CH 5

Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James - Potter

TJ tossed and turned in his bed. He'd just finished a major practical exam and his body was exhausted. He'd returned to his little house tent that had been located in a room with five other tents and barely waved to his teaching portraits before shucking his clothes to the ground and disappearing into his sleeping chamber.

The four were amused by the youth's absentminded manners. Rowena did call out to him, loudly saying, "Make sure you clear your mind before going to sleep, Harry!"

"He won't," Tiber commented.

"Aye," Godric agreed. "I remember those kinds of tests. To reach a high skill level or the ability to work with other metals means that part of the test is to smelt it first. So far all he'd ever worked with was iron and steel."

"Poor boy," Helga commented. "He's younger than you were when you took those tests, right?"

"I had a wand and had been given instruction in it since I was a tot," Godric confirmed. "The High Goblins were the ones that had recommended me to the Alps School of Smithing. I wonder why he didn't go there for his training?"

"Maybe it no longer exists in this timeline," Rowena said. "Like many other things."

They'd been surprised at the current curriculum that Harry had told them about the things being taught at Hogwarts. There was no fencing or sword-play lessons of any kind, no true alchemy lessons and the spells and charms that he'd been learning in his third year were usually what they considered house-management spells, which were taught to a student as soon as they came to the school. They did agree that the stronger the foundation in learning needed to be done. They had told him that the length of school studies had been between three to five years, depending on a student, not a mandatory attendance for seven.

The four continued this discussion as Harry was deep in sleep and dreaming heavily of events taking place far away from here. He awoke late that night at a time closer to the earlier morning, startled by what he'd witnessed. 'Serves me right for not clearing my mind,' he thought with a shake of his head. 'I have to record all of this.'

He got up, frowned at the state of his clothes, but rubbed his scar, as though to get rid of it. He grimaced and stripped out of the rest in order to take a deep scrubbing shower. He flicked his wand and sent any clothing lying around to the laundry hamper.

His famous scar burned, as though it had been a conduit for some electric pulse or shock. He recalled much of his dream and promptly threw up much of what he'd eaten that day. He knew that his scar had burned with the negative form of magic, known as the Dark Arts, but he understood it on an instinctual level as something that had been born first from the Necromantic School of Magic.

Half an hour later he was seated cross-legged in front of the portraits performing several spells at once. They were used to seeing this method of casting with him and had done their best to explain that everyone's magical understanding was different. He shouldn't expect any of his fellow students to have the same skills. In fact others might have different strengths in their chosen field of magic that they can manipulate, which he couldn't; like Herbology or Potions from the witchcraft and wizardry perspective.

Harry used his magic to call forth several scrolls of paper to him and with Rowena's soft voice guiding him, he transcribed nearly word for word in a script format who said what in his dream. He also used artists' coloured sketching pencils and charcoal to draw image upon image of what he'd seen. His drawing ability wasn't good, but this was more of a copy of what he'd seen with the tools he had on hand for such purposes. This process helped him with notes for his outdoor classes.

His ability to multi-cast surged and he added a third scroll to the whirl of magic and on that one he noted all of his personal feelings and impressions of the dream event.

He even noted that he'd had a sense of vertigo. He had felt that he'd been seeing everything in the dream, as though he'd been experiencing the whole thing firsthand from different viewpoints. He saw the graveyard and the house, when he suddenly was in it and following a conversation between the Dark Lord and his servant Peter Pettigrew.

The spells were performed at the same time that he was organizing his thoughts. The scratching of the pens and pencils continued for a while until his mind recalled the final image of the odd creature in the chair that had caused him to wake up and eventually to vomit. The picture being created of it was not a pretty one.

Harry's eyes opened and then he pulled all the papers to him. He sorted them with magic and ensured that each one had a magically applied date and time stamp. He had three stacks of sheets in front of him. "I'm going to have to make copies of these," he said to his teachers. "Where can I find a spell for that, something more official and protected then the regular copy spell?"

