Harry Potter and the Physical Adept

Chapter 13: Prodigy Diligent Asset Friend

Harry awoke in a tangle of limbs and blankets, Liv draped over him and Luna wrapped around one of his arms. Carefully extracting himself from the jumble, he checked his watch, then went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and shower.

By the time he came out of the bathroom, Liv was up and out of bed, pulling on a tank top with a pair of knickers already on as he came out of the door hand-drying his hair.

"Morning," said the dragon, tossing a handful of clothes to Harry, who caught them. "I started the rice cooker; it should be ready by the time we get back."

"What do you want for brekky?" Harry asked, as he put on pants and T-shirt, then stepped into a pair of tracksuit trousers.

"Karaage and shiozake," said the dragon, pulling on a pair of shorts. "Sashimi, omuraisu, and miso ramen. Shall we go?"

"Boots," said the boy. "Don't forget your boots."

~ooOoo~

The first thing Harry and Liv did when they returned to their room after the morning's run and calisthenics was jump in the shower to wash off the dirt and sweat they had accumulated from the exercise.

Then, the two were back in the industrial kitchen, making breakfast. In a way, Harry was glad Liv had worked at Jade Garden with him, because even though she did not have a chance to do any prep or cooking while she was employed there, she learned everything she could simply by watching, and in doing so, could prepare meals with him now they had their own kitchen.

Luna was just waking up as the two came out of the trunk with the industrial kitchen with trays of food in their hands.

"Something smells good," said the girl dreamily, rubbing her eyes and stretching.

"Could be the ramen," the dragon said, nodding towards one of the three steaming bowls, which the boy took off one tray and put onto an empty one, passing it over to the naked girl sitting in the bed.

"Chopsticks or fork?" he asked.

"Chopsticks, if you show me how to use them," said the blonde.

"Sure," Harry said, picking them up to demonstrate. "Just hold them like you're holding a pencil or a quill, then form a fulcrum with them just behind your thumb, like this."

"That's not how you're supposed to use chopsticks," the dragon said.

"It works though, doesn't it?" Harry said, with a shrug, handing the chopsticks to the girl, who did as the boy demonstrated. "There you go. Now, it's just practice."

The girl started to pick up some noodles with the chopsticks, managing to get them a few inches out of the soup before they slipped from her grasp.

"Here, use this," the boy said, offering the Luna an Asian soup spoon.

"Thank you," said the girl, once again picking up some noodles with the chopsticks; this time, rather than trying to raise them to her lips, she instead placed the noodles in the spoon and brought that to her mouth instead.

"See, you're a natural," Harry said, carrying a tray of food over to one of the desks and sitting down at it, opening up a book and setting it aside as he began to eat and write at the same time.

"That's a neat trick," said the blonde, biting into the sliced pork belly that was sitting in the broth.

Liv was already eating, alternating between bites of the noodles, grilled salmon, fried chicken, raw fish and egg-covered fried rice.

~ooOoo~

Filius Flitwick had been the professor of Charms at Hogwarts for many a year, and had seen many things during his tenure.

It was the first Charms lesson for first-year students, and Olivia Baldursdottir, the daughter of Harry Potter, was doing the impossible.

The Wand-Lighting Charm, Lumos, is a very basic charm; in short, it created a light at the tip of its caster's wand. The intensity and color was always the same, and it had no special effects beyond illumination and warding off spectral entities and being a bit on the warm side.

Such was not the case with Olivia Baldursdottir; with a simple incantation of Lumos, she had created a light at the tip of her wand, as was expected of the spell, but then repeated it the exact same way and created a light of varying colors, intensities of brightness and temperature, and even somehow created an effect where the light blinked rapidly, nearly sending one of her fellow first-year students into an epileptic fit.

Then, she made lights appear far away from the tip of her wand, dance in the air, and even created a silhouette of a person with light, all by casting Lumos.

It should all be impossible, but there she was, doing it like it was no different than breathing, even with her lackadaisical pronunciation and wand movements.

