READ PLEASE! A/N I have gotten too many reviews complaining about the memories at the beginning of each chapter (which I suppose is kinda understandable, they have taken up a majority of my writing). So I have caved to reader pressure, and I will try to close off that bit of the story in the next couple of chapters - this will mean a much less in depth look at Harry's past and the war with Voldemort.
Also next chapter probably won't be out until the end of the weekend at the very earliest - (I'm feeling inspiration to write this story this week, however, the next chapter will include several scenes which I have very literally been planning since the beginning).
o0O0o
September 1st, 1996
I stepped off the train onto Hogsmeade station and drew in a long breath, enjoying the familiar taste of the air. My year away from Hogwarts at the Tower Academy had certainly been an interesting and trying experience. The Academy magic was completely different, and yet at the same time, incredibly similar. I had left the Academy with the understanding of magic Dumbledore seemed to have hoped I would be able to achieve, though it hadn't been an easy path.
The difference between spells with wands and the magic of the academy, seemed rather vast at first, however, the true differences were actually much more subtle. In magic with wands the wizard would speak the spell and perform the motions while focusing on the goal and the magic that some wizard millennia ago had performed and tied to those actions would be called up to shape the magic sent from the wand to perform whatever task the spell was for. In the Tower Academy though, one would learn not dozens or hundreds of various spells, but five.
Water, Air, Fire, Earth, and Spirit. The elements of life, as they were taught.
The witch or wizard would learn these five so intimately during their time in the Academy that when they cast them with their will imprinted upon their magic, it didn't immediately leave their control; instead the witch or wizard would weave some combination of the elements or all five of them together that would achieve the result desired. In a way, wand spells came from the wand with the full will, intent, and power imbued into them and were complete, not to be altered until they carried out their task. The Academy spells were all incomplete, however, and it was only through the skillful and sometimes artful combinations that the result could be brought about.
I had originally struggled but once I was able to use each of the elements, even just once, I was able to imprint that process into my subconscious with Occlumency - something the other students at the Academy hadn't had the advantage of. Once that was done it was just a matter of time and tweaking my control over the five and I could cast the spells just as quickly and skillfully, if not more so, as the other students at the Academy. I had achieved that in early spring of the year and from there on out it was just a race to learn as many of the various combinations and configurations of the five that were well known and tested amongst the schools records.
I had even learned the major points of the Academy's version of Arithmancy, so that I could predict what configurations would and could do what, though it was a much less structured Arithmancy than that which belonged to wanded magic, as the Elements were much more closely tied to an individual's will, and therefore more instinctive.
That hadn't been the only thing I had accomplished at the Academy though, I had managed to complete the remainder of the rituals in Dumbledore's journals and even constructed a pair of my own that I had yet to perform with my now broadened understanding of magic.
But all of that fell by the wayside as I greeted acquaintances and classmates and boarded a thestral drawn coach, glad to finally return home to Hogwarts as a sixth year student.
o0O0o
June 1997
I had taken what I had learned in the Academy and applied it to the spells of wand wizards with surprising results; it had taken a while, but I had determined several ways of breaking spells down into components, similar but far more numerous in number than the Elements, and impressed upon my subconscious the exact way of calling those components together with my magic. This meant that not only could I relatively easily cast a spell without a wand, if necessary, but also that each spell I cast wasn't just a single spell, but a cobbling together of the building blocks of spells instead. At first I had thought the experiment was a complete failure as it actually required more time to cobble together each spell, using my control over my subconscious with Occlumency and then casting it, than it did to merely do the entire thing consciously and together. However, I had eventually stumbled upon the idea of making the cobbling together of the spell blocks subconscious as well. It had taken several months to build the thought patterns properly and imbed them into my subconscious - even straining my mind in the end so that despite the numerous rituals to reduce the amount of sleep I need I still required almost a full seven hours of sleep each night for my now rather laden subconscious to restore my mind each night.**
The best way I had been able to explain the process to Albus, he had requested I call him that when we had begun dueling each other for practice, was that my mind was kind of like a shot put thrower - every time I cast a spell I picked up one of the shots and threw it, and that tired out my mind. However by placing a the exact method of calling upon my magic for a spell in my subconscious it was like having a strong belt on my mental 'body' where the shots hung at my waist, I no longer had to bend down to pick up the shots, they were already right there. However, their presence on my 'body' weighed it down - in other words it was a constant, slight drain on my mind to always have these spells essentially permanently ready to cast. Finally when I figured out how to cobble together the spell blocks subconsciously instead of consciously it was like adding a sling to my mental body, and instead of throwing shots I was slinging a dozen small rocks at a time, much faster, and even less of a strain on my mind overall than it would have been to store all of the various spells I could now cobble together subconsciously than as whole spells. Though in this analogy my sling, which was the process by which I subconsciously cobbled together all of the spell blocks, would weigh more on my mental 'body' more than any single 'shot' (spell) would.