"In the library," Rowena said. "There's a book called, 'Small Business Spells'. It should have several spells for duplication of paperwork. It's a good thing you stamped them with a date and time of the occurrence, since I believe, that is a factor in creating magical duplicate documents that are protected."

"Thank you," Harry said. He stepped into the small library that he'd taken from the Chamber of Secrets and looked to the shelves under the S section. He'd reorganized the books in that library with an old-fashioned card file system and in alphabetical order by title. He chose to keep it that simplified since many of the books fit too many categories to separate into, hence the card file with notes about what the books contained. His school library had specific sections for Potions, Defence, Transfiguration, etc...

He found the book quickly and then studied the section on the duplication of official documents. There was even a small section on binding them after they'd been copied and storing them in boxes.

...Copying documents require additional blank sheets of parchment or a pre-bound book of blank pages. A blank scroll is recommended when transcribing the contents of old scrolls to a new one. It is not recommended to bind multiple scrolls of different contents or subject matter together. One is less likely to lose the information that way.

The blank sheets or a blank book cannot be spelled for preservation until all the needed notes and documents have been transcribed. As the preservation spells are usually security spells to prevent alteration to the information.

The spell words are 'Duplicatum' and 'Transcriptus'. As with all magic, intense concentration is required in order to successfully copy a document. Ensure that you follow the language logistics to maintain the number of copies to the limit of the caster's choice. To aid one, a time and date stamp is advisable...

"Wow, that's a bit more complicated," Harry said.

"Nonsense," Tiber said. "Just do it in Parseltongue. That way you don't have to conjugate the verbs and words into Latin."

"Latin is the European common tongue for spells," Rowena said.

"I still think he needs to learn a few other common languages while he still can," Godric said.

"If I had a time-turner, I'd gladly learn whatever other language you want me to learn," Harry told them. "I, apparently, have prophesies about a Dark Lord seeking to kill me and I know that the blighter is at least over fifty or sixty years old. He's had the time to learn much more than I."

The Founders gathered together in one tapestry to discuss the situation, while Harry was going through a list of people he knew that he could tell about his dream. He was fourteen now, as he birthday had passed and he was due to catch the next underwater sailing ship to Easter Wales, a magical harbour town, which would allow him to catch the lime green, 'special transit to all ports of call only no side pick-ups' or so he'd been, magical Knight Bus to the Leaky Cauldron. It was just another version of the Knight Bus, similar to Britain's cross-country triple-decker purple one that he'd taken last summer to get to the magical port town.

He'd been surprised that underwater sailing ships existed, but figured as magical travel methods that he'd read about this was one of the more pleasant ones. He likened it to traveling on an old sailing ship and submarine at the same time. He'd listened to some tales about how the ship didn't travel that much when the second Muggle war was happening since they seemed to have underwater ships too. They still had to be careful and so most of the underwater ships were undetectable by sonar, which was a good thing, since they didn't show up on the Muggle radars that way.

'If I told Hermione about the dream and my scar, she'd say to send a letter to the Headmaster about it,' he thought. 'Then she'd likely think that a cure or information about this situation could be found in some book.' He cared about the girl to an extent, but honestly not everything can be found in a book.

'If I told Ron about it, he'd stutter out something about You-Know-Who and then say that I should talk about it with some adult, more than likely he'd name his father, since that's who he'd trust.' He paused and the continued his thought, 'Who would I trust? Who should I trust with this information? A woman was murdered to bring back the Dark Lord in some kind of infant form that looked like an oversized garden grub with arms and a head.'

He shuddered as that image floated to the foreground of his thoughts again. 'Disgusting,' he thought. 'That poor old muggle, the silly old fool! You should never go to an abandoned house like that without calling the police. Wonder why he did it though?'

He paced the room and glanced at the papers. He re-opened the business book and focused on learning the wand movements with the foil-like knife he'd created to use as a practice wand. It didn't have a hand guard, but a patterned weave of different coloured leather strips wrapped at the larger end.

