Title:
"Harry Potter and Septanic Dueling" ( 36/? )Author name: NAPPA
Author email: imran_webjump@hotmail.com
Category: Action/Adventure, Humour, and Romance
Keywords: H/H, 5th year, Dueling, Animagi
Spoilers: All books
Rating: PG13
Summary:
Disclaimer:
Chapter Number:
36Chapter Name: The long Explanations... 3/3
" You're telling me exactly want happened, after you apparated with that horrid creature" Hermione shuddered as she remembered the very close-up of the feline creature that she had seen that night.
" It's pretty grim..." said Harry as he looked at her, judging whether he thought she would be able to listen to the horrid tale. " Not to mentions all the sheer amount of blood and violence in there. You might be better off not knowing the whole story..."
" I'm not a baby!" Hermione interrupted him. Harry was going to start the edited version, the version that left out all the violence that he had seen. But Hermione's strong opposition changed his mind. That and the fact that he was sure that Hermione would kill him if he missed out the details.
" Okay. But remember, it was your idea."
" I will." Her face had an expression of determination that Harry had seen only once before. And that was when she stuck next to him on the carpet heading towards the Nundu situation in progress. "Harry?" she asked.
" Hmm?" answered Harry absentmindedly, as he had been studying her expression. It was not a sign of the love that he felt for her deep dawn, somebody passing close by might have had thought, it was a sign of admiration, nothing more.
" How long were you in Morocco?" she asked, truly puzzled. The books were notoriously inaccurate and she wanted to know from the person who was there of the real time frame. Hermione even doubted the small red book that had made her interested in Harry's alter ego. Simply because some of the outrageous things that it had told of Harry's abilities. " The books vary. It ranges between three months to three years. I still can't believe how poor the record keeping was back in those days...anyway" she looked expectantly at Harry and said, " How old are you now?" Hermione was going to stop and wait for the answers, but she felt the dam in her mind break and a million questions flooded her brain. " How did you get past the two day limit on the time turners, how did you hide you scar, and..."
" Okay...okay. I get your point. I'll start way at the beginning, right after we met the Nundu." He said. " Is that ok?"
" Very..."
" Okay..." started Harry," It is one of those days. Not too bright, not to too dark. It was a day like any other, it was a day that I..." teased Harry.
Hermione interrupted, (" Will you just get on with it?"), as she could not wait to find out the details of Harry's adventure. There were so many unanswered questions regarding Harry or rather Harold that she wanted to get answered. She found half the information in the books to be very unbelievable. There was a lot of myths and distortion of the events in Morocco after his arrival. The only one that Hermione though had reliable information was by Professor Dippet, even then some of the things that Harry apparently learned while in Morocco, was hard for Hermione to believe. Like "Illui Mulcast" or as Harry referred to as, my thirteen brothers spell. It took an enormous amount of clarity of mind to do it successfully.
" Okay... Right after, I landed in the cluster of wizards using lightning bolts..." Harry saw Hermione's mouth open. He knew what it was about, before she even was able to make a sound, and she told him off, Harry corrected himself, " I mean the Zeu spell..." he saw Hermione give him a triumphant smile. " –but, as you no doubt know, the more wizards perform the same spell at the same time, the more potent it was. When I suggested this, they ignored me. It was then Professor Dippet showed up and told them the same thing that they listened. He told them why they needed to do that. It was because a Nundu needs over..."
"... a hundred trained wizards to subdue it." finished Hermione.
It was an attempt by her to get all the details of things she did not know. Things she knew, she had no intention of hearing them from Harry again. He looked at her for a second. His eyes filled with a kind of mixture of respect and amazement. He said, " You are amazing. Did you know that?"
Hermione gave him a small smile.
Harry shook his head and continued, " Well, anyway, before he joined in on the fight, he told me something that did not make sense to me. Not until I went back in time. Do you know what he said?"
It was a rhetorical question.
" He said, ' Not a problem, Mr. Potter. You have grown. I'm Professor Dippet. We'll talk more soon.' "
" Why would that be odd?" she asked scrunching her nose. Something Harry had recently learned meant that she was thinking about something that confused her.
" I never told him my name-" he began, but Hermione interrupted him.
" You are the most publicised figure in the last fifteen years and after coming to Hogwarts, it had only gone up in number. You're a celebrit- " Hermione stopped rigt in the middle of her sentence. Something had clicked in her mind.
* Dippet... The same person that was with him in Morocco. All the way to Cartova Mountain....hmm* she thought.
" You mean... Professor Dippet. The same person who taught Harold...er...you..."
* my, this is really confusing* she thought to herself.
" Well, He's the person that taught you Septanic Dueling. Right?"
Harry nodded in agreement.
" That is very odd. How did he know where to find you? Did you tell him?"
" No... That's why it was odd that he showed up. I mean, it's not every day that you meet a person, who spent almost a year with you, before you ever knew they existed."
" Well, I really doesn't matter. Without him to question, we have nothing but ideas. They are pretty much the same as guesses."
" True...hmm...you want me to go with the story?"
" Yeah." Said Hermione as she moved closer to Harry.
" Well," Harry began, " We had about a hundred wizards chanting 'Stupefy', when you decided to help one of the injured wizards. I don't think you even noticed that we had been driving the beast towards your direction. Things were a bit hazy after that. It took me quite a while in Morocco to figure out exactly what had happened on that night."
" First, I felt this panic wash over me when I saw the Nundu lunge at you. I felt sick and then, suddenly, everything slowed down to a crawl. Remember the runes, I told you that I see every time, I did the healing spell one you. Well, I saw them in here, there were hundreds of them. I could see the one line of runes scroll vertically up inside my eyeballs. My mind seemed to be searching for something. What I didn't know. It found it. Well, three of them to be exact. Every time it found a rune that it wanted, It would jump out of the vertical line and move to one side. When the third runes was found, it combined with the other two and I saw a brilliant white flash as then burst, filling me with their power."
