"Incendio!"
Ted aimed his wand at the target, shifting it slightly to mimic the movements described in the book he had studied. A few sparks shot out of the wand in response — but they fizzled out less than thirty centimeters away from him.
Observing the result, Ted gave a small, satisfied nod at his first successful cast, then immediately raised his wand to try again. Adjusting his movements ever so slightly, the next attempt managed to send the sparks about thirty-five centimeters forward.
"Incendio. Incendio. Incendio."
Without bothering to check the exact results of each attempt, Ted fired relentless streaks of magic into the air, visualizing the effect he wanted and refining his movements with every cast.
Eventually, one of the shots managed to strike the wall in front of him — though it still missed the target entirely. The movements were still wide and imprecise, but it was progress. He had performed the magic correctly.
Even if doing so left him noticeably tired.
Nodding to himself once more, Ted continued. Over and over, he cast the fire-making spell, repeating the cycle for nearly an hour. Each round of practice and recovery lasted somewhere between ten to twenty minutes — pushing himself to the very brink of exhaustion every time, before sitting down cross-legged to meditate and recover his lost energy.
With every round, his control improved. And as his mastery grew, so too did his efficiency — the amount of magic consumed by each cast steadily decreasing.
But at the start, every single attempt drained far more energy than necessary, forcing him to stop and recover much sooner.
Now, seated in meditation, Ted calmly analyzed the results.
In the past hour alone, he had cast the spell over five hundred times — and, crucially, by the end of each round, he still retained a little magic within him. Not much, but enough.
Draining one's magical reserves completely was dangerous. Doing so would lead to unconsciousness — or worse.
<=============>
During his earlier training in wandless magic, Ted had reached this critical limit more than once — often by accident, and often while creating all sorts of unintended effects.
Wandless magic was notoriously difficult to control. A wizard had to feel their magic, gather it, release it — and only then could they even attempt to control it properly.
And usually, control was supposed to be the easiest part.
The problem was... released magic without control didn't always behave.
Without that control, wandless magic tended to act based either on instinct — usually triggered by high emotion — or, if done through pure willpower, it would twist itself according to the wizard's own magical nature.
But Ted, calm by nature and trying to achieve control through deliberate will, struggled greatly.
Ironically, those with weaker or more mellow magical natures often found that stage of wandless magic by far the easiest. Their magic left the body slowly, gently, giving them time to shape it properly. Muggle-born, in particular, often fell into this category — their magic less aggressive, less entrenched.
But Ted's case was the opposite.
He had gained the ability to feel magic two years ago in Ollivanders — an occurrence that, according to his mother's books, marked significant natural talent. Most wizards required months of meditation near strong magic sources to even begin sensing their own magic. Many didn't achieve it until after receiving their wand.
Gathering magic by one's own will was a feat most wizards wouldn't achieve in their lifetime. Something that usually required countless hours of dedication and endless attempts. Yet Ted had succeeded within a single week of half-hearted effort — simply because he'd been bored in class.
For him, feeling magic came easily. Gathering it? Not difficult either. Releasing it? Easier still.
By that point, the moment he willed it, the magic inside him would surge and move wherever he directed it.
But control... control was where things became problematic.
Casting a spell required magic to leave the body — but if that magic wasn't stabilised quickly enough, the results could be catastrophic.
Magic left unchecked didn't care about the caster's intent. It would do whatever it wanted.
Imagine using Incendio — only for your own hand to catch fire in the process.
Not exactly ideal.
Wands, naturally, simplified this process. Magic channelled through a wand didn't distort the same way — it retained its shape and intent far longer, giving the caster the time they needed.
Wandless magic didn't grant such luxuries.
For most, their released magic stayed relatively stable — lingering in the air long enough to be shaped. But for someone like Ted, whose magical nature ran deep and wild beneath his calm exterior, the moment his magic left his body it was a race against time.
He had perhaps two seconds. Sometimes less.
