It's hard to believe that we're almost
at the end of first year already! It's only one more week until we'll be
writing our final exams, and there's still so much work to do. I should
have started revising ages ago, there's hardly any time left! Generally
speaking, it's a time for panicking all day and night and re-organising
notes, desperately trying to cram for our exams in the last possible
minutes. Someone could have warned me that they were approaching that
fast! I have tried to keep my studies relatively up to date, and this
ought to help a bit. But I haven't even managed to do all the extra
credit that I still wanted to hand it, to somehow boost my grade. I've
been making stupid mistakes all year round, I need that extra marks as
to not miss the scores I wanted to get. Anyways, this entry is supposed
to be about our penultimate Charms lesson of the year (it's the
penultimate lesson! Help! We only just started such a short while ago!),
and it's the last lesson in which we will actually be learning charms.
I'll need to wait such a long time until we'll get to another class,
it's a horrible thought. And I can't experiment too much whilst on
holidays. That's really too bad... Anyways...

Today's
charms will be the chilling and the warming charm. Both are quite
handy, especially on holidays. Just think of the possibilities of the
chilling charm whenever you're in a hot area without any ventilation.
Hopefully, I will be able to make it work somehow. And if you're skiing,
you can easily use the warming charm to keep your feet from getting too
cold - I think this is going to be my favourite lesson yet!

Scribbling
down the necessary information on the spells on a piece of paper, I
frowned slightly. Again, there seemed to be no indication as to which
syllabe needs to be stressed. But as there is no note on any dangerous
backfiring, it should be alright. Hopefully. I have managed to be quite
safe up to now - which is actually quite a feat, as I'm a walking
disaster zone - but I've seen one backfiring spell. Thankfully it wasn't
too bad, and the colour faded after a week or two. But I wouldn't want
to be caught up in any of these effects! Well, the Warming Charm is the
first charm to practice.

The Warming Charm

• Incantation: Focillo (‘foh-Sill-oh’)
• Wand Movement: Slow clockwise circles that continue while you concentrate.
• Focus: Target of warmth.
• Willpower: Moderate
• Concentration: Moderate. Concentration should be maintained on the thought of warmth and heat.

The
liquid - whatever potion it is supposed to be - is really interesting
in the way that it is supposed to change colours. This kind of reminds
me of the mood rings we were playing with when we were younger, only
that they were changing their colours much faster. It would be
interesting to experiment with it as to find out which colour variations
are actually possible and whether or not you could tone the
temperatures down to a level which may be touched, so that we could have
our very own magical mood rings! That would be really cool!

Anyways:
We've been drawing circles with our wands again and again, which is why
this should not be a problem. And concentrating on the phial should be
alright as well. The only problem will probably be to hold that
concentration until the necessary temperature for the liquid's colour
change is reached. We don't know that temperature though, unfortunately.
So it's going to be try and error, until we manage to reach a light
fluourescent green. By the way, how do you see that a colour is
flourescent without turning off the light?

Thinking
but of the little speck of grey in the phial, I will it to become warm
and to turn green. Circling my wand slowly, I can almost see the colour
change and the rising temperature using my inner eye - unfortunately,
nothing happens in the physical world. Well, I do think that there has
been a slight change of colour for a split second, but I was most likely
mistaken. Thinking about the warmth - what could I imagine? What image
would work? As it's supposed to be a stream of warm air, I settled on
thinking about a hairdryer that was pointed at the phial. Only that I
wasn't drying my hair, but warming this liquid. But a hairdryer should
be capable to do both. Except that this visualisation does not lead to
any further results.

Well, it's
almost like a hairdryer - except that there is no actually air movement
involved. So the image couldn't have worked. So it's more like infra-red
light which is used for warming something. Those infra-red lamps, like
to hatch chicken eggs. Yes, this should probably work. And it does work,
though there still is much improvement to be done. The liquid is not
green all over, but still has grey specks all over the place. And the
green is certainly not as light as it is supposed to be. But it's green.
I really hope that we will be allowed to borrow these phials for a
couple of days for further practice. At least it's working now, and the
next try was already a bit better. It's just a matter of practice
apparently!

Now, it's time to
practice the opposite. As for a visualisation, it should probably work
to think of some ventilation - though there is no light. But I've no
idea how else to think of a cool cone to chill something down.
Hopefully, this will be enough.

The Chilling Charm

• Incantation: Infrigido (‘in-Frig-ee-doh’)
• Wand Movement: Slow counter-clockwise circles that continue while you concentrate.
• Focus: Target of cold.
• Willpower: Moderate
• Concentration: Moderate. Concentration should be maintained on the thought of cold and chill.

Again,
this charm does not appear to be too complicated, but I know better
than to let myself be lured into a sense of wrong safety. But the
process of casting this spell seems to be pretty much the same as when
casting the warming charm. In fact, the only differences that I can spot
are the incantation (of course), the reversed direction of the wand
movement (counterclockwise instead of clockwise) and thinking of cold
and chill instead of warmth. The procedure of casting seems to be
similar. Hence, it should be easier as the warming charm worked somewhat
already.

In fact, this logic seems
to work. It is much easier to cast the Chilling Charm, and I even
managed to get flecks of purple on my very first try! To top this huge
success, casting the chilling charm appears to become more and more easy
as I continue casting it! That's great, as I would have never expected
any charm to work that easily and especially not that soon! It's my
lucky day today for sure. Though I'll definitely keep practicing. It
could have been mere luck, and I wouldn't want it to fail during the
practical exam. That would be a catastrophe for sure!

And
if I could get my hands on that potion, I could try and start to build
my very own magical mood ring. But I definitely need to study a bit
(*cough* much) more in Potions before this project is a realistic one,
it's definitely not one of my best subjects and it will probably never
be. But this is something I want to work out, so I'll have to study
potions until I understand how it's done. I will succeed, I'm sure of
it!

As the exams are approaching,
I'm cutting this entry short right here. I'll need to study some more. I
hope everything will work out alright, wish me luck!

Excerpts about the Charms are taken from Quintessential Magic: An Introduction to Charms (2nd Ed.), Chapter 18.