Forging the Sword
Chapter Four: Into the Fire


The last week of the term was not pleasant.

Professor McGonagall's injunction not to gossip might have held one eve while the situation was still so much in flux, not even her disapprobation, however, could quell the Hogwarts rumour mills for long.

No one was suicidal enough to try to interrogate him, nor had anyone actually said anything specific, but after two years of walking these halls, he knew when he was being gossiped about. Somehow – and he wasn't sure, but he was betting on the other petrification victims – Ginny's death had become common knowledge by the afternoon of Ron's departure. The Daily Prophet headline the next morning was all it took to set rumours aflame.

He sat through the interminable – and inevitable – announcement at dinner that night. Dumbledore kept the public story vague, alluding to 'remnants' of Voldemort that could still cause grief. The Basilisk's existence was announced amid gasps, and his slaying of it also touched on. According to Dumbledore, Harry had arrived too late to save young Ginny, and the headmaster asked they be sensitive about his feelings. No mention of the diary, or Lucius Malfoy, was made.

While other tables immediately erupted into gossip, his surrounding housemates at least made an effort to be circumspect. Hermione was to his left, shielding and distracting him as best she could. He was grateful, but all too aware of the empty space on his right where Ron would normally be doing the same.

The days after that were an exercise in restraint.

He could only be thankful that the whole 'heir of Slytherin' nonsense seemed to have been dropped. Even Hogwarts's rumours (he thought with a touch of bitterness) seemed to draw the line at believing he'd petrified one of his best friends, and killed the little sister of his other. The prevailing rumour spawned in its place – that it had all been aimed at Harry from the beginning, first to isolate and frame him, later to kill him – was probably inevitable.

At least that pompous little bastard Ernie Macmillan was squirming for 'promoting' an evil plot.

Harry might have accepted Macmillan 's apology, but the Hufflepuff had been partially responsible for making his life hell that year. If the other boy learned a little bit of what it was like to be the public target of malicious whispers, it'd probably do him some good.

Meanwhile, the exams started in earnest, and isolated from it all, Harry quietly made plans.


He 'd gone to Hermione first.

"Ordering books, Harry?" She blinked at him with clear surprise from across the table, paused a moment in double checking some of the facts slated to be made into Transfiguration note cards. He wasn't sure exactly why she bothered, since he was positive she had them all memorized anyway by now, but it seemed to be a comfort.

"Yeah," he sent her a smile. "I figured if anybody would know about ordering them by owl, it'd be you."

"Well, sure. I mean, I've got Flourish and Blott's standard catalogue. Four galleons and I get a new issue every month as long as the store's in operation. But, why?"

He gave her a level stare. "Because I want to order some books?"

"Harry! I got that part. Honestly. But what I meant is that, well," she floundered a second before continuing, "you've never been interested in academics before. And now you're ordering extra books for summer reading? What are you planning?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

She made a sound a bit like a spitting cat, and he had to laugh. "No, I swear I'm telling the truth." He turned serious. "I've lived three years of my life in the wizarding world: one year as an infant with my parents, two years here at Hogwarts. My time at my aunt and uncle's doesn't count – they're about as far from the magic world as you can get and still be on Earth. Three years, Hermione, and I've been attacked three times. I don't think it's going to stop."

She was watching him closely, and he could see her thinking furiously behind brown eyes. "And you want to order a bunch of books on Defence, or, or curses? Harry… tell me you're not planning anything stupid. Practicing magic at home. Running off to kill Lucius Malfoy. You're only twelve - he'd kill you!"

He was shaking his head even as she spoke. "I'm not reckless, Hermione. The only way I'd try that was if I was pretty sure I could kill him. I don't even have a clue where to find him right now! Not that I would have been at all disappointed if he'd been just a little bit slower at dodging last Friday – I'd have been only too pleased if the sword had pinned him to the wall instead of just getting his cloak. But I'm not foolish enough to believe a book on curses and several weeks of practice casting them are enough to take on an adult follower of Voldemort. And can you imagine the reaction when the order came in, if the clerk gossiped and the newspaper got word of it?" He rolled his eyes and adopted a breathless, news announcer voice: "'Boy-Who-Lived Buys Books on Dark Arts!' Up next: 'Interview at Flourish and Blott's – Harry Potter Going Dark?'" He gave a snort of disgust, and shook his head. "No, I'm not saying I won't be requesting a book or two on Defence, but mostly I'll be ordering history books."

