Harry looked out from the school as all the students began to leave for the summer. He would be staying at Hogwarts from now on trying to learn advanced Magics. It had been an aggravating last week in Hogwarts. Dealing with former friends as well as the antagonism of the remaining students of Hogwarts was absolutely angering. Beside him stood Hermione. She was true to her word about learning healing from Madam Pomphrey. Harry gazed at the children trying to decided how he felt about staying here at Hogwarts. On one hand he was now effectively in the charge of a man who had berated and belittled him for the past two years. On the other hand, Hermione was going to be forced to stay here until she receives another rune inscribed bracelet to hide her still furry appearance. She had spoken to harry about it. Apparently she had never been cured of the condition, just hiding it with an illusion. Harry wasn't sure what to do with that information, but he decided to file it away for future reference anyway.

He thought back to the first thing Severus had done was teach him a ministry restricted technique.

FLASHBACK

Harry stood in Severus' private study. Across from him was the dungeon bat himself holding a book that read. RUNESIGNS: THE ART OF WANDLESS MAGIC.

"This is something you will need to learn, because that wand is a liability to you. If you don't start using this now you won't be able to at all." Severus said with a frown. "This is something that the ministry doesn't want to be spread out as it isn't traceable like a wand. DO NOT LOOSE THIS BOOK! It is the last copy that I know of in the entirety of Great Britain. Do not get caught with this book. If it is confiscated, consider yourself discarded from the role of my apprentice. Now I know that you are going to show this too granger, and I don't care, but DO NOT show it to Weasley."

"I wouldn't show it to him anyway. He wouldn't appreciate it for one thing and he was the first one to decry me when I became your apprentice." Harry said with a monotone, he was still practicing his emotionless façade. "However I might show it to Neville. The twins said his house has been allies of mine for the last twelve hundred years."

Snape sneered, but nodded. "That is acceptable given his poor performances with wanded magic." Severus frowned for a moment in thought. Then he looked at Harry. "He is very good at herbology is he not?"

"Yes sir." Harry said with a calm expression.

"Send him this book." Severus said getting up and grabbing a book off his shelf. "Tell him he can keep it as it is of no use to me, but he may get some use from it."

"If I may sir?" Harry asked without emotion.

"Very well." Severus said with frustration.

"Why are you being so nice to my friends now?" Harry asked with a frown.

Severus sighed with a heavy frown. "I, like all others, am a man. I have made countless mistakes, that have cost me everything from my best friend and the love of my life to a tortured life of servitude. Your father was very unkind to me, and in all my hatred of the man I grew to hate the very idea of you. I have recently learned that you are not in fact James Potter so I'm using a technique called Occlumency to compartmentalize everything I think of when I see how much you look like my childhood bully and only see you as Harry Potter, my apprentice and the only chance to kill the bastard who killed Lily."

Harry nodded at this. "If that will be all sir, I will deliver this tome to Neville." He said with a hint of submission in his voice.

END FLASHBACK

Harry and Hermione were both soaked with sweat, and breathing heavily. In front of them stood Severus Snape with his normal sneer and a raised eyebrow. He looked at the two students and grimaced at the weakness. How was it that they had made it this far in their Hogwarts education, while still being so out of shape. They lived in a seven story castle, and had classes on every single place throughout. They shouldn't have this much trouble simply running around a lake. It wasn't even that hot outside!

Harry straightened up and looked at Severus for his next exercise. Severus nodded and gave him a list. Then he returned to the castle. He had a plethora of potions to complete after all.

Time skip one hour.

Harry looked down at Hermione. She normally uncontrollable hair was now tamed in a mane of micro braids. It strangely made her look like a braided lion. Her tawny fur was flat to her body with a sheen of sweat, and she looked ready to pass out. But she was now in her zone today Severus had run them through the ringer, and it wasn't even lunch. But the physical part was done now it was time to study magic, in ways that would give the pencil pushers of the ministry a coronary. They had both destroyed their wands and started practicing all their previously mastered spells with only Runesigns. It was a problem because most of the spell were designed to make this difficult. Apparently in the fifteen hundreds it was common to use Runesigns but with the founding of the ministry Runesigns were quietly discouraged. And as a consequence wanded magic was designed to be much more difficult to preform thus making it seem that it was so much more difficult to do wandless magic.