It was one that he'd created for one of his primary smithing tests and was made of iron. It was more rod-like than a regular flat blade, with a slight octagon shape that had sharpened edges. The test had been about shaping the metals with magic. It was still a very good piercing weapon, but the dwarves had been impressed with it because of the way it looked and moved like a real wand.

Harry took out some of his old school notes from his second year of Defence Against the Dark Arts. They were the notes that he'd taken in the beginning before the true nature of Lockhart's classes had been discovered and the 'Golden Trio' had been forced to self-study the rest of the year's schedule.

He then took some foolscap sheets to use as trial paper for transcribing his notes. He made several attempts in Latin until he did it in the only other language he knew, (...Back-to-back, copy, transcribe, first three pages...)

Then he watched in fascination as words and ink appeared on the blank pages, as though being writing by an invisible hand. It wrote everything in exactly the same sloppy handwriting that belonged to him. "Damn," he said. Then he explained to the portraits that had focussed their attention on him when he'd sworn. "I was hoping that I could change the letter characters too, to be more legible."

"You can," Tiber said with a chuckle. "Just say the type of font you'd like to see, you can even alter the original language to one that you understand, but sometimes it is best to learn from the original. But in order to copy your writing in a better form, you should do your best to improve it."

"Why," Harry asked, as he played with copying his old school notes.

"Sometimes the original languages will have different nuances to words that can change quite a few things," Rowena explained. "We've discussed this and there is a way to learn other languages, but it can only be done as long as you're under the age of sixteen. The written language is beautiful when done correctly and a person should take pride in writing something properly." She sniffed when she noticed his chicken-scratch writing.

"I promise to practice it," Harry said and thought about the primary books that he'd used as a kid when learning his letters, he hoped to find some that instructed him in using calligraphy pens, since that was the only thing he could think of. Then he looked up from examining his handwriting and asked, "Why sixteen?"

"It's easier for the sleep magic to be absorbed before you reach the age of sixteen," Helga explained. "Your body at sixteen is preparing for a magical maturation that opens your magical channels and increases your base core. Sleep magic is magic that takes place while you sleep. You can program the magic to include books of language and there are a few that are vocal books to learn speech patterns with. I recommend that you begin with Latin in its complete form and then select French, followed by German and one or two of the Asian languages."

"All right," Harry said. "Do you think it will work now, since I've been learning to meditate and clear my mind?"

"I believe that it will work better because of it," Rowena said. "You may still be able to learn other languages through sleep after your sixteenth, but it may take longer for you absorb them before of your body maturation preparations."

"This was the way we learned to communicate with other creatures, not of human origin," Godric explained. "It didn't cover social conventions though, but at least we were understood and we could understand them when we talked or corresponded with them."

"I wonder, if there'd have been less Goblin Wars, if the wizards of those times had studied the language," Harry thought out loud.

"You have got to get a library portrait for us," Rowena said with her arms crossed. "It must be something more recent than what we have, in order to use it to study from. We want to know about the changes in your society."

"I am looking into it," Harry said. He was, as he'd asked his Canyon School instructors about such portraits or possible tapestries. They'd been surprised by his request, but were pleased to assist him, for the modest fee of several lengths of basilisk skin to work with for training and for personal clan reasons. The Mithril-Helm Clan had not been silent about their sources.

"There are several leads on the go," he held up his hand. "...and I'm looking for an alchemy-potions station portrait, a mining and forge portrait, plus one with an arcane enchanter with multiple items stored for the creation of things in all of them. The dwarves of Stoneguard will let me know before I have to head back to England. I told them that I'd pay to have them newly created too, if they knew of properly skilled persons for the job."

"I knew you wouldn't let us down," Tiber said. "So what about your enchanting lessons, still going to get your ears pierced?"

"Yes," Harry said. "I had to commission a pair of enchanted earrings that will automatically cause any pictures or photographs taken of me, to come out very blurry or washed out in one solid colour. I made a ring that will send out low grade shocking zap spells to the backside of anyone that pays too much time staring at me, which I'll control. It'll still give me enough time to get away from any unwanted audiences. I'm planning to make several or else make one that I can control which spell is sent and the intensity of the warning."

