Harry mulled over Trelawney's prediction, who had looked at the cup himself and had seen the exact same images. Of course he could've tricked himself into seeing what he expected but he doubted it, the images had been too clear for it to be a coincidence.
When he had looked up the grim in his book of 'Unfogging the future' he recognised the crude drawing of the grim, it was exactly the same as the dog he had seen in his dream. Harry was unsurprised to find it was seen as an omen of death, given his past experiences it made sense a dog had caused the death of many wizards.
Having sat down in his seat for transfiguration he barely paid the cat on the desk a glance. While he didn't fear death, he had no desire to die. As such his mind was running through several spells and curses that could stop an animal like the grim.
After remembering that the grim was meant to be a spirit and not physical so started adding spells that affected spirits, mastering the divine shield went to the top of his list. If anything was going to use divine magic, Harry would place high odds of the being from his dream using such magic against him.
He didn't miss the furtive looks his classmates kept throwing his way, looks he largely ignored. They swapped from concerned about him dying to calling for his death as if they were flavours of ice cream and just expected him to dance to their tune.
But while he didn't miss the looks, he almost missed Professor McGonagall's lecture on animagi. While he enjoyed the subject of transfiguration, it wouldn't serve him well against magical foes, some like Dumbledore had enough experience and power to use 'combat transfiguration'.
The main reason why transfiguration was generally a poor choice in combat was essentially the difference between transfiguration and alchemical transmutation. With transfiguration you made an object act like something else, using magic as the medium. Transmutation made an object into something else, using both a medium and magic as the power source.
But both methods used up a lot of magic by themselves, if you ignored the magical resistance of distance transfiguration was the more 'cost effective' option. However the transfiguration would only hold for as long as the magic held, so even against somebody inexperienced like Harry who could manipulate magic at close range, transfiguration was just a waste of magic.
Transmutation couldn't be 'undone', once it changed it was stuck as it was unless somebody else came along and decided to transfigure or transmute the object. This meant that in battle if Dumbledore transmuted a wall to buy time, the only way for an attacker to dispel that wall was to use their own magic to destroy it.
But no matter how advanced the defender was, the magic it would take to tear down a transmutation was always lower than the magic it had taken to make it. Of course inside a classroom there were many tricks to decrease the magical requirement of transfiguration, such as taking longer to focus on the intent of the spell.
Harry had noticed McGonagall almost always transfigured an object by tapping her wand against her target, he knew from Nicolas that transfiguration could be ranged but the further away the target was the more magic needed to be spent to combat the air resistance. By tapping the target the magic could travel straight from the source to the target with no resistance.
If Harry had to guess, he would say McGonagall barely spent half as much magic teaching compared to something like Flitwick in charms. This was why the rare times transfiguration was used in combat it was always to defend, many students dreamed of transfiguring rubble into animals to attack an opponent.
Even ignoring the myriad of charms and curses that would disable the animals before they even got close enough to threaten a wizard, a simple dispelling charm would be enough to revert the animals back to their original state.
It was only when he remembered reading the word in his first year that he bothered to look up and pay attention. After Tonks had revealed she could theoretically use her powers to turn herself into almost anything in the Caribbean, Harry had gained a new thirst to copy her powers for himself.
As he listened to McGonagall he decided that while being an animagus sounded useful, it would limit him to turning completely into just one animal. What he wanted was to be able to call forth wings or extra limbs, even if just to impress those around him.
He was amazed when McGonagall turned herself into a cat and then back again with a faint pop. He didn't bother wondering where the extra mass went or even how a cat's brain could hold McGonagall's consciousness, just like his mithril sometimes magic just couldn't be explained.
With some humour, Harry noticed the rest of the class either missed the demonstration or found it boring, as if they saw people turn into cats every day, he also noticed that McGonagall seemed rather put out at the lack of reaction too.
"Really, what has gotten into you all today?" She asked bemusedly "Not that it matters, but that's the first time my transformation has not got an applause from a class."
Everyone's heads turned towards Harry again and he found it significantly harder to ignore him now that the entire class had stopped to blatantly stare at him. McGonagall raised an eyebrow at him and he knew it fell to him to explain why everyone else was behaving weirdly.
"We were in divination and were reading the tea leaves -" Harry began, only to be interrupted by McGonagall
"Ah of course. Tell me, which of you will be dying this year?"
