Harry potter and the descent into darkness

Chapter 8

This was a book entirely on dark magic.

It certainly wasn't the nastiest of the dark magic books he'd bought. It was sort of an introduction to lesser dark curses. He had already read through several dark magic theory books, but this was the first time he was going to actually try using some real spells.

For a while he hadn't been sure how exactly he would try out the spells. Most were rather destructive, obviously, but he didn't want to start throwing off spells at the walls. The last thing he wanted to do was cause a cave-in down in the chamber and end up getting trapped.

But then he was walking through the chamber one day and looked over at the great, enormous basilisk corpse and was struck with an epiphany.

That beast was magically resistant. Most of his spells would get absorbed right into it's scales, so there was no risk of blasting the ceiling of the chamber in on himself.

He took a deep breath and picked the book up.

It was just magic. Damned useful magic at that. That was all. There was no point in ignoring an entire branch of magic just because it scared those too weak to handle it. Harry was not weak.

Having sufficiently steeled himself, Harry stood to his feet and made his way out into the basilisk chamber. He had the book open in one hand while he skimmed several of the spells and walked, and he had his bound notebook in the other.

The book was called 'Sceadwian's Tome of Shadow Vol. 1; Dark Magic that really really hurts, but won't quite kill.' In his notebook he had already made notes of a few of the spells he wanted to practice, and what page to find them on.

He had two lists. One was a list of environment spells. Things that effected the surroundings. These were spells he figured he could easily practice on the basilisk corpse. The second list was a collection of spells he thought would be useful, but were specifically intended for attacking a live human being with.

He could still practice casting them, but he wouldn't be able to tell if they were cast properly and actually working without an actual person to test them on.

He flipped through his notebook to the page of the environment effecting spells and read through his notes.

Scateren glaesum - Makes any inanimate surface crack and shatter like glass. See pg 98.

Khnwos - Scrambles the matter of an object chaotically. See pg 142.

Dimoliri - Tears down a small structure to rubble. See pg 52.

Collabi - Collapses everything within a sphere of space into a crunched mass. See pg 151.

Quassare - Makes a black point of void and sucks immediate surroundings into it. See pg 172.

Screade - Dark cutting curse that can slice through most anything. See pg 208.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek as he debated what he wanted to try first. He wondered of Screade, that cut through 'most anything' would be able to cut through basilisk skin?

A cutting curse was always useful, and if this dark cutting curse could actually cut through basilisk skin, it would definitely be useful in other situations. More useful than diffindo, that was for sure.. He decided to focus on it first, and opened his book to page 208 to re-read the section on the curse.

A few minutes later he felt prepared and stood before the corpse and pointed his wand.

He figured he could work up to non-verbal after some practice actually saying the incantation aloud, since he had never actually performed any spells like this before. He aimed at a portion of the basilisk's underbelly, focused his magic and drawing it out and around him and shouted out "Screade!"