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"The first of the three essential skills is Rise. The first and most basic part of Rise is learning to cycle your magic through your blood and at higher levels through the very cells of your body. Even a child can learn to do basics of this skill, I know because it kept me alive. Remember: basic Rise will increase healing, efficiency and endurance of your body as well as temper pain and sharpen your reflexes, thus enabling you to explore the natural limits of the human body more easily and increasing your life span. I will teach you this by hitting you in hand to hand combat until you relent and start using it. If and when you master the limits of the human body, I will teach you to shatter them."
Chief Unspeakable Harry Potter, before The Fall.
It was the beginning of December and Harry was seriously annoyed at his classmates.
The start of the quiddich season was nearing and Wood had been dragging the entire team out of bed before dawn for 'secret' practice the entire previous week. And now the point was moot.
The habit of the students from other houses to stop in the halls to whisper and point had mercifully stopped, however now that the news he was a seeker had leaked half of them were cheering for him and the other half were jeering and telling him he would fail.
He was very glad that Hermione was his friend. With Wood taking up most of his free time he hardly had time to go over his homework, let alone read quiddich through the ages. Bless her for offering to go over his homework and grade it. Sure it took some revision to fix his the holes in his magical theory but he was now getting the grades that he was used to getting before coming to Hogwarts, not that the Dursley's cared one way or another.
'In fact.' He put away his Quiddich through the ages and looked at the girl that was going over yet another of Ron's scrolls with her dreaded red tipped quill.
"Hermione?" He asked, warming his hands on the blue faerie fire Hermione had conjured for them. Ron was was busy with going over his scroll with her, wincing at every spelling, fact and form correction.
"Yes Harry?" the girl asked, not lifting her head from slashing red lines through Rons scroll. He smiled. His scrolls were no longer red nightmares as they were at the beginning. Ron seemed to be taking a bit more time on learning the proper forms for writing an essay, but then again Ron was home schooled.
"You know that I really appreciate what you are doing for us?" He finally blurted out and Hermione looked up, a closed off look on her face. "I mean without you I'd barely be scraping by with an Acceptable grade in most classes and would still come off as a stupid spoiled kid when addressing my peers and faculty." He stood up straighter and smiled. "So thank you on behalf of clan Potter for teaching me what I need to know."
Hermione looked at him for a moment and then blushed. She had though in her darkest depths that he was, like many others had, just using her. But he really appreciated her help. She knew because a formal thank you like this basically puts him in a minor sort of debt to her. She could ask for compensation, shelter or small favour from him if she was inclined to and he would be obliged to come through.
"You are welcome Mister Potter, your friendship is just as important to me. Granger, at your service." She returned his little bow.
Ron looked at one then the other and frowned. "Oy you lot! What's with you two going all formal like?" He glanced at Harry in confusion. His friend had been avoiding formality of all kinds from the day he had met him and then realisation hit him that this must be really important to Harry.
"I..." He started uncertainly. "I appreciate your assi..." he stumbled over the words he never used for a moment "...assistance as well Miss Granger."
He blushed at his fumbles as he bowed to the girl. Father insisted he learn the basic forms even though he was the youngest son and he had never thought he'd actually use any of it.
Hermione had been dragging his average to EE's kicking and screaming and he had been lamenting the amount of work he had to put into studying. And in this moment, for the first time Ron realised that his mother might actually be proud of him. And that he indeed owed Hermione for her help.
Hermione stared at him for a moment and then a beaming smile hit the boys like a ray of sunlight.
"Aw you guys." She gushed and grabbed them into a hug a tear leaking out, breaking the awkward formality of the moment.
Ron exchanged looks with Harry while they were patting the girl's back. 'Bonkers!' He mouthed as Harry shook his head and smiled.
Girls really were completely bonkers.
Severus Snape was limping across the courtyard, the bite from the Cerberus fueling his temper when he noticed Granger and bloody Potter with Weasley. He knew they were probabbly up to no good and started to make his was to them when he saw Potter bow formally to the girl. He quickly snapped off a notice me not and hid behind a pillar to listen.
Yes, it was a formal thank you. So, Potter had some manners after all. The blasted brat merely elected to forgo them in his class. He frowned and stepped behind the pillar when the Granger girl started to sniffle. What in the nine hells was that girl getting all emotional about, they were merely thanking her!
