Finally, I set myself a goal — to find something unusual. For some of the professors, and perhaps for some students with whom it was beneficial to be on good terms. I had the money, so why not invest it in... good will. The right kind of mood. Let the gift become a calling card, a sign that I am a person who remembers everyone.
Even Hagrid, whom I hadn't managed to get to know all semester, though I'd been eager to at the start. Still, I decided to give him expensive, high-quality loose-leaf tea and some sweets to go with it. To be honest, the gift for the half-giant was mostly to close a mental loop. Something inside me just wanted to do it, and I didn't mind.
Besides that, I had to spend on wrapping and cards — all in a consistent style. For the professors, I put together small gift baskets with sweets. I topped each set with something special but not too expensive — so the professors wouldn't feel awkward.
And, of course, many would soon be receiving woolen socks. Very soft, made from quality materials — warm and practical. For my family, I bought ordinary gifts, except for Draco — a wizard's chess set. I want to teach him to play myself.
Father and Mother had no need for cheap trinkets, so for them I commissioned lockets with Wizarding photographs inside, capturing our family. Fortunately, the photos already existed; it was just a matter of ordering the silver lockets from a craftsman to fit them into.
I spent the most on my family... and, of course, on myself. I bought about a dozen books: from expensive spell manuals to in-depth works on magical history by a renowned historian. Of course, I mean the complete history — the magical one. I didn't forget books on beginner Occlumency either. The library had all this, but I couldn't take them out, let alone smuggle them into Hogwarts.
Actually, I wanted my parents to gift me all this, but Father just told me to take money from the vault and buy it myself. Apparently, this is his way of instilling in me an understanding of the value of money. A rather peculiar method, considering many people work all year round to earn slightly more than I can withdraw from my vault in the same period.
I spent a significant amount. About a hundred Galleons in total — that's a bit less than a fortnight's salary for some Ministry plankton. Just the books cost thirty Galleons. I always buy everything new and of high quality, and good-quality academic books don't cost half a Galleon or a couple of Sickles, but many times more.
It's a good thing I took enough money from my trust vault; the limit is 1000 Galleons a year, but I didn't need that much. Mother had limited me to two hundred Galleons, including spending on the train and future purchases in Diagon Alley.
I was pleased with the outcome of my shopping and headed to the café where I planned to wait for Mother. She was very busy today, so she was likely to finish later than me. Instead of eating a chilling dessert in the winter weather... I preferred something warm. Winters in England aren't that cold, and the café had good Warming Charms. Actually, they didn't just sell ice cream; in winter, warm drinks like cocoa with marshmallows were especially popular.
Navigating through the stream of witches and wizards, I was successfully making my way to the warm, calm place when I suddenly bumped into something — or someone. It was a good thing I kept my balance, stumbling back a couple of steps awkwardly and dropping my satchel.
Amanda Rosier, however, who was the cause of the collision, fell and dropped all her things.
"You should be more careful, Arcturus," Amanda said, looking at me disapprovingly, her voice tinged with reproach.
"For your information, you appeared in front of me, so I didn't even see you. You always show up at the most unexpected moments," I replied calmly, picking up my satchel and her purse, from which an envelope had fallen. Something seemed to have broken inside. "Ah, where are my manners... are you alright?"
"I'm fine," she clipped, smoothing her hair, from which snowflakes tumbled out. "It's just slippery."
"And crowded," I added, throwing a glance at the crowd where everyone was rushing with an extremely businesslike air. "Winter in Diagon is always a fair."
Amanda sighed and looked at my hand, where I was holding her fallen bag.
"Give it back," she demanded in a tired tone.
I handed over the parcel and her purse, clearly charmed with an Undetectable Extension Charm, then allowed myself a soft, apologetic smile:
"Looks like there was a whole potion in here."
"Merlin's beard! Now I'll have to go buy it again."
"It's remarkable how we most often meet where it smells of potions. Or... snow infused with potion," I remarked, looking at the mixture of snow and potion. "At least in Potions class you don't fall over."
"Because I'm paying attention there," she retorted, squinting. "Unlike some."
"I am paying attention," I said, a bit mockingly. "But I can't predict when Amanda Rosier will suddenly crash into me. Maybe I should take Divination. Getting shoved and then blamed for it...."
Her lips twitched into a smile, but she immediately hid it under a mask of seriousness.
"Are you going to Fortescue's?"
"Exactly there," I nodded. "Care to join? I'm willing to make amends with a cup of something hot. Not ice cream, of course."
"You know..." she hesitated, but then nodded. "That wouldn't be bad. But first, you have to keep me company to the potion shop. This was a gift for someone."
