Wit of the Raven
Chapter Twelve
Not for the first time, Harry noticed that he was experiencing the same feeling that a new seamster experiences as he fails to properly thread a needle for the twentieth time; Harry was exasperated. Despite training himself to exhaustion every night, Harry was certain that he hadn't hit his threshold, and that his rate of improvement in terms of being able to cast more wanded spells was glacial.
On the other hand, Harry had gotten his optomancy far enough along that he was decent enough at forcing the melanin out of his eyes that it barely hurt anymore. Besides, after collapsing from hours of exhaustive optomancy, he had discovered that it went away by itself after a good night's sleep. Unfortunately, he hadn't figured that out until he was mostly proficient in forcing it out the hard way, but regardless, he rarely practiced it anymore. He was very quick at altering the lens in his eye, too, so that all he really had to deal with was the disorientation and refocusing before he could reap the benefits. Reading lips was still very hard, since many syllables look fairly similar, but if he really thought about it, he could grasp short unheard words. He wasn't so hot at changing how well he could see in the dark, but he was working on it. One of the benefits that Snape had mentioned was that when a person, or even a plant or an animal tried to surprise him by releasing a great deal of light, he'd be able to guard against that problem easily once he was proficient at it. Consequently, Harry had redoubled his efforts, although he didn't feel that his increase in work was really cost effective; he had improved a little quicker, but not that much.
Despite his triumphs in the rare discipline, Harry constantly wished that he didn't have to manage his spell usage, so that he didn't find himself stuck in a practical lesson, nearly out of juice. Knowing that his problems stemmed from the fact that the wand was actually a disguised staff, he returned to the book, reading more closely on how wands and staffs differed. The stories, which were mostly history, and the facts, which were mostly dry and not written in an interesting way, alternated chapters, and not for the first time, Harry wished that they could have integrated the stories into the information chapters, as some of the other authors that Harry had read had done. From what he could tell, the main difference was in the core. Where the typical wand had a bit of a magical creature in it, and several cores could be taken from the same magical creature, the core of the staff was inhabited by the souls of magical creatures, tied to this plane until the destruction of the staff by the staff's maker. Because souls could not be split, and because the soul was closely interlinked with how blood holds magic, staffs were much stronger, but retained personalities and refused to work below a certain level.
Harry had nearly given up hope, when a paragraph caught his eye.
. . . It is not completely known how, or why staffs have a much larger minimum magic usage. It could be intractability on the part of the staff, except that staffs have been known to have very good working relationships with their wielders, and still they couldn't perform simple tasks with them. However, some wizards have claimed that the lower bound had become better once they had become better acquainted with the inhabitants of their staffs' cores. . .
Realizing that this could be the key to making his life significantly easier, Harry smiled, flipping through the book to the index, and then back to the section on contacting the inhabitants of staffs. It didn't seem too difficult, considering that he already knew how to make a rough circle. Most of the instructions seemed to be surrounding that, since the circle had to be destroyed to stop the communication with the staff; obviously, this was not cost effective for the majority of people reading the book, who probably did not tend to be millionaires, willing and able to shell out the money for a new circle just to talk to a staff. Other than supplying the rough circle with a separate power supply, which Harry still didn't understand, despite Hannah's very good explanations in terms of theory, Harry felt fairly comfortable doing it without using the book at all, even though he hadn't tried it out yet.
A couple of weeks ago, the last remaining member of Harry's dormitory had saved up the requisite number of points, and moved out of the dorm, leaving the entire room to Harry. He had briefly considered moving all of the beds to one side, to give himself more room, but he didn't strictly need it, and it would cause trouble for whoever had to put them back next year. Now though, he moved a couple of the beds to make room for his circle. The beds were surprisingly heavy, and exhausted from the effort, he collapsed in one of them, panting softly.
He had another irritation than not being able to cast easily though, he remembered, and Daphne was her name. She hadn't discussed their altercation with him, but her relationship with Neville had become more complicated. Sometimes she flirted with him in an urbane manner, and sometimes she ignored him. Neville had confided in Harry that he was getting fed up, and privately, Harry was glad. He figured that the cessation of their romantic relationship would improve interpersonal relationships with the other group members. Hannah didn't really seem to care, since she was playing one OR or another nearly constantly, but it would be better for the group as a whole if Neville wasn't in the perfect position to become peeved enough to kill someone if Daphne's secret came out.
Harry also suspected that Daphne could spend more time looking up spells that the rest of them could use if she wasn't toying with Neville's emotions all the time. Neville might actually crack open a book that wasn't part of the required reading, and Harry might actually begin to get something out of the group other than how to write rough circles. Which was obviously useful, but not the only topic he was interested in.
Feeling physically refreshed but emotionally a little unsure after his brief rest, Harry decided to seize the day and get to work. Pulling a piece of chalk out of his pocket, he scrawled the runes needed for a quick and easy circle on the ground. There wasn't any protection, but he wasn't planning on opening it up to any other circles, anyway.
