Julian had no idea that he had just landed himself in Voldemort's sights. He was far too busy devouring the last scraps of information in the modern book on magical fundamentals.
He finished the final paragraph and closed the book with a faint frown. The last topic discussed was the origin of the magic wizards used, and it was, frankly, useless.
According to the text, nobody truly knew where magic came from. Wizards had simply been using it for as long as recorded history existed, treating it as a given rather than a mystery worth solving.
That is a little worrying if this book is being honest, Julian thought, brows furrowing.
He set the modern book aside and turned his attention to the "ancient" volume.
...
Choosing to read the modern fundamentals before the ancient one paid off almost immediately. The very first section in the old text dealt with the origin of magical creatures.
According to this dusty relic, most magical beasts had not appeared naturally at all. They were the result of experiments done by ancient wizards on local animals or on pre existing magical species.
There were exceptions, though. Phoenixes, thunderbirds, unicorns, and dragons were all listed as naturally occurring, as far back as the author could trace. Those species had supposedly always been part of the world.
The biggest source of new magical creatures, however, had been ancient alchemists. In their attempts to unravel the mysteries of existence, they tampered with the natural order so aggressively that entirely new species emerged as a side effect.
Julian moved to the next topic.
The fundamentals of transfiguration described in the ancient book were almost identical to those in the modern text, with only a few subtle differences in phrasing and emphasis. That part did not surprise him much.
The third topic, though, stopped him cold.
Spell crafting.
According to this book, ancient wizards did not, as a rule, learn pre made spells. There were no standard incantations for everyday use. Instead, they created spells themselves, from scratch, for whatever purpose they needed.
Julian was not shocked by that part. Formal wizarding schools did not exist back then, so of course there had to be a different system.
The real problem was how they went about it.
The text described a process where the caster imbued their will into their focus, then shaped the resulting magic according to their own understanding of the subject, letting power flow in direct response to their knowledge and intent.
It felt uncomfortably familiar.
If that sounded similar, it was because it practically was his enchanting method. At first glance, their spell crafting process was almost the same as how Julian forged his rings.
The key difference was control.
The ancient wizards' method involved suggesting to the magic what it should do, coaxing it, which often led to unstable results. Julian, by contrast, forced the magic into the shape he wanted with the weight of his own soul, resulting in something far more consistent and predictable.
No one can ever know about this, he thought, feeling his expression harden. If they find out, I will never be safe.
Clearly this book had been written before spell creation shifted to rely on arithmancy and astrology, which had been the dominant method for the last thousand years.
Spells and enchantments from far earlier than that still functioned, still held power that outstripped most modern work.
If anyone discovered that Julian essentially wielded a refined version of that ancient spell crafting method, the entire magical world would come after him. They would not allow someone like that to exist freely without demanding that he share everything.
He was not all that surprised to see the parallels between ancient human magic and Elvish crafting. If the underlying rules of magic were the same in both worlds, then it made sense that two different cultures might arrive at similar ways of using it.
Still, seeing it written in black and white made his stomach twist.
...
It was not all bad news.
Thanks to this book, Julian finally had the faint outline of how he might eventually apply his forging style to actual spell creation.
I am not trying that any time soon, though, he decided immediately. Just mastering my current system is already hard enough.
He glanced around at the shelves surrounding him, an entire library full of knowledge that still made him feel like he was only scratching the surface.
The magic he had shown so far looked impressive to his peers at first glance, but he knew better. Every professor could see it for what it was, basic work, simple tricks anyone with sufficient skill could replicate after watching once.
That was without even factoring in the so called pinnacle wizards like Dumbledore, who stood well above nearly everyone else in sheer mastery.
Julian was not foolish enough to assume Dumbledore represented the absolute ceiling of this magic system. More likely, the limitation was time. There was just not enough of it in a normal human lifespan to climb higher than that.
In that sense, Julian actually agreed with Voldemort on one point, at least in theory.
Immortality, or at least agelessness, was extremely useful, maybe even necessary, if one intended to push magic to its furthest limits.
The problem was in the method.
Voldemort's chosen path came with a nasty side effect. Splitting the soul like that crippled your potential in exchange for survival.
From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, one life traded for endless time to work with was a very good deal. Especially when you could, supposedly, undo the damage later by reclaiming the fragment and healing the soul with genuine regret.
It had struck Julian as far too easy when he read that little detail.
Humans regret things constantly. They feel genuine remorse for even small mistakes. That made the bar for "real" regret laughably low.
Yet truly evil people seemed to stumble on that step every time. They could not regret what they had done, not in the way that mattered.
Which, when he thought about it, said a lot more about them than it did about the magic.