The next morning Harry awoke to an empty dorm room, his notice-not from the night before ensuring his roommates hadn't tried to wake him up. A tempus charm told him lessons would start in less than five minutes, making him exceptionally glad he had been excused. Dressing quickly, he tucked his school robe into his coat pocket where it joined his invisibility cloak, before turning the coat invisible.
With that done, Harry made his way down to his workshop, which was undisturbed. However, he didn't immediately enter. Instead, he withdrew a stick of chalk and slowly walked further down the hall, leaving a trail of chalk along the wall as he went. When he reached the end of the hall he turned and inspected the line. He remembered Tom mentioning his workshop was close to Tom's private classroom, prompting him to see just how close it was.
The left side of the corridor held seven visible doors for the eight rooms, the eighth, hidden, door leading to the cupboard Harry had hidden and used to protect his workshop. The right side of the corridor however only had six visible doors. He knew the seventh door led to his workshop, but that didn't explain the missing eighth door.
His mind tried to rebel against the idea of an eighth, but his mithrilium allowed him to fight back. Which allowed him to see the gap in the chalk line near the end of the hall, exactly across from the door of another unused classroom. As far as his mage sight was aware, the wall was no different to every other wall in Hogwarts. Shrugging, Harry summoned his saber and stuck it hilt deep into the wall.
Barely a second later the stone around the saber started bubbling and dropping onto the floor, making Harry step back hastily. A moment later, with a shock wave of magic, the protections around the doorway broke. Using his magesight, he realised the wall was waiting for him to provide it a drop of blood, which would then be checked for Tom Riddle's magic.
If the blood was wrong, the stone bricks would remain unchanged, however if it was Tom's blood then somehow the bricks would become intangible. Somehow, Tom had convinced Hogwarts to wall over the doorway, which explained why his magesight had been useless. Then a subtle notice-not rune kept him from noticing the missing doorway. Unfortunately for Tom, the notice-not meant Harry subconsciously lifted the chalk until he reached the end of the doorway.
While Harry would love to break into the room, he didn't doubt Tom had layered the room in as many booby traps as possible. As such, he needed to wait until Dumbledore was present to help deal with anything that came up. A small block of mithril emitting a notice-not field placed inside the sabres' hole ensured nobody would find the room by accident.
Until then, he needed to move his workshop to somewhere more secure. Tom had been able to find his workshop despite the protections and almost broke into it, while incredibly weakened. It also gave him an excuse to test out new ideas and to expand his space even further.
Entering his workshop, he first collected the few items that weren't made of mithril, such as Luna's easel and his books. They all went into the Gringotts bag he had used to take his kiln home. The bag was already starting to fall apart, but it would last for a few more days. The bag was then placed out into the corridor under a mithril generated notice-not.
With that done, all that was left within the room was his mithril. He was unwilling to completely destroy them, since he had spent years decorating them. Whenever he had grown bored he had idly formed patterns and decorations on whatever he had his hands on, whether it be the shelves or his table. While his artistic skills were nothing compared to Luna's, his mithril reacted to his ideas and made something beautiful from it.
His only option therefore was to shrink the mithril, which came with its own problems. It had taken him days to form some of his furniture, before he figured out how to make them self expanding. There was an easy way to shrink them of course, if he drew runes on the furniture they would start to lose magic, shrinking as a by-product.
But, by the time they got small enough to transport it would be hard to remove the runes. Luckily for Harry, he had spent several nights thinking over this problem. The easy part was making a tool to suck the magic out of his furniture, which was easily done; he just had to reuse the power lines from the original mithril generator.
The problem was dealing with the magic when it was inside the tool. The tool he had created looked like a horseshoe magnet fixed onto the end of a Muggle rifle, with the two prongs pointed outward. The mithril had been programmed to suck magic out of whatever it was touching and turn it into the patronus fire, which would easily keep up with the incoming magic while being harmless to Harry.
Cautiously Harry stuck the tool against his table, which instantly erupted in the incredibly bright pale blue flames of his patronus fire. Under the fire the table began to shrink at an alarming rate, such that after just four seconds Harry hastily withdrew the shrinking tool.
Once the flames died the table could've easily fit within a dollhouse, which easily fit within an empty pocket he had reserved for the move. Slowly Harry shrunk everything within the room, until his expanded pocket was full of miniature furniture.
The mithril plates covering the walls, floor and ceiling were harder to shrink, since they formed a complete box. The only way to shrink them was when he was inside the box, which had the risk of crushing him inside. The first step was to return the room to its original size and shape, he could then separate the panels and shrink them individually.