"History books?" She narrowed her eyes. "Explain."

He let his eyes unfocus as he struggled to put to words a concept he couldn't really explain even to himself. "It's… it's like." He sighed. "Right now, I don't even really know anything about Voldemort, or Dark Lords, or fighting at all, really. I mean, I don't know how Voldemort got followers, or power, or how he conducted his campaigns."

"Is that it? You just want to know how Voldemort fought in the past?"

"No, not quite. It's more like- like I want to know how Dark Lords of the past have usually gained power, and how they're usually defeated. What made some of them win for a while, and what made them easy targets for the ministry? Was it something about the Dark Lord's themselves? The way they were fought? And how were they fought? I'm not talking about dueling, more about…" he struggled to find the words. "About how the conflict is shaped. Armies or raids or spies and back dealing. Why did it end the way it did?" He made a sound of frustration. "I'm not explaining this well."

"No," She shook her head, sounding somewhat… impressed? "No, I get it. You're not talking about dueling tactics; you want to learn strategy."

"Yes! I mean, obviously it isn't enough just to kill leaders, not when it leaves people like Lucius Malfoy walking free. If it gets bad again, I don't want to leave behind any more of Voldemort's followers free to kill my friends or their family."

She was still looking at him like he 'd announced he was going to climb Mt. Everest this summer. Dubious, but a little impressed. It was somewhat aggravating.

"What?" he asked, a tad sharper than he'd intended.

"Nothing. It's just. Honestly, Harry, I didn't think you'd be this mature. You don't really like studying, and you're smart enough to know theory's not your strong point like practical magic is. I half expected you to dive into memorizing all sorts of curses and jinxes, and not pay any attention to a larger picture. In the past few days you've grown up a lot, Harry." Her voice turned just a little wistful as she continued, "And you were already one of the most adult twelve-year-olds I know."

He gave a last glance around and sighed. "You know I killed Quirrell last year." She took a deep breath, and looked like she was about to interrupt, so he shook his head. "No, I'm trying to explain things. You deserve to know since I'm asking you for help." She settled back in her seat, obviously willing to wait and listen, so he began again.

"Okay. Like I said, last year I killed Quirrell. I didn't like it – certainly didn't enjoy it! – but it didn't really hurt me. He was practically Voldemort's slave by then, even if he might not have wanted to be in the beginning. And he was trying to steal the philosopher's stone. We did not need an immortal dark lord with all the power, wealth, and influence a philosopher's stone could bring him. Besides which, he was trying with a certain degree of success to kill me at the time." He glanced at her to see how she was following all this, and at her encouraging expression he took a deep breath and continued. "I never had any real nightmares over it. I never hated myself over it. And the only thing I really feared from it – or was wary of, rather – was what all of that said about me."

Here she tried to interject again, but he cut his hand across the air, stopping her. "No. Like I said, I don't hate myself. But I look at Ron, or even you, or at some of the first years wandering around, laughing and playing and talking, and I know that my reaction isn't the same as most of them would have." He shrugged. "It isn't. I don't know why - if it's me, or something from the Killing Curse, or what, but I'm different. I mean, how would you have reacted? Or Lavender Brown? Dean Thomas? Or, God forbid, Neville? You see?"

Perhaps sensing he didn't want a really long answer, she only nodded.

"Okay." He took a moment and another deep breath, getting ready to say what he had to next. It seemed like he was continuously being forced to talk about Ginny, ripping off a scab each time the wound had only just begun to heal. "Down in the chamber, I had to kill Ginny to kill Riddle." He did his best not to acknowledge the look of pity in her eyes. "Yes, she would have died anyway. Yes, there was absolutely nothing I could do to save her. No, it wasn't my fault she received the diary in the first place. But I did do it, and I did it knowingly. Not my fault, but my responsibility. And next time it could be Ron. Or you." He met her eyes. "I think I can endure some hours of extra studying, if it means I don't someday find myself speaking the curse that takes your or Ron's life."

