Bathsheda walked into Harry's workshop cautiously, she didn't want to be caught by any trap Harry might have placed since they had last met. When she entered she saw Harry looking at two plastic cups connected by a piece of string, both cups were freely levitating which was quite an achievement for a student just starting their second year.
"What've you got here?" She asked curiously, she had learned to accept Harry's tendency to come up with completely random ideas that somehow still worked.
"It's a muggle toy, if you speak into one cup the noise comes out the other, regardless of physical distance."
"Okay, why are you looking at them then?"
"Well I'm trying to figure out how they work, I know they do work but I can't understand how. I can only assume the noise is carried along the string since if the string isn't taut then they don't work. But I was thinking, if I could find out how they work I might be able to replicate the effect with magic."
"Okay?"
Harry smiled apologetically having realised that Bathsheda had no idea what he was talking about.
"Imagine your in your classroom and you need to talk to Dumbledore, rather than send an owl or go up to see him you could talk into something like this cup and Dumbledore would hear it through his cup in his office. You could then talk to each other securely and easily."
"Sounds like a fire call…" She said slowly
"Well yes, but this isn't limited to having a fireplace, say you're in the grounds, you wouldn't have a fireplace then."
"Sounds useful…" It was clear that Bathsheda didn't understand the significance of what Harry wanted to do
"Okay, put your ear to that cup over there." Once Bathsheda had done so Harry whispered into his cup "Can you hear me?" Bathsheda jumped and said "I could hear you!"
Harry chuckled "Yeah, now imagine that but over any distance, no need to stick your face in the floo."
"Can you all see me? Can you all hear me?" Lockhart grinned at the class, rather stupidly or so Harry privately thought.
"I thought we'd start today with a little quiz, nothing to worry about, just to see how well you read them and taken in." Again with the stupid smile, Lockhart went down the desks passing out the tests, Harry wondered why he didn't use magic like the other teachers, all it took was a simple levitation charm on each paper.
Harry glanced at the first question and then the next, he quickly skimmed through the entire paper until he got to the end, each and every question was about Lockhart, not the subject. It was a small comfort that he knew all the answers to the questions.
"Tsk tsk, barely anyone remembered that my favourite colour is lilac… although Ms. Brown got all but one of the answers correct. Good girl" Lockhart paused to give a big wink to the girl. "Now, be warned, it is my job to arm you for the foulest creatures known to wizard kind… you may find yourself facing your worst fears in this room… I must ask you not to scream!"
With a flourish Lockhart pulled away the cover to reveal… Cornish pixies, Harry knew that since pixies were part of the Fae family and as such were considered 'dark' creatures but this was ridiculous, even a house elf was more dangerous than a pixie.
For reasons best known to himself Lockhart suddenly opened the door of the cage and the pixies swarmed out, they began terrorising the students who were helpless against them, the only one unbothered by them was Harry.
During his talks with Dobby over the summer Harry had learned that almost all magical beings within the fae family were constructed entirely of magic, their physical appearance were either illusions or conjured. That meant that they could only be stopped by magic, trying to swat them out of the air like Ron didn't faze the pixies at all. All Harry had needed to do was tense his magical aura, he still couldn't get his aura to become visible but he could get it dense enough so that the pixies struggled to penetrate it, like a poor man's shield charm.
When faced with such an obstacle the pixies chose to ignore him in favour of easier prey, in this case his classmates and teacher. He began focusing on a pixie that was getting too curious in him and sent out a whip of magic, it was the combination of his research into spell creation. It was very similar to how he formed mithril, except rather than focusing on forming magic that formed his intent, he shaped his magic into his intent directly.
It was much quicker than forming his mithril however with his mithril he formed it once and then he could activate as many times as he wanted later without needing to reshape it. His whip flew invisibly from his hand to the pixie, the moment it struck the pixie was flung across the classroom and into the wall. Instantly the other pixies stopped and turned to glare at Harry, like all fae pixies had a very strong swarm mentality, whenever one member is in danger the other member all try to help.
This meant that Harry now had an entire swarm of angry pixies bearing down on him, Harry quickly sent out two more whips that both struck their targets, however all he had achieved was to temporarily knock those two wasps away, already the first wasp had rejoined its brethren. He wasn't strong enough to cast stupefy, which was a sixth year spell and he didn't know enough about the jinx to try and replicate its effects, petrifying jinxes would normally work on a swarm such as this but the jinx paralyzed the body of its target and since pixies were made of magic the jinx wouldn't have any impact.
