The back patio of Hopworts Brewing Co. in Bermondsey, London.
Just before 8 PM,
Friday, January 13th.
Continued from Paint the Sky Black

The small little brewery tucked away under the stone railway arch was packed by the time they'd apparated over.  It was a chilly night in London, but the crowd had even spilled out onto brewery's back patio, which was hidden away from Muggle eyes in a dead-end brick alleyway behind the train tracks. 

The outdoor space wasn't really intended to be used in the depths of winter, but the patrons tonight had done their best to make it work.  Overhead, the waning moon was still more than half full, throwing off just enough light to see by in the narrow alleyway.  In the center of the little patio, a magical fire had been started inside half of an old metal keg, which was throwing off plenty of heat along with its dancing bright blue flames.  Another visitor had gotten the bright idea to conjure up a set of thick tartan blankets, which had been scattered for anyone to use around the makeshift wooden pallet furniture.

A Muggle train rumbled by on the raised track above as Kurby carefully navigated his way out the back of the brewery, a pair of beers in hand.  He hadn't been entirely disappointed that the only empty spots to be found were on the back patio.  It was far quieter outside than it had been in the brewery's packed, raucous interior.  The few scattered groups out here were engaged in conversations at a much more reasonable volume, and the night's darkness meant that even if someone he knew wandered by, they weren't about to immediately spot him.

Xin was waiting where he'd left her, in one of the few empty corners that they'd found not far from the warmth of the magical blue flames. There, wooden pallets had been stacked in an L-shape to resemble a sectional sofa, with another pair of pallets piled on top of each other to form a makeshift table.  Kurby passed the Auror the second beer, and then lowered himself to sit on the pallet sofa at a 90-degree angle from her.

"Sláinte,"  he said, tipping his glass towards her to offer a clinked toast.  "Here's to drinkin' instead of restin'."

He leaned back against the pallet backrest as he took a sip, angling his legs so that he could stretch them out fully, crossing one ankle over the other.  The beer here was more of an American style than he usually drank, with cutesy names derived from the four Heads of Houses back when he'd been at Hogwarts, but it also wasn't bad.  The werewolf hunter savored the bitterness, letting it linger on his tongue before fully swallowing.

"So where's your usual haunt?" he asked, arching an eyebrow as he glanced sidelong at the Auror.  "Life has to be a bit dull if you lot can never go off venturin' to drink in Knockturn."

Despite the whole Muggle brewery facade Bagnold had originally presented to her, she found herself liking the atmosphere of the place. Good old brick and wood, and though she briefly wished there was something softer than tartan blankets on the wooden pallets, she still felt it added the right touch.

Train tracks above and a picket fire... she raised her eyes to the railway arch overhead as a train rattled past. Strange how old-fashioned aesthetic could have so much charm. She was deeply reminded of the old men in China who would sit in certain backrooms, twinkling eyes as they played mahjong and the white wine resting in their hands when not holding tiles. There was definitely less of it here, although if one was smart they could find such a community around if they knew where to look.

As Bagnold returned bearing the golden gift of a Friday night, she nodded appreciatively and took her glass from him. "Iechyd da. Better drinking than resting."

It was good beer. She was neither critic nor sommelier, but she had her tastes and she definitely knew what worked for her and what didn't. Besides, there were definitely worse options out there as life was wont to offer.

"Usual haunt?" Adrianna chuckled. "Welsh pubs. Plenty of good ones in Cardiff where I live, there's one a stone's throw from me. Sadly not much of a Chinatown in Cardiff, so I come around to the one in London if I'm looking for good baijiu - rice wine," she added as clarity for his sake. "Knockturn isn't the only place. I might be missing out, but better other places than getting recognised and possibly a fight or two."

She leaned forward, setting her pint on the makeshift table before them, as a reminder to moderate her drinking. It would be too easy to down the thing - alcohol no matter how brief did give her some respite from this week's trials. "You frequent Knockturn often? The way you recommend it sounds like you enjoy yourself down that way."