If he failed to shape it in that window, anything could happen. The magic might explode. It might summon something random. It might erase part of a wall. It might shake the earth beneath his feet.
All of these things had happened to him before.
Luckily, no one had died in the process — though he had injured a few students early on, back when one particularly rough attempt had caused the earth itself to tremble beneath the school grounds.
Eventually, he had made it.
Ted could now cast the simplest of spells wandlessly with reasonable control. But anything more complicated — or anything dangerous — he still avoided. Not because he lacked power, but because he couldn't reliably predict what might happen once that power left his body.
And that — more than anything — was why he'd been so eager to get his wand.
<=============>
Over the last three hours, Ted had made solid progress.
He dedicated and hour at a time to a single spell — then twenty minutes to recover his magical energy through meditation and go over his results. It was a rhythm that worked for him. Efficient. Disciplined.
His focus remained on elemental spells — basic, but foundational. Mastering them was essential to mastering everything else.
Conjuration spells were very hard for him to perform wandlessly, and he hadn't succeeded thus far.
So, today, he had added three new spells to his repertoire: Incendio, Aguamenti, and Rociferre — the fire-making spell, the water-making spell, and the stone-conjuring spell.
In all of them, he had reached a respectable level of mastery.
Both Incendio and Aguamenti now consistently reached their targets, with the produced fire and water each roughly the size of a football. According to his books, that level of power was expected from third or even forth-year students. Albeit the bare minimum.
Rociferre, however, wasn't a spell taught at Hogwarts at all — largely dismissed as useless. It could only conjure a large rock, incapable of even launching it at an opponent.
But Ted had found its worth.
It was a base spell — the foundation for other, far more versatile conjurations like summoning stone walls or armour. Simple building blocks — and Ted was a firm believer in mastering foundations.
With the thirty minutes he had left at the end, Ted ran through the various spells he had already learned to cast wandlessly, testing them again to see how their effects had changed.
The results were exactly as expected.
Every spell consumed less magic than before and worked more smoothly — stable, controlled, efficient.
He had accumulated a wide range of spells — each designed for specific effects, useful in very particular situations. But in a face-to-face battle? Almost all of them, save for one, were next to useless.
That one exception was Expelliarmus.
With the wand, the spell had become far faster and much more accurate at longer ranges, allowing Ted to hit the target in a flash. The wand didn't change the power of his magic — but it refined it, stabilised it, and allowed for precision that was difficult to achieve wandlessly.
His control had grown to the point where even simple spells like Levitation and Unlocking Charms could now be cast silently. Not perfectly — but consistently enough for his current standard.
Nodding to himself one last time, satisfied with his progress, Ted finally turned and left the room, making his way toward the gym's entrance.
"How was it? Managed to cast a spell?" Jim called out, catching sight of Ted leaving.
Ted didn't answer directly.
Instead, he gave a small, mysterious smile — faint, calculated — before walking away, once again stepping onto the old, uneven cobblestone roads.
<=============>
Later that day, the moon shined, reflecting on the water of a small fountain in the Blake's mansion garden. In the middle of it sat a rock statue of a smiling young woman in a summer dress that seemed like it was waving with the wind.
Ted, who had returned home a few hours ago, was now fiddling with the small box he had gotten for his birthday. He was sitting on the edge of the fountain as he passed the box from one hand to the other while looking at the dark sky.
Ever since he was old enough to understand his mother's fate, Ted would always spend the night of his birthday and the anniversary of her death sitting here, watching the stars. According to Nigel, this was her favorite place in the mansion. She would sit there and watch the stars for hours.
He would sit at the same place and just look at the stars, shutting his brain for a single night of the year. Though this night was bound to be different. For some reason, his father decided they were going on a trip.
"The Lord is waiting outside, Master Theodor," Nigel, wearing his usual black butler suit, informed him as he stood near the large arched door that led to the gardens.
"Thank you, Nigel," Ted answered him expressionlessly, moving past the waiting butler.
