A different ambition

The hallways were crowded with the classical mess that defined the first day of term, the chaotic rumble of hundreds of feet suttling about filled the ears, accompanied by the chaotic chattering of countless children. Luckily enough the first years were always shown to their classes on the first day, and that removed them from underfoot, but it didn't help with the NEWT students that so often decided to spend their first empty hours loitering about.

Particularly annoying, however, was the image of two students in particular perched above a bass relief of one of the stone walls, smiling gayly because of the mess that Minerva McGonagall was trying to sort through, her Scottish burr came through as she reprimanded this or that student, recognizing thanks to her experience the difference between those genuinely lost amidst the chaos and those that were trying to milk it for all its worth.

She moved through the crowd towards two students that she instantly knew had better things that needed doing rather than having fun without a thought for the consequences: "Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley."

She briefly enjoyed the startled expression on Ronald's face, only to feel her enjoyment immediately dim when she spotted the guarded gaze of Harry, who was already taking a deep breath in preparation for the imminent confrontation.

The Transfiguration Professor pursed her lips in a thin line: "I understood your refusal of the title of Captain, even if it saddened me..."

Her eyes darted menacingly at the Weasley sixth year, who interrupted her while whipping his head towards his best mate: "You what! You didn't tell me she asked you to be captain, are you barking mad?! Why'd you refuse?"

"I don't have that kind of time to waste, Ron." the green glare of the Chosen One met the blue eyes of his friend, silencing him before McGonagall could do the same, only for the witch to point out the obvious.

"And yet you're here, Mr. Potter, wasting time:" McGonagall sniffed imperiously, "I'd think that the both of you would rather fill this time with potions, or is it no longer your ambition to become Aurors?"

Harry's eyes shone coldly while he let out a dry, cheerless chuckle: "I'll think about my ambition after the war, professor. I obtained my Exceeded Expectations despite the teachings of Professor Snape, not because of it"

"Besides, we can't follow NEWT potions without an O in our OWLs." Ron eagerly added his two cents in, only to snap his mouth shut when McGonagall glared at him.

"Professor Slughorn on the other hand is perfectly happy to teach students with an EE on their potion OWL." the witch jumped at Weasley's mistake, straightening her back with steel in her expression. She didn't like how sarcastic he had been when mentioning Severus, and she blamed his spending the summer at the Headquarters with only sporadic encounters with members of the Order for this open disrespect.

When she had been told by Albus how he had been left to his own devices in Grimmauld's Place, effectively freeing some of the Order for other pursuits, Minerva had been conflicted between feeling vindicated at Harry's preference of that dingy abode over Privet Drive, where those horrible muggles had raised him despite her protests, and worried, as loneliness in his recently inherited home was hardly an acceptable arrangement for a 16 years old boy. She had been glad when Albus had informed her of the his transferrence to the Burrow, but now... now she realized that Harry Potter had aged beyond his years during the past months.

Unimpressed, the Chosen One simply crossed his arms, his objection killing Minerva's pointed suggestion in its infancy: "Potion Making will not help me killing Death Eaters professor, nor Voldemort."

The surrounding chaos was fortunately great enough to cover his voice from the ears of the students moving about, but it didn't protect McGonagall or Weasley' ears: "Bloody hell!" was Ron's instinctive reaction.

"Mr. Weasley!" she reprimanded the lanky boy while shooting a withering glare at the Chosen One, who knew perfectly well not to use that name, only to focus one last time on the tall Weasley: "I'm sure professor Slughorn will be delighted to have you in his class, and don't think that I won't check."

Ronald's first instinct was to disobey the witch's order, only to swallow the injustice he was witnessing: why could Harry avoid Potions? Ron was going to enter the Order too, surely the Transfiguration professor knew that. However, her glare promised a month of detentions if he refused, and so he turned on his heel after exchanging a meaningful glance with Harry.

Only for Harry to apparently misunderstand what his friend meant, because he turned towards the professor to defend his choice: "I made my choice professor. It's either him or me. I'll study Charms, Transfiguration, and Defence, because I'll need them, but..."

"Enough, Potter." she said with the same tone in which she had forcefully offered him a biscuit the previous year, "The war isn't your responsibility, you can't allow it to take everything..."

"It is, and it already did." the laconic answer was the last thing Ron heard as he moved towards the dungeons, his hands clenching with rage as he frowned. It was the first year all over again, when Harry had received a Nimbus 2000 and the position of Seeker, or...

Stop that. Ron censured his own thoughts before they could spiral out of control as they did during the Triwizard Tournament while he reached the slightly damp corridors that led to the Potion classroom. It wasn't Harry's fault, it was never really Harry's fault, yet it was always Ron to be left behind, wasn't he? Always him to live in his friend's shadow.

He sighed tiredly as he entered the classroom, freezing for a moment as the eyes of every occupant turned towards him: "Oho!" the portly professor greeted him, his eyes shining greedily for a moment before he noticed that there wasn't anybody besides Ron, and his expression became more neutral, "And who might you be?"

