Harry Potter and the Physical Adept

Chapter 23: The Miseducation of Luna Lovegood

There was literally nothing on the Chamber of Secrets beyond rumor and hearsay, of which none were really useful when they couldn't agree with each other on anything. When Gideon had tasked her with finding out the layout of the Chamber of Secrets, Luna had thought it would be easy to find something that would help in their upcoming expedition, but after scouring the library for several hours without the help of Madam Pince, who had looked genuinely mournful when Luna had asked her for assistance earlier and instead informed her through a pre-written placard that she had been forbidden to assist students in researching the subject, she had come away with all of nothing.

Uncharacteristically discouraged, the blonde Hufflepuff slowly trekked back to the room she shared with Wolfgang and her sister, worried she would be facing Jacoby's disappointment.

"I couldn't find anything," she said softly, looking down at her feet, when Amadeus greeted her at the door.

"Aw, poor Lulu," Liv said, folding the blonde in a warm hug and kissing her on the top of the head reassuringly. "Everything will be okay."

"Don't worry about it," Everest said with a shrug. "Sometimes, it just happens."

"Okay," Luna said, glad she wasn't going to be lectured. Then, she realized she wasn't sure what the lesson she was supposed to learn from the task had been. "What was I supposed to learn from that experience?"

"I just wanted you to do some research," Phoenix explained. "Before you can embark on any run, it's important to research and find out as much as you can about what you're getting into, because information saves lives, but sometimes, you just come up with nothing, and you just have to go in blind."

"But wouldn't that be dangerous?" Luna asked.

Tolliver shrugged again. "Any sort of run is dangerous; if it wasn't, anybody could do it, and it wouldn't be something we would do. The reason we do legwork in preparation for a job is to minimize the risk as much as possible, but you can never really reduce it to zero."

That made sense.

"So, what's the next lesson?" she asked eagerly.

Gideon and her sister shared a look. Then, he reached into his haversack and produced an oddly shaped piece of metal, quicking doing something he had done many times before as he extracted something from it.

"This is a pistol, a Walther PPK to be exact," Harrison said as he handed it to Luna. Touching the hollow, cylindrical end, he continued. "This is the business end, and you do not, under any circumstances, point this at anyone you don't intend to shoot, and you don't shoot anybody you don't intend to kill.

"Now let's start with the basics: disassembly, cleaning and reassembly. If a gun jams, misfires, ammo sticks or blows off your hand? You're in the drek, so let's never be there."

Luna nodded. She had no idea what he meant, but she was sure she'd know soon enough.

~ooOoo~

Luna felt the blood pounding in her ears, which were ringing from the pistol's report even though Harrison had insisted she wear earplugs. Engaging the safety, just as he had shown her, she slipped it into the thigh holster he had insisted she wear to carry the PPK in, her hands trembling with adrenaline as she tried to take deep breaths to slow her heart.

"How was it?" Liv asked.

"That… was very intense," said the blonde, after taking a moment to gather her thoughts. "My hands are still shaking."

"Good job on the tight grouping," Gideon called from next to the target. "You're a total natural, getting your shots so close together on target your first time out."

"I just followed my intuition, and my intuition said to take it slow," Luna admitted.

"Well, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast," said the boy. "There's no point in shooting if you're just going to miss the target."

"Why was it so loud?" Luna asked. "When you and Liv demonstrated with your guns, they were quiet, and they didn't jump in your hands."

"To be fair, we were able to use the enchantments on the guns, which mute the gunfire and counter the recoil," Everest said.

"Is this gun enchanted?"

"Yes, it is."

"Then why wasn't I able to use the enchantment?"

"It's because it's an activated enchantment," her sister said. "To use it, you have to fill it with Astral power; that way, anybody else who used the weapon would think it a normal one."

"Astral power?" Luna asked. She wasn't confused, but she also wasn't exactly sure what it was.

"It's what Bear and I use for magic," Liv explained. "Unlike the other students here, the source of our magic comes from the Astral Plane and not from inside of us, which is why our magic is different than what is taught here."

That explained why Liv's magic was so incredible.

"Can you teach me?" the blonde asked earnestly.

"Of course," said her dad. "C'mere."

Obediently, Luna went to Jacoby, and he gently placed his palm on her forehead.

"Feel the flow of the Astral power as it enters your body," Everest said.

Luna closed her eyes, ready to feel whatever Tolliver meant.

At first, there was nothing.