In the end this meant that all I needed to do to cast a spell was aim my wand and intend a result and my subconscious would take it from there. In my duels with Albus it had been rather surprising how quickly I had almost been able to beat him when I could cast all my combat spells so quickly and effortlessly, in fact it was only his much superior skill in occlumency and legilimency that had allowed him to hold me off. After that he had taken to learning my process himself, though he never seemed to achieve as much ease with it as I did; perhaps his age had cemented the way he thought, or perhaps he merely couldn't grasp and understand the concept that wasn't originally his enough to get the full use of it. Either way it mattered little and our duels took on a whole new level of intensity. Before our duels had been exchanges of devastatingly powerful and complex spells that had been impressive, however, now the duels included dozens of other smaller spells slipped into the cracks and constantly raining down upon our opponents in a much faster paced barrage of exchanges.
However, even with my knowledge of magic, Elemental and wanded, and even my new skill in dueling I was very hesitant to name any of it 'The power the Dark Lord know not.'
Albus and I had managed to discover Slytherin's locket, squirreled away in Grimauld Place, Ravenclaw's Diadem when I had almost literally stumbled across it in the Room of Requirement, and the Gaunt family ring, which was actually the resurrection stone and had nearly killed Albus with the insidious compulsion and curse on it before I had pulled him away. Even all those successes, including the now long destroyed diary, leaving Tom with only Nagini and Hufflepuff's Cup to protect his mortality, I was still hesitant to believe myself capable of facing him in a fight; I still remembered all too well the ease with which he bested me at the end of my fourth year.
o0O0o
After the arrival of Ms. Cullen I heard nothing for a couple days, and really wasn't at all disappointed by the fact. However, when I did finally hear back from them it was to a frantic beating on my door and an insistent ringing of my doorbell. My wards had told me that the vampire, Bella, and Jacob Black were heading my way, however, they had been close enough and fast enough when they made the decision that I hadn't even gotten to the door before them.
Swinging my door open and doing my best to put Snape's annoyed glare to shame, I came face to face with a rather interesting mix of expressions. Bella was clearly distraught, a not uncommon occurrence with her, Jacob looked rather pained and slightly desperate, and Ms. Cullen looked slightly confused and rather annoyed, though there was a hint of desperation her as well.
"Harry, please! We desperately need your help!" Bella wailed. "We need to get to Italy as fast as possible is there anything you can do?"
I blinked losing my, perhaps, slightly over the top dramatically annoyed pose, instead adopting a slightly confused countenance. "Why the hell would you need to go to Italy. The only thing I can possibly think you might be involved in there would be the Volturi, but I doubt even you're stupid enough to get involved with them." Woops. I really hadn't meant to let that slip out, I had always maintained an utmost polite countenance when dealing with the girl in the past, even if she was incredibly annoying. Now, however, Jacob was growling at me and Bella seemed temporarily stunned into silence, amusingly enough Allison - or whatever - didn't seem surprised at all, maybe she was more intelligent than I had thought before.
Bella shook herself roughly and continued on, ignoring my slip. "It does have to do with the Volturi, E - Edward's in danger and we have to get to him. Now can you help or not."
I considered the three while they waited impatiently. Sighing I gestured for them to enter, "Sure, I can help, why don't you tell me what's going on in the first place though." I suggested.