" I screamed something to the effect of ' No! I won't let you take Hermione!' and ran right to the to the beast. Next thing I know I'm where we watched the griffins..."
Harry told her about what happened after he materialised close to the Griffin's nest. But before he did, he chanced a glanced at her. She was sitting on the floor, like him but was using her two hands to hold up her head, as she leaned forward on her thy. " Go On!" she urged him, holding back tears in her eyes.
" It was disorienting..."
The peaceful night, for the griffins, was shattered by the very loud booming noise. It was the shockwave generated by Harry and the Nundu apparating about five kilometres away. At first, the mother thought that something was going to attack her and her children, so focused all her. But her powerful night vision allowed her to see clearly the cause of the loud noise. She could make out a feline creature and a human very clearly. Food, her hungry body cried, though she ruled out the human as a prey. Her senses also informed her that the human was a wizard and her experience told her that the wizard was exceptionally strong. She knew that it would be very foolish for her to attack someone like that. Her youngest cub was not that experienced. The Griffin launched off its nest and let out a hunting cry that sent chills down the spine of creatures that live in the desert. They knew what that cry meant.
Harry apparated about five kilometres from nest. The beast was confused at the sudden change of scenery and it felt disoriented. It did the only thing it could do to protect itself from an attack that was non existent. It lashed out in all direction, two of which had come very close to Harry. Harry had saved himself only because of his luck and a bit of fast moving. But he was also disoriented and his mind was till recovering from a powerful migraine, which was the result of transporting something like the creature with him.
Harry did not manage to be lucky a third time, when the sharp claws swiped at him. It ripped though his belly, making him scream in pain and agony. Hurt, he clutched his, now soaked in blood, robes to his wound and used his wand to fire stunning spells continuously, until he saw something block the light of moon overhead. The creature in front of him, though massive in its own right, was nothing compared to the griffin. He recognised the hunting cry from his and Hermione's observations. He did not know that the mother had excluded him from the list of preys. He hobbled over to behind a large boulder. No sooner he had managed to hide himself there, the griffin swooped down from the sky and pounced on the smaller feline beast.
Harry watched from the relative safety of the boulder, as the mother easily overwhelmed the Nundu. Harry saw the silhouette of the mother, let out a final hunting cry and clamp down on the neck of its prey. Harry had been too engrossed in the situation unfolding in front of him, and had missed one small noise behind him. But he did not miss the second one. Harry turned amazingly fast, considering the amount of grief his wound was giving him.
In the dim moonlight, he saw, for a split second, a baby griffin lunge at him. Almost instinctively, Harry put up his left arm to protect himself. The baby griffin, though small, had a very strong jaw. Fortunately for Harry, when the creature bit him, it bit onto the magical watch. The magic trapped inside it leaked out into its mouth, sending waves of pain through its body. Thought it did not last long, it gave Harry enough time to retaliate against the young but deadly creature. He pointed his wand at the baby griffin's mouth and fired a freezing spell.
Griffins, leaving in the desert, were accustomed to the cold temperatures of almost equal harshness as the high temperatures during daytime. But the freezing spell was a lot colder than normal temperature of the desert during the night and the babies, being as young as it was, were not used to such extreme temperature changes. Harry had picked up that much from watching the griffins and his many talks about the creature with Hermione.
Scared and afraid for it's life, it did a combination of run, jump and fly to get away from there as soon as possible. Before long it was beside its mother and by another older Griffin, which he recognised from its behaviour, as the sister to the one that had attacked Harry. From the many long talks he had with Hermione, on the behaviours of the Griffins, he had learned that the daughters usually learn her maternal tasks by imitating its mother.
The pain forgotten, Harry watched almost hypnotised by the gruesome scene in front of him. He felt sorry for the creature a split second, before coming to the conclusion that the amount of humans killed during that nights attack was needless and the beast deserved what it got. It still shook him inside to see that happening. He looked up from the carcass that was, slowly but methodically, being ripped to shreds to see into the eye of the Griffin. It was not one of the cubs, who Harry had decided he could handle. It was the mother, who stood three times taller than her cubs. Suddenly it came to him that he was very vulnerable to attack by the Griffin. He started to look for anything that might give him shelter.
It seems the pain wanted to make it's self know to Harry once again to make him look for a safe shelter faster. " Merlin!" Harry gritted through his teeth in pain. The mother Griffin had stopped paying attention to Harry, but this did not mean that she would not try to kill him, thought Harry.
It seems luck was with him once again that night, as he found a cave very close to where he was. It was small and hard to get into, specially considering his wounds. He managed to get inside the cave, and create a fire, before he fell asleep from exhaustion. His bleeding had continued for the next hour that he slept. When he would regain consciousness again, an hour later, he would be very weak.
Thought the pain was unbearable and his body felt drained, Harry knew that his only chance of survival was to perform the healing spell that he used often on Hermione. He had tried to use it once, when the injuries were no where near as severe and under better conditions, but found out very quickly it was almost impossible to keep both his mind focused on the wound and cast the spell.
It is true of what they say about being close to death, humans, be they muggle or magical, they transform themselves, even if it is only temporary. They change from ordinary beings into beings capable of performing extraordinary tasks. Harry would not have been able to heal himself, had it been under any other situation. It took a great amount of concentration and clarity of mind to do what he did. He simultaneously tried to forget about the pain, but look at the wound and cast the spell and keep the warm and tingly sensations from overwhelming his mind and disrupt his spell. It took several attempts, before he finally managed to heal himself.
Exhausted from the spell, he fell asleep once more. This time he slept right through the night. But not before realising what Hermione felt, every time he had performed the spell on her. He realised, why her eyes would go out of focus and why every time her cheeks became pink. Harry did not think it was a wise idea for him to do that again without her permission like he had done before.
Harry did not tell Hermione about what he realised after using the spell on himself. He didn't want to bring it up. Not just yet.
