Within his alchemy lessons they had moved onto the topic of time, it was basically the last topic they could cover in alchemy without actually doing alchemy.
"Many have studied time, there is an entire sub-department dedicated to time in the department of Mysteries. The first thing to know about time is that it will always happen, the march of time is unstoppable and no matter what it will never end. But time is not infallible, as such time travel is possible in numerous ways, the first is with a time turner. A time turner must be made with a mix of fairy and wizard magick, the fairy magick provides the basis for the actual travel. In essence each time a turner is used it makes a deal with Time to ensure nothing will change when time resumes its path."
"If nothing will change when time resumes, what's the point?" Harry asked curiously
"Ah, but this is where the wizard magick comes in, you see the wizard magic somehow cheats this deal by making it so anything that happens once a witch or wizard goes back in time already happened, from the point of view of an observer nothing would had changed when the time traveler went back, but that is only because they already went back. The act of taking a time turner and going back in time means that the future you already did it, if you were to go back in time and take a book from the bookshelf then a future you would have already taken that book and when time resumed its course you would see that the book was still missing."
Harry tried to wrap his head around this idea, it was a rather strange concept to grasp "But if my future self already went back in time to change events why would I need to go back?"
"Because if you didn't then events would revert back and the deal struck by the turner would break, there has never been a recorded event of this ever happening, which either means every person that has used a time turner has been exceptionally lucky or those that did break the deal were somehow removed from time. If they never existed in the first place then no deal would have ever been struck."
That… was not a pleasant thought, Harry wondered how many witches or wizards had been erased from time because they somehow broke the turners contract
"You said there were other ways to travel through time, how many ways are there Nicolas?"
"Too many, but the main ways are either time turner, a deal with the fae or time dilation. Time dilation is the most common type of time 'travel' although it is the least controlled, have you ever gone to sleep only to wake up almost immediately only to find it's already the morning? Well then you've done time dilation. This is where it ties into alchemy, high level magic requires a sacrifice which can't be fulfilled by magic alone, one of the safest sacrifices is Time.
"Both time of your life or immediate lose of time work although the second is the more powerful, during the construction of my Stone I needed to sacrifice an entire year to age a vital ingredient by ten years, the cost was that I was unable to work on any other ingredient during that year as I was in a magical coma for that duration, but I didn't need to delay my entire project by another nine years."
Nicolas went on to explain how the power of time played into other areas of magic, such as potions and arithmancy. It was why astronomy was a compulsory subject, the position of the planets held great sway as they were the easiest way of magically tracking the passage of time.
To say people were scared would be an understatement, several times fights had broken out in the corridors. The upper years had elected to escort the younger years to their lessons, whether this was to protect them from the fights or the heir was left unsaid.
Despite the paranoia of the students several of them had quickly realised Harry was still one of the strongest students in the school. Uneasy with the attention and knowing the students that feared him could decide to start attacking him Harry had started to avoid the main corridors, he also wore a notice-not almost constantly.
There had been a nasty incident where a sixth year Hufflepuff had tried to attack Harry when he had been walking between lessons, the boy had struck without warning and only his near constant awareness of magic allowed Harry to sense the spell and dive out of the way.
As he rolled Harry turned and used one of Lockhart's spells, the wand motion was a simple jab and the incantation, 'pulto', was a modification on the stinging jinx. But rather than just sting the victim once it would repeatedly strike the target until the hex was dispelled.
Rather than just fly in a straight line the striking hex zigzagged, making it hard to block with a conventional shield, which alongside it's naturally fast speed made it very hard to block.
The sixth year's eyes widened as the light purple hex flew towards him, he just managed to predict the path of the spell and put up a shield to block the shield moments before the spell was about to strike him. But while the boy was occupied with the spell Harry had used the opportunity to cast the significantly harder smoke screen charm.
Relying solely on his mage sight Harry was able to see through the smoke and sent various spells at his attacker, then once the boy was off balance enough from the spells Harry willed his magic to imbue the smoke. Now that he controlled the smoke he made it whirlwind around the boy, keeping him focused on the smoke.
Finally Harry fired the stunning spell, the sixth year had accidently turned his back on Harry and so never saw the spell coming. A hush had fallen over the gathered students the entire fight but now that there was a clear victor they started leaving the area.
