Chapter 8: Magical Theory

After Daphne left, Harry put up 'Nature's Nobility, A Wizarding Genealogy' and headed for the Hospital Wing. He hoped to get a chance to check in on Hermione before dinner instead of after.

Hermione was in good spirits when he finally got permission from Madam Pomfrey for a short visit. "Professor McGonagall stopped by to check on me and dropped off my books so I can catch up," she said with a smile.

"Like you need to catch up," Harry laughed, "more like everyone else needs to catch up to you." Hermione huffed but the corner of her lips twitched.

"Yes, well, someone needs to help you pass your classes," she quipped.

Harry put his hand over his heart in mock pain, "You wound me, Hermione." She giggled at his antics. "I'm going to put a lot more focus into learning this stuff from now on. I can't believe I was so lazy the last couple of years."

Hermione eyed him suspiciously but refrained from commenting.

They spent a few more minutes chatting about the new classes and what they were most excited for in them. Soon enough, Madam Pomfrey was ushering Harry back out of the ward so Hermione could have her dinner in peace.

"I'll see you in the morning, then," Harry called to her over his shoulder, then shot an innocent smile at Madam Pomfrey who glowered.

Dinner went by quickly. There had been a pickup game of Quidditch between the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors that most of the school were still making their way back from by the time Harry had finished his dinner. Neville plopped into the seat next to him just as Harry started on his treacle tart.

"Hey, Harry. You missed a good game."

Harry swallowed the bite he just took. "That's too bad." It wasn't really, he didn't have any interest in playing Quidditch right now. He wouldn't mind a chance to go fly for a bit though. "Who did they play as seeker?"

"Ginny," Neville said. Harry raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, that's what I said." Neville chuckled. "Still, she caught the snitch before Cho Chang had even noticed it."

"Damn, I might have to actually try out next year, at this rate." Harry grinned down the table at Ginny and gave her a thumbs up. She blushed but shot him a brilliant smile in response.

"So, what were you up to today?" Neville asked.

"Library," Harry said after he swallowed. "Was trying to find out more about my family. No one has ever told me much about them. Then the weirdest thing happened. Daphne Greengrass came and talked to me."

Neville choked on his pumpkin juice. "The Ice Queen?" Harry looked at him in confusion. "Daphne doesn't talk to anyone, and I mean anyone, other than her best friend Tracey Davis. Some older student in Slytherin tried to talk to her earlier this year. Whatever he said to her made her mad enough to cast a curse at him that froze his bollocks." Neville and Harry both shuddered in sympathetic pain. "She got the nickname 'Ice Queen' after that and not many people have bothered to try talking to her since."

Harry looked over toward the Slytherin table and saw Daphne sitting at the far end with a shorter, brown haired girl sitting next to her that Harry thought must be Tracey. Daphne's eyes flicked up and met his own for a brief second. Harry's stomach did a flip and Daphne quickly looked back to Tracey, though Harry saw the corners of her mouth quirk up slightly.

"Yeah, well," Harry said looking back at Neville, "She came and sat down with me and asked me some questions. She said her mum and mine were friends in school."

Neville nodded, "Yeah, my mum was friends with them too. Daphne is a cousin of mine." Harry looked surprised so he continued, "most purebloods are related in some way. I think I'm related to you through the Potter side somehow. Might be something like 2nd or 3rd cousins. I didn't really memorize the family tree though so I can't remember exactly."

'Shit, Salazar was right. Well, Neville is a much better cousin than Dudley.'

"In fact, I know you are related to Ron as well." Neville shot him a grin.

Harry stuttered. "Wh..what. How?"

"One of his great aunts is a Black and I think your Great Aunt was Dorea Black. I think those two might have been sisters?" His face crumpled a bit in concentration. "Don't quote me on that, like I said I haven't memorized the family trees but I know you guys are related somehow."

