With the edge of my ear I listened and wrote down Professor Babbling's words, but with the greater part of consciousness plunged into unraveling fragmental associations-memories of the dwarf that suddenly crawled out. Crawled out because of the lesson topic, the subject itself. These fragments, scraps of memories, like frames from a movie led me along vague images created on their basis.
Dwarves, great craftsmen and masters of extracting everything valuable from the earth's bowels. Their skills nurtured immeasurable pride in them, and jewels in the earth's bowels, just like masterpieces of their own production—immeasurable greed. But this also forced moving forward, for it is unacceptable that the "long-eared ones" suddenly create something better, and such happened. The dwarf from the shards remembers father's educational rods when he could not memorize and compose a runic chain, or when he did not keep track of the temperature in the furnace.
But there were also more concrete memories. The first correct runic chain, the first war hammer that was personally forged and enchanted by this chain. The first and last Personal Masterpiece—an axe.
But much more important was that words about Runes and languages based on them found their response in this shard. A rune can give one of several effects depending on the environment, magic around, magic in the construct, on other runes; factors are numerous. One can remove the probability of triggering an unnecessary effect with the help of other runes and chains, as well as supplying specific magical energy poorly compatible with unnecessary effects. But controlling runic chains also consist of runes, and they also have unnecessary effects. To take all this into account, one needs to know runic languages very well. Pity that the "leakiness" of shards does not allow remembering them.
However, precisely these miserable crumbs, carrying practically no knowledge, allowed finally putting together the puzzle called "Local Magic." Everything is extremely simple!
Everything I saw, and everything I might yet see, with some exceptions, is not the school of magic familiar to me, and there is an explanation for this; all these complex calculations, monstrous control of energies, monstrous constructs of runes and other structures... They are simply not needed! Because local wizards all without exception, as I see, possess internal neutral energy, they never faced a deficit of energy, they did not have to learn to accumulate it, collect crumbs of diverse external energy from the world around and its manifestations, did not have to complicate constructs by orders of magnitude for the sake of a tiny increase in energy efficiency, and other "did not have to."
Even more so, local wizards went along the path of psychological limiters to prevent spontaneous wizardry, but at the same time finding their unique and completely incomprehensible to me method of creating charms, spells, and other sorcery based on gestures, words, will, and imagination. And it works, I know for sure, although I don't understand how exactly. Like a program or ritual... Hmm, but the latter will need to be thought over.
"You look disgustingly inspired," Daphne's remark reached my hearing, even though she sat not so close.
"I understood magic."
Daphne rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
"Conversations, please, leave for breaks," the professor turned to us.
The dwarf's memories awakened a keen desire to make something, but by these same memories, I can say with confidence that I won't make anything sensible; simply don't know the necessary things.
From understanding how incomplete and fragmentary the memories of shards are, I felt somehow annoyed. Well, nothing. But local rune magic is at least familiar to me by its complexity, which grows exponentially with the complication of the chain. And yet if you think about it, precisely rune magic as a discipline should be undeveloped here. It's just that runic chains and contours familiar to shards are quite highly specialized in terms of requirements for the type of energies, and there is a reason for that. For example, fire energy in a runic contour extremely significantly suppresses the probability of triggering effects of, for example, water, which are embedded in runes. Locals are deprived of such joy, and in a chain, one will have to fully calculate all interactions, for neutral energy is equally well suited for everything and suppresses nothing. Wizards don't particularly need such complexities, for they can cast spells without this, and as a consequence—absence of necessity to develop this matter.
But all this does not negate that I will definitely study local sorcery. Crumbs of knowledge and skills of shards will definitely help me if not invent something new, then maybe behold what locals missed, albeit not due to ignorance, but due to lack of necessity to "look"?
Lunchtime is a wonderful time of "collisions" and completely, absolutely unexpected meetings. Of course, I am being ironic, but how sometimes warring students look at each other, meeting in corridors, is, of course, mm-yeah.
This time I had to get to the Great Hall not in the company of other guys from the House, but together with those who were present at Ancient Runes. Students from the House of Ravens kept aloof both at the lesson and after. Daphne quickly gathered her books and, remembering my attention to them, cowardly ran away from sin. In the end, I covered the entire way, in essence, in the company of a fairly hurried Hermione.
"Sorry I didn't approach earlier," Hermione said while we walked.
"Nothing terrible."
"I didn't even know you woke up already. And then these Dementors on the train, sorting, only at which I learned you woke up, Professor McGonagall said when I certified the schedule in the morning after the feast that you woke up quite independent, and not an infant, as everyone feared, and then this study, schedule, subjects one after another until the very evening..."
Hermione accelerated the tempo of her story. If memory of this life does not fail me, she behaved like this when she worried or was, conversely, on the rise. Under the girl's monologue, we reached the doors of the Great Hall, where groups of students merged into one stream.
"Simply put, neither you nor I know where to start at all," I nodded when we finally entered the Great Hall together with the stream of other guys. "Then, let's keep it simple. Somehow the moment of my awakening coincided so that all opportunities to get acquainted disappeared."
Turning to Hermione, who stopped immediately, I extended a hand.
"Hector Granger, your brother."
Stupidly blinking once, Hermione shook the shock of unruly, but arranged in a semblance of a hairstyle hair and shook the hand.
"Hermione Granger, your sister. Older, by the way," she smiled weakly.
"Let's go to our table, we'll talk. Older," I didn't hide the smirk.
"Is that not so?"
Sitting at a free place next to each other and immediately receiving empty plates with cutlery, we began to pile something meaty and side dishes from common plates served "to the table"; an infrequent manner of serving, for usually portions are individual. Guys from my House did not attach special importance to the fact that a Gryffindor sits at the table, for guests from other Houses sometimes drop in on us.
"Well, despite my past condition, I remember everything."
Hermione looked at me with obvious doubt not only in her gaze but also in her facial expression as a whole.
"Don't believe me? I remember how at five years old you heard somewhere that you are still too small to use swear words."
Sister stared at me with doubt and disbelief, while colleagues from the House sitting at the table tried to move closer under the pretext of filling their plates with dishes from common ones.
"For about two months you walked around the house like such an important fluffy hamster, and if parents didn't see, inserted a strong word with or without reason," I truly remembered this. "And with every, absolutely every word you became more and more important and 'adult'. Until mom applied an educational belt to you."
"Right! Remembered," Hermione beamed, but immediately stared at me condemnatory. "Could have remembered something else."
"Yeah, how you hid 'adult' books from parents in my room?" I smirked benevolently. "Or how at nine years old you arranged for me, considering my condition, a three-hour lecture-rehearsal of your own speech about the fact that I am a 'wrong' patient and sick not according to the book?"