The basic idea was not that hard, although the implementation was fairly tedious. You needed a few runes to specify things like language, interface type and connection, which in this case would be a direct one to an object, as well as a very complex rune with many twists and turns that went in the middle of the circle. It was a substitute for an abbreviated version of The Code, but it was still a pain to draw. There was a rune that the book supplied for letting the souls interact with the circle, and several runes that Harry made into a separate circle for an auxiliary power source. A more experienced haxxor probably could have layered the power source more elegantly on top of the actual code, but Harry decided against it, choosing function over form; it was too time consuming to redo just because he wanted to take a chance.
Once he was done, Harry stood up, and looked over his work. It wasn't a masterpiece, and some of the distances between runes were a little awkward as he had underestimated the distance he would need to fill, but it was passable. He gave a small smile, before kneeling down and pushing his forefinger and middle finger onto a rune that was simply two circles next to each other. Carefully placing each finger inside of the chalk, he pushed a little magic through the blood pumping through his fingers, and into the rune. It glowed brightly, before the glow subsided, and spread evenly throughout the power supply. He repeated the action for the main circle, and a small light appeared at the bottom of the circle, several inches below the main rune.
Tentatively, reaching towards the light like a father his newborn, unsure that he is really there, he touched it gently. Instantly, the interface sprang up; a little ugly, without the clean textures and edges of Harry's standard circle, but definitely serviceable. Harry glanced at the two gauges indicating power. The auxiliary one wasn't straining at all yet, and the main one could stick around for at least another forty-five minutes before it needed recharging.
More confident in his work now, Harry selected the main interface, and was only slightly surprised when two pictures, one of a Pixie and one of a Dragon, appeared in front of him. The pictures seemed like the moving portraits he seen before. The two of them were identical sizes, although he knew that the Dragon was probably thousands of times larger than the Pixie. He had seen something similar when Hannah communicated with her parents, although she had used a fairly advanced graphics code that let them appear practically three-dimensional, and he wondered if he couldn't write one of those himself. At the bottom of both pictures, almost like closed captioning, there was a friendly greeting from the Pixie, and a bizarre mix of alphanumeric gibberish and arcane symbols from the Dragon.
"Hello, Harry!" the Pixie printed, the words appearing with haste, as if to match the visible excitement of the Pixie floating about the picture frame.
"Hello . . . I'm sorry, I'm not sure of your name," he told her slowly.
"I'm Nellodee," she answered, replacing the previous words that had been slowly fading away. The "I'm" faded away like the others had done before, the "Nellodee" stayed in the foreground, turning from black and transitioning through an array of colors before settling on red, and erupting with sparkles.
"Hi Nellodee," Harry uttered awkwardly. He had the distinct feeling that he was going insane, and suppressed uncomfortable laughter before asking, "Do you speak English?"
She shook her head no. "I have a translating charm going. I leeched a tiny amount of magic from you and have been maintaining it like that." As she continued, she would alter the appearance of her words, in ways including but not limited to underscoring, moving about, italicizing, and changing the color of her words. It was more than a little distracting, although after a while, Harry got used to it.
Harry nodded in understanding. "But you can only maintain one at a time?" he queried, wondering why the Dragon couldn't do the same.
Nellodee nodded cheerfully, with a high-spirited, "Yes!" appearing at the bottom of her screen. After a moment though, the word faded, and she added, "Well, I can do both of us at once, but focusing on two drains the magic much more quickly. Barely worth it, really."
"So why can't the Dragon do it?" Harry inquired.
"What are they teaching you at this school?" the Pixie tittered. "Dragons," here the Pixie included a fairly intricate design, a combination of warring fire and ice, alternating by the letter, "have internal magic that lets them breathe fire or ice, fly, and protects them against most magics, but they cannot cast magic spells. Alternately, we Pixies are built like birds. Even stripped of our magic, we could still flitter about. Consequently, we can cast magic, and more efficiently than most of you, at that."
"And you hold no intention of conquering the world?" Harry asked in jest, only barely stifling a laugh.
"Humans are the heaviest hitting of the spellcasters in the world," the Pixie replied, the decoration on the words becoming less and less artful, and more and more obviously haphazard. "We think it's because of the existence of muggles. Why force such a large percentage of our population to lose their magic in exchange for us to become more powerful? It's barely worth it at all," she finished, her words rushing together at the end. Slowing down, she added, "Also, we are pacifists at heart, us Pixies." The last word she made do a little dance, before a final flourish in which the letters dissociated so that their branches turned into individual Pixies themselves, doing a quick dance before flying off the screen.
"That was pretty good," Harry complimented with a smile.
The Pixie knelt in mid-air in some variant on a curtsy. "Thank you, I try," she demurred.