"Ronald Weasley, professor." he could feel his ears tinge red because of the embarrassment, "I wasn't told that an O in potions wasn't necessary with you, so I ran late, and I'm without the books or the ingredients..."

"There's a cabinet exactly for that, my boy, no worries!" the professor turned his back on him and resumed his lesson: "Now what we have here is..."

Ron could feel his heart boom in his chest with anger in answer to the dismissal, and he kept his eyes low while he blindly took the first book he found, quickly moving amidst the others only to realize that the textbook was as tattered and bruised by use, like everything he had always owned.

When it came the time to use the textbooks, to brew something as a challenge for the barmy professor, Ronald bit his tongue to not let out a curse: he couldn't even read the proper instructions, hidden as they were under the endless notes of a previous owner!

"Defodio!" Harry shouted as he completed the upward movement of his wand, only to bend his knees and whip his hand sideways: "Depulso!"

At a speed he could barely follow, Potter looked as the mannequin exploded with a sharp crack: the splinters of wood aflame as they were propelled against the following one, throwing it on the ground only for the third one to be pushed off its feet and into the legs of one that was standing a bit behind.

Harry eyed critically his own wandwork: his targets were all downed, that was for sure, and he had managed to chain correctly the rather basic combination. Efficiency was the name of the game. With each spell, he aimed to strike more than a single target, because, as basic logic dictated and as had been underlined in one of the tomes he had read to prepare his training regime, every second an enemy was busy dealing with the side effects of a spell not aimed at them, it was time Potter could employ to accomplish something else.

"Reparo." he made a great gesture with his wand, which seemed to resist him as he tried to use it for a task that wasn't closely related to battle: the broken pieces of the mannequins conjured by the Room of Requirement smashed together in an uneven approximation of their original shape, and Harry clicked his tongue in annoyance.

The wand loved battle above anything else: every time he cast during his training, the rage that he had grown to accept seemed to seep into some of the spells, making their power grow to the point that the Chosen One doubted any other student could match him. But this is still annoying. He agreed, deep in his heart, that his every action should be focused on becoming ready for the war, but being unable to clean up after himself irked him.

"They're still good enough for practice." he narrowed his eyes at the barely restored mannequins, and he repeated the motions, this time shouting the incantations only in his head. Occlumency aided him a little: emptying his mind of everything, he made sure to leave only the purpose leading his wand, only the reason why he was practicing magic.

The image of Sirius falling beyond the Veil flashed before the eyes of the Chosen One, and as his fury burned once more in his gut, like a frozen fire that gave clarity as the tongues of flame licked his lungs, he cast his spells.

Defodio. The gouging charm ripped a small trench into the floor before tearing asunder the first mannequin, which exploded in answer to the rage that Harry poured into the spell.

Depulso. Faster than ever, the shrapnel of both the mannequin and the floor was flung into the surrounding targets, which suddenly resembled irregular sieves.

Self-satisfaction barely managed to quench the thirst for destruction that he always felt coursing through him when thinking about the events of that night, only for the small smile that that emotion had brought to immediately die. He had managed two silent castings: whoop a hoopla doo. The memory of the battle between Voldemort and Dumbledore was still very present in his mind, and somehow he knew that there was just no way that he'd ever amount to a silver of what had transpired after his killing of Bellatrix.

How was he meant to be able to kill Voldemort, when he had managed to summon a giant snake made of fire? How was he meant to be able to transfigure it into harmless smoke, as Dumbledore had done? That Riddle ever took Harry seriously had never been clearer.

His hand clenched harshly on his wand, and when he swished it this time, there was only unfocused rage thrumming through him.

And nothing happened.

Without a clear image in his mind, with no incantation, was it any wonder that his undirected, untethered rage didn't accomplish a single thing?

Pointing the length of wood forward, he kept his mouth shut while he easily summoned his apoplectic fury: it was cold and unforgiving.

And so, so familiar...

A cold emerald light coalesced eagerly on the tip of his wand and...

A bell rang in the corner of the Room of Requirement, and as it distracted Harry, his rage left him as quickly as it had come, leaving him empty and lost.

Deflated, he sighed and a muttered curse, grabbing his bag before leaving the room: he had practiced for several hours, and the bell warned him of the Charms lesson. Harry couldn't get away with dropping yet another subject, but he wished he could. He needn't to learn how to change the coloring of objects, he didn't need to learn how to swap a spider leg with an octopus' tentacle.

He needed to learn how to fight in a war.

He needed it.

AN

To keep this fic fast-paced enough, I'm going to work through the diverging points or outright new elements that pop up, as I really don't care to work through the minor things we've already seen a thousand times before.

In order to go on with the plot without repeating canon, I zoomed on the first confrontation that saw the Chosen One sent to Potions in canon: but here we have McGonagall interacting with the new and changed Harry Potter, and she too realizes that the change he underwent is a stark one.