Filius Flitwick would have been amazed if his mind could get past the impossibility of what he was witnessing the first-year Hufflepuff do; unfortunately, he could not, and thus instead stood with his mouth hanging wide open as Olivia achieved increasingly ludicrous effects by just waving her wand around and mumbling "Lumos".

~ooOoo~

"Mister Potter."

Harry stopped dead in his tracks at the familiar voice of the Herbology professor and the head of Hufflepuff, causing Luna to nearly run into him, tripping on her own feet in her haste to avoid the collision, though Liv caught her easily by the elbows before she could take a tumble to the floor of the Hufflepuff common room.

"Thank you," said the girl to the dragon, favoring her with a grateful smile.

"I'm listening," growled the boy. He had an idea where this was going.

"Mister Potter, you simply cannot share a room with Miss Baldursdottir and Miss Lovegood," the Herbology professor said. "And Miss Baldursdottir, Miss Lovegood, you two must return to the girls' dormitory in the evening."

"Why?" asked the dragon.

"There's no telling what boys might do with you sleeping in their dormitory," said the woman. "It's why there are charms preventing them from entering the girls' dormitory."

"So, you're saying girls won't do those things to boys when they're asleep, which is why there aren't charm preventing them from entering the boys' dormitory?" the dragon asked.

"Exactly."

"I've been to Vegas," Liv said. "I've known girls who happily do those kind of things to boys while they're asleep.

"Besides, if you're worried about Bear, he's my dad; he wouldn't do anything like that to me, so there's no reason to worry about it."

"Nonetheless, he's a boy, and you're a girl, so it's indecent for you to share a room."

"I'm won't stop living with my dad just because you're old-fashioned and squeamish."

"Miss Baldursdottir, I simply must insist..."

"You can insist all you want; I don't care what you insist on. There's nobody in the world I trust more than Bear, and that includes you. In fact, this is making me trust you less and less, because now all I'm seeing here is you trying to break up my family."

The thick-set woman was taken aback; even though the room had started off on her side, almost indignant at the idea of the mixed-gender living arrangement, the mood had clearly shifted based on the whispers and murmurs of the students scattered throughout the room. She clearly had not expected this, and looked to Luna for some kind of support.

"Miss Lovegood, surely you must..."

"I'm staying with Liv and Gideon," announced the blonde gaily.

"Who?" asked the professor, confused.

"Tolliver."

"I'm sorry, who is that?"

The blonde turned to the boy she had nearly crashed into moments earlier. "Doesn't anybody else here know your proper name, Phoenix?" she asked.

"Just you, Dia," Harry said lightly.

"Well, I'm going to stay right where I am, thank you very much," Luna said. "I'm already unpacked and everything, and having to move out would just be a bother. Besides, I trust Liv, and if she trusts Everest, then I do too."

The professor turned to the boy for support.

"Surely, Mister Potter..."

"What are you going to do, fail me in Herbology?" the boy asked, interrupting the professor. "I failed three courses last year; what's adding one more to the list going to do? Besides, I could always just owl Miss Skeeter; I'm sure she'd have a field day when she learns of how professors at Hogwarts interfere with the lives of students who are family to each other."

The heavy-set woman froze, unsure how to respond to the blatant threat of being torn apart in the press; threatening somebody with public humiliaton was not a very Hufflepuff thing to do, and yet, defending one's friends and family was themost Hufflepuff thing somebody could do..

The boy simply walked by her, Liv and Luna two steps behind him.

"You girls want something to eat?" he asked the two following him, as though the encounter had not just happened.

"Tonkatsu and omuraisu," Liv said.

"That ramen from this morning," Luna added.

~ooOoo~

"You both woke up early again today," Luna observed, as Harry and Liv came into the room. "What are you two doing so early in the morning?"

"Exercise," Liv said, as she started to disrobe in preparation to shower.

"Do you do it every day?" asked Luna.

"Every day, rain or shine," Harry confirmed. "Training your body's just as important as training your mind."

"If you'd wake me up tomorrow, I'd love to join you," Luna said.

"Okay," said Liv.

