Serena Snape: Love of Magic

July 17, 1976 / Serena PoV

For the next two weeks, I was on a new schedule that I easily adapted to, I had rented a room at the Leaky Cauldron for the rest of the summer, I would get up and eat breakfast in the muggle world or on-site. After breakfast I immediately went to the Hag's shop, who by the way, I had finally discovered her name, Mary Cordovin, and brewed potions all day, in fact, I didn't mind it as much as I initially thought I would, I thought that without Serena's love for potions I would get tired of the repetition, but on the contrary, they were fascinating in their own right. Not to mention that Mary wouldn't give me any simple potions to make since they didn't sell those types of potions in her shop, instead they were all dangerous poisons so I had to keep a reasonable amount of attention to the cauldrons, it turned into really nice moments of practice, little by little I was making fewer mistakes as I followed Severus' memories while I brewed the potions.

Once I finished with my work schedule, I was heading to practice for a couple of hours, I had chosen the Dean Forest as a place to train, thanks to the density of the trees and the indiscriminate use of copper cloud, it was easy to keep my training a secret, the first thing I had tried was to finish testing the Magia Baiser skills, I thought there wouldn't be much to test since I could already use the Schiavo skill.

I could fly with extreme ease, my magic blasts were powerful but it was just raw magic, at worst, it was dark magic or something extremely similar. I could feel that they were almost the same and I reeked, for lack of a better word, of dark magic when I transformed so using my transformations in the open without being covered by my clouds was a very bad idea, it would attract the attention of many people that I did not want to find out about me.

Next, my web skills, I couldn't use them in my base transformation so I had to transform into its evolved version and La Verità. The abnormal amount of magic I gained from my transformations could also be harnessed by my wand magic. My wand and my Frusta Dominazione, which could be used as a normal wand, even in La Verità when it turned into a stick.

The amount of magic I could use in my transformations was so ridiculous that a simple stupify could cause some small craters and go through trees if I didn't regulate it well, and that was the least harmless of my spells, a diffindo made a cut almost 50 meters long after going through half a dozen trees, it was absurd.

The problem was that my magic consumption was abysmal, I wasted abnormal amounts of magic for the minimum of my spells. I had to learn to reduce the amount I released and used when I was transformed if I wanted to use it efficiently. Lord Enorme as Imitatio was always in his La Verità form controlling the flow of magic he released, even in his daily life he could maintain his transformation, I was aiming for exactly that.

I was partially successful, while I still couldn't regulate the amount of magic that was escaping in my La Verità transformation, my normal transformation was actually much easier, countless hours training to regulate the output of wasted magic served a lot, I could now maintain it all day except for when I was sleeping, I still couldn't maintain it unconsciously, maybe one day.

Best of all, reducing the amount of magic I spent on my transformation reduced my more… demonic? Succubus-like? features. The point, both my wings and horns and the "smell" of dark magic disappeared by restricting the output of magic, it was something I was happy about, and coupled with the fact that I could change clothes when I was transformed, I could now go out in public with my base transformation always present.

The only thing that gave me away were my eyes and cheeks, my pupils were still gold stars and I had matching little black stars on my cheeks, pretty distinctive markings, but more acceptable than horns, wings and a kinky outfit.

There was only one thing wrong with my transformation, using so much of my magic in the amounts I used to train, used up a lot of energy, it was really normal but the annoying thing was the complete and ridiculous amount of lust that hit me afterwards, the more I used the more my lust seemed to want to come out, but obviously there was no goal in sight, by the end of the tests I could only think of one thing.

It was so bad that I had to go back to the Cauldron, run to my room, lock and silence the room before I masturbated. It wasn't the first time old Serena had pleased herself, but it was definitely the first time I had done it as a woman and it was… an interesting experience. I must say that it was much more comfortable for me to do it this way than when I was a man, there was no kind of dysphoria associated with the action, it was a pretty big step forward, the good thing was that while lust was really part of Baiser, I wasn't obsessed with magical girls so it was a win for me.