"Potter!" He snapped off. "Loitering are we? Skipping class perhaps?" He smiled as the three first years sprang apart and looked about in fear. He stalked over. He glanced at the faerie fire in a jar and frowned, open fire was against the rules but they seemed to have it contained. He looked for anything else to hold against them and after a few moments of scrutiny he stalked off ignoring their stammering.
'Damn bloody Potter for denying him even the simple pleasure of removing points.".
It was a good day for quiddich and Hermione was cheering with the rest of the Gryfindoor when Harry drew the attention from an excellent shot by Katie. She watched him waver and narrowly dodge a bludger, the broom was buckling wildly in the air and she realised that someone was casting a jinx of some sort on Harry's broom, probably a dominator of some sort. She looked at Hagrid's crazed muttering about powerful dark magic and shook her head. She grabbed his ominoculars and scanned swiftly through the audience, finally stopping at Snape.
"Oh no you won't. " She growled, angered by the thought that she had so misjudged them man. She took out her wand and muttered the syllables of a projecting jinx to guide her fairy fire to the man. It licked under the seats and the rushed forward folding in on itself as the flames moved like water. She carefully kept the temperature down until the flames hit his cloak and them let the control go and she smiled in grim satisfaction she placed it back in her sleeve and watched as the flames grew in intensity and volume.
She paled when she realised Harry's broom was still buckling and watched in horror as he finally lost control an hung from the broom by his hands, the broom now actively trying to shake him off.
'It hadn't been Snape.' She realised and fumbled for her wand, stuck inside her left sleeve, panic blooming through her veins as she struggled to remember the poem like tongue twister that was the universal counter spell. She had neither the time nor the knowledge to run through modern counter jinxes in sequence.
"Ronald!" She yelled as she threw the ominoculars at him and used both hands to untangle her wand from the seams of her sleeve. "Find who's doing it!"
She pointed her wand and sped through the universal counter spell syllables in old Greek melding together into a chant, readying her self for the mental feedback as she caught and pushed against the foreign presence that had settled inside the control charms of Harry's Nimbus. The world outside her body and mind had slowed to a crawl, and it was now just her and the evil presence pushing behind the jinx.
She felt malignant tendrils try to lash out at her and strike painfully against her fledgling oculumentic shields and realised that Hagrid might have had guessed properly on the dark nature of the spell. 'This was going to hurt.' She realized as she sent out more magic to burn out the dark presence. It was working. Her magic was purifying the spell, but it was going to take forever, she wondered if she was going to endure untill it was done. She huddled, whimpering behind her thin, oculumentic shields every lash spreading stinging echoes through her mind and imagined her own spell as cleansing flames that would purify the evil.
Ron stared for a moment at Hermione after he caught the ominoculars. She was pointing her wand at Harry mumbling nonsense, but he knew better then to disobey. He frantically scanned the audience and hoped he would be in time. All he could see were people rushing about in panic, knocking over people and each other.
The headmaster sat up from his chair and glanced at Severus who was already going through counter jinxes and took up his old wand to weave a web of half strength cushioning charms beneath poor Harry, just in case. Not that and unprotected fall would kill the boy, just that involving St Mungo's would be troublesome.
He could have, of course, end everything now but the lad needed some adversity in his life to prepare him for what was coming.
Snape cursed as faerie fire ran along his robes and he had to cut off his attempt to save Damned Potter and divert his attention to saving his own skin. The blasted fire was persistent as most types of conjured fire tended to be when unleashed. He wove a web of counter spells and snuffed the blasted thing after a handful of seconds. He glanced at Potter and frowned. He was still holding on, even though he looked like he was choking and the broom was oddly quiet. He prepared to try and hit him with a levicorpus if he fell when it happened. The specific blue green of a successfully shattered jinx enveloped the broom and the brat was safely climbing back n the broom coughing. Perhaps one of his counter jinxes had worked. He ignored the pleased echo of his life debt as it settled down a bit and scowled resisting the urge to smack himself on the forehead.
"Oh bloody hell the brat has more luck then sense!" He growled as Potter strutted in the air displaying the snitch.
