68 - A Tale of Light and Shadow
Chapter Sixty-Eight
A Tale of Light and Shadow
In the old, forgotten summer home of an old pureblood house somewhere in france, he had taken refuge and worked away. Trying to free, or, at least, contact his master.
His magic had recovered somewhat. It was still nowhere near his original strength, but at least his spells once more had an actual impact on the world. He was lucky that his master had ordered him to prepare a hiding place long ago. He probably wouldn’t have managed to trick the old wards on this place into recognizing him as their new master in his weakened state.
The house was old and falling apart in places. It had stood empty for a long time, well over a century, perhaps. It was not a pretty sight to see, but it would do for the moment. Because of one reason, mainly. The house itself might be falling apart, but the wards protecting it were made to last. And, most importantly, it had that one rare, exceedingly expensive bit of spellwork on it.
It was warded against phoenixes.
None of the accursed fire birds would find him here. The wards were the cheapest form of phoenix wards that existed – he had checked – but they would do. A phoenix could come and go freely, but they couldn’t detect anyone or anything that was here.
When he had escaped, fear had heightened his senses. He had not missed the presence of two phoenixes. One had clearly been Dumbledore’s. That much was obvious. But who had brought the second? If one of the other teachers had had a phoenix, he would have noticed, so clearly it wasn’t them. Granger was a smart girl and an excellent student. A shame she was muggleborn. But having a phoenix? No.
That only left one option. Shimmer. The insufferable girl that had provoked him enough that, in his rage, he had even forgotten the portkey that was meant as his way to escape. And by trapping his master, they had handily stopped the dark lord from reminding him.
And then, of course, there was the trap itself. That infernal piece of magic that was now containing his master. What was it? Where had Dumbledore gotten it from? Was it even from Dumbledore? Or was it another of Shimmer’s contributions? Or someone else entirely?
Regardless, if it didn’t help him open the trap, there was no point to knowing where it had come from. For nearly a month now, he had tried to find a way to open the thing. For the first few days, when his magic had still been severely weakened, he had simply scanned the thing all day long.
It hadn’t helped. Much of the magic looked completely foreign. And what small parts of it he could understand gave him no clues towards opening it. The patterns on the outside were an obvious starting point, of course, but he couldn’t make sense of them either.
He had started to break the thing open next, but the flickering of the light inside was worrying him and quickly convinced him to stop and try a different approach before long.
Still, so far he’d had no success.
But he would keep trying. With a muggle village in the nearby valley, food was easy enough to come by and the old mansion’s plumbing was still functional, so he had water. He didn’t trust the old pipes to keep it clean, but purifying spells weren’t much of a challenge. He could stay here. And Dumbledore’s cronies wouldn’t find him.
He had plenty of time.
Without the constant threat of Quirrell and Voldemort, the days, weeks and months began to blur together for Sunset. After a few weeks, the basic exchange of medical knowledge was well underway and a few more people on both sides had adopted her trick to create translated copies of books. With Fawkes now handling most of the exchange of literature, she could get back to her comparative magic sessions with Professor Flitwick.
At least for a few weeks.
After that, Dumbledore himself approached her to ask whether she would be averse to educating wizards and witches in the use of Equestrian style light magic. She agreed. On Saturday afternoon that week, she gave her first lesson.
As the only one in the room who didn’t know the reason why there was a bird perch on the teacher’s table, Amelia Bones was quick to pick up on several of the other witches and wizards assuming that it had to be for the eagle Ms. Shimmer, who would be teaching them the use of the strange power she had witnessed in Azkaban, seemed to carry around most of the time.
The expressions of the rest of the gathered wizards and witches, mostly the faculty of Hogwarts and a few select others, among them a few trusted friends of Dumbledore’s whom he had invited such as Madam Maxime, the headmistress of Beauxbaton Academy over in France and Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel, didn’t exactly support that theory.
When also accounting for the small fact that the idea of someone carrying an eagle around at all times was rather more absurd, it made Amelia seriously doubt the idea.
Her suspicions were confirmed when a gout of brilliant golden phoenix fire delivered Ms. Shimmer behind the teacher’s table. With a stroke over the gorgeous bird’s plumage, she sat down in the chair behind it and let the phoenix jump off her arm onto the perch. “Good afternoon everyone.”
She looked at the imposing figure of Madam Maxime for a moment, then nodded, clearly mentally refocusing. “Welcome to my first lesson in the use of what my homeland calls light magic.”
