It was hopeless. Harry was never going to get the hang of meditation. It had been weeks, and five methods later, and Harry still could not calm his mind enough to accomplish anything.
"It's alright, Harry," Katherine Bundy, the girl's sixth year prefect, said with a laugh. "Relax a little. You're still trying too hard to force it. Remember, this is all about getting in touch with your body. Forget about your mind or your magical core for the moment, and concentrate on the physical sensations."
Harry huffed out an aggravated breath, and clenched his fists at his sides, before relaxing them, again.
He and several other Slytherin first and second years were lying on mats on the ground in the newly gifted quidditch room, with Katherine Bundy pacing between them, giving orders in a calm, measured voice.
Ever since Draco had burst into the Slytherin common room a few weeks ago to loudly proclaim that Harry needed someone to teach him meditation, several older Slytherin students had been offering workshops to their fellow students. It had started with meditation, but the roster of classes was growing every week, as more and more students discovered the prestige that came with sharing their expertise. Ambition multiplied upon itself.
Harry was thrilled, for the most part. There was scarcely a subject, intrigue, or line of inquiry that he could not follow up with another student, anymore. He was learning a lot, even though there weren't enough hours in the day to learn it all.
Meditation, though, remained his arch-nemesis. His brain refused to cooperate, and slow down.
"One more time, Harry," Bundy said kindly. "Start with your toes. Wiggle them around. Feel the sensations of them. Try to move each one separately, one at a time. Just like that, good.
"Now flex your toes; hold them fully extended for thirty seconds. Good. Now clench them for another thirty seconds.
"Next, move on to the arch of your foot. Extend for thirty. Pay attention to each muscle and tendon, as they shift beneath your skin. Now clench for thirty."
Harry moved his way up his body, extending and then clenching one part at a time in a slow crawl towards his head. Clenching his scalp was a singularly bizarre experience, and he could not help snickering at the bizarre faces he was sure he was making.
Bundy chastised him calmly, in her same melodic voice, and urged him to begin reversing the process, extending and clenching his way back from his head to his toes.
It seemed to take forever, but Harry did his best to stay focused, and lose himself in the sensations of yielding his body to his mind's precise control.
"Very good!" the prefect praised cheerfully, checking to make sure that all of the others were finished. "Now, for the next part, close your eyes, and think about what your magic feels like whenever you use a wand. Picture your magic building in your core, running into your shoulder, down your wand arm, and out through your wand. Everyone got a good picture of what it feels like in your minds?
Harry nodded awkwardly, without lifting his head from the floor.
"Perfect. Now this part is tricky. It might take a while to get it right, but it is important that you do, before moving on, or you'll be wasting your time. You're going to repeat the clenching and extending exercise, but this time, try to channel your magic into the muscles you are focused on, and then back into your magical core, before moving onto the next body part. Toes first!
"Extend your toes, stretch them up, out and apart as far as they'll go, then hold them there. Now, build your magic up in your core, as if you're about to cast a spell. Can you feel it rising inside you? Can you feel it getting stronger? Feeding you strength? Filling you with energy?
"That energy wants to go somewhere. Send it to your toes. Push it, down your torso, through your legs, into your feet. Hold it still just before it escapes. Keep it there.
"Stay calm, if you can't get it right away. It takes practice."
Harry grunted with the exertion of trying to get his magic to move! Pansy giggled as the sound of it ripped through the silence. "It's not funny," Harry said, under his breath.
He was the sodding Boy Who Lived! He Who Survived Against the Odds! This shouldn't be so hard. He had to be a natural at magic, if he had defeated the Dark Lord all those years ago, right? He was almost always in the first half of his class to learn a new spell, and tended to be one of the strongest spellcasters, too, especially in Defence. So why was this so difficult?
He knew where his feet were. He knew where he wanted his magic to go. He knew what he wanted his magic to do, and yet it remained coiled like a viper in the pit of his chest, alert and posturing, but refusing to strike.
"This is stupid!" he said, frustration leaking out of him through a rough and piteous voice. "I can't do it!"
"It just takes time, Harry. It is not uncommon for several weeks of constant practice to pass, before for your magic can be reliably channeled."
"But why is it so hard? I can use a wand just fine."
"A wand is a conduit. It calls to and channels magic for us. The stronger the alliance to your wand, the more compatible of a conduit it will be. It pulls magic towards itself. Learning to push your own magic, to aim it somewhere specific, without an external pull to guide it, is a different, difficult skill. It is one that many witches and wizards overlook, but it will benefit you greatly, in the long run, once you have mastered it.
"Keep working at it. You all know what to do now. You can practice at meals, while hanging out with your friends, before falling asleep. You can even work on it in class, if you're careful. If you lose us house points, that's still on you. I'm not going to be your excuse. Dismissed!"
Harry grumbled under his breath as he rolled up his mat and moved it into the small storage room that the Slytherin common room had provided for them, as the roster of uses for the new rooms grew.
He had been hoping that this method of meditation would be easier than the others he had tried. The idea of using his physical body as a focus, rather than relying on wrangling his hyperactive mind into submission, had been appealing.