"So can you help me with my staff problems? The minimum magic required to cast a spell has been killing me." Harry questioned with a slightly pleading tone.
The Pixie seemed to still, and the Dragon, which had hitherto been motionless, roared into action and let a streak of flame roll across its screen. The Pixie, looking over at it in consternation, shook its head. "I handle mostly custodial duties, such as keeping the staff clean. As the superior in internal magic, and it is the internal magic of the staff that you use, Dragon is far better suited to helping you out with that."
"Could you please translate for me?" Harry asked.
The Pixie seemed to hesitate, before flying into the air, and nodding once. In an instant, the words that had just before been English were turned into gibberish, and the Dragon's symbols and pictures became words in a black font, large and ornate like a newspaper headline, serifs large and tittles exact. "Harry Potter: Wizard," the window at the bottom of the Dragon's screen read.
Repositioning himself slightly to face the Dragon, Harry nodded. "That's me. And who are you?"
"Dragon," was the answer. The black seemed to blacken, if at all possible, on the word. Harry noted that instead of fading into the background, the Dragon seemed to have allocated itself a set amount of space on the screen, and the lines of text simply shifted the previous ones up one, and replaced the one before. It gave a funny effect, one combining formality, punctuality, and harshness.
"Hold on, your name's Dragon?" Harry asked, incredulous. He was slightly unnerved by Dragon's mannerisms, but this was a little too bizarre to not follow his initial instincts on.
The text shifted again, and Dragon informed him, "Sounds like your word for my race. But to us, Dragon means aggression." The font, majestic and unchanging, was a strong departure from the Pixie's expressive one.
Running parallel to Dragon's script was a steady stream of nonsense words from Nellodee, changing color from blue to green, and back again. Occasionally, the words would form images that would disappear as quickly as they had appeared. Their frenzied pace counteracted the relaxing effect of their sans-serif font. He chose to ignore it, and continued speaking to the Dragon.
"What does it sound like? The language of Dragon, that is," he asked, biting his lip.
"The language of aggression . . ." Dragon paused, and shifted down a line. Harry could almost hear the hard return on the typewriter, loud and screeching. "It's an amalgam of noises. What is the sound of your language?" Dragon asked, for the first time adding the flavor of italics to his words. It was difficult to discern his exact tone of voice, but Harry gauged it to be cool.
"Er, okay," Harry said, feeling wary of offending his magical focus, as well as still more than a bit interested by the font and manner of speaking. If Dragon got angry at him, who knew what would happen the next time he tried to perform a blasting curse. It could come out the wrong end of his staff if he wasn't careful. "So how did you get the name Dragon?"
"I picked it."
Harry was slightly taken aback. "So what did you go by before you could pick your name? Or do you hatch fully knowledgeable?"
Dragon wrote, at the same pace, same font, "I used my real name, wand-waver."
Slowly, Harry realized why he was so unnerved and why he was an inch away from driving a stake into his head in frustration. Over the past couple of weeks, he had been concentrating more and more on reading body language, the poor man's polygraph. That made this a nightmare. He was going in completely blind, not knowing who Dragon had been before he'd become an essential part of Harry's staff, and he couldn't even guess what Dragon was feeling, since he wasn't so much as twitching on his screen. At least the Pixie had emulated many standard human body positions–this was simply impossible. "And it's standard procedure to name yourself, for Dragons."
"Yes," Dragon answered tersely.
"Would you please tell me your initial name?" Harry asked with interest, trying to hide his mounting annoyance.
"No," Dragon shot back. Harry resisted the urge to curse wildly, until a few seconds later, Dragon slowly wrote out, "We could . . . make a deal."
Eager, but not wanting to come off as too eager, Harry lifted an eyebrow, since he was fairly certain that Dragon could see him. It was better to be safe than sorry, and he didn't want to seem insincere. The Pixie's words seemed to become the font of an angry hiss, directed at the dragon, whose words came as they always had, inexorably, although he had a feeling that they had become blacker again.
"We have been listening to your . . . conversations," the Dragon drawled, its words coming lethargically. Whether that was the dragon or the translator objecting was debatable. "The Potter family fought. I fought. You will fight."
Harry pursed his lips. "Out of the question," he said definitely. "First of all, the Pixie doesn't seem to be all that thrilled about the idea . . ."
"To rights!" the Pixie interrupted, briefly scattering the Dragon's words, the words flying away quickly.
"And second of all, I don't want to be hindered by injury," he added with an air of finality. "Think of another request."
"You won't be injured," the Dragon cajoled calmly, "if you do it right. Trust me," he ordered. "It'll be quick. He shields–you petrify–it rips through his shield–he needs medical attention."
The words 'medical attention" had a sharper tint, almost as if the black had reached saturation point and the only way to get the point across was to make the background lighter at this point.
"Not going to happen," Harry informed Dragon coolly, making to shut down the circle, and reaching for his staff. These talks were obviously going nowhere.