Hermione struggled with the foreign presence lashing out at her and pushed the last of her reserves into her flagging defences when she felt a warmth engulf her in energy and her mental shields stabilize. She could feel it, the warmth of the silver dragon resting against her breast bone as it flushed the blood in her heart with more energy even as it shored up her mind.
Jaws still clenched in grimm determination she channelled her suddenly freed magic into attacking, lashing out with all her remaining strength against the evil git that had bee hurting her, wanting nothing more than to hurt him back. She sent forth the entirety of her still undeveloped magics through the point of contention in Harry's broom and back, back at the attacker lashing out at his shields bombarding him with pain and anger even as he battered her freshly reinforced shields.
And then the original spell to subvert the broom shattered under the additional strain. Hermione reeled back and stumbled physically as a stabbing backlash pierced into her. She sucked air into her lungs with a hiss and clucked at her head blind to the outside world as her eyes roled back and she fainted.
That afternoon in Hagrid's hut Hermione was nursing a headache and sipped black tea laced with headache potion. Oh now she knew why the universal counter spell was no longer used. Prepare yourself for pain. That was the only warning the book gave her.
She knew reaction backlash had to be endured when she broke the spell but she hadn't been expecting a full fledged migraine complete with fading vision and burst blood vessels in her eyes. Even with the potions she could barely sit there and function while Ronald was producing the most idiotic theories in spite of the evidence that made her want to cast a permanent silencio on him and damn the cost.
"I'm just saying that it was a perfect way for Snape to kill of Harry! The stupid bat had it in for him from..."
"Shut up Ronald and think!" She hissed massaging her temple and thanking whatever gods were listening that Haggrid stocked a headache potion in his cupboard.
"If Snape was jinxing the broom it would have ended when..." She trailed off and looked at Hagrid. "...when someone set his cloak on fire." She frowned. "It was someone else, someone well versed in ritual chants and curses or curse breaking. And his shields were like a bloody fortress."
"But I..." Ron tried to say something in his defence but Hermione had had enough.
She growled at his stammering and stood up. "Excuse me Hagrid, I'm a bit tired and I'll go back to bed. I thank you for your hospitality." She said and excused herself leaving the boys alone with Haggrid. She had to get herself into bed and a dose of sleeping potion into her.
It was a few days after the quiddich incident. She had spent the weekend recovering and now Hermione had a very busy schedule. She had been learning about broom enchantment, looking for Nicholas Flammel, and helping the twins brew a most fascinating experimental potion in an abandoned classroom. She was also working on her regular class projects (where she was still half a day behind schedule), her Oculumency and looking into wizarding law. She had to cut her sleep during the week to six hours a day to keep up and by Fridays she'd gotten a bit grumpy with lack of sleep. Which prompted Harry and Ronald to try to cheer her up with an aerial game fo tag.
Right now she was feeling better but sweaty from exertion and felling particularly disgusting in her clothes. She came back to Gryfindoor tower and aimed straight for the showers.
The adrenaline and magic rush from the latest flying lesson had run out and she was feeling a bit tired, however the last remnants of the tension she had been feeling was washing away with the water and sweat.
Flying turned out to be more fun that she would have imagined. Mind you, she would never voluntarily do some of the crazy stunts Harry performed but she understood why he dared to to them much better now that she made a point out of studying the theory behind broom enchantment. The broom wasn't just flying on it's own. Her magic was what controlled the ambient charms in the broom. Saying 'up' was merely a mnemonic tool that helped assert ones will over the demi-sentient objects.
The old school brooms, having developed sevreal quirks over the years, were a bit tricky to ride sometimes and she took particular delight in ordering an especially stubborn broom the others had been having trouble with to heel. It eagerly did this, like a playful concluded, by empirical evidence that flying was part power, part skill and part pure strength of will. She had noticed when she consciously tried to infuse her magic into the broom it moved a little better and turned more precisely. She had to wonder what that said about Harry's ability to get on the quiddich team so easily. A seeker would need power speed, precision, and cantankerousness of a mule to hold perfect control of his broom during the coruse of an entire quiddich game. Teamwork and personal safety came secondary to catching the snitch as far as she could tell.
Insane game for insane people.