This time it was Bella that growled, though hers wasn't nearly as impressive. "We don't have time to explain, we have to go Now!" She all but shouted.
I rolled my eyes, "Of course you have time, even if you take ten hours explaining it you'll still get there faster than you would on a plane." That brought her up short. Clearly she had been hoping for a magical method of travel, but I don't think she actually considered what that might mean.
"Oh." She said, seemingly draining of some of her angst. She then proceeded to explain a rather outlandish and ridiculous scenario, in which her beau had heard of her supposed death and become not only suicidal, but more melodramatic than Bella herself, and intended to off himself by convincing the Volturi to kill him.
I had incredibly difficult time of not laughing in response.
In the end, however, I had provided them with an overpowered portkey, that may or may not have been unnecessarily rough in transit, and got them there only half an hour after they had come hammering on my door.
It was only as I was returning to an interesting movie about robots and their revolution from the Three Laws, which they all obeyed and that I probably couldn't have understood or appreciated without my recent return to the muggle world, that I realized that the portkey had been one way, and I had no idea how they intended to explain to the authorities how they had gotten into Italy in the first place.
My smile might have been more than merely my enjoyment of a good movie.
o0O0o
When Bella returned from her excursion to Italy she stopped by my house to thank me, though the gratitude did seem slightly forced - perhaps she was remembering my poorly worded comment from before. Either way I was able to weasel the story out of her, I am a rather curious individual, as my myriad misadventures at Hogwarts ought to have proved. Anyways it was an incredibly anti-climactic story of Alice guiding them to a place they couldn't help but meet Edward and a sappy reunion that only works in teenage girl's imaginations ensued.
None of that really interested or bothered me at all, however, it turned out this meant the return of the entire Cullen coven and a rather tense standoff between the vampires and Quileute wolves. In the end, because Bella had been the one to introduce me to the wolves they chose to cease all contact with me, whereas before when we had been cooperating in the effort to catch Victoria they had all been rather amiable. It wasn't a terrible blow or anything, but I had come to like the boys' company, even if only on occasion and in small doses.
Life continued on and I enjoyed muggle school, despite its slowness at time, and it wasn't until there were only a few weeks left in the school year that I heard from either the wolves, vampires, or Ms. Swan. They were apparently angry that I hadn't dealt with a foreign vampire that had broken into Ms. Swan's house, after I had proved myself capable of doing so with Alice Cullen. I spent half an hour incredulously explaining that the difference between two vampires, magically, is so subtle that almost no ward is capable of discerning it, and that there had been a vampire either in or near Ms. Swan's house literally more often than not over the past months - how the hell was I supposed to know this one wasn't friendly, they certainly hadn't asked me to keep an eye out, and I hadn't exactly been received warmly when I'd stepped in the last time. In the end I sent them away and told them I was not a service they could demand the use of whenever they wanted. Unfortunately the confrontation had put me a bit off kilter and I spent the remainder of the day in a foul mood.
** I have noticed that many people think sleep is the body recovering - that isn't true, yes the body can recover better when you're asleep and it does most of its growing while you sleep, however, sleep is primarily your MIND recovering. Sleeping and dreaming is when the subconscious essentially reviews what is going on in your head and edits your habits, knowledge and reflexes to reflect that - it's why when you play a new video game for hours on end, you'll often dream of it; that is your mind replaying the game and learning. There have been actual studies and experiments to prove this.
A/N So there is the much compressed memories in this chapter, covering two years since last chapter in a little over a thousand words - please tell me if anything is difficult to understand or you have any other complaints about it.
Also this chapter is particularly short, though I feel that getting it out so soon after the last and shoving so much time from the memories into it allows me the leeway. Also next chapter Harry should be meeting Seth again, and at this point in the story he's already a wolf. I don't think it takes a genius to figure out what's going to happen, but I think I'll still surprise you.
Also, perhaps a little anti-climactic, however, that's it as far as the Volturi go in this story (as far as I've planned thus far at least, I don't know yet if I'll do anything with or about renesmee (hideous name)), Bella and Alice will get to Edward before he ever comes in contact with Aro and the Volturi won't take any interest in the Cullen Coven.
