from a desire for illumination into the intent to produce a blinding effect. Once the caster's purpose changes, the order shifts along with the wizard's will…
Then the order collapses and is rebuilt… which means that even with the same wand movement and pronunciation, it won't necessarily produce light anymore.
…The only problem is that the original collapsed order interferes with spellcasting, so any wizard who learns the Blinding Light Charm can no longer cast the Wand-Lighting Charm stably. That means I have to redesign the magical ritual entirely…
So this is the Blinding Light Charm: the order has been reshaped, but the wisdom hasn't been fully refined yet."
Sean explained all of this while continuing to refine his notes, as casually as if he were talking about breakfast, even though to Harry it sounded like a long string of words he ought to recognize but somehow didn't.
"What do you mean… reshaped? And order, and purpose? What's supposed to collapse and rebuild?"
Harry looked completely lost, as if he'd been handed a textbook from another planet.
How could every word Sean used be English, yet the whole sentence made absolutely no sense?
"I created a new spell,"
Sean summarized.
"Oh, Sean, you really could have started with that."
Harry suddenly understood.
"Oh no—Sean, what did you just say?"
Harry then immediately stopped himself.
"I…"
"You created a new spell?!"
Harry yelped.
"Hey! Sir!"
The freckled witch glared at Harry in annoyance.
"Sorry!"
Harry still hadn't recovered.
"Sean, you created a new spell? Just now? Earlier? On this bus?!"
"Mm."
Sean was always precise when it came to magic.
The Blinding Light Charm had proven his theory.
It used the Wand-Lighting Charm's pronunciation and wand movement as a base, yet it had completely broken away from the foundational charm wizards had passed down for centuries.
It wasn't an improvement on Lumos, like the relationship between red sparks and green sparks.
It was something completely new—from zero to one.
A wizard could force it out awkwardly using Lumos casting habits, but those were clearly not the correct techniques for it.
And that proved something exactly:
Wizards search inward and establish unshakable order within themselves; from that point on, reality itself must obey the wizard's order.
Wisdom is merely the shape wizards carve around magic.
~~~
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