Neville felt he was forgetting something but the trouble was he was unsure of what he was forgetting, he sat down for breakfast and didn't notice when Hermione sat down next to him, he also didn't notice when Professor Dumbledore entered a short while after her, however he did notice when she poked him in the arm rather forcefully for ignoring her
"Uh, wha?" He stuttered, still half asleep
"I asked you a question Neville, honestly!" Hermione said impatiently
"Oh, what was the question?"
" I asked why you looked so tired"
"Because I was up most of the night wondering what I had forgotten"
"Oh, well what did you forget?"
"If I knew what I had forgotten then I wouldn't have said I had forgotten it!" Neville snapped
"Well how about we go over important items first then move onto other items?" Hermione said calmly
At that moment an owl landed in front of Neville carrying a letter, it was unsigned and simply said 'I have what you have lost, trophy room, tonight at midnight, tell nobody' he showed it to Hermione who passed it over to Harry after she had read it, Harry then passed it on to Ron with his own message saying 'Meet in library after lessons, we will discuss a plan then'
For Neville the day passed far too slow, all day the only thing he could focus on was whatever item he had lost, by the time dinner rolled around he was dreading the howler he knew his Gran would be sending him when she found out, when he finally sat down in the library he didn't see the serious look on Harry's face, it came as a shock therefore when Harry started talking as Neville had never heard Harry be so cold and serious
"Neville, you and Ron are going to head towards the trophy room at midnight, me and Hermione are going to be waiting outside the trophy room to see who has this item, when you enter the room I expect some type of trap to be set off so me and Hermione will be waiting ready to counter any trap but if we see anyone enter the room we will follow and offer support, we then take whoever is in the room to Dumbledore"
"But Harry, its against the rules to be out of the common room after curfew!" Hermione argued
"Hasn't stopped me before, Dumbledore even joined me once" Harry said shrugging
"So the stories about you and Dumbledore are true then?" Ron asked excitedly
"Err, ish, he just showed me the third floor corridor then showed me the kitchens where we talked about magic and stuff, I'm fairly sure he follows whenever I explore the school, though I've never caught him doing it."
"Wicked! I wish I could get away with stuff like that" Ron said in awe
Neville and Ron left the common room just before midnight, they didn't see anybody on the way down, not even Filch or Mrs Norris, they entered the trophy room but couldn't see Harry or Hermione, inside the room they saw Neville's remembrall on the ground, without thinking Ron reached down and picked it up, instantly the door slammed shut and the sound of a lock was clearly heard, alongside the door a screeching was heard and a large trophy tipped over revealing a very annoyed Mrs Norris, knowing Filch would soon be along the two boys desperately tried to open the door, Ron even charged into it a few times but it did not budge.
On the other side of the door Harry and Hermione had hidden under a notice me not charm, they had seen Draco Malfoy sneak into the trophy room an hour before midnight with a clearly silenced Mrs Norris, he spent almost an entire hour in there before he had left the room without Mrs Norris and rushed away, shortly after Ron and Neville showed up and triggered the trap as the only door into the trophy room had locked, together Harry and Hermione ran over to the door and began casting all the unlocking spells they knew, however every time they unlocked the door it seemed to lock itself instantly before they had a chance to open the door, they froze when they heard Filch nearby, in a moment of panic Harry reached out with his magic and cut the locking mechanism, he then hurriedly yanked open the door and quickly pulled Ron and Neville out and into the corridor, he then began casting numerous notice me nots over them, aided by Hermione as he had taught her the basic version of the spell Flitwick had shown him, he then turned to Ron and Neville and held a finger to his lips just as Filch turned the corner, Harry had put his hand over Neville's mouth just as the boy let out a surprised yell managing to stop him making a noise.
Filch passed them without registering them and hurriedly entered the trophy room where he fell to his knees upon seeing Mrs Norris stuck within the trophy, he quickly scooped her out and held her close whispering to her until she calmed, Harry thinking quickly summoned an eagle quill identical to the ones Malfoy used and pushed it into the room behind Filch with his magic, Mrs Norris saw it and followed it with her eyes, when it settled on the ground she jumped out of Filch's arms and started batting the quill, Filch picked it up and strode off to find whoever was on duty that night to report what had happened, the four first years hurried back to the Gryffindor common room, their notice me nots fading as they ran, once he had made sure his three friends were safe Harry had hurried back to his own dormitory and into his bed.
The following morning Harry went to his workshop as normal, Hermione had told him the night before while they were guarding the trophy room that she wouldn't be joining him, Harry was planning to practice some more of the advanced charms that Flitwick had shown him, after his first charms lesson Flitwick had passed him notes on spells he might find interesting for the first few weeks, Harry found these notes invaluable as they often led him to paths of magic he might never imagine on his own, he had made a habit of waiting behind class to show Flitwick his progress on the charms, sometimes Flitwick would pass him a note of a charm with a warning that it was considered an extremely difficult charm and more often than not, Harry had to admit that he had been unable to even get any results out of those charms, Flitwick without fail told him not to worry about it and the next note would be one Harry could master quickly, then building up again until Harry was unable to cast them, repeating the loop over and over.
Harry had quickly realised that structured spells taught by Flitwick were extremely difficult to cast wandlessly and the time it took him to get any effect wandlessly could have been spent mastering new spells with a wand, he had therefore given up trying to learn the charms wandlessly and had gradually started using his wand more and more, he did find it easier to use magic overall and for the more basic spell that he had mastered wandlessly he did not even have to think about them to get a passable effect with his wand, however with his wand he was completely unable to summon mithril with his wand and he suspected that was due to either his wand's own signature competing with his own or a block deliberately placed on wands to prevent the summoning of raw magic.