She smirked when she received several confused expressions and raised eyebrows, Amelia’s own among them. “For the benefit of those who don’t already know, I come from a nation called Equestria, located in, from what we’ve been able to tell, a dimension completely separate from this one. From what I hear, Princess Celestia plans to make official diplomatic first contact with wizarding Britain some time this summer and go from there, but that’s not what we’re here for.
“Some of you, especially those whom I’ve not had the pleasure to meet in person before today, may wonder just what I mean by light magic. Well, your world, from what I’ve seen so far, only knows one example thereof. Mister Lupin, I’ve been told it is somewhat of a specialty of yours, would you care to demonstrate?”
Remus got up from his seat beside Sirius with a nod. “Of course. Expecto Patronum.” A glowing, transparent wolf, formed of silvery light burst out from the tip of his wand and leapt forward to stand beside Ms. Shimmer.
“Thank you. Yes, the Patronus charm is the only form of light magic known to this world. Powered, supposedly, by positive, happy memories. Before you ask, yes. I say ‘supposedly’ because it isn’t actually powered by those memories at all, but by the emotions these memories evoke.”
Thinking about it, Ms. Shimmer’s claim made sense. Emotions were what powered dark magic, after all. It wasn’t too much of a jump to assume that different emotions resulted in different forms of magic.
“My homeland knows far more types of light magic and using it is a bit of a talent of mine. Allow me to demonstrate.” Rather than draw her wand, Ms. Shimmer, once again, simply cast without one, conjuring a flickering golden flame in her hand.
“Much like dark magic, light magic has a few innate differences from regular magic, or, as we call it in my homeland, grey magic.” She let the fire grow until her entire arm was burning. “For example, as I’m guessing you know, doing this with grey magic would be highly dangerous while doing it with dark magic would be bordering on suicidal. But, as you can see, with light magic it’s entirely safe. Not only will light magic never harm the caster. It will also never damage anything or harm anyone else unless the caster specifically wills it to do so, or that object or person had extensive contact with dark magic. And in that latter case it will actually be attacking the dark magic itself, not its user. Once again, allow me to demonstrate.”
She pulled the fire together into a single orb of light held between her hands, then threw it into the air over their heads, where it exploded, coating the entire room, and everyone in it, in golden fire. Once the initial shock wore off, Amelia, just like everyone else in the room, realized that the fire wasn’t burning her. It was merely a pleasant warmth.
She noted that the fire seemed to burn a bit brighter around her. She wasn’t the only one to take note. “Ah yes. I suspected there might be some remnant dark magic around you, Madam Bones. An occupational hazard, I’d say. Ah well, better to get rid of it now. It’d just make things more difficult for you later.”
Ms. Shimmer let the fire die down all around the room, until it only remained around herself and Amelia. “I’ll let this stay for a minute or so longer, just to be sure. That should remove the remnant completely.” She turned her attention back to the class at large.
“Now. What I’m doing here is a bit of a signature spell of mine. But I can show you how to use a simplified version of it. All of you are experienced magicians already, so that should make a decent enough starting point for you. Something as destructive as fire isn’t usually the best starting point for beginners, but I’m pretty sure all of you can manage a patronus of some sort, most of you even a corporeal one. So you all have some experience with the subject.”
She snapped her fingers and let the fire go out. At the same time, a piece of chalk floated up in a teal aura and began writing a spell formula on the board. “Now I specifically designed this spell formula so it wouldn’t work with normal magic, only with light magic. To start, you can use the same memory method as for the Patronus. The necessary emotional control to power it without having to worry about memories takes time to learn. Yes Professor Dumbledore?”
“What about the special reservoir you mentioned? I believe you called it a ‘Lumineum’.”
“Ah yes. I’ll explain the details of that later. I have one myself, but I don’t actually know how to make one. I’ll be asking the princess about that later this week. For now, try casting the spell like you would a Patronus.”
She sat back down behind the table and watched as the gathered wizards and witches started trying to cast the spell she had outlined. Several of them, especially the Hogwarts staff, were quietly talking about the spell itself. Amelia didn’t understand the details, but she could guess. The spell seemed to make use of several concepts of magic that weren’t known in this world.
It didn’t escape her attention that the senior staff of the school didn’t seem surprised by that fact. Shaking her head, she refocused on casting the spell. Like she did when casting a Patronus, she focused on her go-to happy memory, the birth of her niece Susan. Seeing how Ms. Shimmer hadn’t specified an incantation or a wand motion, Amelia simply visualized the spell pattern and focused on the memory, taking the emotion from it and guiding its power to the tip of her wand.
She felt a spark of power.
When she opened her eyes, she saw a pale bluish-white flame dancing at the tip of her wand. She met Ms. Shimmer’s gaze, who smiled, nodded and used one of the weird pens muggles tended to use to make a note on a clipboard she absolutely hadn’t been holding a moment earlier.
