Hogwarts: Starting with full Unforgivable Curses

In the minds of most wizards, the label of the Patronus Charm is very clear.

A highly renowned high-level spell, and also one of the strongest defensive spells against certain dark creatures.

Its power lies primarily in dealing with special "non-existent" creatures like Dementors.

When a chilling aura of despair descends, the silver creature summoned by the Guardian Charm radiates warm energy, acting as a barrier to completely repel the Dementors—an effect that other defensive charms cannot match.

But only those who have truly studied soul magic in depth can appreciate the deeper wonders of this spell.

Just like now, the Poro that Dylan summoned here is interacting with its surroundings in an unexpected way.

The silver light emanating from its body spread outwards like gentle ripples, attracting various creatures and shadows nearby to slowly approach.

The first to react were the moving creatures and their shadows.

The gray-black light and shadow of Grindelho stopped its restless swaying and slowly floated towards the Poro, while the brownish light and shadow of Loba Worm was attracted by a magnet and slowly crawled along the trajectory of the energy fluctuations.

Even more surprisingly, the light and shadow of the originally still aquatic plants also changed. The slender leaf-shaped light and shadow, which were originally just swaying slowly with the water flow, started to sway more rapidly and with greater amplitude after the silver light spread, as if responding to some kind of positive call.

Dylan knew very well that the guardian deity in physical form contained the purest positive emotions of the wizard, which would be transformed into an invisible positive guiding force.

For most living beings, this guiding force has a natural attraction, making them involuntarily approach it. However, dark magic creatures like Dementors, which rely on negative emotions for survival, will instinctively repel this positive energy. This is the key reason why the Patronus Charm can restrain them.

At this moment, the light and shadow of the creatures here gathered together, clearly influenced by this positive guiding force.

To further observe the reaction, Dylan mobilized the magic within his body and slowly injected it into the Poro Guardian.

Instantly, the silver light surrounding the guardian became even more intense, yet it still maintained a soft texture, without the slightest hint of glare.

This enhanced energy fluctuation indeed attracted more underwater creatures and shadows. Groups of silvery-white fish began to gather in this direction, and even the colorful fish that had flashed by in the darkness earlier swayed its colorful tail fins and approached.

Even the enormous giant squid's luminous form paused for a moment in the darkness above the Poro Guardian. It stretched out dozens of thick tentacles, seemingly sensing the energy within the silver light. After a few seconds, it slowly moved its tentacles, then plunged back into the distant darkness and disappeared.

Observing the reactions of these creatures and their shadows, a thought suddenly popped into Dylan's mind: "What different changes would occur if dark magic were infused into the guardian spirit?"

He acted immediately, drawing out a stream of silver-black energy and carefully merging it into the Poro Guardian.

This time, the guardian's silver light became even brighter, yet it still retained its gentle nature.

Sure enough, the surrounding biological light and shadow underwent new changes.

First, there were the aquatic plant lights and shadows. Suddenly, tiny green threads emerged from the leaf-shaped surfaces of the lights and shadows, extending slowly like vines, and finally connecting precisely to the silver light of the Poro Guardian, forming delicate energy links.

Immediately afterwards, the fish-shaped lights that had gathered together also began to move. Silver threads extended from each side of their bodies, connecting with the guardian spirit as if they were exchanging some kind of energy.

Meanwhile, the closest mermaid, Grindelho, and Loba worm light and shadow also each sprouted threads. Unlike the "taming threads" that connected the mermaid light and shadow to Grindelho and Loba worm light and shadow, these newly sprouted threads only extended slowly and stayed not far from the guardian deity. They did not connect immediately, as if they were hesitating or adapting to some new energy frequency.

Besides the changes in biological light and shadow, Dylan also felt his magic flowing into the Poro Guardian through some invisible channel, making the Guardian's light more and more stable.

After a moment's thought, Dylan disconnected the magic transmission.

As the energy connection was severed, the physical form of the Poro Guardian gradually dissipated, and the silver light slowly weakened, eventually leaving only a semi-transparent Poro phantom, suspended in place.