~ooOoo~

The first lesson in second-year Transfiguration started with a practical portion, a retread of a spell to make any object rubbery and bouncy that had been taught in Charms the previous year as the Softening Charm.

Harry was not having a good day; as he had expected, the summer away from Hogwarts had done nothing to change his inability to use magic with his wand, and it was frustrating to once again be faced with his limitations. While his classmates, Hufflepuffs and—unlike the previous year—Ravenclaws, were all performing well compared to him, and it was the first time he witnessed first-hand how his best friend could start with nothing at the beginning of a practical lesson and properly produce the effects of the spell in question by the end of the period.

The unfortunate side effect of having a spellcasting course with the Ravenclaws came at the end of the lesson; even though he would rather do anything else, Harry found himself being dragged into a spare classroom by Hermione, and spent the next hour working with her on trying to get the spell to work for him with the wand after confirming he could produce the effect through spontaneous Hermetic magic.

The Boy-Who-Lived knew his best friend meant well, but sometimes, all he wanted to do was to get some time alone to himself to calm down after something as frustrating as that happened.

~ooOoo~

"I know you said to find you after the Welcome Feast, but I asked around and nobody knew where you were," said the blonde boy as he intercepted Harry Potter in the Hufflepuff common room during the third afternoon of the term.

Harry considered his approach for a second, then clapped Colin on the shoulder. "It's my fault, really," said the Hermetic mage. "I didn't know I'd be moving rooms on the first night."

"So, why did you want to see me after the Feast?" asked the first-year Hufflepuff.

"I need your help," Harry said. "It's going to be really time consuming, and it might make people think you're weird."

"Anything you need," agreed the blonde Hufflepuff without a moment's hesitation.

"Aren't you still disappointed I'm nothing like the hero you thought I'd be?" Harry asked.

"At first, I was a little bit, but then I figured there must be a good reason why you do the things you do; I'm just a first-year who didn't even know about magic until this past June, but you defeated You-Know-Who, so if you need something, there must be a good reason for it."

"That's fair, I suppose," said the Hermetic mage. "I need you to run surveillance on Dumbledore."

"I don't know what that means," Colin said.

"I want you to follow Dumbledore around without getting caught when you're not in class, and take photos of him whenever he goes somewhere, talks to somebody or does something suspicious," Harry explained.

"I could follow him and take pictures, but I don't know about not getting caught."

"Well, come on, then, I'll show you some tricks for tailing somebody and not getting made."

~ooOoo~

"Transfiguration is some of the most complicated and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," said the Professor Minerva McGonagall, before turning her desk into a pig. "Anyone…"

Olivia Baldursdottir waved her club of a wand over her desk in a sloppy imitation of the professor's, repeating the incantation with an impression of the professor's that might as well have been a parody.

Her desk too turned into a pig.

It immediately tried to run away.

The young first-year Hufflepuff waved her wand haphazardly again, and the pig transformed back into a desk, skidding across the floor as its previous momentum carried it along.

"Anyone, and that includes you Miss Baldursdottir, messing around in my class will leave and not come back."

Liv turned into an exact duplicate of the cat the professor had been just minutes before, then said, in clearly human words, "But I'm just doing exactly you did."

As the other first-year students gasped in surprise, Minerva McGonagall suddenly felt the beginnings of a migraine headache at the back of her skull.

~ooOoo~

Luna impressed Harry.

From what she had told him, she was not accustomed to exercising, but she had done the morning's calisthenics and mile-long run without a single complaint, doing her best to stay with him and Liv even though she was visibly struggling with some of the endurance aspects of the regimen. Only when they finished the run did she collapse onto the ground, laying on her back as she panted raggedly, trying to catch her breath and watching as Harry and Liv began circling each other, slapping at each other's hand as they prepared to wrestle each other to the ground as part of their hand-to-hand combat training

"You did good," he told Luna as he stood over her, dirty with grass, dirt and sweat once he and Liv had sparred intensely for nearly half an hour. "You need to warm down though, or you might hurt something."

"Okay," said the girl, reaching up, and Harry gave her a hand, helping her to her feet. "Show me what to do."