"Please tell me I'm not related to Daphne too." Harry grumbled. He wasn't keen on finding his cousin attractive.

"I don't think so," Neville said slowly. "Her family is Sacred 28, but they used to put a lot of stock into that stuff. I doubt they would have mingled with the Potters. Your family wasn't pure enough for them back then."

"Back then?" Harry asked. "So they don't believe that shit now?"

"Hard to say," Neville said, diplomatically. "Their family is fairly neutral, or moderate, in their politics. If I had to guess, they would be open to whatever would be the biggest benefit to them."

'True Slytherins.' A month ago Harry would have balked at that idea, now however, he was intrigued. Harry glanced up toward Daphne again and saw her looking at him this time. She blushed and turned back to Tracey quickly and Harry couldn't help but smile after he looked back down at his food.

Neville gave Harry a knowing grin. "She's been looking at you off and on throughout the meal." He elbowed Harry lightly and laughed when Harry blushed.

"Don't make me go get Hermione, Nev." Neville blushed as well and mumbled something that sounded like "Don't know what you mean." Harry smirked and chuckled. "What is Sacred 28?" Harry asked, not so subtly changing the subject.

Neville grinned again, catching on to the reason behind the topic change, then raised an eyebrow. "I forget that you weren't raised in our world. The Sacred 28 is the 28 families that have the 'Purest' blood. It was in some book that was anonymously published back in the early 1900's. It is suspected that one of the Nott's wrote it, but it was never confirmed. Your family is almost as pure as some of the other family's on the list, but your Great Uncle, Charlus Potter, was on the Wizengamot at the time and pushed for wizarding kind to help end the muggle World War. That got the Potters excluded from the list."

Harry smiled, "That's actually the most family history anyone has ever told me."

Neville looked surprised. "Really? If you want, I can try to fill in some gaps. I don't know much, but the Longbottoms and the Potters were close. My Gran knew your Grandparents well."

Harry beamed at him. "That would be excellent! Maybe we can sit down after classes sometime before the end of term?"

"Works for me, I'll write to Gran and ask her what she knows as well." Neville shrugged, "Anyway, the only families that care about that Sacred 28 hogwash are blood purists. The Weasleys were on the list but they are now considered blood traitors because they don't hate muggles and Ron's dad keeps pushing legislation to protect them from us. Most people don't even mention that their family is on the list unless they are bigots."

Harry nodded along. 'Maybe I should ask Daphne about it sometime. She said she doesn't hate muggleborns and insinuated that she wasn't a blood purist, but maybe she was just saying that because she thought I wouldn't bother talking to her if she hadn't.'

After Neville finished eating, the two boys headed up to Gryffindor tower together. They played a couple of games of exploding snap with Ginny and the Gryffindor Chasers, and Harry was given a play-by-play of the pickup game from the girls. Ginny looked very proud at the praise she was getting for her Seeker play that day.

"Careful Potter," Alicia said, "you may have competition next year in tryouts."

Harry grinned. "I heard she is even better at Chaser than she is at Seeker," he quipped. The three chasers looked between each other before eyeing up Ginny.

'Whoever loses out will be pissed.'

Just before 9pm Harry begged off to his bed claiming he was exhausted. Neville shrugged it off and bade him goodnight. Harry made his way up to the dorm and found it empty.

'Weird, I didn't see Ron today.'

He called for Dobby and asked him to apparate him to the study. Dobby gave him a funny look but did as he was asked.

"Ah, look who it is," Salazar grumbled once Harry appeared in the study, "my unappreciative brat of a great great grand whatever you are to me."

Harry smirked. "Sorry, did I forget my sword laying there where you could clearly see it all day." Harry looked to the desk but saw the sword was missing. "Where did it go?"

Salazar grinned at him, "You moved it to the desk drawer when you got here this afternoon."

'Right, linear timeline, and the headache starts again.'