" I can't believe how stupidly I behaved!" said Hermione, making Harry snap out of what he had been thinking, after he had paused for a second to begin the next phase of his story. Harry looked over to where she was sitting a moment before, to find she had shifted from her position. She was hugging her knees to her chest and crying. To Harry, it looked like she had been crying for a while now. Silently but surely. There was a rather big wet patch where her face rested on her knees. He felt like an idiot for not noticing when she had started to cry.
Trying to make it up to Hermione, he moved closer, before enveloping her in a hug. " Why are you crying?" he asked, softly.
Her face buried in his chest, she cried some more, before answering his question. " Because..." she said in between sobs, " you risked your life for me...and what did I do?" she looked up briefly, before going back to crying. " I had a fight with you, thinking you didn't want to be friends anymore. I was so stupid!"
" Hey!" said Harry, " You weren't stupid!" said Harry rather loudly.
Despite how she felt, Hermione could not help but snort at the way Harry had defended her terrible action, directed towards him, to her. It brought a temporary smile to her face, but it was gone soon.
Harry continued, " Your marks should tell you that. And as for your behaviour, well, I really can't say I know why you did that. If, it was indeed because you thought I didn't need you as a friend, then I would have had expected you to try and find a million things that I would need your help with." Hermione would have had said something to defend herself, had she known what she could have, but she need not have. Harry continued, " But, if the summer with you taught me anything, it's, I can't think of you as a bookworm or a bossy little girl. There's much more to you than meets the eye and I'll be damned if I loose you as a friend, before I find them all out."
Hermione started to cry even more after what Harry had said. It was not because, what he said hurt or made her sad, no, it was because it was a great complement. Even after how she had behaved towards him, he was so kind and forgiving that it just made her feel even worse. When she finally got a hold of herself, five minutes later, she said, pulling slightly away from Harry's comforting and reassuring embrace, " I'm sorry for getting your shirt wet" referring to the massive wet spot in his chest.
" It's quite okay." he said smiling, but still looking very worried for the girl in front of him. Harry pulled her back into the embrace and said, " Are you feeling a bit better now?"
Hermione just nodded against his chest, since she did not trust herself to speak, fearing she'd breakdown again. Against what she felt, a smile broke onto her face. Harry slowly loosened the embrace and brought up his hands to her chin. He cupped her chin, before lifting it so that he could see her eyes. He spoke softly to her, " You okay to hear the rest of the story?"
Hermione nodded.
" Good." Harry let go of her totally, but sitting shoulder to shoulder, he asked, "Any questions?"
Hermione did have a question to ask, but she was not sure if she should ask him. But knowing, her friend to be very understanding made it easy for her to ask the question. The question she wanted to ask him since she heard that Harry had acquired the scars on his stomach because of her. " Can ...Can I see the scar?" she stammered out, "... I mean if that's okay with you."
It was an odd request, but Harry knew Hermione just wanted to see how much damage had been done to him rather than gawk at him, like most of the girls in school. He, like all the other guys in school, caved the attention, the opposite gender sometimes provided. But Harry hated the fact that it came mostly because of his fame and more recently, because of his physical appearance. Most of them had never even talked to him to find out what kind of a person he really was. Stuck in past, Harry realised, he was no better than all those girls that had started to follow him around, for he had felt the same way about Cho Chang. She was a person, he had talked to only once or twice in the four years he had been in Hogwarts, yet he had the biggest crush on her.
There in the desert, he figured out that even if Cedric had survived or not been in love with Cho, he would never be able to have a relationship with Cho. Simply because he had never had enough nerve to ask her about herself, for that matter even talk. Harry had learned from his mistake in his crush with Cho. Since realising his crush (*maybe more* thought Harry) on Alicia, he had done every thing possible to make sure that he did not fall into the same trap, as he had done with Cho.
That's why, Harry was so happy about his talks with Alicia, who he found to have a lot in common with him, even if she was two grades above him. The age factor mattered less to him then it would to everyone else who did not know about Harry being in Morocco's past. So far, only one person knew of that.
Harry stood up and very slowly, because he was shy of showing off his body, and started to pull out his shirt where it had been tucked inside his trousers. Harry had worn nothing under his clothes, so it became visible almost instantly. Harry did not take his shirt off totally, instead he just lifted enough to show her the scar. Though Hermione had seen the scar on the way back to Hogwarts on the train, she had not paid much attention to Harry's scar, as she was busy revelling in the fact that, he was not dead.
Three thin diagonal gouges that stretched across his belly made up the biggest scar that Harry had. Hermione shivered, as she lightly grazed the scar with her hand, thinking of the amount of pain that Harry must have had gone through. And it was for her that it had happened to him. Harry shivered a bit himself, because it felt ticklish to him. She asked, " Did it hurt? ...I mean, did it hurt much?"
Harry did not bother to tuck in his shirt, as he sat back down next to her, " It hurt a lot..."
Harry was honest. He did not want to lie to her. Harry knew that Hermione liked things properly measured. She always liked to categorise things in one order or another. This allowed her to judge things that happen to her, with more objectivity and fairness. " It wasn't as bad as the Cruciatus curse, but then again very few things are. It lasted a long time, which, in my opinion is much worse than the unforgivable curse. I still can't believe I managed to do a deep healing spell on myself. It was hard enough to do it to you..."
Harry noticed, from the corner of his eye, Hermione's face suddenly turned bit to the far wall. Harry gave a small smile, when he saw her cheeks had a slight pink tinge to them. " -I think, because my life literally depended on it, I did manage to do it. I doubt, I would be able to do it again."
Harry looked towards her and asked, " Didn't you wonder, how I knew what it felt to have that healing curse performed by me? Especially after the Dueling demonstration, when I told Ron about you holding onto the table not because of pain, but the tingles that you felt?"
Hermione still refused to look at Harry's direction as he said this, but her face coloured more than even she thought was humanly possible." ermm...no" Hermione's voice was at best squeaky.
" Hermione Granger preferred ignorance!" exclaimed Harry. He had no idea that she being the top student of Hogwarts and the most devoted bookworm the school had ever seen, would prefer not to know how her friend knew something's that he otherwise should not.
