Shines A Light

Chapter Sixteen: Preparing

Now that Harry's body was completely recovered from the end of the previous school year, he was ready to do anything, or so he felt anyway. Each day he spent several hours working on unarmed combat with Tatsu and swordplay with Neko.

Neko knew a lot about swords, even though she usually worked with katanas, which were not quite the same, and she was a good teacher. Harry, while he had never been great when it came to working with the katana, had a somewhat greater ability when it came to an actual sword, which he was happy about.

He also dedicated long hours to studying, reading over notes from the past couple of years, practicing spells and doing the assignments that the teachers were heaping upon him. Without Quidditch training he was able to keep up with everything just fine, although Ron was once more having difficulties in that area.

Ron was spending a lot of time with the Quidditch team, trying to get them ready for the final match, which would take place the next month, against Ravenclaw. Harry didn't think that it would be too difficult to win, but Ron was worrying about it a lot – he wanted to win the Quidditch Cup for the only year that he was Captain, and since it was his last year at Hogwarts. It wasn't so good that the last match would take place just after the NEWTs finished, and just before the OWLs began, because it meant that Ron would be thinking of other things while he studied, but then, that couldn't be helped.

Harry understood completely – last year he would have felt exactly the same. This year he knew that Voldemort was getting stronger, and he was making himself as strong as he possibly could so that when the time came, he would be ready to fight, and he would be able to win.

He didn't know when the battle would come yet, but he knew that it was coming as surely as he knew his own name. Draco, Severus and Blaise all spoke of the Dark Lord implementing plans that they didn't understand, because he never explained himself to his followers. But they were as sure as they could be that he was preparing for a huge strike against the Wizarding world in the not too distant future – and depending on where that stroke fell, Harry might find himself fighting the battle of his life.

He knew that he was doing fairly well at his schoolwork – not brilliantly, as Hermione was, but achieving what would be an 'E' if it were being marked more often than not, even in Potions. Snape was being a lot nicer at the moment , something for which Harry was very glad.

Now that he had discovered the mystery behind the box, Harry was thinking more and more about the ring on his finger, wondering what sort of enchantments it might have upon it. He didn't want to ask anyone, because it seemed sort of personal, something that he should find out for himself, not rely on someone else to do for him, and therefore he was determined that he would discover its secrets on his own.

It would be fun, he tried to tell himself, to think about something that wasn't school work, training or the inevitable fight with Voldemort. All those things had taken on, in some ways, life or death attributes. How he did in the exams would determine what job he got after school, his training would determine whether or not he would still be alive after school, and the fight with Voldemort would determine the fate of the world.

It scared him, a lot, the thought of what he might have to go through if he couldn't do what was necessary. In a way it had been easier before the end of fifth year. While he might have felt that he had a lot of responsibility when it came to fighting with Voldemort, now he knew that the fate of the entire world rested on his shoulders.

Sometimes it was easier not to know.

Harry was currently standing in the Room of Requirement, facing Tatsu and preparing for another round of fighting, before he returned to the Gryffindor common room to finish off a potions assignment and get some sleep for the night.

Tatsu attacked suddenly and without warning, but Harry was ready, and fought him back, then attacked himself. So it continued for almost an hour, before they both stepped back, exhausted. Harry knew that Tatsu was still holding back when they fought, worried that he might still irritate Harry's healing back, but not holding back enough that Harry could win.

Fighting themselves into a stalemate, they eventually stopped and bowed to one another, before Harry changed out of his Gi and into his ordinary school robes and he and Tatsu parted ways, Harry heading up to the common room, his way lit by torches, as darkness had since fallen.

He didn't hurry his steps or make any effort to conceal his passing, he was, after all, the Head Boy, and he was allowed to wander, if he so chose, because for all the teachers knew, he as on his rounds, or whatever else. He ran into only one other person, a second year Gryffindor returning from a detention.

Back in the common room, he found Ron and Hermione hunched frantically over their homework, writing as fast as they possibly could, Ron very sloppily and Hermione much neater. There was so much homework to do that not even Hermione could afford to take things steady, and Harry walked over to where they were sitting without a pause, taking a seat himself with a murmured greeting to which he received only absentminded responses.

His own things were waiting for him where he had left them when he'd gone to meet Tatsu, and he immediately picked up his quill and read over what he had written last, checked some facts in his text book, and starting writing as fast as he could, just like his friends beside him.

There wasn't a time recently that he could remember when he hadn't had several assignments that were due in the next day, and it wasn't a situation he enjoyed at all, although Hermione seemed reasonably cheerful, she was the only one in their year, it seemed.

He looked forward to the end of this year – he would be free of school, which would be one less burden on his back.

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Harry took refuge in Grypis's company more often over the next week, finding the company of his peers, in their rush to complete homework and study as much as they possibly could, a little annoying. Grypis had no worries about school to unburden on Harry, and didn't wander around muttering the components of a truth serum, or the steps involved with changing an inanimate object into another inanimate object, or changing objects of various waits into lesser or greater weights.

He could concentrate on his own work and thus get it done on time and be reasonably satisfied with how he had done. Harry also practiced when he got too fed up with trying to word things perfectly, and practice took his mind off everything else that was going on.

Voldemort had gone suddenly silent, and Harry was sure it was because the Dark Lord was about to launch a bigger strike than ever before somewhere, he was going to do something important, but Harry couldn't find out what that was.

While the Order told him most things, sometimes they didn't, often because someone forgot to alert Tatsu, or Minerva, or the ones who found out didn't see fit to inform anyone, because it didn't seem important.