"Fair condition," I agreed, and we set off towards a place only she knew the way to.
Walking the streets of Diagon together turned out to be much more pleasant. The large snowflakes starting to fall from the sky evoked the spirit of Yule... or, to be completely honest, the New Year. Though here, the holiday from my other homeland wasn't celebrated with as much pomp as Christmas.
We turned into a shop, narrow and rather dark, with a sign where the words "Mr. Shafiq's Potions and Ingredients" kept popping up, magically alternating with "Quality Potions & Ingredients!".
Inside, the air was thick, heavy, as if saturated with the vapors of thousands of decoctions. Jars of dried roots, bunches of herbs, and vials of multi-colored liquids crowded the shelves.
Amanda walked confidently towards her goal. I, meanwhile, glanced at the counters, assessing the selection. And the selection was good, even if I didn't yet know the uses for some ingredients. Freshly ground mandrake root, Bubotuber pus, alchemical mercury... all first-quality, and the prices weren't for paupers either.
She quickly picked what she needed — a neatly corked vial with a murky green potion. The shopkeeper wrapped the purchase in paper, gave a pompous nod, and Amanda, clutching the bag, shot me a look:
"See? Five minutes — all sorted."
"Hmmm... my apologies, but I was judging by the average speed of dress selection," I smirked.
"I take longer to choose a dress," she parried calmly.
We stepped back outside, and the snowy air felt especially fresh after the stuffy shop.
"Now — to Fortescue's," said Amanda. A rare lightness flickered in her voice, the kind with which she allowed herself to be just a girl, not the perpetually irritated Miss Rosier.
During this time, I had apparently forgotten who I was standing over a cauldron with, to the point of allowing myself to doubt her cunning motives... and she has them! I'm not biased!
***
Yule passed much like the previous ten years, with one single difference — the Flesh-Cleansing Ritual. Before the age of eleven, performing such rites was not recommended: a child's magical system wasn't fully formed, and any interference could lead to less-than-ideal consequences.
It's roughly like enrolling a child under ten in weightlifting. You could, of course, but the outcome would please no one: excessive loads lead to spinal, ligament, and joint injuries, hernias, musculoskeletal diseases, or even bone deformities.
The ritual could cause no less harm to the magical system — from extensive channel damage and reduced potential, to the process of magic formation simply grinding to a halt. The result could be a second Filch. And that's no joke, by the way. By all accounts, Filch should have become a wizard in his childhood, albeit a weak one. Something went wrong — and his magical system never fully developed. As a result, he lived his life as a Squib: hating everyone and everything, never experiencing what it means to wield magic.
I even feel a little sorry for him, imagining myself in his place. To know you had a chance, and to lose it... few things are worse than that. I didn't learn about Filch from gossip — our prefect, Rowle, told me about it in passing. Although... I suppose that is gossip.
As for the Cleansing Ritual — it was one of the most well-known and, perhaps, most useful rituals. Its effect was the destruction of all minute bodily particles: saliva, hair, dead skin, nails, and the like. Of course, it couldn't erase anything large, like a severed arm, but all these "trifles" vanished without a trace. And it was precisely these that were most often used for creating curses, hexes, love potions, Polyjuice Potion, and other nastiness.
If a wizard got hold of even a single strand of your hair, you could expect trouble. That's why it was recommended to perform the cleansing every couple of months. Aurors, by regulation, did it every two weeks. My father told me about this, explaining the ritual's history in passing and showing me how to perform it. Today, in honor of Yule, my parents allowed me to participate in the full rite for the first time — as a tradition, but also as a lesson. I performed my first Cleansing Ritual.
The ritual itself was devised by a famous wizard during times when wars between families and clans were fought not only with politics and intrigue but also with blood magic. Back then, every single hair, every drop of sweat could become a weapon against its owner. The Blacks and Malfoys, like no others, knew the price of such vulnerability.
History did not preserve the name of the ritual's creator. But an old tale survived, which over the years almost turned into an "established fact." Many believed it, and not without reason.
Legend has it that the first warlock who devised this cleansing ritual was a man paranoid to the point of madness. He had too many enemies and too few friends. At first, he performed the ritual every hour, without exception. Initially, it was a precaution, but fear overpowered reason: the intervals grew shorter. Half an hour, twenty minutes... until he finally reached the point of performing the cleansing ritual every fifteen minutes, and then even every couple of minutes.
