Finals are OVER!!! I got a D+ in Chemistry, but I don't have to worry about it because I can't change it! There's nothing I can do about it, so it's no use worrying! Hakuna matata, you know? And it only brought my grade down four percent. I've still got a B.

So this chapter is in celebration of the end of finals, and also because I'm excited to write this one. Hermione's life hanging by a thread… what is going to happen? Will she live? Will she die? Okay, yeah, I'm melodramatic. I know.

Chapter 22

The Inner Sanctum

Monday morning was a nightmare for Harry. He was trying to teach the first year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs to conjure a protective shield around themselves, but he couldn't focus. His mind kept drifting back to an image of Hermione's lifeless form, and from there to a picture of Severus Snape, and from there to the idea of cutting him in half and spilling his guts in Antarctica. Snape would have a lot to answer for when he found him.

And of course, his students wanted to know where he had been for the last week. He told them he had been ill. This wasn't enough; they wanted to know what it was and why Madame Pomfrey couldn't cure it. Harry found himself inventing things, digging himself deeper and deeper into a lie, which eventually landed with his telling them that he had been accidentally hexed by a sixth year while they were practicing jinxes, and he had ended up in the hospital wing with green tentacles growing out of his nose. In order to cure it, Madame Pomfrey had needed the blood of a grindylow, and it had taken her a week to track one down in the lake, which she had accomplished by turning herself into a shark and swimming around for a few hours.

Apparently, at least someone saw holes in his story. Arionna Pusey hung back after class.

"Professor?" she said slightly timidly.

"What?" he asked distractedly, sorting through the homework he had just collected and pulling out the one that didn't have a name on it. He labeled it Kyle Lindsay. Kyle always forgot to put his name on his work.

"What did Madame Pomfrey say your… er, disease was called?"

"Seversnapeatitis," he answered dryly as he sat down, putting his elbows on his desk and putting his head in his hands. "Why?"

"Because there isn't such a disease as sevesnapeatitsis," she answered.

"Not until last week, there wasn't. The kid who jinxed me seems to have unintentionally invented a new hex, one that makes blue tentacles grow out of your nose. Madame Pomfrey decided to call it seversnapeatitis."

"You said they were green tentacles."

"One was. The other was blue."

She looked at him with her eyebrows raised. "Really?"

She looked so much like Hermione that he wanted to cry. Instead, he sighed. "Do you want something, Arionna?"

"Only the truth," she said quietly. "No one tells us anything. We know stuff's going on, but we don't know what, and it's a horrible feeling. You all lie to us because you think we're too young to know or understand or keep a secret, but it's worse when you don't tell us, because then we invent stuff to fill the gaps. Stuff that's usually worse than what actually happened."

Harry looked up. He knew how that felt, knew how it was to be kept in the dark, not being told anything, not understanding. And it was true; his mind made up worse scenarios when left to wander.

"Arionna," he said after a big breath, "what I have been doing over the last week is a secret, not because I think you're too naïve or untrustworthy, but because you don't need to know. You don't need to burden yourself with what is happening that is beyond your control."

"But how far does that really extend? Are we only hearing about the least consequential of You-Know-Who's attacks? Are we being sheltered? Because whether it's beyond our control or not, it concerns us. We will be affected by it just as much as the adults will, and we can understand it, too."

Harry smiled slightly, reminded very strongly of another young woman with the same sort of vocabulary. One who might never be able to use it again. "You are wise beyond your years, Arionna Pusey," he said softly.

"Thank you very much, but that doesn't tell me what's going on."

"Not to be dissuaded, are you?"

"No."

He drew a deep breath. "Someday, Arionna, you will know. I can't tell you now, but I can guarantee, if you decide to stick your nose in it, nothing will remain hidden from you for long. You're too smart for that."

She looked disappointed, but started to turn away, defeated.

"Arionna," he said. She looked back. "Good luck," he whispered.

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Saturday morning dawned chilly and bright. After lying awake for hours the previous night, Harry had made a decision.

He left the castle before breakfast and began walking around the grounds. He could only hope that she was there; she was the only person to whom he thought he could turn for the help he needed.

