The clever witch had already realized what Iain was trying to pull out.
She simply did not want to face it.
You are the first person I have ever seen who wants to use the Entrail-Expulsion Curse for something else.
The diary's pages fluttered softly in the windless room.
"Which proves I'm uniquely gifted. A once-in-a-thousand-years innovator for the wizarding world."
Iain was absurdly proud of himself, puffing out his chest as he spoke in a tone of pure self-satisfaction.
I am not convinced that was praise.
The diary fell silent for a moment before continuing.
In theory, the essence of magic is the extension of will. If you can transform the will of "I want to pull out his intestines" into the will of "I want to pull out that box," then the spell's effect should change accordingly. But—
"But what?"
But anyone who can take a bloody curse like this and reshape it into something merely disgusting is either a genius or insane. I am not sure which one you are. And I am not sure I want to know.
Hearing that, Iain tilted his mouth to one side and silently repeated the witch's phrase, I'm a genius, three times in his head.
Too bad. His super-brain had already auto-filtered the rest.
"I just want to help people. I want to clear Dark Magic's name. It should be allowed to make its own contribution to things like bowel obstruction and constipation."
"Of course, children are always swallowing coins. Kaisha, for instance, is conservatively estimated to have at least sixty marbles in her stomach. We could use it to help greedy little kids too."
Iain spoke again, looking deeply concerned on behalf of Dark Magic. He did not mention that there might also be a few sticks of C4 in his own stomach.
There was no helping it. Proper chewing gum cost money, after all... and back when he'd been learning improvised demolitions from the old gatekeeper, Iain had not exactly had much cash in his pockets.
...
The diary was silent for a very long time.
The incantation is not the key. The flow of magic is not the key either. A wizard's will is the essence of magic.
At last, it answered.
A wizard is a god. I have always believed that.
The handwriting rushed across the page, as though the moment the thought formed, it could not wait to be fixed in ink.
"A wizard is a god?"
Iain lay on the desk with his chin on his folded arms, staring at the sentence for a long while. Then he repeated it, as if savoring a candy with an unusually complicated flavor.
A wand is a tool. An incantation is a medium. Magic is a phenomenon. But a wizard... a wizard is the source of all of it. A wizard powerful enough does not need a wand to cast, nor an incantation to produce an effect. The best example is our ancient magic.
A great flood of writing filled the page.
Iain's eyes lit up.
"I get it now."
He spoke in a thoughtful tone.
What do you get?
"There were never any gods in this world to begin with."
Iain raised one finger, his expression solemn, like a scholar delivering a lecture.
"The so-called gods are just wizards whose power became too great for ordinary people to comprehend."
"Which is a little different from the version I'd imagined, where wizards conquer the heavens, hunt gods, and enslave worlds. But honestly, this is still pretty reasonable."
There was even a trace of disappointment in the young wizard's face.
??????
The diary had clearly not expected Iain's interpretation of wizardkind to be even more outrageous than its own. It had absolutely no idea how this child had managed to derive such a worldview.
Whatever the case... you really did understand for once...
After a pause, the ink reappeared, faster than ever before.
"Of course I did."
Iain's crooked grin climbed to a whole new angle. He picked up his wand from the desk, spun it once in his hand, and aimed the tip at a crooked-handled cup in the corner of the sitting room.
He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, building a firm intent in his mind.
"Lumos."
That was the Wand-Lighting Charm.
The wand-tip lit.
But not white.
Green.
It was the annihilation spell the evil diary had taught him, a piece of Dark Magic more violently destructive even than Avada Kedavra. It dissolved the crooked-handled cup completely.
And the table behind it.
By now, Iain clearly had some measure of control over that magic, likely thanks to the unicorn tail hair in his wand, which could suppress Dark Magic's effects to a certain degree.
The spell you just spoke was Lumos?
"Yes."
You stuffed the emotional framework of a destruction curse into the incantation for a lighting spell?
"Yes. Ha ha ha. So you admit it now. What you taught me was never a modified Lighting Charm at all."
Is that really the important issue here? No, wait... are you planning that in the future, when you kill someone with a curse, you'll just claim you used a Lighting Charm?
"Upperclasswoman, why are you so evil? Why can't I hide a modified Entrail-Expulsion Curse instead?"
Iain still had not given up on his unrealized innovation.
At this point, the diary was completely stunned.
What kind of Dark Magic prodigy even thought of hiding a destruction curse inside Lumos?
And he had only just understood the principle.
One try, and it worked!?
For the first time in many years, the diary almost felt like it understood how its classmates must once have felt around it.
"Upperclasswoman, tell me this. With a casting technique like mine, if Priori Incantatem checked my wand, would it only show that I'd used Lumos?"
Iain, meanwhile, was not especially concerned about his Dark Magic talent anymore. He had already accepted that his gifts leaned toward evil.
Now he only wanted to properly study this brand-new idea.
As expected of his super-brain: one casual thought, and it could produce something epoch-making.
The diary's handwriting stopped for a long time.
So long that Iain thought it might not answer again.
Then, very slowly, the words began to appear.
Each one seemed chosen with care.
You are the most dangerous genius I have ever seen. Not because of your power, but because of the way your mind works. Other people see rules and think about how to obey them. You see rules and think about how to exploit them, alter them, and use them to do what they forbid.
That is not intelligence. It is instinct.
The handwriting carried a strange added weight this time.
"Upperclasswoman, you called me a genius. You're so nice."
Once again, Iain selectively heard only the part of the evaluation he liked.
Then, without waiting for the diary to say anything else, he crossed the river and burned the bridge behind him.
He shoved the diary back into his suitcase, zipped it up, patted the lid shut, and made sure it could not crawl out again on its own.
Then he returned downstairs.
The little skeleton, unsurprised by this point, had already moved over a new table.
"If I stuffed the emotion of love into the Killing Curse, what would happen?"
Iain had already found a new research direction. Thoughts poured through his mind one after another without end.
His inspiration seemed inexhaustible.
Of course, since the young wizard had not yet learned the Killing Curse, he currently had no way to test that idea. He decided to set it aside for later.
"Back to studying difficult first-year magic... Phoenix intelligence, cat intelligence, combined activation."
Returning to his studies, Iain placed Fawkes back on top of his head.
Then he wrapped Handsome Tabby, who very likely had some kind of magical creature blood in him, around his own neck.
Cats really did behave like liquid.