Many thanks to lubabpaul for the beta-ing!

1990-01 September

In the middle of July, Kurotsuchi flew in my room with a letter from my Head of House, which informed me that arrangements had been made so that I could attend Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, Runes and Arithmancy as my electives.

Timeturner!

The owl did not like that I had kept two little ravens in my room for all the summer, he was probably cranky because I asked him from time to time to bring in a rat for them, but I had no intention of spending any money that could be used for my books on something like owl-treats, or proper feeding for ravens under one-year-old. I had a few more galleons than the previous years and I was able to purchase battered copies of the needed textbooks (seriously, the notes on the sides were lifesavers, I had no idea why anyone would pay more for a copy without them.),

And I managed to squeeze in a second-hand copy of The Great Book To Take Care Of Your Book, which contained more than a hundred tips about book care. I didn't know why anyone would waste time writing such a book, but then I thought about Madam Pince, and my doubts vanished. A third hand, but well-maintained copy of Weather Charms For Every Occasion, which was the stupid, unknown brother of Mastering the Sky. Of the latter, less than a dozen copies existed in the world and it was obviously on the Ministry's blacklist. Also, a very battered copy of Treasures from the hunt: a guide, found its way in my hands. That book promised to teach me how to properly render animals. If nothing else, it would cross the path of my studies on mammal anatomy. I also purchased an old book in what looked like Japanese, but for 5 knuts I would buy anything.

However, wary of cursed books like Riddle's diary, I would ask Flitwick to examine it, since books capable of eating my soul or my face actually existed. I also took note to research if there was a spell to translate stuff, or if it was possible to magically learn a language.

For my talking ravens project, I managed to gain permission from professor Kettleburn to use a room in one of the towers that he warded so only I could enter it. It was bare, but I did make do with furnishings from the room of the Hidden Things.

It would have been cool cleansing and using Ravenclaw's Diadem, but that would mean throwing the plot out of the window, and that was a big no-no, at least while Dumbledore was around.

The time turner was a curious little thing, it could bring me 7 hours and 47 minutes back in time at once, before needing 13 hours of cooldown period.

And it couldn't be used to 'live in a loop': meaning, that even if I used it to time travel 144 minutes into the past (after that jump for some reason it only needed 49 minutes of cooldown time) I couldn't use it to jump into a time where there were already two of me around, nor I could end up in a time before I used it for the first time in that day.

And if I wanted to stay alive, I couldn't directly interact with myself, meaning I wouldn't be self-dueling or using legilimency on myself to practice and test my occlumency.

From what I had been told, if my magic or bioenergy was to interact with the magic or bioenergy of the past me, the time turner would collapse into the void taking me with it. It would have been a very complex form of suicide through violent vanishing. The arithmancy that explained it would probably be a nightmare, but I wasn't really sold on the whole 'you can't interact with your past self'. After all, in the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione thought she recognized herself, she tossed pebbles at Harry and witnessed his future self conjure a Patronus that saved both him and Sirius: the more I thought about it, the more I believed the rules and regulations I was told to follow and respect existed to prevent me from abusing the time-turner. The only reason Hermione had given Harry to not interact with his past self was 'that he would believe himself to have gone bonkers'. If I planned for it, why would I go crazy if I were to meet a future me?

'Interactions with the future/past me' was soon scribbled on my ever-growing Research List.

The little book Flitwick gave me explained only the rules of time travel and the time turner limitations, I actually had the freedom to use it as I pleased inside of these limitations.

My conclusion? Hermione Granger had been an idiot. Why the fuck would anyone jump back to live again the same hour?

I traveled with a parchment upon which I wrote with a pencil to keep notice of when I was, and I kept a ledger in my private project room in which I wrote down both the times and the movements of my first time living each day. I kept my usual routine, only, instead of going into the tower after my stop into the RoR, I asked for an exit near to my private room, in which I would then enter, compile my ledger of the day, before rearranging my notes of the day, completing the assignments given that day, and revise the ones due for the day after.

