Author's Note: I know I have been publishing on Sundays lately but since Sunday is Christmas I decided to publish this today. Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas!
The next few days seemed to pass in a blur even as Harry had nearly all of his new classes except for Divination which was held exclusively on Tuesday mornings.
Ancient Runes would mean learning a whole new language, namely Elder Futhark, but thankfully there was a shortcut. If you drank a potion made by someone who had learned the language the hard way then you could learn it much quicker, learning the vocabulary but not the grammar. He had asked and learned it worked that way with all languages. He vowed to find one for Hindi.
Arithmancy was learning to use numbers to predict things like the weather, changes in the economy, and how a certain spell or potion would work, though in its NEWT years it would be about spell and potion crafting. It was a numbers-heavy class but Harry and the other muggle-raised students had an advantage if they'd already taken Algebra, which he had.
Care of Magical Creatures was taught by Hagrid and on their first day, he showed them Hippogriffs. It was fascinating and the flight that he got to take was breathtaking; he could almost imagine doing it on his own as a bird. Unfortunately, the class was marred by Malfoy getting hurt after he tried to be smart with one of the Hippogriffs, even after Hagrid had specifically told them all that would happen if they insulted the creatures. Everyone was left wondering what Malfoy's father would do about it.
Finally though, after their second Defense class with Professor Lupin which was a theory-heavy class about boggarts (after their first class when they had been shown and fought off an actual Boggart), Harry left for his first lesson with the Headmaster.
After speaking with Jennifer she had agreed that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity but had warned him that he would likely try to influence Harry away from his family. This had left Harry upset and irritated and now he stood before the stone gargoyle guarding the entrance to the Headmaster's office trying to calm himself down with an exercise he'd read about in one of the Mind Magic books.
Using circular breathing he pumped a small amount of magic into his brain. Almost at once he calmed and relaxed. Harry smiled to himself and gave the password, "Ice Mice."
The Headmaster was standing when Harry got there, gently petting the Phoenix. "Hello Fawkes," Harry murmured. The Headmaster offered him a red jellybean and gestured to Fawkes. Harry held it out to him and sure enough, he snapped it up and trilled out a brief but happy song that uplifted Harry's heart.
"So Harry, I know you just got out of Defense so why don't we do Defense on Wednesdays and Transfiguration on Fridays?"
Harry murmured in agreement.
"Have you ever heard of the Animagus transformation?"
Harry flushed, "Uh yes."
The Headmaster eyed him for a moment before chuckling, "Like father like son, I suppose."
Harry frowned, "What do you mean?"
"Your father also began studying for his Animagus transformation in his second year and completed it by the end of the third year."
Eager for a story about the parents he'd never known he asked, "What kind of animal was he?"
The Headmaster's eyes twinkled as he said, "A stag. Do you know what kind you will be?"
Suddenly Harry realized what was happening and closed himself off. He couldn't tell the Headmaster, it was supposed to be a secret.
The Headmaster sighed, "You don't have to tell me, of course. Let's move on shall we?"
Harry nodded and followed the Headmaster to sit by the fire, relieved. "If you wish to continue to study the animagus process on your own we could also focus on Combat Transfiguration."
Harry blinked in surprise, "Combat Transfiguration? I've never heard of it."
"That would be because it's not part of the normal Transfiguration course, it is in fact part of the Transfiguration Mastery. Not because it is particularly difficult, though it can be, but because it is generally considered unneeded for students."
With that, the Headmaster began to show him how to transfigure part of the stone floor to ice. At first, Harry struggled to see how it could be part of combat until the Headmaster pointed out how hard it would be to move around on it on a battlefield unless you had practice. Practice Harry would have, eventually. First, he had to get it right.
After he met with the Headmaster, he met up with Hermione and worked on the huge amount of homework. Hermione had even more homework than he did as she was taking Muggle Studies on Tuesday afternoons and Wednesday mornings. Harry was glad that it was agreed that Muggle Studies was an unnecessary class for him, he didn't want a full course load.