" It's too embarrassing to think about." She said in her defence, but kept her face firmly to facing the wall in an effort to escape the embarrassing topic. Harry wasn't quite finished with the topic, as yet, so he kept going.
Harry smiled at her embarrassment and said, " After finding out, what exactly it felt like to have the curse on myself, I don't think I'll do it so willy-nilly like I've done before. That's why I asked your permission to do the curse, back then. Surely, it must have had aroused suspicion in you?"
" No." Said Hermione, her face still facing the other direction and still very much pink, " Most of the time after the healing spell, it was hard for me to keep my mind straight." Even as she said it, Harry could see that Hermione's eyes were focused firmly on the most interesting shaped scorch mark. It had been there since her little firefight with Harry. " It's too embarrassing to think about..."
Harry took the hint that she did not really want to talk about that particularly embarrassing issue. He decided that he was going to go back to telling the story when Hermione asked him another question, most likely because she thought he was going to go on about that topic. After all, she did read in books that boys thought of sex, atleast once every three minutes.
" How did you go to the past?"
" Answer to that question, brings me to the second part of the story..."
When Harry awoke, the next morning, he found himself in blood soaked clothes. It took him a while to remember what had happened to him the day before. When he did remember, he quickly took off all his clothes and started to clean them using scrubbing charms. Harry had never thought his knowledge of scrubbing charms would ever come in handy. He remembered, all the while he did the homework, he had cursed himself for choosing such an obscure topic to do the essay on.
Ron had been rather clever and chosen his essay on 'Handy Charms for Busy Wizards', something he could most of the tips from Bill and Charlie. Hermione had chosen to do research on the Aurors, but he did not have any books from which he could have had done that assignment, so Harry had chosen to do something that he thought would be quite simple. Kitchen charms. It was simple enough, as he had thought he had to find spells that could be used in kitchen to help along the process of maintaining and cleaning of the place. Only after he had chosen to do the topic, did he find out that he had to think and state reasons a charm might be dangerous.
Harry, himself, was rather surprised at how well the charms worked the first time, especially since he neither tried to use them before. The blood and the dirt started to disappear quickly enough, though there was still a lot to be desired from the finished product. As Harry set about putting the almost new clothes back on himself, he thought that if Hermione was there, she would have had been able to make them shine like new. He would also know that she would have been able to mend them as well.
Harry then thought, he should have had read up the books up to mending charms for the busy wizards on the go, like Hermione had asked him to. Just before they left, Hermione had gone a bit insane and started to panic. He made a mental note not to take Hermione's advice on what to study lightly.
Harry did a last minute check to see if his wound was not making opening up. He grimaced at the thought that people would want to see his new scars just as much as his lightning shaped one.
He slowly made his way to the mouth of the cave, wand ready, to find nothing of predatory nature waiting for him. It took him a while to be convinced enough to get out of the cave. Courage he had, but the events from the day before had made Harry very cautious. He was certain he would not fare well against a fully-grown Griffin, so he was being careful not to get himself in a situation that would endanger him.
Harry used a four point to determine the Southeast was. He knew that that was the direction that the city lay, since he remembered that the exact opposite was where the Griffin's nest was.
When the realisation hit that he would have to go past the Griffin's nest he contemplated his option. He knew how to pour water out of the end of the wand, so there was not a chance of him dying from the thirst. But there was the fact that he would have to get past a magical beast to consider and this beast had single-handedly managed to do what over a hundred fully-grown wizards could not. The thought in itself was terrifying, but the images of the way the creature had so quickly killed the Nundu, still fresh in his mind, just added to his anxiety. Harry estimated that it would take him a day to travel, what on the carpet only took a few minutes. Harry thought of using the summoning spell, to get his Firebolt, but he knew that was impossible, as he did not know that how to make the spell to work over very long distances.
Harry went back inside the cave and practised all the curses that he knew, to make sure that he was prepared for the griffins, if they attacked him. It was almost night-time, when he was satisfied. He slowly crept along the valley floor towards the city.
Harry need not have had bothered, since the griffins being the smart animals that they were, had decided that it was too risky for them to stay in that place, as more humans were bound to come looking. So they had abandoned their nest, fearing that they would be killed because of the apparent danger to the Human.
" When I reached where the dead body of the Nundu, something very odd happened."
" What?" Hermione was sitting shoulder to shoulder to Harry before. Now she started to rest her head on his shoulder. Harry didn't mind. In fact, as he was saying the rest of the story, his mind was comparing the smell of her hair to find out what it exactly smelled like.
" Well..."
Harry looked at the carcass of the Nundu, covered in dry blood, and thanked Merlin that it was not him that was lying there in that condition. His prayer was interrupted, when a white glowing orb, no bigger than a tennis ball, appeared behind him and started to flash. Harry tuned around to see that the orb was expanding in between the narrow valley walls. Suddenly when the orb had expanded to half his height, lighting erupted from the flat it's sides hitting the valley walls, making rocks and loose rubble fall from where it had been hit. When it finished expanding, Harry could see that it had formed into an oval shape. Very much like a full body mirror, but instead of the mirror in the centre, it held as a watery surface, that was seem to have diffused light coming from the other side.
" What the hell!" he exclaimed, as he approached the object. What happened next was even more astounding than when the object had appeared.
" What happened?" Hermione asked, taking her head off his shoulder and sitting up in rapt attention in front of him.
" Well..."
The watery surface of the portal rippled, as a human being emerged from the portal. It would not have had been so surprising to Harry, since he had not see all the modes of travel in the magical world, he had assumed that it was just another one of them.
But the person was him, albeit looking different, Harry could tell that it was him. He just did not understand how he knew it. The Harry from the portal said, " Mountains of Cartova is where your destiny lies. Fulfill it."
It would have been very okay with Harry, if the discussion had stopped there, but he did not want for what happened next. The Harry from the portal whispered something that Harry could not tell, and a staff appeared. Then an unknown spell was cast on the unsuspecting Harry, making him right fly into the portal.
