A/N: Sorry for the long wait. I've been busy with exams and life. Once again I appreciate everyone who is following the story. I have no plans of abandoning this story so don't worry about that.
Disclaimer:
The Harry Potter universe and all the characters in it belong to J. K. Rowling.
Chapter 7 Training Part 1
As Harry slept, his magic and the potions that he took just before he went to sleep, began to repair the physical damage done to his body. First, it scouted out the injured areas. Then it removed scarred tissues and regenerated new ones. Once it was done, it was guided by the formula of the potion to ensure that the areas that were damaged were properly healed. Over on the other side of the mansion, Perenelle tapped a sequence of runes to activate the time ward.
At 5:30 in the morning, a house elf named Timmy popped into Harry's room and gleefully dumped a bucket of cold water on his head. Harry sprang out of bed with a cry and glared at Timmy while shivering and dripping water onto the carpet. "Wha'wha'what d'did y'you do t'that for?"
Hiding a smile, Timmy said, "I'm sorry sir. Master Nicholas wishes you to be ready for your first lesson."
Grumbling a bit at the early time but feeling excited, he quickly got dressed in dry clothes and found Nicholas waiting for him in the same recreation room where the discussions about Dumbledore, Voldemort and his friend's betrayal took place.
"Good morning Harry. Did you have a good sleep?"
""I did until that house elf dumped freezing water on my head," Harry said.
Nicholas's eyes twinkled with amusement. "Well, that made you wide awake and ready to learn. Didn't it?"
Harry nodded reluctantly.
"Now what do you know about Occlumency and Legilimency?"
"Nothing really."
"Occlumency is the art of preventing someone from accessing your thoughts while Legilimency is the art of accessing someone's thoughts. These two skills are called the mind arts and they are difficult to learn which is why they are considered rare skills. Eventually you'll be a master in this field of magic but now, we just expect you to get the basics. You have an aptitude for this branch of magic so it shouldn't be too challenging for you. The first step in using any mind arts is being able to meditate. To do this, you need to sit comfortably, relax, and clear your mind."
"How do I clear my mind?"
"There are several methods that you can use. You can listen to your breathing, repeat a word mentally or out loud, or you can even imagine a safe place if thoughts keep on intruding. The goal is to be able to get rid of the chatter in your mind," Nicholas said.
Harry sat down on the blue sofa and began relaxing his muscles. As the tension slowly left him, he closed his eyes and listened to his breathing. He noticed the reverberations of the room, the faint breathing of his mentor and the slight creak of the couch. He knew that there were too many thoughts running around in his head still so he began to repeat the word 'magic' in his head. That caused memories of Hogwarts and spells to appear so he imagined a place where he felt safe. A replica of the cupboard under the stairs appeared in his mind. At last, his head was clear of all thoughts.
"Very good."
Nicholas's voice startled him out of his trance.
"Before I show you how to add protections to your mind, you need to work on clearing your thoughts and going to the representation of your mind which in this case, is your cupboard, as fast as possible."
"Wait! You used Legilimency on me?"
"Yes. I used Legilimency to enter your mind but I did not access your thoughts. I only observed your surface thoughts." Predicting the question that Harry was going to ask next, Nicholas continued his lecture. "The difference between regular thoughts and surface thoughts is that regular thoughts are more detailed while surface thoughts are like flies. They are less detailed and they can appear and disappear very quickly."
Harry sighed and let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding.
"If it makes you feel better, Penny and I can swear a magical oath not to divulge any of your information."
"That's alright. You already knew a lot about me before and haven't used any of your information to harm me."
"Thank you for your trust. I know how difficult it is to trust people." Nicholas murmured the last part quietly to himself. "Anyhow, practice clearing your mind and accessing your mindscape until you're able to do it very quickly. I bet you're starving. Let's go get some breakfast."
As Harry arrived at the dining room, he could smell the delicious aroma of food. He saw that Perenelle was waiting for them at the table reading a muggle newspaper.
"Good morning dear. How was your first lesson?"
"It was alright. It took me a bit of time to clear my mind and access my mindscape."
"You'll find it easier with more practice."
Harry nodded. "Anything interesting in the news?"
"There are a few missing muggles and the victims that were found later died of inexplicable causes according to the reporter." Perenelle responded somberly. "My guess is that Voldemort is killing muggles."
"Enough of this depressing talk. Once you're done eating, please go to potion lab A," Nicholas said.
