Harry Potter and the Physical Adept
Chapter 10: Of Elves and Wands
It was six in the morning when Jason dropped them off at the King's Cross Station, well before the usual morning rush of commuters, so the platform was empty of people.
Never one to waste time, Harry made a beeline for the barrier that led directly into Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, Liv two steps behind him.
"That's where we're going, right?" asked the dragon-in-girl's-form, pointing, as the barrier came into sight.
"What gave it away?"
"The magic wrapped around the barrier."
"Then you know the answer."
Just before Harry reached the barrier, though, Liv grabbed him by the shoulder. "Wait!"
"What is it?"
"More magic just appeared. It's different, maybe even dangerous."
"Can you tell what kind it is?"
"I've never seen anything like it before."
Reaching into his pocket, Harry drew out a dice and tossed it at the barrier; rather than passing through like he had expected, it bounced off and rolled away.
"Somebody must have erected a magic wall over the barrier," said the boy, picking up the dice from the ground. "Hold up, I've got this.
"Perdo vim."
It was a much lesser version of the magic he had used on the magic mirror the previous term, as he did not want to disrupt the normal enchantment on the barrier. Still, a familiar wave of weariness washed over him, and it took him a second to regain his concentration.
"You cleared it," Liv said, and Harry started back towards the barrier again, only to be stopped a moment later as she put a hand on his shoulder again. "It's back."
"That means the source is nearby, watching."
"What's the plan?"
"I'm going to melt it again. Keep an eye out for the point of origin when they recast it."
"Wilco."
"Perdo vim."
A moment of silence followed as the dragon looked around. "Nothing. Again."
"Perdo vim."
A beat.
"Again."
"Perdo vim."
"Again."
"Perdo vim."
"Got them."
"Get them, and melt any other magic they try."
"Wilco."
The dragon was off like a rocket, vanishing in a blur of motion that streaked across the platform, coming to a stop in a dark corner, a small, gangly creature struggling in her grasp.
"Let go of Dobby!" it said, thrashing helplessly in the dragon's hands as the boy closed the gap in a much more human speed.
"Who sent you?" Harry asked.
"Harry Potter!" said the creature. "So long has Dobby…"
The Hermetic mage nodded to the dragon, who applied pressure, forcing the creature to stop mid-sentence and squeak like a rubber duck.
"Who sent you?" the Boy-Who-Lived growled again, this time violence more evident in his voice.
"Dobby has come to warn Harry Potter, even if he must shut his ears in the oven door later:
"Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts!"
"Telling me not to do something just makes me want to do it more. Who sent you?"
"No, no, no!" squeaked the creature. "Harry Potter must stay where he is safe; if he goes back to Hogwarts, he will be in mortal danger."
"I just call that Saturday. Now, who sent you? Voldemort?"
"Not, not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, sir," the creature said, shaking his head slowly, like he was trying to pass along a message.
"Dumbledore? Was it Dumbledore?"
"Albus Dumbledore is the greatest headmaster Hogwarts has ever had!" the creature squeaked, as the dragon applied further pressure.
"I don't think we're going to get anything useful out of it," Liv said.
The Hermetic mage considered the house elf; just like it was in a vampire's nature to hunt and feed, it was in this creature's nature to follow its master's directions.
"You're probably right," Harry agreed. "Put it down."
Liv's lips curled into a vicious smile, her fingers tightening around the creature, whose already large eyes widened even further as the sickening crunch of bones breaking came from the grasp around it.
The last thing the creature that called itself Dobby ever did in its existence was scream in pain as Liv crushed it to death with her bare hands, splattering blood and viscera all over the platform floor and walls as its head exploded like a water balloon.
Harry reminded himself once more to never get on the dragon's bad side.
Once again, it was time for crime scene clean up. At least this time, Liv was around to watch and learn the magic involved, so she would be able to sanitize evidence by herself in the future.
~ooOoo~
"Are you always early?"
Harry sensed the annoyance in Hermione's voice as she came into the train compartment. He checked his wristwatch; it was eight-thirty, thirty minutes before departure.
"If you're not early, you're late," Liv said without looking up from her Game Boy.
"What she said," Harry agreed.
Stowing her trunk in the overhead rack, Hermione sat down next to Liv and across from Harry, peering over her shoulder to look at handheld game console in her hand.
Then, she asked, "Did you get her everything she'll need for school?"
"Pretty sure I did," Harry said.
"Books? Cauldrons? Robes? Wand?"