It trip took a fraction of a second, but instead of appearing where he was supposed to, Harry appeared on the other side of portal, three feet about the roof of an abandoned house on the outskirts of city Dripen. The capital where Mr. Pasha lived was on the other side of the country.
The fall hurt, but not nearly enough to cause Harry discomfort. For long anyway. The abandoned house had some provisions (dried food and some bottled water) and old maps of the area, which came in handy for Harry. He found the nearest town and started to head for that area. Harry had rationed his food supply, but he ran out of food and water by the time the city was within his sight. He collapsed only a few minutes from the watering hole.
He did not know it, but he was seen by a few of the local Shoran youths eager to get some war experience for themselves. They dragged Harry back into the city, and started to say things to the effect of punishment for the freemen drinking the water of Shoran clan was death. They weren't going to be lenient on Harry and use a death curse. Not because they were afraid of using it, but they were too young to cast it. It was then an elderly man intervened.
" Professor Dippet?" asked Hermione.
" Yes."
" What did he do?" she asked, wanting verification of the things that she had read in the book.
" Well for one thing, he took care of me that night. In the morning, I went to the city and then to a wizarding bank branch. In the morning he gave me some food. I learned to cook from him. Well then..." he was however interrupted by Hermione.
" You know how to cook!" it was an astounding new discovery for Hermione.
She had not told anyone, but she had tried to cook meals using wizarding ways. She had thought to herself that, being a witch would not leave her time to cook in the muggle way. And she was adamant that she would never get a houseelf, unless they were free and were paid. Her foray into that area of magic was even worse than her venture into flying.
* May be he'll teach me how to make the food* thought Hermione.
If it were anyone else, Hermione would have had a lot of problems, just for thinking that. But he was different. She remembered how nice he was with her, when she could not do the Automatic page turning charm. Not only in Morocco, but before it too. She remembered their flying lessons and how gentle, encouraging and enthusiastic he was.
" Yeah, but I'm nowhere as good as Professor Dippet. He could make food that makes my mouth water just from thinking about it. Just eating magical food has its disadvantages, but I'm sure you know about that already." said Harry.
Hermione did in fact know about them. Magical food can be prepared with two types of ingredients. One is the pure magic, involving transfigured objects. The other is using real animals and vegetables and cooking them. The down side to using the pure magical methods was that you had to be really good in transfiguration. But that was not the only one of the disadvantages. The other was that food created that way had only taste and very little in the way of sustenance. Most witches, including Mrs. Weasley, choose to use a combination of both the methods.
" Yes. I know. What can you make?"
" Well... Lets see three things like I told Alicia." Hermione's head perked up at the name of Alicia.
It was becoming increasingly obvious to her that Harry liked Alicia. Well, she knew he liked her, but it was more obvious now that, Harry's crush on Alicia was a bit more than a crush. Hermione knew that though Harry and Alicia both liked each other, she could not say anything to Harry. As she was likely to wind up as Malfoy's date to the ball.
" Bread... that took me almost seven months to get right. I still have occasional problems with the transfiguration, but the easiest thing I can make is fried chicken and ice cream. But the Ice cream, I've shown everyone that I can do."
Harry stopped and looked at her and asked, " You haven't had any thing to eat in the morning. So do you want something? You'll still need to have some real food, but it'll keep your hunger at bay from a few more hours."
Hermione did not need to ask Harry to teach her how to cook the things that he could cook. As he was doing the magic, he told her what to do and how to hold the wand, how to move it and what to say. The food was not really cooked by Harry, rather it was getting Hermione to do all the magic. In all her cooking that Hermione tried before, she could get the main transfiguration right, but she never managed to learn how to add correct ingredients and when to add it right. She had thought to get a magical cooking book before summer started, but since she didn't go to the burrow and in the hurry to pick up Harry from the Dursley's she forgot to buy any extra books. She did find that odd once she was back at Diagon Alley, but forgot about it quickly when she and Harry got into a routine at her house.
Regulating how to control the spice flow turned out to be very simple, and it took only a few minutes for her to master it almost as good as Harry. He made a big deal of how long it had taken him to get that part of the spell right and how little time it took her. Harry commented frequently that she was very good at cooking and should take it up once she gets a chance. When he said she was almost as good as Professor Dippet, she had a hard time believing that, though she blushed furiously at the long list of complement that kept coming at her.
The art of Magical cooking was simple enough and it came to women much easier then men. It was something that Merlin has put in his spell to allow access to magic, with the permission of Mauve.
" Thanks." She said.
Harry had the final cooked food in front of him. " Here have some.." said Harry, before he cut the fried chicken using his knife and very enthusiastically, shoved it into her mouth. Hermione did have to admit that it was indeed very good, but she would never say that. She was a bit disappointed that she didn't get to taste the food that Harry could cook, but she was grateful to Harry for helping her. She was also disappointed that Harry had not cooked a bit of book himself. * I could have had compared it to Harry's.* she thought.
" You said a few minutes ago, it took seven months to get the bread done properly. How long were there then?" she asked
" I was there ... let's see..." Harry counted off his fingers until he had all ten of his fingers up. " Just a bit over ten months."
" So that's why you seem so old?"
" Huh?" came his confused reply.
" From the time you came back... well, you seemed older. I couldn't put my finger on it, but now I do."
" Oh... that. I grew a whole six inches...that's half a foot...come to think of it, don't tell you didn't notice that I was a five inches taller in two days. Didn't you think it was odd?"
Hermione looked embarrassed. She and the rest of the school had over looked the very obvious. He had grown to six feet two inches, the tallest he could ever be because of his gift.
Hermione had been rather different. The gift was not supposed to change her physically, but it did. It and puberty hitting her body had resulted in her going from five feet five inches to her current height of five feet eight. A whole one inch taller than both of her parents.
" Well, that plus my experiences..." continued Harry, "...speaking of which, you keep eating and I'll tell you the rest of the story."