All of this happened with me reading out loud and explaining to the ravens what I was doing. I was hoping they would pick up a thing or two here and there.

Waking up at 5 am to accompany Hagrid on the grounds every single morning was murder on my willingness to stay alive, but he was so happy to talk me through whatever he was doing that stopping would have hurt his feelings and broken my heart. But I was honestly learning a shitload of stuff. And he told me about Fluffy.

Maybe I would even meet him! Them? Whatever.

I usually ended my work around 9 pm, then jumped back around 1 pm, in time to attend the 2 pm double runes period on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesday and Thursday, I attended arithmancy from 4 pm to 6 pm, I would then hide into the astronomy tower for the nighttime lessons.

At night, I always slept like the dead, since I had 31-hours long days. When I wasn't attending lessons (while being back in time) I ate snacks, slept, or read light stuff to my ravens, who were trying to croak their first words.

I did enlist the house-elves' help, and Moppy was a lifesaver. She either reminded me of the time, made sure I ate and properly slept, or had my naps when necessary. All in all, I lived an interesting year.

For Christmas, I gifted to my Head of House 'The Time Machine' by Wells, which I stole from a library the previous summer exactly for this occasion. For McGonagall I stole 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' because I had a feeling that she would get a laugh out of the magic cat. I had painstakingly carved a wooden flute, like the one Tumnus uses in Narnia, and a set of runes made it play a lullaby when touched with a wand. It was as long as my forearm, after all, it was my gift to Hagrid, and it had to be proportionate to his size.

I received 'Elemental Transfiguration: magic or myth' from McGonagall, it was a book as big as my chest, and it had her fucking annotations on the sides! Throwing around thunderbolts! I loved her.

'Unraveling the charmed: a study on light shape manipulation' was the almost literal bomb gifted to me by Flitwick. Illusions! I loved him.

He also gave me back my Japanese battered book, having judged it safe. Uh, I had completely forgotten that.

I somehow suspected that they were competing against each other, but hey, all the better for me. Those books were not something that could be found just anywhere, and with their annotations, their value was incalculable, at least for me. I was happy that they would survive the canon story without my help.

Hagrid, bless his giant heart, gifted me a knife as long as my forearm. It was made of bone, or horn, it was straight and had a side like a saw, while the other was so sharp it shaved the hairs off my arm. The hilt was an engraved raven, and the leather on the handle was comfortable. It could do with a pommel to better its balance, but for Hagrid the thing weighed nothing. It was a greatly appreciated gift, because one should never go around without a knife. I would need to ask Hagrid from what beast it did come from.

The professor took it away from my hands and left it in Hagrid's care, he would teach me how to take care of it and how to properly use it during our mornings together. I would be able to take it away from Hogwarts once I was 17 years old.

Party poopers.

1991-01 September

The results that came to my room in the middle of July had confirmed what I already knew: I was a kickass young wizard. My understanding of how magic actually worked confirmed a few of the ideas I had, based on the shitload of fanfictions I read in my previous life, and threw others out of the window. Incantations are a trick to make the mind associate a particular intent to an effect generated in the world, with enough repetition your magic would learn to answer to the incantation even with minimal focus. Wand motions, of any kind, 'yank your magic' around and your intent shapes it into a result.

The British magic system was a mess of wand motions that didn't make sense. A magical core does not exist. Powerful magic users are so because they understand what change they are shaping; they pour all of themselves in that change. So, truly powerful magic is akin to an act of faith in both yourself and the change you want to bring into reality. So, with enough time and focus, I could create a spell on the fly without an incantation, along with wand movements that simply felt right. Enough repetition would turn that long process into something that I could do in an instant and with barely a thought.