"Drek," swore the boy, realizing the dragon didn't have a wand.
"It's not like I need a wand to use magic," Liv said.
"It's not for that, it's for your cover," Harry said.
"It's too late now," the Ravenclaw said. "It'd take at least twenty minutes to get to Diagon Alley and back, and who knows how long it'll take Ollivander to find her a wand."
"It's never too late," Harry said, opening his haversack. "I'll be right back."
The Hermetic mage tumbled into the haversack, leaving the girl and the dragon in silence.
"So, how was your summer?" Hermione asked.
"It was good," Liv said, without looking up from the Game Boy. "I washed dishes at a restaurant and learned how to cook a little bit, discovered food is more delicious when you prepare it carefully first, went to espionage camp, bought a Super Nintendo and a Game Boy, went to a strip club, where I learned about human anatomy, beat a vampire in a fight, and learned more magic by watching Bear."
"Wait, what?"
"Washed dishes at a restaurant."
"After that."
"Learned more magic by watching Bear?"
"Who's 'Bear'? And no, before that!"
"That's Harry; Emily liked to call him 'Hair-Bear'."
"Emily?"
"One of the front of house staff."
"What's that?"
"A waitress."
"Oh. Wait, what did you say before that bit about learning magic?"
"Fought a vampire?"
"Before that!"
"Went to a strip club?"
"Yes, that!"
"What about it?"
"You're too young to go to one! What was Harry doing?"
"At work. He was a prep cook."
It was just then that Harry climbed out of his haversack with a length of wooden rod in hand, and Hermione slapped him across the face.
"What was that about?" he asked, rubbing his cheek.
"I think she's angry I went to a strip club," the dragon said with a shrug.
"I'm livid," Hermione agreed. "What were you thinking? She's too young to see those things."
"I was at work, so I was probably thinking about the prep list. I didn't find out until I got back and saw she was anatomically correct, and that's a good thing, since people are not Barbie dolls," Harry said.
"She's too young!" Hermione repeated, fuming.
Harry shrugged. That wasn't a problem he could fix anyways, since it was in the past.
Right now, he was focused on the length of wood in front of him.
Taking out his monoknife, he flipped it open, carefully splitting the wood evenly lengthwise before closing it back up and putting it in his pocket.
"I need one of your hairs," he told the dragon, who reached up and plucked one from her head before trying to hand it to the boy. "And I need you to suspend it in the air, pulled taut."
Without a word or looking up from her game, the dragon let go of the hair, and it lifted out of her fingers, floating into the air and pulling itself into a straight line.
"One gold piece, one silver piece," Harry said, and the mokeskin pouch around his neck produced the coins he asked for, which he placed on a book he pulled out of his bag.
Forming a circle with his hands, thumbs on top and fingers underneath with his right hand overlapping his left in the zen kuji-in, he focused his mind and incanted, "Muto terram."
On top of the book, the coins slowly deformed, growing longer and thinner over the better part of a minute, until each was a pile of metal thread. Taking a pencil from his haversack, the Hermetic mage carefully split it open with his switchblade, peeling away the wood until all that remained was the graphite core. He once again formed the zen kuji-in with his hands, and once again incanted, "Muto terram", leading to the graphite to first lengthen and grow thinner, becoming a filament with a crystalline appearance.
Lifting the three threads, Harry carefully began to weave them together with the hair floating in the air, creating a single interwoven plait.
"All right, I've got it," he said, and the dragon released her magical hold on the hair, letting it drop into the boy's hands.
Taking the braid of crystal, gold, silver and dragon's hair, he placed it on the center of the split wooden rod, resembling the two halves together before he brought his hands together, fingers interlocked with knuckles out and fingers in, the jin kuji-in. "Creo herbam."
The two halves of wood melded back together until it was once again one solid piece, which he handed to the dragon. "Your wand."
"You can't just make a wand!" Hermione protested.
"I just did," Harry said.
Hermione looked annoyed for a moment; then, her curiosity got the better of her. "What is it?"
"Gidgee with a braid of diamond, dragon's hair, gold and silver, about a foot and a half long."
"Fancy," Liv said.
"It's basically a slottin' truncheon."
As if to give the point emphasis, the dragon-in-a-girl's-body swung it a few times, cutting the air as she did so.
"I like it," said the boy's adopted daughter with a grin. "Doesn't feel like it'll break easily."
Harry reached into his haversack, retrieving his walking stick; he had not used it much over the summer, as he was only faking a limp for the benefit of the magical society, but now, it was once again time to resume that part of his cover.