Oh well, he probably heard enough really. Sometimes he almost felt as though he was ready for the final confrontation that he would have with Voldemort, and sometimes he felt as though he could never be ready … right now was on of the 'I'm ready' moments.

But he still hoped the battle wouldn't be for a couple of years yet.

Most of the time he tried not to think about the battle, and rather concentrate on one potential disaster at a time – right now he wanted to think about the NEWTs, not what might happen after them. He did not feel in the least bit ready for the upcoming exams, which would determine what sort of career he could get into after school, although, as Draco had pointed out a week back when they had both been looking for books in the library, out of sight of the other students, not many people would be all that likely to turn the famous Harry Potter down, even if he didn't do well.

Still, Harry didn't want to take any chances. It wasn't worth it – if he survived the final battle, he wanted to know that he had something he had done on his own to help him through the rest of his life, though he had the sneaking suspicion that he would never be a 'normal' wizard, even if he did manage to get himself a job based totally on his own credentials. Somewhere, there would always be the memory of what he had done when he was younger.

Harry wondered if, after Voldemort was gone (presuming he was still alive, of course) he would have more such adventures, battling Dark Lords, running after mystical things that were threatening people or places that he loved … or if he would just settle down into a 'normal' life and do what he could.

He didn't know … only time would tell.

The NEWTs scared him, in some ways, but it was the fear of not doing well enough, not the sort of fear that he felt when his life was in danger, and it was nice to feel that kind of fear and know it to be different. The exams would go over a period of a month, with all of the different exams being held, organised so that most students would get at least a day in between their exams, both to rest and to study for the next exam.

The time-tables were already out. Harry was fair lucky, most of his tests were two or three days apart, he knew that some of the Ravenclaws had two tests on one day, which sounded very nerve-wracking. Even Hermione hadn't needed to go into that, for which she, at least, seemed to be grateful.

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The NEWTs began in the second week of April, and the week long break of the Easter holidays fell in the middle of them, which would give the students a much needed break. Harry's first test was Transfiguration Theory, which he shared with most of his year. They were all led into the Great Hall and sat down at their desks, while the external supervisors prowled around, making sure that no one cheated.

Harry went through the questions reasonably quickly, doing the ones that he knew well, skipping those that would take him time to think about, then coming back to them. By the end of the exam, he felt that he had done reasonably well, although there were several questions that he felt he could have better on, and more than one that he had had to skip because he simply couldn't remember.

The second he got out of the exam, he went down to the kitchens for something to eat, and then headed for Tatsu and Neko's quarters. He had no wish to go to the Gryffindor common room, or the library, because he knew that he would find students muttering about the exams, discussion questions that they thought they'd gotten wrong, asking others what the answers might be.

In two days time, the practical test would commence, and Harry fully intended to practice as much as he could before then, although he would rather do so in a place where everyone else in the room wasn't doing the same thing, because that was off-putting.

He knew that he had the option of the Room of Requirement, but he was also sure that other people would go there, because he wasn't the only one who knew the way in. When he asked, Tatsu and Neko were all too happy to donate their training room for Harry's use, and so he spent that night, and the next, in their rooms, sleeping an exhausted sleep of one who has pushed himself almost to the limits, while he did what he could to prepare himself for the next exam.

He spent some time with his friends, of course, practicing together with them, but, as he had thought, it was somewhat distracting … although it was useful, in some ways, because Hermione corrected every tiny little thing that Harry did (whether he asked for the correction or not), and gave him some idea of what to expect when the exam rolled around.

On the morning of the Transfiguration practical exam, Harry joined the rest of his year waiting outside the Great Hall, and immediately sank into his Centre to try and remember all of the spells, going over them in his mind, while the people around him fretted. He decided he was happy that he could remain calm, if he so chose, throughout anything.

Finally, his turn came, and he entered the Great Hall, remembering the set up from his OWL exams two years back. He approached the free examiner, holding his wand tightly in his right hand. The examiner looked him over, and, to his credit, tried to treat Harry like a normal student. "Name?" he asked when Harry was standing in front of him.

"Harry Potter," Harry answered.

The examiner looked down a list and ticked off Harry's name – Harry assumed that the lists were magical and that every other examiner would now know that Harry had been done. "I'm Professor Greendale," the examiner told Harry. He was a reasonably young man, his hair not yet going grey, and his face open and friendly.

"Now, could you please change this hedgehog into a dog?" Greendale requested, and Harry did so. It was the first of a lot of questions, which Harry made his way through with reasonably good results. A couple of his spells didn't quite work, and he couldn't quite remember two of them, which he had to come back to.

All in all, however, Harry felt he had done well as he came out of the exam. Hermione was waiting for him, but Harry didn't mind discussing this exam with her – while she fretted over the most minor of things, Harry at least knew how well he had gone, whereas in the theory exam, he didn't want to hear how much Hermione had written on a subject, or what she had written, because it made him feel as though he hadn't done well at all.

They waited around until Ron joined them, then headed up to the common rooms, where Harry started studying for Potions, which would be his next exam in four days time, although Hermione had Ancient Runes the next day, so she was studying frantically for that.

The first exams were now over, and Harry was ready to face the next ones when they came. Potions shouldn't be too hard, not after all the help that Michael had given him, after all. He smiled slightly as he opened his Potions book and began to read up on things.

Well, I know it's short, but I wanted to update, so here's the new chapter. Very soon things are going to heat up!

Thanks to:

Laen, Lady Siobhan, FredomStar, QueenWeasel, katepotter13, shadowmonk, Kordolin, Kordolin, JeanieBeanie33, Dumbeldave, FlyingPixie, T.R.Stone, Marauder #3, Ezmerelda, shadowmonk, Hexe605, Dreama.