Because that was now his greatest fear. Ginny had proved that he could sacrifice his friends; now he would do whatever it took to see to it that he never had to. He might survive making that trade; he wasn't sure his soul would.

His attention was pulled back when Hermione started silently gathering up her books and supplies. "Hermione?"

She packed in her inkwell and stood. "Come on, it's almost time for lunch. I can go pick up the catalogue from my room after we eat. In the meantime, do you want to know what I know about Voldemort's rise to power?

He smiled as he slung his book bag over his shoulder and walked after her. "Sure."

"All right. First, you have to realize that he managed to get fairly far along before rumours of his existence reached the Ministry of the day. The defeat of the Dark Wizard Grindelwald, and the collapse of his power structure and allies, not only provided a smoke-screen of confusion for years afterwards, but lured the powers of the day into complacency. No one was expecting the rise of a new dark wizard so soon after the defeat of the previous one…"

Listening raptly, Harry followed her out of the library.


Their voices faded into the distance as they continued to the great hall. Left behind them, a figure hidden in the shadows of the stacks exhaled. He hadn't planned to eavesdrop, although once he'd heard part of the discussion there was no way he could have walked away. Now he had to decide what to do with what he had learned.

Not that he'd overheard anything that could really be considered too much of a secret. The Boy-Who-Lived was studying history? Send a notice to the Prophet! But it was the wayPotter had talked; the reasons for his interest and the way he was approaching it.

Hermione Granger was not the only one who would have expected Harry Potter to head straight to the DADA shelves.

And those soft revelations at the end!

He'd grown up with all the same stories and rumors about the Boy-Who-Lived that every wizarding child grew up with, but when he'd seen him in Hogwarts the boy had seemed rather… ordinary. He didn't have an instinctive grasp of magic. He didn't excel at his studies. He didn't have alliances with all the houses, or a group of devoted followers or the teachers' unstinting regard. He didn't, in fact, appear at all different from any other ordinary Gryffindor boy.

Ordinary Gryffindor boys had not killed four people by the time they were thirteen.

And, he thought with just a touch of shocked hilarity, Potter still has a few more months to add to that count before his next birthday.

It would make more sense, he thought dimly, attempting to reconcile what he'd thought he'd known with what he'd just heard, if Potter's a raging psychopath of some sorts. But Potter really just wasn't. He was always polite. He would defend anyone from being picked on. He never started fights, although he didn't back down from them either. He'd chip in good naturedly in school projects. The parselmouth ability had been rather surprising, but he himself had, in fact, only been rather darkly amused at the whole 'heir of Slytherin' nonsense. Harry Potter was not the type to walk around petrifying other children out of childish spite.

At least I judged that one right.

He'd gone to some lengths to present himself as quietly apolitical in his house, and he'd consequently managed to avoid most of the power games a contemporary of Draco Malfoy would otherwise be forced to endure. He hadn't paid much attention to the Boy-Who-Lived other than his own casual curiosity, and for the occasional enjoyment derived from watching Malfoy fume helplessly. But if what he'd just heard was any indication, the public knowledge about Harry Potter and his exploits wasn't even half the true story.

He might quietly keep an eye out next year. He wasn't sure exactly why or what he was looking for, but he had a feeling Harry Potter might turn out to be more interesting than he'd expected. Might, in fact, one day become what his grandmother called a pegwyn, a pivot.

And in the meantime?

It sounded like Lucius Malfoy might want to start watching his back.


Harry 's books arrived at breakfast on the last day of term. He picked up the small parcel of shrunken books and tucked it in his bag without opening it. After breakfast he'd see if he could get an older student to cast notice-me-not charms on each of the books, maybe one of the prefects. He did not plan for them to stay locked in his trunk all summer, and hopefully the charms might prevent his aunt and uncle from noticing the presence of magic books in case of an accident. It'd be even easier if he could get a time-released unshrinking spell on them – he'd be able to just pocket them, avoiding the effort of smuggling them up to his room – but as the Ministry apparently couldn't differentiate between his spells and a house elf's, he wouldn't bet they could tell his spells from another student's either.

