Plasma Torches and Light bulbs:

Harry once again found himself up to his normal evening mischief the next day. His dearest sister Hermione would grace him with her presence, and he was anxious to bounce some of his new ideas around. She arrived promptly at 4:30 pm but surprisingly she had two pizza boxes in her hand and a cold bottle of Harry's favourite orange juice.

"Hey Mione!" Harry said affectionately as he hugged her.

"Too much grinning is present. Out with it immediately, big head!" she joked.

"Sit and gimme a slice of that pizza. Grace you can sit on my lap I will feed you" Harry told Hermione and Grace respectively. Grace hopped over on his lap, with only the expectation of eating all the pepperoni, her absolute favourite. Harry began to update Hermione about his experiments:

"Well Mione, some days when you aren't here I discover great things, and some days I can't do anything without you. So as of yesterday, I managed to design a superior version of the broom thruster using a preliminary idea. Just Imagine 400 kg of thrust with a badly manufactured steel pipe contraption, which is enough to carry both of us and the whole of Grandma's kitchen anywhere. And you know that woman has a pan and pot collection that could probably make Hogwarts jealous."

"That is a lot of progress for one evening. So, your mother's spells worked out?"

"Yes. A much superior design using aerogel is coming. It has the highest known surface area and air permeability known to science. I have to wait, as the custom pieces are very expensive. I had planned to use JP-7 and some injectors purely to build an afterburner complete with a flame holder, but then I changed my mind.

After I thought about the Titanium incident, aluminium could be used to make magical motors or generators. I did test the 'magnetic' effect of it, and they repel each other when charged. Flip one piece and it sticks. So, I am going to build some small models and see. Now I am beginning to wonder about the whole kit we will be using for the breakout. And oh, I am restarting the search for Azkaban from Aberdeen and then moving to Edinburgh. Yep, end of rant and report."

"Let us start with the mission kit first. Is Gramps sleeping? Wake him?" Hermione asked.

Invictus slowly stretched and came into awareness. He spoke:

"Ah yes my darlings, welcome, welcome. Harry almost blew off his head yesterday. Can't argue with the results. Tell me, granddaughter, I see your mind is up to mischief – question?"

"Harry wants to cut metal reliably. Getting those Azkaban bars cut is important. There are a lot of muggle solutions. We want something magical that doesn't depend on heavy equipment. What spell gives off the most amount of heat? And I don't mean flame-based spells, any spell at all?" Hermione enquired.

"Well, there are two spells that run utterly hot. One you already know. Lumos runs quite hot. I don't think wizards are aware of it. The other one is Fiendfyre – it's a spell that summons a magical fire that can burn through everything. It is highly unstable. Wizards have died trying to control it. The intent can shape the spell to whatever you need it to be. Snakes and dragons are not uncommon animals that are used for the intimidation factor. I would NEVER encourage the conjuration of Fiendfyre in a closed box.

Let me guess, you want to research Fiendfyre?"

"Why not. Although, we can't do that here. Why is it unstable? Is it unstable because it needs too much power to stabilize or does it need only a little energy and large amounts of energy are dangerous?" Harry questioned.

"Nobody knows. We will have to go into a flat area somewhere with an absence of combustible material and find out." Invictus suggested.

"If it is hotter than a welding torch it might be what we need? It sounds viable for cutting steel bars?"

"I think so. We could go the angle grinder route but I want something silent. By the way, how are we getting illumination for our mission? It might be nice to have something that is magically powered? An enhanced Lumos?

"How about if we work on a magical light bulb this afternoon? It might be a useful tool for Azkaban. If we learn anything, we could implement the ideas elsewhere. Consider it a small but unimportant project to relax." Hermione explained.

"Hey, that is useful, I think. Alright, I am down. Does a standard light bulb work with magic? Say I we could intent modify the Lumos to occur inside the bulb."

"We should try that."

Harry grabbed a bulb and thought about the magic just acting inside the glass bulb.

"Lumos!"

The light bulb lit up with easily the brightness of a large bulb and caused Harry and Hermione to squint. One second later, the bulb exploded and lodged hot glass shards into Harry's forearms. Hermione had been saved by conjuring a quick Protego. The spell shortly collapsed and Hermione was now sweating bullets as she had depleted a great deal of her magical core just to conjure that single spell, which should not have been possible for a person her age.

"What the flying fuck was that? How is that even possible? Why did the bulb explode? Ouch, my arms hurt like a bitch!" Harry yelled.

"Good thing I conjured quickly – I heard a cracking noise and conjured reflexively. That is quite amazing. How can that much light come from that tiny thing?" Hermione questioned, genuinely impressed.

