wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure

[alittlemirror]

To say Jade is displeased would be an understatement. It's not that he cares about this detention tarnishing his record, no. He doesn't really care about his record. What he does care about is how it cuts into his studying time. He had just come across a particularly fascinating snippet on the nature of death and the soul...

(And besides, those Hufflepuffs had started it with their incessant chattering. They're like a less annoying version of Saphir, and nobody had ever really objected when he hexed Saphir. And it's not like he used a serious hex; he just sealed and removed their mouths. Easily reversible, if they knew what they were doing - and knew how to use nonverbal spells.

After all, what kind of first-year doesn't know how to use nonverbal spells?)

But someone had taken offense to his hex, and now he finds himself trudging to Professor Rammsteiner's office, growing increasingly irritated at the loss of his study time. From what he's heard of detentions, they usually entail doing useless, mundane tasks easily accomplished with a little creative wandwork. He's thought about ignoring Professor Rammsteiner's orders more than once, but he's also been told that it would just lead to more detentions and thus a bigger waste of time.

Oh well. He's here now. With one last irritated sigh, he raises his hand to the door and knocks.

"Professor Rammsteiner? This is Jade Curtiss."

Comments

[canicide]

Jade had asked if he'd be in his classroom at a certain late hour, which already raised suspicions, but Heine really hadn't planned to leave until he finished a large chunk of grading. He's rolled up the sleeves of his robe but left a low fire burning in the grate. The latter tempts him to throw some particularly badly written responses in to burn like they deserve, but he refrains. Barely.

A knock on the door. Heine glances up, and lets the door swing open to reveal just the student he's come to know and mostly dislike.

"What do you want?"

Truly the worst professor.

[alittlemirror]

He's taller now, facial features a little sharper, but Jade still wears the same blank expression as he always does. Three years of research, and he's still no closer to achieving his goal. Hogwarts exposes him to new ideas, to old and buried secrets, but not enough.

Three years of fruitless research. He has nothing to show for it except the growing bags under his eyes and a few new scars, caused by his own magic as it lashed back at him.

But it's not a complete loss. He's come to think that part of his answers lay outside of Hogwarts - in particular, in the realm of forgotten rituals and wandless magic. The first he has to research on his own. The second he can learn - and he has a resource at his disposal to do so.

Which is why he's at the door of one of his least favourite professors, staring up at him unblinkingly as the door swings open to let him in. He takes a step forwards, posture straight, head held high.

Professor Rammsteiner gets straight to the point (unlike that detention in his first year), and Jade returns the favour. "I want to learn wandless magic."

[canicide]

Heine leans back in his chair, crossing his legs, watching Jade silently and without a change in expression.

It's a reasonable desire, he guesses. They don't teach it at Hogwarts but it's common enough in other schools. But...

"Why can't you learn it on your own?"

Just like he's seemingly learned whatever else he wanted to know?

[alittlemirror]

He walks forward until he stands in front of the desk, looking at Professor Rammsteiner with an unusual intensity in his red eyes. "It doesn't work as well as it should," he states, a slight frown twisting at his mouth. He hates failure. It's frustrating, it's a waste of time. He hates being reminded of his limits. Has it always been this way? He isn't sure. "I can perform rudimentary spells, but not much else."

He shrugs, a slight shift of his shoulders. "I'm not sure why. So I thought I'd come to you."

[canicide]

The fact that Jade's clearly worked up about it makes Heine rethink things a little. Pushing his papers to one side of the desk, he leans forward.

"Did you start learning magic with a wand?"

[alittlemirror]

Professor Rammsteiner is actually paying attention to him? Jade thought he'd have to argue harder for it.

He nods. "Yes," he answers, short.

[canicide]

If he had to guess, Heine would say that's why he's having trouble with wandless magic now, but it's based on instinctive reasoning rather than any research. But if Jade wants to learn, it should still be possible. It also bothers him less than the prospect of Jade learning more hexes and forbidden magic.

"You don't need a wand to do any magic." His own wand is sitting in his pocket; after a pause he takes it out and turns it on its axis on his desk, watching it spin and trying to figure out how to explain something he's been taught since birth. "What can you do without yours so far?"

[alittlemirror]

"Not much." For all his frustration, his voice is more or less level. "And nothing nonverbal."

In other words, he can't use his favourite method of spellcasting.

From their previous encounter, Jade guesses that Professor Rammsteiner might want a demonstration. His eyes fall onto the wand spinning on the desk, watching its endless rotations. Has he seen anyone spin their wand before? He doesn't think so; certainly he would never treat his most prized possession with such a cavalier attitude.

