章 37: Defending Family Honor
Still, Harry simply nodded and accepted her condition. He then signed the paper the librarian gave him and waited for him to be given the books, "You have two weeks to return the books, any tardiness will result in a fine and a ban from the library until you return the books. You will not be able to take out any other books until you pay the fine. Now go away."
Harry thought hummed, "I'm sorry, but I had a few questions about the organization of the library please."
"What is it?" the witch responded with obvious irritation in her voice.
"Well, I don't really understand how it's structured on the way back. I can see in the front where the spellbooks are sorted by years of study and their reference books, but after the NEWT books, it feels very chaotic."
"That's because it is chaotic," the librarian drawled back, "there are hundreds of thousands of books in this room. I cannot keep track of them all. The further back you go, the less used the books are. They tend to only be checked out by old students checking a mastery in one subject or another, not a student of Hogwarts. They already know the exact books they need and so they look for them. I haven't had a single complaint so far in my organization, so do not look so outraged. Now, go away. I have better things to do than to pander to a first year student that still hasn't finished his first week of magical education."
Well, that woman was rather unpleasant, that's for sure. All he asked was for her to explain how she organized the books, nothing more. Is she really trying to demean an eleven-year-old boy for her own gratification?
It didn't matter; Harry didn't care about the prickly woman. He had gotten his books and so he turned, put the books in his bag and left the room, seeing the library rules printed on the golden plaque.
The library rules were reasonable. You are not allowed to eat or drink in the library. You are not allowed to cast any magic inside the library. You are not allowed to take out a book without checking it first – there are alarm charms to enforce that – and you are not allowed to damage any of the books in any way. Of course, there is the whole late fee and paying for damages thing, but overall, they were very understandable. A miscast spell could burn down the library, and the library housed a lot of rare books that were worth thousands of Galleons.
Still, the way to the common room was a lot quicker. He might start to get used to the chaotic ways of Hogwarts any day now. Harry passed by the hall for a quick snack for dinner and went to the common room, starting to read his magical theory book.
It was very informative. It turned out that magical cores weren't really a thing. A wizard's body acted more like a buffer to magic, where it would absorb magic from the environment and channel it through the body to be unleashed as spells. The magic was absorbed by the heart, or at least near the heart on a metaphysical plane, and spread out through the body using metaphysical channels for each spell. The better the channels, the more powerful the wizard. The channels start to stabilize around a child's eleventh birthday, which is why students are invited to Hogwarts at that stage.
The thing is that a wizard never runs out of magic as long as there is magic around them, instead, their bodies are taxed with every spell, which is why spells are designed to be fired at once in bursts, and not in a continuous way, which would quickly tire the castor. It was also the reason why Azkaban was a prison, since the island was almost devoid of magic, meaning that wizards can't cast anything.
In a way, magic was like a muscle. You could train your channels to grow as you grow up. Before the eleventh birthday, it could be dangerous and accidents were prone to happen to overzealous wizards that have tried to train their heirs before Hogwarts, the results were not good ones.
Still, a student can slowly use these channels to widen them, allowing them to hold and pass through more magic, making them more powerful. However, on the seventeenth birthday, the magic stabilizes, and the channels stop growing or shrinking.
Of course, there are probably a lot of dark rituals to circumvent these limitations, which is what Harry imagined Voldemort had done, considering how inhumane he was rumoured to look.
Harry was distracted from the book by Blaise who was looking down on him with a frown on his face, "Where were you?"
"I just went to the library," Harry replied.
Malfoy, who was standing behind Blaise, snickered, "You should have been a Ravenclaw if you like reading so much."
Harry shrugged, "There's nothing wrong with reading a book."
"Well, you have to make up for your Mudblood mother somehow…" the blonde boy replied with a smug grin on his face.
This last sentence had gotten Harry's attention and the common room seemed to quiet suddenly. He slowly put a placeholder in the book, put it in his bag, and then turned to face Malfoy, "What did you just say?"
His voice was barely above a whisper, but the blond boy shivered slightly, "I said…"
Harry interrupted the boy, "I didn't think you were stupid enough to repeat it. Now, let's get something straight, Draco dear. I don't give a damn about you; I don't care if you're a bigot or secretly a troll. You can go around terrorizing Hufflepuffs with threats of your father all you want, but you will not insult my parents. Are we clear?"
Draco stiffened, "How dare you…"
The boy tried to raise his wand at Harry, probably to cast some kind of spell, until the green-eyed boy simply grabbed the wand out of his hands. The baffled look on the boy's face was priceless. Harry though didn't even look at the wand and instead was staring Draco straight in the eyes. "I said, are we clear?"
With each syllable, Harry was projecting his anger at the boy with his magic. It wasn't even a spell. It was barely more than a party trick, where Harry just changed the symphony, he was releasing to be a violent and angry one but without any intent, but the Malfoy scion seemed to be close to pissing himself. His nod was shaky, and Harry stopped releasing the magic, while suddenly smiling gently, "Well, that's very good, Draco dear. It's good that we have an understanding, right."
Harry handed him his wand and patted him on the shoulders, "Try not to hurt yourself, dear."
Draco had stopped trembling and started to glare once more, "My father will hear about this…"
"And you'll tell him what? That you called someone's mother a Mudblood in the middle of the common room and that he asked you not to do it again after taking your wand from you and giving it back without using any magic. Good luck with that."
Harry didn't even wait for an answer and just grabbed a bag and went to the bedroom. After all, that book wasn't going to read itself.
.....
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