"Alar is a thought process, really," he said, without taking his eyes from the diagrams. "A sort of faith. It's how sympathists are able to to impose their will on reality. And if yours is stronger than the person's your fighting, your will can overcome theirs. So if Ambrose was using sympathy to attack me, I could hold off his attacks with the use of my Alar. Which is significantly stronger, in fact."
He looked up from the diagrams at last, taking another glance at his gram.
"It absorbs sympathetic energies. I had to learn runes for it I'm really not supposed to know yet - blood, and bone - but I haven't used them for any destructive purposes. Just defensive."
He raised an eyebrow at Harry's usage of the word 'enchantments.' So far as he knew, all enchantments were either sympathy, possibly sygaldry, and little else.