Everyone in this world carried the walker virus. That was the baseline. Death activated it, or a bite, and you turned.
Lucien stared at the tent ceiling, working through the logic.
He was a soul from another world. Technically speaking, his original body shouldn't have had any diseases. And this body, the eleven-year-old wizard vessel, had been healthy when he'd received his Hogwarts letter.
So theoretically, he should be virus-free.
Which raised an interesting question about Episkey.
What if the reason the healing charm drained so much magic when it was used on other people was that part of the energy was being consumed fighting the virus in their systems? It was not curing it. Episkey was not that powerful. Instead, it was suppressing the infection, working around it, and compensating for tissue that was technically infected even though the host was still alive.
And when he cast it on himself, with no viral interference, the spell worked smoothly.
"No," he said out loud. "No. That's completely barmy."
He sat up, shaking his head.
The theory had no basis. He was just making wild guesses based on incomplete information and a healthy dose of paranoia.
From what he remembered of the Harry Potter books, Episkey was designed to treat physical injuries. There'd never been any mention of it having antiviral or detoxifying properties. It wasn't a cure-all, just a patch job.
Besides, even if he'd been healthy before transmigrating, who was to say he hadn't been infected since arriving? He'd been breathing the same air as everyone else for weeks. If the virus was truly universal, he'd almost certainly have it by now.
"I could be misremembering the spell's limitations," he muttered. "It wouldn't be the first time. Table that one until I can test whether I'm infected or not. Which I can't. So... moving on."
He forced himself to refocus on what he did know.
His magical arsenal was pathetically small. The Water-Making Spell produced water, but it was barely functional and more like a dribble than the jets described in the books. Episkey worked for healing, though it was strange and inconsistent. The Scouring Charm handled cleaning and worked fine, nothing more. The Levitation Charm was the only spell he had truly mastered.
Actually, when he thought about it, those were the only spells that worked more or less as intended. Everything else was either half-learned or showed strange variations from what he expected.
Scourgify was straightforward. Point, flick, clean. No mysteries there.
The Levitation Charm, though...
He frowned, pulling up memories of his training.
His relationship with that spell was bizarre. On one hand, he'd gone from barely making something twitch to wandless, silent casting in under two months. That kind of progress should be impossible. Even accounting for apocalypse-level motivation and an adult's comprehension, it was extraordinary.
If he'd been at Hogwarts, showing that kind of aptitude, he'd have been flagged as a prodigy. Teachers would be watching him. Dumbledore would probably have invited him for tea and cryptic warnings about his potential.
Hell, if Voldemort had seen an eleven-year-old achieve wandless magic that quickly, the man would've either tried to recruit him or kill him on principle.
So clearly, he had talent. At least for that one spell.
But, and this was the confusing part, learning every spell had been brutally difficult.
When he cast magic, his power felt sticky. Like trying to push treacle through a straw. There was resistance. Where the young witches and wizards in the books seemed to grasp spells in a single lesson, he needed days of practice just to produce a flicker of effect.
And that was with detailed textbooks full of diagrams and instructions.
If he was supposed to be talented, why was everything so bloody hard?
Even the Levitation Charm had been rough at first. That initial successful cast had been followed by weeks of struggling against that same resistance. Like his magic kept forgetting how to work properly.
But at some point, the resistance had faded.
When had that been, exactly?
Lucien tried to pin it down. Was it the first time he'd used it in combat, smashing a stone into a walker's skull? Or later, in the hospital, when he'd driven a steel spike through an eye socket? Maybe when he'd tried to levitate himself?
It seemed that every time he used the Levitation Charm in a real, life-or-death situation, his control improved. It was as if the spell were learning from experience, or as if his magic were adapting to how he needed to use it rather than how the textbook claimed it should work.
Eventually, it had just clicked. Wandless casting became natural. Silent incantation became effortless.
"So what, I'm some kind of Levitation Charm savant? One-trick pony wizard?"
There were precedents for that in the books. Some wizards had natural affinities for specific spells. Harry and the Disarming Charm. Lockhart and the Memory Charm, though that git had used it for all the wrong reasons.
Maybe he was the same. Born with a talent for one particular piece of magic, and that talent only emerged through repeated practical use.
"Practice makes perfect," he muttered. "Except I've practiced other spells just as much and gotten nowhere."
It didn't add up. If he was talented, he should be learning faster across the board. If he wasn't talented, the Levitation Charm shouldn't have progressed so far.
He was Schrödinger's genius, simultaneously gifted and incompetent depending on which spell you looked at.
"Not enough data," he decided finally. "There could be a dozen different factors. World mechanics, soul stuff, the virus interfering, or just my brain being weird."
He'd make a note of it, file it away for future investigation, and move on. Right now, theorizing about why his magic worked the way it did was less important than learning more spells.
Because regardless of the how or why, his current abilities were inadequate. He needed to expand his repertoire.
He pulled out The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1 and flipped it open.
His short-term goal was to master two extremely practical spells.
First: The Full Body-Bind Curse.
It was one of the few spells where he could feel his magic responding during practice. And the tactical applications were enormous.