Souls were very real, and animism was a thing. Stones resist very little to a transfiguration, a plant a bit more, a nonmagical animal even more so, all the way toward magic users. It's actually easier to transfigure an eleven-year wizard, more so than any niffler or devil's snare. That would be because the sense of self of magical animals is absolute. Meaning that all they are, and have, is their magic and their body, without a distinction between the two. A hippogriff flies because of its magic and its wings. There is no way in hell a beast weighing 4 hundred kilos can flap its wings and actually fly.

Let's say you wanted to transfigure a rabbit into a raven.

Having an exact knowledge of the rabbit's anatomy was useless, on the other hand, knowing the anatomy of a raven did help somewhat. The transfiguration process wasn't the combined change of a lot of minor, little transfigurations. You did not actually change a mouth into a beak, paws into talons. Rather you changed the physical representation of the rabbit's soul. It was easier to turn a rabbit into a flying raven if you cast your spell mid-jump.

A Wand directed your intent, imposing your soul's will over the will of whatever you were changing. In Transfiguration, the understanding of the raven (which was the end result) was more important than understanding the rabbit. The feeling of the feathers, the playfulness of the flight without worries, and the sharpness of the beak, were elements you should keep in mind. Knowing how the bones were disposed of helped building the image in your head, but was ultimately less important than the result you could see. It would be easier to transfigure a snake out of a gust of wind than out of thin air. Conjuring stone is very difficult because you bring out the stone-ish side, the stone aspect, of the air: the unyielding property of an unrelenting gale.

The serpensortia spell bypassed that part because it included a lot of wiggling in its wand movement: you changed the wiggling into the slithering of a snake, and the step from there to the actual reptile was easy. I had seen enough discovery channel in my previous life that I could conjure every kind of reptile with a very similar wand movement.

So, wandless magic could only bring into existence little changes. Moving around stuff that weighed less than you? Easy peasy. Why your weight is relevant? Because physics is real, even in a world of magic, and you naturally have a rough feeling of the effort you should naturally exert to move stuff around. Cutting curse? Easy enough. Summoning fire? Doable (even if it was conditional on your familiarity with the element). Throwing a lightning bolt from your hand? Forget it, even if it was possible to manage giving someone a nasty shock with a touch. Guiding a natural lightning bolt to fall on a target? Easy. Notice-me-not charms and other compulsions? Impossible. Wrapping shadows around yourself and hiding into a dark corner? Difficult, but doable. Manipulating Dragon-Fire? No chances in hell.

Wands were absolutely overpowered tools because they connected the you-soul to the world-soul and redirected the world's latent will into your intent. The wand core connected you to the wood that was connected to the world, because wand wood remembered better than other tools what it was like to be a part of the whole, while the core remembered better what it meant to be alive as an organic construct with instincts, wants, fears, linking easily with the human wielding the wand.

So, in short, wands were soul/will-bridges. With all of this in mind, alchemy wasn't something that everyone and their mother were able to do, because transmuting changed the soul of what you were tinkering with. So, to recap, spells change the tangible representation of the souls, for a time. Transmuting crafted a permanent change. The World did not like that, so transmuting shapes was doable if you knew what you were doing, permanently turning stone into steel required a shitload of energy. And that was why, in alchemy, after shape manipulation, naturally came energy redirection. Redirecting kinetic energy was the first step, heat the second one, changing one into the other the third one. And finally turning one kind of energy into another while directing a part of it into a transmutation.

And when I say that the World doesn't like permanent changes, I don't mean to say that the world is sentient and aware of everything, like some pantheistic god. It's more like the world has an inertial force that would break whatever transmutation you attempt to do unless you compensated for the changes with energy of some kind.

Maybe all the Narutoverse nature chakra manipulations were an alchemy trick? RoR here I come! I felt I was on my merry way to become a true alchemist. Now that I thought about it, it was likely that Dumbledore was a Transfiguration Monster because he studied alchemy under Flamel.

