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Serena Snape: Love of Magic - chapter 7
🕑 Added 2024-09-13 16:54:36 +0000 UTCAuthor's Notes: Chapter edited and corrected by Scott Fellman.
July 17, 1976 / Serena PoV
I was on a new schedule for the next two weeks that I easily adapted to. I had rented a room at the Leaky Cauldron for the rest of the summer. I would get up and eat breakfast in the muggle world or on-site. After breakfast, I immediately went to the Hag's shop, who, by the way, I had finally discovered her name, Mary Cordovin.
I then brewed potions all day. In fact, I didn't mind it as much as I initially thought I would. I felt that without Serena's love for potions, I would get tired of the repetition, but on the contrary, they were fascinating in their own right. Not to mention that Mary wouldn't give me any simple potions to make since she didn't sell those types of potions in her shop.
Instead, they were all dangerous poisons, so I had to keep a reasonable amount of attention on the cauldrons. It turned into really nice moments of practice. Little by little, I made fewer mistakes as I followed Severus' memories while brewing the potions.
Once I finished with my work schedule, I was headed to practice for a couple of hours. I had chosen the Dean Forest as a place to train. Thanks to the density of the trees and the indiscriminate use of copper clouds, it was easy to keep my training a secret. The first thing I tried was to finish testing the Magia Baiser skills. There wouldn't be much to test since I could already use the Schiavo skill.
I could fly extremely easily, and my magic blasts were powerful, but it was just raw magic. At worst, it was dark magic or something extremely similar. I could feel that they were almost the same. I reeked, for lack of a better word, of dark magic when I transformed, so using my transformations in the open without being covered by my clouds was a horrible idea. It would attract the attention of many people that I did not want to learn about my abilities.
Next, I couldn't use my web skills in my base transformation, so I had to transform into its ascended version and La Verità. My wand magic could also harness the abnormal amount of magic I gained from my transformations. My wand and Frusta Dominazione could be used as a normal wand, even in La Verità when it turned into a stick.
The amount of magic I could use in my transformations was so ridiculous that a simple stupify could cause some small craters and go through trees if I didn't regulate it well. That was the least harmful of my spells. A diffindo made a cut almost 50 meters long after going through half a dozen trees. It was absurd.
The problem was that my magic consumption was abysmal. I wasted abnormal amounts of magic for the smallest of my spells. If I wanted to use it efficiently, I had to learn to reduce the amount I released and used when I was transformed. Lord Enorme, as Imitatio, was always in her La Verità form, controlling the flow of magic she released. Even in her daily life, she could maintain her transformation. She was aiming for exactly that.
I was partially successful. While I still couldn't regulate the amount of magic escaping in my La Verità transformation, my normal transformation was much easier. Countless hours of training to regulate the output of wasted magic helped tremendously. I could now maintain it all day except for when I was sleeping. I still couldn't maintain it unconsciously, maybe one day.
Best of all, reducing the amount of magic I spent on my transformation reduced my more… demonic? Succubus-like? Features. The point was that my wings, horns, and the "smell" of dark magic disappeared by restricting the output of magic. It was something I was happy about when coupled with the fact that I could change clothes when I was transformed. I could now go out in public with my base transformation always present.
The only thing that gave me away were my eyes and cheeks. My pupils were still gold stars, and I had matching little black stars on my cheeks. Pretty distinctive markings, but they are more acceptable than horns, wings, and a kinky outfit.
There was only one thing wrong with my transformation; it used so much of my magic while I was training. When I used up a lot of energy, everything was normal, but afterward, the annoying thing was the complete and ridiculous amount of lust that hit me. The more I used it, the more my lust seemed to want to come out, but obviously, there was no goal in sight. By the end of the tests, I could only think of one thing.
It was so bad that I had to go back to the Cauldron, run to my room, and lock and silence the room before I masturbated. It wasn't the first time old Serena had pleased herself, but it was definitely the first time I had done it as a woman, and it was… an interesting experience. I must say that it was much more comfortable for me to do it this way than when I was a man. There was no kind of dysphoria associated with the action. It was a pretty big step forward; the good thing was that while lust was really part of Baiser, I wasn't obsessed with magical girls, so it was a win for me.
