Chapter 7: Constant Vigilance!
Dumbledore had decided not to tell anyone else in the order about the shield Harry had conjured and only warned Moody, Kingsley and Tonks that they might want to avoid scaring Harry. Moody had apparently overheard this as he the next morning slammed the door open to Harry's bedroom and shouted "Constant Vigilance!". He found it immensely amusing to start the training of his new Auror recruits in this way, and he figured that this wasn't all that different. Kingsley and Tonks only just realised what he was about to do before he slammed the door open, and therefore their warnings never quite left their lips before Moody hid the floor with a frozen smile on his twisted face, his eyes staring into nothingness. Kingsley only just managed to get up a shield to cover Tonks and himself before the next two stunners from Harry's outstretched hands would have hit them as well.
Harry was jerked awake at the sound of his bedroom door being slammed open, and he could only just make out a seemingly huge figure entering his room in great strides and so his reflexes kicked in. He stunned the first person screaming out stupefy and thus drowning out Moody's own shout, which could easily have identified the intruders. As soon as the body in front of him started dropping, he could make out two more people behind the first one and he immediately fired of two more stunners, which to his regret was deflected to the ceiling. He felt naked without his wand as he only mastered very few spells wandlessly. He sent some more stunners at the two forms in the doorway but they were easily deflected by now and he was getting rather desperate. He fired of some more stunners before he suddenly got an idea.
He stretched out both hands and shouted "Accio shoes!" He didn't even really believe it would work, but the result was rather spectacular.
Kingsley and Tonks normally wouldn't have had any problems defending themselves against the stunners that Harry sent at them, but they were rather hard pressed as they were used to people using wands against them, using a certain movement, which they subconsciously timed their defences after. However to their amazement here they were pinned down buy a 16 year old schoolboy, who they were supposed to teach, who was using nothing but his hands to attack them. They had tried shouting out to Harry, but he couldn't hear them over the noise of his shouts of "stupefy" and their shouts of "protego". As they almost always worked together they had developed a very good understanding of each others body language, and could usually communicate to some extent without words. They were shouting furiously at each other weather they should just drop their shields and take the stunner when Harry used the cheapest but most effective trick any of them had ever seen.
The force of Harry's summoning was something to be reckoned with but it wasn't enough to actually draw the shoes and their wearers to Harry. However it was plenty forceful to drag the legs from under the two persons in the doorway, and their shields immediately dropped which Harry exploited by stunning them before they hit the ground.
5 seconds later only one thing went trough Harry's head: "Oh shit!"
10 minutes later the three aurors and Harry was sitting in the living room drinking steaming hot cups of tea to calm their nerves. Moody had a rather confused expression on his face, Tonks and Kingsley just stared first at each other, then at Harry, then back at each other. No one spoke while they finished drinking the tea, but as soon as Harry finished his cup and sat it down words started spilling out of his mouth apologising over and over again.
"Stop right there lad." Moody interrupted forcefully. "Dumbledore warned us that you were a bit on an edge at the moment and even if he hadn't, you would have nothing to be sorry or ashamed of. I should be the one to be ashamed. I thought it would be fun to wake you in the same way I usually start of my new auror recruits. For that I'm sorry. That said I think you have a bit of explaining to do. First I want to know everything that happened after I went down like a 1 month rooky, and after that, I would very much like to know how you managed to stun me without your wand."
Harry tried holding his head high and look Moody in the eyes while he recalled what had happened, but every few seconds he would find his eyes drifting towards his shoes. He couldn't help it, but he still felt ashamed that he had reacted like he did.
When Harry stopped talking a heavy silence descended the living room, and Harry felt like starting to apologise all over again when Moody finally spoke.
"I'm sorry lad but I think you have to run that last bit by me again. You took out two top auror's and members of the order, by summoning their shoes?"
Harry didn't know what to say, but he definitely wasn't proud of what he had done. Instead of using some proper duelling move, he had resorted to a childish trick. If he could he would have transformed into a mouse and crawled away under a floorboard, that's how embarrassed he was. His train of guilty thoughts was interrupted my Moody.
"HAR, HAR HAR HAR… HAT HAR HA HA HA HAR HAT HAT…."
To Harry's great surprise Moody was almost rolling on the floor laughing in a strange sort of guttural way. When Moody's fit ended he collected him self and turned to Tonks and Kingsley his face suddenly grave. "You two better be glad this can't go on your official records. Instead you better learn from this. The way Harry here took you out was absolutely brilliant! No person in his right mind would try summoning an opponents shoes – which is what makes it brilliant. It was unexpected, simple and effective. I wish I had come up with that move! HAR."
Kingsley and Tonks just looked at each other their faces showing nothing but disbelief. Harry wasn't sure whether it was because Moody had told them off, or because he had laughed like that, or maybe because he had praised Harry right in front of their eyes.
Half an hour later Harry had eaten a bit of breakfast while Tonks and Kingsley recovered a bit, and now he was training vigorously in the grand training room. Moody had said that they would start out slow, but Harry already felt like his heart was going to pound it ways out of his chest. Moody had Harry run lengthwise in the room shooting weak hexes at targets along the sides, and simultaneously duck the stunners Kingsley and Tonks shot at him. Apparently Tonks and Kingsley felt they had to redeem themselves a bit, as Harry kept finding himself jumping over one stunner, just to be hit by another. It was clear that Kingsley and Tonks were used to work together.