Now even with my personal Magic Theory, I still had no idea how the fuck I would craft a Philosopher Stone, and I only had a very blurry understanding of sacrificial magic and rituals, all of which was based on my foreknowledge of the events of the Potterverse. Often I was lost in my musings, caressing my wand like usual. Each year she felt more at ease with me: the venting sessions in the RoR attuned me with the thunderbird, who also appreciated me being busy. My endless and yet paced pursuit of knowledge appeased the wood, while my generally relaxed state (thanks occlumency,) helped in not spooking the demiguise, who was also appreciative of me not feeling under scrutiny.

In the summer I wrote to the Divination professor about a dream in which we were using mirrors to see a reflection of the future. To Flitwick about enchanting mirrors and creating pocket dimensions into those. I asked McGonagall about transfiguring light into the reflection of a mirror to create an illusory knight inside of it and then using conjuration to bring it across the mirror into reality.

Yes, I wanted to see the mirror of the Erised, and that was a very Slytherin way to go about it, but I did the same to obtain a time turner, displaying my interest in each of the electives. But The mirror was a shortcut to the Patronus, so, I wanted to see it. I was now in my fourth year, and Harry Potter was sorted into Gryffindor without my interest or interference. On the 31st of October there had been a troll loose in the castle, but I didn't bother changing my routine, keeping up with my usual time turner enhanced 31-hour long days. It was that night that I realized that even if I didn't want to enter in the mess that Voldemort's second war would bring, it would probably find me anyway.

Unless I left Britain immediately after my last year. And I would need money for that. Even if the book on skinning animals had useful spells for treating the leather, becoming a hermit and living alone in the woods did not appease my thunderbird side. Besides, living a life in hiding or exile until 1997 annoyed me a lot. I was sure that there would be a lot of lost money in the Room of the Lost Things, or stuff that I could take and sell at a later date. So, money was not a pressing issue. Learning expansion charms would probably help, and it was scary interesting.

I needed to learn how to enchant. And Practicing both fighting and general venting against the bludgers was fine and dandy, I was pretty sure I could already toss around three random seventh years like ragdolls, however, a muggleborn with my academic record would annoy a lot of purebloods. And Voldemort too.

I was not so stupid as to believe that my existence hadn't already changed the canon Potterverse, even if only a little. I was hoping it would mostly stay on track until I was able to leave to... I don't know, Australia?

However, It was a good thing getting ready for the worst. The worst being facing Voldemort. That was, in fact, literally the second point of the Great Plan to Live Long and Happy.

I had got a bit lost with magic of every kind. So, it was time to up my game a bit. So, From this year forward, I would keep a single subject of research per day, in order to unwind and try to avoid my tendency to jump from one topic to the other another. I would keep a weekly night in the RoR to learn how to control Fiendfyre. I would keep up alchemy practice two nights a week because being able to redirect energy was something with limitless applications. I would ask for a Room in which I could safely learn how to magically enhance my body, being faster and stronger would make me deadlier in close quarters. One night a week to learn how to properly enchant. The sixth night in the RoR I asked for a Room that would teach me how to survive an open war. On Sundays I would study healing charms, wards and practice spells ad nauseam.

During the Cristmas holidays, Flitwick walked me to the Mirror of the Erised,

I whistled, That is some big ass mirror I thought distractedly when we arrived.

"Ten points from Ravenclaw, Mr. Taylor" added my Head of House.

Oh, I said that out loud. I realized belatedly.

"Indeed, Mr. Taylor."

My occlumency kept progressing, but I would need a few more years before I could reign in that absent-mindedness that was now my very well-known quirk.

The mirror showed me images of myself a few years older, now in a proper wizard tower on a high cliff, and of me while exploring the wilderness. There was also a witch on my side, and while she was blurry, I knew she was beautiful, we loved each other, and she was just as magically powerful as I was. Around us, from time to time children were popping around and growing to be extraordinary and happy on their own. And in the background I could see humanoid shapes of other witches and wizards that challenged me and mine, in understanding and prowess, daring each other to reach new heights.

"Mr. Taylor." Flitwick covered the mirror with a sheet.

"You got lost in there for a while" he spoke gently, like he was almost sad of taking me away from my reverie.

