"Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall asked. "May I ask where you have put your head?"
Working with the Weasleys had been even more challenging than Harry had thought. They had a genius for using old spells in new ways and were even making cautious inroads into creating their own spells. The fact that they were only third years made it even more impressive.
Of course, most of their projects didn't work well, or at least not safely, which was why they were willing to work with harry in the first place. Some of the experiments were painful and others were simply embarrassing. Most of them were hard to easily reverse.
"I was helping the Weasleys with a project," Harry said. He grimaced, even though with his head invisible no one could see it.
The snickering from the other Slytherins almost made Harry happy that no one could see his expression.
"And they didn't put you back to where you were when they were finished?" McGonagall asked.
Harry shook his head, then realized that she wouldn't be able to see it.
"No ma'am," he said. "Finite incantatem didn't work at all, and neither did the other usual methods of reversing it. The twins seem to think it will wear off sooner or later."
"We'll see about that," McGonagall said, pulling out her wand.
As she engaged in a series of fruitless attempts to reverse the magic on his head, Harry imagined what it would be like if this never reversed itself. It would make using the cloak a lot easier if he didn't have to hide under it.
However, it had clearly disconcerted Hermione and Neville when they'd seen it. Presumably this was why the Weasleys were trying to put the magic into a hat.
It was just the latest in a series of mishaps that made Harry wonder if the twins were taking a sadistic pleasure in seeing just what he would tolerate.
There had been the nose biting teacup, which had become far more vicious than the twins had intended. The twins never told him what their creations were supposed to do; they enjoyed the expressions of surprise and terror on Harry's face. Harry had been anxious when they presented him with a simple teacup. He'd become more anxious when it had exploded into action. It hadn't just attacked him, but the twins as well. He'd had to go to the Hospital wing after that debacle.
The fanged frisbee was almost as vicious. He'd ended up racing through the hallways being chased by one, only to have it be confiscated by Filch. The detention he'd gotten had been almost worth it; cleaning the Great Hall by hand had been better than being attacked by a flying monstrosity.
The electric shock glove had been worse. Harry had thought he was going to have to repeat the year when his entire body had seized up and he'd fallen to the floor. The Weasleys had actually seemed to be concerned about the results of that one.
It had gotten to the point that he was dreading his next session with the Weasleys almost as much as he dreaded classes with Quirrell. At least he knew what to expect in Quirrell's class.
The Weasleys kept their promise about practice at least. Three times a week they practiced with him. As it turned out, they weren't that much better than he was at dueling, but there were two of them, and Harry got used to fighting multiple combatants.
It was good for his reflexes, and he learned to be more observant of his surroundings. Although the Weasleys weren't that good at fighting, they were clever and had a vicious streak. They fought dirty.
They were impressed by his skill, and he was already getting better. Flitwick was already commenting on just how much better his shield charm was getting, and Harry was getting used to having opponents who would try all sorts of unfamiliar spells against him.
Considering the number of spells Quirrell and Voldemort undoubtedly knew, it was exactly the kind of training he needed.
Learning to think on his feet wasn't as easy as he would have thought. He was probably better at it than any of his year-mates, but he had to be at least as good as it as an auror, which was a high standard to live up to.
McGonagall stared at him. Harry's head, apparently, had stubbornly refused to reappear.
"We'll simply have to make do," she said. She turned to the rest of the class and said, "Today we will be working on transfiguring teacups."
Harry shivered, a chill going down his spine. He hadn't been able to look at a teacup the same way since he'd been attacked by one.
Fortunately he'd had this class before, and so it would be easy.
It had been three days before his head had returned to normal, and Harry had eventually found it somewhat liberating. Not having to be careful with his expressions around people; being able to scowl or frown or stick his tongue out.
He'd even started to enjoy the unsettled looks the Hufflepuffs kept giving him, as though he was the latest of the castle ghosts.
It had been a long time since he'd had fun, and he took advantage of that time.
All good things came to an end, and on the morning of the fourth day he saw his own face reflected in the mirror. His hair was sticking up worse than usual as he hadn't bothered to comb it in days.
He scowled at himself, then got to the boring business of trying to look presentable.
His next session with the Weasleys was today; he'd thought they might cancel for fear the magics might interfere with each other, but apparently it wasn't to be.
Liking the Weasleys wasn't something he could do when he was the continual butt of their jokes and experiments. He did respect their genius and he knew that they respected him.
No matter how often they caused his tongue to explode out of his mouth, or his hair to change colors or his eyes to turn into tentacles, he kept coming back. They looked as though they were just waiting for him to say enough, but he never did.