Taking a moment to memorise the boy's face Harry had applied a notice-not and left for his workshop. As was typically in Hogwarts word had spread quickly of the fight, although as with all rumours it had been blown out of proportion.
"Alice seems to be under the impression you had a duel against 5 seventh years and still managed to walk away without a scratch." Luna said blandly the next day over breakfast
"Does she? I don't know why, it was a single sixth year and my shoulder still hurts from where I had to dodge that spell." Harry grumbled
"Erm, hiya Harry, I'm Colin Creevey… I - Luna said you might be able to help me?" Harry looked up from his book to see a nervous looking first year dressed in Gryffindor robes.
"What do you need help with?" Harry asked guardedly, not used to any students aside from Luna actually talking to him
"Well we're meant to write an essay on the incendio charm but I don't really understand how to do it." Colin said miserably
"Don't understand how to write an essay or the charm?"
"The charm, I wasn't able to get it to work in lesson even though everyone else managed it."
"Okay, show me the charm and I'll try and help you." Harry said tiredly
"Incendio!" Colin waved his wand in a passable imitation of the wand movement
"Try and cast it slower and be more precise with the movement, Incendio, see that flick I did at the end? That should make it easier for you to cast it." Harry spent the next half an hour helping Colin until he could cast the charm successfully.
"The trick is to try and get the wand movement down first, how fast you cast it doesn't matter. Likewise repetitive attempts to cast a spell will actually increase your chances of getting it right since your will to get the spell to work will keep building every time you fail. So next time you get stuck on a spell try and keep what you want from the spell in mind at all times and just keep going until it works."
"Thank you so much Harry! I knew they were wrong when they said you were evil." Colin said cheerfully as he left.
Harry was sitting in his workshop playing with a design for a shield when the Grey Lady poked her head through the wall "Myrtle has gotten upset again and has tried to drown herself, she won't listen to us and we wondered if you would mind talking to her yourself?"
Ever since Headless Nick's deathday party some of the ghosts he had spoken to would seek him out to ask for his help, twice now he had been asked to talk to Myrtle before she flooded the entire second floor.
When Harry entered Myrtle's bathroom he noticed just how much water had gathered, absently he willed the water to pool over the drains and heat up. As the water began to boil Harry climbed up to the window Myrtle was floating by.
"Good Afternoon Myrtle, what's the matter?"
"Oh, hello Harry. Somebody threw a book through me!"
"Deliberately?"
"I'm not sure, one moment I'm just sitting in my toilet and the next I've got a book passing through me. It hurt too." Myrtle seemed to have cheered up at being able to discuss her latest issue, it was strange how quickly Myrtle could go from depressed to overjoyed with just a few words.
"Wait, the book hurt you?" As ghosts had no physical body, much like the fae, they didn't have any pain receptors left to feel pain, only dark magic that targeted the magic of a person could actually be felt by a ghost.
Myrtle nodded cheerfully and pointed to a book that was now floating in the middle of drain, steam rising all around it. Despite the fact the water around the book was boiling hot the book looked completely untouched.
Harry frowned when he couldn't summon the book, hopping down to the floor Harry went over to the book, trusting the impervious charms on his shoes to protect him from the boiling water.
Immediately he flinched away from the book, it felt wrong to Harry, which confirmed his guess that it was 'dark' magic. He Looked at the magic of the book and frowned even more when he saw the soft yellow signature, he knew it was familiar but couldn't remember where he had seen it.
For a reason Harry couldn't explain he had kept the book and hadn't told anyone he had it, the diary had some of the strongest protections he had even seen. He suspected most of the protections must have been conditional protections, having only just managed to break through the first of the enchantments on Dippet's book on conditional magic he wasn't confident he would be able to break into Riddle's diary.
The name of the diary was the most confusing, he had recognised the initials of T. Riddle but he didn't know why, it wasn't until he had gotten a letter from Xenophilius, or 'Rook' if they used their code, had mentioned checking the Greater Hangleton graveyard for anything Harry might have missed that Harry remembered.
'Thomas Matteo Riddle, born 1905, died… early 1940s…' Harry thought carefully, trying to remember what the gravestone had said 'He died the same day as his parents, Frank said the police couldn't figure how they died which indicates magic was involved, especially if Tom was a wizard. The diary must have writing hidden in it, nobody would put so much protection on an empty diary, nobody would try to throw away an empty diary.'