The Welsh toast made him blink -- it was a phrase that he would have expected to hear while out drinking with Bruce Ballentyne, and not necessarily out of Adrianna Xin.  But Kurby swallowed any surprise back quickly, listening as the Auror described her typical Cardiff drinking haunts.  When they'd spoken in the Capture Unit office, in between taking justified digs at him for yelling, Xin had mentioned being back to speaking English for two years.  'Back to'  meant that she must have spoken it before at one point.

Her posed question about Knockturn made him give a slight smirk.  "Naw, just durin' weeks like this," he said dryly, crossing his right arm loosely across his chest.

There was something liberating about having an opponent, about standing face to face with something monstrous and knowing that you were both about to do your damndest to ensure that only one of you made it out alive.  That was part of why he'd stuck with the Capture Unit for so long.  When werewolves were involved, there was never a question about the type of danger that he was up against; never really a worry about what type of enemy he might have to fight.

But everything this week had been nebulous.  Purple flowers flowing out of Robert Dunnigan's dead lips; the damning missive sent out with the Prophet that reminded him too much of the sort of propaganda he'd seen as a kid.  Even the vision of Carter's death, with the clenching fear that made his muscles want to seize up with helplessness and despair.  He was tired of having to deal with problems that he couldn't fight.  Maybe he was getting too old to go instigating trouble in Knockturn, but having a physical enemy to face off against felt intoxicatingly appealing.

Even so, that wasn't the smartest thing to admit in front of an Auror, even one that was nominally friendly.  Far better to change the subject.

"How long've you lived in Cardiff?" Kurby asked quizzically, glancing at her as he raised his beer to take a sip. Xin had dropped a few hints about her story: working as an Auror at the Chinese Ministry, where she'd spent seven years hunting a marauding, murderous werewolf.  "You said you'd been at the Ministry here for a couple years, aye?"

"All my life," said Adrianna, too engaged with straightening out a jacket sleeve to observe any potential expressions on Bagnold's face. "Well, when I say all my life, I mean studying in Hogwarts and becoming an Auror. Then went to China for almost twenty years. Came back, have been since then."

She looked up at him, small epiphany reached. "I'm half-Welsh, if that's important," she said. "The Chinese accent is hard to lose, I admit - it makes me sound like I come from there, but in reality I've always spoken Chinese. I've been back for two years, yes. I don't plan on going anywhere else for now - I think I've had the experience of a lifetime already."

The Auror picked up her glass again and sat back against the pallets, shrugging. "Aurors aren't called Aurors in China, but for ease I just do. Worked with them for a lot more than those seven years I spent chasing down a werewolf. When you work in China, you have to be completely immersed with how they do things, because they don't like Western methods - if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Any overseas transfer gets an intensive crash course before they can work there. They're thorough."

She drank, remembering some old times. About the closest she could get to hanging out with colleagues after a long day was chilling with this fella, but she still wasn't inclined to do the usual pub crawls in the event she had to walk into work with another hangover the size of Hogwarts. "You been with the Werewolf Capture Unit for long? I don't usually see Level Two chatting with you guys, not until now, so I have no idea who's in there with you."

Relaxing under the light of the waning moon with a beer in hand, he could almost pretend that this was just a normal Friday night: that the full moon had come and gone without any more stress than usual, that there had been no assaults or invasions or unexpected attacks.  That the crackling blue flames were simply providing warmth to ward off the chill of the January night, and were never reminiscent of the ominous blue torches on Level Nine; that he hadn't walked through a corridor littered with blood and cigarettes and bits of silver; that he'd never been intimate witness to a nightmarish death.

With the pale scars from a werewolf's claws arching across her face, Adrianna Xin was interesting enough  -- even if her twenty years in China put her a bit older than he had been reckoning.  Few witches or wizards had survived an attack like that and gone on to tell about it, or at least gone on without turning furry once a month.  And so Kurby leaned back and listened, sipping on his beer, half-tempted to drain it at a much more rapid pace so that he could skip along the journey to insobriety.

He paused at the Auror's question, glancing sidelong at her.  This wasn't like the game that he'd played with Moira McBoid, trading answer for answer to see how close they could dance to uncomfortable truths.[1]  Xin was just being friendly, looking to unwind herself after a similarly taxing week.

