Black Magic Books
From the day Skylar received his wand at Ollivander's, he discovered that it amplified the effects of Dark Arts.
He still remembered learning his first Dark Arts, the "Curse of the Bogies," in first grade. Originally, this curse was supposed to create an effect similar to a severe flu, causing the victim to sneeze incessantly or have a runny nose and tears. However, Skylar used it to make someone fall ill directly, causing Dobby, the test subject, to become Dobby weak from excessive snot that he fell into a coma. Fortunately Skylar had prepared some Pepperup Potion, Dobby probably wouldn't have been able to get out of bed for several days.
Although he was naturally suited to learning Dark Arts, Skylar had no intention of becoming a powerful dark wizard. He studied Dark Arts books to gain a more comprehensive understanding of magic, not just to learn the partial knowledge that the Ministry of Magic and Dumbledore had censored.
Skylar knew all too well the damage that learning and practicing Dark Arts would do to his soul. Dark Arts evil as a foundation, which gave it characteristics similar to addictive substances in the Muggle World. Each time Dark Arts was used, it could unleash the evil and wicked thoughts in people's hearts, digging out the darkest corners hidden in people's hearts. Over time, one's personality and soul would become distorted, becoming more and more violent and uncontrollable.
This isn't Skylar being a hypocrite; the importance of the soul to a wizard is common knowledge for every wizard. Once the soul is corrupted or twisted, sooner or later it will be devoured by Dark Arts.
This is also the biggest difference between Grindelwald and Riddle, the two generations of Dark Lord.
Grindelwald used Dark Arts to reform the wizarding world and achieve his ideals, believing himself to be on the side of justice, even though many innocent people were inevitably harmed in the process. Riddle, on the other hand, used Dark Arts for his own selfish desires. He didn't want to be an unknown person; he wanted the whole world to know his name. To this end, he specifically chose the name "Voldemort" for himself and placed a name curse on it, so that no one dared to mention it. His actions, such as organizing Death Eaters and creating the Dark Mark, were all aimed at creating and spreading terror for his own fame.
This led to Voldemort's tragic end in the original story—his soul was too twisted, so he was repeatedly restrained and defeated by "pure love." There are still many mysteries in the magical world, such as love and cause and effect, and Skylar doesn't want to one day be inexplicably restrained by these mysterious forces.
Let's get back to the three books on Dark Arts.
The book "Fallen Creatures" even records the creation of Dementor and various secrets. Dementor are "non-beings" in a state between life and death. They do not reproduce, but instead grow like fungi in decaying places. Furthermore, Dementor cannot be destroyed by any magic and can only be banished by Patronus Charm.
(Note: Non-existence is actually an aggregation of emotions. There are currently four known examples. Please refer to the chapter "Non-beastly magical creatures" in the relevant section of the work.)
You might ask, since Dementor cannot die or be destroyed by magic, why haven't Dementor ever-increasing numbers allowed them to dominate the wizarding world? That's because while Dementor cannot be destroyed, they can be driven to their demise by creating a specific environment. Dementor feed on despair, and draining people's happiness is merely a means of creating despair. If a Dementor is placed in an environment where no despair can be found to replenish its energy, it will perish on its own.
(Note: This is the official Dementor design. Rowling based the Dementor on depression. The magic that can kill Dementor is fan fiction.)
The first to discover how to control Dementor was the medieval dark wizard Raczidian. The exact period in which Raczidian lived is unknown, but it is known that it was before the establishment of the Wizards' Council (the predecessor of the Ministry of Magic). At that time, the wizarding world followed the law of the jungle, where the strong were respected and the weak were preyed upon, so he could openly study and use Dark Arts.
He discovered the secret of Dementor by chance and figured out how to mass-produce Dementor —he built a dark and decaying Chamber of Secrets in his dark fortress, allowing the Dementor to thrive in this environment.
He also created a unique method of controlling Dementor, enabling him to burn, kill, and plunder wizard villages near the castle. After being stopped by a young man named Ilius using the Patronus Charm, he tried to imitate Illyas' Patronus Charm in an attempt to restrain Illyas' Patronus.
Unfortunately, he didn't know that one of the conditions for releasing the Patronus Charm was having a pure heart of protection. As a result, he was backfired by his own spell—his wand summoned a swarm of man -Man-eating Gadflies that devoured his body in the blink of an eye.
Skylar's greatest gain was the ability to control Dementor; if used properly, Skylar would gain a significant advantage.
In his book "Dark Potions," Skylar also found a very useful Potions recipe— the Magic-Boosting Potion. Magic-Boosting Potion Potions forbidden to be made in the international Wizarding World because the ingredients involve dark creatures, and the process of taking them is extremely risky. Any deviation during the making process can cause the user to die from a magical overload.
After taking this potion, the body will experience temporary discomfort, such as fever, weakness, dilated blood vessels, and rapid heartbeat. A certain level of endurance is required to withstand the pain. This is because the potion is catalyzing the magical potential contained in the blood vessels, stimulating it into usable active magic. As long as you can endure this torment for several tens of minutes, you can achieve a significant increase in magic power.
