8 September 1992, Hogwarts
Still, with a concrete plan to deal with the financial side of his duties, Harry thought back to his main problem. The Basilisk. With the ingredients still not having arrived, Harry needed to figure out how to actually fight a Basilisk in case he had no other choice. And for that, Harry would need one of his most powerful assets, one that had saved his life in the past, and unfortunately, one that he still had no idea how to use. He needed to figure out how to use his magical crest.
The weekend was over, and Harry hadn't really progressed in finding a way to kill the Basilisk. He didn't want to fight the damn snake, but if he had no choice in the matter, it was better to have at least a plan in place.
As far as he could tell, a Basilisk had very few weaknesses. Well, they couldn't really be called weaknesses, more like vulnerabilities. Their skin was impervious to all magic and was pretty much indestructible. The venom had some kind of bullshit magic negation properties, that's not to mention that it could eat through mundane objects as if it was acid. The only weaknesses were the eyes, which also happen to be one of its greatest weapons, and its open maw. Even then, the very flesh of a basilisk was resistant to magic, meaning that spells would not really affect the damn thing. Although a rooster's cry could kill hatchlings, and severely hurt young basilisks, it doesn't really affect the older ones, which develop an immunity to it as they grow. Perhaps, somehow amplifying the impact of the rooster's cry was a viable option? Nah, he would need to study Basilisks in general and have a few to test his theory before perfecting it, and that wasn't really possible. And if it was a viable option, the old Basilisk hunters would have done it somehow, yet there was no mention of this method being implemented.
What the old hunters did was train an entire generation of blind bats to attack the thing's eyes, and after it was blind, they would either try to immobilize it or kill it with enchanted weapons into the brains. Back then, it was the knights' duty to kill the monsters threatening the populace, and of course, they were equipped with the finest enchanted weaponry and armour, sometimes even blades of legendary power that had existed for centuries.
As for how they immobilized the beasts, thankfully, ice was surprisingly effective. A Basilisk is a giant snake, and it prefers a hotter environment. Master Cryomancers were often employed to freeze the creatures and chain them up in enchanted ice until the knights killed them. Even just making the battlefield cold was enough to slow basilisks down, making the other steps go smoothly.
Yeah, wizards were really hardcore in the Middle Ages and even then, it took teams of around a hundred wizards to hunt a single Basilisk, and now Harry could possibly need to do it by himself, and that was fucking terrifying.
He needed to get started on Cryomancy and get his hands on any kind of enchanted weaponry, to either copy it if he could or just use it in desperation. He had already scoured the forbidden section for books on Cryomancy and started practising it slightly. His progress was somewhat slow, but it was still good enough. After all, Cryomancy was more than just casting ice spells. It was the pure manipulation of ice and cold. A master Cryomancer could literally freeze anything, and manipulate the element without a second's thought. There weren't any spells or rituals, just pure magical manipulation. The young Slytherin might be a magical prodigy but the mastery over any element took decades of hard work. And even if he was cheating a bit with his Arcane Hearing, it would take a month for Harry to be proficient enough to use it reliably.
A master ice mage could literally freeze Fiendfyre, that's how dangerous this is. It was so far beyond anything taught in Hogwarts it wasn't even funny. As far as he could tell, only a handful of actual Cryomancers were still alive in the world, and they were taught that skill when they joined a guild, definitely not before.
Ice magic always leaves this sense of detachment in Harry. If he had to describe it using his arcane hearing, it would be like having a strict song that's rhythmic and measured, with something like a drumroll in the back. In the past few days, Harry was able to move an ice cube with just Cryomancy – not telekinesis. He was a long way from sucking the heat from an atmosphere or creating giant icicles out of nowhere, but it was still progressing. The books he had found were not really impressive. It was just the basics of how the magic worked, with a few exercises to get familiar, but it was enough to get going. A competent wizard doesn't need step by step instructions, after all, just an understanding of the theory and enough time for experimentation. To be a mage is to walk with Death.
Now, a problematic part of his research so far had been about weapons. Having spent the entire weekend learning about Ice magic, Harry wanted to take a little break and see what he could unearth about magical weaponry in the library and it was a pretty complicated subject. Legendary Magical weapons were generally either made with Adamantine or Goblin Silver. There were rumours about the exitance of Mithril, but no traces of the miracle metal could be seen today. Adamantine was pretty much an alchemically treated metal that was pretty much indestructible once it was forged. It was pretty useful in armour since it had also magic negating properties. But for the enchantments to hold permanently, Goblin Silver was used. No one knew how it was made, only that the Goblins outright denied making any more of it after Godric Gryffindor died without returning the sword, he had commissioned from them. When they refused, everyone started refusing, which started an entire Goblin rebellion.
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