"That sounds like dark magic!" Ron hissed in horror.
"It's not but I believe you might have a bit of a misunderstanding of what dark magic actually is. Not that you can really be blamed since more than a few spells that aren't actually dark magic get the label." I said with a shrug.
"What do you mean?" Harry asked curiously.
"If you went off of banned spells a lot of not so pleasant spells are labeled dark magic but in truth actual dark magic has very specific conditions in order to be counted as such. Take the spell I just used for example. It's not a fun thing to experience but it's not dark magic because it doesn't fulfil the conditions to be counted as such. The ministry and people have a bad habit of labeling anything they find unpleasant as dark magic but it's plain untrue in a good amount of cases." I explained calmly.
"You mean the ministry is wrong?" Ron asked with a deep frown.
I shook my hand in a so-so way "Yes and no. It's a rather complex situation. The idea of how the ministry decides what is and is not dark magic is both helpful and horribly wrong at the same time. Yes most of those banned spells are dark magic but there is a lot that are banned as such without actually being it. The reasons for this ranges from fear to control and everything in between. Ritual magic for example. The ministry bans all ritual magics as dark but it's not actually true. There are plenty of dark rituals of course but most are banned because it threatens the ministries control." I said seriously.
"How do you know what is dark magic or not then?" Hermione asked and I smiled in approval.
"One of the prerequisites for dark magic is negative intent, anger, a desire to see someone hurt, sadness, that sort of thing. If any piece of magic you find has one of these as requirements then more often than not it's dark. Another prerequisite is the effect of the spell on the caster. Dark magic corrupts the caster or takes something from them. If you find it easier to cast spells while angry but not calm then you've probably used dark magic at some point. It's why dark wizards seem so mad, they are literally corrupted into that state by the magic they've used." I explained seriously.
"So why isn't that spell a dark one?" Hermione pressed.
"Because it's a prank spell. It's not meant to cause harm or even to really torment someone. It's like leaving a fake spider around, a joke though a slightly cruel one admittedly." I said honestly.
"How do you know so much about dark magic anyways?" Ron asked curiously.
I shrugged "Research and teachings by Quirrell, he's surprisingly knowledgeable on the subject if you can get past his stuttering." I said frankly.
All three of them looked doubtful at that claim but I wasn't about to argue with them on it. Ron changed the subject at this point.
"What are you doing for break? You weren't on the list of people staying at Hogwarts right?" he asked curiously.
"A bit of traveling if everything goes well. No set destination but I might bounce around a bit." I said casually.
"Bloody hell, you must be like super rich if you can do that!" Ron exclaimed in shock.
"Traveling isn't that expensive if you use muggle means you know. Grab a ferry to the mainland and then you can take a car or train most other places. The real hassle is if you create a magical incident while you travel like that. The other ministries don't like it when foreign wizards show up unannounced after all." I said frankly.
They looked thoughtful at that and went on about their own plans for the break. Harry and Ron were staying at Hogwarts and Hermione was headed home. Terry and Mike got involved and explained that they were also heading home. Most of them were a little jealous that I got to travel around during break but I could only shrug at that.-
What I neglected to mention is that I planned to use the break to attempt something that may or may not even work, world hopping. My idea was simple. I was going to have David make a deal with me for time in his world. Something simple like zapping some Scavs or something like that in exchange for a couple days in his world. Of all the worlds I had as an option Cyberpunk Earth was by far the safest for the current me as there was nothing there that could get past my logia invulnerability other than rubber.-
This made it the ideal testing world for this idea. I didn't think it possible to completely hop worlds using the system because that might require whoever my contact was to literally own the world. But a temporary hop should be possible since my contacts are natives of those worlds. It's like someone who lived in a house inviting me in even if they didn't own the place. I imagined that once my "invite" was worn out I'd be booted back to this world. Even if that proved not the case and I got stuck in whatever world I went to it wasn't a terrible problem.-
I did technically have this worlds inventory in the form of the shop so I could still learn magic even if it's so much more convenient to actually be in this world. It was frankly speaking a gamble, one I needed to take because eventually I'd need to have face to face chats with contacts. Right now it was kinda like a long distance trading type deal but there was a level of impersonalness to it that made this a little awkward.