" Okay." Said Hermione, as she ripped of a bit of bread that she had cooked. It tasted a bit dry and though the chicken was okay. Hermione realised why exactly Harry had more trouble making the bread magically then the chicken, which at first glance would seem a lot harder to cook.
" Well the..." Harry had just started, when Hermione thought of a question.
" How come you looked so different in Morocco? I mean... what did you use to hide you scars. You would have had a fair few by the time you went through the portal. Was it makeup? Did the spell that your future-self cast, hide the scar, or did you use a spell to hide it yourself. I mean I would understand if you did. People were bound to be furious with you for impersonating a child of only..." she thought for a split second, " three..." it seemed to Harry that she was doing calculations in her head again, " no ...two years."
" No!" objected Harry loudly to the fact that Hermione had thought that he had used makeup. " Nothing like a spell and certainly not Makeup."
" Okay..." she said, " what about your eye colour. Books don't go much into your physical description and the only person who was with you in Morocco, did not go into your eye colour. It looked..."
" Blue?" finished Harry.
" Yeah..."
" Well, my future self used a staff to cast the spell on me..."
"Staff?" Hermione exclaimed.
" You know... wand device. That's what I used to do magic in Morocco..."
" I know what a Staff is!" Hermione sounded indignant, " Where is it?"
" Oh that?"
" Do you want to see it now or later when I..." Harry was going to tell her that, when the get to the part of Harry's meeting with Professor Dippet in the past. As it was a gift from him. But Hermione was impatient."
" Now!"
Harry stood up and moved a few steps back away from Hermione. Harry extended his wand arm and just said the words, " Tevel Sho'ka". (Meaning: to me my staff)
In his palm, a golden light appeared in the form of a small ball. It changed its brightness slightly to an invisible rhythm, before it started to grow in opposite directions, from the middle. As it grew, it started to solidify from the middle. Hermione thought it was unnaturally straight for a staff. There were no kinks in it like the ones that the picture of Merlin had in them, but she liked the way it looked. It had a small emerald green stone on the top, held there with what looked like a claw. Few seconds after it appeared in Harry's hand, it sent a white coloured surge of electricity though him, atleast something that danced on his body like electricity.
Hermione was shocked at what had happened next. The surge went fr0m his wand arm to his torso, it removed the clothes, and replaced them with the battle costume that Hermione recognised from the book cover of 'Tale of a saviour'. Two things happened next, which explained a lot of question that Hermione had, but it also added a few more.
The first thing Hermione noticed was that when the surge went past his eyes, they changed colour to a vivid blue. Almost a glowing blue/purple colour, before the surge reduced Harry's hair in length, revealing the scar on his forehead.
The question about why Harry's eye colour in Morocco was different in the picture was now answered.
Second thing that Hermione noticed was that a tattoo on Harry's chest became visible. It was just like the one that Ali Pasha had, only different. While the clan tattoos had one arrowhead pointing up and the other down, Harry's was horizontal and both pointed away from the circle. It was also different in colouring than the other ones, which were of one colour. Harry's was different in that his had very dark green, almost black circle and had one arrowhead was red, while the other one was blue. The question of what Hermione saw on Harold's chest on the book cover had been answered.
Harry really wished his staff would not change his clothes to what he was wearing now, almost nothing from waist up. He could not help but start to blush because of it. Hermione looked admiringly at Harry. Not his muscles, nor his trim athletic and toned body, but at the amount of practise it must have had taken Harry to master the staff.
" Wow!" she said in awe, " How long did it take you to master the staff?" that is as far as her knowledge on staff went. Before long that day she would learn a few more.
" About two month" he replied.
" What did you use before that?" asked Hermione. Since that would meant that Harry had to use something in the mean time (atleast three months) to do magic.
" Professor Dippet had an old wand..." he did not say that the wand he found was on a dead body of a Tozan warrior, left to die from a chest wound. " It wasn't that good...truthfully, it was terrible. Sometimes the spell wouldn't cast at all, but it was something. It helped me defend myself. The Staff however is very nice. It's almost as good as my wand, but I think is because I still haven't mastered the staff well yet."
" Why didn't you just go and buy a wand. I though..."
" I told you there was a war on, and it was about three months before I got close to a place where I could buy a proper one, by that time Professor Dippet had given me the staff."
Harry noticed Hermione still staring at him. It was making him uncomfortable. " Can I?" she asked.
" Can you what?" he still had not realised that she was not staring at him. She was staring at the staff.
" Can I see the staff?" Hermione held out her hand. Harry didn't hesitate before he placed it on her hand. The colour of the stone changed to a red. It glowed once before it went back to the emerald green stone.
" It approves of you!" says Harry.
" Is that what that meant?"
" Yeah... Only people who are trusted by the owner of the staff can change the colour of the stone."
" I didn't know that-"
" Really?" Harry didn't think there was a topic that Hermione had not read a book on.
" It's not in any of the books that I've read so far. I have yet to read a book on wand devices."
" That's no excuse Hermione" Harry said, imitating something that Professor McGonagall would say, if he had forgotten his homework, " It means we must start to astral out very soon, so that we can get you memorising all the books in the library."
Hermione did not say it, but for once she wished there were not so much magic in the air. First her watch, which was a present from her mother, blew up (before she read Hogwarts a history) in her first year. Now, in her fifth year, she couldn't go to the library and read all she wanted to, because of all the magic in the air that prevented and made it difficult for Harry to astral out.
Hermione gave the staff back to him, after she examined the writing on the side of the staff. A whispered word from Harry and the staff disappeared from his hand. Once the staff was gone, Harry turned back to normal, though Hermione could see that Harry's eyes had a eerie glow to them.
" How come your scars were sill there? I thought, your staff was why, the scars did not appear in the picture of you on that book cover."
