Magic Knows No Boundaries But Those We Believe In
by NonsensicalRants
Chapter 7:
Practical Exams : Part 1
The following day brought with it a sense of anticipation and excitement for the practical exams.
He prepared that morning by drinking the entire pot of coffee and dictating a letter for Bellatrix as he soaked his hand in ice and murtlap juice. Ollivander was none too happy to be forcibly recruited into the role of calligrapher for the morning, but he'd get over it.
"I have nearly finished retaking my NEWTs and find myself suffering from a sudden and unexplainable case of carpal tunnel syndrome. So extreme, in fact, that I decided I will be unable to cook my own dinner this evening and so will be going out on the town." Harry said as he stretched his aching fingers. "I am writing to you because the serving sizes at restaraunts are far too large for me to eat by myself, and would appreciate it if you joined me for supper. Pee ess, Ollivander sends his love."
The unloving old man in question snorted at his presumptuous addition.
"You're goddamn Cassanova reincarnate, you know that?" Ollivander grouched as he dotted the I's and crossed the T's.
He neatly folded the letter before hurling the finished product into Harry's lap and fleeing from the room. Harry unfurled it with his free hand and read it as the curmudgeon retreated to his workshop and whatever experiments lay within.
Dear Bella.
Go on a date with me?
Sincerely, Hadrian Morrigan.
Harry was slightly disturbed at how perfectly Ollivander had forged his signature at the end, but couldn't bring himself to care due to being overjoyed at the exquisite accuracy and faithfulness with which his boss had lovingly transcribed every single word to paper. It was perfect.
He sealed the letter with some melted wax from a candle and stamped it with the ring Ollivander had given him for good measure before tying it to Hedwig's talon and sending her on her second ever delivery. He somehow managed to do it all one-handed and felt an inordinate amount of pride at the accomplishment.
As soon as she left he did the last of his morning routine - feeding Crookshanks, practicing wandless magic by doing all of the household charms, etc. After magically cleaning the entire shop and living area, pressing his clothes, making the food and so forth without a wand he went on his way. He barely remembered to take his wand from this universe and put his original in the box instead.
The last thing he did before heading to the Ministry of Magic was stop by a Muggle Pharmacy to purchase a wrist brace. With his thumb locked into an uncomfortable, but unpained, position he strolled to the all-too-familiar phone booth.
Harry's practicals that day were going to be with a Mrs Professor Tufty and he hoped finding her would be as easy as it had been finding Mister Marchbanks.
Going through the ministry security for the second time was still just as big of a hassle, though this time he actually carried a wand for them to scan. He hadn't needed one the day before, and he would be damned if they caught whiff of his mastership over the elder wand(an alternate universe's elder wand to boot) or that the wand he supposedly received from Ollivander a few weeks ago had apparently been in use for over a decade and a half. Neither of those revelations would have boded well for him. It was bad enough that the goblin nation knew about his interloping, but having the Unspeakables breaking down Olivander's door looking for him would be a nightmare.
With the checkpoint hassle finished he was directed to 3a1 and managed to instruct the lift there himself. Three floors down, one floor over, one floor forward. Turns out, that was one floor forward too many and he had to go back one. He was only supposed to go three floors down, one floor over and stay there. Apparently the system of organization was only zero based with the up/down levels not side or front.
The room he found himself in was a large, round antichamber with white-tiled floors, a ceiling like the sistine chapel and blank walls. The only things in the room were an enormous dresser and an elderly lady in a purple dress.
"Mrs Professor Tufty I presume?" Harry called as he approached.
"Believe it or not, it's actually Mrs Dr Professor Tufty, but I'm not so conceited about titles." She said with a polite smile as she offered a hand for him to shake, which he did.
"Can we start with something non-wand based? My hand is still a bit cramped from yesterday and I'd rather give it a little more time before I cramp it harder." He told her, indicating the wrist brace which held his right hand.
"Not a problem, not a problem. From what Alastor told me you didn't test that well in potions, so let's see if you can make it up with practicals." Tufty informed him.
For a moment Harry's brain stalled as he thought she was referring to Mad-eye, before he remembered that Marchbanks also shared his first name with the old Auror.
