-- Clara POV —
There were few things I delay. One of them was my first animagus transformation, which I did already, though I had not transformed once since then. One of the other procrastinated tasks was my staff, particularity the first material for my wardstones. While I had already decided on the current material, palladium microalloy glass, at the creation of the staff, there were generally three problems: Durability, conductivity and amplification.
Amplification was the most complicated of all, as specific types of materials would affect specific ward - vice versa -, either in a negative way or a positive one. The best example would be wood, which was freshly harvested. If you are fast enough to carve and activate any ward or enchantment, an huge amount of mana, even more than dry dead wood, would be absorbed by the wood to revitalize and grow. For some projects that is a boon, but for others not so much. Conclusion is, that one would need a neutral material, which is not affected by many different wards. Or one would need to decide, which type or category of ward not to use.
The other two are much easier. Durability specifies the hardness of the material and its energy and ward or enchantment capacity, while conductivity is the ease of movement for mana in, on, around or through the material.
I had decided on a material which was magically inert, before being treated. Pure neutrality with decent durability and conductivity, but this also meant, that the treatment of the material can be individual, not constrained by the rules of my staff. For safety reasons I consulted an expert. Due to those restrictions, I still needed to make the required potion myself, which was the reason behind my new interest in potions.
Contrary to wardschemes, I had no qualm about using given recipes for my potions, so I had a magnitude of simple ones to try out and while I already tried a few of them, it was also through this, that I could see the difference that Slughorns training made. Mistakes lessened, multitasking became even easier and I spotted subtle things while brewing, which I would have never seen before. This meant, that I no longer failed three or four times while trying to make the potions, though there were still some anomalies.
These potions were commonly named as single energy attunements or primers. They either enhance or suppress a specific element, the more complicated one could affect multiple different energy classifications and types, though I could not brew those yet anyway.
Of all these simple potions I know, there was one, the hardest, most elusive and just annoying one to make, which led to its procrastination. A mental energy primer, not a single use case listed in the books and journals I had read, due to a simple reason. Wards and enchantments operate on mana, not mental energy. While I would never say, that something was impossible, I did not know of a single ward yet, that used something else than mana.
But I could still think about one single case, where it would be useful, bugging myself to finally try it out or at least work towards that.
The idea was to soak the treated material in my mental energy, kind of binding it to myself, an extension of my senses as you will.
The idea sound simple, but I did not yet know how to start, I had only inspirations, vague ideas.
Maybe I would need an enchantment or ward, which traps my mental energy in the material, allowing me to control the wardstone or even remotely as long as I am in a specific range.
Or I could improve upon the potion, already soaking the potion with mental energy, effectively binding it to myself. Enhancing the potion to allow for different combinations of energy attunement, finetuning them for their needed use cases. Maybe even enhance binding, sensing, control or even range if the base idea is even valid in the first place.
The only requirement was to get good, well I needed to be at least a potion grandmaster to try the latter and a ward master for the former.
Another task was to finally take the plunge with my lovely second skin. I still did not use the impossible mode often, a maximum of once a month to be exact and I knew deep down, that I needed to overcome this hurdle. With my nerves working at full capacity it was just not viable yet. But the second skin itself had improved at a good rate till now. Nowhere near the hoped result, but that was expected to take centuries at the very least. Its favorite feeling was asphyxiation with different sources. It also started combining different feelings into one, though the progress there was questionable at best.
Occlumency came short too in these few moths. Especially improvement was sparse. I remodeled my whole mind in increasingly difficult ways, increasing its functions and help, but in terms of real progress I was standing still. Annoying, but it is what it is. I changed my mindscape to such a degree, that everything is perfectly symmetrical. The only exception is the content of the units. I originally wanted to keep those creative, malleable, so that they can be repurposed to help with anything I may need. Now, I stood before a decision. To simplify them, making the whole of my mindscape uniform or to keep the original idea of these spaces.
There were side effects of course. Simplifying the units would make the overall structure of my mindscape easier, but would hinder, block me from realizing more complex ideas. Building on the original idea though, will make it very hard, to keep my mindscape as structured as it is currently, though in no way impossible.
I had also reworked the whole key-value system. More like deleted it. It no longer existed. Currently every unit had a central pillar with one quadratic book, which detailed any connection to other units and as soon as I improve upon this, I will hopefully have a better mindscape than ever before. It was not yet in any way or form perfect, but a step in the right direction and I could literally feel the improvements of these changes. Minute, nearly unnoticeable, but they were there and I would praise me in the future for cleaning up my mindscape. The web idea was also changed, as this web was anchored in the central pillars.
Another future venture was supplies. Better supplies. I already mentioned a warehouse suitcase. I also needed a new notebook, with a near endless amount of pages, search functions and more. While my memory is near immaculate, I still regularly wrote down notes and currently those either got vanished, burned or were somewhere in the chaos I called my desk. The idea is to write down my knowledge long term to contribute to different guilds, libraries and more and while taking notes was kind of unnecessary, it still helped to build a rapport, so that writing real books in the future would come easier. Practice makes perfect or at the very least better, which brought me to my next item on the shopping list, writing utensils for calligraphy and normal use, new and better sets of carving and chiseling tools, ink supplies, ward and potion materials and so much more. Pricey.
Another prospect would be my ascension.