"Well, I always wondered how Lumos worked. Lumos can take the matter in the environment and excite the atomic orbitals. Light is given off as a side result. Now if I think about it, Lumos never needed a filament or an inert environment. By giving the Lumos the things that lightbulbs need, I think the Argon got so hot in the lightbulb, that the glass cracked under the temperature. We need a replacement to hold the arg….wait a moment."

"Are you thinking what I am thinking?" Hermione said, smiling.

"Hey! The old man is lagging behind. What is going on?" Invictus commented.

"We just discovered Lumos can be made many times brighter by using some ideas that already exist. Inert environment and Tungsten filament do the trick. We are going to try to contain some Xenon gas inside a sustained bubblehead charm and see what happens." Hermione answered.

"Can the bubblehead charm be shaped in an enclosed manner? We have not tried that one before?" asked Harry.

Hermione and Harry spent the next hour trying to shape an enclosed bubblehead charm in a tub of water. As soon as the intent was invoked to actively shape the field, the charm collapsed.

"Okay…this is frustrating. Why isn't it working?" asked Harry.

"Maybe you need a person? The charm was always for breathing underwater. Or perhaps you can cast a bubble around yourself but not externally." answered Hermione.

"What if…we could use the Protego instead? We have been shaping the shield for a while now, with some success? Just to make it enclosed?"

"How do we get the Xenon gas in?"

"I don't know. Poke a tube in? Oh right, physical barrier. Maybe, we can put the gas into a…."

Hermione had suddenly left the room as she needed to check Google for something. Harry was not aware that Hermione had been investigating rune creation and she had decided to take a shot at spell creation. Hermione came back and slowly closed her eyes and she carefully thought about the new spell behaviour.

"Continentis aeris substantia"

The spell flared and nothing happened.

"Did you just try to create a new spell?" asked Harry?

"I did and it feels like it almost wants to happen. I can tell. I am missing something." answered Hermione.

"Protego has several adaptations. Protego Horribilis, Protego Maxima, Protego Totalum and I even came across Protego Diabolica. I am thinking that if Protego Diabolica can identify friends or foes and only let one type of person pass and then burn enemies into nothing, that has to be intent-based. Maybe we can use the Protego?"

Over the next hour, the following spells were attempted:

"Maybe? Protego Continentis!"

Nothing.

"Protego Aeris!"

The spell flared somewhat.

"Protego substantia"

The spell flared and fizzled out.

"Well, that was a bummer." Hermione complained dejectedly. "Unless….

Protego aeris substantia!"

Suddenly a transparent bluish-silverish bubble flared into existence.

"Congratulations granddaughter, you have just created your first spell ever!" replied Invictus.

"Well, it is good you caught up to me, I can't make all the discoveries by myself you know?" Harry joked.

Hermione followed the comment up with a slightly aggressive shoulder slap.

It was now late but Hermione and Harry spent the evening experimenting with the spell. Hermione had in the creation of the spell, considered that she wanted physical objects to pass through the shield but not necessarily let gases leave. She had made the spell shape intent-driven and also temperature resistant. As the evening went by, Harry built a wand assembly that could sustain the spell. Hermione banished everything except and then filled the space with Xenon gas from a small gas cylinder. Harry programmed an intent modified Lumos where the light would deliberately focus only on exciting xenon gas orbitals. He also started the source of light at a thirty-millimetre distance from the wand tip. On applying a minuscule amount of energy, the lightbulb lit up so brightly, that Harry stopped the connection immediately.

"If we test this here with a bigger power source, we will go blind. Let us make a flashlight body and we can test this at mum's house? I am thinking about a much bigger Xenon containment field. Biggest powercell."

"You like to make everything oversized, eh?" Hermione laughed.

A half an hour later, they were ready.

"Hi grandma. Mione and I are going to attempt to test an ultra-sophisticated flashlight in your backyard. Is mum home? I didn't see her in a while, we have only been talking on the phone."

"Namaste my dear grandson. Yes, she is here. Come over. When you are done, something to eat?" Amba asked with an utterly hopeful tone in her voice.

"Sure, I won't deny you that pleasure one bit, Grandma. You can make something for Hermione too."

Hermione who had been listening to the conversation via the speakerphone laughed. Harry then hanged up.

"Grace, zap us to mum's house, under the back shed?"

Hermione held Harry's hand while he held the prototype lamp under his arm. Harry to his surprise appeared right in front of a rather tired but happy Priya.

"Hey you, put that funny thing down and let me give you a hug my darling boy."

As soon Harry placed the assembly on a rather nondescript table, Priya gave Harry such a warm hug that Hermione almost teared up looking at the sight. When Priya noted Hermione looking on, she opened one of her arms and invited Hermione to join them. Hermione jumped in too as she giggled.