Thinking of which, he really should see about getting that previous warning cleared.

The train ride was long and uneventful. He 'd said his goodbyes to Seamus and Dean in the tower that morning, so they were having fun farther up the train. Neville stopped by to talk for a little bit, but for the most part he and Hermione had been left alone. His uncle's greetings had been as charming and convivial as ever, and the trip back to the house was made in silence. Harry found an opportunity to slip down and pick the lock on the cupboard while the Dursleys were eating dinner, and stashing his gains was quickly done. Really important things, and things he'd not thought to get charmed – his invisibility cloak, his album, and some extra food – were hidden under the loose floorboard. His school books and the books from Flourish and Blott's – all charmed unnoticeable by a friendly seventh year – were simply shoved out of plain sight under his bed. Since Petunia never cleaned his room, he figured they'd be safe enough from casual glances in the course of snooping.

At any rate, he was easily done in time to look perfectly innocent when his uncle came by to ensure he wasn't doing any "funny" business. Hedwig was padlocked inside her cage over his protests – a state of affairs he was determined to quickly rectify – and gave a quiet, mournful hoot when he gave her an owl treat.

Then he sat down on his bed, pulled out a blank sheet of parchment, ink, and a quill, and began to scheme.

When he 'd gone to Dumbledore to return the Hat – and to hand over the diary – he'd asked some questions about what he'd managed to do with Gryffindor's sword. Before, he'd sort of assumed that, once a wizard started training, accidental magic wouldn't happen anymore. This turned out to be an only halfway accurate summation of events.

Once a child entered training, accidental magic – magic the witch or wizard didn't mean to do, didn't even realize they were doing, often enough – did stop happening. But, Dumbledore had asked him with a serious gaze, had he truly not meant for Lucius Malfoy to be hurt?

Remembering his overwhelming desire to see the senior Malfoy's blood, he wasn't sure he could honestly say yes.

And that, Dumbledore had explained, was the difference between accidental magic and uncontrolled magic. A subset of wandless magic, uncontrolled magic was just that – magic that happened when, usually due to strong emotions, a wizard or witch lost control over their power.

The headmaster had laughed a little when he immediately burst into a flurry of questions, most of which boiled down to "why use wands?", but he had answered them.

The drawback to uncontrolled magic was that it wasn't strong. No, that wasn't quite how Dumbledore had put it; the problem was that it wasn't focused. His anger at Lucius Malfoy had flung a sword, but it could have just as easily only shattered windows, or have set his robes on fire, or have shoved the man back several paces. The point was that there was no way Harry could know. And if he got placed into the same situation a second time, the uncontrolled magic might manifest differently.

All of which meant it really was next to useless in a duel. As strong as it might be, scattered around a wizard or witch without direction it couldn't do the same kind of damage in the way a curse or hex could. A simple shield is all it takes to fend off most attacks from uncontrolled magic. If Malfoy had held his wand close to hand, that was all it would have taken to halt the Gryffindor sword. And it wasn't exactly fast or a surprise attack. It usually took a bit of time to build up, and it could manifest a variety of secondary magical effects as warning signs: flickering lights, a small breeze, tremors as if the wizard or witch stood at the epicenter of a small earthquake...

So it wouldn't be any use it fighting Voldemort or Death Eaters. Which is fine, he thought, smiling. Because I suspect I just might have another use for it...

When he'd inquired – in his absolute best tone of pure idle curiosity – whether Ministry monitoring wards picked up uncontrolled as well as wanded magic, (since they didn't seem to pick up - or at least punish - accidental magic), Dumbledore had paused, pulled down his half-moon spectacles, and looked at him.

He 'd looked down, fighting a blush, and made a note to work on his 'pure, idle curiosity' tone.

Somewhat to his astonishment, Dumbledore had told him that it might be picked up if strong enough, but there were no laws against it. A loophole, he'd added, and not a sanction.

Then, making a somewhat cryptic comment about the wisdom of judgment and restraint, he'd handed Harry a lemon drop and sent him on to his Transfiguration exam.

