Banging his fist on the egg didn’t work, putting the tip of his wand on it didn’t do anything, the wall of white seemed solid enough to withstand a lot. Before Luca had time to cast a spell from inside, the barrier strangely got sucked to one point where the emerging back upon the world boy saw his teacher’s wand targeted.
“It is more solid than I anticipated, actually takes three of my shots to cancel, normal wizards cast one to block one, and your age… It will probably block ten once you become an adult. You can see the outside, right?” Fontaine asked to receive a shake of Luca’s head, the man realized a problem that the boy had been disheartened by a couple of seconds ago. “So you blind and trap yourself, it doesn’t seem mobile either?” Luca’s head went up and down, his teacher took the last sip of his beverage in extended silence.
“Protego!” Luca tried again, but the spell worked precisely the same way, a wave of power solidifying itself around him to form an unmoveable fence. A grey beam collided with it shortly after, making the wall collapse into the point of contact. Another cast partitioned the mid-sized office in two, extending from the place Luca intended to hang it into all directions and corners in line, this form of use fairly alright if thought well beforehand where exactly to unfold the two-dimensional veil. Last variation, Luca cast it on a table and made it encased in a smooth egg, not much change in the white shell looking from the outside. Pointing his wand randomly at objects near him, the entire room became littered with white domes and barriers before Fontaine finished studying closely the one cast on the table.
“Since it goes so well, let’s get over with everything that involves defense I want you to learn as soon as possible. Maybe you can even do it all today, who knows? Follow outside, measure how large is that shield naturally, and understand my housekeeping skills.” getting up, the vice-headmaster handed the boy two more prepared rolls of parchment from his pocket that Luca read as he kept one eye on the road while they went downstairs unhurriedly after the man broke through the barriers separating them from the exit. The last traces of sunlight coming from a part-clouded sky made the flowing in gusty wind grass and towering white lithe buildings alternatingly shine and be covered in shadows, painting an ever-changing but unwaveringly stunning panorama.
“Beautiful place and weather.” Luca who finished absorbing the concise instructions remarked as he looked around.
“Indeed.” pride and complacency in his voice, Fontaine agreed. On the way somewhere private and spacious, they saw a lot of students walking around, the stadium occupied with hundreds of youths playing or practicing on brooms babysitted by ghosts and Pukwudgies. They went past it to an area on the edge of the Forest, a clearing hidden by increasingly denser trees on one side touching the stone wall and enchantment encompassing Ilvermorny’s grounds.
“Protego.” Luca started to train the optimal way for him to use the spell, casting it multiple times in the air and stacking layers of white until they became surrounded by huge swathes of solidified magic, ones hanging in the air perfect circles forty feet in diameter, on the ground extended semicircles to reach a length of sixty feet depending how close to the ground the boy chose to place the focal point.
“Alright, try the counter-spell on them, second-best defensive and support tool in a wizard’s arsenal. It cancels simple and dark magic quite reliably in an emergency, has the drawback of being slow to fire and gather magic, depends highly on talent.” Fontaine encouraged Luca to clean up the scene by using the information from his second scroll, the boy nodded and changed his intent before shouting the incantation.
“Finite!” a red beam came out of his wand, the effect reversed as compared to breaking it by force, white shield disappeared from the point his magic hit outwards. Using protego the magic stayed invisible to the naked eye before reaching its designed position which prompted the boy to make an observation on the differences between charms. “Why are there so many red spells?” Luca wondered as he felt that this colour came out of his tentacle with unreasonable frequency, no purple or magenta spells learned yet, but crimson ones creeping slowly into a dozen.
“What?” Fontaine was momentarily blindsided by the question, going into serious thinking mode he stroked his oval beard with uncertainty for a good minute before answering. “Don’t ask stupid questions, next cast the other form, I want all the walls cleaned up at once!” he gave up and demanded pointing all around them with one hand.
“Fine, I will try.” Luca rolled his eyes, he had to learn to live not knowing everything. Diffusing unrefined magic from his wand into the air, the boy was supposed to accumulate and manipulate it into a spell, the huge power he released without restraint hovered in his and his teacher’s perception in front and around him. “Finite Incantatem!” the invisible mass of magic bent to his will and rushed forward, clinging to and eradicating three barriers, after losing majority of the volume it went scattered forward, shrinking one wall that managed to temporarily persevere to ten feet in diameter, the white circle looking tiny compared to its nearby copies.
“Great effort, I expected you to have problems here! People spend years controlling such charms, it’s incredible! We can totally learn everything in the school’s seven-year program in two, maybe even less!” Fontaine praised unreservedly with joyful exclamations and started to explain the drawbacks and uses of this method. “Cast like that, the general counter-curse requires a significantly bigger investment of magic to break enchantments, barriers, and spells than the amount required to shoot them, so if somebody can’t mobilize magic fast enough it’s a useless spell in a fight, for you thought, it just might make you completely invincible against other wizards considering the peculiarity of that life attribute infused into vastly superior already amount...” his teacher looked at him in a pondering fashion. “Before going to the third scroll this needs testing, I suspect it might be the case…” the man murmured under his nose a bit and got solemn, walking to the edge of one wall to see both sides of it, his black eyes losing their usual frivolity he showed on weekdays, Fontaine readied the wand to point on one side of the wall while craning slightly his white-haired head to the other. “Avada Kedavra.” he chanted forcefully, Luca could feel violence and threat in his teacher’s tense body erupting suddenly, immediately restrained back to calm after a green beam of light collapsed the shield in the same fashion that petrificus totalus did. Luca’s mind raced, the boy knew what it meant.
