The Darkening of Your Soul

Chapter 49

Harry met up with his friends in the Club House. He plopped down on the sofa next to Neville and took out Gybbard’s book.

“Is that a book from the Restricted Section?” Blaise asked curiously, his voice purposefully a little louder than usual.

Susan turned to Harry in shock. “You broke into the Restricted Section?”

“What? No.” Harry reached inside his bookbag and pulled out his permission slip. “I got a pass.”

The permission slip was passed around from awed child to awed child.

“I can’t believe you got Snape to sign this for you,” Justin said, looking as though Harry had managed to persuade Darth Vader himself to give him his autograph.

“He’s my Head of House,” Harry replied with a shrug, accepting the pass back and tucking it away. Truthfully, Harry was surprised Snape had signed it, too, but he’d been so full of need to get his hands on Gybbard’s work that he hadn’t considered that Snape was probably just as likely to sneer and give him detention as he was to actually sign anything for Harry.

Hannah looked around the room with wide eyes. “But now we have someone on the inside. Imagine, Harry can check out every single book from the Restricted Section and no one could stop him.”

Sighing, Harry opened Gybbard’s book and tried to read, studiously ignoring the kids around him.

“Harry, what do you think?” Hannah asked him with an expectant look.

“Let him read,” Neville said, much to Harry’s appreciation. Was this how Hermione had always felt when she’d tried concentrating on a book while Harry and Ron were loudly messing about around her? How the hell had she ever put up with their shenanigans?

Finally, the kids around him focussed on other things and Harry managed to concentrate on Gybbard’s book.

What he found there was fascinating, even if it was mostly theoretical as Tom had warned.

Gybbard spoke of how magic gained a conscience of sorts if it was allowed to grow and gain power over many, many years. This often expressed itself in the wards of very old magical buildings, such as old Manor Homes, but also buildings like Hogwarts.

The wards essentially split themselves into surface wards and sentient wards. The surface wards were the wards that someone could actively control, like McGonagall had done before the battle of Hogwarts. But the sentient wards were much harder to find and to control. They were to a building as subconscious thoughts were to the human mind.

Gybbard theorized that these sentient wards added to structures in ways that were entirely unpredictable, but always in line with the building’s original function. Sentient wards in a family home would always try to help look after the family. Sentient wards in a school would always try to look after the students. But since they were very difficult to recognize, it could be hard to pinpoint exactly what a sentient ward had changed.

By the time they left for dinner Harry had finished about a third of the book and he was completely enthralled. This was the kind of magic he wanted to spend his time studying. Not how to turn snuffboxes into mice.

“Interesting book?” Theo asked while they enjoyed their dinner of sweet and sour pork with rice.

“So bloody interesting,” Harry said with a huge grin. “You can read it once I’m done.”