Sometimes, I really like that man.

Which all brought him to tonight, waiting for the Dursleys to retire to bed, so Harry could sneak out and see what he could accomplish.

For his plan to work, he didn't need his magic to be controlled, or predictable, or powerful. All he needed was to be sure that he could make something abnormal happen at will.

If he could, well, tomorrow would be Sunday, and his uncle would be home. It just might be time to negotiate.


1:07 AM.

He rolled off the bed, grabbed his wand, and tiptoed out the front door. Then he paused for a moment, thinking.

He didn't want to go too far from the safety of the house. Not that he was really worried about his ability to defend himself from a muggle mugger, but the whole idea behind this affair was to not get himself brought up on improper use of magic charges.

On the other hand, the neighbourhood around Privet Drive was undoubtedly one of the safer suburbs, and he was leery of making his first attempt at deliberate uncontrolled magic on his aunt and uncle's front lawn. He really, really, didn't want to wake them if noise occurred, and in plain sight of half a dozen muggle houses, minimum, was probably not the best place to work magic.

The park it is, then.

It was a short walk, no more than ten minutes, and it proved to be thankfully deserted. He settled down in a small alcove in the bushes. There, shielded from sight on three sides, he tried to figure out how to not only call his magic up, but to let it slip its leash enough to manifest. The opposite, after two years of Hogwarts studies, was second nature. Figuring out exactly how to reverse it would require some fumbling.

Twenty minutes later he tossed away the stone he'd been focusing on in disgust.

That had been splendidly unsuccessful.

What am I missing?

One hand twisted strands of grass together as he thought. Hadn't Dumbledore said something about it normally happening in times of strong emotion? He hadn't mandated exactly which emotion, but the only one that had worked for Harry so far appeared to be anger. It's worth a try, anyway.

He snapped off a branch from the bush beside him, and set it on the grass to give him something to focus on. Then, feeling somewhat reluctant, he closed his eyes and summoned images to the fore. Lucius Malfoy's sneering face, Hermione's petrified body, Riddle's taunting voice, the horror of knowing he had no choice, Ginny's death, Ron's pain, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's betrayed looks – he took his anger and he fed it his guilt and his horror and his pain, transforming fear and grief into tongues of fire that licked at his self-control. Distantly, he heard the brush around him rustle, as if a gust had come up, but only distantly. Higher and higher he built it, till anger flared to fury. Then he opened his eyes, and focused it all on the twig in front of him.

The wood exploded, splinters flying everywhere.

He flung his hands up as he turned his face away, but he wasn't quite quick enough to shield himself from the flying wooden shrapnel. He felt a sharp sting as a larger piece sliced his cheek as it flew by, and he hissed in pain as smaller splinters peppered his hands and forearms. After a few seconds of stillness, he slowly brought his hands down, wincing as he looked at himself.

Dumbledore could have mentioned that when he said uncontrolled magic was dangerous, he'd meant to both the target and the caster!

Alternating swearing, wincing, and hissing, he slowly started to pull splinters out. When he was finished, there were small beads of blood across his hands and arms, and he was becoming somewhat dubious about the project.

He definitely needed to try this another way.

First, because that had made him feel sick. Creating that much hatred and rage… he shuddered. He wasn't entirely comfortable knowing he could feel like that, and he didn't want to feel it too often. Certainly not when he was only trying to rattle the Dursleys! Besides, it felt like he was using his friends' pain, exploiting it. He could do that if he had to – would do it, if necessary – but pulling that out for what would be parlor tricks with his wand just felt like he was demeaning both them and himself.

Besides, he reflected wryly, that wasn't exactly what I'd hoped for.

He wasn't, after all, trying to kill his aunt and uncle. Nor was he trying to break their stuff, (although a small, dark part of him idly wished he could). All that would do is make his uncle more difficult. No, what he was going for was, what had Dumbledore called it? The secondary manifestations of primary magical phenomena. The flickering lights, the sudden breeze – not at all dangerous, but to a family who loathed his kind, positively unnerving.

Rage, it seemed, was more likely to make his magic try to incinerate them.

