Chapter 27: Chapter 24: The curse 3

If Harry thought that his headache after the Occlumency practice had been bad… Well, it was nothing in comparison to the gigantic pounding that his grey matter was taking right now. Sledgehammers knocking on his skull from the inside out was what woke Harry up from a comparably pleasant unconsciousness. He clearly opened his eyes, which were at a height level with a dusty floor and an abandoned book titled 'Flaying Your Foes.' Charming, he thought and failed at repressing a groan.

"Shut up, Evans, I'm almost in," a female voice hissed and Harry tried to right himself up to see where it was coming from, only to notice that he couldn't move from the spot. He spun his eyes as far up and to the right, where the voice had come from, as he could, but the only thing he could see was the lower end of a grey robe.

He nonetheless recognized where he was. It was the restricted section and if his guess was any good, he was at the same corner that he'd caught Twix in the last time he'd had the privilege of visiting the library with the woman.

"I'll show them," the crazy bitch murmured as a low buzzing of different frequencies filled the air. Harry recognized the sounds that different spells were wont to emit when clashing with other magic. "I'll be the first," The woman muttered and Harry began fearing for his life. What the fuck was this woman trying to do? He thought sluggishly through his headache. It was only after he finished formulating the thought that he realised he'd spoken aloud.

The feet of the former professor spun to him and he heard the woman stop casting. "I will prove," Twix hissed, "that I am the best curse-breaker in Britain. Those goblin brownnosing Gringotts serfs are nothing. I will dissolve the curse left by You-Know-Who, and then nobody will have the option of denying my brilliance," she finished, making Harry want to start crying.

What kind of fucking drugs was this bitch on? he wondered. For real this time. Why was she looking for the DADA curse in the library? She was completely off track, the curse was obviously bound to the diadem Horcrux in the Room of Requirements. He obviously wasn't going to tell her that, because the last thing the world needed was Twix getting possessed by Voldemort. But still, how did she come to the restricted section? "But why take me with you?" Harry asked weakly. "I can't imagine you need my help, I'm just a first-year," he said, causing Twix to snort disdainfully.

"Of course I don't need your help, I just need a hostage in case the professors come before I can clear my name with my deeds. Now be quiet and don't disturb me," she said threateningly and turned back around. Harry wiggled his toes, something he hadn't been able to do before. Good, his magic was fighting against what was probably the petrification curse.

"Alright, I'll be as quiet as a mouse and stay here in case you need me," Harry said as he started actively fighting against his paralysis by letting magic course through his body.

"Shut up!" Twix screamed and her legs moved erratically, as if she was repressing an urge to kick him. Harry wisely decided to shut up. Through the pain in his head, he started working completely and utterly against his restraints and hoped that he would be done fast enough to stun the woman before she opened whatever she was looking for. Because, while she hadn't necessarily found a Horcrux, which would have been very bad news, she had very likely found something. Probably not something nice which would pat them on the back and send them on their way with some lollipops either.

"Yes," Twix suddenly hissed and Harry heard a creaking and a squeaking as if someone was dragging a bookshelf across the floor. Fuck, Harry thought, still not done with the hex restricting his movement, but he was able to move enough to slightly tilt his head and to see what was going on. He didn't enjoy what he saw, a dark library filled with books on darker magics, in which a wall was slowly being pushed aside to reveal a dark chamber behind it. Twix, the stick-like figure representing insanity in this whole catastrophe of a play, with her unkempt hair and ragged grey robe, didn't at all add the sense of security that perhaps any other professor would have.

Although she wasn't really a professor anymore either. Harry's thought process was suddenly interrupted by a new voice breaking the ominous quiet.

"Alexandra." It began. "You were always a disappointment, I see that not much has changed," a deep baritone said from within the revealed chamber, out of which stepped a portly man with a bald head and an upwards pointed moustache. He looked at Twix with a disappointed gaze and the woman seemed unsure for the first time in this whole adventure. She looked to the left and to the right, her beak-like nose offering an interesting profile to Harry, who was still lying on the floor.

"Fa-father?" Twix asked meekly and started shaking slightly, something that Harry only noticed because he was right behind her.

The portly man shook his head and his beefy arms travelled down his form, which Harry just noticed was garbed in muggle attire. The man slowly undid his studded belt and pulled it out from its fastenings. "I wish I wasn't, Alex, I really wish I wasn't. You know that and you also know what this means."

Twix took a slow step back as the man advanced and as she did she opened enough of an angle for Harry to see that behind the woman's father, there was another, identical figure and behind it, another. All three of them had their belts in their hands and were slowly approaching, slapping them onto the palms of their hands.

"It's boggarts, cast a riddikulus!" Harry shouted, after analysing the situation. Twix needed to make a stand here, or she'd trip over his still form and run away, leaving him to the tender mercy of three non-beings. Harry didn't know what boggarts did to their incapacitated victims and he didn't really want to find out.

Thankfully his reminder was enough to get Twix out of her funk and the woman raised her wand threateningly at the creatures. "Laugh, Evans," she ordered before casting the spell, in a suddenly angry voice, "Riddikulus!" A bright light filled the restricted section and the closest boggart turned into what Harry assumed was still Twix's father, just that he was much older now. A man on the verge of death in a wheelchair and with an IV-Drip connected to his frail and bony arm, which wasn't holding a belt anymore, but a flower.