"Good on you," Godric said with a laugh. "I wouldn't stand for that kind of attention, unless it was required, you know politically and all that."

"I figure that I'll still have a few good years at the school to avoid that kind of situation," Harry said. "But I sincerely doubt that since they tend to like taking my picture."

"What are you going to do about that dream you had," Tiber asked.

"I'm thinking that I have to let someone know about it," Harry explained. "But there aren't many adults I could send any of this, let alone only a part of it to."

"What about your godfather," Helga suggested. "Surely he'd be able to help you out. I'm also sure that he'd be disappointed to know that he wasn't your first choice."

Harry sighed and said, "I only found out about him two months ago. I'm not use to turning to an adult for things, especially of this nature. But you're right, I think I will write to him about it and include some of the information."

He sat at his desk and selected certain parts of it to send to his godfather, Sirius Black. The man should be able to find information about the dead muggle at the very least, unless the man's corpse had been banished or buried in that graveyard that he saw in his dream.

Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James - Potter

Dear Sirius,

Thank you for your letters this summer. It's been refreshing to receive anything that had nothing to do with the school's homework or Quidditch.

That bird was wondrously magical and really huge too.

My private tutors were impressed with it and begged it for some of its feathers, since they're catching me up in potions because I, as they say 'sorely missed the fundamentals'. The bird positively preened to have been of service. Although, Hedwig wasn't thrilled about it because some other bird was supplying down and flight feathers for potions for me. Personally, I think she was a bit jealous, since she's very protective of my attentions if I focus on other birds.

I'm quite OK, in health and all that and have managed to complete my summer studies for the coming fourth year at Hogwarts. It's a thing that I'm quite certain that Hermione will demand to see and correct, if I give her that chance.

Did you ever have someone like that in your life? She seems to want to take on a role of 'mother' or some such thing, which I confess is one of her personality flaws that I don't like or appreciate.

Ron on the other hand is so Quidditch crazy that I do wonder just how far he's gotten in his studies. I know that the Quidditch World Cup is happening this summer. He gave me a book for my birthday called 'Flying with the Cannons', as though they're the only Quidditch team that exists out there.

Anyway, a weird thing happened to me in the small hours of this morning. I woke up from a strange dream and my scar was hurting. The last time I felt something like that was in first year when that 'Dark Idiot' possessed one of my Professors. I have copies of some of the dream sequence, but do you reckon that a scar like mine would still hurt years after the fact?

Any insight would be useful and we should really find another way to communicate in the near future, since I don't want you to get caught. Want my cloak?

Say hello to Buckbeak for me.

Harry

PS: What do you think of my handwriting? My tutors wanted me to improve my writing so that I show pride in the written word. What do you think?

Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James - Potter

TJ re-read the letter to his godfather and nodded, thinking that it sounded all right. He then packaged the papers in a small, enchanted leather pouch that he'd created for his godfather. It contained instructions on its use, plus a much longer letter confessing to the man that he wasn't living with the Dursleys this summer, at all. He figured that since summer was almost over, it would be something relatively safe to confess, after all the man already knew that he was looking to attend summer school, not that he'd actually done it. The pouch also contained a long fine graded steel sword that had earned him is fifth F grade in metal working class using steel ore and long iron dagger of N grade to aid in the man's defence, he had a lot of those.

He hoped that Sirius would understand his reasons for the choices he'd made this year. He did say that he'd been accepted for a summer study program at another magical school, but he didn't mention which one it was, in case the information was found out.

He lightened the pouch before tying it to Hedwig's waiting leg. "Take this to Sirius and then wait for a reply," he told her. "I'll be traveling back to England in two days time, so just wait until I'm at a stable location before coming back to me, make sure that you hunt and feed too. I'll probably be at the Leaky Cauldron or the Weasleys by then."

Hedwig hooted and nibbled his ear, before she took off through the tent's open door and then through the high window in the door of the dorm room.

Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James - Potter

TBC…