Dylan manipulated his consciousness to approach the phantom and, after careful observation, discovered that it was not the residual energy after the guardian deity dissipated, but a completely new form of energy. Threads also emerged from the surface of the Poro phantom, and these threads extended outwards, connecting with the light and shadow of the mermaid, Grindelow, and Loba worm.

However, this connection seemed exceptionally illusory, and the color of the threads was much lighter than the threads used by the mermaids to tame other creatures, giving it an unreal feeling that it might break at any moment.

Dylan tried to touch the threads with his consciousness and could feel a faint flow of energy, but it was far less stable than when he tamed the threads.

“This is all truly amazing.” Dylan stared at the floating Poro phantom, his mind quickly processing his recent discovery. “The reason why the Guardian Charm can generate positive guiding force is that it is essentially a personification of the soul.”

He further analyzed: "When performing this ritual, one needs to use beautiful memories as a starting point to stimulate one's own pure positive emotions—memory and emotions, these two elements that are crucial to the 'soul,' together support the form of the guardian deity, making it an external manifestation of the soul's energy."

“Originally, this process involved a complex transformation of soul energy, but here, the influence of the Poro Guardian on the surrounding light and shadow appeared exceptionally pure, without any interference from magical energy in the real world.”

Dylan's consciousness lingered on the Poro phantom, sinking into deeper thought: "The effect of using dark magic to maintain the guardian spirit here is also quite obvious—this remaining Poro phantom is essentially the form of energy returning to its pure state. And this purity seems to have directly affected the 'memory' level of the mermaid's light and shadow, causing them to re-establish their previous connection."

A new hypothesis suddenly emerged.

"What if we use other magic that can affect the soul? And it has to be different from the Guardian Charm, magic that doesn't have a physical form. Would we make any new discoveries?"

His first thought was the Killing Curse, a dark magic spell with a devastating effect on the soul, but when he tried to mobilize magical energy, he found no response in his consciousness.

Clearly, such extreme black magic cannot be performed here.

However, Dylan was not discouraged and quickly came up with another option: the "Happy Happy Mantra."

That is, the happiness mantra.

This is an advanced spell taught by Professor Flitwick in last year's Charms class. It's an advanced version of the Tickling Charm, which is more difficult, but in principle it's similar to the Patronus Charm. Both require activating one's own happy emotions, and after casting the spell, the target will feel a strong sense of pleasure, thereby influencing their behavior.

In Dylan's view, the Happy Charm has already touched upon the realm of influencing the soul.

Similar to this are summoning spells, but summoning spells focus more on guiding will rather than transmitting emotions. Transfiguration magic, which must be learned from the start of school, is also related to memories in the soul. Wizards need to clearly remember the details of the target's form in order to transform it through magic.

"In fact, from the moment they enter Hogwarts, all young wizards have already been exposed to knowledge related to the soul without realizing it. However, the threshold for soul research is too high and it is full of unknown risks. Even if most students master Transfiguration magic, Summoning Charms, and Happy Charms, they will only stay at the 'use' level and will not be able to delve into the underlying soul logic, let alone make further breakthroughs."

However, for someone like Dylan, who has gone through countless real-world experiments, this is not difficult to understand.

After clarifying his thoughts, Dylan decided to conduct the experiment immediately.

He focused his consciousness on the mermaid's light and shadow, and chanted the spell of happiness: "Enjoyment at hand!"

The moment the spell took effect, pale pink energy fluctuations enveloped the mermaid's light and shadow.

The previously still pale green light and shadow suddenly came to life, dancing irregularly in place, while indistinct syllables emanated from the light and shadow—it was the mermaid humming a lullaby.

Since this ball of light and shadow represents the entire Black Lake mermaid clan, the voices of different individuals are intertwined, making it somewhat chaotic. It is only possible to barely discern the similarity between the melody and the previous golden egg song.

To compare with the previous Guardian Charm experiment, Dylan used two different magical powers to enhance the Happiness Charm.