"Hello to you too Hermione. What have both of you been up to? And what is this?" Priya enquired, pointing at the rather suspicious looking object.

"Tell you what mum, how about some of grandma's fantastic chai and I will tell you what I have been up to. It is a lot."

"She already started the tea. Both of you march into the living room. Let me hear what you have been doing…"

As they walked into the living room, Harry enquired about his former class. Harry found out that everything had been more or less normal. It had not gone unnoticed that her class had improved and they were beginning to give the local schools in the area some competition. Amba walked into the room and proceeded to smother Harry and Hermione so incessantly that all they could do was blush. After she poured tea for all of them, she left signalling for the conversation to begin.

"Tell me how your studies have been going Harry?" Priya asked with excitement tingling in her voice.

"Nothing to talk about in terms of normal school. I should be able to write the GCSE for Physics and Maths within a year. As for Hogwarts material, I can cast up to 4th year spells under pressure and at a pretty fast speed. I also know almost all the 7th year spells but I use them for making things. Speed isn't the focus for those." Harry said quite nonchalantly.

"I am so proud of you. We will have to take you out for something to eat!" Priya beamed.

"Hold up yet, that what he spoke about there are his side-line activities. Now, for general housekeeping" said Hermione, rubbing her palms cantankerously.

"Oh, what else have you been doing?" Priya asked not considering that Hermione was quite serious about her claim. However, when she saw Hermione the bookworm sniggering, she realised that she was in trouble.

"Well….the first thing that we have been hiding under wraps is that I have managed to get cell phones to work in the magical world. That was two weeks ago. Lorna has been in on it the whole time. Apparition proof too. GPS, Radio, Text, Data, everything."

"WHAT? HOW? Wait you guys been hiding this from me to get a laugh out of me?" Priya questioned.

"Yup. Titanium sheets can block magical interference." Harry replied almost bored.

"You don't sound too excited. Almost as if this is old news. Next thing you are going to tell me you built a rocket too." Priya replied thinking it would not get worse.

"More accurately a type of pseudo-jet engine. But let me tell you everything so you won't have to keep interrupting. The issue is that my hobbies and research are rather expensive. I also eat a lot of interesting things from all over the place. I take delivery to my house. I decided I wanted to manufacture something as a business so I won't eat into my nest egg. It started with the supercapacitor. I now use my house magic to transfigure humble materials into cutting edge lab-grade materials. So, I have a graphene foil and a graphene flake business running in one of the partitions in the null-box. Peverell Industries officially made 400,000 pounds since January. As of the last three months, you should have an easy 20K sitting in your account that you probably didn't notice. I pay you a salary as if you were a sleeping partner and…."

"You are joking right?" Priya asked.

"No. I sell graphene to Universities. I have an Amazon store. Look for 'Peverell Graphene' on Google?"

Priya took out her phone and googled the result. Sure enough, she saw Harry's handiwork and realised he had been quite busy. Her eyebrows lifted in utter curiosity and she listened on.

"I suppose this is hard to believe, so let me tell you the new magical discovery that enabled all of this. I uncovered how wand cores work. I can put a spell into a wand core and get it to fire off by introducing energy. No more patchwork-quilt runes. We are talking about a single reliable, repeatable effect. We made a super-duper cool flashlight, so you can see how it works in a bit. You can see what this means for your bracelet. Invictus helped with background knowledge and Hermione helped me bounce ideas around. All the research is towards creating your bracelet as a mass-manufactured product."

Priya now had the most incredulous look on her face, as she considered what a genius-level Harry Potter would look like. Well, now she knew for sure. And worse yet, he had a genius level Hermione Granger to keep him company.

"The money I have been making has been handy. I have to stockpile magical cores and I often have to visit the machine shop. I also have to buy expensive tools and it honestly looks like I am going to have to use Peverell Manor as the base of operations."

"Why should I even be bothered to be surprised. Your house magic is an atom. I do guess you like to make things. And you also like to make trouble…" Priya laughed.

"Yes. But more importantly, when war breaks out in the magical world, all the Death Munchers and Moldypants will be facing something that will haunt them in their sleep. There will be a new form of warfare that they cannot conceive and all this is necessary so that the political reforms and the changes will follow. I must be able to tell the Ministry of Magic to get lost and I want their puny little spells to bounce off my armour. The armour is already underway we are just finetuning the shape of the Protego.

These items will help me break into Azkaban."

"NO HARRY NO! How are you going to handle Dementors? You are serious? You can't be serious!" Priya yelled, clearly distressed as she realised that his comments at Gringotts in February had been deadly serious. She still did not want to reconcile that he was determined to go through with his promise.