Closing the large doors after Ted, Nigel gave a long look at his departing figure before he went to Ted's room and took the large, black and silver suitcase that was placed at the center. Picking it up, it was light, but he trusted Ted to take care of himself; he had watched the young man grow up.
Getting to the car, Ted entered the backseat, where his father already sat. He was speaking to someone through a large cell phone that was in his right hand. He didn't even give Ted a glance as he sat right next to him.
Expecting his actions, Ted just took a book out of his briefcase and started reading. The suitcase Nigel carried to the car was just a decoy. He prepared it ahead of time, as he didn't want to draw any suspicion.
The ride wasn't long, and soon they reached Heathrow Airport. They didn't stop like the many other cars; they just kept driving. The car only stopped a few minutes later near a gate that blocked the passage to the runways.
With a short verification of their identities, soon, the car moved again until finally, it stopped in front of a black business jet with the logo of three angry dog heads, one looking straight and the other ones to each side. The logo was silver in color, and below it, in old English letters, the name BLAKE was written.
This was his father's private jet, though Ted knew nearly nothing about it. He never learned anything regarding planes and aerodynamics... This was Ted's first time here, thats was also the only reason he agreed to go on this trip.
During his last birthday, Ted's father didn't actually give him a traditional gift. Instead, he handed him a paper with a list of questions regarding different aspects of business—math, interactions, economics, etc. Following that, Ted received a present that he wished for, something he valued and needed the most: more freedom.
This test proved to his father that he already knew enough to take over the family business if and when the need arose in the future. Consequently, Ted was no longer required to attend any of the arrangements made by his father unless his father deemed it absolutely indispensable—something that never happened.
Cassius, Ted's father, was by no means a good person in Ted's opinion, but he was fair. He wouldn't lie to someone for his own gain, and he always kept his word when he said he would do something. A deal for him was like an unbreakable vow, and he expected the same from the opposing side.
Just as he wouldn't break his word, he expected others to do the same. Ted remembered overhearing a discussion between his father and Nigel regarding a certain business partner that betrayed them. The following week, the man lost all his assets and was even tried in a hastened trial, resulting in a prison sentence. Cassius was as vindictive as they come when someone went against his rules.
Entering the plane, a pair of young and beautiful female flight attendants in black uniforms greeted them, along with an old captain wearing a black suit and a black captain's hat. His father, like him, didn't like different colors all that much, sticking to the darker colors as long as there was a choice. Coincidentally, for both of them, only silver was an exception.
The interior was nothing special in Ted's opinion—just four wide black leather seats surrounding an ebony wood table. At the back, there was a small fridge, a flat TV screen of the type so expensive it wasn't even on the market, a bathroom stall marked with the letters W.C, and a small fridge on the other side. Taking a seat at the table, Ted looked outside the window, though his field of vision was so short he could barely see ten meters ahead.
His father sat in the seat in front of him and asked one of the two flight attendants to bring him an espresso and a newspaper. He spoke in fluent French, and his eyes never left the window. If Ted didn't know it was dark outside, he would have thought he had seen something interesting.
Moments later, the captain announced through the comms that they got permission to take off. The plane shook a little as it started moving forward, and when it gained enough speed, it finally shot into the night sky, heading east, towards their destination—Paris.
<==============>
Next chapter is in France, and the all characters supposedly speak french, though I won't write in a speech as french isn't on of the languages I know and it will take longer to translate.
Truefully i don't mind doing that, but it will take longer for the chapter to come out, and it might actually be shorter. So unless i see request for the sake of authenticity, You will have to use your imagination...
please VOTE and give me some POWER STONES if you like the story
Let me know if you have any ideas you would like to share about Magical French, and let me know if you would want quidditch in Hogwart or not
Also leave a COMMENT if you don't understand something, or have any idea, I promise I read every comment related to my story, won't address toxic people though..
BTW- if you want you can try the How I Met Your Mother fic I'm writing:
HIMYM:Barney Stinson... But with a vampire system?!