For the time being Harry had tucked the diary inside his bag, he didn't trust it to stay inside his workshop, but he didn't want to just get rid of it. He had found himself incapable of handing it to Dumbledore or just throwing it away, he felt like he had found it and so it would fall to him to study it.
When February 14th rolled around Harry was momentarily stunned when he walked inside the great hall that morning, the hall looked hideous with love hearts and flowers everywhere. Sitting proudly at the staff table Lockhart looked far too pleased with himself to be innocent, Harry glared at the man and silently promised to not hold back in their next lesson.
After the first few lessons of Harry teaching Lockhart he had solved his problem of not having anyone to test the spells on, he would test his spells on Lockhart while the man tried to dodge and defend. It was a good way for Harry to make sure his spells acted as intended and it encouraged Lockhart to learn how to avoid being hit.
Lockhart had quickly mastered two different shield charms and had developed a dodging and shielding technique that Harry had difficulty defeating, for Harry it was good to be able to practice against a moving target. Trying to hit Lockhart had also taught Harry the necessity of being creative with his attacks.
He had told himself he wouldn't use his mithril against Lockhart in the hope that he wouldn't be helpless if he was ever in another situation were he couldn't use his mithril, so without his mithril he couldn't brute force his way through Lockhart's shields as the man was somehow extremely powerful once he had learned how to properly cast spells.
And now he had betrayed Harry's trust by engineering such an outlandish attack on Hogwarts' already fragile sense of safety.
"Cheer up Harry, it's just valentines day." Luna said cheerfully, tucking into her second batch of heart shaped pancakes
"It's against everything I've ever stood for." Harry said in mock seriousness, staring in disgust at his love themed breakfast.
Lockhart chose that moment to stand up and start talking, Harry happily tuned him out and continued eating but looked up when the doors to the hall opened and revealed about a dozen winged dwarfs. Not just regular people that were small but actual dwarfs, near human magical beings famous for their mining and craftsmanship.
It seemed Lockhart had hired them for the day as postmen, Harry suspected the man had some sort of blackmail on the dwarfs as they would normally be too prideful to take part in such a humiliating activity.
Harry quickly learned that either the dwarfs could see through notice-nots or his magic had no effect on him, one dwarf had spent most of the day chasing Harry around the school, only his ability to see the secret passages allowed Harry to keep his distance.
The dwarf finally caught up to him on the moving stairs, there were too many students on the staircase so Harry couldn't just weave between them and if he started pushing people out of the way his notice-not would fall.
Later Harry wished he had pushed people out of the way, rather than just land and talk to him the dwarf decided to land on top of Harry. The weight of the dwarf sent Harry crashing into the staircase, which dispelled his notice-not and caused everyone around him to stare in curiosity.
As he fell his bag decided to empty its contents, including Riddle's diary. The dwarf began to sing horribly off key but all Harry could focus on was the diary, despite the dwarf's small stature he was far too heavy for Harry to dislodge, he considered using magic but didn't want to know what the dwarf could do if angered.
Fortune was not on Harry's side as a hand reached down and picked up the diary, the hand was small and quickly left Harry's view, he only caught a glimpse of the scarlet trim on the robe before the person fled.
The next day Harry awoke to the sound of gongs, having just woken up it took him a moment to realise the importance, the gongs were the signal that somebody was trying to break into his room with force.
Harry quickly jumped out of his bed and hurried into the main room, the Invisibility Cloak jumping from its position on the bed to wrap around his shoulders, he wrote a short message on his communication stone and sent it to Dumbledore.
Once done he activated his gauntlet and drew his saber, he knew the door had the combined protections of himself and Dumbledore but the fact the attacker had managed to activate the alarm meant they were powerful enough to break through his first line of defense.
The magic of the door began to give way and dark red magic began oozing through, the same dark red of Voldemort from the year before. Just before the door gave way Harry threw his spear with as much might as he could, it was programmed to always hit it's target and would return to his hand within moments.
Harry began sending wave after wave of spells at the doorway and then hid under his Cloak and waited, he waited for a while before Dumbledore ran into the room, spinning around quickly to try and find where the attacker was.
"Dumbledore?" Harry asked cautiously, remaining hidden under his Cloak.
"Harry! Where are you?" Dumbledore asked urgently, the headmaster sent out a revealing charm as he talked and Harry felt the wave of Dumbledore's magic wash over through him.