"Me apparently" Harry found himself bemused at how the class seemed split between staring at him as if waiting for him to keel over and die, or at McGonagall as she displayed an uncanny ability to predict the unexpected… or at least to see a trend that happened every year.
"I see. Then you should know Potter, that Sybil Trelawney has predicted the death of one student per year since she arrived at this school. None of them has died yet, seeing 'death omens' is her favourite way of greeting a new class. If it were not for the fact I don't speak ill of my colleagues… Divination is one of the most imprecise branches of magic, I shall not conceal from you that I have a very little patience for it… True seers are very rare and Professor Trelawney…"
She paused again and took another look at the students that were hanging on her every word, Harry could almost see the battle of telling the class what she thought and retaining her professional manner.
"You look in… moderate health Potter, so you will excuse me if I don't let you off homework today. I assure you, that if you die you need not hand it in!" After grimacing down at his grey hand which still hadn't shown any signs of recovery he grinned at McGonagall. She had never gone out of her way to help him like Flitwick or Snape but he liked her none-the-less.
But while he respected the woman, she hadn't seen the magic flowing through the tea leaves. The flakes of his own magic that had formed to warn him of an omen of death, mere hours after dreaming of the exact same omen.
Runes looked like it was going to be a rather quiet lesson, there were a few Slytherins and Hufflepuffs but the majority of the class were Ravenclaws. There wasn't a single Gryffindor as it seemed the entire year had gone down to Care of Magical Creatures.
Harry had decided to sit in the first row and against the wall, Justin sat nearby and gave Harry a nod which he returned. The rest of the class seemed to be competing on who could sit the furthest away from him, even when Ernie Macmillan sat next to Justin he sat on the far side.
When Bathsheda walked in and surveyed the class she seemed momentarily surprised to see how the students had left a bubble around Harry, she flicked her eyes towards him who simply raised his eyebrows and shrugged. He had gotten used to the behaviour and there was no point having a teacher force the students to move.
"Welcome class, to the study of ancient runes. Before we begin I should warn you that up until your OWLs this class will focus on merely translating runes, not writing runic structures. This is because an incorrectly written rune can go disastrously wrong."
She then flicked her wand which sent a pale grey stone slab to each student, each slab was about a square foot. When the slab gently dropped onto his table he noticed there was a faint red brand in the corner 'Staunton's Stonework: Providing reliable Runic slabs since 1356. 1 Galleon'.
His mage sight revealed the brand was made of something like wax which had several runes carefully inked in. Faint lines of magic then spread from the brand across the slab, the lines made sure the slab couldn't be copied or repaired with magic and would even self destruct if the brand was tampered with.
"The tablets I have just given you are made of limestone, now as limestone is a soft stone you will find it relatively easy to carve runes into them. But can anyone tell me why we only use soft stone for training? Yes Ms. Greengrass."
"Because harder stone types preserve their magic for longer and also better prevent accidental damage to runes."
"Correct, five points to Slytherin. Now normally you will want your runes to last as long as possible, but when training your runes only need to last long enough to prove they work. As these tablets are both cheap and easy to break, any incorrectly written runes can be easily broken, which lowers the danger of incorrectly drawing a rune."
She then called up the students one by one to pick up a chisel, they were simple reinforced maple tools with various magical cores. Harry ended up with a dragon heartstring core that felt powerful enough to channel his magic properly.
The rest of the lesson focused on first learning then writing mundane runes, such as numbers or connectives. For the magical runes they wouldn't be allowed to write them for some time until Bathsheda was certain they wouldn't make a mistake and blow themselves up.
Snape and Bathsheda asked him what seemed like hundreds of questions about what had happened the night before, but after seeing how tired he had gotten Snape decided to let Harry go to sleep with the promise they would work on it more the week after, it was only as he was leaving Bathsheda asked her final question.
"When you saw your mithril, did you see the mithril ward generator for Hogwarts?"
Harry was intrigued to note his vow to Bathsheda 'perked up' at her question, it wouldn't stop him lying to her but she would instantly know if he did. It was the first time he had ever actually felt the vow at work since he had sworn to it and was amazed at seeing it with his mage sight almost two years after it had been formed.