Jade extends his hand, the tip of his fingers curling. "Accio," he says, motioning for the wand to come to him. Never mind that he's essentially trying to disarm Professor Rammsteiner. It's not as if he uses his wand that much anyway.

[canicide]

Nonverbal and wandless casting is markedly difficult, so that part isn't a surprise. But the fact that he seems unable to channel magic without a wand is the first obstacle.

Heine isn't quite sure why he's trying to teach the kid about it. Maybe because he thinks wandless magic is a perfectly valid method to learn, maybe because Jade has found something to pursue and in the end, he hasn't.

Maybe he's just trying to avoid doing work. Either way. As his own wand is dragged away by magic, Heine watches. The movement's a little slow, but it's working.

He raises his own hand, palm out, and says firmly, "Accio." His own wand flies back to him, accompanied now by Jade's, yanked out from his sleeve, pocket, or wherever he's been holding it. Heine catches both in one hand and turns his attention to Jade's.

[alittlemirror]

As the force of Professor Rammsteiner's magic sends Jade's wand flying from his sleeve, Jade makes a grab for it, only to watch it slip away between his fingers. His next reaction is instantaneous.

"Accio," he repeats, almost a snap. His hand thrusts out, palm out - even when he's thrown this off-balance, he still has the presence of mind to observe what Professor Rammsteiner is doing and mimic the gesture of his hands.

[canicide]

The wand twitches in Heine's hand, as if yearning to return to its master, but reflex makes Heine tighten his grip and cast Accio once more from close range. With another jerk the wand stills in his hand.

"You can learn to work without your wand," he says. "Live without it."

[alittlemirror]

A scowl twists his face, a hot spill of anger pouring through him. The wand is his. Professor Rammsteiner shouldn't be holding it. He stares at his wand, contemplating the merits of casting another Accio.

No. That's failed already. His fingers twitch, but then Jade allows his hand to drop back to his side, acknowledging Professor Rammsteiner's victory. "Fine," he says curtly. "Teach me, then."

[canicide]

After a pause, Heine decides it's perfectly reasonable to teach someone wandless magic. It's just weird.

With the decision he tosses the wand back. He shouldn't be throwing wands, and definitely not his own, but it should make it to Jade. Catching it is up to him.

"You can use your hands to channel." Heine puts his own wand away in his pocket. "Wands... give you direction, I guess. If you don't have one you have to supply the direction by yourself."

Intention and motivation. Heine points at a book on his desk. "Wingardium Leviosa," he mutters, more for clarity than for actual effect. As it levitates, Heine moves his hand with it, moving it about in the air before tossing without touching it at Jade.

[alittlemirror]

He catches his wand with ease, fingers closing around the familiar wood and feeling warmth bloom under his skin. He's still the master of his wand, at least. After a quick glance to make sure it isn't scuffed, he tucks it back up his sleeve.

The moment he does so, Professor Rammsteiner tosses the book at him. Ordinarily, Jade would have been able to "catch" it with a flick of his wand and send it ricochetting back at him.

He has the incantation ready - depulso - but the thought of channelling magic without his wand is such a foreign thing. He ends up catching the book physically, feeling its weight in his hands.

Frowning, he tosses it back at Professor Rammsteiner. "Do that again."

[canicide]

Heine doesn't say anything, but stops the trajectory of the book mid-air with a silent Arresto.

The only advice he can think of is to tell Jade to imagine his wand as an extension of his arm, but it's more the other way around—how he'd learned to cast with a wand after being taught mostly without one. Now that Jade's without his wand, he supposes it might feel like losing a limb.

"The wand opens your abilities," he says. A quick flick of his hand sends the book flying back at the same speed. "It's not the only way through."

[alittlemirror]

At least he manages to get the spell out this time: "Depulso!"

It doesn't work. He tries to imagine the magic channelling through his body - he must have performed magic like that once, when he was still a child, before he had taken to borrowing his parents' wands - but it doesn't work.

The book glances off his outstretched fingers, tumbling onto the floor. Jade stares down at it.

Then he leans down to toss it back at Professor Rammsteiner, not speaking a word.

[canicide]

Heine catches the book once more, this time in his hands. After a moment's thought he transfigures the book into a ball, a palm-sized sphere as heavy and hard as the book it had been. This time he just throws it at Jade like a baseball, faster. Maybe it'll work out of necessity?

[alittlemirror]

Really. They're moving to balls now?

"Depulso!" He repeats, pointing at the ball - or trying to, at least. This feels like a test of his reflexes as much as it is a test of his magic.