"Right! Yes, I'm a fair hand better at application than theory." He told her.
Two hours later he had proved it. You see, studying the Half-Blood Prince's diary for a year had made him into an excellent potions brewer; in practice. But it turned him into a terrible tester on account of certification boards and the like demanding specific answers. In other words, he learned the best method to do things, which were not synonymous with the government and academia approved method of doing things.
However that handicap only affected him when doing written exams. When doing practicals? With an actual human being present? One who cared about skill and results over a checklist? In that environment he excelled.
Tufty had opened one of the cabinets on the dresser and removed a table, cauldron and box of potions ingredients. After setting up the test area she had him complete the final stages of brewing a Felix Felicis potion - which has always been a bitch of a potion to brew - before the six months of condensing it would have to go through before becoming a single spoon's worth of drinkable content out of the gallon of material.
"Excellent work! Where did you learn to use conjured fool's gold as a separator before adding the powdered unicorn horn?" Mrs Dr Professor Tufty congratulated him.
"I read it in my school bully's diary." Harry answered honestly. "He was an arse, but a very inventive potioneer."
"Hmm." Tufty agreed. "It can be a shock to learn of people with special talents, greatness can be found in the most unexpected of places."
Harry was struck by how "Dumbledore-y" that statement was, before he found himself nodding in agreement.
"Well then! Let's move onto charms. How's your wrist doing?" She asked.
"Aweful." Harry answered.
"I'm sorry, but you can't wear that wrist brace during exams. If you're in too much pain to go on we can reschedule but you may have to pay the testers fee a second time." She informed him.
"It's fine. I'll push through." Harry told her.
He removed the brace and shook his hand as if trying to dry it without a towel. As he did this Tufty opened one of the cabinets on the dresser and took out a gym bag of sorts and set up a second table. A few seconds later she had placed a miscellany of seemingly random objects on the table.
"Okay then. To start, please cast a color swapping charm on the platonic solid blocks, next use a switching charm on the walnut and pecan so that their insides are swapped, a weightless charm on the block of lead with the weight amplification charm on the feather and a tickling charm on the puffskein." Tufty instructed.
Harry did so. The blue octahedron turned red, the red tetrahedron turned blue, the pecan shell burst open to reveal a walnut, the walnut she burst open to reveal a pecan, the block of lead floated away, the feather flattened at the sudden increase in weight and the puffskein giggled uncontrollably. This all happened at once.
"Uh dear, I meantwitha wand?" Tufty said awkwardly after his display of wandless magic.
Most people reacted with much more shock and awe when they witnessed him use magic without a wand. The fact that her response to him doing five different spells simultaneously, using each separate finger as if each were a wand said a lot about her composure. The trick to doing multiple spells simultaneously is to prepare them ahead of time and hold off casting until they were all ready. It was a trick inspired by the lessons he learned from mathemagic - which he stopped using when he realized he kept getting the wrong answers compared to when he wrote the math out - where you calculate the answer in your head as the person is asking the question.
In other words he silently cast each charm in his head as she called them out, but delayed their casting until after she finished. It was a great party trick but that's all it was. The concentration needed to do even two spells simultaneously made even walking a difficult challenge. It was useless in a duel, save for surprise attacks where stunning four enemies at once can cause shock and awe. Lord knows Harry had been impressed when Dumbledore did the same trick on Kingsley, Dawlish, Umbridge and Fudge. He shouldn't have been, considering how much time Fudge had given him to prepare the trick with all of his monologuing and posturing.
Another downside was that it was impossible to cast the same spell multiple times simultaneously, making it the only situation anybody would use a stunning spell other than stupefy, the generic and board approved stunning spell.
"Do the rules specifically require me to use a wand to cast the spells for the test?" Harry goaded. "My wrist is such that wand movements would be a little hard on me, wandless casting won't aggravate it."
Tufty smiled at him before shaking her head and giving him the next set of instructions.
After he had wandlessly summoned and banished a baseball(ironically, the first two spells he ever learned to do wandlessly) Tufty gave up on the list of spells for demonstration and began to absolutely vibrate with anticipation of something only she could see. This caused Harry no small amount of concern.