Falling in line at Liv's flank, Luna began following her example, doing the same exercises as the dragon, albeit a half-beat after her. A half-step behind her, Harry did the same, though he knew the order and number of repetitions of the exercises himself.

When the exercises for the morning were finally complete, Luna was soaked in sweat but glowing from the workout, a look that saw her pale skin flushed pink.

"That's a wrap," Liv told the other first-year Hufflepuff.

"I'm all icky with sweat," the blonde announced. "Let's go take a shower."

Harry wasn't sure if the shower in their dormitory could fit all three of them at once, but now as good a time as any to find out.

~ooOoo~

With Madam Rolanda Hooch under inquiry by the Board of Governors following the revelation in The Daily Prophet that her inaction had led to Harry's broken leg and subsequent refusal to even attempt to mount a broom, a temporary substitute for the position of flying instructor had been hired in the form of Rowan Murphy, a professional Quidditch player currently in-between teams. A journeywoman with a versatile skillset, capable of playing any position on the field as well as a utility player who primarily rode the bench as a multi-positional backup could be expected to, she was in her mid-thirties, just out of her athletic prime, and considering a change in career as she saw her employment opportunities in the League begin to dwindle.

It was the first time she had ever seen the Boy-Who-Lived in person, and even though she had seen the photograph of him included with the article in Prophet, seeing him in person cemented just how different than her expectations of him were from the reality. Even though she had read about the abuse he had suffered at the hands of his aunt and uncle, she had not expected the wiry boy to have such sharp eyes and to be constantly looking around, as if trying to spot threats to his being.

After giving tasks to the other students, Rowan approached Harry carefully, not wanting to scare off the boy who was attending Flying for the first time since his accident but also wanting to help him discover the pleasures of flight.

"Flying's not really that hard, you know," said the Quidditch professional, as she got within talking range of the Boy-Who-Lived.

"I know," he said, standing next to the broomstick assigned to him. "Up!"

Nothing happened.

"I guess we should start you off on the basics," Rowan said. "When you say 'Up!' to the broom, you should try to imagine it flying up and into your hand."

The boy gave her a look, then nodded and focused on the broom.

"Up!"

For a moment, the broomstick did not respond; then, it twitched in the grass before suddenly lifting from the ground and slapping against the boy's outstretched palm, then shot off like it was fired out of a cannon, crashing into the wall of the castle and fragmenting apart.

"I don't think brooms like me very much," the boy deadpanned, as other students ran from the rain of splintered wood falling out of the sky. "At least I didn't try to grab it this time, or it would have been me in the wall again."

"You just need practice," Rowan said encouragingly. "The first time I flew on a broom, I was terrified I'd fall off and break my neck, and when I did fall off, I hurt my ankle, but I never gave up and I ended up good enough to play in the League."

"I don't think I'd care to play Quidditch, but I see your point," Harry said.

"Good. Now let's try again."

~ooOoo~

"I'm sorry, Harry," said Colin, as he ran in front of Harry just as the latter entered the Hufflepuff common room. The first-year Hufflepuff had clearly been waiting for him.

"We need to stop meeting like this," said the Hermetic mage, reaching into his pocket and taking out a two-way radio, which he handed the younger boy. "Take this and contact me on the second channel if you ever need to find me; we'll use it to arrange meetings everyday to go over the results of your surveillance and switch out the battery."

"Thank you," said the blonde boy gratefully, before frowning. "I'm so sorry."

"About what?" asked the Hermetic mage.

"I tried to tail Dumbledore last night, but Filch caught me and now I've got detention, so I can't follow him today."

"Don't worry about it."

"I wish Filch wasn't around; if he wasn't, sneaking around at night would be so much easier."

"Things have a way of working themselves out."

~ooOoo~

Rowan Murphy wasn't sure what to expect from Olivia Baldursdottir after her first time teaching Harry Potter. Despite her patience and best efforts, Harry had yet to take to the sky on a broom, though he had gotten much better at getting brooms to not smash into walls after he called it into his hand, and that made her wonder how the daughter of the Boy-Who-Lived would fare.