" I only figured it out after I left Morocco and was back here. It's nothing more than a theory, mind you, but it's something. I think it's because, neither the griffin, nor the Nundu had been born yet. I'm not a hundred percent on what happened to my lighting scar, but I think the protection belonged to me all the way in London then myself, so the scar wasn't there. And since Voldemort had not been resurrected the scar on my right arm (where Wormtail took blood from Harry) was not visible. I think I'll get to the story... did say how I wound up going to Cartova mountains instead of capital of Morocco, where it would have been easier for me to catch a flying carpet shuttle to England?"
Hermione nodded a no.
" Well, from the beginning I wanted to go to England and sort out the matter of Wormtail and Sirius. I had a nagging feeling that it would do me no good. You and I both know that time can't be changed. Like me and the Shozar War. I shaped the course of history, without knowing it well myself. Just like how I saved myself from the Dementors in our third year... I tried to do whatever I could. I spent over a thousand Galleons sending owls to Professor Dumbledore and the minister of Magic. I sent several personal messengers, but each seemed to disappear after taking the money... I sent a hundred OWL posts to Cedric's parents warning them, not to let their son enter the TriWizard Tournament..." a silent tear ran down his cheek. " ... I tried so hard..." Harry was wiping his face furiously and did not finish the sentence.
" I only stopped when I got a message from my future self. It said, 'we met at the valley, near the Nundu, Stop doing what you are doing and go to Cartova Mountain. It's a matter of life and death of a lot of people.' I didn't exactly know what I was supposed to do, but I learned little by little what it was that I had to do.
As we moved to the other side of the country, Professor Dippet and I avoided, town, and people when we could. He was a very good transfiguration teacher, but he told me that even the best transfigured meal could feed a person for a few days, after it looses it's affect. It was about eight months into me being in the past, when I realised what I was supposed to do in Cartova Mountains. I was supposed to capture Shozar Sebastian."
Hermione used her wand to clean her hands off the food that she had just had and started to listen with more attention than before, if that was even possible.
" That's when I actively started to try and stop the war. It wasn't until then, I saw dead bodies... murdered, maimed and killed. There were few like that, since the war was about power and wiping out the enemy was not the objective. Subjugation was. I still can't believe that after all that, after all the famous warriors on both sides died, the two clans agreed to piece."
Hermione saw Harry start to cry. She lunged at him and hugged him tight and said, " It wasn't you fault." Hermione had guessed correctly that Harry blamed himself for not trying to find Shozar Sebastian before that. " It was..."
" No! Don't ever say that! You couldn't have had known. You were trying to go to Cartova Mountains for a long time. Even before you knew what to do there. If it were not for you, that country would still be in war. They probably would have had wiped themselves out." Hermione pulled back slightly and said, as she wiped away his tears, " You saved an entire country. You should be proud."
Hermione pulled away more, and sat back down next to him. She reached over to him and guided his head to her shoulder. " You can tell me rest of the story, when you feel a bit better."
The stayed like that for a long time.
Finally when Harry had collected himself, he began again. He took his head off her shoulder and said, " Hermione, I have to tell you something."
" What?" Hermione gave him a warm smile.
" If and when I do decide to tell Ron, could you tell him about these events in Morocco. I'm very sure he'll become more mature and responsible in the coming years, but he's a guy. I can't...er... Best friends or not, I just don't I want to break down in front of him..." Hermione looked at him oddly.
He defended himself, " ...its a guy thing. It'll be just too..." Harry searched for a word, but he could not find something that described how he would feel. Hermione came to his rescue.
" Don't worry about it. I'll tell him when you think he's ready to know." She promised and then asked, " How are you feeling?", as she ran her finger through his soft black hair. If there was one thing that she was jealous of Harry it was his hair. Sure, it was just as wild as her own, but it was not bushy.
" Fine." He replied as best as he could, " I'll tell you the rest of the story..."
" Don't." She said in her most concern filled voice. " Just answer a few Questions. If you think that's all right."
" Okay."
" When did you get that mortar and pestle thing for Professor Snape?"
" That was a total accident. A few days before I caught Shozar, I was out in the near by town to buy some food for Professor Dippet, and me. I called him David at that stage, since we had become such good friends at that stage. I went into the town, it was my turn to go into a town, and well I caught a few boys breaking into the magic shop run my Methyl Magda. They were looking to steal some ingredients to pull pranks on people. Well, Methyl was very happy and gave me the mortar and pestle as a gift. He told me they were expensive, since he was a very big name in Potions. He was shy to mention that fact, but I could tell he was famous. He offered to brew me all kinds of potions. He was even willing to brew me the purifying potion, even thought he would not be able to do anything for that week. I read about the potion in the books about Soul Inhibiting potion-"
Hermione blushed slightly.
"- so I agreed to that. Well, you took a vial of that." Harry looked at her and saw how guilty she felt. Almost as if it, she felt that it was her fault that she was forced fed that potion by Harry and Ali Pasha. Harry could not honestly think why she felt that way. True that potion did things to women that was highly irregular, but she had never done anything like that. She simply did not have enough time for the effects of the potion to start, let alone get to the embarrassing stage. But Harry knew that confronting her about how she felt would only make her feel more embarrassed. Hermione would like to forget that incident ever took place, and so he decided he would not bring up again.
Hermione waited a few seconds before she asked, " Did you tell anyone else?"
" Yes. I told Professor Dumbledore. He already knew about me and there was something that I had to tell him"
" He knew about it already!" she exclaimed, " How?"
" I saved his niece, I didn't know it at the time but it turned out to be her...
It was a very dark night that Friday when Harry and Professor Dippet set camp on the outskirts of a rather large but rundown city by the name of Khulna. Professor Dippet told me to go into the city and look for as a particular cafe and ask for food there for David of Lancaster.
It took a second to enter the city. The cafe was easy enough to find, but something happening in the alleyway nearby got his attention. He heard screams by what he deduced that it was a young woman. He saw some people contemplate helping the woman in the alley, but they ran.