Harry walked around the desk and opened the drawer to pull out the time turner. Inside the drawer, the sword was laid between the boxes on one side and the parchment on the other side. He pulled the time turner out, put it around his neck and spun the dial the 12 times required. The world blurred for a second and , when it stopped, he was sitting in the chair 6 hours earlier.

"Good, you are here. Now, put that shiny piece of Godric's overcompensation in the drawer where I don't have to look at it anymore." Salazar groused.

"Ok, ok." Harry smirked again.

'Double the fun. An unexpected joy of this time travel business.'

He slid the sword into the drawer where he had seen it before he traveled back and pulled a sheet of parchment and "his" red feather quill out.

"Why do you use that particular quill?" Salazar asked, glaring at the quill like it did him great personal harm.

"I'm not sure." Harry shrugged and looked at the other quills available, but none of them caught his eye like this one had. "It feels warm to the touch and I just like how it looks."

Salazar muttered something about "Godric's influence" then said, "That quill was a gift from Godric Gryffindor. It is a tail feather from his phoenix familiar."

"Godric had a phoenix familiar?" Harry was surprised. "Fawkes, the phoenix that helped me down here and saved my life is Dumbledore's familiar."

"Stupid birds," Salazar muttered. "That bird was as much a menace as the man-baby it was bonded to." The words sounded unkind, but Harry could see the fondness in Salazar's expression. "It used to flash into my office and burn my notes while I was writing. Godric found this highly amusing. That was part of the reason I built this Chamber. I got tired of my things being messed with, either by Godric or his damned fire chicken."

Harry started laughing so hard he almost fell out of his chair. "You call his phoenix a fire chicken?"

Salazar chuckled, "Sure, why not? Useless birds. Snakes are much more intelligent and Parseltongue makes them far more useful."

After a few more minutes of stories about Godric's fire chicken and its exploits, Salazar began the real discussion of the night. "I wanted to give you an overview of some of the rituals you will be performing. Grab that large, black, leather bound book on the second shelf of the bookcase to your right." Harry located the book and pulled it down, placing it gently on the desk. "Open it to page 13." Harry did so. "The first ritual you will perform is detailed there. Read about it and we will discuss it afterwards."

Harry settled more comfortably into the chair and started reading.

The Cleansing Ritual is the most basic ritual one can perform. The Foundation of the ritual is an equilateral triangle surrounded by a circle that intersects with the corners of the triangle. At each point of the triangle, the practitioner must place alchemical ingredients that represent healing. (A list of these may be found in Appendix C). Remember, the more powerful the ingredient, the more powerful the effect.

This ritual will heal physical and magical ailments. The limits of the effectiveness of the ritual can be arithmetically calculated based upon the ingredients supplied and the effects of Nature on the ritual. For the greatest effect, this ritual should be completed on a full moon. For an even more superior effect, a full moon coinciding with an equinox would be preferred, but the benefits conveyed this way can also be achieved by using the rarer alchemical ingredients listed in Appendix C.

Underneath the text there was a drawing of the triangle and circle described in the text. It showed the runes etched around the circle in detail and had each one labeled for reference. Harry studied it for a minute then looked up to Salazar.

"Good," Salazar said, "Now, how much of that did you understand?"

Harry thought for a second. "The ritual will heal my body and magic proportional to the power of the ingredients I use and what day I perform it on."

Salazar beamed at him. "Good, you understood the basics. You are not as foolish as Godric at least." Harry grinned. "Now flip back to Appendix C."

Harry did so and was met with a large list of ingredients under the heading "Healing Properties".

"There are three particular ingredients that I want you to attempt to procure. They are very rare and no doubt very expensive, but if you use these three the ritual will have the greatest possible effect. Even trying to plan the ritual to occur during a full moon on an equinox wouldn't add much benefit with these ingredients." Harry pulled over his parchment. "Phoenix tears." Harry scribbled it down. "Dragon Liver." Harry wrote it down too. "And last, but not least, uncursed unicorn blood." Harry froze.