Usually strong emotion implied not always. Maybe emotion just made it easier? He closed his eyes again and tried to recall exactly what it had felt like, not emotionally, but with his magic. But as much as he sought back to that moment, he couldn't remember anything but the rage. He grimaced, raising a hand to tentatively probe the small cut on his cheek. All of which meant that, if he wasn't giving up on his idea, he'd have to try again.

But this time, definitely without the stick.


An hour and a quarter later, it was just beyond half past three in the morning when he rose and staggered home.

It had taken him five more tries that night before he'd been able to separate himself from the tempest of his emotions enough to find the comparative whisper of his magic being released. Three more tries after that, closely paying attention to the sensation, before he thought he understood fully what was happening.

And what was happening seemed somewhat paradoxical.

When he unleashed uncontrolled magic it was an act of both pushing and letting go at the same time, much like trying to move an object by hand without touching it.

The difficulty, therefore, was rather obvious.

Part of uncontrolled magic was instinctive – wizards and witches apparently grabbed for their magic when distressed. That's why Neville had bounced instead of getting seriously injured when he was tossed out a window, and was one of the reasons why magical people were far less likely to die in an accident than muggles. Quidditch played by wizards and witches was dangerous, if fun.

Quidditch played by muggles, if they could figure out how, would be fatal.

He remembered reading about it last year, in one of the earlier chapters of Introduction to Magical Theory, but until now he hadn't really understood what the textbook meant. And strong emotion – as a fairly good indication of significant distress – roused the magic normally held in quiescent discipline by the wizard or witch.

That was the first part of it.

The second part followed naturally. Normally, the wizard only calls magic when about to channel it into a spell. So there you have a furious or terrified wizard, pulling his magic up by the bucket loads, and not paying attention to it in the slightest. The magic, meanwhile, is active, and the control that normally moulds it into concentrated energy patterns is gone. So the magic just continued to gather 'til even vague, unspecified desires could give it form. Or more often, a target.

But before that point, that much magic - charged magic, active with anger or fear - concentrated in one place but with only the vaguest direction, usually had effects on the natural world around it.

Having figured out how it felt, however, actually attempting it without the fury was shelved for another night.

Right now his head was pounding, he felt like throwing up, he was completely emotionally exhausted, and at five hours past the time he normally went to sleep, he was physically exhausted too. He nearly tripped over Dudley 's discarded trainers, and a hasty grab at the hall table was all that saved him from a fall. A glass of water from the kitchen tap, and he headed up for bed.

Vaguely, he hoped the Dursleys might be so displeased at having him back that they were simply glad not to be forced to put up with his presence for breakfast.

Right now he felt like he could sleep for a week.


His prayers were not answered.

His aunt 's persistent rapping at the door at last roused him, and if his eventual "I'm up, Aunt Petunia," sounded less than amiable, at least it wasn't the snarl he'd almost greeted her with. And no wonder, he thought, blearily staring at the alarm clock. Three and a half hours of sleep is far too little to expect anyone to be human.

He checked his arms, but while the various pricks still hurt, none of them were obvious to casual scrutiny. The slice on his cheek was more problematic, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He ran his hands through his hair, changed his clothes, and, figuring he'd done all he could without a mirror, headed to the kitchen.

Breakfast was made quickly and without complaint, and his uncle's suspicious "What happened to your face, boy?" was easily satisfied by a fabrication about tripping over his shoes last night. Their obvious amusement over this he bore stoically.

His uncle's gruff orders about what was expected from him this summer – no freakishness, do whatever chores he was assigned, stay out of their way – actually dovetailed rather nicely with his own plans for studying. After six years of experience, washing and drying the dishes was quick work, as was mowing the lawn and weeding. He finished up at ten, took a fifteen minute shower, and headed back to his bed, setting the alarm to wake him in two hours to make lunch. After the lunch dishes were done his aunt didn't have anything for him to do – his uncle was taking Dudley to the movies, so he got out of washing the car – and he returned upstairs to his room, his afternoon his own. Pulling Insurrection: the history and tactics of Dark Lords from under his bed, he propped his chin on his hand and started reading.


And so the weeks passed.