Then, she felt it, a comforting warmth that entered her body through where Wolfy's hand was pressed against her head, like a hug, but on the inside, and she let herself float on it like she was in an ocean of magical power. Even after he removed his hand, Luna continued to float in the magic, letting it saturate her very essence as she welcomed it in; there was nothing to be afraid of, just her and the Astral Plane wrapping her in its welcoming embrace. It felt safe and familiar, like echoes of her new family, and it felt almost alive, almost like it was whispering its secrets into her mind.

Opening her eyes, she glanced towards the dorm room door, locked to prevent unwanted visitors from intruding in on the training session.

There was no need to worry about specifics; magic was magic was magic.

"Could you unlock that, please?" she asked the magic flowing through her, though, to everybody else in the room, it must have looked like she was talking to nobody in particular.

She felt the warmth inside of her pulse slightly, almost as if to agree. Then the door clicked unlocked.

For the first time since she met him, Harrison looked genuinely confused.

It was a nice surprise, to see he could make that kind of expression.

~ooOoo~

"Dia, we love your fashion sense, but when you're on the job, you'll want to be a gray man."

"A 'gray man'?"

"Yes. It's a term used to describe somebody so utterly forgettable, nobody will remember them after the job is concluded. Like the color gray."

"But I like pretty colors and awesome prints."

"And they look good on you…"

"The best…," agreed the dragon.

"But if you show up to the job in inappropriately eye-catching clothes, you'll be remembered, and that's not good for you."

"Unless that is the job."

"Is that why we're ordering all these new clothes?"

"Yep."

"Okay."

~ooOoo~

"Colin, this is Dia. Dia, Colin."

"Luna Lovegood," Luna said, to the further confusion of the camera-wielding boy.

"I'm sorry, I'm just so confused," Colin apologized. "Everybody in class, even the professors, call you Luna, but Harry calls you 'Dia', and I think I heard Liv call you 'Lulu' before? Which is it?"

"All of them," said the blonde serenely.

"All of them?" echoed the photographer, his confusion unchanged.

"Yes."

"So, Colin, can you teach Dia about surveillance?" Jacoby asked. "I think you're probably better at it than me at this point, since you pretty much do it every day, and I only do it once in a while."

"Harry, I'm flattered, but I'm not the best teacher," Colin protested, even though he looked like he was secretly pleased.

"Don't worry, chummer, you got this," Wolfy said, giving the younger boy a thumbs up. "You're an expert, so you've got nothing to worry about."

Despite his protests, Colin looked as happy as a clam.

~ooOoo~

*beep*

"Bear, help!"

It was unlike the dragon to use her nickname for him, rather than his call sign, over the radio, but he also hadn't heard that kind of panic in Liv's voice since their first few months together, when she still only had the maturity of a small child and was easily frightened.

*beep*

"Where?" Harry asked.

*beep*

"Two-nineteen."

*beep*

"On my way."

Quickly, the Hermetic mage dumped all of the stuff he had laid out on the desk into his haversack in a hurry; he was on the sixth floor, and he had to get down four stories as fast as possible, so he had no time to lose.

Crossing over to the wall, the boy threw open one of the double windows, then took four steps back. With a running start, he hurled himself out of the aperture, free-falling three stories before he passed Astral power through his walking stick, feeling his shoulder nearly get jerked out of its socket as his descent suddenly halted. Growling, he pulled himself up until he was resting his entire weight on just his hands, then dropped back down, kicking his legs out as he did so and swinging towards the window in the wall below before swinging back away.

He had one shot to make the pass back into the castle, and he wasn't going to fail.

With another swing, he let go of the cane and crashed through glass and wood, sending it splintering and shattering onto the stone floor as he rolled side over side, bleeding off the impact of the landing, surprising the older boy and girl who were occupying the room and each other's laps, making them yelp and pull apart from each other.

Continuing in a dead run, the shadowrunner threw open the door and barreled through, turning the corner, only to be faced by a hallway full of students.

"Move! Get out the way!" Harry roared, and at the shouted demand full of barely-contained fury, the crowd parted, allowing the Boy-Who-Lived to pass at full speed.

"No running in the…"

The ginger never quite finished the sentence; he was interrupted as Harry jumped into him with a flying knee square to the chest, sending him crashing to the floor from the momentum of the running attack, before two quick punches to the jaw rattled the back of his head against the floor and sent him off to dreamland.