"Last year, the centaurs told me that anyone who spills the blood of a unicorn will have a cursed life." Harry paled at the thought of that.

"Uncursed blood is just that, uncursed. The only way to obtain it is for a unicorn to willingly give its blood to someone. This happens so rarely that uncursed unicorn blood is one of the most expensive ingredients in Alchemy." Salazar said, placatingly.

'Maybe Hagrid has an idea. He works with the unicorns in the Forbidden Forest all the time.'

Harry scribbled it down on his list. "What do I get if I fail to get one or more of these?"

"Dittany would be a good substitute. Unicorn tail hair would work instead of the blood if you cannot get it. The effects of the ritual will be significantly diminished though if you don't get the best ingredients."

Harry scribbled down the alternatives on his notes. "Why bother with this particular ritual? Couldn't I just go to our healer here at Hogwarts and have her fix me up?"

Salazar thought for a second, stroking his beard. "The largest guaranteed benefit will be repairing the malnutrition that your muggle relatives so kindly bestowed upon you by depriving you of food as a punishment. To remedy that with potions and healing spells would take a couple of months at least. You can only take so many nutrient potions at one time. Too much of it and your body will process it out without any effect. However, there are magical benefits as well as physical. I have a suspicion that you unconsciously block a portion of your Magical Core as a defense mechanism. It was not unheard of to find children in situations like your own during my time. The children in these scenarios built unconscious barriers around their Magical Core to help prevent accidental magic. After performing this ritual, they found themselves significantly more powerful simply because they now had full access to their magic."

'Just another thing the Dursleys did to me.' Harry fumed internally.

Out loud, Harry said, "So, this ritual will be done on the next full moon, I'm guessing?"

"Not the next full moon," Salazar said, "The next full moon is on July 3rd. This would only give you a total of 7 days in order to locate the ingredients and prepare for the ritual. Creating the ritual Foundation will only take a couple of hours but I can't imagine you getting the ingredients needed in time to complete this ritual in 7 days time. We will plan this ritual for the full moon on August 2nd instead."

Harry jotted down that date on his parchment.

'I'm going to need to buy some kind of planner to keep all of this straight.'

Salazar shifted in his chair and settled his familiar more comfortably on his shoulders before continuing. "Now, flip to page 94." Harry did so. "Again, read the description and we will discuss it when you are done."

The Puberty Ritual is another rather basic ritual that must be completed on the practitioner's 13th magical birthday. The Foundation of this ritual is a five pointed star oriented with a point facing true north surrounded by a circle that intersects with the points of the star. At each point in the star the practitioner must place ingredients that correspond to the following: at the northernmost point, place an item of strength. At the eastern point, place an item of fertility. At the south eastern point, place an item of healing. At the southwestern point, place an item of beauty. And finally, at the western point, place an item of growth. (A list of acceptable items may be found in Appendices A through E). This ritual will accelerate the rate of puberty from the standard three years for Magicals, to between 6 and 18 months (Depending on the arithmetically calculated cumulative benefits of the ingredients used). This will cause the practitioner to grow to their full height, complete their reproductive organ growth and maturation, and normalize their hormone imbalance in that time frame. This ritual also rids the practitioner of the inconvenience of acne and, for males, voice "cracking" during this time frame.

Again, under the text was a diagram showing the completed ritual foundation with the runes labeled. This foundation was much more complicated than the previous one. Harry studied it for a lot longer and made some notes on his parchment about different runes he would need to study in the pattern. After a while he looked back up to Salazar.

"Good," Salazar said once Harry looked up, "now, this ritual does exactly as the book describes. However, a couple of things it doesn't mention is that a post-pubescent male has much more muscle mass than a pre-pubescent male. This means your workouts will have a bigger effect on your strength and stamina after this ritual is completed. Also, your Magical Core goes through a change during puberty, similar to how your body does. This ritual will accelerate that rate of change as well, giving you full access to your adult Magical Core at a much earlier age."