Living enemies? Freeze them solid, turn a gunfight into target practice. Walkers? Same deal. They couldn't bite if they couldn't move.
The real genius, though, was in how he'd disguise it.
He'd carry around noxious potions. Smoke bombs. Maybe some tranquilizer darts if he could figure out how to make them. Before any confrontation, he'd have his allies put on masks or drink a harmless "antidote," just water with food coloring, probably, but they wouldn't know that.
Then, when he cast the Full Body-Bind Curse, he'd simultaneously throw the chemical props at the target.
To everyone watching, it would look like he'd incapacitated the enemy with drugs or chemical weapons. The magic would be invisible, hidden under the cover of Victorian-era mad scientist theatrics.
"I'm already the camp's healer," he said to himself. "Adding 'budding chemist with questionable ethics' to the resume isn't that much of a stretch."
The Breaking Bad jokes practically wrote themselves.
Of course, there were details to work out. He needed to get the timing right, make sure the props were convincing enough, and find excuses to carry suspicious substances without raising too many questions.
But it was doable. And once he had it down, he'd have a reliable combat spell he could use openly.
Second priority: The Mending Charm.
On paper, it was absurdly simple. First-year students learned it to fix broken quills and torn pages. Point your wand, say the word, and damaged objects restored themselves.
In the apocalypse, it was basically a superpower.
Tools wore out. Weapons broke. Vehicles stopped working. Having the Mending Charm meant infinite logistics. It was a portable workshop that fit in his pocket.
A car with a busted engine was scrap metal to everyone else. To Lucien, it was transportation waiting to be unlocked. A radio that died at a critical moment could be restored, reestablishing communication when it mattered most. Weapons that jammed or shattered could be made whole again.
And then there were his books. God, his textbooks. They were irreplaceable, the only magical education he had access to. Being able to repair them if they were damaged was worth the effort by itself.
But the applications went deeper.
Imagine having to abandon a safehouse because walkers found it. Before leaving, he could sabotage every useful item there. Anyone who arrived later would find nothing but junk. But he could come back anytime and fix everything with a few flicks of his wand.
It was denial of resources to enemies combined with a personal insurance policy.
There was even a vague memory tickling the back of his mind, something about the Mending Charm being dangerous if misused on living tissue. He couldn't remember the details, just that it was mentioned somewhere as a cautionary tale.
If that was true, and if he could weaponize it under the right conditions...
Well, that would be another card to keep up his sleeve.
But the Mending Charm was proving to be the most difficult spell he'd ever attempted. Harder than Episkey, which had required medical knowledge and notes from a previous owner to barely scrape together. Harder than the Water-Making Spell, which still only worked half the time.
He'd tried dozens of times. Hundreds, maybe. The wand movement felt wrong. The incantation didn't flow. His magic just... refused to cooperate.
If he hadn't managed to learn the Scouring Charm and the Water-Making Spell shortly after his initial failures with the Mending Charm, he might have seriously questioned whether he had any magical talent at all.
But he'd keep trying. Because the Mending Charm was too useful to give up on.
Those were the short-term priorities. Achievable goals that would dramatically improve his survival odds.
Long-term, though... long-term, he had his sights set on something bigger.
The Shield Charm.
Lucien flipped to the section on defensive magic in The Essential Defence Against the Dark Arts, found the brief mention of the Shield Charm, and stared at the complete lack of notes or diagrams surrounding it.
The previous owner of the book had apparently not been interested in defense.
The Shield Charm was sixth-year material. It was advanced magic that required more than technical skill. It demanded the right mindset, a willingness to stand your ground and push back against incoming threats. Most students did not master it until they had practiced for months.
He was still a kid. He had no teacher and no practice partner. And he had only a few textbooks filled with spotty notes.
"It would be nice to learn the Muggle-Repelling Charm too," he continued, talking to himself because there was no one else to listen. "Or the Undetectable Extension Charm. Both incredibly useful for my current situation."
The Muggle-Repelling Charm could keep walkers away from a safehouse, or at least make them less likely to investigate. Worth its weight in gold.
The Extension Charm would let him carry supplies, weapons, maybe even people in a space that looked too small to hold them. The tactical applications were endless.
Except, the Extension Charm wasn't even taught at Hogwarts. And Muggle-Repelling was N.E.W.T.-level. Which meant he had exactly zero chance of learning either one without help.
He glared at the book in his hands.
"You know," he said, addressing the absent previous owner, "you really could've been more ambitious with your education."
"I get it. You wanted to be a Healer. It's a noble profession, very respectable. But did that really mean you had to ignore everything else?"
"You couldn't have, I don't know, taken a few Defense Against the Dark Arts electives? Maybe learned some protective spells in case your patients got violent? You could have gone full double agent. You train as a Healer, join Voldemort's ranks as a medic, feed information to the Order, and then get reassigned to Hogwarts as a Defense professor when it all went wrong. It would have made for a much more interesting life. And you would have left me better notes."
The Full Body-Bind Curse first. Then the Mending Charm if he could crack it. Then, maybe, if he survived long enough and got lucky, he'd figure out the Shield Charm.
As for the rest, those would have to wait. The road ahead was long.