"The Pixie" Dragon started, his words suddenly italicized, "translates the magic. I make it efficient. You'd be surprised by how much I can do."
Harry sighed, and pulled back his hand. In his mind's eye, he could easily see himself, tiny, in a meadow, in front of a gigantic Dragon, curled up so as not to appear as large as he truly was, keeping the big guns for later. Lack of efficiency was a puff of flame at worst, which could be staved off with little or no difficulty, with wandless magic. The much greater threat was a spell being interpreted correctly by the faerie, and then wrought completely out of control by the Dragon. The flame charm that burned off his face would probably be equivalent to the Dragon stretching out and backhanding him.
Harry sighed again. If he was obviously in danger from fighting, Dragon would probably let him stop doing it, and it could be fit into his schedule, by switching out of Criminal Psychology, still fulfilling his father's request, probably becoming even closer to the spirit of his request. And did he really want to be on his staff's bad side? He allowed himself a small smirk. The joys of turning an issue into a boon.
"Alright, I'll switch into it," he agreed, with a smile on his face and eagerness in his words, quite contrary to his prior opinions.
The Pixie gave a small, frantic twittering, and on Dragon's board, there was simply an animation of a Dragon doing a flip in midair, the first time it had moved the entire time. Harry was filled with a sense of great foreboding, wondering if he should already regret his decision.
The Office for Defense was Spartan. There was a filing cabinet, a desk with a couple of papers strewn over a Circle, and a wastepaper basket. The man sitting behind the desk was seated in a stiff wooden chair with a high, flat back. His open robe showed beneath it a button-down white shirt and slacks, and his only extravagance was his long black dreadlocks, tied into a ponytail behind him. He ran his hand through them as Harry came into the room. He glanced up for a second before returning to his work.
Harry was a little intimidated. "Excuse me sir, are you Professor Shacklebolt?"
"Yes, I am," he said without glancing up.
"Um, do you know how I can switch into a dueling class?" Harry asked, a little put off by the uneven cadence of the conversation. Professor Shacklebolt seemed completely unwilling to play along.
Now the professor stopped working, and looked Harry in the eye. "Aren't you going to introduce yourself?"
Harry began to feel a funny combination of a headache coming on combined with a sort of respect for her–he knew for certain that she respected him, at least. "I'm sorry sir, I'm Harry Potter, and I'm a first year."
"Better. Now start again."
"Hello Professor Shacklebolt, how are you doing today?" Harry asked in a warm voice.
"Hello Mr. Potter, I am doing very well," Shacklebolt answered. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
Satisfied that he could go on to the main order of business, he explained, "My father asked that I take a defense class, and although I have been taking and enjoying Criminal Psychology, I feel like my time could be more usefully spent at my age in taking a dueling class."
Shacklebolt nodded in understanding. "Dueling opens up more classes in the future, while Criminal Psychology is only a prerequisite for an OWL. It would widen your ability to choose different, arguably more interesting classes next year. However, first years tend not to take this class. Do you know why?"
Harry shook his head. This was new information, and silently he made a note to thank the Dragon. He hadn't been thinking ahead adequately–this would behoove him.
"What would you guess is the reason?" he asked.
Harry thought. Criminal Psychology was not an easy class, and was challenging for even Harry to understand. Nearly all of the first and even second years in his class had dropped out, and Harry had really only survived by reading ahead in the book. "Not to be presumptuous, but given that there are so many more advanced forms of the class, since if I recall, Dueling is the first in a long line of classes that have successive prerequisites, I would be surprised if the difficulty was in the theory," he said, thinking out loud.
"The theory is very simple, you are correct," Shacklebolt said, a neutral expression on his face.
"Then the problem must be with the practical aspect," Harry decided. Privately, he doubted that it would be much of a problem, given that his problems were with poor volume of spells, and not with actually casting them, as far as he could see.
"Yes," Shacklebolt said, a small smile appearing on his face. "First years that have not passed their first threshold frequently have problems casting the requisite spells, and the weeding-out period for first years has already passed. We usually teach the hardest spell of the year in the first few classes, so that we don't have to flat-out reject first years. Besides, some first years can handle it, just not most."
Harry nodded, barely containing his eagerness. The headache was slightly compounded as he considered his opportunity to show off, but he assuaged it by reminding himself that he could only take the class if he showed off at least a little. "Do you have a way in which you can quickly test me to see if I can physically handle the class?"
Shacklebolt asked, "What hexes do you know?"
Harry thought for a second, before listing, "A petrifying curse, a stillness hex, a disarming charm, and Jak."
"Is the petrifying charm Petrificus Totalus?" he asked with interest.
"Yes," Harry said, unsure of whether or not the interest was a good sign or not. Probably a good sign.
"I'm going to cast that spell on you, and you are going to cast this shield and reflect it back at me."
"Alright," Harry said, readying his staff.