I simply smiled to him, now I knew that the thing I wanted above all was proof that this second life of mine was real, and that someday I would no longer be alone in it. My Great Plan to Live Long and Happy was spot on, after all. I slowly unsheathed my wand, focusing on what I did just see, making it real in my head. I added to it the feeling of the thunderbird protecting me while letting loose, the feeling of not having to hide the quirks of the demiguise, along with the steady and sure strength of the Old Tjikko's roots.

With my eyes closed, I raised my wand and uttered "Expecto Patronum." After three seconds, I felt it, filling the air around me, a combination of warm-safety-love-strength-joy that filled my lungs and made me laugh: I was sure it was a perfect Patronus.

"Oh my…" I heard Flitwick say.

I opened my eyes to see a silvery, winged form roaming just under the high ceiling of the room.

"That's one big bird." I said, and my surprise disrupted my focus enough to cause the Patronus to dissipate.

"That, Mr. Taylor, was an Albatros. A very evocative Patronus indeed! A Diomedea exulans if I'm not wrong. I'm glad to have taken the risk with you, if only to see it. A corporeal Patronus at fourteen! I'd say 30 well-earned points to Ravenclaw! Just wait until I tell Minerva! Oho! Why, the last time..." I tuned out the diminutive professor, thinking about the form of my Patronus. It was an occasion for deep introspection if I had ever seen one. What did I know about the Albatros? A symbol of good omen? No, that was only a song by the Iron Maiden. They fly on the sea all the time, without flapping their wings because they're so fucking huge... Oh well, if nothing else, I guess I now have a new topic of research.

I once again turned my focus to the Charms Master, who was about to finish his tirade against Minerva, who apparently had kept using the three eldest Weasleys as examples of perfect students. The eldest had been a good student indeed, but there was a clear difference between academic prowess and the results one could obtain with dedication and...

Ok, maybe he wasn't about to finish.

I studied my wand, for a while, trying to understand what the fleeting sensations reverberating along our bond meant.

I don't know why the mirror would be something that required the professor's presence to be studied, I wanted to tinker with it without other peoples around. "It's a marvelous coincidence that you happened to be studying enchanted mirrors during this summer, I've waited for more than a couple of decades for the opportunity to study this object in particular. I couldn't rob you of the opportunity to experience it, before approaching it with a cold mind in the next days. We only have time until the end of the winter holidays, after all. I would brush up your diagnostic charms, Mr. Taylor, this opportunity isn't something that happens even onceevery century."

I didn't even realize it, but my Head of House had walked me all the way to the common room.

Well, maybe I was still a bit out of it. I participated with Flitwick, Vector and Babbling to the research on the Mirror, along with a couple of other students, more specifically a Slytherin and a Hufflepuff. We roamed around it, it was uncovered, but everyone was careful to not look in the reflection it offered. Nobody missed the fact that they were seventh years, or that out of the students in the House of The Most Brilliant (that was Ravenclaw, by the way), Flitwick chose me for this opportunity. I felt smug. My wand felt the same. Basically, we students randomly shadowed the three professors that were storming around the artifact. While Babbling drew runes with her bare hands! in the air, I managed to recognize at least three arrays that were meant to glow in a pattern that probably meant something only for her. Vector was writing down calculations with a base thirteen that were a bit over my head. Flitwick however was a whirlwind of detection charms linked to several self-writing floating parchments. From time to time I could notice a disapproving frown on the faces of the two female professors, followed by a glance towards their protégés. And that meant Flitwick had taken me under his wing! And it also meant that we students were doing something wrong. While the other two tried something from time to time, I still had to do anything. I didn't think I could outshine even one of the professors in their respective fields.

"The point is understanding how it does what it does right?" I asked.

The sardonic smiles answered my question. I raised my wand, trying to listen through her, instead of focusing on our bond like usual. Closing my eyes, I waited. There was... something. Sparks, fluttering like feathers. I recognized Flitwick, his light burned more bright than the others. I could distinguish the two students from the two female professors, like different shades of the same color. The mirror did not register on my senses, at all.