"Well you certainly seem able, so what d'you say we make this more interesting?" She preempted. "Why don't you cast the most advanced and complex charms you can do wandlessly and we call it a day for charms and move on?"
The suggestion was significantly less 'interesting' than his usual morning workout of running through a forest dodging killing curses or breaking into goblin banks. Still, never accept gift horses from Greeks and all that.
"Is that a valid method of marking?" He asked warily.
"Not really." She shrugged. "But I can't be bothered to go through the entire syllabus. And seeing as the whole of the ministry takes advantage of the chaos to cut corners why should I pretend to do things properly?"
"Fair enough." Harry relented.
He started with his best spell. The patronus. A spell he could do better wandlessly than even with the elder wand.
The white mist poured out of his every hair follicle and coalesced around him like a protective wedding veil before rising above him like steam to form the mighty prongs. Tofty clapped and cheered as the stag galloped around the antechamber before he let it fade and moved onto the next spell.
Next he tried to enchant the ceiling to mirror the sky outside. Tried being the operative word, seeing as one needed to actually touch a ceiling with their wand many times over again to accomplish this feat. He stretched his magic and senses out until he could feel every smooth slab of granite up there, but by the time it got that far it was stretched too thin to affect the entire ceiling, so he focused on a single square slab instead of all hundred or so. It was still a most impressive feat, or so Tufty assured him.
Finally, for charms at least, he placed the octahedron from the set of platonic solids in one of the drawers of the wardrobe before removing a quill, inkwell and piece of parchment from that same drawer.
He wrote the secret he was about to hide on that scrap of paper.
The test octahedron is hidden in the second drawer down on the left-hand side of Professor Tufty's wardrobe of fantastical test ancili.
He showed the note to Professor Tafty - who raised an eyebrow at what he was claiming he was about to accomplish - before igniting the parchment and rubbing it between his hands. The ash on his palms evaporating into transparent silver vapor that glittered with magic. At his mental command it coalesced into a single mass and rushed to strike the drawer like a light from the deluminator.
The drawer glowed with a soft hum for several seconds before returning to normal. Appearing to them both as it had before.
"If you are the caster, and I am the secret keeper, then how do we test if it was successful?" Tufty prompted.
Harry blanched as he realized his error, but Tufty laughed it off and walked to the lift and left the test room. She returned less than a minute later with a young secretary Harry recognized from 3a2 when he went forward one floor too many.
"Helena dear, would you be so kind as to open every single drawer in the wardrobe? It would help us greatly." Tufty asked politely.
Helena huffed before doing as instructed, and as she opened each drawer both her eyes and hands passed right over the drawer Harry had cast the fidelius charm on as if it weren't even there. So that by the end only seven of the eight drawers were open.
"Thank you Helena, that will be all." Tufty dismissed the girl.
She looked at them both suspiciously, no doubt she expected they were having a go at her, but she eventually shrugged and returned to the lift. This left Professor Tufty satisfied that he had accomplished the fidelius charm.
"How large of a space can you cast the charm on?" Tufty prompted as she marked his sheet
"A garage or a shed, wandlessly. With a wand, a small cottage or one-bedroom house." He answered honestly. "I have neither the power nor the skill to accomplish it on anything larger."
Every now and then he would learn a piece of more advanced magic, like the fidelius charm, and become that much more impressed with men of Dumbledore and Voldemort's calibre. Both men were in a league far above his own, even accounting for the significant age difference. Even should he reach Dumbledore's age, Harry doubted he'd be a match for either of them. If he just devoted his life to study and training and did nothing else? Maybe. But he had sports to play, skirts to chase and money to earn; each of which was a full-time endeavor. So yeah, that wasn't going to happen.
"I suppose that settles whether or not the fidelius you cast was successful. And that is more than enough for me to score you on charms." Tufty spoke as she made marks on her clipboard. "Why, if I didn't know better I'd think you were currently working on your charms mastery beneath Filius."
That may have been the most flattering thing anybody had ever said to him. And that was saying a lot, considering the fanmail and publicity he'd received over the years.
"Now. Transfiguration." Tufty prompted.