Looking around, Amelia saw that several others also had flames dancing on their wands. Most of them were either pure white or a similar bluish-white to that of her own flame. Only Ms. Flamel’s wand played host to a flame nearly the same pale gold as Ms. Shimmer’s had been.
“Very good. Well done. I take it most of you will have noticed that your flames had different colors. What you’ve seen there is the color of your light aura. It’s a barely known phenomenon in this world, where most spells have an innate color.
“Back in my world, very few spells have that, so the color they appear is usually dictated by the caster’s aura. Each caster has three aura colors. A light one, usually a shade of pale silver or gold, a grey one which can be more or less any color, but often matches the caster’s eye color, and a dark one which is usually some shade of green, purple or black.
“The light aura color depends on the kind of light caster you are. Light magic mirrors celestial objects. Those of you that have pure white light magic are stellar casters, the most reliable type, only varying in strength with the time of day. Lunar casters, those with a slight blue tinge to their light magic, additionally vary with the phases of the moon, being the strongest on a full moon. Much rarer are solar casters like myself or Miss Flamel. Our light magic also has a seasonal variation, stronger in the summer than the winter. We’re also the only light casters who’s magic is stronger during the day than the night. That effect is reversed for all others.
“The final type is also the rarest, which, I guess, explains why there isn’t a single one of them in this room. Planetary casters. Their strength mirrors one of the other planets of their home system and varies with its motions. But that’s all very specific. All you’ll really have to worry about is that your light magic will be stronger at night. Unless if you’re a solar caster in which case the opposite will be true.”
“Now I suspect some of you may be questioning of how much use a spell like this one could be. One would suspect that countering dark magic takes specialized spells, right? Wrong. Any light magic will counter dark magic. Here, I’ll show you.” Once more, she conjured a flame in her hand and let it grow up her arm. From there she let it grow further until all of her was aflame.
“This was what I used as light magic defense in my recent … disagreement with Mister Quirrell. I was stalling for the headmaster and the senior staff to arrive. While I had this protective envelope running, I was, at some point or another, hit by all three unforgivable curses. All of them failed to take effect.”
She paused to give them a moment to process that statement. “Mind you, his magic was severely weakened at the time, so the damage those spells did to the barrier was marginal, but the envelope would have stopped more powerful versions of the same spells as well, only at greater cost. A more specialized spell might achieve a greater effect for less cost, but any light magic will disrupt any dark magic, no matter the situation. Just keep in mind that the reverse is also true.
“But it will always come down to a contest of strength and skill. No dark magic spell will ever simply bypass a light magic barrier. The same is also true for the reverse, but dark magic is really not well suited for defensive barriers.”
Amelia couldn’t really argue with that fact. She had been the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for five years and worked there for almost ten years before that. She couldn’t recall hearing of dark magic being used defensively even once in all that time.
Ms. Shimmer went on to explain several more facets of light magic and how they affected its users. She then provided them with another three spell schemata she had modified to work only with light magic. One was a dedicated barrier spell, especially useful against dark magic in both directed and diffuse form. A powerful passive defense against, for example, dementors. The second was an aura sight charm designed specifically to detect dark magic and identify the most common types thereof. She had, apparently, designed it to analyze the dark magic in Mr. Quirrell. The third was designed to create a focused bolt of light magic, meant to disrupt energy patterns, specifically those of dark magic.
She and Albus joked about her making good on her promise. Amelia wasn’t entirely sure what they meant until Ms. Shimmer spelled it out that, with sufficient power, that spell would, in fact, be capable of destroying a dementor.
That statement silenced the room as the gathered witches and wizards considered the implications of that possibility. All the while, Albus and Ms. Shimmer watched them with amused expressions.
And, again, none of those spells came with incantations or wand motions. Did the girl have some reason she never included those? Was it a property of light magic? But no. The Patronus had an incantation after all.
A question for later. After each of them had managed all three charms which, given the amount of magical talent and skill concentrated in the room, didn’t take long, Ms. Shimmer asked them to keep practicing the four charms and, until the next session, attempt to cast them without relying on memories as a crutch. With their ‘homework’ assigned, she dismissed the class, let her phoenix hop onto her arm, and vanished in a gout of flame.
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for some reason hot for teacher has a new meaning due to sunset and fire
I'm curious if she will go into the drawbacks of light magic or the overuse of it. Nothing is ever perfect.
Loved the update!
9709296
third day of teaching should probably include some of the drawbacks of overcasting Light magic.