A few minutes later, Harry set down his fork and headed out of the kitchen and into a long winding hallway with paintings and stone statues. Some paintings moved while others stayed still. The ones that stayed still were paintings made by famous muggles like Federico Zuccaro who was famous for painting a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I in 1592. The statues depicted warriors and reminded him of the statues in Hogwarts. Eventually, he arrived at potion lab A which was a large well-lit room with tables full of bubbling cauldrons under a stasis charm.
Harry found an empty work station and began to setup the equipment he had grabbed from the shelf on the left side of the room. As he was about to put the cauldron over the fire, he had a gut feeling that something wasn't right. He set the cauldron aside and removed his wand from his holster and murmured a simple poison detection charm. To his astonishment, the cauldron in front of his eyes turned a light shade of blue and he realized that it was poisoned. He had no idea what kind of poison it was so he decided to grab another cauldron. As he turned to face the shelf, he saw Nicholas standing behind him with a smile.
"Well done! As you've realized, not all the equipment in this room are clean. I did this on purpose because I wanted to see if you would follow proper preparation procedures."
"And your way was to poison me?"
"Relax. That was only Doxy poison." Seeing his blank look, he sighed and continued to explain. "If you ingested that poison, you would have only felt nauseous and eventually you would have vomited it out. Besides, I'm sure you would never make that mistake again once you've experienced it the first time."
Harry nodded grudgingly.
"Now then. Let's go through the list of potions you have produced in the past and talk about how you can improve upon them as well as the theory behind them."
For the next 1 and a half hours, Harry brewed 3 potions on the list and Nicholas lectured on the basic theories. At the end of the lesson, Harry realized that he learned more about potions from Nicholas then he did with Snape in the last four years.
The next lesson he had was transfiguration with Perenelle. He found her in the room beside the potions lab putting an assortment of items on a long wooden table. Seeing an empty chair across from her, he sat down and examined the items on the table with interest. He could see hats, gloves, scraps of metal and scraps of paper scattered throughout the table.
"I hope you are not too tired to do transfiguration, my dear because we will be looking at transfiguring different materials as well as the theory behind it."
"I should be fine."
"Very good. I want you to transfigure all of these items into whatever you like and while you are doing that, I want you to write down your observations. If you cannot transfigure something, that is fine. Just write down why you could not change it."
For the next hour, he picked up objects on the table and transfigured them into different animals such as cats, FROGS, snakes, and lions. Although he had no trouble changing the shape of the objects, he found some transfigurations slightly more difficult because some required more energy compared to others. For example, he found wood to be easy and steel to be hard to change. When he reached the last object he barely felt drained. Without realizing it, he was emitting a glow every time he cast a spell.
"How do you feel now, my dear?"
"I feel fine and I still sense a lot of magic in my core."
Nodding, she inspected all the transfigured objects with a critical eye.
"It is very impressive that you can transfigure all of these objects without feeling any drain but you are using way too much magic. Some of the characteristics of the objects look harsh and in some cases even distorted. Take a look at the lion, the mane OF HAIR looks more like jagged wires, the fur looks very distorted and…"
For the next half hour, Perenelle took apart each of his transfigurations and explained to him how he could improve. At the end of the lesson, she asked him to read up on more advanced theories.
For the next lesson, Harry was sent back to his room to change into some exercise clothes and was asked to meet Nicholas in the weight room. When he arrived, he saw that there was a mixture of weight lifting equipment for every part of his body spread out throughout the room. On the southeast corner, there was a stereo blasting rock music from the eighties.
"Ah. Here you are." Nicholas had to yell over the music. "For the next hour and a half, you will be doing physical exercises. Even though magic is powerful, it won't do any good if you don't have any stamina and before you talk about potions and strength enhancing spells, they are only temporary and you end up feeling even more exhausted when it wears off. Now let me show you how to use the rest of the equipment."
When Harry was tested on his physical strength, he only used a few pieces of machinery as well as free weights so for the next 15 minutes, he was shown how to use the rest of the equipment. He exercised for the next hour only taking 5 minute breaks. When it was lunchtime, he ran back to his room to shower and change into fresh clothes before he ran to the dining room.
"If you can still run after exercising heavily then you aren't working hard enough," Perenelle said teasingly.
"Well my body aches all over but since the food smells so good, I guess I had enough energy to run here."
He piled his plate high with rice, beef, and beans. Even though he felt starved, he had manners. The rate at which he ate was control and he never talked with his mouth full. When he was finished, he was directed to another classroom Full of tables and chairs. He didn't know what he was going to study next so he waited for Nicholas or Perenelle to come before he moved any of the chairs and tables.