He had never really learned any advanced transfiguration like animation or the like, so he just snatched the list of spells she was meant to test and performed them all. Inanimate to inanimate. Living to living. Inanimate to living. Living to inanimate. Conjuration. Vanishing. It was all more than doable wandlessly, if slightly imperfect, but he never claimed to be above average in transfiguration. By now the wow factor of doing it wandlessly had probably worn off on the doctor professor, but it would probably still count for something in his scoring.
He expected an Acceptable, but hoped for an Exceeds Expectations.
It was just as she finished marking him for transfiguration that another young lady entered the room by way of the lift.
She was maybe a few years older than Harry, with short, curly brown hair, light skinned but not pale and had the smallest peppering of freckles. Something about her seemed oddly familiar. Visually he thought he recognized her light brown eyes along with the shapes of her face, but he couldn't quite place it.
"Ah! Ariana. Welcome. You're just in time." Tufty greeted.
Ariana? No. Surely a coincidence. Nothing in her appearance would suggest relations with the Dumbledore family. In fact, when he stretched four his senses to examine her aura he could feel the smell(weird way to sense, but it worked) of cabbage and cats around her. Particularly kneazle mixes.
Harry knew her family name before Professor Tufty said it.
"Mister Morrigan, this is Auror Ariana Figg. She is a class A duelist and has agreed to help test you in defense against the dark arts by way of a duel." Tufty explained. "I managed to send word for her while stealing Helena earlier."
So that's why it had taken so long.
"I see." Harry said as he examined the young woman.
Her stance, even in the ease of their surroundings, was a hair trigger away from being ready for a fight. As his extended magic touched hers Harry sensed the wide array of fast, brutal offensive spell chains she practiced religiously every morning with her workout routine. A disciple of Moody, it would seem. The cool confidence in her smirk betrayed the playfulness in her expression as she pouted in such a way as if she were pleading him to accept.
How could anyone say no to such a face?
"I accept." He said with a confident smirk of his own.
Notes:
Had to cut this chapter in half because I didn't write every day this week like I was supposed to. I'm sorry about that. Other half will be the next chapter instead and I'll merge them.
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Reviews:
Guest wrote:
I really enjoy the vibe of this story. A few too many typos though
Response:
Vibe is exactly the word I would use to describe the feature of this story that I love so much. Thank you for putting it into words. Tone was my second choice of words to describe it. I'll be going back and re-editing all of the previous chapters over the next week after this is posted. Not just spelling mistakes, but a couple canonical ones as well.
You should have seen this chapter, and the previous one, before I edited them the first time. Damned autocorrect. I disable it but it doesn't stay disabled.
thunderofdeath97 wrote:
wait ollivander said james potter and lily potter lived there, but harry didn't so why is harry saying that lily didn't marry james? also yuck goblin food sounds gross af lol
Response:
James and Lily exist, Ollivander didn't explicitly say they were married or not, Harry just assumed they aren't. We will be meeting them on the next chapter actually.
agnar wrote
How does one murder another to anything but 'death'? If one is murdered, they are, by definition, dead.
Response:
That phrase is a joke reference to TheSpiffingBrit, a YouTuber who breaks video games like skyrim and fallout. It's a phrase he likes to use. "Now to test out this 809,000 damage fork in going to go to the college of winter hold and murder everyone to death".
CORRECTION
IWantABetterWebsiteInformed me that it was notThe Spiffing Brit, but in fact,TheEpicNate315who I was referencing. He is correct, I was mistaken.
Mr Heller Wrote:
How exactly the ministry can "syphon" someone's money from a private bank? Goblins aren't beholden to the human government.
Response:
Governments steal money all the time from people's bank accounts. Not just through taxes(theft) or wage garnering(also theft) but through inheritance taxes(huge theft) and from even overseas banks through financial pressure upon the institutions.
Mr Heller Also Wrote:
You never read "Delenda Est"?
Response:
If I could link to youtube videos my response would simply be to direct you toM. Bison "Of course!"
But yes. Yes I have. Are you related to the excellent environmental scientist Tony Heller?
There were other reviews, including one that deserves an essay length response because of how shit it was, but I'll hold off until I finish the other half of this chapter.