His efforts were rewarded about an hour later. Walking up the gate to relieve the auror who stood guard there was Tonks, pink hair very conspicuously poking out of the hood of her cloak. She grinned slightly as she saw him. "Wotcher, Harry!"

"Hello, Tonks."

When he continued to stare at her, she looked at him strangely. "Something wrong?" she asked concernedly.

"Sort of. Can I talk to you?"

She shrugged. "If you don't mind hanging out here in this weather, you can. It's freezing."

"I'm fine."

"Alright," she said as she and the other auror exchanged a nod and he left, "let me guess. Is this about Hermione?"

"Indirectly, yes."

She sighed, leaning against the gatepost. "I don't know what to tell you, Harry. She won't wake up."

"I know that," he scowled. "That's not what I want to talk about."

"Okay, talk, then."

Harry drew a deep breath. "I have a big favor to ask of you."

She looked at him suspiciously.

"I need to learn to defend myself. Past the school level. I need to know the harder spells, the ones that aurors learn, the ones that actually have more of an impact than the Jelly-Legs jinx or the Bat-Bogey hex. I need to know them because I can't defend myself against Voldemort and the Death Eaters with Expelliarmus."

"You did once," she said quietly.

"Once," he said. "My luck might not hold next time."

She was silent a moment. "You want me to teach you."

"Yes."

She looked at him long and hard. "You've grown up a lot since I met you, Harry," she said softly.

"Through no choice of my own."

She smiled almost bitterly. "Yes… the world tends to make us do that." She hesitated, gazing at the brilliant morning sun. "I'll teach you, Harry. Whatever you want me to, I'll teach you, but I'm probably not the best-qualified person to teach you."

"No one else has the time. Everyone I can think of is either a Death Eater or busy with keeping the world from careening into chaos."

"A fine goal, to be sure," she said, smiling. "When are you free?"

"I teach from nine to one and then from three to five. Friday nights I give extra classes."

"For the overachievers?"

"For the ones who want survive an attack."

"I see. I'm off by six every night. I can do it for a couple hours then and on Saturdays before about seven in the evening."

"That's a lot of hours."

"There's a lot to teach you."

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Slowly, slowly, five weeks inched by. Hermione got no worse, but nor did she get better. Ron, who had decided to stay at Grimauld Place, used floo powder to appear in his office fireplace every night at exactly five-thirty, and they talked, exchanging news, grimly speculating, and Harry giving Ron his homework. Then Tonks would come in and teach him.

He learned faster than he ever had in his life, driven by a desperate need to see Hermione awake, smiling, laughing, living, as she once had. Every night, they retreated to his empty classroom, and she taught him.

"This is a training circle, a master's wheel," she had told him on his first lesson, drawing a circle, fifteen feet in radius, with her wand on the floor. She marked it with a shimmering orange something that shot out of the tip of her wand. She drew another one inside it—this one with a radius of ten feet—one inside that with a radius of five, and finally, a small one with a radius of three feet. "While I'm here, this circle will be your world, your whole life. While I am teaching you, there is nothing outside of it."

"Hermione—"

"There is nothing," she said firmly. "Hermione does not exist until I say she does. As your skill improves, you will progress to the smaller circles. With each new ring, your world contracts, bringing you closer to your goal. This is how they do it in auror training. Trust me, Harry."

"What is the point of this circle, then?"

"It makes you focus. If nothing exists outside of it, you will be concentrating on what you are supposed to be learning. You will find you're more successful. You'll be able to concentrate more. Your spells will have more power. You'll remember things better."

They began at the beginning. She taught him tactics with his wand, such as how to reflect a spell off something in the room so that it would hit his opponent from an unexpected angle. They worked on silent spells, wand movements, and enunciation. She made him do spells with his left hand, she gave him her wand and told him to try doing two spells at once, and she drilled him mercilessly for every fact of magic he had ever learned.

On Monday of the second week, they sat down in the middle of the circle facing each other. Tonks drew a deep breath. "I'm going to try to teach you something, Harry, that most people never learn. It has to do with your Inner Sanctum."