His body had no time to leave behind a single hair, a drop of saliva, or a flake of skin. But the ritual's formula made no distinctions: if no bodily particles remained, the spell began to consume the master himself. The ritual, deprived of sustenance, started to devour its owner. His hair vanished, his skin thinned, then peeled off entirely. Flesh gave way to bare bones... and the warlock kept whispering the incantations, convinced a curse had been laid upon him.
They say that in the last moments of his life, he was on his knees, the whiteness of exposed bones visible here and there, but he continued to mutter the words of the ritual. Until it destroyed even his vocal cords, and only then did the mad wizard die, regretting that he couldn't perform the ritual one more time to cleanse himself of the curse. He never realized that the cause of his woes was not a curse, but his own mind. And so he died, by his own ritual...
The moral of this story is simple: moderation is key in everything. Even in magic. Especially — in magic.
Of course, this is hyperbole for intimidation, a tale to ensure another young fool doesn't fall victim to the ritual, for everything has its price. But there's a grain of truth in every fairy tale. And the truth was that using the ritual too frequently does indeed damage a wizard's body, albeit not as rapidly. The formula is greedy: it constantly seeks new remnants of flesh, new particles of the wizard, and if fed too often — sooner or later it begins to consume the master himself.
Therefore, no sane wizard had performed the cleansing more than once a week for a long time, and preferably once every two weeks. Everyone knew: paranoia could send you to the grave faster than any enemy. And imagine what a paranoid that person must have been, the one who invented this ritual. Then again, if he hadn't invented it, he would probably have died much earlier than in the legend.
Many received gifts from me this Christmas. Fortunately, in Diagon Alley, you could always go to the "post office" and, for a fee, send out a dozen owls with different parcels. Thanks to this, everyone got their gifts on time, even Alister Yarwood — another vial of Furuncle Potion.
Amanda Rosier was supposed to get a standard set of sweets, like most of my acquaintances, but after our meeting at the café, I realized: despite my bias, we got along quite well. Moreover, she was the one who often pulled me through in Potions, doing the lion's share of the work for our shared 'Outstanding'.
In the end, after saying goodbye to her and meeting up with Mother and Draco, I had to pop into another shop for a Potioneer's Kit. Small copper cauldrons, scales with a set of weights, a couple of dozen tools — all designed for non-stationary brewing. Essentially, a travel kit for those accustomed to brewing potions outside a lab.
Furthermore, the kit included twelve specialized phials. Not to be confused with ordinary glass, which we used to bottle potions at school. Potions for sale are stored in specialized containers so the magic doesn't leak out and the effect lasts longer. Ordinary containers spoiled the composition: the potion's strength faded like water through a sieve. Of course, even special phials weren't eternal, but they had categories, quality, and shelf lives. All this determined whether your work would last a month, a year, or all ten. Of course, the potion itself played a very large role, as some potions could be stored in any container under any conditions, while others were demanding even of temperature.
And I received my main gift:
The flame of the candles rose in even tongues; the air smelled… of magic, like the scent of ozone mixed with rain and something so pleasant it was indescribable. I stood with my eyes closed, feeling the magic glide over my skin, burning like invisible sparks. The quiet chanting, the whisper of ancient runes falling from my lips, ignited something within.
I was focused on the ritual, whispering the text I had memorized by heart, feeling the magic resonate with the ambient magic. And when my whisper died down, I felt an unprecedented lightness.
It all happened as if time had stopped — and I suddenly understood that Yule was different not only because of the ritual. It had become a milestone for me: I participated in it for the first time not as a child-observer, but as an equal.
I clenched my fists, feeling that everything had changed. The world had answered my call, and I had paid my price, feeling a part of my magical reserve vanish due to the ritual, while simultaneously feeling a profound relief. It was as if I had washed after a 12-hour shift under a hot sun.
And this is only the beginning, I thought. From that day on, I understood that I truly enjoyed Ritual Magic; the very idea of studying this fundamental branch of magic properly set me alight. Rituals were the foundation of the magical tradition. Knowing the basics of ritualism meant one could grasp the fundamentals of all other magical sciences, for everything was a ritual—from simple charms to the most complex ones. From potion-making to alchemy, from Transfiguration to Divination. Ritual Magic was the common foundation of almost all current magical sciences, which meant it deserved special attention. For now, I asked my parents to buy me more books on the topic. Of course, the library had many more, but at Hogwarts, I needed books that were absent from the ordinary section.
For now, I had to continue secretly practicing Occlumency. However, I had to buy the books on mental magic myself. For the reasons already stated, I couldn't ask my parents. I only had access to the most indirect and basic books for purchase; anything more serious was forbidden by law to be sold to ordinary wizards.