Harry nodded, he had a lot of questions so he started with the easiest one. "It says I need another Healing ingredient. Would the unicorn blood be best for this as well?"

"Surprisingly no," Salazar replied. "I tested different ingredients with Arithmancy on this particular ritual when I was alive. Rowena and I wanted to find the best possible combination to give our students the largest benefit possible. We found that giant's blood in the strength point, bat spleen in the growth point, boomslang skin in the beauty point, Veela hair in the fertility point, and finally dittany in the healing point worked the best both arithmetically and practically."

Harry jotted down that list of ingredients as well.

'Giant's blood may be hard. I've never heard of a Veela either, so that could be pretty rare. The rest I have in my potions kit or can just buy at the apothecary. I wonder if Snape could have some of this tucked away in his storeroom? Hermione told us earlier this year that he kept a lot of the more dangerous and rare ingredients in there.'

Harry jotted down the new list of ingredients he needed to procure next to the first list he had made. "You keep mentioning my "Magical Core". I've never heard that referenced by any of our professors here." Harry was sure he hadn't heard that term before, but it could have been that he just hadn't been paying attention.

Salazar fiddled with his beard for a second. "How best to explain?" He thought about it for another few seconds. "Think of your Magical Core like a bowl of water that is being filled by a tap. As you use magic, you empty the bowl, but magic is always flowing into you from Nature. Some of the rituals I have planned will, in layman's terms, make the bowl bigger, or open the tap further."

"But, if magic is constantly flowing into me, won't the 'bowl' overflow?"

Salazar nodded. "It does, but that overflowing magic simply cycles back to Nature with no harm done. Your magic is constantly being drained. Wizards and witches live much longer lives than muggles because our magic helps to repair the cells in our bodies. I once read about a muggle health problem called 'Cancer' in a muggle medical journal that Tom suspended for me. I have never seen this issue in a magical being before. Also, magicals have much better memory recall than the average muggle, which is a result of Occlumency. This is one of the Mind Arts I am going to teach you about later. Every magical uses Occlumency without realizing it, hence the improved memory recall. The trick is to concentrate that natural ability and strengthen it with practice and focus. This confers greater benefits, such as perfect memory recall, or eidetic memory, and the ability to protect your mind against outside influence from practitioners of Legilimency, the other Mind Art I am going to teach you about."

Harry thought for a second. "You say magic comes from 'Nature', but how exactly?"

Salazar looked down at him with pride showing clearly on his face. "These kinds of questions are exactly what I like to hear my heir ask. Learning the very fundamentals of magic is a truly wise thing to do." He paused and fingered his beard again, thinking. "When I refer to 'Nature', I am referring to the Magical Ley Lines in the Earth itself. These are, for lack of a better descriptor, 'Veins' of magic that course through the Earth. Hogwarts was built on a nexus of Ley Lines. This is why the school has so many enchantments built into it that have lasted for 1000 years. These Ley Lines leak magic out into the world, and we, as witches and wizards, are able to absorb and utilize this free floating magic."

Harry was writing notes as fast as he could. He had never heard an explanation like this as to how his magic worked, but it made sense to him.

"In order for us to utilize this magic," Salazar continued when Harry's writing stopped, "we utilize the three Focuses of magic; Intent, Willpower, and Visualization. You 'intend' for a specific action to occur, you 'will' it to occur by putting magical power behind the intent, and you 'visualize' the outcome to focus your magic to follow your intent. These three combined are the basis for all magic achieved by any magical race. Each branch of magic relies more heavily on one or more of the Focuses than the others. For instance, Transfiguration and Conjuration are more heavily reliant on visualization, while Charms are more reliant on willpower and intent. Humans have devised methods of making some of these Focuses easier to achieve. For instance, wands were created to help our magic 'flow' easier, thereby making the willpower Focus easier to achieve. Incantations were devised to help achieve the proper intent by using word association. Technically speaking, it is possible for certain witches or wizards to perform almost any magic without the need for a wand or incantation, but it takes a lot of practice, study and magical power and most humans have gotten lazy since they have crutches in their wands and words."