Then, the shadowrunner was going again, legs pumping and boots pounding the smooth stone beneath him as he dashed down the hallway, coming to a stop only when he came to a classroom with "219" painted on the door.

Throwing the door open, Harry was met with a sight that made his heart nearly stop.

Dia was on the floor, twitching and convulsing, eyes rolled back into her head as blood gushed out of her ears, nose, mouth and corner of her eyes, while Liv knelt over her pallid body, stained up to her elbows in dark red blood, obviously pouring mend wounds into the writhing girl beneath her with as much Astral power as she could manage.

"Bear, help her!" the dragon pleaded tearfully.

Closing the door behind him, the shadowrunner channeled Astral power into the tattoo at the heel of his palm; he had seen this before, when Hermione had overchanneled her magic for her first spell, and he was certain Dia had done something similar.

With electricity crackling around his left hand, Harry knelt by the girl thrashing on the floor; before he could do anything, though, the dragon grabbed his hand with her one.

"What are you doing?" the Norwegian Ridgeback demanded.

"I need to shock her to get her body to stop channeling magic," Harry explained. "It's the only way."

Liv nodded, letting go, and the Hermetic mage placed his hand the unconscious girl's chest; immediately, her entire body stiffened as her back arched, and Harry quickly flushed the Astral power from the tattoo, the arcs of electricity around his hand disappearing as he did so, and the dragon-in-girl's-form quickly placed her hands back on the first-year girl.

Slowly, the bleeding slowed from a deluge into a trickle, then finally stopped, all courtesy of the healing magic the dragon was pumping into the girl.

After a long moment, the blonde's eyes slowly opened.

"What happened?" she asked weakly, trying to sit up.

Instantly, the dragon-in-girl's-form wrapped the girl in her arms, ignoring her blood-drenched clothes, skin and hair as she held her close. "I was so scared, Lulu!" she sobbed. "I thought you were going to die!"

"I'm okay," the girl said feebly, stroking Liv's back reassuringly. "What happened?"

"You were gushing blood, probably out of every orifice," the Hermetic mage said.

"That would explain why my knickers are soaked and sticky," Dia deadpanned.

"Well, to be fair, that could just be your period," Harry said flatly.

"I don't think I period out of my butt," said the blonde, smiling wryly.

"No, I don't think that's biologically probable," the Boy-Who-Lived agreed, the ghost of a smile flitting across his lips as well. "What do you remember?"

"So, I don't know if you know this, since you can't use magic with wands, but when you cast a spell with a wand, it pulls magic out of you, from around here," Dia said, gently freeing herself from the dragon before gesturing around her abdominal area. "Well, I thought I'd try mixing the magic from there with the magic from the Astral Plane, and the next thing I knew, I felt like I was being torn apart from the inside. Then, I was waking up, sticky and wet, and Liv was kneeling over me, crying."

"Liv? What'd you see?"

The dragon-in-girl's-form considered for a moment. "She was drawing magic from the Astral Plane while also pulling on the magic from inside her, but when the two met, they started to fight each other."

Harry considered the Norwegian Ridgeback's observations; it was in moments like these where her Astral perception was incredibly useful.

If what the two said was true, then Dia had just tried to mix magic from the Astral Plane with her own native source, and the interaction between the two had nearly been fatal.

He didn't get to complete that thought; the door to the room slammed open, and he spun instinctively in its direction, Beretta in hand as he stepped between the door and his daughters.

"Whoa! Easy there!" said Fay, her hands rising up instantly as she stepped in front of Neville. "We heard the call on the radio and just thought Liv might need help."

Peeking around the gun-toting boy, she flinched. "Is that blood?" asked the Gryffindor girl.

"Dia's."

Fay looked horrified. "Is she all right?"

"I'm okay," the blonde called from behind the Boy-Who-Lived. "Leelee's is taking care of me."

In a hurry, the Gryffindors pushed passed the Hermetic mage, who quietly stowed his pistol in his waistband and closed the classroom door, jamming a chair under the door handle as a makeshift barricade; for a moment, he wished he still had his walking stick, so he could bar it too, but that was neither here nor there.

"Harry… Knife?" Neville asked, as he reached into his pocket, digging through it for a moment before retrieving several small paper packages wrapped in twine and a glass flask.

Without a word, the Hermetic mage tossed his switchblade to the Gryffindor, who caught it awkwardly between his arm and his side; popping out the blade, he cut the packets free of the twine and dumped the contents into the flask, then turned towards the dragon-in-girl's-form.