"Hey, we match!" Liv observed. Then, her brow furrowed. "What's with the runes?"
Harry suddenly realized the dragon had not really seen the cane since she understood the use of runes as an enchanting mechanism; passing Astral power through the cane as he held it between them, he let go of it and it remained floating in the air.
"Go ahead, try to move it," he said, and the dragon-in-girl's-form grasped it with one hand, a confident look on her face, only to have it be replaced by a look of surprise, then concern, as she tried with all her might but could not make it budge.
"What is this?" she asked, finally letting go of the cane.
"I call it an 'immovable rod'," Harry said.
"That's amazing," Liv said. "There must be hundreds of things you could do with it."
"What's so special about it?" Hermione asked.
"Is she an idiot?" the dragon asked.
"No, she just has a severe lack of imagination," the boy answered.
"I'm right here, you know," Hermione said.
"Sorry," Liv apologized. "It's just, if you can't see the possibilities it presents, I don't know what to tell you. It's amazingly versatile, a complete paradigm shift!"
"I'm glad somebody appreciates it," the Hermetic mage said, and he and the dragon bumped forearms, a habit the two had picked up working in the kitchen, where hand-to-hand contact was a risk for cross-contamination. Flushing the Astral power from the cane, he caught it as it tumbled out of the air, no longer fixed in place.
"I still don't understand how you can just use spontaneous magic like that," Hermione said.
"Like I said, you have a severe lack of imagination," Harry said. "How much progress have you made with the Hermetic arts over the summer?"
"I finally learned how to fly," said the Ravenclaw, her chest puffing pride.
"Anything else?" asked the Hufflepuff.
"I learned how to fly!" Hermione reiterated.
"Through what method?" Harry asked.
"Air lifts me off the ground and moves me around," said the bushy-haired girl proudly.
"And that took you the whole of summer vacation?" the boy asked, clearly unimpressed. "Depending on how you do it, flight isn't even that difficult to achieve, and your version only does one thing."
"Well, excuse me for not living up to your standards," the girl spat in indignation.
"Could you even make me fly with it?" Harry asked.
The Ravenclaw froze, her anger rapidly turning into dismay.
"No," she mumbled, defeated.
"There's a life lesson here, isn't there?" the dragon interjected.
"You tell me," the boy said.
"It's 'don't get cocky', isn't it?"
Harry shrugged.
"Well, it's the first spell you developed yourself, so it's bound to be limited in scope," he said.
"What was your first spell, then?"
"Knock."
"The one that unlocks doors?"
"Well, I had to get past getting locked in a cupboard from the outside."
"What spell should I develop next?"
"Why are you asking me for?"
The Ravenclaw looked taken aback. "But…"
"It's your magic, your time, your development cycle," Harry said. "Figure it out yourself."
Author's Notes: When you combine Liv's Astral Perception with dispel magic from Dungeons & Dragons, this would be logical way for this version of Harry to handle the barrier on the barrier. Note that he would never have interacted with Dobby prior to the train station given the wards on his safe house would make magical entry impossible and his own people know to contact him via snail mail or telephone.
If you thought I wasn't going to knock off major characters, or have them die gruesome deaths at the hands of the series regulars, you're in for a bad time. I'm not saying this is Game of Thrones, but, given the amount of bodies Harry himself has already dropped, it was only a matter of time until one of the names got put in the ground, or in the case, all over it.
Before anybody questions why he spared Patience but had Dobby put down, consider this: with the vampire, it wasn't personal. That's a very big difference, because one's just a random act of violence, while the other's a targeted attacked. One is a random monster in the dark, the other is an enemy agent.
Liv may have been learning the wrong lessons with Harry.
Who says you can't just make a wand? If its owner doesn't need one to use magic, you most certainly can.
As foreshadowed in Hermetic Arts, Hermione's rote magic tends towards the overly specific, as demonstrated with her version of a flight spell, which can only make herself fly and nothing else. Contrast this with Harry's use of multi-purpose rote magic like alter self, and there's already evidence in how the two have differing perspectives on how to use magic.
I know this is a shorter chapter, which is why it's the first part of a two-chapter update; I tried several times to put this and the next chapter together, but they just didn't fit together tonally, so I decided to keep them separate, even if I upload them together.
Once again, many, many thanks to my long-suffering editor, Romantically Distant, for all their hard work. And now you've read this chapter, feel free to leave a review or just PM me.