"I have a thrust assembly in its primitive form that can produce approaching eight times the lift capacity of a broom. A jetpack is on the way. So Dementors have to catch me first if they want to suck my soul. You are aware that Dementors can only glide above the ground. They cannot fly?"

Now Priya's poor eyebrows were strained from the surprise on her face. So, that was why he bought all those brooms. The boy continued rather casually:

"I also have a suspicion we might be able to kill Dementors as I had mentioned. There is an unknown type of spell and it almost sounds like it can create plasma. As long as we figure out why it is an unstable spell and we correct the issue, we will program a gun assembly. Also, I can almost produce a Patronus anyway. I can hold the shield form of the spell for an hour nonstop. I just need a really happy memory to form my protector animal and I will be fully corporeal."

"You can produce a Patronus? At this rate, you won't have anything left to learn at Hogwarts? And I suppose you are stubborn enough and you won't change your mind? I can't believe this! You are serious and you have a plan?" Priya asked resignedly.

"Pretty much. I am not running off half-cocked. We will run several trials and establish for certainty what can be done and what can't be done." Harry answered.

"Well, I will have to help. Otherwise, you are not going through this. Good grief, breaking into Azkaban. Tell me about this thing over here, my brain needs a break!" Priya complained although she was secretly proud.

"Well, we discovered that Lumos can take random air molecules and charge the orbitals to the point where it makes light. We contained some xenon gas inside a Protego field – like a bulb. Here look."

Priya examined the contraption gently and saw an odd bluish-white glowing material in the middle of the pipe. Harry continued to explain the setup:

"So yes, a supercapacitor or a power cell as I call it, is holding that Protego field there. By the way Hermione created a brand new adaption to the Protego spell. It does gas containment now. Protego aeris substantia is the new spell."

"You too Hermione, you created a new spell this afternoon? Very soon both of you will want to go to the moon?" asked Priya.

"Daughter, don't be surprised if they are interested." Invictus snickered.

Harry continued to explain:

"The field has only xenon gas trapped there. As for how we got that shape, you can use intent modification to summon the new spell into custom shapes. We have the gas contained in there because when Lumos when applied to lightbulbs, the glass can crack from the heat. The bulb we used to test this earlier this evening exploded and burnt my forearms. It was possibly Xenon plasma in there? So, the Protego is being substituted for glass. And we have the largest powercell I have ever created. So, we need your backyard to test this thing….."

"Well, let us see the result of your mad science experiments. Come then, I am excited." Priya replied as she carried both Hermione and Harry into her backyard. They placed the apparatus on a little ledge, between some discarded sneakers as Priya slipped on a darkened safety glasses. Hermione and Harry also put on their glasses, respectively.

"Powering in 3….2….1…and….on." Harry warned them.

The beam of light was so bright it was literally like a lighthouse. Every shadow disappeared from the near vicinity. The PVC assembly began to feel toasty, rather quickly. Harry had to kill the connection in under five seconds because it was quickly becoming suspicious. Perhaps they could pass it off as lightning? It was already rather cloudy and thunder had been heard for the evening. More interesting was that the moss on the wall had been fried into oblivion. The concrete had been cleaned to perfection.

"Well Hermione. Looks like I have my discharge tube for my laser. I just need a ruby core and then to refine the design? As long as I can trigger the full input under a reduced period and I have some quality optical focusing lenses that should do it? Then we has the LAZZZZERS!" Harry replied gleefully.

"Lasers now. Oh boy. From the frying pan, into the fire. Let us go inside and eat. This is enough action for one night. But none the less Harry and Hermione, congratulations. It seems both of you are equally Engineers. Let us go and celebrate your successes with some food."

The threesome walked in, as the house began to fill with the aroma of freshly cooked food. They would spend the rest of the night eating and laughing before Grace would carry them back home. Priya went to sleep with a warm chest. She was truly proud of her son and Hermione.

He was happy, most importantly.

Lilly Potter who had been watching on silently beyond the Veil cried. Magic had been kind to her. This girl who she had only met once in her life, looked over Harry as her own. That such kindness could come from a total stranger, was incredible. She remembered the words of Remus Lupin:

"Those who give kindness, receive it back one day."

Her boy was safe and he was continuing the research that she could only dream to complete. Then, he was going to break into Azkaban for his Godfather. Just the type of operation that the Marauders would approve of, but this was being planned with scalpel precision. Perhaps this is what all the Houses of Hogwarts working together, looked like. This was strength through unity. Lilly contented herself and decided to check in on both Sirius and Lupin.

Harry was coming for them soon.