The trial and error approach had allowed Flitwick a much greater understanding of what Harry was capable off and had let him move onto what was known as 'familia leporem' which roughly translated to "family of charms", Flitwick had explained that charms within a "family" all had similar results with varying difficulties and affects, the current family that Flitwick had Harry practicing on was the Lux familia, the family of light, he started with Lumos, which Harry found extremely easy to cast as it was similar to a spell he had developed at the Dursleys, he then moved onto Lumen, the glow spell, unlike Lumos which only made the tip of the wand light up Lumen made the entire wand glow faintly, Flitwick told Harry that it was useful when reading in the dark as it did not require the user to have to awkwardly point their wand at their book the whole time, after Lumen came Lychnus which did not light up the user's wand but the object the user was pointed at, these three where considered the easiest and Harry could cast all three without much thought, Lychnus was the hardest for him to cast and he found whatever object he charmed lost its light after a few minutes of him shutting off his magic.
Flitwick had shown him two other light charms, the first was Lux which was the most like Lumos in that it made the tip of the wand light up, Harry theorised that either Lumos evolved from Lux or Lux evolved from Lumos as they were so similar, however unlike Lumos or Lumen the user could still use their wand to cast magic without losing the light source, the downside to this charm was that it requires the user to focus on the charm at all times, Harry could cast Lux however he wasn't able to split his focus enough to keep the light going and cast another spell, either the light died or the spell failed to form correctly, the second charm was Lucidus Inundatio, the flood of light charm, it was one of the most powerful light charms and when cast successfully would completely fill a room with light, the caster could control if the level of brightness, from barely visible to blinding, Flitwick had told Harry that more than once he had managed to use Lucidus Inundatio to win a duel as his opponents did not expect the very room to fill with light, Harry tried to cast it but found himself severely lacking the power to do anything more than remove the shadows with the room.
To successfully cast Lucidus Inundatio the caster's magic had to flood into the room first and then apply light directly to the magic, this took tremendous strain on the casters magic and required extreme focus for both the magic and the light, despite Harry's previous experiments in controlling his magic in such a way he was unable to apply charms to his magic while he was controlling it, when Harry had tried it he had just managed to get his magic to fill the room but when he had tried to light it up his magic had collapsed leaving him drained and exhausted and Flitwick had cautioned him to not try it again until he was stronger magically and mentally.
Already running through the incantations and wand motions to the Lux familia charms so that he could begin casting them immediately when he got to his workshop he was extremely surprised when he opened his workshop door to see a metal sculpture floating in before him, cautiously he cast a basic diagnostic charm to check for any malicious spells however it came up with nothing so Harry felt more confident to get closer to it, he felt some recognition at seeing the sculpture despite never seeing it before in his life.
His mage sight did not reveal any magical signature however that did narrow down who could have placed it there, Harry doubted any student would have been able to cast such complex magic while also keeping their magic signature masked, Harry had found that to mask his signature he had to tone down the power of the spells by increasing his intent and focus, this allowed the spells to still work however no amount of focus or intent could improve the power so while he could change a matchstick to a needle without leaving a trace and his needle looked perfect it would revert back to a matchstick significantly quicker than the other students, Harry doubted that there were any students capable of masking their magic on a complex transfiguration such as this as well as the levitation charm, the students that were possibly capable of such magic presumably wouldn't care enough about Harry to break into his workshop in the first place and waste their magic and time on something harmless.
That left one of the teachers as the culprit, out of all the teachers in the school, Harry had only actually spoken to three outside of lesson, those being Dumbledore, Snape and Flitwick, he suspected that could Flitwick have followed him one day but he would have left a note and had no reason to mask his magical signature as it was fairly well known by know he was helping Harry, Harry suspected that Snape would not have left a calling card in the first place and would have kept his knowledge of the workshop quiet for his own reasons, that left Dumbledore, he would have the time and the cunning to track down and break into his workshop and was flamboyant enough to leave a calling card while also masking his magic so that nobody could actually prove it was him.
Harry figured Dumbledore must have had a reason to leave the symbol, assuming it was him and Harry hadn't just made a mistake so Harry moved it onto a nearby shelf, he then spent the rest of his time going over the various light charms until hunger won him over and he left for breakfast, when the post owls arrived Harry ignored them like normal, after all he had nobody that would owl him as everyone that cared about him was in Hogwarts anyway so it came as a shock when two completely different owls landed in front of him and offered him their letters, the first was written in an untidy scrawl while the other was much neater and elegantly written with bright green ink, it also had the same triangle, circle and line symbol on the bottom corner of the envelope, Harry pocketed that letter as he felt he shouldn't upon it with so many people nearby, he then turned back to the first letter and opened it and read the short message inside; "Dear Harry, I was wondering if you and your friends wanted to come down and have a cup of tea and a bit of a chat, I knew your parents very well and would love to tell you some stories about them. Rubeus Hagrid"
If it wasn't already fairly clear by now the magic within this story with differ from cannon a lot, for example some spells from cannon will be gone entirely while others will have different effects, for example Lumos Maxima, for some spells I can see how adding "great" to the end would improve the effect such as reducto, however for Lumos Maxima either makes the light flash bright then fade away like in the prisoner of Azkaban movie or make a ball of light float around like in Half Blood Prince, neither of which really relate to Lumos at all, like JK Rowling's magic is actually fairly limited if you think about it and by giving one spell multiple uses (such as the patronus) just limits it even more, you have witches and wizards that are actually fairly lazy, it's more in character for them to have many spells for many things than one spell for many.
Also I will say I am only using google translate and picking what I want, the spell translations will more than likely be wildly wrong and as Harry progresses I will start to lose the names for spells as they will become obsolete… but that's all to look forward to.