"Liv, water, if you'd be so kind?"

Liv waved a hand over the flask, and it quickly filled with water to the neck.

Stoppering the flash with a cork, the pudgy boy gave it a few hard shakes, then held it up to the light for a moment before handing it to the still-prone Hufflepuff girl being cradled by the dragon-in-a-girl's-body.

"What is this?" Dia asked.

"It's a quick and dirty version of the Blood-Replenishing Potion," the Gryffindor explained. "Isn't as effective as the real thing, but does the job in a pinch, and you don't need a cauldron for it."

"What?" he asked, as he saw the looks of surprise on the face of Liv and Fay. "The stuff I smoke isn't the only herb I'm good with."

"Thank you," said the Hufflepuff girl, as she gulped down the tincture. Color quickly began returning to her face, and after a moment, she freed herself from the dragon's arms and stood, dripping blood all over the floor.

"What in God's name happened here?" Fay asked, surveying the blood-spattered classroom.

"A bit of this and that," said the Hermetic mage vaguely.

"I was experimenting with magic," Dia said serenely. "Mixed a little bit of Astral power with my own, and, well, it went sideways."

"Astral power?" asked Fay, puzzled. "What's that?"

"It's what Gideon uses for magic," said the blonde, as Harry felt a headache start in the back of his skull. "And not just the enchantments either; real magic, like spells and stuff…"

"Wait, you can use magic?" asked the Gryffindor girl, turning towards the Boy-Who-Lived, her indignation evident on her face.

Harry shrugged, as Neville lit a spliff and took a drag from it.

"Why didn't you tell us? I thought we were friends!"

"You didn't need to know."

"You still could have told us!"

"Again, you didn't need to know. I mean, I don't tell you when I crack one off, so why do I need to tell you about this?"

"What is with you and your secrets?" Fay asked, annoyed. "What are you afraid of?"

"Remember: You-Know-Who isn't dead," Harry said. "There are people who can read minds, some of whom might work for him and cross your paths without you even knowing, and if they read your minds with my secrets in them, my advantages evaporate, and I'd like to have my advantages if I'm going to war."

"But what if they read your mind? Or Liv's?"

"They can't," the dragon said. "Our minds are protected; that's why the Hat couldn't sort us."

"And Luna? Is her mind protected too?"

"In a manner of speaking," Harry said.

"What does that even mean?" Fay questioned.

"We're together enough to where my protections will shield her," the dragon said shortly.

"They do?" Dia asked.

"I didn't think I'd be walking into this," said Hermione, as she slipped through the door and closed it behind her; clearly, she had used knock to get past the makeshift barricade. "That's a lot of blood; do I want to know what happened here?"

"Magical mishap," the blood-soaked blonde said.

"Oh, I had one of those, the first time I tried…" started the Ravenclaw, suddenly stopping when she saw the Gryffindors.

"We know Harry can use magic," Neville said bluntly, exhaling a ring of smoke.

"Well, the first time I tried Hermetic magic, I nearly melted my brain," Hermione said, almost seeming to smile at the memory.

"You don't seem very disturbed by this," Fay observed.

"I mean, I was there when Harry burned the troll to death with fire," said the bushy-haired girl. "After that, I couldn't even look at a roast for a month without wanting to throw up, so this is pretty tame in comparison."

"Anybody have any extra clean clothes on them?" interrupted the Hermetic mage. "It's not like Dia and Liv can traipse through the halls drenched in blood."

"Couldn't you just clean the blood out?" Hermione asked. "You did it last time."

"Floor would be pretty easy, but clothes and skin, not so much," said the Boy-Who-Lived. "Remember last time, when I used it, and the blood disappeared from your skin, but you still felt like you needed to scrub your hands afterwards, right? It's because the spell managed to clean the surface, but blood still soaked into your pores, and that's a feeling you can't shake, and that's the same with the clothes, since the blood soaks into the fabric."

"I need a shower," Dia agreed.

"Well, you can take one when you get back to our room," Harry said, setting down his ever-present bag.

"Wait, you're sharing a room with Liv and Luna?" Hermione asked, clearly appalled.

"They're my daughters, and they're not even teenagers yet," said the Boy-Who-Lived. "What do you expect me to do, let them live alone?"

"Since when has Luna been your daughter?" Fay asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"About a week after Valentine's Day, but keep that under your hat."

"What? Why?"