To her surprise, Olivia was a complete natural, the broom obeying her like it was an extension of her body and will. While other students struggled to control their broomsticks, the first-year Hufflepuff was doing loops, rolls and twists that would make some of her colleagues in the league jealous, all while riding sidesaddle.

With that in mind, she paid the Norwegian girl little mind as she went from student to student, coaching them through how to improve their flying technique. Only when she heard shrieks of surprise did she look up, and she saw Olivia holding onto her broom with one hand as it raced sunwards, far too fast for the first-year to control.

"Here, girl!" Rowan shouted, and her broomstick, a vintage Moontrimmer she had purchased, restored, modified to suit her needs and then named Cloudrunner, flew into her hand from where it was leaning against the Hogwarts castle wall, flipping end over end through the air before she caught it and swung herself onto the ascending broom, aiming to catch the Norwegian girl before she got hurt from any number of things.

Suddenly, Olivia lost her hold on her broom and started to plummet groundwards; below her, Rowan heard gasps of horror coming from the students who could only watch and pushed Cloudrunner to go faster, wanting more than anything to prevent an incident like the previous year's with Harry Potter to mar her tenure at Hogwarts, no matter how temporary it might be.

In midair, the broomstick Olivia had been riding performed a lazy eight, followed by a snap roll, then suddenly went into a steep dive, as though trying to catch its previous rider; before Rowan reached the falling girl, the broom had caught up to her, and the first-year Hufflepuff grabbed it with one hand, swinging herself back onto the broom with a flip that landed her in a sidesaddle position even as the broomstick hairpin turned into a rapid ascent.

As fast as Cloudrunner could go, Rowan barely managed to catch up to Olivia as she finally leveled out and floated in the air in a leisurely manner, laying flat on her back with the broomstick resting against her spine, as though she was lazing about on a hammock.

"Olivia, you shouldn't do that, it's dangerous," Rowan called from a distance.

As if to punctuate her point, the Norwegian girl suddenly lost her balance, slipping off the broomstick, which seemed to suddenly lose all ability to stay aloft and plunge groundwards alongside her. Rather than panic, though, Rowan saw unadulterated pleasure in the girl's face as she plummeted groundward in freefall, and she dove Cloudrunner after her, praying to Merlin she'd catch Olivia in time.

It turned out to be unnecessary, though, as the seemingly lifeless broomstick suddenly straightened out and accelerated into a dive until it was beneath her, catching the Norwegian lightly and cushioning the impact of her bottom landing on the seat by adjusting its descent to the girl regaining her seat.

"You don't need to worry, she's taking good care of me," the girl called to Rowan, who was in a state of shock, as she gave the broom she was seated on an affectionate pat; even as a professional Quidditch player, she had never seen such displays of skill with a broom, especially with a broom as old and battered as the one used at Hogwarts for flying lessons.

"How did you do that?" Rowan yelled to the girl.

"I told her what to do after I let go, and then I let go, and she did what I asked her to," Olivia shouted back. "You see, she didn't want to disappoint me."

"Well, I think what you did was amazing, and I've never seen anything like it before, but you shouldn't do that kind of thing," Rowan told the Norwegian. "It's very dangerous, and other students might try to copy you and end up hurting themselves."

"Okay, I'll go join Luna, then," Olivia agreed, rapidly descending until she adjacent to the blonde girl flying her broom languidly with a dreamy expression on her face.

Rowan considered recommending Olivia to the Hufflepuff Quidditch team but decided against it; as far as she could tell, the girl enjoyed the sensation of freefall far more than the thrill of flight, and she did not think the first-year Norwegian Hufflepuff had a disposition suitable for any of the positions on a Quidditch team, even if she had the talent to play any of them.

~ooOoo~

"Is this what you do for fun on the weekends?" Colin asked, looking around the room.

