Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 77: The Hidden Books
James put his hands inside the opening and pulled the contents outside.
"That's all?" Harry wasn't expecting much given the size of the hole, but he felt a bit disappointed when he saw his father pull out four books and a small black box.
"That's it. The isn't much room in there. Our ancestors must have considered these, the most important ones to preserve." James looked down at the books.
He then walked to a nearby marble table and placed the four books and the box on top.
"Lily!, we found the books, come here."
"That's great, dear! Give me a second, I'm almost done here."
Moments later, they saw her coming over with a wooden jewelry box in her hands.
"What did you pick for Lyra?" Asked James.
"Well…I couldn't decide on one so I selected a few pieces for her to choose from later at home." Lily smiled and placed the box on the table. This one made a loud noise at the impact.
"That looks heavy…" Harry noticed.
James didn't seem to care that much about his wife filling a box with expensive jewels.
"Let's see those books." Lily picked the book at the top.
"Malgamum Compendium…it is written in Latin."
She pointed out, not that she was having any trouble reading it.
Harry took the second one.
"Urgg…this one is in old Gaelic."
"Can you read it?" Asked James.
"Just a bit…but I can already tell I'm not interested in this, This is a book about druid magic." Harry explained.
"Oh, I didn't know we had any druids in our family," James said with interest.
"Is an old family. Maybe an ancestor married someone from a druid clan and their descendants inherited a few spells. They are not very useful thoughts. Druid magic can be strong but it has many downsides, like only being able to do certain magic under specific circumstances or needing a large number of druids to perform the strongest conjurations."
"You seem to know a lot of them. How is that?" His father asked.
"I knew someone who was obsessed with this type of ancient magic…"
'She also read a lot about shamans and their elemental rituals. Now, those were a bit more useful. ' He recalled.
Harry placed the book down and took the next one.
James had noticed that his son didn't want to go into details about that topic and didn't ask any more questions. Although Harry had told them many things about his previous life. His tales always become very vague when it comes to talking about his old companions. Harry uses the terms 'a friend did this' or 'I knew someone who liked that', but never mentions the names of those people.
"Human transfigurations" Harry read the name of the book in his hands.
The title caught the attention of James and Lily.
"Human transfigurations?" Lily observed the cover of the book.
"But those are not illegal. Even I could turn someone into a pig."
"Yes, there is also the animagus transformation. They form part of the human transfiguration branch. They are regulated by the Ministry but not illegal." Said James.
Harry grew more curious and started to flip through the contents of the book. At least this one was written in fairly modern English. At first, he only found some basic transfigurations that even modern Hogwarts students could perform.
"Ah…I think I see why this is here."
"Well, tell us. What is it?" James looked at him.
"Yes, what did you find?" Lily approached and looked at the page he was in.
"Permanens mutatio…around midway through the book, it starts to talk into detail about permanent transfigurations that can be performed on the human body," Harry commented.
"Permanent?" Lily frowned. All the transfigurations she knew had temporary effects. Once the magic runs out, the transfiguration ends and the object of the spells returns to whatever form it has. When it comes to humans, the effects last even less, because the person's own magic will interfere with the spell itself.
"What kind of transfigurations are we talking about?" Asked James.
"Growing extra limbs, become taller, bigger, shorter, change the gender…there are lots of them here." Harry talked as he flipped through the pages.
"Can it be used on others?" Lily wanted to know.
"Yes, and can even be used against the will of the target…that seems to be the main form of use, that is described here," Harry said.
"That horrifying!, to permanently change someone against their will like that…" Lily exclaimed.
"Why did my family have something like this?…" James wondered.
"What about that one, Mom?" Harry pointed at the one she had been reading.
"This one is filled with some very nasty dark curses… " Lily pushed the old tome away from her.
"I stopped reading when I got to one curse that would liquefy a person's intestines and make them come out from their…you know."
"That sounds useful." Harry glanced at the book.
"Harry!, how can you say that?" His father reprimanded him.
"I didn't mean that particular one. But knowing a few of these old curses could save your life one day. " He tried to explain his reasoning.
"How so?" Lily seems genuinely curious.
"Modern protections like the protego charm would not work against many of these old curses. Also, using spells your opponent is not familiar with can be very helpful since they would not know how to counter you."
Having said that, Harry had zero interest in that book. In his past, he had already gone through the entire Black family library, as well as the ones of many death eaters they had killed. There will be nothing new for him to learn from there.
His eyes moved to the last book, hoping that this one would have something useful.
It had a black leather exterior and no title or wording of any kind on the surface.
"Anything interesting there?" Lily gave him a few minutes to read before approaching him. She noticed it was written in Latin and filled with symbols on every page.
"These are rituals." Harry finally said.
"Rituall…well, I was expecting at least one of those here," James said.
"What kind of rituals?" Lily asked.
"Let's see….this one is to enhance some of your senses, there are some for your physical abilities…magical capacity, being able to see at night, resistance to poisons and venoms, resistance to elements. Seems quite complete"
"Oh, those sounds too good to be true. I bet there is some downside to them." She never had the chance to study ritual spells as the Ministry declared any information about them as illegal, but she knew that nothing was completely free in this world.
"There are plenty of downsides." James joined the conversations.
"I heard so many horror stories about people who performed rituals on themselves. Let me tell you about it."