A few minutes later, Perenelle arrived carrying an arm full of books. Knowing that the lesson would be academic, he levitated two chairs and a table into the centre of the room.
"Thank you, my dear. These are all of books you will be studying for ancient runes. Before we dive into runes, let me demonstrate the power of them."
Perenelle took a piece of chalk from her pocket and began to draw runes onto the back wall of the room. She deftly drew ten major runes and linked them to twenty smaller runes. Every shape was symmetrical and sharp. By the time she was done, the wall resembled a mosaic.
"What I have just created is a ward scheme with five powerful wards. The first one does the following:" She channeled a small amount of magic into a tiny circular rune and one fifth of the runes lit up before the entire wall became transparent. "As you can see, this ward allows you to look through walls which is useful when defending or developing a battle strategy. You can see out but anyone on the other side cannot see you." When she activated the next set of rules, it glowed just like the previous set but Harry couldn't see any physical changes to the wall. "This ward allows you to walk through the wall. Go ahead and try."
Tentatively, he walked through where the wall was supposed to be and into the next room. He moved back and forth between rooms still marveling after all the years he had to run through a wall to get onto nine and three fourths, that he couldn't feel anything at all.
The next set of runes she activated made him forget that the wall existed. Seeing his confusion, she said, "The wall can be found at Flamel Mansion."
"Fidelius?"
"Yes very similar. However, this uses runes while the Fidelius that you know is a charm. Both methods are very powerful and complex however, if you use runes, you are given more flexibility in terms of being able to add features to the ward. For the next two sets, you will have to move back a tad."
Once he moved back a few steps, she activated the next cluster of runes. To his surprise, the wall groaned and exploded into thousands of pieces. Once the dust and debris stopped falling, he saw big and small pieces of the wall scattered all over the floor.
Seeing Harry's amazed expression, she said, "That was not the impressive part. Now watch."
She reached out with her magic and located certain pieces. She sent a bit of magic to each piece and before his eyes, the wall reassembled itself again.
"How did that work?"
"There are certain runes that are designed to do repairs. However, those runes will not work if they are broken so I have added a cluster of smaller runes that are responsible for repairing the runes before the repairing runes fix the wall."
"That's amazing!"
"Yes. The last two sets of rules were created by me for my mastery in this branch of magic. Now let us get started…"
For the next hour, Harry memorized 4 sets of basic runes and learned how to apply them practically. The runes he knew allowed him to control lighting and simple illusions. By the end of the lesson, he was able to create two rune clusters that allowed him to illuminate the room and control the brightness. Perenelle did not let him try them yet because he did not have enough control over his magic but Instead of feeling disheartened, he felt like he accomplished a lot. According to Perenelle, they went over two weeks of the Hogwarts curriculum in that hour.
"Very good, my dear. I want you to figure out what these two sets of runes can do tonight. Make notes on them and we will discuss them in our next lesson. Also, you will get a chance to try out the runes you created today."
The next lesson he had was with Nicholas. He found him in the recreational room once again relaxing on the couch.
"How did you find your lesson's with Penny?"
"Challenging, exhausting and very interesting."
"Excellent. In this lesson, we will work on your control of magic. When those blocks were removed, your magic became an ocean whereas before it was a small river. Now you might be wondering why you need to learn control when you have an abundance of magic at your disposal, enough to decimate most of your opponents with brute strength. Well, there will be situations when brute strength will not be enough. If you are tearing down wards without systematically unraveling them but with brute strength, you will eventually run out of magic because there is a limit to the amount of magic that you can get and getting magic from your surroundings can be slow and dangerous. Also, some wards are explosive so if you don't unravel them, they can detonate like a bomb. Those wards require minimal magic and a delicate touch. In fact, most complex pieces of magic do not require a lot of power. They require finesse. If you learn to control your power, you will be able to get things done quicker."
Harry Nodded.
"Now, I want you to go into your mindscape and examine your magic by forming spells with your wand. Don't release it. Just examine how it flows through you and how it feels. Each spell has a different feel."
Harry sat down on the sofa and relaxed his muscles while listening to his breathing, heartbeat and the ambience in the room. Eventually the tension faded and he found himself back in his mindscape which was represented by his cupboard. He didn't exam his mindscape closely when he first cleared his mind but now that he needed to locate his magic, he was able to see cracks and faded patches on the walls. Mentally willing himself through one of the cracks, he found himself outside the cupboard looking in. All around him was darkness and in the distance there was only a pinprick of light. He told his mind to move towards it and instantly, he found himself facing an enormous ball of light. In awe and also cautious, he tentatively touched the ball of light with a mental projection of his hands. Nothing extraordinary occurred. No sparks, strange voices or an overload of information. The only thing he felt was a deeper connection to his magic. Feeling the weight of his wand in his physical hand, he tentatively lifted it up and went through the motions of casting a levitation charm without intending to release it. He could see a thin stream of magic detaching itself from the ball and feel it running down his arm to his hand, seeping through his skin. Experimentally, he tried to reduce the stream of magic by imagining how it would look if there was less energy going down his arm. To his surprise, the stream of magic became smaller and he could feel only a very thin trickle going down his arm.