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“I’m invulnerable, haha!” grinning wildly at first he went on to laugh outright, the image of Mr. Weiss's death flashing before his eyes, he affirmed that being a helpless victim would never be his fate. A growing blade of grass grabbed the ankle of the weirdly chuckling boy to hang him upside-down in the air, knocking Luca off the pedestal being rapidly built in his mind.
“Nobody is, you have to stay vigilant.” Fontaine reprimanded before laughing too as he let the boy fall awkwardly. “But yes, it is pretty awesome. Now I’m thinking, can your ring block it?” eyes shining with hope, he focused on the boy’s hand, tip of the wand following his line of sight.
“Hey, don’t do it while I’m wearing it!” frightened Luca jerked his body and stood up again. “Use some normal spells, I didn’t charge it yet!” immediately the boy found himself on the receiving end of a bombardment of light, eventually turning into a lion as the ring exhausted its magic. Before Luca had a chance to appreciate the new perspective and take a step with his now containing explosive power four legs, he got turned back human in a daze and urged impatiently.
“Laying down again, get up and charge it, night is coming.” second time sprawled on the ground in less than two minutes, Luca’s eyes filled with resentment.
“Don’t you too have a ring, stupefy, stupefy!” the boy sent a series of red beams at his teacher who managed to dodge the first one with a roll and immediately built a shelter for himself out of rising earth.
“Where is respect for the elderly? Little imps get worse and worse every generation.” muffled voice reached Luca’s ears from behind the transfigured wall, he inhaled sharply and went to put his wand on the ring, lighting up the extinguished micro runes on it gradually.
“Done.” the boy threw it to his vice-headmaster who stood patiently on the side of the makeshift fortification and caught it deftly.
“I really wish it works, most deaths we had were from Avada…” Fontaine sighed with his eyes absent, reminiscing of the past for a while. “Third scroll, yes.” vice-headmaster snapped out of it and took off his glasses, and put them on Luca’s nose. “Watch me.” the boy observed through enchanted lenses in detail as his teacher’s robe started diffusing multicoloured mist outside of his body in one direction, the mist shortly after dove down into the earth and merged with it, sending a barrage of spikes full of magic to eventually break all five of Luca’s shields on the side of a path leading back to the castle. The amount of mist hovering near his teacher’s robes increased until the flickering firmament went completely black, a giant cat made of fire formed. Gathering all that floating magic power, the Firecat bounced happily to collide with and disperse all of the surrounding white walls, losing part of the spell’s power with each of his successes until it shrunk to be the size of Ringo and on the order of Fontaine hovered sitting in front of him licking it’s paws. A raging mist of power slowly calmed down and drifted outside the field they were in, Luca could see parts of it absorbed by trees and other plants, and parts seemingly fighting with each other until only one colour remained or both of them vanished.
“This seems slightly different than what we learn.” Luca furrowed his brows, he didn’t sense or see any magic coming from the wand outside, almost like it wasn’t a spell at all.
“Correct, a trick to my transfiguration is in dissipating magic around yourself, can do it because of my artifact robe and inheritance. Basically, my wand can cast whatever I want and clothes can transfigure nearby environment as long as the stored magic lasts, it doubles the wearer’s capacity, has to have my bloodline so don’t start any plans of murder and theft tonight.” Fontaine tapped on his robe, his eyes intently watching the boy. “But I expect you to be able to do it eventually without help from external factors considering the history of multiple wandless incidents you went through.” Fontaine expressed his expectations to the boy.
“It never went as I hoped.” Luca denied the possibility after a thought, the theory on the scroll he read only contained a vague phrase like ‘Make your overflowing magic go out through the entire surface of the body.’ which sounded no different than his failed ‘force’ attempts.
“Don’t worry, I got inspired watching you manage to use that tentacle.” Fontaine smiled smugly with a sense of superiority. “It can act as a crutch for now because of the enormous conductivity, for example if I wish to channel the same amount of magic you did with Incantatem it could take a minute, and no bragging, I’m already the absolute ceiling of wizards in North America. You tamed it so easily, it’s a natural talent for manipulation absolutely no worse than mine.” he assured the doubting boy.
“Isn’t my control rather poor?” Luca failed or completely changed too many charms to believe it like that.
“No, it is wizards’ spells that are deficient and weak, you complete the true intention behind them.” Fontaine shook his head and gave Luca something to think about. “Go ahead and feel the change between dispersing unrefined magic and one meant for transfiguration.” the boy did as told, looking through the glasses on his magic floating in the wind.
“Red again, or rather ruby like my eyes, peaceful, cohesive.” he ascertained, stopping the infusion and focusing on remembering the instructions contained in the third scroll.
“That’s personal, people have different colours, students get tested in the fifth year, a bit pointless to know before. We don’t have any exact data on what it even means, wizards can have white or gold magic and cast Avada just the same.” the vice-headmaster shrugged and explained as his apprentice again channeled magic from within him outside.
“Fluid, rainbow, volatile, chaotic.” Luca looked intently at the invisible without glasses cloud that he ordered to go inside the ground and rise up to form a wall as his teacher did. His request heard loud and clear, the boy felt a connection to a half-spherical piece of land centered on the place where the cloud submerged itself as it rose up to form a small hill.
“I took weeks to do this point.” Fontaine looked at it with intense jealousy.
“Effortless for a true genius.” Luca swatted non-existent dust off his shoulder to the annoyed face of his teacher who snatched his ellipsoidal glasses back.
“That’s the end for today. You get the gist of all basic defensive moves wizards can do, what remains is to practice. Get ready for a follow-up with the ring, I’m positive you will have to charge all of them that MACUSA uses if the Pukwudgie survives.” Fontaine went in strides in the direction of the stone wall to catch a potential sacrifice in the name of science, Luca went back to the castle, praying for his magic to work and rejoicing at his increased safety.