I also learned that keeping my newfound lust at bay with my Occlumency was of no use, in fact, it was much more harmful to do so than not to, cutting off lust and obsession, which was the core of Magia Baiser's powers, immediately cut off my magic, I couldn't transform into La Verità and her normal version was extremely weakened, so I had to endure the attacks of lust after my training sessions that ended with me masturbating several times.

It was annoying, but certainly not unmanageable, but it was something to keep in mind if I were to use it in other, more complicated circumstances, in fact, I already was now, even in my permanent state, while I wasn't expending too much of Baiser's magic, I was still using small amounts of it constantly, this causing me to be constantly horny.

Was it annoying? Yes, but not unbearable, I was a boy in my past life, I went through adolescence, I know what it feels like to be horny 24/7, I know how to ignore it, although before it was easier to concentrate on the dysphoria to ignore it, now that I was more comfortable it became a little more difficult, although not so much since I could please myself more regularly than before.

Getting back, the next thing was practicing with Roy Mustang's template, the flame alchemist, it was really a bad idea to practice with fire in a forest, but it was necessary, flame alchemy was more... complicated than I thought and at the same time not. The hardest part of alchemy was always understanding it, understanding the structure and properties of what one wanted to manipulate was the hardest part, but it was something I could skip with the memories of the template implanted in my mind, I had all the knowledge I needed to use flame alchemy and the necessary circle, I had decided to do without the gloves, even though I really liked them, they were extremely out of place in my daily attire, not to mention that I had no replacement in case they were destroyed at some point, was I paranoid since I had 6 identical pairs? Yes, but they were my gloves and I wanted to keep them stored, so I decided to keep them in my inventory and treasure them, instead, I tattooed the circles on the back of my hand.

Funnily enough there was a tattoo parlour in Diagon Alley, a blessing as I really didn't want to go to a muggle one, it was 1970 and I shuddered to think of the conditions I'd be in, so now, I wore the transmutation circles permanently and practised sparking with my wandless magic, which was easy.

The mechanics of the Flame Alchemist were simple, increase the density of oxygen to a volatile level and create pathways that linked the sparks it created to the target, it sounded easy, the hard part was actually doing it in practice. In the span of a snap, in a single instant, I had to do all the calculations necessary to manipulate the oxygen towards the target, too slow, the spark would not ignite the pathway and would not cause flames, too fast and the oxygen would move away from the target burning everything around where I aimed. I also had to create the oxygen pathway thin enough so that it would not blow up in my face, but the thinner it was, the harder it was for the spark to ignite the pathway, suffice it to say that my brass ring worked overtime to keep from burning me, I had a lot more practice ahead of me if I wanted to be on par with Roy Mustang.

And lastly, the Lord Ruler template. I had started storing the attributes in my metalminds, it took time but it was something necessary, strength was the easiest to store, I was a witch so the moments where I really needed to use strength were really rare so I was always storing at least half of my physical strength. Like physical speed, as long as I wasn't training or preparing potions I needed all my speed to react to the potions. I stored part of my speed, the energy part while eating or sleeping was also relatively problem-free, the annoying thing was the other attributes, health, mental speed and senses were annoying, most of the time I stored them when I had some free time, for example mental speed I could store a portion when I was eating or taking a shower, I didn't take out enough to be able to choke while eating but enough to make it take almost twice as long to finish the food.

That being said, I was able to quickly refill several MetalMinds, I had also realized, that there was no need to keep my jewelry on my person constantly, it was something that Lord Ruler did unconsciously after centuries of habit, but I had another option, I could refill MetalMinds and store them in my inventory and refill other MetalMinds, the attributes did not degrade as long as they were stored in a MetalMind, not to mention that the pocket space was timeless, so I could bring any filled MetalMinds and decant them anytime I needed.