"There will be people motivated by political and personal gain who will want to know who adopted Dia," the shadowrunner said. "I'd like to not make it easy for them."

Meanwhile, Liv waved her hand, and the pool of blood on the floor slowly contracted until there was none left. Likewise, the blood on the girls' skin shrunk until they disappeared, while the dark red stains on their clothes faded a little, but remained splotched onto the fabric.

"Why don't they just borrow your clothes until they get back to our room?" Neville suggested. "With the way you carry it everywhere, I assume you practically live out of your haversack."

"Yeah, why didn't you think of that?" Hermione challenged.

"Look, Danger, I'm just one guy. I can't think of everything," Harry said.

The conversation was interrupted by the screeching sound of a furniture being pushed along the floor, and all eyes turned in the direction of the noise to see Dia using the cobwebbed desk at the front of the classroom as a barrier between herself and the dragon.

"C'mere," Liv said, as she swiped across the table, and Luna dodged to the side, giggling.

The two went back and forth for a few more moments before the dragon suddenly hurdled the table in one twisting flip, catching the surprised blonde by the wrist as she tried to slip away and hoisting her up onto her shoulder, all while the girl continued to giggle.

With exaggerated high-steps, Liv marched over to where Harry had set down his haversack before jumping in, carrying the slight blonde with her as she did so.

"So, were you ever going to tell us?" Fay demanded.

"I would have, at some point," said the Hermetic mage, trying to placate the girl with the pastel purple dye job.

"What point would that have been?" the Gryffindor girl asked forcefully.

"When it came up," Harry said with a shrug.

"So, the troll, was that magic?" Neville asked, interrupting Fay before she could continue.

"Yes."

"And the jellied petrol, did you make that up?"

"Yes and no. I didn't use it that time, but I do know how to make it."

"How'd you kill it, then?"

"I have an entire repertoire of battle magic, designed specifically to kill."

"An entire what?" Fay interrupted.

"Repertoire," Harry repeated. Seeing the confusion still on her face, he decided to rephrase it. "When it comes to Hermetic magic, I know a lot of spells. Many which I can use in a fight."

"Then why are you failing Charms and Transfiguration?" the purple-haired girl asked.

"If I knew, I wouldn't be failing."

"Have you tried…?" Neville started to ask.

"I've tried pretty much everything," Harry said. "It doesn't really bother me anyways, aside from the failing grades, which honestly, won't matter in the real world."

"What do you mean?" Hermione demanded. "If you fail Charms and Transfiguration, you won't be able to take the NEWTs for them!"

"Yeah, again, I really don't care," the Hermetic mage reiterated with a shrug. "I don't need a piece of paper to tell me if I'm good at something."

An uncomfortable silence fell over the group.

"What the Hell is taking the girls so long?" Harry asked after a long moment, crossing to where the bag was.

Sticking his head inside, he pulled it back out almost instantly. "I think I'm going to give them a minute. Or ten."

"What? Why?" Hermione asked, joining him next to the bag and poking her head inside.

A moment later, her head was back out, her cheek flushed a bright red.

"Oh…"

"Yep…," said the Hermetic mage, a lopsided smile on his face. "I'm going to go back to our room, and maybe they'll be done by then."

He made a mental note to retrieve his cane when it was all said and done.

Author's Notes: As demonstrated in "Fallout", Harry is a good teacher, and sometimes, the lesson is in learning the process, not the achieving the result.

The line about maintenance comes from Graceland, which was really good for about a season

Harry and Hermione are Hermetic mages, and Liv instinctively manipulates magic directly, but Luna was never going to be on either of those paradigms of magic, because it just doesn't suit her character. She's something more primal, more cooperative.

The internal/external magic conflict was originally intended to be explored in a much later book, but then Luna happened and I realized I had to move it up ahead of schedule; given her inquisitive nature and willingness to just try things out, it would only make sense she'd end up trying to combine the two, to disastrous results.

Liv panicking is a new look for a creature otherwise practically a force of nature.

Neville flexing so matter-of-factly was something I wanted to showcase.

Because Harry never explained how he was compartmentalizing information within the circle, it'd make sense for one part of it to spill something he was keeping in his back pocket to another part of the circle, since they're still within the circle, and thus, Neville and Faye discover he's got magic, even though he wasn't planning on telling them (yet). Again, the inconvenience of people having their own minds.

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, and, with the WARS pandemic still on-going, stay safe.