"Bit more than fifteen years," Kurby said, rolling his shoulders in a shrug.  "I started right after I graduated from Hogwarts.  We see a lot of turnover, so most of our lot are pretty young."

He took a long swallow from his beer, glancing across the way.  On the opposite side of the small courtyard, a rowdy group of wixes had started to build a card house out of what appeared to be a deck of enormous Exploding Snap cards.  As they took turns to add new cards one by one to the delicate structure, their cheers and cries of encouragement echoed off the bricks of the alleyway.  Kurby snorted quietly, giving a brief eyeroll at the game before he glanced back at Xin.  That effort was sure to end in disaster.

"So I know it's probably a bit much to dive into when we haven't even gotten through one beer yet," he began, with a slightly lopsided smirk that belied that he knew the question might be opening a jar of pixies, "but how're things different in China?  Reckon it's more'n just havin' a different name for Aurors, aye?"

1.	December 2, 2011 - Time Out

The raucous shouting at the other end didn’t go amiss under her eyes, but it would take a lot more than that to distract her proper. Fifteen years? She’d definitely not be familiar with any of the Ministry, since she was still away. Her time in China felt like an age ago, not that she enjoyed remembering a lot of it.

“Very different.” She picked up her pint and took a long sip, golden, if temporary, ambrosia to refresh her memories. “Beginning with the fact that the Chinese magical division isn’t separate from the government - it’s a part of it, in fact. But in China, the belief is that even if you have no affinity with magic, hard work will get you there. It just depends on whether you take the initiative to do so.”

She gazed at the fire, the laughter across them echoing distantly against her own memories. “The Chinese don’t use wands, so I ended up not using mine for well over a decade.” The Auror chuckled. “They examined it and were much amused to know that we wave around sticks of wood, but they were more curious about it than I anticipated. It’s easier to make similarities to their own tools of magic. Once they understood, it was all a breeze from there. Not to say that I was allowed to use it,” she added, “but some Chinese criminals are enterprising enough to know how to defend against a Western wand user. So I had to learn Cultivator magic and use that, or else I was going to end up getting mocked for being too Western.”

Adrianna waved a finger attached to the hand holding her glass at Kurby. “See, if you went over there and insisted on using your wand, they’d slide for you. I don’t have that excuse, being half-Chinese. That said, it’s great magic once you get the hang of it, but I was never as good as my colleagues.”

She glanced in the direction of the Exploding Snap construction. “Speaking of which, we might have to move slightly further away before that thing goes.”

The suggestion that they might want to move out of the way of the forthcoming explosion made the werewolf hunter crack a grin. 

"What, you not one for livin' dangerously, Xin?" he retorted, flashing a sharp, bemused smile back in her direction.  "Playin' things too safe takes all the fun out of the night, doesn't it?"

Shrugging despite his words, he gestured to her, motioning for her to take the lead in moving as he took his drink in hand.  The house of giant Exploding Snap cards was getting dangerously tall; the group building it had moved on to the third layer, and there was no telling how long it would last before it met its fate.  If she wanted to move well out of range, he wasn't going to protest.

There was a lot to unpack in the witch's exposition.  Aside from a short adventure to Eastern Europe back when he'd been in his early twenties, Kurby had never traveled much outside of the United Kingdom and Ireland.  The lifestyle of someone like Duncan McBoid, who voyaged all over buying and selling magical horses, was completely foreign to him.   Even so, all of the places that he'd heard McBoid talk about had magical traditions similar to those in Britain.  He could hardly imagine going somewhere so foreign that witches and wizards didn't even use wands.

"You mean their magical government's not separate from the Muggle government?" he asked curiously.  That was certainly different than the United Kingdom, where there was a firm division between the mundane and the magical, no matter how hard wixes like Rosheen might resent it.  "What's the, uh, Cultivator magic like, then?  They use different tools of magic?"