"The spell is Laerad. Watch." He drew his wand, and deliberately pushed his wand forward, before pointed down with it, surprising Harry. This wasn't one of the shield wand-motions that he recognized at all–this was one of the more common herbology spell wand-motions. The powerful wizard said, almost lovingly, "Laerad," and instantly, before his eyes, the wand sprouted branches and created a tight, cohesive shield of branches. "When a spell hits it, it turns into a ball of condensed magic, which is trying to drill through the shield. If you push back, though, it will go back to where it came from." With a shake, the spell was dispelled, and he put down his wand again, indicating that Harry should go.
Harry thought for a second. The Potters were notably good at Herbology, and their magical bloodline ran through Herbology. He would do fine. Harry nodded, and prepared himself, considering the steps that he now knew by heart for casting the spell. He didn't have a good sacrifice to help the spell, except for maybe the pebble stuck in his shoe, and he knew close enough how to pronounce the spell. He could practically feel the magic running through his blood, and he tried to remember the feeling of pushing magic into something else, pushing his magic from his blood into the wand, causing the small head of a pixie to appear, with a slightly worried look on her face. Harry opted not to worry too much, and he used the wand motion that Snape had taught him for Herbology spells, the one that simulated planting seeds.
"Hurry up," said Shacklebolt, who had lost his smile long ago. "I don't have all day."
Harry nodded, and thinking of growing and protecting, how the mighty boughs of a tree would protect the microcosm that lived beneath it, the feel of a broad trunk under his fingers, the shade of its leaves preventing Dudley from catching him, the immutability of a tree, the roots it dug deep beneath, and the way that if a few trees grew together, they would twist and turn about each other, weakening and strengthening each other in turns, turning together into a regular behemoth of a tree. "Laerad," he enunciated, pulling up his hand.
As soon as he had loosed the spell, he knew something was wrong. As he continued to push the magic through his fingers, the dragon that Ollivander hadn't been able to see roared out of the wand once again, bellowing silently, but the spell didn't cast. Harry took a quick look at Shacklebolt, who was staring hard at his wand, and Harry returned his attention to the wand himself. After a second, although it didn't move, Harry could feel the strange sensation of the innards of the wand almost buckling under the stress, and although it didn't change in weight, it appeared as if he was holding a tree in all of its green finery, and not a tiny little stick. He couldn't see Shacklebolt through the leaves, although he could make out his laugh.
"Get ready, Mr. Potter!" the professor ordered, before hissing in a monotone, "Petrificus Totalus." Harry felt as if something was pressing on the tip of his wand, and shoved back a little. The pressure stopped, and Harry dispelled the shield.
Shacklebolt's skin had taken on a grey veneer, and Harry's heart leapt up in his chest, even as he began to feel slightly fatigued from all of the magic that Dragon had taken from him. The feeling quickly disappeared, and after a couple more seconds, Shacklebolt shook off the spell before Harry could even cast Finite.
"That was a good spell, Harry," Shacklebolt commended, dusting something off of one of his cuffs. "It would be good for a fourth year, but a fourth year wouldn't have required so much time to cast it," he reprimanded. "Still, more than enough to be able to survive Dueling class. I helped design the curriculum, you'll fit in very nicely into the next class, which is just theory, and you'll have two weeks to work on these spells." Shacklebolt sat back down, still stretching his fingers. He pulled a piece of looseleaf paper from one of his filing cabinets, and wrote six spells down in neat handwriting, before handing it to Harry. "May I see your schedule, please?"
Harry pulled his schedule out, and Shacklebolt tapped it a few times, before smirking and drawing a diagonal with his finger over what had previously been Harry's Criminal Psychology class. "You'll be exciting for this teacher," Shacklebolt said.
Harry was still a little dumbfounded that Shacklebolt could move. Taking the schedule back, he asked, "Er, sir, how did you get rid of the hex?"
The professor smiled broadly. "The Shacklebolts are beloved of Ares, just like the Potters, and Ares doesn't mind when you simply wish to be able to extend your battles. This kind of immunity isn't that difficult to obtain, if you're one of us and you have the patience and knowledge. The only difficulty is really in the extent to which I can fight off spells," he said. He started poring over his work once more. "Is that all?" he ordered.
Harry left.
At Harry's next flying lesson with Snape he brought up dueling lessons. He hadn't had any trouble with the actual casting of the spells, but he had a feeling that it would be trouble if he tried to cast them repetitively, since regardless of the spell, he could still only cast a few using his staff. He had experimented a little with his Windstaff, which had given much weaker, but more standard results. The spectacular things he did with his staff were interesting, but not very useful, and generally extremely taxing.
"Remember my problem with putting too much power into spells?" Harry asked.
"Of course," Snape replied, doing a leisurely flip in the air. "Try that, Harry. Wrench your body about, and the Windstaff will follow. As long as you don't accelerate at all, you'll maintain the direction you're going in."
