Disclaimer: I do not and am not trying to own any of the works or ideas of J.K. Rowling. She is the sole owner of that material.
AN: And so I begin again. I wrote this story originally two summers ago and unwillingly abandoned it as the school year came upon me. I debated starting from scratch but I felt that my first attempt was decent enough to simply rework. For those of you who were disappointed or frustrated with the previous story… this one will be better, if only because I have two more years of writing under my belt. Or of course you'll continue to be disappointed and I'll just be writing selfishly. Also, don't bother leaving comments like so-and-so would never do that in the books, this story isn't written by J.K. Rowling, sorry. That being said, if something happens in a chapter that you feel is just a huge jump from the character in a previous chapter feel free to let me know. I only ask for a bit of leeway because the characters will simply not always be true to canon. Thanks for reading everyone and enjoy.
Chapter 1
Harry sat quietly hidden in the corner, the light reflected off the dust floating through the air of the library. He stared at an old tome he had picked at random from the shelf behind him. His eyes, staring blankly at the text, fell from line to line, his hand reaching out periodically to turn a page. To the casual observer, it looked like he was reading. And he was trying to, but his mind could not focus.
It had been a week since Sirius had fallen through the veil. A week that Harry had hardly notice pass. "It's my fault," Harry thought. He turned another page, slowly tracing the lines with his eyes.
"I'm so sorry Sirius," he whispered as a tear fell to the page.
He watched the tear hit the page and slowly soak in, smearing a letter of the handwritten text. As Harry looked at the smudged letter, he noticed the sentence it blurred and started reading.
"What must be understood about magic is that it has a level of control over the witch or wizard. This effect is generally only noticed by those with more magic in their blood or in their core. Thus, it is not uncommon for witches and wizards born from parents without magic to never realize or feel the pull their magic has over them. There are, of course, exceptions. Witches and wizards with large magical cores will begin to feel their magic pulling at their decisions and personalities particularly during their magical majority and physical puberty. This 'pulling' generally takes the form of witches and wizards declaring fealty or loyalty to a wizard of greater power. This is why wizarding history is driven by the most powerful wizards and witches of the time and rarely by those with lesser magical power. An interesting comparison to consider is the difference between muggle history and wizarding history. Muggle historians are often forced to consider whether it was events that led to a moment in history or if it was the person who drove it. This is hardly ever taken into consideration in wizarding history because individuals of power have such great influence over those weaker…"
Harry reread the paragraph considering what he had just read. He flipped the pages till he arrived in the middle of another chapter.
"Magic is sentient to a certain extent, but not enough to split itself by defining aspects of its nature with moral ambiguity. For example the 'darker' magics are considered evil due to their effect on the castor and the person affected. Apart from the sometimes detrimental aspects of darker magic, it - by nature of being more powerful - is exceedingly more difficult to control. The result is typically untalented warlocks throwing about massive amounts of uncontrolled magic that has been defined by the castor to cause destruction of some nature, or it results in extremely talented wizards and witches using some of the most powerful spells ever developed. Neither of these options were appealing to the Ministry of Magic and so in 1543 they established…"
He sat there. He couldn't really think of a time he had ever felt his magic. Maybe the time with the dementors but so much had happened he couldn't remember specifics of how he had felt apart from fear. Maybe he could ask to Dumbledore if he could borrow his pensieve...
He flipped to the first page of his book, Magics by Arthur Sarcosta.
Harry tried to remember what shelf he had grabbed it from. He turned the pages to the end of the chapter he was reading.
"There is no such thing as good and evil when it comes to magic. There is only power and the minds that wield it."
His mind travelled back to his first year. "There is no good and evil, only power, and those to weak to seek it," he muttered to himself. He couldn't quite bring himself to believe the statement, not because it came from the Dark Lord but… well, to be honest, he didn't know why. Everything about the way he had been taught since he came to Hogwarts was the opposite. There were strictly defined lines of good and evil, and what was useful and what wasn't. They didn't explore philosophical aspects of magic in class. They were told to turn this into that or to take these ingredients and mix them into this. It wasn't difficulty. Just follow the instructions and you did well. It didn't surprise Harry at all that the Ministry restricted knowledge and labeled it as evil because they were nervous about people using it to cause problems. It would surprise him at all if the reason he hadn't heard of any of this before was somehow because of the Ministries meddling.
Harry might have been disgusted or upset with the conclusions he was arriving at a week or two before, but he was simply too tired to feel anything more than mild interest in the situation. "I could get used to this," he thought. "It's so much easier to think about everything when I'm too tired to feel anything."