"My what?'

Tonks looked surprised. "You've never heard of your Inner Sanctum?"

He shook his head. "What is it?"

She took a long breath. "I think in order to describe it, you have to know what magic is."

"I'm listening."

"That's the thing; no one really knows. Some say it's willpower, some say it's more tangible, like a hormone or something. So no one really knows how to understand the Inner Sanctum. Basically, it's where your magic resides. It's not a physical place, like your heart or mind, but if you search for it within yourself, you can find it. It's a complicated thing."

"I can tell."

"You have to feel where your magic comes from, find that place, and be able to control it. And that's what I'm going to try to teach you."

"Why do I need to learn it, but most people don't?"

"For starters, you need to be able to defend yourself properly. Most people don't have You-Know-Who out for their blood. Very few people ever learn the kind of defense skills you get as an auror. You also have to know how to control your magic because as a member of the Order, you're going to be doing things that most people will never do. If your magic gets out of hand, the results could be disastrous."

"So finding this… Inner Sanctum will help me control my magic?"

"Once you're so familiar with it that you can find it without even thinking, nothing will be beyond your reach."

"How do you find it?"

"That," she said, smiling, "is what I'm going to teach you. Stand up."

He did so. She stepped out of the ring. "I want you to cast lumos. But don't do it unthinkingly. Pay attention to what you're doing. Try to feel what happens when you prepare to cast a spell, as you cast it, and then the aftereffects. Go ahead."

Very confident, Harry squared his feet, held his wand out in front of him, and said, "Lumos!"

He concentrated on himself and watched the light grow at the end of his wand, but he felt nothing. He shook his head. "Nothing felt different."

"Of course nothing felt different. You're doing the exact same thing you've been doing since you started casting spells. What you're doing is so much a part of yourself that you do it subconsciously, and you can't even trace it with your conscious mind. That's why you don't notice it; it's like noticing your heart beating. It doesn't even occur to you that it's happening because it's so ingrained in you. Though I daresay this is harder than focusing on your heart beating. Try it again."

He tried it again, and still he felt nothing. "What am I supposed to feel?"

"The magic welling up inside of you, preparing to be unleashed. When it's let go, a rushing sensation. And when it's over, you should feel… like it's going down again, settling. It's tough, but you'll get it eventually."

He tried it again. He tried it again. He tried it again. He didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

"Try it again," she said.

On the second night of fruitlessly casting lumos over and over again, Harry, through all his frustration, finally felt something. When the spell left his wand tip, he felt the faintest rush inside him, as though his heart were pumping blood at twice its normal rate. "Nox," he whispered, and he felt it again, barely perceptible, this time going backwards. "Tonks, I think I feel something."

She made him do it again, and again, and again with more potent spells, until he felt it every time, and he was more sensitive to it so it felt stronger than it had at first. It was an exhilarating sensation, feeling his magic rush through his veins. Finally, after he had conjured his Patronus and felt the magic from it, Tonks grinned. "Now you get to try to follow it. Follow where it comes from, follow it when it recedes."

The first time he tried, he had no idea how get beyond the simple rush of magic. He tried it again, and again, and again.

He didn't get it until Thursday night. He was ready to scream with frustration. Instead, he threw a Stinging Hex at the wall. It didn't calm him down, but as he felt the magic receding, he noticed something. It all seemed to be pooling up. Excitedly, he followed it to where it was going. Not mentally, not emotionally… but he felt it. It was gathering, not in a tangible place, but now he could find it, sense it all over his body. And he found, to his astonishment, he could make it go places. He could send it one way or another, make it form this spell or that. He had found it.

"I found it," he gasped, dropping his wand and feeling his torso. It felt as though it were somewhere in his abdomen, but he couldn't feel it with his hands. "I've got it."

But then it faded, and he lost it again. "It's gone," he whispered, turning around and looking over his shoulder as though it may have snuck behind him.

"That's okay," Tonks said encouragingly, beaming at him. "It's hard at first to retain it. Go ahead and try it again."