The power of the elder Wand fought the power of the Cloak and Harry knew the Cloak had lost when Dumbledore turned to look at him straight in the eyes.
"Harry? Are you unharmed?"
"Yes, Voldemort didn't get in, I think he ran away after I threw the spear at him." Harry said shakily
"Voldemort? He was here? Then things are worse than I thought…" Dumbledore said gravely
There was a double attack that night, a Gryffindor and Slytherin, Neville Longbottom and Draco Malfoy. They had been found beneath a message "Blood traitors and deserters alike, all shall fear the Heir of Slytherin."
It had driven the message home that nobody was safe, not even the purebloods in Slytherin, at lunch Harry had received a letter from Wulfric, it was incredibly short and only said 'Be at Hagrid's before 7, stay there, do not hide.' As lessons had been canceled for the day Harry had started work on his latest idea, that morning, when he had thought he was about to be attacked, his mind had gone blank.
He hadn't been able to come up with a single idea on how to make something to help him, once the rush of adrenaline had faded he realised how much danger he had been in. He had thought in a crisis he would have the luxury to fully form a mithril object specifically for the situation, forgetting it normally took him hours to work out the right combination of ideologies.
So he had started work on his new motto 'always be prepared', he planned to have several general purpose mithril objects that he could keep on him at all times that would allow him to quickly counter anything that may attack him.
The first item he needed was a shield, if Voldemort had pushed into the room and started throwing curses Harry would've had very little protection. His shields still couldn't block Lockhart's more powerful curses, this meant he couldn't rely on his magic either.
As it would be fairly awkward to carry a full shield and he didn't want to rely on metaphysical summoning, over the summer he had discovered an issue with his flask and saber that he had missed while at Hogwarts, as the objects only came to him when he called they needed to be summoned to his ring before they could be made physical, it had taken almost half an hour for his flask to fly from Hogwarts to the Dursleys when he had first called it.
For his water and saber that wasn't all that important, but he didn't want to wait for his shield to fly across the country while spells were flying at him. That meant the shield had to be small enough to easily fit on him without being overly obvious. Ideally he would have the shield shrink to the size of a watch and grow to its full size when powered, but that would require power going into growing and not protecting.
It would take at least ten seconds for the shield to fully grow, during which Harry's mobility would be decreased. Having ruled out those ideas he moved on to how he would power the shield, if he didn't want to expand the shield he could limit it to just the mithril's own magic and a mithril core to keep it stable.
The easiest solution would be to have his shield be physically small and have it activate a magical shield like protego, which would be the main source of protection while the physical part of the shield would be able to block anything that would pass through a magical shield.
Harry grinned when he realised he wasn't limited to just one shield charm, he could layer various shields together with his mithril, one shield for purely magical attacks, a second shield for physical attacks such as elemental powers and animals and finally a dismantling shield.
A dismantling shield was widely considered theoretical only, the idea was it would rip apart any spell that hit it, but the amount of magic it took to power that shield would need to be much stronger than the spells hitting it. Some wizards like Dumbledore could make a shield that did something similar but they could only keep the shield up for seconds at most.
It would be a bad idea to put that shield first as even his mithril could be drained, when he and Bathsheda had started work on the mithril ward they had experimented with shields, the mithril would activate and keep the shield powered indefinitely as the magic within the mithril produced exactly the right amount of magic.
But every time a spell hit the shield it would lose some power, possibly because the mithril didn't expect the shield to be hit so it never produced any magic to account for spell damage. With Harry's shield the mithril core would be able to deal with spell damage while the mithril itself kept the shield up, but the mithril core wouldn't be able to keep up with dismantling every single spell that hit it.
In truth Harry wouldn't have bothered with a dismantling shield if it wasn't for the fact that they were capable of stopping 'unblockable' spells. There had been many arguments over whether the fact even the unforgivables could technically be dismantled meant they couldn't be unblockable, often people said the spells were being destroyed not blocked so technically they were still unblockable.
When Harry left his workshop that night he had made great progress on the shield, he had eventually settled on having the shield fold into a single slice that would sit on his forearm under a notice-not, he planned on making it so that when he activated his shield the slices would start to rotate. Every so often it would leave a single slice behind, until it rejoined the first slice to form a perfect shield.