Trying the maneuver, Harry had some trouble not accelerating as he switched directions, and Snape expertly kept around him, yelling out ways to correct his problems. "Do you have any, ah, shit, wrong way, any ideas on what I can do to solve my problem?"
"No, ask your magic teacher. Do you have Professor Kylix? That was pretty good, Harry. Now just try to do it a little slower."
"Like–oh, Merlin–like this?" At Snape's nod, he tried it again, and said, "No, I have Professor Nectarus. Oh, bugger."
"Let's head back towards the castle, we're getting dangerously close to the F. Forest. Nectarus is rather intelligent, and I've heard good things about his teaching. When is your next class with him?"
"November," Harry said, decelerating before trying the move again, but only half-way. It wasn't perfect, but he quickly readjusted so that he was going towards the castle. Snape didn't stop or decelerate, but instead turned around in midair, and accelerated towards the castle, the other direction. "Since I figured out his trick, and you already assigned me the EME homework, I don't have to go to class until after Hallowe'en. Thanks for the help in theory by the way; I can much more consistently get spells on the first try than most of my peers, excluding McAndrews . . . ah! There we go," he said.
"Good one Mr. Potter," Snape congratulated. "Don't feel too bad about McAndrews' superiority. He has been trained in spell theory since he could walk, probably. Both of his parents are noted spell theorists." He gave Harry a sharp look, and finished, "Besides, it's unbecoming to be envious."
After a few more tries, Harry mostly had the turn down, and they moved on to the trick that Snape had shown Harry, with accelerating in the opposite direction instead of decelerating. It was a much faster way to do it, but it made coming to a full stop fairly difficult, and if airspace was full, one could run into another flier. A thought hit Harry. "I probably shouldn't tell Professor Nectarus about my inability to cast weak spells, and my facility in casting strong ones."
Snape smiled. "Hard to conceal, no?"
"If I loop a spell with Tor or Jak, I can usually diffuse the efficacy. Keeps up the facade of normality."
"Clever," Snape said. "Hmm, do you have time to break in a weapon? An oak cudgel might work out nicely as a wand substitute, if it's just for dueling class."
A wand substitute would be useful, but Harry knew that watching from the sidelines wasn't exactly what Dragon had had in mind. "I don't really have the time to break in a wand substitute," Harry demurred, before flipping about and using the accelerating trick to stop. He overshot nil velocity a little, and decelerated down to zero from a relatively slow pace.
"Good. That's enough, we're going back to Hogwarts," Snape said, setting the pace towards the castle. Harry kept up, but didn't bother trying to talk to the professor until they touched down again.
Once they were back down, Snape responded to his question, "I think the Potters have at least one already broken-in wand-substitutes solely for battle. You can check Gringotts."
"Yes," Harry said. "But if they don't, any other ideas?"
Snape shrugged. "Get the other guy on the first hit," he advised sagely. As they put their Windstaffs away, he asked, "How are you with your optomancy?"
"Eye-fucking?" Harry asked. Snape shot him a withering look, and Harry smiled disarmingly. "It's going well, I've pretty much figured out how to purge my eyes of excess melanin when I'm done. Dark and light adaptation is a little tricky, but I'll have figured it out by next week."
Snape nodded, and said, "Quicken the time-table and we'll do a ritual that lets you see magic on the day after Halloween if you've figured it out."
"Whoa," Harry said, deftly utilizing his expansive vocabulary.
"'Whoa' indeed," Snape said.
Harry closed the door to the storage room, and asked, "What do I need to do to prepare?"
"Nothing, really. Don't do too much work on your eyes on November first, and I can brew the potion for you."
"What do you want in exchange?" Harry asked, barely managing to contain his delight.
Snape raised an eyebrow. "That was blunt." Harry instantly regretted his phrasing, as he felt a sharp stab of pain, perhaps the onset of a migraine. "Come, I'll get you a few potions books to read. Johnson took on a third year protégé, and it would benefit both of us to one-up her. Here, I know a shortcut to my office, we'll cut across the pitch."
"Who is Johnson?" Harry asked as they walked around the bleachers. He had seen the pitch before, in an exhibition between the Greeks and the Romans, but hadn't walked on it. The grass was neatly trimmed, and uniformly green.
"Faculty advisor for the Americans, also the woman who you humiliated with your first-year potions knowledge."
"I prefer to think of it as supporting you, Professor, rather than damaging someone else's reputation," Harry said, carefully choosing his words. His migraine miraculously disappeared.
"Think of it however you wish," Snape said. "Regardless, I won, and she's turning this third year into a potions mistress to get me back."
"Do these things happen frequently in the Potions department?" Harry asked, sidestepping some mulch.
"The one-upmanship?" Snape asked. At Harry nod, he nodded as well. "It's actually better in Potions than in Charms though, since Charms have such quick results. Herbology has a pretty thriving competition system, but since everything in Herbology is long-term, it's more subtle. Haven't you been scouted out as a tool for an Herbology professor yet?"