"Want to meet the others in the Slytherin library to finish up our homework?" Draco asked, slinging his mat into the storage room with the put-upon air of one who had never before been expected to pick up after himself.
"Sure," Harry agreed easily. "Let me grab my books and broom."
Draco went with him to their dorm room to grab their stuff. Harry's habit of fidgeting on his toy broom while studying had caught on amongst the first years, to varying success.
Draco seemed to benefit from the energy outlet almost as much as Harry did, but a few of the others got easily distracted by the constant tweaks needed to keep their balance, or lost the plot entirely, and dumped the concept of learning entirely in favor of showing off.
The prefects had banned Vince from touching a broom within the library, altogether.
Everyone had changed since the start of term, but Vince had changed most of all. He had thrown himself into their morning runs, and when a couple of older half-bloods had hesitantly set up some free weights in the corner of the quidditch room, Vince had been intrigued. The half-bloods had been delighted to impart their enthusiastic expertise onto a young, pure-blooded protégé, and Vince had basked in their attention, in turn.
He was still big, but he was steadily replacing rolls of fat with solid muscle. It made him look older, and downright intimidating. He had swapped out a hefty dose of his sugar intake for lean protein, too, and the combination of a healthier, active lifestyle with a balanced diet had given the boy energy to spare.
He had been itching for a fight back in September, but now he had the stamina to chase one down. The prefects had gratefully ushered Vince into the ranks of the newly formed 'physical arts' club, to channel his aggression into sanctioned and supervised sparring matches.
Harry was glad that Vince had better entertainment options than inventing some wizarding equivalent of Harry Hunting, because he was pretty sure that Vince would be able to bully Dudley Dursley any day of the week.
It was still weird to see Vince and Greg standing next to each other, now that they no longer resembled a matched set. Greg had slimmed down a bit, since joining in the runs, but his sweet tooth was too strong to melt the chub from his cheeks. He looked soft and childish next to Vince, now, which only accentuated his gentler nature.
Harry's first impression of the two large boys had been that they were both a bit dumb and dangerous, but he had quickly learned that Vince's aggression had merely seemed to be mirrored off of Greg, when they both looked so much alike. They weren't stupid, either. Vince was actually quite clever, when pinned down, but had no interest in academic pursuits. He knew that he was failing to learn core concepts with his lack of effort and attention, but he simply did not care.
Greg, on the other hand, was quiet, and prone to get lost in his own thoughts. He understood the practical application of magic, but had trouble expressing himself. Harry wasn't sure if his troubles sprang from shyness, self-consciousness, or if there was something else holding him back, though.
"What are we working on first?" Draco asked, as he and Harry joined the others in the library.
"Defence essay," Blaise said, with caustic derision dripping from his sneering lips.
"D-d-don't take th-that tone, Mister Zab-b-bi-nini!" Draco said, wagging a trembling finger into Blaise's face, as he wrapped some parchment around his head in a poor approximation of a turban with his other hand. "How c-c-can you l=l=learn to f-fight evil f-from a m-m-master l-like me, if you s-s-sound so scary and m-mean?!"
Everyone laughed at that, egging Draco on.
"D-don't y-y-you all start w-with me! I'm n-n-not a b-b-bog-g-g-gart. Unless… wh-what i-f-f-f I am? St-st-stop laughing be-be-fore y-you k-k-kill m-m-m-me!" Draco raised his hand to his forehead and dramatically threw himself to the ground in a dead faint.
Pansy clutched her sides, while Harry wiped tears from his eyes.
"Oh, no," Millie deadpanned. "We murdered a professor."
"Do you think he'll come back as a ghost, or would that be too scary for him?" Pansy asked, poking at Draco's prone form with her shoe.
"Quirrell's such a coward, his own shadow is afraid of the dark," Greg said, his soft voice carrying.
Everyone paused for a beat, turning to look at the quiet boy, who flushed deeply.
Blaise slapped him on the back. "Good one, Greg!"
"So," Draco asked, sitting up, and pulling off his paper turban to fix his hair, "what's scarier, ghosts, or the dark abyss of death?"
"Ghosts at Hogwarts have to spend eternity with Moaning Myrtle," Pansy said. Harry didn't know who that was, but all of the girls visibly shuddered. "I choose sweet oblivion."
Harry smiled at his friends. Everyone had been hyper sensitive to the topic of death in the days after Harry was almost murdered, but the careful skirting around the topic in Harry's presence had only drawn attention to it, and to him. Harry had hated it. His friends had noticed. They had all developed a slightly morbid sense of humor, in the following weeks.
Harry was grateful. "B-b-b-boo!"
Most of the Slytherins looked at Harry strangely, but Daphne laughed.
"I don't get it," Pansy said. "Why's that funny?"
"'Boo' is what muggles think ghosts say," Daphne said.
"That's stupid," Pansy said. "Why do they think that?"
Harry shrugged. "I dunno. It's a muggle game to scare your friends by jumping out and saying 'boo', though."
Theo and Draco exchanged grins, and Harry could sense a barrage of jump-scare ambushes in the Gryffindors' future.