Harry wrote copious notes.

'Hermione would be amazed to hear this. I wonder if any of her books mentioned anything like this.'

Harry finished his notes and browsed over them quickly. "So, would it be possible for me to do spells without my wand, and without saying the incantation?"

"You can't," Salazar said, "not yet. As I said, it takes a great deal of magical power and practice to achieve this, though this is something we will work on as you get older and complete the rituals I will lay out for you. We will especially work on silent casting. This skill can be the difference between life and death in a duel. Your opponent won't know what is coming, which gives you a split second advantage."

Harry jotted down some more notes then slid his now full parchment into the right hand desk drawer. He pulled back over the parchment with his notes on the rituals. "This Puberty Ritual, it says I need to do it on my 13th 'Magical' birthday. That date will be different from my actual birthday though, won't it? Because of the Time-Turner?"

Salazar beamed at him. "Good, you have been paying attention. Yes, each time you use that device your Magical age is affected. I want you to skip using it on the final day of the term. Use that day to return to your relatives, have Dobby set up your protection wards, and visit your wizarding bank. You need to check with the goblins there and see if they can assist you with the Blood Magic to determine your heritage." Harry nodded and wrote down his instructions on his parchment. "Other than that one day, I want you to continue coming down here every single day and using the Time-Turner for the full 6 hours. This will give you a monumental amount of time to study and learn during the summer. If you do use the Time-Turner each day, your 13th magical birthday will be July 24th at midnight. We will perform the ritual then."

Harry nodded and underlined that date on his notes.

'Definitely going to buy a planner. Maybe Flourish and Blotts has a good enchanted one of some sort. I could probably get one for Hermione too as a birthday gift while I'm at it.'

The rest of the evening, Salazar had him read the introduction to the book on Rituals, which laid out the principles of ritual Foundations and the various runes used in rituals. Then Salazar had him try his hand at the Flagrate spell. This spell conjured enchanted flames that would last until dispelled, and were used to mark the Foundations of the rituals. The flames would not burn anything they touched, they acted more as writing.

"The incantation is pronounced Flaw-graw-tay. When you cast it, intend your flames to be everlasting and non-destructive. Imagine them flowing from your wand as ink flows from a quill. You can visualize them in any color you prefer, but green is obviously the best color." Salazar gave him a look that said all too clearly, 'There is no arguing this fact.'

Harry imagined bright green flames flowing from his wand. He had considered making them blue or red just to irritate Salazar. 'Maybe I shouldn't push him much farther today, the prank with the sword was enough,' he chuckled to himself.

He concentrated on making the flames permanent and non-destructive, then said the incantation, "Flagrate." A small trickle of flame came from the tip of his wand and followed the path he traced over the stone floor. When he was done he willed the flames to stop, at which point they stopped flowing from his wand. He had drawn a small circle on the stone floor in green flames that rose roughly a centimeter from the stone.

"Not bad," Salazar said, "practice this spell a few times before the first ritual."

Harry nodded slightly, but was eyeing his wand curiously. "That's weird." He mumbled, more to himself than anything.

"What's weird?" Salazar had heard him anyway.

"That's actually the first spell I have cast since before meeting you. My wand felt different. It's hard to describe, but it almost felt like it was resisting me a little bit." Harry was getting nervous. He loved his holly wand and was worried it had somehow gotten damaged during his fight with the basilisk.

Salazar tugged at his beard in thought. "It is possible that your Magical Signature has changed slightly. This can happen to a witch or wizard who has momentous events occur that changes their personality, which, coincidentally, changes their Magical Signature as well."

Harry stared at Salazar in fear. "My wand won't work for me now?"