It loosely wrapped around his own magic and then shot off towards Bathsheda, normally the vow was completely invisible to him and he had almost forgotten he had even made one. The vow itself was made out of Dumbledore's magic but as it had clearly been made with the Elder Wand it was almost completely unbreakable.
At a slight squeeze from the vow he remembered Bathsheda was waiting for his answer and honestly told her "No, I didn't see it. But as I wasn't looking for it I might've just missed it, I'll have to see if I can find it next time I try it… How are the wards coming along anyway?"
Bathsheda sighed wearily and said "Not well, even with Mr. Flammel's help we decided it would be easier to just completely rewrite the ward scheme. But the only reason some of the wards worked together was because one was centuries old before another was added. Like the Anti-Apparition ward for some reason refuses to work if the human identifier ward is activated."
"Well… What if you split them up, have the Anti-Apparition in one mithril chamber and human identifier in another? We would only need to combine them when the mithril projects them over the school so the runes themselves will never mix."
"That… that's brilliant! But can we do that?"
Harry was ready to continue the discussion long into the night but Snape stepped between them purposely "As fascinating as this is, you two can continue this discussion later. Mr. Potter will need to get to sleep if he wants to be awake for my lesson tomorrow morning and I will not accept tardiness!"
With a sigh Harry collapsed onto his couch after making it to his workshop, he had never gone back to his dormitory after Flitwick had given him permission to avoid it during his second year and nobody had told him to move back so far.
As he was so tired he hadn't even noticed Luna sitting at her table until she looked up from her homework and stared at him intently "You seem preoccupied".
Harry flopped his arm over his face and groaned before replying "Just a busy day really, I had this crazy dream and then in divination my cup predicted the Grim in my future."
He was startled when Luna let out a loud gasp, he was shocked to see how pale she had become and he thought he detected pure terror in her eyes. "But it's fine right? I mean, the Grim isn't actually real." Harry said uncertainly.
"Oh no Harry, the grim is very much real, I've seen it… the day my mother died I was playing in the garden and I remember seeing a shadow on the side of the house. The shadow was pitch black but was clearly the shape of a huge dog and had two glowing red eyes. I remembered thinking it was strange as the sun was bright and there was nothing that could've cast that shape of shadow."
Luna swallowed thickly and looked at Harry with glistening eyes "When I turned to see what was casting the shadow my mother screamed and when I looked back the grim was gone… I ran inside to find her and it was horrible, her workshop looked like it had been blown up and she was just laying at the bottom of a wall. She was just barely alive and I held her as she… as she died."
Harry silently walked over to her and held her to him as she cried, he didn't know how long he held her but eventually her sobs stopped and she had fell asleep in his arms.
He carefully picked her up and willed the workshop a replica of his own bed to form in the corner of the room, after tucking her in he made walls form around the corner so she had some privacy. After getting ready for his own bed he looked in on Luna and was sad to see that even asleep she seemed upset.
Drawing upon what magic he had left he formed the rough outline of a rabbit and then slowly added detail to it, once done he made the mithril soft and acted like it had stuffing. Finally he told it to always be comfy and to bring comfort to whoever held it.
Once done he levitated it over to Luna and couldn't help smiling when she subconsciously reached for the rabbit and held it close, slowly Luna started smiling weakly.
That night Harry dreamt of shiny silver rabbits chasing huge black dogs, he watched the game from high above, flying with silent black wings.
I'm going to try and keep this note brief, but I mainly wanted to publicly answer a review I got last week. "Don't you find it nerve-racking that Harry was sorted to ravenclaw but doesn't have a single friends in 1st year ravenclaw while he's friends with Gryffindor. What was point of sorting Harry to ravenclaw." Now for a start you are sorted into your house based on personality, not where your friends are. But also the whole point is that Harry doesn't have many friends his age, he grew up almost completely alone and constantly read books, so even when he escapes the Dursleys and gets to Hogwarts he carries on as normal.
His two main friends, Hermione and Luna, both sought him out first and both are fine just sitting near Harry and reading, somebody like Ron would never understand how they can find that fun.
Now in other news, my plans for the next few upcoming chapters is to start to skip through several months. The last few chapters were set very close together so Harry is only in his 2nd week back at the end of this chapter, but ultimately 3rd year is relatively boring until you get to the end of the year. As such I'm planning on starting to move the focus to other characters, such as Lucius Malfoy, Tom Riddle and Sirius Black.