Chapter 130: Love Magic 101
Power. It was a word completely foreign to Harry.
He knew what friendship was; he longed for friendship. He knew what it was to be cared for; he longed to be cared for. He knew what respect was, and he longed to be respected.
But the word "power"... Harry felt it had nothing to do with him. He couldn't even imagine what it was good for. The wizarding world was a place of reason, after all. You just had to talk things out, figure out who was right and who was wrong, and any conflict could be resolved. This was the life lesson Harry had learned from his interactions with Malfoy, which had evolved from bitter hatred to a normal rivalry.
"Power... is useless, isn't it?" he said, scratching his head with a bewildered smile.
The room fell silent. While Harry's answer was somewhat expected—a first-year student wouldn't naturally understand the concept of power—his sheer innocence was a bit jarring to the "dark hearts" of the old-timers present. Ryan, for one, felt personally called out, even though there was no evidence or logical reason for it.
"Actually, power is very useful," he said, trying to force an explanation in the hopes of corrupting this pure-hearted child. "It can eliminate a lot of unnecessary trouble. Take Voldemort, for example. Everyone is afraid of him. To deal with Voldemort, you need power."
Dumbledore felt this was entirely the wrong track. He believed Harry's view that power wasn't a good thing was perfectly correct. "Harry already possesses a power that Voldemort can never have."
Oh, here we go again with the magic of love, Ryan thought, palming his forehead.
Harry, hearing the Headmaster claim he possessed a power even Voldemort couldn't match, thought he was talking nonsense. "How is that possible? I've never met him, and I didn't live through his reign of terror, but just from the chaos in the castle... I could never do what Voldemort did."
Even though Harry and the Slytherin Quidditch team were mortal enemies, and he had experienced Snape's life-saving intervention, he had chatted with Hermione after the incident. She had told him just how terrifying the animated statues had been. Later, Neville had also confirmed that the raw strength of the statues was beyond imagination. If it hadn't been for a group of students casting spells to support him and Hannah from behind, they would have been thrown aside the moment they made contact.
Neville had claimed his Strengthening Charm wasn't strong enough, but Harry knew exactly what his friend's monstrous strength was capable of. He had personally seen Neville single-handedly tossing the massive sofa in the Gryffindor common room as easily as George Weasley tossed a Quaffle. In that moment, Harry had been convinced that Neville could physically send a person to the afterlife. And yet, Neville and the equally capable Hannah together were no match for the basic strength of one of those statues. And those statues were clearly just disposable pawns for Voldemort.
"I mean it," Harry repeated. "Magically, I don't think I'll ever be able to do what Voldemort does."
"That's not true, Harry. You possess love. That is a magic Voldemort can never learn," Dumbledore said, beginning to export the most critical component of the "Dumbledorian magical worldview": Love. He started with the love Harry's mother, Lily Evans, had used to protect him, and went on to speak of Harry's own capacity for affection and family...
Ryan felt himself dozing off. Having endured this "love education" many times before, he had a rough understanding of what Dumbledore meant by the concept. Stripping away all of Dumbledore's flowery prose, Ryan could summarize the principles as follows:
Love is a strong, positive emotion, which is diametrically opposed to the malicious, harmful emotions inherent in Dark Magic. In short: it has a special attack bonus against Dark Magic.
Under certain conditions, love can allow a wizard to surpass their own magical limits and achieve things that seem impossible. In short: it's a power-up.
Love is a long-lasting medium that can fundamentally enhance ordinary magic, for example, by extending a spell's duration. In short: it's a magical additive.
By the time Dumbledore finished his sermon, Harry was completely mesmerized, his eyes shining with stars. He seemed to have fully bought into the theory and looked ready to run out and fight a Dark Wizard armed with nothing but his love.
"I understand! I understand it all now!" Harry exclaimed, his voice full of dawning comprehension.
You beast, what the hell do you understand?! Ryan wanted to leap up and slap the boy a couple of times to snap him out of it before he did something rash in a fit of Headmaster-induced passion.
Considering the Headmaster's dignity, he settled for a more tactful approach. "Harry, the theory of love the Headmaster speaks of objectively exists, but one cannot excessively treat the subjective as the objective, thereby allowing it to replace the objective."
Harry Potter: ???
What did that even mean? He knew every word his senior had just said, but why couldn't he understand the sentence they formed?
Ryan looked at the pure, clear confusion in Harry's eyes and felt that the boy was a disgrace to the title of English gentleman. Eleven years old and he still hadn't been properly baptized by the pinnacle of British culture: bureaucracy! He was a disappointment to the intangible cultural heritage and precious spiritual wealth left by generations of English monarchs.
"What Ryan means is, stop dreaming," Gellert said bluntly. "The magic of love only works if you have the skill to back it up. Now, let's drop the talk about love and power. The point is, you need to accept some help—a treatment—"
"Gellert!" Dumbledore immediately cut him off.
But Gellert acted as if he hadn't heard. He stepped out from behind Dumbledore, deftly put him in a restraining hold, and pinned him. "Listen carefully," he said directly to Harry. "When Voldemort gave you that scar, he used a certain method to leave a part of himself—a part of his magic—inside of you."
Harry was still lost in his own fantasy. Harry Potter understands love, Voldemort does not, that's one win. Harry Potter survived, Voldemort lost his power, that's two wins. Harry has two wins, Voldemort has zero, that's three wins...
The sudden news that Voldemort's magic was inside him was a much deeper violation than just a "connection." The feeling was upgraded from having touched something foul to having eaten it.
I'm tainted. I'm tainted. No matter how you look at it, I'm just tainted. Harry suddenly felt an itching all over his body. Everything felt wrong. He had an overwhelming urge to go to the washroom and scrub himself for a day and a night.
"Impossible!" he shrieked, his pre-adolescent voice cracking. "How can I have Voldemort's magic inside me! It's not true!"
His cry was piercing and tragic, like that of a spurned lover, like a man who'd stumbled into the wrong kind of nightclub. It was a sound of pure, wretched misery.
~~~
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