I also learned that keeping my newfound lust at bay with my Occlumency was of no use. In fact, it was much more harmful to do so than not to. Cutting off lust and obsession, which was the core of Magia Baiser's powers, immediately cut off my magic. I couldn't transform into La Verità, and her normal version was extremely weakened, so I had to endure the attacks of lust after my training sessions that ended with me masturbating several times.
It was annoying but certainly not unmanageable. It was something to keep in mind if I were to use it in other, more complicated circumstances. In my new permanent state, while I wasn't expending too much of Baiser's magic, I was still using small amounts of it constantly. This was causing me to be constantly horny.
Was it annoying? Yes, but not unbearable. I was a boy in my past life. I went through adolescence, and I know what it feels like to be horny 24/7. I know how to ignore it, although before, it was easier to concentrate on the dysphoria to ignore it. Now that I was more comfortable, it became a little more difficult, although not so much since I could please myself more regularly than before.
Getting back on topic, the next thing I was practicing was Roy Mustang's template, the Flame Alchemist. It was an awful idea to practice with fire in a forest, but it was necessary. Flame Alchemy was more... complicated than I thought and, at the same time, not. The hardest part of alchemy was always understanding it.
Understanding the structure and properties of what one wanted to manipulate was the hardest part, but it was something I could skip with the memories of the template implanted in my mind. I had all the knowledge I needed to use flame alchemy and the necessary circle, I had decided to do without the gloves.
Even though I really liked them, they were extremely out of place in my daily attire, not to mention that I had no replacement in case they were destroyed at some point. Was I paranoid even though I had 6 identical pairs? Yes, but they were my gloves, and I wanted to keep them stored. So I decided to keep them in my inventory and treasure them. Instead, I tattooed the circles on the back of my hand.
Funnily enough, Diagon Alley had a tattoo parlor, which was a blessing as I didn't want to go to a muggle one. It was 1970, and I shuddered to think of the conditions I'd be in. So now, I wore the transmutation circles permanently and practiced sparking with my wandless magic, which was fairly easy.
The mechanics of the Flame Alchemist were simple: increase the density of oxygen to a volatile level and create pathways that link the sparks it created to the target. It sounded easy; the hard part was actually doing it in practice. In the span of a snap, in a single instant, I had to do all the calculations necessary to manipulate the oxygen toward the target.
Too slow, the spark would not ignite the pathway and would not cause flames. Too fast, and the oxygen would move away from the target, burning everything around where I aimed. I also had to create the oxygen pathway thin enough so that it would not blow up in my face, but the thinner it was, the harder it was for the spark to ignite the pathway. Suffice it to say that my brass ring worked overtime to keep me from burning. I had much more practice ahead of me if I wanted to be on par with Roy Mustang.
Lastly, regarding the Lord Ruler template, I started storing the attributes in my metal minds. It took time, but it was something necessary. Strength was the easiest to store, I was a witch, so the moments when I needed to use strength were rare. So, I was always storing at least half of my physical strength. Like physical speed, as long as I wasn't training or preparing potions, I needed all my speed to react to the potions.
I stored part of my speed and the energy part while eating or sleeping was also relatively problem-free. The other attributes, such as health, mental speed, and senses, were annoying. Most of the time, I stored them when I had some free time. For example, in terms of cognitive speed, I could store a portion when eating or showering. I didn't take out enough to be able to choke while eating, but enough to make it take almost twice as long to finish the food.
That being said, I was able to quickly refill several MetalMinds. I had also realized that there was no need to keep my jewelry on my person constantly; it was something that Lord Ruler did unconsciously after centuries of habit, but I had another option, I could refill MetalMinds and store them in my inventory and refill other MetalMinds, the attributes did not degrade as long as they were stored in a MetalMind, not to mention that the pocket space was timeless, so I could bring any filled MetalMinds and decant them anytime I needed.