"When you're old enough, Bagnold," she retorted, smirking as they moved, "maybe one day you'll feel you've had enough excitement for a lifetime. Or maybe not, but you can't be living dangerously on the edge all the time can you? Blunts the edge of living on the edge, sometimes." Admittedly at best the explosion would be akin to that of firecrackers, but she wasn't risking it even with a highly trained hand present.

She settled back down, crosisng one leg over the other as she took a larger mouthful. "Well magic and non-magic boundaries don't technically exist in Chinese culture. Imagine having magic a part of your cultural history regardless of Muggle status, and the idea that anyone can actually learn the magic. Of course that doesn't mean you can do it well, but the opportunity is there if you want to take it." Adrianna paused. "Alright, magic isn't strictly allowed in Muggle areas for obvious reasons and the Chinese government looks down on it, but it's hard to put a stop to the subtler aspects. They just... look the other way." The Auror shrugged.

"Cultivator magic doesn't need tools, you could do it equally well with just your hands and feet. Have seen some bilateral amputees do some pretty good magic - that's without arms, mind you. Technically you could use anything as a magical tool, but some things in the culture have higher value than, say... a broom. Did you know a broom can mostly bring bad luck in China? I'm glad my father taught me that before I went." Adrianna set the glass back down on the table now that they were suitably positioned away from impending danger. "I can still ride a mean broom, but I keep them away just like I did back there. When they do use tools, they might be a little... unconventional for a Western point of view. A sword made of peachwood, for one. I know I had questions when I found out."

She leaned back against the back of the pallet, shifting against the hard wood. "Technically they're not called Cultivators either, but 'cultivation' is the English word they use for the school of magic. It's... difficult to explain without going into a novel length here, and I don't think you want that, Mr Fun Seeker." A light tone, though she did resist sticking her tongue out at him. "There's that, and then there's fangshi[1], which roughly is the name for technical specialists. For example alchemists, healers, diviners."

Adrianna folded her arms across her chest and shrugged, looking at him. "There's a lot more than that, but that's the general gist I was taught when I got there. They don't use 'wizard', 'witch', 'sorcerer' or 'warlock' - those usually have negative connotations these days and it's best not to offend. The Chinese let it pass when abroad, but doing it in China nets you some great long stares and none of them too admiring."

1.	Pronunciation

Kurby grinned in response to the Auror's smirk, looking entirely unperturbed by her doubts about the longevity of his desire to live with one foot perilously close to the cliff's edge.  Dancing with danger, when adrenaline was coursing through him and any misstep could end in death, was by far when he felt the most alive.  He'd seize any opportunity he could to face off against a werewolf or stand up to a dark wizard.  It was all the rest of it, the minutes in between when the imperfect system reigned and nothing he did could make a real difference, when it felt like everything was on the verge of falling apart.

As they shifted position, he settled back again, beer in hand and his other arm draped over the backrest behind him.  Xin's description of Chinese magic was fascinating.  His sister Rosheen's boyfriend was Chinese, but from what Kurby had gathered, he'd been born in England and was a Muggle besides; he'd never caught a hint that magic was so woven in to the culture there.

The idea of wandless magic was equally interesting, he thought, sipping at his beer as he listened to her description.  That was something that he'd never really experimented with; typically, if he couldn't use his wand in a fight, he had other methods for defending himself, and he tended not to use much magic around his flat as it was.  But having a whole magical tradition built around casting spells without needing a wand at all...that was something that he could certainly see the value of, especially when they were living in dangerous times.

"Reckon you might be willin' to give a demonstration?"  Kurby flashed the Auror a sharp, wicked grin, and then nodded pointedly to the Exploding Snap tower that had been the motivation for them to move.  The gathered group had grown hushed, watching with baited breath as two of their number attempted to the fifth layer of giant cards on top of the growing structure.

Kurby eyed it for a moment, and then looked back at Xin, arching an eyebrow in challenge.  "If you can knock that tower down without a wand, I'll buy the next round, too," he offered, grinning as he raised his mostly-empty beer.  "Needs to be magic, though.  It doesn't count if you just chuck somethin' at it."