Starting with the ceiling, he first removed the cores then shrunk the panels into oblivion. Once done, the room was back to its original state, albeit less dusty. He left the protections on the door, since it would distract anyone should they try and attack him. With that, he closed the door for the final time.
Having already chosen the spot for his new workshop, he made his way to an unassuming still-life painting of a templar knight on the fifth floor. The first thing Harry had noticed when had first seen the painting was the relatively large pure black stone in the pommel of the knight's sword, the triangular sign of the Deathly Hallows indicating it could've been the Resurrection Stone.
The next thing he had noticed was the extremely unique handle of the sword, the nodules running down its length being eerily similar to the Elder Wand. Finally, instead of the traditional pure white cloak the knight wore the silver invisibility cloak.
"Professor, is this one of the Peverell Brothers?" Harry had asked midway through his second year.
"Yes and no Harry… yes and no. This painting is called 'The Lord Peverell' and as you correctly identified, it contains all three of the Hallows. However, we cannot know if it was inspired by one of the brothers using all three Hallows for a battle or if the artist saw the three brothers individually using their Hallow and imagined what it would be like to have all three."
"How would Cadmus use his Hallow in battle?" Harry had asked wryly
"Can you not imagine how the ability to raise the dead would help in a battle Harry? We know for a fact the brothers took part in many battles before they returned to England, which gives us some insight into the true power of the Hallows. By all accounts, Antioch was the strongest, but it was Cadmus who scared the enemy. Imagine, Harry, being an enemy soldier under those conditions.
"You've seen both friend and foe slain around you, then Cadmus steps onto the battlefield and raises them into a form of undead. If you had gained any ground before then you would have found yourself sandwiched between the dead and the living, if you lost ground then the force you are losing to just became significantly stronger. Never mind the fact it is harder to kill the undead, especially if you're a Muggle."
"Oh…" Harry muttered simply, having never realised the full power of the Resurrection Stone. He had always assumed it would be limited to calling back shades, just like in the Tale of Brothers Three.
The painting itself was life size, with the knight easily being six foot tall with a good foot above and below the knight. However he wasn't there to look at the painting again, according to the Marauders Map, there was a secret passage behind this particular painting.
Upon activating the map, he was impressed to see it had automatically homed in on his position. As he watched the map a small speech bubble appeared next to his nametag just as Sirius had claimed in his letter, revealing the password for the passageway. Next to the speech bubble was a small warning, telling him the passageway was considered one way, so that once he was inside the only way out was to leave via the other exit.
Annoyingly his magesight was unable to identify the entrance, the magic within both the painting and wall behind it hiding any other magic. Rather unoriginally, the password turned out to be "Hallowed dream", something Harry thought was too obvious given the painting's subject. Upon proving the painting with the password a ripple passed over the painting but other than that nothing happened, until Harry cautiously placed his hand against the painting only for it to fall right through.
Just like the entrance to Platform 9 ¾ the painting had become temporarily intangible, unfortunately the bit of wall under the wall turned out to have remained tangible when Harry smashed his foot against the solid wall. The collision made him lose his balance and launched him into and through the painting, falling heavily onto the small landing behind the painting and narrowly avoiding a suit of armour.
Standing quickly and dusting himself off, Harry looked around in interest. As the map had promised, the passageway was a small landing at the bottom of a spiral staircase, which he knew led up to another small landing. Climbing up the staircase led Harry to the second landing, which was an exact twin to the one below, except for the small arch way beside the suit of armour.
The archway led into the back of a tapestry, hiding the passageway from view. Consulting the map revealed the archway led to the tapestry corridor, located on the first floor. How the castle made a passageway from up from the fifth floor and end up on the first floor was far beyond Harry's comprehension, unless the castle somehow made use of portals.
Before descending the staircase, Harry formed a disc of mithril and carefully stuck it to the back of the suit of armour. Harry then did the same with the armour at bottom of the staircase, allowing him to control both suits at the same time.
The mithril discs would keep a constant communication going with each other, keeping an internal count of magical beings entering and leaving the passageway. Harry then linked the bottom armour to the mithrilium within his arm, allowing him to find out if somebody was waiting within the passageway.
With that done, Harry climbed the staircase till he felt he was around half way up, then placed his palm flat against the wall and concentrated upon his magic. Using just his magic, he asked Hogwarts to move an unused classroom to behind the wall. To his great surprise, Hogwarts agreed instantly, without any compromises or bartering.