First came the conventional magical power. After the pale black energy merged with the pink fluctuations, the mermaid's light and shadow danced more violently, even beginning to swim rapidly in the black lake, leaving behind pale green trails. A sense of pleasure was clearly conveyed through the energy fluctuations.

Next, he tried to inject dark magic. As soon as the silver-black energy touched the mermaid's light and shadow, the light and shadow began to tremble violently, and fine energy ripples appeared on its surface. Then, a wisp of pale green thread-like energy slowly emerged and floated next to the light and shadow.

In fact, the so-called dark magic is just an evolved version of ordinary magic, which Dylan triggered by chance.

It can carry a deeper meaning, such as time.

Of course, this doesn't mean that using this magic will allow you to manipulate time, but it does possess such a property.

During the experiment, Dylan discovered that, unlike before, there was no continuous energy output this time. Instead, the dark magic was consumed all at once and injected into the mermaid light and shadow. This means that in the shadow world, different magics may have fundamentally different requirements for ancient magical power.

Just as Dylan was distracted by the energy changes, an unexpected event occurred. The pale green thread that had emerged from the mermaid's light and shadow seemed to have gained its own consciousness and suddenly flew towards his sensory body.

Dylan reacted quickly, but he did not stop it. A second later, the pale green thread tightly wrapped around the edge of consciousness, forming a stable connection.

The moment the connection was formed, a strange yet incredibly familiar force came from the threads. This force was gentle yet irresistible, like an invisible hand gently peeling his consciousness away from this world.

The next second, the surrounding darkness was quickly replaced by another, purer form of nothingness, and Dylan immediately realized that he was being pushed into a special space of his own.

This special space is very similar to when I am receiving magical knowledge from the system, or when I am adding new characteristics to my magic.

When his consciousness stabilized, he found himself in front of a star cluster emitting a pale pink light, which was the star cluster symbolizing the Happiness Mantra.

Unlike before, the star cluster replenished itself at an unusually rapid pace. The pale pink light continuously drew energy from Dylan's consciousness, and the star cluster's volume increased at a visible speed, with its originally faint light becoming increasingly intense.

He had originally intended to take this opportunity to explore the situation of other star clusters, but just a few seconds later, the replenishment of the Happy Curse Star Cluster was completed, and a gentle pull came, drawing his consciousness back to reality.

Upon returning to reality, Dylan immediately gained new knowledge about the new characteristics of the Happiness Charm: the merfolk in the Black Lake now reacted to it with an exceptionally strong intensity.

This spell can not only effectively soothe the emotions of mermaids, but also quickly calm their anger and greatly reduce their wariness of the spellcaster, even if the group is in a state of anger or vigilance.

"So it was just a targeted feature that was added," Dylan realized.

This property has a rather narrow scope, only effective against the merfolk at the bottom of the Black Lake, much like how the Patronus Charm is specifically designed to counter Dementors; it's a magical enhancement effect on a specific target.

He began to review the accident that had just happened. The reason he was pushed into that world was obviously because the Happiness Spell, which was enhanced with dark magic, had a special effect on the mermaid light and shadow in that world.

Based on previous explorations, a key inference has gradually become clear.

Just like the experiment just now, by using magic with the attribute of time to apply the Happiness Spell to the mermaid's light and shadow, an indelible mark was left on the light and shadow. The influence of this mark spread along the connection between that world and reality, eventually causing the mermaid clan in the Black Lake in reality to also show changes that made them more sensitive to the Happiness Spell.

From this perspective, it's as if Dylan indirectly perfected the effect of the Joy Charm. It's precisely because the magic itself sensed this new and unprecedented effect that it transmitted this characteristic to the star cluster symbolizing the Joy Charm through that vague, system-like guidance of the space that teaches magic itself, thus completing the update of the magical information.

Dylan further pondered the implications, concluding, based on his research into this special power, that its core characteristic was not simply energy intensity, but time itself.

The reason why the Joyful Spell, imbued with this power, could have such a profound impact on the mermaid's light and shadow, besides the unique nature of dark magic itself, is that the characteristics of time clearly played a crucial mediating role. (End of Chapter)