Maybe it was the alcohol, or perhaps it was the way he'd proposed the challenge to her. Whatever it was, Adrianna had a few doubts, but they vanished at the thought of showing off a little. Besides, the magic seemed to stir her heart every time she'd used it, and she would not admit it so openly that she found it enjoyable.

She looked up and around them as if surveying their surroundings before licking a finger and holding it up to the air. There was very little wind on this night. One method was rendered useless then, but it would be a poor impression of Chinese magic if she couldn't solve a given problem in her own way. She smirked at Kurby. "I'll do you one better - I'll use my own breath to do it."

They were quite far from the construct of capricious cardboard. A simple breath would be lost even before it passed their table. To be sure and just to be cheeky, she sat up straight and blew sharply in that direction, and of course the failure was to be expected. Still smirking, she glanced at Kurby to check if he was still watching before putting her hands in front of her, holding her arms horizontally before her chest, the backs of her palms facing her and at chin level. Very gently she breathed upon her hands, and as she did she began to rotate her arms about an invisible horizontal axis.

She focused on the base while rotating her arms, her own wrists sculpting with little effort the wind in her hands that was now pulling in cool air from around them. No longer adding air to the wind between her arms, she focused her gaze on her target. Focus your mind on your goal and see it and only it with utmost clarity, a teacher had said to her. Bring forth your qi to give your magic life, and use it to guide it to the destination. The feeling was akin to that of a chilly breeze rising.

With the air still curling about her hand along with momentum, invisible to either of them but felt against skin, she swiped the flat edge of her palm at the base of the tower.

The sound of the air speeding in earnest past them could only be described as hwip! The load-bearing cards at the base spun wildly out from under their beleaguered packmates. The tower folded gently upon the table with a sigh, and there were cries of shock as the group jumped back at the sudden flurry of wind set free into the cold night.

Adrianna dropped her arms, feeling a little breathless. It had been her life energy, after all, and she hadn't had had to use it in over two years. She picked up her glass and drank from it as she recovered. "Probably not as dramatic as I see it," she said modestly. "There are and have been greater feats performed with just one person's breath, but we are taught to exercise restraint just as much as using the power given to us. I chose a less flashy method. Besides," she added, "I don't think they're very happy with us now. At least it was just a... tiny gust of wind." Despite her apprehension for the occupants of the other table, she grinned a little.

It seemed as if his challenge had lit a fire in the British-Chinese Auror.  Kurby flashed her a wolfish grin, watching with interest as Xin sat up straight and puffed out a breath towards the gigantic card tower.  Her first attempt, obviously meant to be teasing, didn't work, but then she repositioned herself, holding her arms out in front of her as she began to concentrate.

It was magic like he'd never imagined it before.  Kurby had cast wandless spells once or twice, but they were always simple: tricks like summoning his wand to his hand when he'd left it on the opposite side of the bed.  He'd seen others perform wandless magic on occasion, but it almost always stemmed from uncontrolled emotions.  This Cultivator magic, as Xin had named it, was hardly wild or out of control.  Instead, it was disciplined, forceful, and deliberate.

Hwip! went the burst of air, and suddenly, the cards at the bottom of the tower had been blasted out of place, and the whole thing came tumbling down.  The oversized Exploding Snap cards immediately began to detonate, letting off a series of loud cracks like odorless dungbombs as they exploded in quick succession.

"Probably not as dramatic as I see it," Xin began, and Kurby barked out a laugh, grinning back at her.  She'd earned the right to show off a bit.

Except Xin apparently had no sense of self-preservation after a practical joke, still holding her head as high as she had for her trick.  Kurby shot her a playfully admonishing look, his eyes wide in warning. 

"Don't look!" he hissed in a stage whisper, elbowing at her side. 

Ducking his head, Kurby turned his body so that his back was to the group that had been constructing the Exploding Snap card house. He immediately picked up his glass to drain the rest of it, as if he had no idea that there had just been an explosion behind them. 

Still, he didn't bother to hide his grin as he snuck a look over his shoulder.  The group that had been building the tower was standing in the middle of its remains, looking a little stunned.  Finally, one of their number let out a ragged cheer, which caused the rest to break into frazzled applause.  Looking a little battered but with chatter building amongst themselves again, they started to pick up the pieces of their structure to begin construction anew.