His confusion didn't last long, as the castle communicated its reason which was remarkably similar to his mithril ideologies. In short, the castle recognised he was working on a way to improve the school protections and needed somewhere to work on those protections, as such it willingly gave him use of the room.
Silently thanking the castle, Harry entered the room and began the process of turning it into his workshop. With a new and empty room to work with, Harry was planning on letting himself go wild with the possibilities.
That lunch, Harry received a small note via Corvus. 'Meeting today, usual place, period four. -S'
It would be a rush to get from the top of the divination tower all the way down to Snape's office, but considering Greengrass was in his class, he wouldn't be the last to arrive.
"Hey Harry, what did you think of the great bouncing ferret?" Ron asked eagerly, having popped up behind Harry without him noticing.
"Err, what?" Harry questioned, spinning around to look at Ron.
"What did you think of Moody turning Draco into a ferret?" Ron asked slowly
"I think that sounds kind of cruel… when was this?"
"Oh, I assumed you were there. This morning the Prophet talked about how my dad went off to help Moody yesterday and 'needlessly embarrassed the ministry', anyway it included a picture of mum in front of the Burrow and Malfoy was being a prat about it. But then Neville turns around and insulted Malfoy's mum, apparently he saw her a few times at the balls he's forced to attend. Anyway, we turned to leave and Malfoy tried to fire a curse at us from behind but Moody just appeared and started yelling about how cowardly Malfoy was, then he whipped out his wand and turned Malfoy into a ferret and started bouncing him around!" Ron explained excitedly.
"That seems a bit harsh for a punishment… even if Draco shouldn't have been trying to shoot you in the back. Imagine how terrifying it would be to get forced into the shape of a ferret and then bounced around…"
"I guess… bloody brilliant though!"
"Today class, we will be leaving the realm of palmistry and entering the subtle art of hydromancy. Having predicted the heavy rainfall we witnessed last night, I had left several barrels outside to collect the rainwater, such that we may begin our journey with hydatoscopy."
Harry subtly looked through the lesson planner Trelawney had provided the year before, so far every lesson subject had happened exactly as written, including the one lesson on hydatoscopy that Monday and again on the Wednesday the week after.
The lesson was extremely interesting, seeing as Trelawney had them all partner up and share a bowl between them, one would then hold a piece of string tied to a small copper ring and slowly swing it and knock it against the side of the bowl. The partner would then look down on the bowl and try to divine the future from the reflections and ripples.
"You might as well try to divine first, Harry, we both know I'm useless at it." Neville said forlornly, having teamed up with Harry as was normal. Soon the dull sounds of metal on wood rang throughout the classroom, along with the occasional splash and Lavender's "Not so hard Ron! You're trying to tap the bowl, not break it!"
At first all Harry could see was water, but with each ripple Harry began to see something, when a ripple managed to catch the light from a nearby candle and filled the reflection with the still image of orange fire. As the next ripple spread across the surface the flames moved under the wave before freezing again in the still water.
With each subsequent ripple the image progressed, until something dark green and covered with spikes started to appear behind the flames. Just as Harry was hoping to get a clearer image the reflection was shattered by the ring falling into the water.
"Whoops, sorry Harry, the string slipped out of my fingers!" Neville apologised
"It's fine Neville." Harry replied tiredly, used to the boy's bouts of clumsiness. "Why don't we swap places? Just remember, don't focus on the bowl or the water and don't try to force anything… just think about something and let the water guide you."
As the lesson wrapped up, Harry eyed Daphne Greengrass hurriedly put her book and wand into her bag and briefly whispered to her friend. As if feeling his gaze, she suddenly straightened and looked around the room until she spotted him and raised an eyebrow challengingly, Harry sent back a smirk and bobbed his eyebrows mockingly which elicited a glare back. The moment Trelawney told the class they could go Greengrass was making her way down the ladder.
Harry followed at a more sedate pace, but instead of going down the spiral staircase like his classmates he carried on down the corridor until he judged he was above the entrance. Before doing anything else, Harry undid the transfiguration on his school robes, returning them back into his blue-grey trench coat. Then, keeping a firm grip on his wand, Harry opened a nearby window long enough for him to slip out onto the battlements, the courtyard eight stories below looking very small.
After making sure his feather-light charm had been applied properly, Harry jumped off the battlements before his nerves could set in. As he fell he sent out his magic to direct most of the air into a shield, making the fall considerably more bearable. Despite the shield working, Harry felt like it should've been better, given his previous control over air even if it had been some time since he last practised his wandless aerokinesis.