Though the seventh-year students from the previous semester had graduated, many students from the upper forms brought new students from their houses along to the gaming club's inaugural meeting of the new school year. After the club's success during the previous year, Harry had taken care to expand his collection of board and social games, not wanting to have to wear out as many decks of cards as he had the previous year, and with his two-way radio, Hermione in Ravenclaw, and Nevile and Fay in Gryffindor, communicating the location where the club would meet to those who wanted to attend was now a much easier task.

Having been taught GUCS by Patience during the back half of August, Hermione had started a game with several other students, finding the rules-light and free-form nature of the system far more appealing to her peers than the highly granular and rules-heavy system that was Dungeons & Dragons.

Liv and Luna were with a small group of first-year students, playing a game of Uno, while Fay and Neville were floating around the club meeting, surreptitiously selling baked goods.

"This is where I come to unwind after a long week of lessons and studying," Harry lied. "I started this last year after playing Battleship with one of our housemates and it drew a crowd, so I thought it'd be a great idea to get everybody interested together to enjoy each other's company and play a few games."

Colin looked around like he had his head on a swivel as Harry gave him a brief history of the club, gawking at the numerous out-of-uniform students gathered in the abandoned classroom, enjoying themselves without having to worry about inter-house relationships.

"Everyone here seems to be having fun," observed the first-year Hufflepuff.

"That's because they are," Harry said. "Everybody's here to play something or just hang out; there's no wrong way to enjoy your time here except starting a fight."

"Hey, Potter, who's the kid?" called a round-faced boy seated at table, playing Chinese chequers with five other students.

"This is Colin Creevey," Harry said, introducing the blonde boy. "He's new to Hogwarts."

"Hullo Colin," said the boy at the table, "Have you ever played Chinese chequers?"

The first-year Hufflepuff shook his head, and the round-faced boy immediately launched into an explanation of the game, which Colin nodded along to.

He was going to fit in just fine.

Author's Notes: I meant for the title to be a play on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but describing the four major characters featured in this chapter in ways that would immediately identify each while also juxtaposing them; Liv's methodology is in sharp contrast to Harry's, while Harry handles the Luna and the Colin in completely different ways.

Wand magic has always seemed extremely specific to me, where a spell does just one specific action. Enter Liv, who can see magic as it's being used and replicate the effect, even playing around with and altering it at will; anybody who sees that and doesn't understand it would rightfully be shocked by it, because it would seem like the rules are being broken.

I don't believe for a second that McGonagall's threat of kicking students out of Transfiguration has any teeth behind it; it's considered one of the core classes at Hogwarts, meaning students are required to take it every year, so I don't think she can actually expel a student from her class, which is mandatory, without also expelling the student from the school, and despite being Dumbledore's second, I just don't buy that she has that kind of authority. As for Liv's desk-pig skidding after she transforms it back into a desk, a pig can weight more than 700 pounds, which is way more than a desk would, hence conservation of momentum. Yes, there's a bit of science behind this story.

Incompetent teachers was a real sticking point in Hermetic Arts, so I wanted to demonstrate what an actual competent teacher would look like, and I created and introduced Rowan Murphy specifically for this reason. Unlike the other professors, who only really give lip service about caring about their students and never really demonstrated it, I wanted Rowan to act on it, rather than say anything about it.

While Hermione started learning tabletop RPGs with Dungeons & Dragons and Shadowrun, two of the more rule-heavy and granular tabletop RPGs, most new players actually benefit from learning and playing simpler systems, because they're easier to learn and generally allow for more creativity; hell, when I'm introducing new players to tabletop RPG games, I start off with Do Stuff, a microlite nano-RPG that I can explain in the space of 5 minutes. The premise of Do Stuff is simple: each player writes down five adjectives and a noun, which is that player's character, and then do stuff by using up an adjective to succeed when challenged by the GM, or fail any challenge and gain a new adjective of the player's choice, though the adjective should be related to the failed challenge in some way. Players win when they done all the stuff as determined by GM, and in doing so gain 1 XP, which they can then spend on buying another adjective.

Once again, many, many thanks to my long-suffering editor, Romantically Distant, for all their efforts in reading and proofing my writing. And now you've read this chapter, feel free to leave a review or just PM me.