To put it simply they were fighting an uphill battle. Not impossible, but difficult as getting into a fist fight with a giant. Needless to say neither had managed to do more than a simple floating charm and a fire-starting charm respectively. Harry decided that he didn't like this much. Also Hermione was completely distraught at the thought that without wands almost the entire branch of transfiguration was no longer applicable. But both clung to their motivation. Harry chose this to fight on equal terms to Voldemort, and Hermione chose this to make sure her little brother figure always had someone in his corner to protect and fight for him.

Neville sat in his greenhouse looking at the plants surrounding him. They represented all he had ever been good at. Up until Harry let him read the tome on Runesigns. He had resigned his father's wand back to its place on the mantle beside his mother's as soon as he came home. He had been practicing Runesigns ever since. They were hard, but he made slight headway. He had delved into the Longbottom library and began looking at the oldest tome trying to decipher the family magic. Turned out they had been battle mages with the Vikings, same as the Potters. Except where the potter's specialty seemed to have been runes, the Longbottom specialty had been elemental magic. Earth and water specifically. So he began to learn a branch of magic that seemed to come easier to him than wanded magic ever had. That wasn't to say he became a battlemage after simply reading the book. No he was forced to spend countless hours practicing and training. It seemed that to be a battle mage required a great deal of physical strain. Unlike wanded magic, he found that to do something wandless or Runesigns you needed to be powerful enough to do it physically. Like the spell he had learned to force the earth to raise up and form a wall, required the energy that it would take to build said wall. Needless to say he was getting a great amount of exercise. He had also taken up learning to use the Longbottom ancestral war axe. It was a six-foot-long staff with a wicked looking double-bladed bearded axe head. Now he was looking at the book that Harry had given him. He wasn't going to be left behind and useless. He would stand at Harry's side and help when the time came.

Fred and George Weasley stood in front of the cauldron looking at all the prank stuff they had developed in their brief time as Hogwarts' resident prankster kings. Inside were all the things that they had decided weren't fit for battle in any form. Things like trick wands, punching telescopes, and various joke candies.

"You know brother mine. Once we do this there will be no going back. Full on battle mode till the end." Said the twin on the right. (that's right even the author can't tell them apart!)

"I know brother mine. I also know he'd never ask us to do this, but we need to be committed and as our liege lord it's our job to do everything for his best interests." Stated the twin on the left.

"So be it." Sighed the twin on the right. "So ends the Weasley twins, pranksters extraordinaire."

"So begins Weasley twins Quartermasters of house Potter." The left twin said lighting and throwing a match into the cauldron.

Ginny Weasley sat in her room looking at all the stuff she once loved. Now however all of it seemed stupid and useless. She hid it well but after the incident inside the chamber she changed. She no longer cared about anything but getting stronger. The diary had almost devoured her soul. And there had been nothing she could do about it. Clutched to her chest was an old volume covered in dust and looked like it hadn't been opened in a century. The Weasley family Grimoire. The sum of the Weasley family spells. She had snuck into her parent's room and snatched it from under the bed. She simply held it to herself and stared blankly at the wall in front of her. She was clearly lost in thought when a small voice said.

"'Mistress? Are you going to open the old book or not?"'

The Youngest Weasley, the first girl in seven generations looked down at the small fiery serpent curled up in her lap. It had been the first snake she had encountered after the incident. Proof positive that she had been touched by Voldemort's horrid soul. A foot long ashwinder that had been on the brink of dying when she found it. In her desperation to keep it alive she had bound it as her familiar. Her mother had of course been furious, however for the first time in her life she saw her father put his foot down. Straight onto her mother's growing protests. She was allowed to keep the snake. She nodded and opened the book.