When the ground grew uncomfortably close, Harry quickly cancelled his feather-light charm so that he could cast the Arresto Momentum charm. He had needed to wait so that when his weight returned to normal he wouldn't have time to reach terminal velocity, just in case his slowing charm failed. Between the resistance from his air shield, his prior lightness and his body's enhanced strength, his impact with the ground would've been fairly painful as opposed to fatal.
His caution was not needed however, seeing as his charm worked perfectly and slowed him such that he came to a complete stop a few inches above the ground. He easily cancelled his charm and air shield and casually strolled into the entrance hall, externally ignoring the shocked stares from the nearby students.
"Don't try that." He warned over his shoulder, belatedly deciding he should act responsible around the students. Once out of sight he picked up his pace and jumped several steps at a time down the staircase into the dungeons.
With significant time to spare, Harry found himself outside Snape's office, which was regrettably locked. Knowing Snape disapproved of him breaking into his office, Harry elected to wait in the hall, which had nothing to do with wanting to see Greengrass' face upon being beaten. A few minutes later the girl soared into the hallway and up to Snape's still locked door, completely oblivious to the grinning Harry.
"He's not in there yet." Harry unnecessarily commented, drawing her attention.
"How… How did you get here so fast?" Daphne demanded between great gasping breaths, clearly unused to the exercise.
"I took a shortcut." Harry remained smoothly, internally cheering over his excellent grasp of comedy.
Daphne glared at him suspiciously, before trying to valiantly sort out her uniform and hair. Harry was extremely impressed when she waved her wand over her hair and magically brushed and straightened it, before doing the same with her uniform to remove the creases.
Before Daphne could argue any further, Snape marched into the hallway, cloak billowing behind him. "In" he said curtly, unlocking and opening his door with a single wave of his wand.
Daphne waited until they were inside the room before saying "You told me to come alone, professor."
"Quite right Miss Greengrass, instructions you clearly had no issues following."
"Of course... But then why is Potter here if this was meant to be a private meeting?"
"Ah, the answer to that is that this isn't a private meeting... At least not one in the sense you might have been expecting. Since your first year Potter has been coming here once a week for extracurricular lessons. At the end of last year we had the opportunity to obtain a large supply of highly sensitive and rare potion ingredient, giving us the exceedingly rare opportunity to study how it will react with different potions, due to your exceptional results in your potion work I felt it was apt to invite you to our small group."
Daphne looked suspiciously between the two of them, as if expecting one of them to break down and reveal it was all a big joke."So... what is this ingredient? I know a great deal of high quality salamander skin was briefly on the market, but they are hardly sensitive ingredients."
"A quantity of Dementor Ash" Snape replied simply, the corner of his mouth twitching up in what passed as a smile.
"But that's impossible, we would've heard if you had bought a large amount of Ash, and anyway, the ministry only releases a few kilograms every month." Daphne denied, shaking her head softly.
"You are of course correct, I have no doubt your father would've heard if myself or the school purchased the ash. However as it stands, we had no reason to purchase the ash given we were given it from a temporary supply outside the ministry."
"You took it from the Dementors while they were here!" daphne concluded, sounding quite impressed.
"Actually, the Ash I collected throughout the year was barely enough to produce a basic potion, it was Potter who provided a cauldron's worth of the Ash."
"Why would Potter have a large collection of ash? Especially given it loses potency after a year."
"I went to war with the dementors at the end of the year, which caused them to drop a huge amount of Ash. By the time I was finished it looked like the clearing had been covered in snow." Harry explained
"But... but I thought that was just a myth or at the least an exaggeration, like how some claim you went into the Chamber of Secrets second year and killed a thousand year old basilisk or killed professor Quirrell!"
"Actually none of those were exaggerated, I can show you the chamber if you don't believe me." Harry replied, grinning at Daphne's stupefied expression.
"As painful as it is to admit, Potter is correct. As it stands, we have a cauldron full of dementor ash and less than a year to use it. Are you interested in joining us Miss Greengrass?"
"Of course I am." Daphne agreed instantly.
This chapter's story recommendation is 'Harry Potter and the Weasley Seer' by Sarcasm Dragon, I've started reading it while writing this chapter and am thoroughly enjoying it.
Things I think I need to explain:
- Hogwarts classes: Can't remember how it is in canon, but in this story the school works like my own high school, where you have 2 lessons, then a break, then 2 more lessons, then lunch then 2 more lessons then home time.