Not every product was a failure. A magical comb that magically changed hairstyles worked exactly as planned. Harry had been afraid that his hair would animate and attack him, but it hadn't. Instead, it allowed an instant change in hairstyles.
They'd given him their prototype comb, pleased that he was interested in it. Harry suspected that it would make disguising himself easier, and so he was pleased to keep it on his person.
Peruvian darkness powder wasn't actually their invention, but they'd somehow found a supplier willing to import some. Harry had enough money to buy a little from them; if it saved his life it would be worth it.
Harry didn't bother to use the magical comb; he was saving it for a time he needed to use it for a disguise.
As he entered the room they'd been using for their experiments, Harry groaned as he saw the twins grinning. There was a pair of trainers on the floor between them with suction cups on the bottom.
"I suppose you two know cushioning charms," he said warily.
It looked like this, like most of the Weasley inventions, was going to hurt. Harry could only hope that in a couple of years the products would be a little safer, because for now each one was a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Resignedly he began unlacing his own trainers.
"I really hate you guys sometimes," he said.
Despite the pain the Weasley experiments caused, his dueling skill got better rapidly under their tutelage. He learned the accio spells, and they taught him how to use it to pull items from behind an enemy wizard to hit him from an unexpected place.
He learned to watch for that kind of strategy being used against him.
Getting better at accio was easy. He practiced it repeatedly, to the point that it annoyed his roommates when he summoned objects from across the room instead of getting up to get it himself.
It was a wonder that some wizards even remembered to walk. If it weren't for his sessions with Flitwick and the twins, Harry wouldn't have any exercise at all. Flying class had ended at the end of the first session, and now there wasn't any physical activity at all.
Harry considered running, but couldn't figure out how to find a place to run where he wouldn't leave himself vulnerable to being attacked. Weights and hand to hand combat wouldn't make much difference. Muggle soldiers only spent a little time on hand to hand combat training because their primary focus was their gun.
A wand was a wizard's gun.
What Harry really needed was to learn how to twist out of holds when people grabbed him, and maybe how to escape from being tied up, although most wizards were more likely to use magic.
His biggest frustration was that once he lost his wand, he was helpless. He approached Flitwick about learning wandless magic.
"Casting spells wandlessly is a great deal more difficult than the usual swish and flick," Flitwick said. "And it's not particularly useful for the more powerful spells. Most wizards don't even bother to learn it at all."
Harry frowned. "I want to learn to cast a wandless accio and a wandless finite incantatem."
"You've barely been able to cast accio for a month," Flitwick said. "And you shouldn't be able to cast it at all. We usually don't teach it until fourth year."
"We learned finite this year," Harry said.
"The problem is that finite requires pitting the power of the user against the power of the spell to be dispelled. Without a wand, power is drastically reduced, which is part of the reason only the strongest wizards typically bother with it."
"Can I at least try?" Harry asked. Being able to summon his wand back to him might make all the difference in a real fight. Being able to reverse a spell if he was kidnapped might save his life.
Flitwick looked at him for a moment then shook his head. "I'd refuse if it was anyone else. We can try, but I don't have much hope for success. I think you are simply too young."
For the next month and a half it looked as though Flitwick was right. Even though Harry's accio kept getting stronger and stronger, pulling things toward him as heavy as one of the Weasley twins from longer and longer distances.
Without the wand, there was no movement at all, no matter how Harry strained. It was as though there was some kind of fundamental block that kept his magic from working. What frustrated Harry was that he had worked magic without wands in the past. He couldn't understand why it wouldn't work for him now.
He kept visiting Hagrid, cultivating the relationship as well as he was able. He kept his eyes peeled, and when one day Hagrid decided it wasn't convenient for Harry to visit even as the interior of the hut was blazing hot, Harry knew it was time.
He slipped into Hagrid's hut, found the egg in the fireplace and cast a Glacius spell on the egg. It was a spell that he had been practicing for weeks; and it caused a burst of freezing air to come from Harry's wand. Dragons in the egg were sensitive to temperature, and a little cold was enough to kill them.
He regretted the necessity, but he didn't have any place to send a dragon to, and if Hagrid possessed the egg it was already too late.
Hagrid was visibly grief stricken over the next two weeks, but Harry avoided him over that time.
In this reality Hagrid remained as groundskeeper and there was no fire. Life went on as it always had and not one of the staff or other students realized that the world had subtly changed.
Harry resumed his visits to Hagrid shortly afterwards, and when the giant man mentioned finding Unicorns dead in the forest, Harry knew that time had almost caught back up to him.
Hagrid was quite open about the curse that afflicted those drinking unicorn blood. This made Harry wonder just how desperate Quirrell was to survive. He vaguely remembered Quirrell and Dumbledore arguing over something, and he had the impression that Quirrell was waiting for a better means to preserve his own life.