His mithril would easily deal with them but he was loathe to reveal his mithril to his classmates, as he thought about his mithril he remembered that all fae had some intolerance to metals such as iron, for the fae as small as a pixie prolonged contact with iron was deadly. Of course Harry wasn't strong enough to actually summon iron but he could transfigure something into iron, looking through the swarm of pixies he spotted a large copper candlestick, he ran over and quickly ran his wand over it, as his wand passed over the stick it shrunk and began changing to iron.
After what seemed forever Harry now had a considerably smaller iron candlestick, he spun around and wielded the candlestick like a sword, the pixies began backing off, using his new weapon and his magic whips he herded the pixies to there cage and eventually got all of the pixies into the cage, he slammed the door shut and let out a sigh of relief. Slowly he became aware of the fact that at some point all his classmates and Lockhart had left him to deal with the swarm alone.
On his way to his workshop after that dreadful lesson Harry became aware of someone following him, he carefully extended his magic behind him and formed an impression of the hall in his mind. He had learned how to visualise his surroundings in his occlumency lessons and it had been relatively simple to learn how to make an image using magic instead, it wasn't perfect and only showed highly magical objects but in Harry's mind, the 'cool' factor made up for the downsides.
He recognised the sky blue signature as Luna's, he could have increased the power on his notice-not but he had been lonely ever since Hermione died and a small part of him thought that Luna could fill that hole. He still didn't understand how Luna could see through his notice-nots when none of the other students could.
When he opened his door he made sure to brush his hand against the mithril door knob, his power had grown that he no longer needed to deform the mithril to change it, he told the mithril to accept the next magical signature that touched it. The workshop protections had changed considerably since he had first set them up, if someone unauthorised tried to open the door they would be hit by the equivalent of a repelling charm, the unfortunate student would suddenly remember something urgent and hurry off to the opposite side of the castle.
If they got passed the door they would find that they are stuck within the workshop until Harry released them, he had drawn inspiration from the vaults at Gringotts, if they somehow escaped the room with any of his mithril they would find the final defense, if any of his mithril objects got stolen and left the room they would go to the same plane of reality as his flask and saber.
The only way to retrieve them was with his gauntlet which never left his hand, Nicolas had told him that the Philosopher's Stone was deeply loyal to the magic within it, now that it had bonded with the mithril it would always be loyal to Harry. The only way for someone else to use it would be to remove the mithril, which was difficult by itself even without the Stone itself rejuvenating the mithril.
Harry waited in his workshop, waiting for Luna to enter, however after a few minutes it became clear she wasn't going to be entering.
"The Stone works by holding the magic of its user, aside from your mithril the Stone is the only magical object I know to hold the pure signature without any contamination, the elixir of life itself is just a healing potion but instead of a bezoar you use the charged Stone. The elixir has the power to completely heal its drinker, so long as the drinker is the one who charged the Stone, if the signature in the Stone doesn't belong to the drinker then it is a basic healing potion at best, deadly at worst."
After almost a month of teaching Nicolas had decided it was time for Harry to learn how to use the Stone, he had avoided the alchemy side of the Stone due to the considerable risk, when he had first met Harry he had used what was left of the Stone's loyalty to lock the Stone from performing accidental alchemy.
But even without alchemy the Stone was incredibly powerful, even just regular contact with the Stone would boost the immune system and grant temporary immunity to most poisons both muggle and magical. It gave the holder a boost in power and could be used as a magical focus like a wand or runes, it was this attribute that made learning the different magicks vitally important. If you used the Stone as a foci it would only accept Loquela and Verbarn magicks while the alchemy side would only accept divine or arcane magicks.
"Now it is important to note that the Stone can bring people back from the brink of death and can even prevent aging or illness, but that doesn't make you unkillable, even at my fall strength a simple killing curse would have been enough to kill me. Even the Stone has limits and it cannot prevent any quick death, it also cannot bring back the dead, it could return a dead body back to perfect health but the soul would still be missing… I have long suspected that the Stone would greatly aide in dark necromancy, most of the necromancy spells I have heard of focus entirely on repairing the body with only a small amount dedicated to animating the dead… I tell you this as a warning, if there is ever a significant risk that the Stone will be taken from you, destroy it."
As foretold, a new chapter! Starting to get more into alchemy and fae lore, if anyone knows of any fanfictions with good alchemy or fae please tell, for example Barefoot by Zaxaramas had some alchemy lore in the later chapters.
Last chapter I asked about Harry befriending Luna and/or Ginny and so far the consensus is Luna but not Ginny, Luna will probably become more involved after Halloween which will be in the next chapter, Lockhart will also be more involved than in canon since I really enjoy his character and I was really upset he doesn't appear in the movies after Chamber of Secrets.