It's a test that he fails. The ball hits his knuckles, bouncing off of them and down to the floor, where it goes rolling away under the desks. Immediately, a dull throb of pain starts up on his knuckles and refuses to fade.

At the same time, a book comes flying off the shelf, moving towards Heine in a wobbly glide. It looks like the spell had (somewhat) worked - just not on its intended target.

[canicide]

They're easier to throw than a book! But also harder to keep in one place, which is apparent when the ball rolls away. Heine casts a slightly absent Accio to pull it back towards them, looking away when he hears something on the shelf move.

Getting there. He puts the book back for the moment and casts about on his desk for a moment to find a pen and paper, which are transfigured into a slingshot. An opened carton of cigarettes becomes a pile of round projectiles. It takes some charmwork to get the thing working without his input, but only a few seconds—and no wand.

Jade will be pelted by projectiles any time now if he doesn't get Depulso working. Heine doesn't use the opportunity to get back to working, however, just watches silently and closely.

[alittlemirror]

He can venture a guess at what Professor Rammsteiner is setting up, but what he's more interested in are the movements of his hands and the way he positions his body. It's nothing he can't imitate, Jade decides.

Which just means that all this is less a problem with his technique and more a problem with his control. He remembers his first year, watching his fellow students struggle to so much as lift a feather even when their wandwork and pronunciation had been perfect. Their difficulty had stemmed from their inability to tap into their magic, to channel it.

It's not a problem he had faced before. Magic had always came naturally to him. But it's a problem he's facing now.

The first projectile hits him, even as he snaps out a quick "Depulso!", trying to channel his will through his fingers. A second projectile glances off his ribs, and he lets out a little grunt of pain. Again, he repeats his incantation, and while the third projectile wobbles in the air, it doesn't stop. A spot of pain blooms in his left shoulder.

It's not working. As the fourth projectile soars towards him, Jade raises both arms: "Protego!"

His mounting frustration, the odd excitement of meeting a new challenge, his will and his determination - all of that he channels into the air in front of him.

The projectile hits an invisible barrier, then falls to the ground like a stone.

[canicide]

For all his clear frustration, Jade picks it up quickly. Heine doesn't expect him to succeed that quickly.

He gathers the other projectiles into a huddled herd on the ground before summoning them to rest behind the slingshot, in case Jade continues, but he stands to look at the barrier.

"Can you keep it up?" He's about to tap on where it was before.

[alittlemirror]

"We'll see." He doesn't think it'll hold. He knows how barriers work, and this one doesn't feel strong at all. Frowning, he tries to do...whatever it is he had done a few seconds earlier and create a stronger barrier.

Nothing happens. It holds when Professor Rammsteiner taps on it, but Jade thinks the fragile shield has more or less reached its limits already.

He shakes his head. "I don't know why this isn't working."

[canicide]

Heine makes a noncommittal sound in reply—he doesn't know why either. His guess amounts to the idea that wandless magic means letting go of an aid that's been with Jade for most of his exposure to magic.

"Maybe because they were hitting you." For a kid, Jade's surprisingly collected nearly all the time. There had been something, though, when he'd gotten clearly angry and managed a proper Shielding Charm.

It's idle conjecture on Heine's part, anyway; he starts up the charmed slingshot again and hops to sit on a desk to watch.

[alittlemirror]

"Maybe," Jade acknowledges, his mind hard at work. It's not that he's incapable of wandless magic; he had managed that Accio earlier, and other simple charms besides.

It just doesn't work as well as it should. His spells lack the strength they usually have, and casting them requires immense focus. He simply can't react to the projectiles quickly enough to deflect them.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Professor Rammsteiner has much advice for him beyond keep trying.

He thinks about walking out, but the slingshot has started up again and he decides that he might as well stay. He needs practice; whether he practices on his own or with someone else doesn't make much of a difference. The first projectile hits his shield while he's busy thinking. The air in front of him seems to ripple and shatter into shards of light as the shield collapses.

With a sigh, he tries to block out the pain of the projectiles hitting his skin, falling into a deep concentration. "Protego," he says again, determined, and is rewarded with the appearance of another weak shield.

He's not satisfied. "It shouldn't be this hard," he mutters.

[canicide]

Heine watches while Jade casts another Shield Charm. It holds, but not well.

"Why's it easy to use your wand?" he asks. For Heine personally it's more difficult with a wand when it comes to quicker casting, though it serves as sort of an amplifier when he needs it. But it's hard for him to imagine not finding wandless magic easier.