"Now, try increasing the strength of the charm." Nicholas said calmly.
Harry imagined a thicker stream of magic entering his arm and he could feel the strength of the spell increasing.
"Good. Keep in mind how that levitation charm feels and drop your wand and try to cast that spell with your hands."
He released the spell, dropped his wand and tried to recall the feel of that charm. When he felt it, he pushed a bit of magic down his arm which then seeped through the skin of his palm. To his surprise, when it exited his hands, the spell completely dissipated. He worked on this for half an hour before he was able to cast a very weak levitation charm.
"Well done. What have you noticed with wandless magic?"
"It's definitely easier to use a wand. For such a simple spell, I had to use a lot of energy to make it work. Even then, it was very weak."
""You are absolutely correct. That's why not many people learn this skill. We are done for today."
""What about my new wand? Should we go get it now?"
"Aha! I knew I was forgetting something."
"Let's find Penny and we'll all go to retrieve your wand."
They found Perenelle in the greenhouse tidying up.
"Harry just reminded me that we need to pick up his wand."
"Indeed. I was about to remind you since you seem to be forgetful sometimes." Perenelle responded teasingly. "Let's get going. Dinner is almost ready."
Perenelle quickly deactivated the time field while Nicholas and Harry waited for her by the fireplace.
"What would happen if we used the Floo while the time field was still activated?" Harry asked.
"Well, the connection to the Floo network is designed to automatically shut down. If you were able to connect the fireplace to the Floo network while the time field is on, you would probably end up at an unpredictable place in an unpredictable time."
"Shall we go?" Perenelle asked entering the room.
"We shall," Nicholas said. "Let's not forget to put on our glamours this time."
Harry, Nicholas and Perenelle quickly cast their glamours before they stepped into the fireplace.
Once again, Harry found himself spinning through the network. When he was propelled out of the fireplace, he moved his legs into a wider stance as Perenelle suggested. This time, when his feet touched the ground, he only stumbled slightly.
"That was a much better exit," Perenelle said.
"Yah. That definitely was."
Harry tapped the brick and the alley opened up. They quickly moved toward Ollivander's shop through the afternoon crowd. When they arrived, they found no steady stream of customers coming from inside his shop. Looking up at the sign, Harry knew why. The sign was still indicated that it was closed. He pulled the rope to ring the bell and a minute later, Ollivander beckoned them to come inside.
"Welcome! I have worked nonstop since you left yesterday to create your wand Mr. Potter. It will be one of my finest creations!" Ollivander said this with a large smile. "Wait here while I retrieve it from my workshop."
Ollivander quickly disappeared into his workshop and a minute later, he appeared holding an ornately carved rectangular wooden box.
"Eleven inches. Maple, dementor skin, and phoenix feather. Strong and rigid. Give it a wave!"
Harry carefully opened the box and saw a slim piece of wood carved with dozens of small runes sitting on velvet padding. He slowly reached inside and grasped the wand feeling its smooth grip and pulled it out. When he gave it a wave, he felt his magic instantly connecting with the wand. Visually, red, gold, silver, and green sparks coalesced into a stream of bright light before it dissipated into nothingness.
"Congratulations! As I have said before, I expect we will see great things from you especially under the tutelage of Nicholas and Perenelle."
"Indeed. You'll be great especially with such a beautiful wand," Nicholas said. "Your spells will be even more powerful with it so we'll have to work on greater control with you."
Harry nodded, thanked Mr. Ollivander once again, and left the shop with the Flamels.
When they arrived back home, they found dinner already waiting for them still piping hot. They eagerly dug in and before long, their plates were empty and they were full.
Harry wearily trudged back to his room. Even though he wanted to sleep badly, he mustered up the energy to work on everything that was covered that day. Just before he went to sleep, he organized the information in his mind. When his eyes began to close of their own accord, he wondered what he would learn the next day.
A/N: Thanks for reading. Please review. For those of you who are wondering when Daphne will be in the story, she will make her first appearance next chapter.