His reading of history continued slowly, and he interspersed it with other subjects. He'd decided to go through his older textbooks, (or older portions of his textbook), making sure he understood everything where before he'd been happy to "get by." Back in primary school he'd pretty much been forced to teach himself math from the book, and he'd noticed that when he had a problem understanding a section, the answer was usually something he hadn't really understood a few sections back. He didn't see any reason why that should be different with magic.

Besides, quizzing himself as he attempted to memorize entries from 1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi - which was used up till NEWT level potions – was a welcome break from the monotony. (Magical theory, despite his new-found resolve, was still not his strong point.) He actually wasn't sure how well his resolution to totally change his study habits would have gone (determination versus a twelve-year-old's attention span, he admitted to himself, no matter how motivated, was chancy at best) if not for two things. One, he wasn't at Hogwarts. He didn't have any friends here. He didn't have any games here. He didn't have any freedom here. In fact, he didn't have anything here, except for his magic books. Memorizing magical plants might be boring (except, yeah, there was that section about the man-eating ones, and then the part about the acid spitting ones which was, well, kind of cool…) but it was still more interesting than sitting in his room, staring at the walls.

The second thing that kept him from slacking off was that he had started to find a lot of the stuff kind of interesting. Oh, not all of it. For every man-eating plant out there there were twice as many perfectly harmless ones, but history was actually kind of cool when you read it less like a history textbook and more like a military book. He still couldn't wade through all the various developments creating the International Confederacy of Wizards, or the names of the Ministers of Magic, or the creation of a regularized standard of wand production, without yawning and his thoughts starting to drift, (several of his books had found themselves shoved back under the bed, abandoned, despite his resolve) but reading about various battles? That was just wicked.

Some of the stuff some of these Dark Lords had come up with had been just gross (he shuddered, remembering a section on the torture techniques of one seventeenth century Austrian Dark Lord) but it had also been sort of sickly fascinating. And the next section, which described how it was because of the barbarity of that wizard's tortures that enough people rebelled, and comparing that act to several other incidents in history where Dark Lords had crossed over the line from being feared-more-than-hated to being hated-more-than-feared… well, yeah, he was finding it all unexpectedly interesting.

Which was good, because although he had, in fact, included a few more Defense books in his order than he'd perhaps led Hermione to believe, he'd held true to mainly focusing on subjects that didn't require casting. This way, he'd figured, when he got back to Hogwarts where he could cast spells, he wouldn't have to waste extra time on things like potions or herbology.

His nocturnal progress was somewhat slower, but he'd kept at it. He was, he thought, nearly ready. It'd been well and fine to simply do his chores and retreat to his room for the beginning of the summer, but he had to meet with Ron. Had to talk to him in person. For that he had to be able to move about freely. His relatives and he had existed in a state of happily ignoring each other, (save for when Harry took directions on various chores), but now he needed more. He'd never actually expect his relatives to help him with anything, but he needed to make sure they wouldn't hinder him, either. Which, he knew, they'd do for spite if given the chance.

So he 'd needed something to… convince them.

His uncontrolled magic was the key.

In the absence of emotion, deliberately calling on uncontrolled magic took a strange twist of thought and formidable power, but it wasn't tremendously difficult. Trying to tame it enough, once released, to ensure nothing happened he didn't wish to happen, and all that happened was what he did wish to happen, was what took ferocious strength of mind. Once he'd learned to call it up without emotion, (a feet of several weeks alone), it'd taken weeks more of practice before he learned enough control to make sure he could do the most basic of things – gather enough magic to force electric appliances to flicker, cause things around him to shake, or the air to begin feeling heavy. He wasn't positive how much more it'd take to shatter glass – thank Merlin he'd thought to get his glasses charmed unbreakable in his first year – but he was pretty sure he could do it without difficulty.

Tomorrow, he'd talk to his uncle about his new status of freedom. His letter to Ron was already waiting, and Hedwig knew to be back by tomorrow eve.

Part of him hoped there would be no need for… dramatics, but he knew his aunt and uncle too well to really expect everything to go smoothly.

The other part of him was looking forward to it.

But no matter what happens, he acknowledged to himself, after tomorrow, things are going to be different.