Still grinning, the werewolf hunter started to his feet.

"What'll it be for round two?" he asked Xin cheerfully, nodding to her beer.  "If you don't mind lettin' me twist your arm into showin' off again sometime, maybe we can take over one of the dueling practice rooms on Two.  Reckon there must be all kinds of creative ways with that magic to knock me flat."

She subtly had suspected that Bagnold might have wanted to toy with the drunken rabble for his own gain, but with no way to prove it she went along with him and turned her back on them, leaning back with an arm supporting behind her to take a nonchalant swig of her beer. A swig so big that drained her pint. She chuckled at the smirk on his face, shaking her head. Oh what a pair drinking their night and worries away.

“What beer? Make it the same. It’s pretty good stuff even if it doesn’t hold a candle up to the Welsh brews.” Adrianna let out an air-shaking belch, and chuckled as she wiped a corner of her mouth. “Whoops. Drank that down too fast.”

Despite the laid-back air, she wasn’t drunk. It’d take her more than just one pint! The baijiu back in China was a tad stronger than most brews of the British Isles, and only Merlin knew how much she’d drank that stuff back then. She set the glass down. “There’s more than one way to knock you down, that’s right - but it’s not all knocking down. See, we dealt with everything - and I mean everything. Poaching, smuggling, triad turf wars, corruption…” She drew up her knee, resting her heel on the edge of her pallet and glanced over to the group rebuilding their Snap tower.

“Sometimes ‘knocking down’ meant kill on sight. And that’s proper hard to do when you’ve got someone just as skilled, if not better, on the streets when they shouldn’t be. Cultivation magic doesn’t instil a good-aligned moral centre no matter how hard the schools try, as much as we wished it would.” Adrianna looked back over to him. “Just because the schools teach a philosophy that covers morality, ethics and doing good deeds doesn’t mean everyone agrees. In fact we’ve got a record of Cultivators drunk on power that we’ve had to restrain and sometimes just kill. It’s the same all over the world.”

She gestured up at the stone ceiling above them listlessly. “Hey I don’t mind having a duel with you. A bit rusty on this thing myself, but it’ll whip me back into shape. I don’t dare use this kind of magic in this country, honestly - don’t know what Carstairs might have to say about it, but if he knew I don’t think I’d be allowed. Would rather not abuse a privilege, nor my authority as an Auror.”

Adrianna shrugged. “What else would you like to know about China? About the only thing I don’t touch is the politics there. That was the first unwritten rule I learned over there about Chinese politics - you don’t talk about ‘em. None of us did. We just had a job to do, and we were paid to do it. Anything else, I can answer.”

All it took was a beer, and Auror Adrianna Xin had dissolved into cheerful, unending chatter.  Kurby cocked an eyebrow at her, somewhat bemused, and reached for the second empty glass.

"Reckon I should probably grab that next round first," he said dryly, and disappeared back inside the pub.

The inside of Hopworts was still packed to the brim; apparently they weren't the only ones interested in enjoying more than one drink tonight.  It took a few minutes to fight the crowd and make his way all the way to the bar, where one of his old housemates was working behind the counter.  Finally, he snagged two more beers and headed back outside to the patio.

After the overcrowded warmth of the brewery's interior, the cold chill of the outside air hit him like the sharp edge of a knife.  Navigating around the edge of the Exploding Snap group, who were well on their way to recreating their tower, Kurby made his way back to where Xin was still sitting.

"Iechyd da," he said with a smirk, passing her one of the two pint glasses.  Reclaiming his former position on the wooden pallets, he lowered himself to sit again, taking a long sip from his own beer.

"So how's the Cultivator magic work, then?" he asked, easing back to relax again, one arm draped over the back of the makeshift wooden sofa.  There were a few threads he was curious to follow from Xin's description of it, but that seemed the simplest and most direct.  "Do they use incantations at all?  Or is it all silent like your breath trick?"

