Remus carefully made his way down to the lakeshore and after applying cushioning charms sat down next to Harry. Across the Black Lake Remus could just make out the shadowy forms of the dementors, judging by how Harry had been staring at them for the past hour he assumed the boy was studying them.
It was a look Lily had regularly worn but it was strange to see it on James' face. But while he often acted like Lily, physically Harry looked like James in their fifth year, while not as tall he had a similar build and mannerisms. Of course there were several differences between James and his son.
For a start the boy's left hand still hadn't recovered from the dementor encounter, as a specialist on the effect of dark creatures upon the body he had been asked to take a look at the hand. The consensus was that while the hand still worked perfectly, the magic within the hand was completely dead.
The skin itself was an off grey colour with pure white veins, this discolouration had spread up past his shoulder where his original skin tone started bleeding through. The reason the hand had still not recovered was because the damage had been inflicted by a dementor using a dark form of magic, which meant normal magic couldn't heal it.
They, that was to say Remus, Pomphrey, Dumbledore and Flamel, had also noticed Harry's body temperature had dropped by 5 degrees Celsius. But strangely he was showing no signs of damage so they tentatively hoped his magic had it under control.
The other biggest difference between father and son was the fact Harry was missing the distinctive Potter glasses, while James hadn't needed to wear his all the time he thought they made him look cooler. Later in their sixth year James realised he could enchant his glasses with… interesting abilities.
It was odd but Remus couldn't help trying to find features of his old friend in Harry. He was definitely more mature than James had been at his age and significantly stronger, both physically and magically.
In fact Harry was easily the most powerful student in his year, without fail he would be the first to pick up a new spell, sometimes even on his first try. According to the other teachers the only reason Harry hadn't been allowed to move up a year or two was because his written work was rarely on bar with his practical work.
"Studying the dementors?" Remus asked lightly, bringing Harry out of his thoughts.
"Oh, hi Professor Lupin. I guess I was just lost in thought… how did you find me anyway?"
"Well your father, myself and some friends used to use this spot a lot. We found it was a good place to relax… and avoid the teachers." Lupin winked at Harry to show he was only joking.
"Could… could you tell me stories of my dad?" Harry asked softly, Remus internally winced as he remembered how he had ran away when Harry had first asked on the train. Feeling he owed it to the boy he started to tell Harry about James, he chose stories that didn't involve Peter or Sirius as they were painful.
Harry inspected his new mithril watch cautiously, at first he had made it to hold the physical side of his shield. While he had thought it was a good idea to have his shield on him at all times inside his arm, the mithril couldn't expand outside his skin.
While his mithril sleeve had originally continuously summoned the metaphysical shield until it was needed, it was impractical and when he had entered the magical dead zone in the Caribbean the shield had disappeared and he had needed to make a new one.
This led to him making the watch, which would hold the shield until it received a signal from the mithril in his arm where it would expand outwards. By mixing runes with the mithril's intent the shield could go from its one inch diameter form to its full size in less than a second.
The power behind the shield remained within his arm, so that even if he lost the watch he could make magical shields. But having run out of ideas for his shield he started thinking about what else his watch could do, ironically while he called it his watch he had been unable to get the mithril to display the time.
Remembering how he had used his mithril to mimic Tonks' power at Malfoy Manor he had started modifying his watch to let him change his appearance at will. In order to change quickly he forced a small spike to extend from the mithrilium in his arm and painlessly pierce the skin, it then combined with the watch.
As the mithrilium controlled the mithril watch he could change what form the watch turned him into with barely a thought. But while the mithrilium made it much quicker, he still needed to fully understand what he wanted. Changing the colour of his hair or skin was relatively easy, but if he wanted something more complex like wings or extra limbs he would need to perfectly understand how they worked inside and out.
Unfortunately both his mithril and mithrilium was unable to 'store' such complex information, so every time he wanted to change he would have to mentally go through how his metamorphing worked. The only time he knew of mithril storing information was the sword of Gryffindor, the rubies on the sword held the powers of the sword.
While he knew what he wanted, he had no idea how to create it. As he had grown tired of calling it crystalised mithril he had picked a name for it 'Mithraite'. His first attempt was to get his mithrilium and get it to stay in liquid form outside his body, simply willing his mithril to remain mithrilium didn't work.
Bathsheda had then designed a runic array which kept the mithrilium in a form of stasis, they were then able to pour it into a bowl where Harry could better experiment. At Dumbledore's urging he had also started writing his observations in a notebook, the first page documented the appearance of his mithril.
The normal mithril was normally plain silver but the mithrilium had a green tint to it, he expected the mithraite to be a green see-through crystal. After he had inspected the mithrilium he had placed a block of mithril inside the bowl, he had hoped the two would combine but unfortunately the mithril had just converted into more mithrilium.
He and Bathsheda would continue to experiment but even though they knew what they wanted to achieve getting there was proving to be an issue. He also hadn't forgotten Dumbledore's challenge of replicating the sword of Gryffindor, to do that he would need to create his own mithraite.
Until then he could only experiment with what he had and hope he would figure out how to make it in a controlled environment, but knowing his luck he would accidentally discover his mithraite in a life or death situation.
The name mithraite comes from reviewer 'Jedi Master Albus', I personally pronounce it like "Myth-ra-ite"
I don't like how short this chapter is but I had no inspiration to write… hopefully I can get more done for next week. In case it wasn't obvious this version of Harry doesn't need glasses, originally I had planned on explaining how Harry was using his magic to mimic the effect of glasses but felt it didn't fit so it's now here instead!
Something I've noticed with Remus Lupin is there appears to be three main versions of him; Fanfiction Remus, book Remus and then movie Remus. The fanfiction version is the one most often found in 'bashing' fics where Remus is extremely cowardly and does whatever Dumbledore says.
Book version is still a coward but he thinks for himself, finally you have the movie Remus (aka the cooler Remus) due to the additional scenes Remus has with Harry we get to see more of his personality so he acts much more confident, think about the corridor scene in Prisoner of Azkaban where Snape tries to take the map away.
While I have no issue with any of these Remus' for the sake of this fic I'll be trying to emulate the movie version as that is my personal favourite. Ultimately he will only be a minor character but I thought it was worth mentioning.