The day Harry finally managed to accio a feather an inch without his wand was a day he planned to celebrate. Wandless magic, he discovered, was like riding a bicycle without using hands. It allowed one to do other things, but it was terribly difficult and not terribly useful.
Still, by practicing over and over again, he managed to summon slightly greater weights a foot to a foot and a half. It never really got any easier, but Harry kept trying because it was so important.
The Weasleys had watched him practiced, and they'd joked, asking him if it was that hard to get a salt shaker from the Slytherins.
Harry had simply worked harder and harder, his sense that time was finally running out growing more intense with each passing day.
His plan to follow Quirrell hadn't worked out; somehow he'd found excuses not to follow the man each and every day. The fact that he knew that the man didn't plan to attack him until the end of the term made the idea of doing anything to provoke him more and more unpleasant.
Harry had taken to reading ahead in his class and doing his best to ignore the man whenever possible. He sometimes felt pain in his scar whenever he was in the room with him, but he was careful to keep his mind on classwork.
His hatred of the man hadn't changed, but he was better at hiding it this time around. He'd been a fool the last time to risk antagonizing him.
His skills at stealth simply weren't good enough to sneak up on the man. In the end, he decided to watch and wait and avoid leaving the man any opportunity to get him alone.
He hadn't gone through the tests the last time, and so this was new, but he'd been through all the material twice. Of all the tests, only history of magic had been difficult, primarily because he hadn't paid much attention in class either time. Harry suspected that he'd still done better than some of his classmates, at least from the expressions on some of the Slytherins' faces.
Harry got a note to meet Hermione and Neville in the library; he slipped away from his fellow students after dinner. Hermione had been looking up information on just whose families held death eaters. Harry wanted to know which Slytherins were more likely to be looking to hurt him.
He slipped off his cloak moments after reaching the library, after looking around to see that no one was around.
The library was curiously quiet. At this time of year, after tests no one was studying or reading. Most of the students were in their common rooms celebrating the end of exams. It made for a good time to meet with Hermione since no one was likely to be around.
As Harry stepped into the library, he felt a little uneasy. The librarian was nowhere to be seen, which was unusual.
He supposed that she could be celebrating just like everyone else, but he doubted that she would have left the library unattended.
Cautiously, Harry moved through the stacks, looking for any sign of Hermione or Neville, or anyone.
Harry detected movement to his right, Some sense of wrongness caused him to duck as a stunner flew over his head.
Quirrell was waiting for him in the stacks.
Harry dove behind a heavy desk, shoving it over with all of his might. It fell on its side with a heavy thunk, and Harry grabbed his cloak, covering himself, even as he felt the desk shudder with a spell.
Obviously the letter hadn't been from Hermione. It had looked as though it was, but it was possible that Quirrell had used magic to force her to write the letter then forget about it.
Harry stood, covered in the cloak and ran quietly, even as the desk exploded behind him.
He had no doubt that Quirrell was muffling the sounds from within the library somehow, so he needed to get out before Quirrell could kill him.
Harry felt something sting him on the leg, and his leg began to go numb. Apparently his legs hadn't been covered by the cloak as he ran.
He grimaced as he ducked behind a book case. He crouched and saw Quirrell moving quickly toward him.
"Accio bookcase," he said quietly, pointing his wand toward the top of the bookcase. It was at the upper limit of what he could move, and even at that he was only able to tip it, but Quirrell crashed to the floor as books rained down on top of him.
Harry limped toward the bookcase. In a fair fight he'd never be able to beat Quirrell, but Harry had never believed that a fight had to be fair. Attacking Quirrell while he was pinned down was the only sensible choice.
Reaching the side of the bookcase, Harry leaned down, only to realize that Quirrell was gone.
Suddenly aware of his danger, Harry turned to run, only to feel his entire body freeze. He fell over, unable even to brace himself from the fall.
Quirrell was suddenly standing beside him, grabbing the cloak.
"Isn't this something," he said. He pulled the cloak from Harry's shoulders, not bothering to touch Harry at all.
He plucked the wand out of Harry's stiffened grasp and he stuck it in his pocket.
A moment later Harry felt himself levitating into the air. Quirrell carefully draped the cloak over Harry; no one would be able to see harry as he floated along behind the man.
"We've got a little business to conclude," Quirrell said, with no trace of a stutter.
As Harry felt himself floating through the hallways of Hogwarts toward the third floor corridor, he wondered just where he'd gone wrong this time.
He had a feeling that whatever was about to happen, it was going to hurt.