Afterward, he skipped dinner, instead checking out some books to scan and going to take another dose of the Animagus potion. It was the last dose he had left and the next day after he meets with the Headmaster, he'd have to make more. He wasn't especially looking forward to doing the tricky potion entirely on his own.
The next day dawn broke bright and early and Harry woke with a start as it did so. He didn't particularly know why he had woken so early, but he was now wide awake so he got a head start for the day and scanned some more books in while studying Spanish.
After breakfast was his meeting with the Headmaster and he found he wasn't dreading it so badly. He wondered what they would be doing but wasn't overly concerned about it.
"I thought," the Headmaster began as Harry avoided looking at the eyewatering inducing bright yellow and green robes, "that we could have a field trip today."
"A field trip?"
"Yes, I thought you might be interested in witnessing a dueling competition."
Harry considered it. He couldn't see how this could be used to sway him away from his family, but perhaps that was the point; to lull him into a false sense of security before he began properly trying.
Still, a dueling competition did sound good so he agreed.
Harry had a marvelous time.
It started with Sergei Livius, whom the Headmaster told him was an amateur dueler for the past five years, this was his first time in the professional dueling circuit. He didn't look nervous, instead, he looked confident.
His opponent was Antonia Portchester who had been a professional dueler for two years. She'd won about fifty percent of her games in the past but this season she'd gone farther this year than she'd ever managed before.
The two faced off, wands in the same position Professor Snape had held his the year before for his duel against Professor Lockhart.
"Three…Two…One!"
At one they both started firing off spells faster than he could see. They were mostly silent and they didn't seem to stop casting at all. "They're called Spell Chains, they're chaining together similar spells to keep moving quickly."
As Harry watched Antonia changed the dueling platform into a rocky terrain, giving her a place to hide from the battery of physical assaults Sergei was trying to assault her with. She did not indicate that anything had hit her though, other than a small amount of blood dripping down her nondominant hand. While Sergei tried to blast the terrain apart Antonia transfigured the floor he was on into a muddy terrain.
Sergei slipped at once and struggled to stand. As he tried and failed to get the mud off of his face so he could see Antonia cast a simple expelliarmus and caught his wand. Thus the duel ended.
With a wave of her wand, the abnormally sticky mud fell off of Sergei in one great clump. Antonia bowed to him as she was announced the winner and he simply glared at her and snatched his wand back.
"Sore loser," someone nearby muttered.
"No wonder he stayed amateur for so long," someone else agreed.
After that, they watched three more duels that were equally exciting before it was time to head back to the castle.
Harry couldn't help but chatter excitedly to Hermione and Ron about the duels he'd seen. "-And then the ice dragon attacked! But Lionel was waiting for it and burnt it away with fire that he sent back at-"
"Why do you get to go to dueling competitions while the rest of us are stuck here?" demanded Seamus.
Harry shrugged, "I get private lessons with the Headmaster and he decided it would be educational."
"Speaking of," Harry said turning back to Hermione and Ron, "the Headmaster said I could invite two people with me for my next field trip, Saturday after next. Want to come?" he ignored the outraged look on Seamus's face.
Ron lit up, "Sounds brilliant mate!"
"What will we be doing?" Hermione asked.
Harry shrugged, "I don't know yet, the Headmaster said it'd be a surprise."
After the exciting morning he'd had it was hard to calm down enough to make the potion. Mercifully Hermione and Ron insisted on staying with him and while Ron wasn't much help with anything Potions related Hermione helped him get the timings down just right.
"So what does this potion do anyways?" Hermione asked as he bottled up all thirty doses.
Harry shrugged and Ron sighed, "Another one of your secrets."
Hermione put her hands on her hips, "I'm putting my foot down. No. More. Secrets."
Harry grimaced he really didn't want to lose his friends but he didn't have a choice about keeping things a secret.
"Hermione I can't tell you. Not don't want to. I can't."
"But why?"
Harry just sighed.
"Is someone threatening you?"
Harry shook his head, "No one's threatening me but I really can't tell you."
Neither Ron nor Hermione looked happy with that.