He grabbed the book and performed an obscuring charm he had found when he was looking for something to teach the DA. Instead of removing the wards or charms already on the object, the charm simply interrupted the flow of the ward. It was kind of like placing a wall in the way of the magic and would redirect it into space. In short, it meant that he could put the book in his bag and walk out without having to check it out with Madame Pince and without worrying about any anti-theft charms going off. There were downsides to it. The object often broke down entirely from the pull of the magic and it was impossible to cast anything else on it. He figured the book would probably last a month at most before it disintegrated.
Shrugging his bag onto his shoulder he walked out of the library. He briefly wondered why it didn't bother him that he was stealing a book but he tried not to think about that and moved on to another question, which was why there weren't protections against the charm he had just performed. It was simple enough and it could bypass just about any basic ward, and some of the more complicated ones, there had to be ways to protect against it. As he made his way to Gryffindor tower, his mind wandered and he zoned out.
"Courage," Harry said, rolling his eyes slightly at the simple password as he stepped through the portrait hole. He looked around and didn't see anyone he knew very well. Ron and Hermione were still at St. Mungo's recovering from their injuries, so he walked up the stairs to his dormitory, dropped his bag and collapsed onto the bed. He lay there for several minutes before taking his wand out to cast a silencing spell and a privacy ward. He lay back down and spent the next thirty minutes clearing his mind, ignoring the thought that if he had done this months before his godfather might still be alive.
Draco Malfoy sat in the opposite corner of the library finishing an extra potions project that he was doing for Professor Snape. He set his quill down and looked over his essay. He sighed. It still needed work and he prepared himself for another hour of writing. He put his hand to his neck to massage the knots. He sharply pulled his hand away thinking of the reprimand he would receive from his father if he saw him giving in to this habit in public. He sighed again and then winced as he thought about even more reprimands against sighing.
He glanced up and looked around the library. Potter. He was sitting across from him. Draco leaned back in his chair and considered him. Now there was an enigma. Everything about Potter confused him. The Boy-who-Lived, champion of the wizarding world… Draco always assumed Potter would own every aspect of those titles. Using his fame to get away with all kinds of things, using it to make the school worship him in all his arrogant glory. But he didn't.
When Potter first arrived at school, he looked starved… for food or love or both, Draco couldn't tell. He looked at everyone with bright green eyes, searching for something. Again, he wasn't sure for what, affection maybe. But that had changed over the years. Each year Potter became more and more private. Ever since the end of last year, when he appeared with that Hufflepuff's body, he had changed even more. To be honest, though he would never admit it, Draco was a little scared of Potter. "Well, scared isn't quite the right word," Draco thought as he reflected. Nervous was a better description.
No, Potter had changed a lot. He reminded Draco of his father's friends. It was the way he walked, the way he looked wary, wild and dangerous. Just like his father's friends, the wariness seemed to be a part of who they were, as though they expected to be attacked at every turn but were too prepared and confident to look anything more than dangerous. Potter stood up, grabbed his book and cast a charm that made Draco's eyes open in surprise, though not so wide that anyone else would notice. He thought he felt something in his magic shift around him, but he ignored it.
"Well, well, Potter. Casting dark charms so you can steal a library book," he thought. "And he did it wordlessly which adds a level of difficulty beyond the fact that that charm is no simple feat." He then tried to forget what he'd just thought. It just added another layer to Potter that, as he had observed more and more, he didn't entirely want to know about. But his own curiosity, which he still wasn't sure why it was there, and the thought of a reward from his father for providing interesting information, made him sit back and continue thinking. His essay sat untouched in front of him until curfew when he made his way back to the dungeons.
Harry awoke the next day startled to find that it was actually morning and not the middle of the night. Not only that, but he wasn't sweating. He couldn't feel the spells placed around his bed straining against his magic, and his throat wasn't raw from screaming. He made an instant decision that he would put all of his focus into learning oclumency. Clearing his mind seemed the most reasonable explanation for not having his usual nightmares as well as the ones that the Dark Lord continuously gifted him.
Trying not to wake his roommates, he quietly walked into the bathrooms and took a quick shower. As he stepped out, he looked at his body in the mirror. His first thought was that he didn't look as skinny as he used to. He had been running in the mornings ever since the Room of Requirement had given him a book that explained a link between physical strength and magical strength. He continued his examination, counting all the scars on his body. A variety on his back and chest were from Uncle Vernon.
The basilisk scar was particularly nasty. He always made sure to keep it covered. It had reminded him too much of his lightning bolt scar. It had driven Harry to test the scar for lingering magic. He had spent days searching for a spell which would show the magic in a specified area. When he finally found and used the spell it definitely showed the latent magic in the scar; like he had assumed, it resembled his lightning bolt curse scar in that it was surrounded by dark magic. The difference was that the magic in his curse scar appeared to be more active, swirling and pouring from it, whereas the basilisk scar was surrounded by a latent field of dark magic. "Of course," Harry thought, "it isn't really dark magic, is it? Just magic used with intent to do evil."
