Chapter 71 - Meditation exercises

The next day, I got up early at 5 in the morning. After a quick freshen up, I started unpacking my things and modifying the room according to my needs. The room I was provided was very simple and small with only a bed and a cupboard in it. There was no table or chair bit it was not a big problem because I can always conjure them when required.

I had to modify the room all by myself in a short time according to my needs. I realized that I had become dependent on my house elves for things like this over the years and wished they were here with me. But unfortunately I could not bring them with me due to India being unfamiliar to me and I did not know their views on house elves.

After I was ready, I made my ways towards the common meditation area. All non-elder academy members had to meditate in the meditation grounds. When I reached the meditation grounds, I found the place to be quite soothing for my mind and soul. The place had an aura that cleared my mind and also removed the fatigue I had from the previous day.

By the time I reached the place, the meditation platform was already packed with more than a thousand people. One thing I found surprising about the crowd was that in spite of so many people being there on the platform, there was no noise and it was quiet. Many people were already sitting in lotus position and were preparing to start meditation. Maybe it was the effect of the magical aura of the grounds that calmed everyone.

I found the elder in charge easily among the crowd due to his unique Elder clothing and asked his help to get myself started in the meditation exercises. He lent me a small book that contained a brief description of different meditation exercises and said

"Go through the list of various meditation exercises and chose the one which you would like to practice first. I will direct someone to teach you that exercise and also give you the detailed instructions of that exercise when you have chosen.

Different exercises have different benefits but you can practice only one at a time or else you won't gain any benefits. So choose carefully. There are four stages in each exercise early, mid, late and peak. You begin at early stage and only when you have reached mid stage in that exercise can you stop and try another exercise otherwise all your progress in the first exercise will be lost. Similarly when going from mid to late stage you cannot stop or you will lose all progress. You can take today off and take your time selecting a exercise. Tomorrow you can start."

So I left the meditation ground and went back to room. There I started going through the various exercises mentioned in the book. After a brief read, I was amazed and awed by the different meditation exercises and their benefits. There were meditation exercises for improvement in many fields.

There was one exercise in the book that attracted me the most. It was an exercise that increased the strength of the soul and helped in repelling mind and soul based attacks. The process of doing this exercise was not written but the benefits were, which told that it was a must learn for me. One benefit of it was that it made me immune to the confundus charm and the imperius curse. At peak stage even spells from Grand Arch-mages will not affect me. Another benefit was that soul based attacks from an Horcrux will not affect me in the slightest.

But this was not what attracted me to this exercise. It was a side note written below the description of the exercise which said that when this exercise was practices to the peak stage, the Avada Kedavra curse which was a soul based killing curse will not kill me and I will be immune to it. This side note made this exercise the most beneficial exercise in the book to me.

The AK curse was something that I was most vary of in this magical world. It was a scary curse and I always had my mage sight active in most occasions to protect myself from being ȧssassinated. The only way to block it was to summon some object in front of its path or dodge from the curse but this can only be done if you can see the curse coming which may not always be possible. This curse was also the most common spell used by dark wizards due to it not requiring much magical strength to cast and I had been searching for a way to protect myself from it for a lond time. Now that I had found this exercise, I was overjoyed. I was not going to stop until I had practiced this exercise to perfection.

I wanted to practice the all the exercises in the book but each exercise needed many years to practice to perfection which made it impossible. I may be a little bit faster than most geniuses bit still it would take a lot of time. It did not take much time to practice to early stage so I was planning to reach atleast reach that stage in most of the exercises.

Some of the exercises gave most benefit when done before magical maturity so as much as I wanted to solely concentrate on the soul, I could not since practising other exercises like increasing magical pathway and body strength were more important for my future growth. I am sad that I was not able to find these wonderful exercises early in my life.

I decided to practice the exercises important to me to late level atleast before my magical maturity in two years. This was possible since time taken for going from early to late stage in an exercise was much less than going from late to peak stage in the same exercise. Talented students take 7 months to reach late stage but take an extra 3 years to reach peak stage. Average people take more than 10 years to practice a single exercise to perfection. I planned on completing atleast four exercises to late stage in the two years before my maturity and then start soul exercise. I could then concentrate solely on the exercise till achieving peak stage in it.

Now that a plan was made, I decided to move on to the other activities of the day. First, I went to the hospital to get myself immunized. It did not take much time and I still had a lot of time left before I had to go for my duelling classes.

I ate my breakfast next and on finding a lot of time still being left, I decided to get myself one of those ring magic foci. Magic performed with wand was more powerful than gone by ring by a small margin but the ring was more comfortable and handy. It was always in my hand I did not have to summon it or search for it during an emergency.

So a short visit to the magic foci crafter later, I had a ring made of holly wood with a core made of a tooth of a type of magical lion indigenous to India. The ring was black in colour with a white piece of tooth in the middle. It also had a drop of my blood in it which made it usable only by me. It had better compatibility than my current wand so the spells performed with it were as strong as the ones performed with my current ok compatibility Olivander wand.