Welp, in this story equestria goes fow the wizards, it's understandable seeing how it all happened, now the ministry is still corrupted, let's see if there will be any clash between equestrian royalty and the ministry eventually, some will try to treat the ponies as magical creatures and not sapins beings, but we will see.
I'm honestly curious if theres a pony out there (Probably Sombra) that has done the opposite of a Lumineum. Mabye it could be why Celestia put the Lumineum into practice in the first place. I'll call it the Tenebris, cause that sounds cool.
Or mabye one of the other magic types. (Chaos magic reservoir for Discord? Call it the Ataxia.)
9709394
oh well I meant canon sunset......huh how old IS sunset now anyway? in Equestria Girls I mean? I still say pony wise she in her 20s but hmmmm maybe 16 as a human?
It'd be nice if Quirrel got badass due to studying how to free voldy, combined with getting to study (leaked) equestrian magic. So far everything has gone right for the heroes, a Quirrel/Voldemort with souped-up dark magic from applying equestrian principles would be pretty great to see. After all, just like how Equestria has more knowledge of light magic, I'm pretty sure the wizarding world has a lot more dark magic - but that doesn't mean it can't be improved by combining them.
9709405
I got the impression that she was, at most 12. She's the same age as Hermione, who just started at Hogwarts this year, which would have made her 11 at the start of the school year.
I am wondering if there is a reason you made Sunset Shimmer an 11-year-old instead of 15? Which is closer to her true age. I really thought it would just be better if she was older than 11 because I thought it would have been a better story idea.
You've made her a child prodigy which in all honesty I don't think that works. It's really pushing it that they let an 11-year-old child teach experimental magic In Hogwarts. Forget that, they never allow an underage school girl to teach anything she wants in Hogwarts.
9709557
At this point in the story, both Sunset and Hermione are 12. (Hermione's birthday, canonically, is about two weeks or so into september and Sunset is a few weeks younger.)
As for canon Sunset, no idea. There are so many factors that would depend on.
Interesting and curious. So light magic has anther weakness, Sunset's specially, and is countered just as much as it counters dark magic.
I did notice that apparently no one reacted weirdly to having a class with a eleven year old. And that Amelia stars thinking about the eagle abd questioning it and then transitions to referring to the Phoenix without rime or reason.
9710302
No actually. She doesn't start thinking about the eagle and questioning it at all. She's just overhearing others in the room discussing that. And there actually is a reason for her to start thinking about the phoenix. Namely said phoenix entering the room.
Sunset: I am the professor now.
Nice work
I would be surprised if this held true for human living on earth; as we have a very limited range of eye colors. I suspect that it's either caused by some environmental factor in Equestria, or by a trait of the biology of life native to Equestria.
I think it's a bit of both. And here's what I imagine causes it… Given that very likely all life on Earth descended from a common ancestor, unless it's a completely synthetic life form (which do/will exist … look up XNA), I don't find it unlikely that that's the case for Equestria as well. ‘But what does that have to do with eye color and magic?’ The process of evolution shapes the development of life, and evolution is heavily dependent on the environment. So it stands to reason that if biology can interact with magic in the environment, that it will become a part of how biology works in some way. What I think happened, is that there was a property of magic, perhaps a property of a presumed magical field generated by a living organism in Equestria, that evolution hooked into biology to produce color in the organism. ‘Why?’ Could be something as simple as it being cheaper to use magic, than to produce a massive array of pigments, and more colorful biology had some kind of survival advantage. And a form of this trait could have appeared very early in the history of life in Equestria. Or it's useful enough that many similar traits developed independently, later on.
I believe that the instances in the show where character were shown to become greyed-out, supports this, as something was messing with their magic in each case.
Hold the phone, I thought Sunset was the one to give herself the Lumineum?
9713860
Nope, the Lumineum was invented by Celestia. She was the one who gave it to Sunset. What you're thinking of is the photographic memory.
9716479
It's a wizarding duel Malfoy specified to use a set of rules that doesn't allow for physical contact. Only magic allowed.
9716889
It's a summoning charm. It calls things into your hand.
9714304
Is it possible for a Lumineum to become corrupted and turn into a well for dark magic?
9733501
That’s a good question I wish I asked that
9758617
It is designed to stop corruption.
9733501
I doubt that would be wise, dark magic is seems capable of killing the user if one is not careful. Probably not wise to store something so dangerous in your body.
9868341
I suspect it would cause one to become like Sombra, a being a shadow weakened by light and perhaps even partly undead.
9873635
If you're lucky, it may destroy your soul leaving an empty husk behind.
9868341
The scarcrux could probably be made into one