Once all the slices were in position the shield charms would activate, the shield would be about a foot in diameter when activated, big enough to go from Harry's elbow to wrist. The shield charms would then be almost 3.5 feet in diameter, any larger and even his mithril struggled to naturally sustain the shield.
It was far too easy for Harry to sneak out of the castle and down to Hagrid's, even with his invisibility cloak, Hagrid answered his door on the second knock. Harry stepped back when he had a crossbow stuck in his face.
"Easy Hagrid, it's just me, Harry." Harry said cautiously, pulling back his cloak so Hagrid could see his face.
"Oh Harry, wasn' expectin' to see yeh at this time o' night" Hagrid said sheepishly
The two talked about nothing important, just enjoying each others company, that was until they were disturbed by a sharp knock on the door
"Yeh'd better get under tha' cloak, Harry"
"Why? I'm allowed to be down here, I'm not breaking any rules." Harry said softly, not wanting to upset one of his oldest friends
"oh fine then, I ain' gonna stop yeh"
Hagrid was rather obviously shocked when he opened the door, Harry wondered who could cause Hagrid to step back in fear. Hagrid stepped aside and let two men into the cabin, the first was Dumbledore who nodded a greeting at Harry, the second man was someone Harry hadn't seen before.
Dumbledore stepped forward and said "Minister, may I introduce you to Harry Potter, Harry meet Cornelius Fudge, the current minister of magic"
"It's a pleasure to meet you sir" Harry said, wondering if Dumbledore had asked Harry to be there just to meet the minister
"Pleasure to meet you too Harry, but shouldn't you be in the castle at this time of night?" Fudge said warmly
"The rules say I don't need to be inside for another hour at least and I like talking to Hagrid, he's a good friend of mine."
"He's your friend? Oh… well this… changes things" Fudge said awkwardly, fidgeting with his bowler hat quite rapidly "You see, I had come here tonight to issue the arrest of Mr. Hagrid, people are being attacked and we… That is to say the ministry needs to be seen doing something."
"But why arrest Hagrid? We already know who's behind the attacks"
"You do? Who is it boy?" Fudge asked, sounding rather relieved
"It's Voldemort of course, he tried to attack me a few days ago and he was famous for calling himself 'the heir of Slytherin'"
"You-know-who? Preposterous, he's dead!" Fudge blustered
"Then perhaps it's someone trying to cash in on Voldemort's infamy then, but Harry wasn't lying when he said someone attacked him Monday morning, someone with access to extremely potent and dark magic." Dumbledore said smoothly, giving a pointed stare at Harry.
Before Fudge could respond there was yet another knock at the door, this time Lucius Malfoy strolled in. Harry couldn't help noticing that Lucius' clothes looked less cared for, possibly due to him losing his house elf over the Summer.
"Ah, Fudge, I hoped to catch you. You see, I have here a notice for the removal of Albus Dumbledore as headmaster, signed by all of the School Governors and the chairman Augusta Longbottom, effective immediately." Lucius said smugly
"yeh can' get rid o' Dumbledore, there'll be killings next" Hagrid bellowed
"If that is what the governors wish, I will of course step down. But you should know, I will never truly be gone for as long as people still believe in me. Before I leave, minister will you be arresting the Key Keeper or will I be able to leave knowing the Keys to Hogwarts are still in safe hands?"
"He will stay, but I'll be posting aurors at the school to watch over things, while you're gone." Fudge said softly, without another word Fudge fled the cabin with Lucius strolling after him.
So first big things, Harry is strong enough to resist the temptation to write in the book but not strong enough to notice the temptation to not reveal the book, lessons with Lockhart have become more of 1 on 1 dueling where Lockhart is starting to out power Harry.
Tom Riddle's father was canonically Tom Riddle Sr whose own father was Thomas Riddle, so technically Voldemort is actually Tom Riddle the 3rd. For the sake of ease when I say Thomas Riddle I mean Voldemort's father.
Harry's shield will sort of resemble Percy Jackson's shield just physically much smaller, the spear he's been carrying for a while is one of the spears he formed while attacking the troll, just modified to be more powerful.
Next chapter will be Harry entering the chamber and confronting Tom.
I have also uploaded yet another story, Time Heist. Making liberal use of Time Turners to break into Gringotts during the events of the Deathly Hallows.