I still kept my piercings, rings, and bracelets, I liked my look the way it was, but it was nice to know I could store attributes almost infinitely without being completely covered in metal, I was only limited by the space in my inventory.

I even transmuted most of the filled metalminds into beads to see if even separating them with alchemy would keep the attributes they were filled with, the answer was yes, so I had a set of rings to feruchemically pull, a set of beads to allomantically burn, and a last set of beads to do metal compounding, aka, using allomancy to enhance the feruchemy of my metalminds, by swallowing my metalminds and then allomantically burning them they would draw out an order of magnitude more feruchemical attribute than stored, aka 10 times more strength, it was just perfect, the only problem was that by burning them I completely lose the metalminds, but having a supply I could carry in my inventory was less of a problem.

On the other hand, I was also practicing with normal Allomantic Burning, I had to get used to the attribute boosts during burning so I had to practice with them, the trick of flying with coins or metal objects pushed into the ground or that were heavier than my normal weight was fantastic, I could fly like Magia Baiser yes, but learning how to do it while pulling and pushing metals didn't require any summoning of my wings and an alternative form of movement never hurt, it was certainly a harder difficulty scale but I was having a lot of fun learning how to use it.

Some Allomantic metals were ridiculous, duralumin especially, it would instantly burn whatever metal I was burning at the time gaining a much greater burst of power, I would have to be careful with its use as it can backfire, it's impossible to regulate its use since the burning is instantaneous and accidents can happen such as risk of sensory overload, but metals aside, duralumin could also enhance my normal magic, by burning them during spell casting I could manage to increase their output strength to the same level as my transformations without actually being so, I was afraid to actually test what La Verità could do with duralumin so it was something I still avoided trying, it had to have some safeguards and somewhere less public than a forest.

Still back to Allomancy, what I used the most was bendalloy, allomantically burning the metal pushes time around me, creating a bubble where time passes faster, 1 gram of bendalloy lasted 5 minutes, the created time bubble lasted for 5 minutes real time, inside the bubble the time was 90/1, I was surprised when the change wasn't 2 minutes for every 15 real seconds like Wayne, but it shouldn't be weird, Rashek had changed his physiology in the Well of Ascension to be an extremely powerful Mistborn, not counting that a bendalloy bubble could be pushed much further, after all, they were involved in light speed travel, so I wouldn't complain that those 5 minutes in real time were 7 and a half hours that I could spend training.

And that time was more than enough for training, especially for storing up the attributes to fill the metal minds, I really didn't want to push my Allomancy to the point of becoming an Allomantic Sage, I knew I was being foolish and needed to consume a lot more metal and while the power boost was welcome, I didn't want to create any addiction to any metal if I could avoid it, or the unwelcome side effects, at least not before I had the right defenses in place, a small price to pay.

The last thing I realized, which to my shame was something that took me a while to realize, my Allomancy was not linked to preservation, Allomancy was a positive end, when they burned they had no power of their own but rather they channeled the power of the preservation fragment which was what powered the Allomancy, that is to say, it shouldn't work outside of the Cosmere, now, it seemed that they were pushed by magic, it was still a positive end since it wasn't my magic that was pushing it but the ambient magic from what I could deduce, which meant that as long as there was magic in the environment I could use Allomancy with peace of mind.

And that was true for any metallic art coming from the Cosmere, Feruchemy which was a neutral purpose, also stored magic and not investiture, but it stored my own magic along with the respective attribute, and I was sure the same would happen with Hemalurgy, the negative purpose of metallic arts, I didn't know if I had spiritual networks or living beings in this universe in general had them to begin with, but I was sure they would work with magic when it came to stealing attributes, not that I was going to use them anytime soon but it was good to know.

All of this meant that the investiture, was it magic, or did my body and the Catalog simply change the way the metallic arts worked so that I could use them in any universe without worrying that they were only usable in Cosmere, I was grateful for that, but still confused, something to reflect on in the future, but it was nothing to worry about, it was a blessing more than anything else.

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