He did, and he lost it when he found it again, but not as quickly. He was able to hold onto it longer the third time, and even longer the fourth.

By Saturday, he could hold onto his Inner Sanctum as long as he wanted to after he cast a spell. By the next Monday, he could find it without even having to use magic.

As soon as he found he could do it without casting a spell, he was practicing every second. It took him a while at first, but he managed it with more and more ease as time went on. Any spare moment during his classes, during dinner, sandwiched between Neville and Dean, as he lay in bed trying to sleep, he conjured it. And eventually, it was there at his whim. He hardly had to think to find it, and he could keep it with him as long as he wanted.

On Wednesday, he came into his office with a grin on his face. Tonks asked why he was so happy, and he told her: he had managed to keep it there all day, even when his concentration was required elsewhere. Tonks looked amazed. "I'm impressed, Harry, honestly," she said slowly. "What you've accomplished in a week and a half often takes six weeks or more to do. It took me a little more than a month."

"I've got a lot riding on this, that's all."

"Don't demean yourself, Harry," she said smiling slightly. "You're incredibly talented. You've got a knack for this sort of thing."

"I've still got a lot riding on it."

She looked at him strangely. "I still can't see where learning to defend yourself will make Hermione wake up."

He drew a deep breath. "I know of someone who probably has the counter-curse. And it'll take a lot to get it out of him."

"Snape?" she asked quietly.

He nodded.

"Don't go getting yourself killed, Harry," she said.

"I assure you that if I do, it will be through no conscious choice of my own," he answered, smiling.

"Well… shall we start, then?"

They started with Lumen Confundus, a spell that conjured hundreds of dazzling lights that the victim could see, but the conjurer couldn't. They were supposed to bedazzle his opponent. "Now," Tonks said as she redrew the circle, which she erased after each of their lessons, "this powerful of a spell is one where you have to consciously call on your magic so that you can get enough force behind it. Find your Inner Sanctum and command the magic to go through your wand.

Harry took his place in the center of the circle, squared his feet, and shouted, "Lumen confundus!"

At the same time, he found his magic and forced it out of himself, and it exploded through his wand. It felt wonderful—he could control how powerful he wanted it to be, how long it took to take effect, how much magic he put into it. He couldn't see any visible effects, but then, he wasn't supposed to, and Tonks was shielding her eyes and squinting. He assumed it had worked.

Over the next two and a half weeks, she taught him everything she could. He learned how to conjure ropes and bind someone, he learned the Blasting Curse, which knocked an opponent off his feet, the Disillusionment Charm to make something practically invisible, spells that confounded his opponent, nearly a hundred different spells that would come in useful during a duel. She taught him everything she could think of. Finally, at the end of a grueling five weeks, she sank back against the wall. "There's only more thing I can teach you, Harry."

When she didn't continue, he asked quietly, "And what is that?"

She snapped her fingers and a ball of blue light appeared in her hand. "Wandless magic," she said, grinning. "Stand in the center circle."

He did so, pocketing his wand. "No," she said, shaking her head. "You're not ready to do it without the wand yet. Now, I want you to send Expelliarmus at the wall. You're going to feel your magic, and when you feel it, concentrate on just what it is that the wand is doing to it."

Harry did so. At first, he couldn't tell what the wand's function was in casting a spell, but after a few more tries, he realized what it was. "It focuses the magic," he said softly. "It focuses it and channels it and concentrates it."

"Exactly," she said smugly. "If you try to cast a spell without a wand, but not knowing how to focus it, you'll emit it from everywhere, but so weakly that the effect will hardly be felt. However, if you can make your hand—or whatever part of your body you want to emit the magic from, for that matter—if you can make your hand channel the magic from you Inner Sanctum and focus it as a spell, you don't need a wand.

"Now, here's how you do it. It requires multitasking, though it gets a lot easier once you get the hang of it. You have to focus on your hand—or your toes or your bellybutton, wherever you want it to come from, the finger for our purposes—and concentrate on sending the magic that way. You have to take over the wand's job. Try it."

He did, and, as he expected, he failed. But he tried again and again and again, and finally, the next night, he made his hand glow with the lumos spell.

