Chapter 61: Wizarding magic

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.

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.