章 75: The furnace

Occlumency was the magic of protecting the mind from intrusion as well as organizing ones mind. The way it did this however was from an internal point of view rather than a biological one which meant that illusion that messed with the mind via biological means still worked. Despite finishing the books Nick was not nearly done researching the topic or else the timeline he gave Snape would be massively over blown. No , what he needed now was a true personal understanding of the subject rather than just fact memorization and that will only come with time and experimentation.-

Nick's timeline had to include the time he wasn't using to learn about illusions such as class , sleep , smithing to improve his skill and even hanging out with his friends. All that combined removed a whole two and a half weeks worth of time available to him. This meant he in theory had about a week and a half's worth of time to get a good understanding of illusion magic. Not a super long amount of time but certainly acceptable. The best part out of all of this however was that learning was worthwhile for Nick as the more he knew the more dangerous and powerful both he and his works could become.-

He finished the final book just in time too as the twins entered the library excitedly looking for him. ""Oi! We got the thing!"" they yelled at him much to the librarians ire getting all three of them kicked out of the library. "Did you know we had to go through like twelve people just to get this bloody thing?" one of the twins complained loudly as they walked with Nick towards the Gryffindor common room. "I wouldn't have made the deal if I didn't think you guys could do it." Nick said with a shrug.-

"Tell you what though , since it was slightly harder for you than expected I'll teach you how to use a spell perfect for pranks." Nick said with a smile and the twin faces lit up with excitement. "So it's called the ghost charm and here's how it works." Nick then explained the spell to the twins and showed them the wand movements. The twins immediately tried it and cackled like maniacs when they shifted coloration to look exactly like the ghosts that roamed Hogwarts. They couldn't go through objects or fly like the actual ghost but this was more than fine with them.-

They were already chatting between themselves about the best way to use this new spell to it's fullest. Nick made a few suggestions like "haunting" Draco or attending class like that to make people think they died in their sleep. Nick didn't realize how dedicated to pranks the twins were as some of their ideas were borderline crazy. One such ide was to rig up an invisible rope system in the great hall and act like a poltergeist during dinner. Nick could only wonder how doing such a thing in front of the entire teaching staff seemed like a good idea.-

Soon the group made it to Gryffindor tower and the twins had to shoo away the housemates that were eyeing the canvas covered two foot tall cube curiously. Nick carefully unwrapped the ropes and canvas on the furnace and marveled at it when it came into full view. It was primarily made of a grey stone material save for the front and back of it that had metal doors as well as a set of dials on the side. These dials controlled the temperature , centralization and even type of fire inside of the furnace.-

The first two were easy to understand but the third required a bit of explanation to clarify. See in this world there was of course normal fire but there was also what are known as arcane fires that tend to have unique properties. An example of this was dragon fire that tended to much hotter than normal fire and cause metal to resist corrosion it would naturally fall victim to. There were many different types of arcane fires and the way this furnace worked is that it first require a sample of an arcane fire before it could magically produce it on it's own with the dial to switch between them.-

This was actually one of the reasons so few people ordered new furnaces as the older a furnace is the better the selection of fires tends to be but the price also increases exponentially. Nick had seen fire seeds in the shop and could only shudder at the price that tended to be rather hefty at the cheapest dragon flame seed costing nearly a hundred thousand points and the most expensive void flame reach seven hundred million points.

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