She got this particular piece of enlightenment on the sanity of the magic endowed during her adventurous aerial version of capture tha flag with some of the Gryfindoors. Harry still flew circles around her and Ron held an edge in experience but still, she pulled her weight when she concentrated and her fear of heights was not so bad since she was in control. For one insane moment she had forgotten common sense and performed a twisting corkscrew manoeuvre that helped her evade being tagged.
Apparently insanity and reclesness was catching.
Afterwards Professor Hooch had praised her for finally mastering flight after her shaky start. She had wondered for a moment where her recent recklessness came from before putting it out of her mind as silly nattering. Afterall it had finally dawned on her during her studies that wizards were just generally tougher then muggles. A 30 foot fall could be healed in days. As long as you didn't fall on your head. A cracked skull could take weeks.
The shower was hečping to ease the tension in her muscles and she used the time she had dedicated to drying and brushing out her hair to rebuild her still slightly vague mental filing system, and check on the double layer mirror shields in her mind when a shudder went through her and the world seemed to dull a bit as her focus retreated into her mind as threads of consciousness snapped together. A flood of magic poured out of nowhere into her blood, taking down her mental barriers. After a moment of panicked confusion Hermione realised she was consciously expiriencing her first magical growth and basked in the feeling of strength the expirience brought with it. Pretty quickly the flood of magic receded and woth it the weariness she had been feeling during the day.
She quickly refocused on rebuilding her shields and they snapped into place faster then ever.
Realisation hit her while she sorted her latest memories through 20/20 eyes of perfect recall. She took stock of her memories of the entire year and clenched her hands. In retrospect she had been acting odd ever since the troll. I had never felt this good inside my skin before Hogwarts. Confident. Strong.
Insanity of wizards indeed.
She hadn't thought twice about sneaking into the owlery to order a book from Flourish and Blots after curfew the day she got released from the hospital wing or helping the twins with a tame prank or two.
'And that aerial madness I have been doing with Potter, Thomas and Weasley.' A shiver went through her part thrill part fear. She had been having fun. All week. True, she was working harder then ever on her studies as well as personal projects, like that Flammel fellow Harry and Ron had gotten Hagrid to slip about. But during her down time she had been having fun like she hadn't been in a long long time.
'No. I wasn't just been having fun. I've been having fun with people. Friends. I actually told jokes! And people laughed.' She relaxed and smiled reaching for a towel, the feel of oddness passing as she mentally classified happiness.
A happy cheerful made her way to her dorm, her hair still slightly damp but as dry as she could make it with just a towel. She sat on her bed, checked her schedule and smiled. Tinkering hour was the time she set aside each day to do whatever had recently caught her intrest and she thought might be fun to try.
She pulled out a seemingly blank piece of parchment out of a stack of essays and tapped it with her wand mumbling the password she had chosen for it.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
The letter she had received from her alternate self appeared and she quickly looked for the underlined book list tapping the words. She just loved the ingenuity that went into it's creation.
She want down the alphabetical list of books she had been advised to read over the years. Ocasionally most titles would be underlined with quick summaries of the book content. But some titles had an asterisk, usually titles that didn't exist yet and were stored in the letter in their entirety. About twenty books in total contained hidden knowledge from the future and if she tried to open those she'd get a fifty question quizz to answer. She loved a challenge.
She tapped Warding 101 and smiled as a mostly filled out question list emerged. She eagerly answered the last question.
"Why is the Universal counter spell rarely used despite it's effectiveness."
She had tried answering it with logical explanations derived from books and it was always rejected. She hesitated her pen in the air above the parchment and then finally she simply wrote, somewhat cheekily in the space provided.
Blinding sodding headache of DOOM. Oh and caster versus counter-caster mental connection/battle that is mind-numbingly dangerous. Energy inefficient.
For a few seconds nothing happened and she wondered if her answer was a bit too off kilter for whatever heuristics this enchanted piece of parchment that used to be a letter used. Finally words appeared.
Correct. If a bit melodramatic. And crude. Try borrowing A witches etiquette from the Hogwarts library.
She smiled as the contents changed into a by chapter index of a book. She didn't mind being lectured by a piece of enchanted parchment. Not if it supplied knowledge.