Harry shook his head. "Not that I'm aware," he said, considering his interactions with Sprout in the past.
"Peculiar," Snape said.
"So why the constant competition? It's there with the students, it's there with the professors, apparently, is there some kind of competition between heads of house?"
Snape shook his head. "No, but there is one between headmasters. We spend a good amount of time at Hogwarts, and we'd go insane without something to do in our spare time. Since it's institutionalized, and we basically get pay-raises and promotions based on our success at it, we keep the competition going and have incentive to be the best possible teachers. If we have the best students, we get the best perks, the best salaries. The only real downside is that it dissuades people who might be great teachers, but dislike competition, from teaching at Hogwarts. Come, this door leads to my quarters." Snape pushed a slightly protruding stone, and it slid in with a moan, before it disappeared, alongside a good portion of the wall, revealing a long corridor.
"So are you using me to help position yourself in this competition?" Harry asked, not really offended. Given that Snape had helped him out so much over the summer, he would do as much as he could to help him out.
"No, not yet," Snape said. "Since I haven't formally taught you any potions, except for a little theory, I haven't sufficiently influenced you in that field, which is the only pertinent one for me, for you to be useful to me." They rounded a corner, and Snape changed the subject. "You're in a group, correct? With whom?"
"Neville Longbottom, Daphne Greengrass, and Hannah Abbot," Harry replied, quelling his irritation at them.
"Longbottom will be powerful after his fifth threshold, they have a peculiar quirk in their blood trait that does that somehow. The Abbots are an extremely wealthy family, although it isn't immediately obvious, and probably around the second best in their field, and the Greengrasses . . . no one really knows anything about them. You would solve one of the great mysteries of the Hunter world if you figured out anything from that girl," Snape said.
"She hasn't talked that much about her family life," Harry lied. It wouldn't be kind, even if she got on his nerves, to reveal that information.
"Who's your Charms teacher? Not my wife, I don't think," Snape said. "She only teaches one first year course, and besides, she would have mentioned you."
"No, Professor Barnshot," Harry said.
"Great teacher," Snape said appreciatively. "Here we are."
Snape opened the door, stepped in, and summoned a book. "Finish this, and tell me when you do. No real hurry, just before the end of December. I don't expect proficiency."
Harry glanced at the title, More Magical Drafts and Potions, and nodded. "Should I review Magical Drafts and Potions before starting this?"
"You should be fine without. Go, we both have work to do."
Harry nodded, and went back to his dormitory. It wasn't a long walk, and he got back to his room and had the time and energy to start More Magical Drafts and Potions before meeting with his group at nine. It was a pretty good read, and Harry got through the introduction before he had to depart for the classroom they had designated for their Saturday meeting spot.
He got there at exactly nine, and as he had thought, everyone else was waiting for him with bated breath, although Neville's breath was split between being bated and flirting obnoxiously with Daphne, who barely seemed to notice. When Harry walked in, she swivelled her head in his direction, and beckoned him to come in. "We've been waiting," she said, a grouchy look on her face, although her tone was neutral.
"I'm on time," Harry noted. "You're all just early."
"C'mon Potter," Neville cajoled, "tomorrow is the Hunter game. Of course we're early. Here, I'll start. I really like my spell. Shoots small objects, like pebbles, at a high velocity. Incantation, waddiwassi. Won't move anything too massive very quickly, unfortunately." Scooping pebbles out of his pocket, he handed them out to Harry, Hannah, and Daphne, who seemed not to notice that his hand lingered a little longer in hers.
Harry was grudgingly pleased at first to see a spell that he didn't know already, but quickly found fault with it. The direction was spotty at best, and dictated by the end position of the wand. If the opponent was extremely close, or had gigantic tender spots that were impossible to get at with standard magic, and needed to be hit by magic-less objects, he supposed that it might be useful as a last-ditch effort, but it was generally not that helpful. He was a little disappointed to see that Neville hadn't fully learned the ins and outs of the spell, and amused himself by trying to think of which spells to loop around it to make it useful.
In the middle of daydreaming about a combination of Accio and Waddiwassi, he realized that Hannah had gotten off of her desk, and was explaining her spell, which could be used to plate a conductive anode in a cathode, something like instantaneous electroplating. She hadn't thought to bring sample metals, but gave fairly decent advice on how to pronounce it, "Welter."
Not all that irritated, given that he could think of some pretty decent uses for it, such as covering up the spots left by de-rusting charms, although Neville seemed a little put out, he turned his attention to Daphne, who indicated that Harry should go first. "Age before beauty," she suggested with a smile.
"Pearls before swine," Harry countered.