He continued surveying his scars. As Harry looked at each of them, he remembered how and why he got them. It reminded him of how much he and others had given up over the years as well as how much they had achieved.
He pulled his clothes on after toweling off and was about to go grab his bag from his room when he remembered that his classes were over since he had sat the O.W.L.'s the week before. Instead of grabbing his bag, he opened it and grabbed the book he had taken the night before and headed for breakfast.
He was in a pretty good mood considering everything going on right now. He hadn't had any nightmares and he'd miraculously made progress in oclumency. Again he ignored the stab of guilt that progress brought. So far, it was a good day. As he made his way into the Great Hall, the empty seats where Ron and Hermione usually sat dampened his mood slightly but, like the guilt, he pushed it away.
He walked to the furthest end of the Gryffindor table and sat down. Grabbing a couple pieces of toast, he pulled his book out and turned to a chapter titled "Runes".
"Runes and rituals are the origins of the modern day method of focusing magic that was developed by the Romans during the height of their empire. Though the word 'origins' implies a level of simplicity, runes and rituals were far from simple so they evolved into the simpler method of using wands and words as foci. Rituals were, and still are, incredibly complicated methods of invoking magic. Runes on the other hand have become much simpler with the discovery of wand-making. Much information on runes has been lost and classes taught on the subject lean toward learning the runic language rather than using it for its actual purpose — magic. The method is quite basic in theory. Draw the rune with your wand while focusing on the image of the rune, then push your magic into the rune to power it. This idea is simple enough, but…"
Harry stopped reading the book. "Just draw the rune and push power into it. Huh. Sounds pretty easy to me." He glanced around and noticed a fourth-year sitting at the Ravenclaw table reading a runes textbook. Harry was about to get up and ask if he could borrow it when two things occurred to him that made him sit back down.
Draco looked up from his table and saw Harry lean back with an undreadable look on his face.
"I can't just ask the girl for her book, apart from the fact that I don't even know what I would do when I got it," Harry realized. "Would I look at the rune and try and remember it till I have time to draw it out? Or … ? Either way, I'd be calling huge amounts of attention to myself." He paused in thought. "Dammit! I am a wizard. I have the power He knows not. There is only power, those who use it and those too weak to seek it."
Harry pulled one of the large wooden bowls of fruit toward him and wordlessly banished all the fruit from it and transfigured the bowl into a small empty journal. Harry was kind of impressed with himself. He'd never performed magic in this way. The most he'd ever used magic outside of class was for the DA or when he was being attacked. He'd only just started researching things for his own use this past year.
Frowning slightly, he cast another spell, though he wasn't sure it would accomplish what he wanted and there was no way he would be able to tell if it had worked until he'd cast his next spell. He tried to make the journal able to accommodate all the pages in the girl's textbook without actually having to make more physical pages. He used the space-modifying spell that allowed trunks and rooms to have more space than what was physically possible. When he performed it, he focused on the idea of what it should do to the book. He thought it should work since the spell itself was a charm that was rooted heavily in transfiguration theory, based on willing an object to change, or at least he guessed it was, due to the spell's effect. So, he simply willed the spell on the book to do what he wanted it to.
He began to have doubts about his spell work. What he had just done went against everything he had been taught. Or if he was honest he had never actually been taught anything close to this and was just winging it, but he had this nagging feeling that it would work. He cast a quick anchoring spell on his empty journal so that his copying spell would have somewhere to copy to.
He leaned forward a little, grabbed his fork with left hand and started eating as he moved his right hand and wand under the table to aim at the girl's book. "Ha!," he thought. "I got something from the Dursleys after all, whether they wanted me to or not." The various injuries that had been caused by his 'family', as Dumbledore called them, had at times left him unable to use one hand or the other. He had been forced to learn how to use both growing up, partly preemptively and partly because there were times he just couldn't use his dominant right hand.
Smirking, he shot the copying spell at the girl's book. Then, placing his wand back into the holster on his right wrist, he continued eating. He tried not to look at his journal. He looked up again and scanned the Great Hall. His eyes drifted across the Slytherin table. Draco was sitting amongst a group of older years eating calmly. There weren't many students down this early. He was beginning to think he was too paranoid when Draco glanced up and made eye contact with him.
Harry jumped a little in his seat. Malfoy sneered at him and looked away laughing at a joke the boy on the right of him had said. Harry sat there wondering what his problem was. He picked up the transfigured book and stacked it underneath the one he had taken from the library. He calmly walked out of the Great Hall heading towards the seventh floor corridor, not noticing several pairs of curious and worried eyes following him.
Review... pretty please :)
epic
