Chapter 61: Wizarding magic

Hermione approached the brick wall and pulled her wand out of her pocket, "Well, then, let me open the wa-"

Only for Tom to interrupt her by placing his hand on her shoulder.

"Give me a second, I'd like to take a look." He smiled and pulled her back.

Hermione was confused but she relented, looking at Natasha in search of an explanation but the redhead just uncaringly shrugged, "Don't look at me. I probably know less theory about magic than even you."

Hermione wryly smiled at that and redirected her gaze back to Tom who was now...

"What the hell are you even doing?" Hermione blurted out as she saw Tom leaning closer to the wall and sniffing it, causing her to cringe hard and subconsciously look towards the door, wishing nobody saw that.

Who knew how many drunks pissed on that wall and he was sniffing it? Bleh.

Tom's eyebrow twitched when he heard her. This was how it was done so this is how he did it! He didn't like the procedure either, alright!?

"I am checking out the wards around Diagon Alley." He sulkily grumbled before continuing his... observations.

That mollified Hermione but she still had a hard time looking at Tom who continued doing all sorts of weird things to the wall.

She couldn't believe she thought like this but... the magician's magic was just weird. At least wizards only needed to wave their wands to get an overview of their wards.

At that moment, Hermione was glad she was a witch and not... whatever Tom was.

"And done." Tom stopped knocking on the wall, and Hermione sighed in relief. At one point, she even thought he would pull his trousers down and start peeing on the wall in the name of checking the wards out.

Tom turned around, only to see extremely amused Natasha, holding back her laughter, and Hermione who was heavily frowning and looked embarrassed for him.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Chuckles." Tom clicked his tongue at Natasha. "At least I now know what kind of wards we will be shortly entering, unlike you who would walk into unknown territory, having no information of what to expect at all."

That did the charm and Natasha stopped smiling, instead, her lips now showed a grimace.

If there was anything she hated, it was exactly that. Her time in the Red Room and SHIELD instilled in her quite deeply the dislike for being uninformed and Tom knew exactly how to use that against her whenever she tried to tease him.

The prick...

"Did you really see through the wards around Diagon Alley so quickly?" Hermione doubtfully asked. It was not that she didn't believe Tom was capable of that. She just... yeah, she didn't believe it.

Tom was not even in the middle of his twenties and hearing he could do this... It sounded too outlandish to her.

In the past three days, the only magic she had seen him using was when he cooked. Other than that, neither Tom nor Natasha seemed to use magic at all. It was completely different from the Weasley household where magic was used for literally everything from cleaning the dishes to taking care of their farmlands.

That's why Hermione subconsciously thought wizards were superior to magicians because... why would Tom not use his magic on a constant basis? Hermione simply didn't get it.

Alas, Tom wasn't about to tell her his entire house was full of automatic runes that did these things for him on a regular basis during the night. Nor would he reveal the existence of the training basement to the girl so that only fed her a subpar impression of his capabilities of using magic outside of cooking.

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"Yup. The wall is just a public entrance to Diagon Alley. You input a specific key and it opens for you, letting you through all the wards and keying you to them." Tom dumbed down the lengthy explanation.

"Really?" Hermione looked dubiously at Tom, her opinion of him slightly changing.

At the same time, though, she had never read about anything like that so she found it hard to believe his words.

Seeing her skepticism, Tom looked funny at her, "You don't really believe the Diagon Alley is really behind this wall, do you?" He amusedly raised his eyebrow, making Hermione frown as the gears in her head started working.

"Any satellite scan would instantly reveal something fishy if that was the case. Having a massive blank spot in the middle of London would raise several major flags in the government even if they didn't have any idea about the Wizarding World." Tom elaborated.

Hermione's eyes widened as she realized the merit of Tom's words. Muggles were not idiots. In fact, from what Hermione observed so far, they were even more resourceful than most wizards. Having a huge dark zone in the middle of the capital city would definitely not be overlooked.

Before Hermione could speak, Tom shook his head and continued, "No. The Diagon Alley is in something called Parallel Pocket Dimension. It exists parallelly with these parts of London. Behind this brick wall are really just empty and dark back alleys that are not used at all. This brick wall is just the entry point to the Pocket Dimension that mirrors these back-alleys, existing parallelly with them. It's quite clever if I say so myself. If there is anything wizards are good at, it is hiding like cockroaches."

When Hermione heard that Tom compared wizards with the irritating vermin that pops out when you least expect it, her earlier excitement was as if doused by a bucketload of cold water and her questions got stuck in her throat while her expression soured.

Tom, however, didn't give a damn as he followed the disgruntled brunette stomping her way towards Gringotts. After all, he only told the truth.

Wizarding magic was impressive in its utility and versatility. Tom was not really surprised they could do this. Not with magics like Fidelius and the sort. Their magic worked on intent and imagination. Theirs was one of the most versatile and free magic systems out there, surpassing even the one devils had in some aspects.

The only reason why other races didn't seek wizards to do their wards or enchantments was that wizards are weak as heck. In the wider supernatural world, adult wizards, who are on average mid-rank beings, don't amount to much. Not when other races have High or Ultimate ranks among them.

No matter the versatility the wizarding wards could offer, if the ward can be taken down by just one High-rank person focusing a bit, then it is not worth the money.

The wards around the Diagon Alley were indeed impressive in their functionality. Hell, these wards maintained the whole Pocket Dimension. But... one Ultimate-rank being could tear through them like a finger tears through a wet tissue. These wards were strong against mid-rank beings. They worked well against wizards and witches. But against the powerhouses of other races? They were not even an obstacle.

That rule, unfortunately, applied to every aspect of Wizarding Magic. Their enchantments were clever and versatile, but weak. Their potions did not work for anyone who didn't have wizarding magic in them... And so it went with other branches of their kind of magic.

And that's not even going into the actual problems of their enchantments and wards and their compatibility with other magical systems. So many of these were unusable without being fed WIZARDING magic, meaning if a wizard set up a ward around the house of a magician and if there was no automatic conversion of neutral mana to wizarding mana through a specialized wardstone or the like, the ward would just quickly crumble due to insufficient energy source.

It wouldn't matter how much neutral mana the magician could supply. Wizarding wards simply worked on a different power source altogether.

Sure, there were a lot of workarounds for that particular problem. Devils usually geared their wards for ambient mana rather than demonic powers, for example. But wizards did not exactly have a lot of experience with other kinds of energies than their own wizarding magic.

In fact, most wizards had no idea any other kind of magic than their own even existed, despite living literally next to goblins.

Funnily enough, all these disadvantages of wizarding magic actually served wizards well. Thanks to them they were ignored by most of the factions, and that meant they evaded most of their conflicts and scheming.

Being a race completely composed of cannon fodder level existences had its perks too.

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