What Harry saw, when he intervened, staff ready was the most horrifying scene in his life. Two men were trying to rape a woman. This was not the part that horrified Harry. It was the fact that one of the men was holding a helpless baby in his arms and threatening to kill it if she did not co-operate that had horrified Harry. It invoked a terrible need for revenge in him when he saw this. He had lost his own mother because of some bad men. Power very much like that he had experienced in his own time, before he was thrown back in time, filled him. The fight between the two men and Harry did not last long.
When the dust was settled, the two men had both their leg and arms broken, cracked ribs and vertebrae out of line. He would have had used the killing curse on the two men had he not been stopped by the mother herself.
(A/N: The more detailed account will be coming up in a few weeks.
" That's the only person's life I saved directly... it was because of that day did I try and stop the war. It was so that Sanoe would have a peaceful life that I tried to hunt down Shozar Sebastian."
Hermione looked positively sick, when he finished telling her all the gruesome details. Harry was not far off himself, but his time in Morocco had hardened him a lot. He suspected that's why very few things got on his nerves now. Harry tried to lighten the mood. " Sanoe was the cutest baby I've ever seen. Well...the only one, but I know that he was the cutest thing I have ever seen. He had these chubby little hands and a really nice shade of pink all over his skin. I had to take care of him once, while she was travelling with us. Our food had run out and we needed someone to go into the city. Women were allowed to get food from the oasis in the desert, men were killed on sight."
Hermione gasped, Harry had not thought before he said that. The whole idea of him telling her about Sano was to lighten the mood not get into another round of story telling.
" Don't be so shocked. It was war, and men approaching the city without a banner of the city meant one thing. Invading army. As incredibly sexist it sounds, most men did not let their counterparts participate in the war. Their status went from witches and supposed equals to baby machines. So the chances of a woman approaching the city, alone to the water well was allowable. Somehow no one thought to poison the water supplies... to my knowledge anyway."
A few seconds later, Hermione looked at Harry. Almost as if sizing him up for something.
" Why don't you want anyone to know about what you did in Morocco? And don't tell me because you hate fame. I know that... but this is different. You've only told me and Professor Dumbledore, which suggests you've hidden something. Something that needs to be hidden..."
Harry was going to say something, but she said, " Don't interrupt me...Ever since you came back, you've been giving off this aura that says that you have a lot of experience. You're very sure of things, like you know something- The Veloron thing. At that close range you were close enough to be burnt to a crisp, even including the fact you had a shielding charm around yourself and can speak to dragons in Drakh." Harry knew what that was... he paid attention to what Hagrid had said on the first day of classes) " I think something made you believe that you would survive it."
" You're very perceptive, Hermione. As much as I want to tell-" Harry interrupted Hermione, but then Hermione interrupted him.
" You didn't let me finish..." she said annoyed, " ...you boys are so impatient. I know, you're waiting for something. I know, you can't tell me because that'll affect the future. That's why I don't want you to tell me."
Hermione stopped. She stood up and started to put the books back into her bag. Harry stood up right up with her.
" You're amazing. I don't think I've met anyone so smart, brave, understanding and perceptive as you." He said, hugging Hermione very tightly.
" Well, I'm special. By the way... How did" emphasis on the word did, " you get past my shielding charm?" asked Hermione.
" That was something that David- I mean Professor Dippet taught me. It's called a compression charm. I cast it on my hands before I entered. I thought you might try something like you did. It's not particularly strong, but it's great for getting down magical barriers. As long as the shield, is being produced by a living thing. Pressure build up inside the barrier and the only way to reduce it is to either, weaken the shielding charm, making it easy for the person on the outside the shield to break in or reduce the shield circumference, resulting in the same outcome. The compression charm only last a few minutes after being cast on the caster's hands and on top of that, depending on the person being attacked and his/her magical strength, it stops working a few inches to the shield. I took a chance that you didn't know what I was doing and would surprise you enough to drop the shield. It looks like my idea worked."
" It won't work the next time..." she said defiantly.
" I know... but I have other tricks up my proverbial sleeve." Harry said with a mischievous smile on his face that made a shiver run down her spine.
" If you're almost a year older and Professor Dumbledore knows, why did he not put you in 6th year? It's truly unfair that you're so much older and yet you're in the same class as me."
" Oh... so now you're trying to find reason's I beat you in charms."
" No... I was just ask..." Hermione did not like Harry bringing up her mistake again.
" Don't worry... I'm only joking. I know that's not the reason. To answer your question, it's the same reason as you not getting your birthday presents eight days early."
" Huh? Why would I get my birthday presents eight days early?"
" Because. I as I figure it, You had 28-hour working weekdays in your 3rd year. That makes it eight extra days to the year."
Hermione was quite taken back. She had not thought that Harry paid attention to detail like that. She stopped right in front of the door and gave another one of her examining glances.
" Don't look so shocked. I had plenty of time to reflect on my life before Morocco and examine things in more detail. I found some startling things about myself."
" Like?"
" Well one thing was my crush on Cho. I realised..." he looked at Hermione's shocked face and stopped. " Oh... cummon... you knew about it. I had been googling and stammering around her since my third year."
" I did... I just didn't think that you did." Smiled Hermione.
" Well, I realised that it was a crush and had Cedric not been dead or not taken part in the TriWizard Tournament, for that matter not been interested in Cho at all. I still would not have had been able to pluck up enough courage to speak to her and find out enough about her to like her in that special way. I just did not know her. She was pretty and smart since she was in Ravenclaw and ...well that's all."
" I don't know why I had never saw this..." said Hermione. " No not your crush. It was in the book that Professor Dippet wrote. I didn't even see the parallels between Harold's life and yours." She shook her head in disbelief.
" As Professor Dippet told me a million times, as we practised Septanic Dueling.." Harry's voice went a bit deeper and a bit more gruff, " 'Hindsight is 20/20. It's no use thinking about what you did wrong, when you've got to think about what's coming next'... the last part does not apply, but the hindsight thing definitely applies."
She smiled, " So when exactly are you gonna ask Alicia out?"
~~~
END OF CHAPTER
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