Skylar had long encountered a bottleneck in his magical research due to his own lack of magical power, and how to enhance his own magical power had always been his top priority.
It's important to understand that Skylar, despite his extensive reading, is not lacking in Magical Theory. However, due to limitations in his magical power, he is unable to use the vast majority of spells. If he could overcome this limitation, he would be able to cast many powerful spells that consume a great deal of magical energy, and his strength would reach a new level.
Concocting Magic-Boosting Potion isn't particularly difficult; the biggest problem lies in the fact that all the ingredients required are extremely precious and rare. The rarest and most difficult-to-obtain ingredient in the Magic-Boosting Potion recipe is actually Basilisk venom.
This raw material would be the biggest hurdle for others, but it was no problem for Skylar at all. Skylar had already collected a large amount of precious materials from the Basilisk corpses during the battle in the Chamber of Secrets, and the amount of venom he had was enough for him to refine several bottles of Magic-Boosting Potion.
Unfortunately, due to the toxicity of the Magic-Boosting Potion, each wizard can only take one bottle in their lifetime. This restriction did not surprise Skylar, since the Magic-Boosting Potion uses the toxicity of snake venom to stimulate the magical potential in one's bloodline. No matter how successfully it is made, there will always be some toxicity remaining. It's just that with the limit of one bottle, that toxicity is not enough to harm the human body.
Other materials are also not easy to obtain. One of them, the Phantom-Scent Grass, is a Class A prohibited trade item. Skylar plans to try his luck in the black market of Knockturn Alley. If all else fails, he will have to consider Snape's laboratory.
As for the remaining materials, he entrusted Dobby to purchase and collect them from various apothecaries. Skylar had made a Dobby amount of money selling spider venom and Basilisk flesh at the end of last semester, but even so, he still spent most of his savings to purchase the materials needed for the Magic-Boosting Potion, leaving only 1,000 Galleon on hand for emergencies.
(Note: The cost of raw materials for the Magic-Boosting Potion, excluding Basilisk Venom and Phantom-Scent Grass, is approximately 200 Galleon. The above cost is not just for the amount of raw materials needed to brew one Potions. After all, the chance of failure in brewing this ancient recipe is very high, so it is reasonable to buy more than ten as backups.)
The book "Arbatel Volume I" was the one that surprised Skylar the most among the three books. Abatair covers almost all areas of magic in the magical world, including Charms, magic theory, Transfiguration, seals, barriers, curses, mental magic, and spirit magic. Unfortunately, the book was divided into eight volumes due to a great war in the Middle Ages and was scattered in different places.
The book in Skylar's hand is only a fragment of one of the eight volumes. Most of its contents are Mental Magic. From this, we can infer that the third ancestor of the House of Malfoy Armand II Malfoy, must have obtained this book by chance and gained inspiration from it to create the Malfoy family's magic spells. This is because many of the mental magic spells that Skylar learned from the Malfoy Family Spells can be found in this book.
While this book couldn't teach Skylar any spells or significantly boost his power in the short term, it gave Skylar a deeper and more solid understanding of the essence of mental Magical Theory. In the long run, this was far more valuable than learning a new spell.
Next, Skylar also took out the Malfoy family's secret spells to study them again. Sure enough, after reading Arbatel Volume I 1, his understanding of the family's spells increased to a new level. He successfully discovered the true heritage of the Malfoy family - Mental Magic.
Armand II Malfoy was a born Legilimens and an expert in Mental Magic. His innate and powerful mental energy merged into his bloodline after his death and was passed down to his descendants. This explains why Skylar activated his bloodline power, could easily learn advanced mental magic.
The Malfoy family's inherited spells include many ancient and unheard-of spiritual spells, many of which are forbidden spells belonging to the realm of Dark Arts. Their power is comparable to that of the Imperius Curse, one of the Three Unforgivable Curses Imperius Curse. Examples include the Legilimency, the Mind-Chaos Seed Spell, the Mind-Breaking Theft Spell, the Hypnosis Charm, the Memory Manipulation Spell, Gaze of Fear... These spells sound incredibly evil and terrifying just from their names.
This made Skylar curious: why did such a powerful spell never appear in the original stories about the Malfoy family? And why would the House of Malfoy, with such a powerful heritage, need to humbly submit to Voldemort? Skylar could only deduce that perhaps the loss of their bloodline power caused the Malfoy descendants to become increasingly reliant on intrigue and scheming, prioritizing politics and business, thus neglecting the inheritance of magic.
Such examples are not unique to the House of Malfoy. As far as Skylar knew, the great Slytherin were truly proficient in Parseltongue spells, which relied on the pronunciation of Parseltongue. Without the Parseltongue talent inherited from the Slytherin bloodline, it was impossible to learn. After the Slytherin bloodline withered, Parseltongue magic was also lost.