"I'm doing it!" he shouted, ecstatic. "Look! I'm doing it!" As soon as he turned his attention to Tonks, the light faded. His face fell. "I was."

"I know, I saw. It'll take practice, but keep working on it. Good job."

Harry tried it again, and this time he focused on holding it. After five minutes of staring intently at his hand, Tonks whispered, "Now think about something else."

Harry moved his mind slowly over the other spells he had learned. It moved to Ron and then Hermione and then to Snape. He looked down and found, to his astonishment, that his hand was still emitting a yellow glow. He gazed at it in wonder. "If people can do this, then why do we still have wands?"

"Well, for starters, you have to learn the basics with a wand. A lot of people can't do this, either. They have to have a wand. And plus, even if you can focus mostly on something else at the same time, at least a little concentration is required to hold the spell. Oftentimes you need all the brainpower you can get behind whatever you're trying to do, and if you've got a wand, you have that much more. Does that make sense?"

He nodded, entranced. "Nox," he whispered, and his hand went out.

When he came the next day, Tonks deliberately stood at one side of the largest circle. "Face me," she ordered. "We're going to duel."

Harry did as he was told, immediately pulling a shield around himself. She shook her head. "We won't be using anything dangerous," she told him. "And nothing that's safe will penetrate a shield. So we're not using shields, either."

Harry nodded and withdrew his wand. Tonks raised her own. "Use everything you've ever learned, Harry," she said quietly. "Silent spells, precise wand movements and pronunciation, duel tactics, everything."

He nodded.

A jet of red light sprung out of the end of her wand. Harry dodged it and countered with a Stunning Spell, which she blocked. He sent a Jelly-legs jinx, quickly followed by a Full-body-bind Curse, which he sent at the window so it would rebound and hit her in the back. She skillfully avoided both, and, while his attention was on aiming the spell so it would reflect right, she set a Disarming Charm at him. His wand jumped out of his hand.

He had practiced for hours after their lesson the previous night, summoning things to himself without a wand, banishing them again, starting a fire in the grate of his office and then extinguishing it once more. He had even tried to do two at once; he had lit the fire and summoned a book to himself. Though he had set the rug on fire instead of the logs in the fireplace, and despite that the book had hit him on the head instead of landing neatly in his hands, he had managed it. He could use wandless magic.

He sent a weak stinging hex at her, followed quickly by three Disarming Charms. One of them hit her, and her wand was gone, too. She grinned with a smile that sort of scared Harry. Without warning, the ground rolled beneath his feet: an Earthquake Spell that threw the opponent off balance. The incantation was Contremisco. He hadn't been ready for it, and he fell, banging his head on the stone.

He blinked to rid his eyes of the dizzying pain and sat up again, only to find Tonks' wand at his throat. "Checkmate," she said brightly.

They dueled once a day after that. Harry held out longer and longer, until finally, with a quick combination of a Stunning Spell, a Lumen Confundus, and a Disarming Charm, he beat her.

Pointing his wand at her chest, he stood over her, breathing hard and flushed with the ecstasy of victory. She smiled at him as he offered her his hand. "Harry," she said hoarsely, grinning at him, "I think you're done. I can't teach you anything more."

Harry stepped back, still breathing hard. All the efforts of five long weeks were crashing down on him, and he had just defeated an auror in a duel. Something within him welled up and screamed victoriously, and a slow grin began spreading over his face. He straightened up and looked at Tonks.

"You're ready," she said softly. "You can defend yourself." She placed her fist over her heart. "I condensed two years of auror training into a five-week crash course, and you've done beautifully with it. Congratulations, Harry. You have my utmost respect."

"Thanks, Tonks."

"You're ready, Harry. The world is yours; you have only to reach out and grasp it."

A/N: Wow, I really didn't mean for it to be that long. There just kept not being a good place to end it. Thanks for sticking with it this long, though… funny, I think, that this chapter comprised as much time as the rest of them have put together. Five whole weeks. We're now at the beginning of November. Only seven months left to go. Everyone cheer for Jarlaxle.