She had to admit to herself, while Bagnold went to get drinks, that she was less of a disgruntled belligerent alcoholic tonight. The Auror looked up at the stone bridge arch overhead curving between the two walls that encompassed the seating area, pondering. It had been quite a while since she had had drinks with someone in open air. Might be the likeliest explanation.

It made sense, but Adrianna was not so self-serving as to forget Bagnold, or at least his interests. Sure he might be focusing on the magic that was so unfamiliar to this country, but she wondered if he had a reason to ask beyond that of whimsical curiosity. Most people did. She’d be genuinely surprised if he hadn’t any.

Adrianna watched him return with the glasses, this scruffy-yet-not-so man, with little thought while drawing a knee up to rest her heel on the pallet she was seated, absently wrapping an arm around her leg. Her breath misted in front of her face as she accepted the proffered glass. She raised her glass at the toast, smirking a little, but did not drink from it.

“How it works depends on what school of magic it is, frankly.” She swirled the glass a little, her eyes watching the bubbles swirl in it. “But it all starts with your own qi - life force or life energy. Those who choose to pursue the Cultivator style of magic must begin with nurturing their own bodies and lives - cultivating ourselves, hence the name. We must be aware of the world around us, that we are not alone, and we must respect all that is alive.”

She finally took a sip from her beer, though her expression was fairly focused as if thinking of what to say next. “Cultivation starts with the first rule of keeping oneself hale and hearty in mind, body and soul. A good education, regular exercise, maintaining relationships - it’s a lifelong process. A healthy person has a good, strong flow of qi, and that’s the foundation for all Cultivation magic.”

The Auror blew a puff into the air; it sped away from her as a wispy sheer of frost. “My breath trick required the manipulation of my own qi to direct the air in my lungs to gather and expand. Qi is required to shape the element of air into something more substantial, and understanding the magic in both life and air is key to doing that efficiently.”

She let her leg slide back down onto the ground. “Incantations - or invocations, we call them - are yet another way of using magic, usually by way of relics already enchanted with magic directed by qi. They are in Chinese though, the same way Western magic spells have their root words in Latin or Greek, and require a knowledge of Chinese poetry.”

Adrianna set her pint down on the table and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees with her hands clasped in front of her. “With that said, anyone can learn Cultivation magic if they are so inclined, but those with less affinity for it may find it harder to progress than more talented peers. I don’t suppose you’ll be trying your hand at it, Bagnold? Though I would make a poor teacher, granted - there’s a reason why I’m an Auror and not a professor at Hogwarts.” She laughed a little at her own joke.

The Cultivator approach to magic sounded a lot more involved than British or European magic.  Kurby sipped at his drink, eyebrows raised as he listened to the Auror's explanation silently.  The more complicated forms of magic -- things like potions, which required a careful understanding of ingredients and their interactions, or runes, which involved memorization and precision, had always eluded him.  He'd always been best with spells that were much more instinctual and direct, like hexes or transfiguration.

There was something to Xin's explanation, though.  Her description of the spell that she'd cast -- using her life force to direct the air -- reminded him a bit of how a British wix might call up their patronus.  It was more than simply speaking an incantation to incite magic; it was willing one's spirit into being, calling it forth into the world in a magical form to act as one's messenger and protector.  For all the talk of balancing one's life and nurturing relationships, Cultivator magic still sounded somewhat similar.

Her description finished, Xin wasted no time in cutting right to the chase.  Kurby blinked, cocking an eyebrow as he gave her a sidelong look.

"And any of my old Hogwarts professors would tell you that I'm a pretty bleedin' awful student," he retorted, shooting the Auror a smirk.  "Good thing none of us have to worry about gettin' graded for our OWLs anymore."

It wasn't as if that hadn't been why he was asking, though. The werewolf hunter took another sip of beer, studying her thoughtfully for a moment over the top of his glass, and then shrugged.  Wandless magic -- especially the strange, life force-involved version of wandless magic that the Auror had demonstrated -- wasn't something he'd ever really thought to attempt before.  Considering what they'd been up against lately, any trick that might give him an edge if he ended up in a corner was probably worth the effort. 

"I'd be interested," he said simply.  "Dunno how much of a quick study I'd be with it, though."