Neville looked a little confused, Hannah rolled her eyes, and Daphne looked chagrined. "Pack," she muttered, going for effect. Without losing time, the pebbles rose in the air, and settled themselves in her hand. With another intonation, they ordered themselves, largest on the bottom, smaller ones filling in the cracks and on top. "Think of the way you want them to be ordered," she said, "mathematics say that you should usually do big ones, then small ones."
Harry had learned how to do it, and had gotten surprisingly efficient results for his trouble, after seeing Granger do it, but decided not to show off his skill with it, and instead gave Neville pointers as he harangued Daphne. "I thought we had agreed to do spells that would be helpful at the contest," he complained.
Daphne shrugged, about as warm and receptive to his comments as a stingray. "Go fuck yourself, Neville."
"It may shave a few seconds off our time in tomorrow's game, especially since Hunter games are apparently usually search and retrieve," Harry said. Daphne gave him a surprised look, but he didn't twitch. He had nothing to gain by becoming irritated and off-balance, he knew it. "Besides, it's a generally useful spell to know."
Neville grumbled, but persistently tried the spell until he could get the pebbles to jump into his hand consistently. Hannah did it until she could get a miniature Circle to slip into her pocket, and then they turned to Harry.
Harry had examined the spells advised to him by Shacklebolt, and given the other spells that they had already covered in the group, he had decided that the tripping jinx was the most different. He cast, "Tridia," on the ground in front of Neville, and said, "C'mere, Neville."
Neville nimbly tried to leap over the spot that Harry had spelled, and was fairly surprised to feel his leg be caught as he was tripped. He narrowly avoided having his face be rearranged by the floor, by sticking out his hands in front of him, and quickly stood up, a shaky smile on his face. "Wicked! It sets up a short, invisible wall on the ground where you cast it?" he asked.
"No, it actually grabs at the second limb as it goes over. It can be fooled by having one person's leg go over, and then the other person's leg go over, which it counts as the back leg, but it's a generally pretty useful curse."
Harry played guinea pig for the spell by letting himself be tripped up by the spell as they figured it out, as well as training himself in how to trip properly, so that he could get back up as quickly as possible, and possibly, how to evade the tripping hex. He managed to get the invisible thing to get him a little awkwardly once, but he couldn't figure out the full-on miss. After Hannah, who was inarguably worst at Hunting or fighting spells finally figured it out consistently, and was breathing heavily, they left the room, Neville patting Harry on the back. "Pretty damn cool spell," he admitted without a problem. "Wish I'd done it."
"Yeah," Harry said. "Not going to lie, pretty badass," he said, with a mocking smirk.
Neville smiled, before his eyes shot open, and he yelled at the group, "Oi, come back! Last order of business to attend to, then we can bugger off."
Neville's order of business was simple. "I think we should split up and do the Hunter challenge each by ourselves, because we're pretty much the strongest around, and there probably won't be an obvious best contributor. It will prevent infighting about who gets the first place."
"That's bullshit," Harry said, shaking his head. "We'll be killed by practically all of the other teams. Hunting is even a team job, usually."
"My great-uncle hunts alone," Neville answered calmly with a ferocious nod. "We can do it."
"My mother hunts alone as well," Daphne said, studiously avoiding Harry's eye. He knew why she hunted alone.
"I'm not even competing," Hannah said.
"What?" Harry asked, turning to her. "You're miles beyond the average in terms of hunting spells!"
"Hufflepuff has a tremendous number of revenge oriented hunting families. Those kids are real fanatics. I wouldn't have a chance," Hannah said simply. "I have a sufficient number of points, I don't need to waste my time for maybe two."
Harry sighed. "You're all nuts. Instead of all of us winning, we'll all lose." Hannah looked awkwardly at a wall, Neville and Daphne exchanged glances, and the three of them left the room, leaving Harry by himself.
A/N: Whoa, haven't updated in ten months. My apologies. Time just seems to zip past. Anyway, I'm still alive, I still breathe, I still think, I was going to hold onto this chapter until requiem (my next chapter) was done, but I decided against it. Because ten months is a long time. Don't you hate transition chapters?
Anyway, I was reading some random fan fiction, don't remember the title. Anyway, the author used the acronym EME to describe Extreme Magical Exhaustion. I was so proud--a plagiarist of my own! So I looked up "Extreme Magical Exhaustion" on google. Sadly, it turns out that the author could have plagiarized from many people, most notably A Lifetime Story Four by Iniysa, who wrote back in '04. Just to give credit where credit is due. I have also borrowed concepts from DragonGirl16 (I remember asking her if I could use the idea, but it would have been with my msn account, so I can't give you proof) and have been deeply influenced by Raven Dragonclaw's work. I intend to swipe a scene from Vox Corporis (I can show you this email where I ask if it's okay) but I have not done so yet.
Also, many thanks to the people at AFC, especially IP82, Charmscharles, and Traveller, as well as my invaluable betas. All of you kick much ass, and make sure my story's plotholes are gone, or at least secret.