Well, it's kind of arrogant for me to call it an astral ward, that's more like my end goal.

  Astral Wards are a theoretical concept theorized by new age wizards of several institutes such as Hogwarts and Ilvermorny. Basically, a bunch of Diviners and theoretical charm crafters got together and came up with the idea of a sort of enchantment that completely hides you from fate and all its machinations.

  My version is not so ambitious; it's mostly a ward against Divination and scrying. I took the dreamcatcher again, holding it by its chain in front of my eyes; I was quite satisfied with it.

  That I could make it in the first place was in part inevitable and part luck.

  About two and a half years ago, when I was attempting the making of a new system of charm craft specialized to non?foci casting, I came across a problem — or rather a question.

  How do charms know things the caster doesn't? For example, with transfiguration. One of the things that masters of transfiguration like to show off that's actually not as impressive as it should be, is turning objects into creatures. Like turning a mug into a rat.

  If the charm needed the caster to be completely familiar with the structure and the makings of a rat's body, then the charm, if successfully cast, would truly be impressive, though it would also pretty much kill the usefulness of the transfiguration charm.

  With a little investigation into the nature of transfiguration and similar charms, something shocking was revealed.

  It's Divination. Or a facet of it at least. It was quite surprising at the time, though now it's quite obvious.

  As far as I could tell, almost all high?level or complicated charms used Divination in one or more parts of their structure, but it wasn't actually like that by design.

  I could be wrong about this, but whether in terms of the non?existence of books about this phenomenon or the specific way Divination is baked into so many charms, it doesn't seem like it's something that was done on purpose.

  It's like how pi or the golden ratio of the inverse square keep popping up all over many different branches of physics. it's simply part of our universe.

  That whole discovery led me down the rabbit hole of: how does Divination even work? I mean, you can say it's just magic, but I have managed to find a how?to for several charms, though they're not always the same.

  Like for telekinesis — my own telekinesis charm works based on a sort of vector control, though I haven't found a way to expand that into things other than physical movement.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  My levitation charm works based on gravity manipulation though, and I've been trying to get my telekinesis to do that too, as it seems it's a more efficient way. The funny thing is, though, that there's no indicator within the spell model that would show how the charm would work.

  One of the things I've been doing as a result of this, is observation of other wizards in the Vancouver wizarding district.

  As I did, I noticed other things. For others, each time they cast charms, they don't necessarily work the same way. The why of this whole thing, however, was solved by observing the simplest of all spells being cast — by a child of all things.

  Normally, when adults use the levitation charm, it works by the manipulation of gravity if it's heavy, and by creating small air vacuums if it's light.

  When I came across a child showing off her magic to her parents, though, I had seen the beginnings of a hand forming as a result of the charm. The hand, of course, collapsed before even complete formation; as I'd said, the magic of this world is not particularly attuned to making things, physical or otherwise.

  Though it failed, it gave me the answer I had needed. Normally, if they are a good teacher, no one tells their students to imagine a hand lifting the object when casting this charm. They should — though I don't really know if they do — just teach them the charm itself without trying to enforce any specific image, allowing them to form anything they are more comfortable with and feel the closest to.

  This, however, can also leave a gap for a mistake I assume is very common. They imagine a hand or a platform pushing or pulling on the object, which gave me the answer I should have already guessed but had somehow eluded me.

  Charms are our way of telling magic to do something. How that something is achieved, though? That's for magic to decide. But it will be either a very close or the exact way the caster imagines it to be accomplished — like that girl who had imagined a hand, that is if they imagine anything at all, I suspect the reason it sometimes changes for adults based on situations, is because they're used to it enough to not imagine anything, so magic chooses for them.

  All this led me to believe all charms have an underlying method by which they achieve their intended purpose, and that includes Divination.

  But how did it work? It was an incredibly hard question, and also a surprisingly important one. Based on a celebrity rumor magazine from Britain, Morgana is at the very least on a close?friends basis with Rowena Ravenclaw, if not the lovers the magazine claimed — though I personally doubt the lovers rumor. Morgana was obsessed with Arthur for centuries, even if it was mostly hatred. I doubt she would go for anyone else, and most certainly not a woman.

  Anyways, Rowena — the ancestor to a character from the movies known for her eccentric behavior and prophetic abilities, Luna Lovegood — is an incredibly talented diviner. The moment Morgana finds out about my existence, all she'd have to do is go to her friend, perhaps give her some of her blood, and they would be able to track my location to the meter.

  The answer... I've not figured out yet. Which is one of the main reasons my astral ward is not an Astral Ward. I'm close, though. It has something to do with the vibrations through the mana?field; I just haven't cracked it yet.

  Regardless, even without understanding the underlying workings, just based on the hundreds of different methods Divination can work — learned from numerous charms — I was able to make a proof of concept. And for what I'm doing next, it's more than enough.