When they had taken out Harry like that the first 5 times Harry found himself being aggravated by it and it ruined his concentration enough to make him miss every single target and have Moody shout at him to get his act together. This only aggravated Harry more and on his next run trough he demolished the targets with the strongest spells he could remember, and with his left hand he summoned small weights from the weight rack in the corner, only to banish them straight at Kingsley and Tonks. The two aurors had no trouble protecting themselves from the attacks, but it threw of their coordination just enough for Harry to slip between their hexes and get to the other end of the room unchecked. By now Harry was completely exhausted and he told Moody so. The old head auror just ushered Harry out of the room and told him to get a bath and have a 15 minute break and then come back. Harry had an ice cold shower and felt refreshed when he got to the closed doors that led into his training room.
Harry had put his hand on the handle, and was just about to press it down, when he thought better of it. If he knew Moody right, the half crazy old auror probably had something nasty in store for Harry as soon as he entered the room. Harry didn't feel like being stunned or hit with a stinging hex or something equally unpleasant, and so he quickly decided that entering the room in the usual manner was probably not the best idea.
He stepped a few paces back, took a running start, jumped, started his roll and in the absolute last second used a combination of alohomora and a banishing charm to bang the doors open.
He had figured that he would get a couple of meters into the room, roll and get up gracefully as a cat. However once his already airborne body passed trough the now wide open doors, everything started going wrong. As much as Harry wanted there was no way he could stop the graceful roll of his body from hitting dead centre into the desk standing just inside the door. There were no aurors shooting nasty hexes at him instead they were all standing near a blackboard quietly discussing something. They all turned their heads towards the sound of the doors banging up, only to completely crack up as they watched Harry dive head first straight into his desk.
When Harry later thought back to that moment, he was pretty sure that he had never been so embarrassed before in his entire life. Moody and Kingsley had been good about it and stopped laughing fast, but Tonks had been teasing him mercilessly for the next 3 hours until Harry had finally had enough and had banished both Tonks' shoes while she stood with the back towards him. The result: Tonks dumping to her behind both legs straight forward and her nose white from the chalk dust she had scraped of all the way down the blackboard. Moody and Kingsley were both laughing too hard to tell Harry of and Harry himself had tears in his eyes from laughing so hard.
When Tonks had finally gathered herself and straightened out her clothes and general appearance she grinned evilly at Harry and mouthed "This is WAR", when Moody and Kingsley had their heads turned away.
Other than that the day had been almost like a normal DADA class, only it was far better than any Harry had ever attended. The aurors all took turns explaining the spell they were currently working on, and while one was speaking the other two were showing of how to perform it properly. When Harry understood the theory perfectly he was allowed to practise the spell and when he had gotten the hang of it all three of his teachers would point out how they personally performed the particular spell. Harry had always thought that there were only one way to do a spell correctly, but he soon realised that everyone had different stiles to their wand movements and pronunciation how ever minor they might seem. Kingsley's wand movements were micrometer precise and he would perform the exact same movement over and over again, opposed to Tonks, who's stile was more relaxed bordering on reckless. Moody explained that Kingsley's stile ensured that he always performed the exact same spell with the exact same strength, where Tonks' spells were greatly affected by her mood and temper as that was what guided her wand movement. This resulted in Tonks being able to put just a bit more power in her spells when she felt strongly about something, but had the opposite effect if she really didn't care.
After watching Moody perform several different spells of various natures Harry couldn't quite put a word to what his stile was. When he had watched several more spells being shot from the aurors wand he realised that what he was watching was cool efficiency at work. If there were corners to be cut; they were, but not more than that it would not affect the power of the spell. Harry quickly decided that he wouldn't like to dual Moody 1 on 1.
At the end of the day Harry felt like he had had his head cut open at the top and had someone stomp down knowledge with a sledgehammer, only to have it sealed rather poorly. Before the three aurors left Tonks whispered Harry in the ear, that Dumbledore sent word that Harry should remember his other training. Tonks looked pleadingly at Harry to find out what it might be, but Harry just shook his head and sent her of trough the Floo Network.
Harry was dreadfully tired, but he decided it was best to do as Dumbledore wanted and so he sat down in his favourite chair closed his eyes and started clearing his mind. At first Harry was unsure of how to archive all that he had learned during the day, but he soon found out that he could imagine his mind as a long hallway full of doors. After that discovery it didn't take long for him to figure out which doors to put the different spells behind. Harry found lots of doors that had interesting titles on them, but he wasn't sure he wanted to go exploring before he was a bit more skilled at this meditating thing. The only door Harry actually stepped trough was the one labelled "People in my life". Inside he found a room very similar to the revolving room at the department of mysteries. It only had 8 doors but every time the room turned the length of a door, the names on the doors changed. Harry found that there were countless doors. He figured that there must be a door for every person he had any memory of. Some doors had pictures on them and no name, and it was obvious to Harry that this was people he only knew by face. Some of the people he had met the very first time he was in The Leaky Cauldron were among these. Harry had watched the doors changing for what felt like forever, and he still hadn't found any of the three aurors he had new memories about. In frustration he talked to himself "Oh come on just show me someone... Moody... whatever!" As soon as he had even completed the thought the room started spinning furiously only to stop with the door named Alastor Moody right in front of him. "Why didn't I think of that before….?" Not many moments later Harry had put his new memories in their right place, and he left the room and his subconscious, and entered the conscious part of his mind. Everything was nice and orderly there by now and Harry decided that it was properly time to get to bed.
The next morning Harry was woken by Tonks who was flashing him her most candy like innocent smile and Harry just knew that the war had begun.