"Not necessarily. Your wand still chose you so it will work, but not as well as it could if it was perfectly in tune with your personality and magic. I was going to suggest this anyway, seeing as the Cleansing Ritual and Puberty Rituals will have such a drastic effect on your magic, but you should probably do it sooner. You need to go talk to a wand maker about your wand. I had to change my wand a couple of times in my life as well. Once because it was broken in battle, once after performing enough rituals to change my Magical Signature sufficiently enough, and again after creating this school."

"Why would building a school cause you to need to change your wand?" Harry was perplexed. The way Ollivander had spoken about wands gave him the feeling that they somehow had their own sentience, and now the way Salazar was talking, it only further propagated that feeling.

"Sit back down and pull another piece of parchment." Salazar said with a grin. "We have a little more time and these are good questions to have answered."

Harry sat back at the desk and pulled another sheet of parchment out, inked his quill, and gazed back up Salazar.

"I will start with Magical Signatures. Every piece of magic worked by a magical being leaves a trace. This trace is like an echo of the magic that was performed, tinted by the being's personal imprint. These echoes fade over time in most cases, but someone who knows how to sense them can feel the echo through their own magic. If the person sensing the magic has felt the practitioner's Magical Signature before, they will be able to recognize the practitioner in the imprint they leave behind."

Salazar paused to give him time to catch up on his notes and to think of how to word the remainder of his speech. "Your Magical Signature can change whenever your personality, physical maturity, or Magical Core are affected. Things like puberty, coming of age, marriage, changes in personal life goals, those sorts of things. When I built this school, my personality changed drastically. Prior to meeting my friends and founding this school, I was focused on becoming powerful to protect magical beings from the muggles that wanted us all dead. We founded the school to accomplish this goal, so I then focused on passing down my knowledge to future generations. This change in my personality caused my wand to not be fully compatible anymore. I had my wand adjusted by Rowena when I noticed the change."

Harry finished his notes. He thought about what could have changed in him to cause his wand to not function as well as it had.

'I fought with Ron and chose not to be friends with him anymore. I decided to work harder and become better at magic. I fought a basilisk with a sword. I chose to study under Salazar and, hopefully someday, the other founders. Assuming I can find their portraits. I guess I matured a bit and my goals have definitely changed.'

Harry looked back up to the portrait. "So, I think I know what may have changed. I chose to learn more and be more responsible." Salazar nodded approvingly. "The rituals will affect me even more, making me physically mature faster and affecting my Magical Core, so that should cause further changes to my Magical Signature."

"Yes," Salazar smiled, "Also, you now have two very powerful alchemical components in your bloodstream that will no doubt have made a drastic change to your Magical Signature."

'That makes sense.'

"So, just to clarify, I can still use this wand," Harry gestured to his holly wand lying on the desk in front of him, "at least until I get a chance to talk to Ollivander about a new one?"

"Yes, but I would recommend you talk to him very soon."

'I'll go see him when I go to visit Gringotts after term ends on Wednesday.'

"You better get going," Salazar said. "Make sure to keep that damnable sword in that drawer though." Salazar glared at him and Harry smirked.

"I don't really have anywhere better to keep it." Harry replied before calling for Dobby to take him back to his dorm. He took a quick shower and brushed his teeth. He was about to exit the communal bathroom in his dorm when he heard the door to the dorm open. Then he heard himself call for Dobby, then a soft pop sound followed by some unintelligible speech and another soft pop sound.

'Ok, that is so weird. My other self just apparated with Dobby. I wonder what Dobby thinks I'm doing. To him I just apparated from the Chamber to here, just to apparate back to the Chamber.' Harry shook his head. 'Too much to think about, the headache is starting again. I'll ask him tomorrow.'

Harry climbed into bed, laughing softly to himself about the absurdity of all the time travel business. He fell asleep imagining Dobby getting annoyed about the seemingly worthless trip Harry had made to his dorm.