"Well, we know it's not legilimency." I said out loud, I had my occlumency active when I saw the mirror with my Head of House for the first time. "And it shows you something very personal, very deep." I kept going, noticing that Flitwick stopped doing whatever he was busy with and looked at me, waiting to see if I had a point. "So, either it's sentient and what it shows is a defense or hunt instinct of some kind. Either because it fears that those who gaze into it would wish to destroy it, or because it gains something while its prey is gazing into it." I made a pause there, my favorite professor looked intrigued at the approach I was offering, before concluding: "The more sinister alternative is that somehow it reacts to the soul."

Now Flitwick started casting at double speed after giving me a somewhat startled look. "Could you cast homenum revelio sir?" I asked.

"Way ahead of you, my boy!" the half-goblin answered merrily. After a deep breath, I used one of the occlumency exercises to sharpen my focus: I visualized a gust of air picking up dust particles and forming a little twister in which the dust became shiny, before visualizing it pooling into an amorph mass of mercury. I poured my intent through my wand, and with a twirl, I flattened the mercury turning it into a floating mirror.

"While I've never seen silent conjuring done from a fourth year, Mr. Taylor, is there a point in your show of prowess?" professor Babbling asked.

"I wanted to check if looking into the mirror in a reflection would activate its enchantments." I explained quickly. "Could you take me out of the room if I awaken it?" I continued distractedly. I positioned myself behind the mirror of the Erised, on the left. I moved my conjured construct in a way that would allow me to see the enchanted object. I saw only myself, its magic stayed silent. I was running out of ideas.

"Moppy?" I called.

She appeared with a pop: "Master David calls?"

"Yes, Moppy, can I steal a moment or two of your time? You don't have to if you have something else to do or if you don't want..."

After a second that the house-elf spent thinking about it, she answered: "Master David can ask and Moppet can answer! House Elf enthusiasm is something else. I thought with a smile.

"I would like it if you could tell me what does this mirror feels like." The others looked at me, appalled and baffled at my idea.

"Moppet feels it... Like a door without a handle. And.." In the end, every one of my ideas proved inconclusive.

Days later, my ravens were able to express themselves through a very peculiar selection of words that cost a lot of points to Ravenclaw (I don't know why they loved words like 'fuck' 'cunt' and 'bullshit' so much). Even they couldn't feel anything from the mirror. We determined that it didn't alter your memories, that if you breathed right over the mirror, your breath did not mist up.

We knew lots of things it did not do. And while ultimately interesting, was also useless. In January I ended up once more in Flitwick office because of my ravens. While they were slowly learning to relay messages between me and Kettleburn, they also enjoyed swearing, a lot. So, while the students found them hilarious, I quickly became adept with silencing charms.

Instead of reprimanding me, we discussed my participation in the study of the mirror of the Erised. He was proud. Not because I found any kind of solution to our conundrums, but because I used my head and adapted the tools at my disposal to try to overcome our snags. And I was happy to make him proud.

For a few weeks, I noticed that something was off with Hagrid, but I didn't realize what it was until one morning, during our 5:15 am pre-work tea I noticed the boiling pot on the fire. The fucking dragon. Obviously, I didn't want anything to do with that specific disaster-to-be. But Hagrid had gifted me a giant knife the year before and taught me a lot of things. And most of all, he was a friend.

I've always been a staunch supporter of free will and individual responsibility, so I only said: "Hagrid if you need some kind of extra help, just let me know, ok?".

It shouldn't really have surprised me to receive a request from Hagrid two days later to help hunt down whatever was killing unicorns in the forest. I grabbed several vials before going toward the Forbidden Forest, because if a unicorn was going to die, who was I to squander the spoils? Hagrid handed me my trusted knife (even if it was more like a gladius than anything else). And we waited for the firsties who got themselves landed in detention while petting Kurotsuchi. Yes, I brought my owl, because only an idiot would ignore the help of a night-time predator who could both see and hear better than you.

