บท 131: Chapter 131- summer vacation(part 1)

Harry's POV

Traveling to the top of Badaling Mountain took two days, yet it was only a week after the start of summer vacation that Harry was truly able to reach his goal at coming to Fenghuang, the library.

The reason was simple.

While as an 'apprentice' of a student in this school he didn't need to climb the mountain to get accepted to this school, the school faculty didn't like white people, in fact, the only reason they excepted Remus was that he passed their tests, and tradition demanded that whoever pass the tests be excepted to school.

Luckily, excepting apprentices are also part of tradition, so they excepting him.

The problem begun when they told him to come at the start of next year, and when Harry told them he only came for the summer.

That didn't sit well with them.

While there was no rule that students must stay at school, and many students came to this school for a year, and as adults, the students who were still children were supposed to stay at school for a long period, and they always started at the beginning of a term.

Thus started the greatest argument about a student in the last 50 years.

The first group wanted to deny him a place at school saying he spits on everything the school was standing for.

The other group wanted to treat him like an adult student, making him pretty much like Remus, with the ability to use the library and nothing else.

At the end a vote was made and he was granted access to the library.

Looking around the library took him an entire day!

While people say the Hogwarts library was the greatest in Britain, Harry could tell you this library was the greatest in Asia, and if the legend of the library of Alexandria was a lie, maybe the entire world.

The library was a huge building, divided to two parts, old and new.

The new part of the library was about the western magic system, filled with magical books from all over the world.

This part was divided to smaller parts, each with its own sub-subjects- charms,Dark arts, transfigurations, alchemy...

The older part of the library was about the eastern magic system, filled with scrolls and old books, magically protected against damage.

This part was also to smaller parts, each with its own sub-subjects- physical enhancements, spiritual workout, magical talisman creations, eastern alchemy....

As Harry looked at the books and scrolls he couldn't help but swallow his spit, so many books, so little time.

Taking SCAMER out, Harry charged him with magic to last an entire day before putting him at the older parts of the library.

Going to the newer parts, Harry found the section about potions, found a book he hasn't read before and started reading.

The reason he hasn't read any of the older books was that as much as he wanted to, Harry hasn't managed to find the time to learn any of the eastern languages, so he didn't have the ability to study them yet.

Right now he will only copy them to the server, in the future he will learn them all!

Two weeks later

While Harry learned a lot from the western side of the library, strengthening his understanding about charms, potions and dark arts, SCAMER worked non stop, copying everything it could, returning to Harry only once a day, where Harry quickly returned to the room they gave him, took out the vanishing cabinet from his bag and 'vanished' to Hogwarts to download the information into GAI, who made sure to translate and arrange it, and finally, after two weeks he had basic explanation of the eastern magic system.

While the west works only with the idea of wands and rituals, eastern are about talismans and alchemy, and at the core of them, both magic systems are about using outside help.

No matter if it's wands or talismans, they are about using magical creatures body parts to channel your own magic.

Talismans of the east are the magical artifacts of the west, and wands are just an advance, more versatile artifacts.

In fact, while learning the eastern way of artifact creation might be incredibly helpful for his learning of blacksmithing, especially the Japanese way, western magic is in fact superior to eastern magic in that department, which is probably why most people use it.

As for rituals and eastern alchemy, it is about reaching your goal by using the magical energy of outside.

Rituals are about achieving magical effects one person cannot do alone by taking parts of magical creatures or the magic of other people, and eastern alchemy is the same, the only difference is that rituals need a lot of preparations and people, while alchemy is about refining the needed materials.

When the western people wanted to make alchemy as part of their culture they created potions, which is basically small size, time limited rituals.

The difference between rituals and alchemy is about the end results.

While rituals add something that wasn't there to the person or the object, alchemy is about using what was already there.

So while rituals with tears of Phoenix can give a person immunity to poison.

Alchemy product with the same ingredient will heal the person better.

The other thing is that rituals can create unknown side affects latter on, while the affects of alchemy products are instantaneous.

With Harry's knowledge of ingredients, he started focusing on alchemy techniques as he made sure SCAMER moved on to the magical theories of the eastern system.

Harry truly needed to understand the idea of belief vs knowledge.