Darius glanced around as he saw the numerous magical circles surrounding the incredibly life-like mannequin that lay on the makeshift bed. Perenelle was waving her wand about, seemingly at random, the magic circles in the air moved a bit and slowly rotated and showed glyphs which he could barely understand, despite studying about them for over a week.

Darius had found healing to be and inordinately pleasant thing to do. As much as he loved studying about magic and making new spells and artefacts, not that he had started healing, he felt he had found another new avenue to explore, one he found even more rewarding. Putting aside the fact that it was a new branch of magic, something he loved anyways, it was a fascinating and in-depth subject. Healing could scale up from a minor wound or abrasion that could be healed in a jiffy with a small spell to a near dead case which would require multiple healers working in concert to heal the patient.

Healing was a very complicated and knowledge-intensive art. While it was bad enough in the muggle world, being one of the most difficult fields of study; it was far worse in the magical world. The sheer variety of potion, charms, transfiguration, plant-related afflictions, magical beast injuries and accidental or experimental magic that they have to deal with is mind-boggling. Of course, like in all other fields of study there is an underlying theory to it all and once it is grasped, it is much simpler to build on that. And Madam Perenelle was doing exactly that.

“The reason that I consider Divination so important is because it is an integral part of the first part of healing someone, diagnosing exactly what is wrong with them. For instance, if you have a man stabbed by a dagger in the stomach, simply healing the wound and sending him on his way is not an option. For instance, if the dagger had been coated by a poison, the man would succumb to it shortly after, whether he was physically healed or not. Therefore, finding out the exact nature of the problem is very important.

These days charms have taken over most of the functions of divination. Charms as a whole is a very versatile subject, with spells available for nearly every task imaginable but every spell is limited by the fact that it only does exactly what it was designed for, very unlike transfiguration which has much more malleability with the usage of its spells.”

“That was a very good example if your attempt was to get me to be strongly focused on the theoretical parts of it. I had never considered something like that. And you’re right about charms and transfiguration as well, I noticed the same when I practiced my various spells.”

“Good, always keep your eyes out for such little oddities. They are the cornerstones of paving your own path and style in magic. But for now, lets head back to the subject of divination. Here, watch this mannequin. It has various settings which can be used to stimulate over 30 of the most common cases at St. Mungo’s. This first one is magical exhaustion. It is a shockingly high number of patients who are not fully aware of their own capabilities and who often strain their magical cores. Such incidents can have negative long-term effects on the core if not treated promptly and properly.”

Perenelle proceeded to wave her wand over the mannequin twice in two separate and elaborate wand movements, before the entire body began to glow in a pale white sheen. As Darius watched the entire light quickly becoming rather greyish in color.

“The white sheen at the beginning is the sign of everything being alright with the person. Any changes after that allows us to correctly diagnose the problem. The entire body greying is immediate signs of magical exhaustion. There are a few ways to treat this, but I will get to that later. For now, let’s stick to diagnosing.”

Darius watched as she changed the setting and then used the same spell again. This time the body shifted from the white glow only in the region in one of the arms. The light around the right arm was seemingly fractured in appearance.

“This is also a common problem. People often get injured and get fractures and the like when practicing magic, dueling or experimenting with spells. The glow still being white shows that there is no magical damage of any kind. The fractured light is an indicator for a bone fracture. Now, the last one for today before we move on to theory.”

She reset the mannequin and performed the spell again, this time showing a very different result. There was a slight trail of purplish-black light along the mouth and a lot more purple and black light at the stomach. There were also vein like branches of black reaching towards its extremities, like some sort of partial nervous system.

“This is a magical venom, specifically that of a Runespoor. Most victims don’t survive long enough to get treated of the venom anyway. But this does mark one of the more common cases at Mungo’s, magical poisons and venoms are common problems. The purple you saw was a sign of a magical toxicant and the black marks were the physical signs of it.”

The two of them continued in a similar vein over the rest of the holidays. Madam Perenelle was careful to regulate the classes so that Darius was not burdened too much and rotated theory and actual healing regularly.

The divination circles were a complete marvel. Though common diagnostic charms which Madam Perenelle had started his lessons with were useful enough, they had nothing on the magic circles. The diagnostic charms could cover a wide range of conditions, but it was nowhere near as all-encompassing as Divination readings. Treating a patient was always easier if you had more detailed information on the problem, nit to mention it made coming up with or creating a cure a lot simpler.

And all the studies with Madam Perenelle tied in very nicely with his continued classes with his mother as well. She was very happy that he had kept up with his potions practice. She had told him to do so before he left for school every year and he faithfully kept his word that he would. She held Severus Snape in utter disdain for his ability to teach potioneering.

In her own words, “The boy is an absolute genius when it comes to potions, one who comes around once in a generation. He is the youngest potions master in Britain in the last couple of centuries and kudos to him for that, in fact some of the papers written by him for the Brewer’s list newsletter were extremely helpful in my studies. But he can’t teach worth a damn, writing out words on a board and asking his students to get on with it does not qualify as teaching under any circumstances.”

Darius had also long figured out the trick pulled by the surly teacher in regards with words suddenly appearing on the board.Far as he figured out the word had already been written before-hand and the only thing the teacher did was to remove the notice-me-not charm affixed on the board, thereby making it appear as I the writing had manifested instantaneously.

Darius had told her about the RoR as well and she was quite fascinated with the concept though she didn’t dwell on the subject other than urging him to continue making good use of the opportunity to experiment with potions. His mother was sure he was already more than ready to give the exam for the position of a potions apprentice and would be ready for mastery in less than a year later. Of course, neither of them was in it for the fame and both agreed to hold off the exam until after his schooling was over. Taking the test now meant drawing a lot of unwanted attention their way and they weren’t keen to do so.

Just a week before the holidays were to finish, the mother and son duo also finished their shopping at Diagon alley. There wasn’t much to do honestly. He already had all the books for his year and many more beyond that. So, he just picked up a few replacements and additions he needed in his potions kit before heading off to Madam Malkins to get a new set of robes. He had had a growth spurt over the last couple of years and needed new school robes as well as pick up the dress robes he had commissioned for the yule ball, not that he was supposed to know what it was for. His mother had told him all about it of course, despite the fact that it was to be kept a secret from the students. She didn’t believe in withholding information from her son for such a trivial thing.

His new dress robes looked good though. Not as good as his basilisk hide dueling robes of course, but he couldn’t wear those in a ball anyways. It was a pitch-black design with gold and violet accents. It looked rather royal. He was rather looking forward to the Yule Ball, if for no other reason than to have an amazing night out with Mione. He still remembered that she was rather gorgeously attired in the ball in the books as well as the movies, but he was waiting to see it in real life. She was already very pretty, and he didn’t get where all the talk of her bushy hair or bad looks came from other than maybe petty jealousy. Her chocolate brown hair looked fine just the way it was, and she was quite beautiful for her age and was already growing in to the beautiful woman she would be. Well, it would be no great loss, in fact the longer the other fools took to realize what a catch she was, the better it was for him. He had had a bit of a problem stripping away her obsessive need to follow authority figures and rules but a few glimpses of the darker underbelly of the Wizarding world worked well enough as a shock therapy to set her straight.

Finally it was time to get back to the castle as a sixth year student and he was looking forward to it. He had sent a owl ahead to the castle to Madam Pomfrey to ask for permission to apprentice their but it would take too long for the letter to remember so he could simply speak about it to her face-to-face. And there was the Triwizard tournament to look forward to after all. And check out how many changes his actions had wrought about.