The kids looked how they were depicted in the movies, and they brought with them a feeling of nervousness that spooked Fang a bit. Malfoy was appalled that anyone in their right mind would ever enter the Forbidden Forest without being forced to. Since I had a little experience with the outskirts of the forest, I ended up in charge of Potter and Draco, along with Fang as well.

As soon as something happened, the dog would run to Hagrid and guide his group to us. The Keeper of Keys didn't need any help in navigating the Forest and would have found us with little effort if needed. Since I couldn't resist, I obviously chose to spook the two eleven year old's.

"So, I'll explain the Rules To Stay Alive that any eleven-year-old brat has to follow." I started talking. "Stay close, keep quiet if you can, shout when something tries to eat you." and before Malfoy started complaining about whatever, I silenced him with a twitch of my wand, who was finding the entire situation interesting. "And spare me your whining, hearing is more important than sight here, and if you talk when it's not needed you effectively cripple our ability to be aware of an attack. However, if I have to silence you, you won't be able to call for help. Do we understand each other?"

After he nodded furiously, I lifted my spell before conjuring some mercury and explaining to them to keep an eye out for it. After doing that, I added 'Why unicorn's blood and Mercury look so much like molten silver' to a spare parchment I had with me, before turning my back on the eleven years old wizards before I summoned a few floating lights over our heads, so we could see where we were putting our feet, before leading and proceeded to lead them deeper into the the way, I collected three unicorn hair strands that had gotten entangled into a few bushes and I filled a vial and half with unicorn's blood. We stumbled upon Quirrel-mort and several things happened at the same time.

Fang bolted, along with Malfoy.

Harry Potter fell on his knees clutching his forehead.

I snapped my wand forward like it was the handle of a whip.

From the tip of the ancient wood a bolt of lightning shot toward its target. White plasma arching in the night, followed by a thunderclap.

Quirrel-mort was flung back further into the woods.

While I was wondering why an electrical current would ever fling someone away instead of grounding them, I strode towards the dying unicorn. "Are you okay brat?" I asked Harry distractedly, I knew he could handle whatever shit happened to him, but he was eleven for the love of Merlin. I sat on my haunches near the wounded neck of the wheezing beast, and focusing on the images of blood vessels closing, blood clotting, muscle re-growing and skin being knitted together as good as knew, I pushed my will through my wand. I was deep into it, after a while, however, I noticed that something was resisting the change I was willing into existence. It wasn't anything rabid or hateful, like I suspected Quirrel-mort's magic would feel like. It was more similar to... distrust? Ok, I called bullshit. The unicorn's magic was working against mine because the creature didn't trust me?

Oh, I guess it can tell that in my mind I am an adult.

"Brat, come here please."

After few seconds Harry Fucking Potter was there, with a determined glint in his eyes.

"I need you to convince the unicorn I'm trying to help; she doesn't trust me and she is refusing my healing spells." The kid looked at me like I was completely crazy, but wisely swallowed whatever 'i don't know how' thought he had before simply asking: "How?".

I have no idea.

"Put your hands on her neck, look at her in the eye and talk to her. Explain that I'm trying to help. Focus on warmth, happiness and calmness." I explained.

I was bullshitting my way through the problem, but my idea made sense in a certain way: physical contact let souls leave an impression on each other, and Harry Potter was as innocent as they came. After maybe a couple of minutes, I noticed the mistrust give way to wary acceptance. Slowly, I healed the unicorn mare, who as soon as possible jumped up, walking around the clearing, watching me the entire time. She turned her behind toward us and flicked her tail: A single strand fell to the ground, like a silvery spider web floating in the winds.

I picked it up putting it in an empty pocket: that was an invitation to wandcrafting if I ever saw one.

"Well done Harry Potter." I commented quietly, he now deserved to be called by his own name.