She tapped the first chapter Runes 101 and started reading.
Later that afternoon an excited Hermione Granger sat on her bed curtains drawn. Most of the chapter went over her head, referencing other works and using concepts she was only vaguely familiar with. But the exercise was straight forward and she was confident that her newfound levels of magic could power it.
Use a flame to trace a fire rune in the air, shape it, draw a containment bubble and feed power into it.
It would create a semi permanent globe of orange light that would turn on under the influence of magic.
She took a deep breath and traced the symbol in the book in the air using faire fire. It was easy to do, the large fire rune practically snapped into place when she drew it. She then circled it and coaxed it into a sphere mentally etching the control and shaping runes into the surface of the fire construct. Hermione found that the effort was bit more involved but very similar to the mental exercises explained in Work on your mind any body. After about twenty minutes of work she put a binding rune to set it and with a quiet hum the construct became an independent entity. Floating in the air without her input.
Her confidence restored Hermione smiled as her first runic work worked. She smiled as the globe of fire hovered in the air eagerly obeying her mental instructions or just sitting quietly when she ignored it.
He had done it! She had made her first runic construct. True, it was the magical equivalent of a 'generate six random numbers in a circle using the following script' instruction in her very first pascal book but still. This wasn't computers! It was Magic!
Happily she played with the magical light for a few minutes before deciding to call it a day. She reached out to touch it and started to disperse the magic when the ball bucked and shattered, the backlash throwing her against the bed and rattling the curtains around it.
Hermione stared in horror and confusion at the circular hole in the sheet and bedding, just in front of where she was sitting.
Her curtains were ruedly opened and daylight streamed in displaying her mistake for all to see.
"Bloody hell Granger what was that?!" Lavander yelled, relief giving way to anger.
Hermione shook her head, her mind processing what just happened and she couldn't find words to speak with.
"I made a mistake." Hermione finally croaked. She was busy trying to figure out what went wrong and this airhead was bothering her. "And what business is it of yours."
"What do you mean what? I know what that felt like! You shouldn't be messing with elemental runes! Or any runes for that mater." Lavander yelled and then sighed looking somewhat shaken. "Look, for a moment I though I'd find you passed out bleeding from your eyes or something."
"Can you clear that last thing up for me a bit? What do you know about runes?" Hermione asked, touched by her room mates concern and making room for Lavander on her bed and motioning for her to sit. She put the privacy issue aside for now, the girl had been concerned. Lavander nodded, the vacant look in her eyes she usually had when discussing fashion with Parvati Patil gone, replaced by passionate expression of her favourite subject Hermione knew from staring at the mirror.
"Well there's a reason we take runes in third year you know. Most of our classmates would hurt themselves trying to power a rune. Mother says you need power and precision when constructing or deconstructing runes. Heck even activating the wards in my house exhausts me and that's a pre powered runic cluster, and I know what I'm doing." The girl explained her knowledge of runes.
"You can flash entire arrays?" Hermione asked her curiosity awoken, suppressing the stab of jealousy. "Wow, and to think you were having trouble in other classes: It's warding or nothing huh?" She added, smiling.
Lavender tilted her head to study her. "Sure. Runes are interesting! Transfiguration is just bleh, I mean beetles and needles and matchsticks, oh my." She giggled and dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand.
"Can you show me the basics? I'm having issues with some of the terminology and concepts." Hermione asked.
"If you promise to help me raise my average to EE in transfiguration?" Lavander smiled.
"I think this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Hermione intoned with a smile as she pulled out some parchment so they could work out a schedule
Learning was, after all, fun. And learning Magic of all things? Just bloody amazing.
AN
Will try to add more secondary persepctives from peopleother then Hermione like I did with Harry at the begining of this part and snatches of thought trought the rest instead of trying to write entire chapters from the perspective of a single character. I'm still (Even after a failed rewrite of my first version of the first year) working a propper balance of point of view. (and tense XD)
Also I'm trying to keep from ading too much content. Should I describe things more? Slow down the pace and delve deeper into intrepersonal relationships and emotion?
Or is the level fine and I should get to the action?
Yes, not describing the quiddich match was deliberate. Had a thousand words of chasing brooms and plays before I realised the entire thing was superfluous.
