Harry Potter & the Wizards of Waverly Place Book 2: 7th Year at Hogwarts

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"Excellent, Alex," Harry said with a proud smile. "That's an amazing Patronus. Your best yet. You got that in record time."

"Hear Hear!" Said Hermione, as she gave a little clap and jumped up off the chair in which she had been reading a ridiculously complicated spell to conjure up dark magical creatures she had never heard of before in the context of the Wizard World--only in fiction. She wagered that probably 90% of wizards had never heard of these beings. Demons really.

Demonology had caught Hermione's fascination. It was new information. And it was something that a fair number of muggle occultists and Alchemists had engaged in rather successfully, with only magical artifacts and very exacting dark rituals at their command. Some didn't even seem to need any magical artifacts. It was amazing, though sometimes quite horrifying what these "crypto-wizards" had accomplished.

The Ministry had mostly ignored the muggle occultists who believed they had magical powers, writing them off as delusional and not worth the effort. Occasionally Aurors would run into a muggle sorcerer or cult with access to magical artifacts, and they would simply confiscate the artifacts and store them in the Dept of Mysteries.

But Wizards who dismissed the power of muggle "magic" did so at their own peril Hermione thought. One of the things a small number of muggle sorcerers had become adept at over the centuries, was bending Demons to their Will and using them for their own purposes.

Wizards had all of their own powers and no need for Demons. So they just ignored them, and most Wizards believed that Demons were a fairy tale, a muggle invention based on the actions of dark wizards, or other magical beings.

But not all Wizards believed that. Some of the most famous Alchemists were muggles, but many other Alchemists of note were real Wizards-like Nicholas Flamel. In some cases muggle occultists would team up with real wizards who shared their goals. It was a remarkable hidden history which was not taught at Hogwarts, or any other major wizard academy-though if there were any underground practitioners, they would likely be from Durmstrang, where all dark arts were taken seriously.

Though apparently, not all Demons were Dark. There was an entire category of "Light" Demons who could also be compelled to do a muggle's or a wizard's bidding. The beings seemed to be from many other planes of reality which intersected with the "real" world. Hermione noted that the Light Demons were not all good, and that the Dark Demons were not all bad-which could be potentially fatal for the practitioner unwittingly attempting to use an evil Light Demon to achieve an ostensibly beneficial goal.

Hermione had been trying to understand the mechanics behind the rituals to make the spells work. Many-if not most-successful Occultists had apparently managed to conjure Demons even without magical artifacts. Hermione had been staring at the complex spell, trying to figure out how that could possibly work when Alex had cast the most amazingly bright Patronus she had seen-at least as bright as Harry's. Hermione wasn't too surprised to see that it looked like some sort of large jungle cat-perhaps a panther.

Alex was extremely pleased with herself; she had progressed farther than she could have possibly imagined and had already caught up to 6th year levels. And it wasn't even Halloween yet. Whatever Alex had lacked in knowledge was rapidly being filled, and her powerful natural magical abilities made excellent use of it.

It was with trepidation that Hermione and Alex returned to the Gryffindor common room. They had been trying to avoid Ron since they had heard that Ron had been let out of the infirmary. But Ron hadn't been seen in the tower in over 24 hours Seamus reported-so all was well.

But all was not well, thought Hermione. Seamus's statements gave her an ominous feeling, and she wondered what the hell Ron was up to.