Becoming an Animagus and gaining a Friend II

This night Julius was finally able to spit out the mandrake leaf into "a vial which receives the pure rays of the moon" and add the chrysalis of a Death's-head Hawk Moth and dew from "a place neither sunlight nor human feet have touched for a full seven days".

After that the only thing left was to put it into a quiet and dark place, in hopes of that keeping him from thinking about it to much he let Theo choose a place and put it there.

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The next morning at sunrise Julius put his wand tip over his heart and chanted the incantation "Amato Animo Animato Animagus" as he would have to do every sunrise and sundown for the near future.

Then he visited the crystal viper again, after a few joking suggestions which earned him a shallow bite mark he gave it the name he had worked on during the last moon cycle and it was received quite favourably.

This day "Rachel" would sit on his right shoulder with her tail around his neck while he was playing with his sisters.

And as the sisters had put this much work into developing a passable sign language they decided to upgrade it a bit and then use it as a language just for the three of them.

Astoria also took a liking to Rachel and the feeling seemed quite mutual, even though the snake was still a bit mistrustful to anyone not Julius.

This sundown when he chanted the incantation Rachel poked his neck and as soon as she did he felt a faint second heartbeat and a connection to her which was just as faint.

Then after getting Rachel back to her lair he got to his bed, still just as happy as the last night to be able to just sleep carefree.

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After waking up earlier this morning Julius visited Rachel before chanting the incantation, assuming the success of the day before to be linked to her presence.

This time again he felt a faint second heartbeat and a connection to his scaly companion, no friend.

But this time both felt slightly stronger even though that wasn't completely sure yet.

This time while training he decided his connection to the source of death magic he had been solidifying until now was finally strong enough to start training the spell in earnest again.

When his spell succeeded at the first time he felt something from his right shoulder where Rachel was resting right at this moment.

It felt like there was a smaller source of what he thought to be death magic inside her, only that it felt slightly inferior in quality and that it appeared to constantly producing death magic instead of the source Julius used, which only gave him the amount of death magic he was able to take, though in turn he was probably able to take more of it at once instead of the slow but steady supply inside of Rachel.

It also appeared to be accumulating where the venom gland of a snake would usually be, in the back of her head.

But even though this discovery had very important implications, for now Julius just wanted to enjoy his life until going to Hogwarts as much as possible while also becoming an animagus to ideally help him explore the castle in secret, especially with the pipes the basilisk would later be using now unoccupied.

Turning his attention away from Rachel, Julius noticed the death magic he had concentrated on a certain spot in the air had spread while he didn't concentrate on it and he could feel how more and more microorganisms perished in the air around the original spot and even a single grasshopper who apparently had somehow slipped through the wards and into the garden of the mansion, was slowly losing his life after having been in contact with the death magic for a while now.

And not only the grasshopper was affected, even the grass around him slowly turned into a dry brown version of itself.

Shocked Julius immediately dissipated the death magic but even after cutting his connection to the source he could still feel death magic inside the grasshopper but none inside the grass.

‚Maybe death magic doesn't dissipate after coming into contact with living beings.

But shouldn't the grass also be full of death magic then? Or does it only stay as long as there is still life remaining?

Maybe due to death being the opposite of life the death magic somehow connects with the life it comes in contact with, but it's not the time to be thinking of new magic theory, I should just ask teacher about it.

I should be more careful with my training from now on though, I don't want to imagine what could have happened if the already weak Astoria came into contact with death magic.'

Just by thinking about Astoria being in place of the grasshopper currently living it's last movements Julius felt a nauseous feeling rise.

After this experience Julius visited Theo in the kitchen and asked him to tell his sisters he wouldn't have time to play today and went to the mausoleum to see his teacher, maybe he could even help him with more than just his theory.

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<I can't help you.>

"But why?! After centuries of development there can't possibly not be a way to keep this from happening!"

After harassing his teacher for hours Julius was still not able to receive any other answer than „I can't help you", at least until now.

His teacher sighed:

<The only way to keep death magic from affecting the wrong parts of a body or even the wrong body is extreme concentration and absolute control over the death magic, as soon as death magic, drawn onto to end any life it comes into contact with, comes into contact with this same life it sticks to it and the only way to stop it is to get control over it and dissipate it.

Even with the life magic of a family, I will not tell you about however often you ask, it is only possible to survive contact with death magic if the user is able to draw onto enough magic to completely overwhelm the death magic, we're talking about tens of times of the amount of death magic here if we assume both have the same kind of quality.

I can only ask you to be very careful as long as you don't yet have the needed control to save someone in a possible accident.

But said you had another question didn't you? And I see you finally got yourself a companion and a very fitting one at that.>

Seeing as he probably had no other choice but to accept this answer Julius decided to move on and have his other questions answered, well, besides the new one about the family with control over life magic.

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IMPORTANT PLEASE READ!

I don't say this often enough so; thank you all who read this book and those who help me with tips and constructive criticism and not to forget those who actually gave me their power stones.

Now I have a proposal; anyone who gifted me two or more power stones at any point can write one name into the chapter or paragraph comments of THIS chapter and if it's an honest suggestion I will use the name in the book in the future, and I won't just do that for the next chapter but as long as I think about it I will at any time I need a new name, with a few exceptions, revisit the comments (if there are any) any choose one.