I still kept my piercings, rings, and bracelets. I liked my look the way it looked, but it was nice to know I could store attributes almost infinitely without being completely covered in metal. I was only limited by the space in my inventory.
I even transmuted most of the filled metal minds into beads to see if separating them with alchemy would keep the attributes they were filled with. The answer was yes, so I had a set of rings to feruchemically pull, a set of beads to allomantically burn, and a last set of beads to do metal compounding, aka, using allomancy to enhance the feruchemy of my metal minds.
By swallowing my metal minds and then allomantically burning them, they would draw out an order of magnitude more feruchemical attribute than stored, aka 10 times more strength. It was just perfect; the only problem was that by burning them, I completely lost the metal minds. But, having a supply I could carry in my inventory was less of a problem.
On the other hand, I was also practicing with normal Allomantic Burning. I had to get used to the attribute boosts during burning, so I had to practice with them. The trick of flying with coins or metal objects pushed into the ground or that were heavier than my normal weight was fantastic. I could fly like Magia Baiser, yes, but learning how to do it while pulling and pushing metals didn't require any summoning of my wings, and an alternative form of movement never hurt. It was a harder difficulty scale, but I had a lot of fun learning how to use it.
Some Allomantic metals were ridiculous, duralumin especially. It would instantly burn whatever metal I was burning at the time, gaining a much greater burst of power; I would have to be careful with its use as it could backfire. It's impossible to regulate its use since the burning is instantaneous and accidents can happen, such as the risk of sensory overload, but metals aside, duralumin could also enhance my normal magic.
By burning them during spell casting, I could manage to increase their output strength to the same level as my transformations without actually being transformed. I was afraid to actually test what La Verità could do with duralumin, so it was something I still avoided trying. I had to have some safeguards and be somewhere less public than a forest.
Back to Allomancy, what I used the most was bendalloy. Allomantically burning the metal pushes time around me, creating a bubble where time passes faster. 1 gram of bendalloy lasted 5 minutes, and the created time bubble lasted for 5 minutes in real time; insidethe bubble, the time was 90/1. I was surprised when the change wasn't 2 minutes for every 15 real seconds like Wayne, but it shouldn't be weird.
Rashek had changed his physiology to be a mighty Mistborn in the Well of Ascension, not counting that a bendalloy bubble could be pushed much further. After all, they were involved in light-speed travel, so I wouldn't complain that those 5 minutes in real time were 7 and a half hours I could spend training.
That time was more than enough for training, especially for storing up the attributes to fill the metal minds. I really didn't want to push my Allomancy to the point of becoming an Allomantic Sage. I knew I was being foolish and needed to consume a lot more metal, and while the power boost was welcome, I didn't want to create any addiction to any metal if I could avoid it, or the unwelcome side effects. At least not before I had the right defenses in place. The Company’s defenses were a small price to pay.
The last thing I realized, which, to my shame, was something that took me a while to learn, was that my Allomancy was not linked to preservation. Allomancy was a positive force. When they burned, they had no power of their own, but rather, they channeled the power of the preservation fragment, which was what powered the Allomancy. That is to say, it shouldn't work outside of the Cosmere realm.
Now, it seemed that they were powered by magic, but it was still a positive force since it wasn't my magic that was powering it but the ambient magic, from what I could deduce. Which meant that as long as there was magic in the environment I could use Allomancy with peace of mind.
That was true for any metallic art coming from the Cosmere universe. Feruchemy, which has a neutral force, also stored magic and not investiture, but it stored my own magic along with the respective attribute. I was sure the same would happen with Hemalurgy, the negative force of metallic arts.
I didn't know if I had spiritual networks or if living beings in this universe, in general, had them to begin with. But I was sure they would work with magic when it came to stealing attributes. Not that I was going to use them anytime soon, but it was good to know.
All of this meant that the investiture, was it magic, or did my body and the Catalog simply change how the metallic arts worked so that I could use them in any universe without worrying that they were only usable in Cosmere? I was grateful for that, but still confused. Something to reflect on in the future, but it was nothing to worry about. It was a blessing more than anything else.