"Where are you, Mary? I can't see you," the old man croaked miserably and looked around. Harry noted that the pupils of the man were glassed over and that he was blind. Twix started laughing, the sound was reminiscent of its stereotype and Harry wished for nothing more than to be far, far away from this place and this situation. The boggart started vibrating in tune with the laughter and the shape of the old man became more panicked. It started twitching in its wheelchair and rolling its eyes, foam building at its mouth and blood running out of the insertion point of the IV drip. Twix's laughter became louder and Harry joined in as tears fell from his eyes and onto the dusty floor.

The boggart popped and disappeared, the other two thankfully going along with it instead of likely suffering the same fate. The corridor was silent, Twix had stopped laughing, and Harry was fighting against the mystical bindings burdening him. The chamber beckoned with a soft blue light and Harry glared at Twix with pity and anger. The woman turned around and re-cast her bindings at Harry silently before levitating him up and beginning to walk towards the blue light.

Harry's struggles reset and became more frantic than before. He pushed his magic against the bindings, tried casting a finite wandlessly, failed, promised to himself that he'd practise it if he got out alive, and struggled physically. "Why are you taking me there, it's dangerous," he complained through gritted teeth. Twix only laughed at his question.

"A second set of eyes is good, also, I can't have you running away now, can I?" she said without turning her head and entered the chamber, Harry's floating stiff body following closely behind. She levitated the boy into a corner and approached a blue crystal floating in the middle of the otherwise empty hexagonal room.

Harry bit back a scream as the woman dropped him onto the floor and an ache in his back popped up to accompany the one in his head. He looked around frantically to see if there was anything that could help him out in this situation and forlornly noted that his first impression of the room had been correct. It was empty of any objects besides the crystal. The crystal that Twix was approaching with her wand out and what he assumed was an inquiring face, was looking away from him. Harry accepted his new position of lying on the floor, with his face pointed in the direction of the former professor and renewed his struggles. Maybe if he managed to run out now he could somehow close the woman in here, go back to his dorm and forget that this whole thing had ever occurred. But for that, he would first need to get free.

"What are you?" Twix suddenly said, poking the crystal with her wand. Harry almost answered 'angry,' but stayed his tongue, looking anxiously as the crystal levitated backwards for a short distance after the poke, before returning to the original position. An itch developed in Harry's ears and he quickly concluded, fearfully, that it wasn't an itch, but a vibration weak enough that only his inner ear was currently picking up on it.

"A power source for the curse?" Twix asked again and waved her wand over the crystal casting some sort of spell, probably identification. The vibration intensified and now Harry could feel it in his chest.

"You reek of mind magic, is that how the curse affects the DADA professors? Makes them self-sabotage through unconscious actions?" she said and cast another spell. The vibrations started to reach Harry's bones.

"Stop! Don't you feel that it's building up to something?" Harry shouted at the woman from his prone position on the floor and watched as his scream distorted the dust particles near his mouth. They flew up into his nose and he started uncontrollably coughing and sneezing.

"Of course I know!" Twix cursed as she looked at Harry disparagingly over her shoulder. "You need to bring the construct into a state of activation before you can dispel anything with this sort of power source," she looked back at the crystal and started stalking around it. Harry stopped coughing and was glad the woman wasn't looking at him anymore, her eyes had reflected the blue crystal's light in an eerie way. "I didn't know You-Know-Who had such finesse," Twix began, again speaking to the crystal and raising her wand high in the air, "but the thing about fragile objects is that they break easily," she said as she brought down her wand and incanted out loud of the first time. "Confractus!" she cast it at the same time as Harry screamed.

"Don't!" He shouted, violently enough for spittle to fly from his mouth.

The spell hit the crystal and the crystal cracked straight down the middle, its lights suddenly dimmed and the two halves fell to the floor. Twix grinned triumphantly, "Did you really think a curse-breaker of my calibre would have been unabl-," she began before a blazing blue light suddenly flew from the crystal and straight into her. She froze in her position and fell to the ground. It would have been less horrifying had she started to scream, instead, Harry got to look into her horror-stricken face as her pupils vibrated violently in place, illuminated by a blue light shining straight out of the woman's eyes. He watched, terrified, as the blue light began dimming, at the same rate as Twix's eyes bled a puddle onto the floor. It was a slow, agonizing process to watch as more and more red liquid pooled in front of the woman's head and drenched her robe. Harry was almost thankful when it stopped, the blue light pulsing one last time and some grey goop being ejected from the woman's nose.

Harry was less thankful when the blue light left the now corpse and started wobbling in the air towards him with a weak shine. He tried to move, but couldn't, he tried shouting, but his voice was hoarse and there was nobody around to hear him. He laboriously formed a small fireball in front of his head and shot it at the light, but it just passed through. The only thing he could do, right before the blue light reached him was pull all the Occlumency knowledge and skill he could muster and hope to god that the reason Twix died was due to a mental attack, not a physical one.

In his mindscape a bright blue meteor trailing fire descended on the fields, Harry fought through his exhaustion with a picture-perfect clarity and energy that could only come right before death. He created barriers, he denied the meteor's existence, he doused it with water, he turned it into a metaphor and he rhymed it on leaveor to make it fuck off. Nothing helped, it kept coming. It strained against the rudimentary barrier that Harry had created over the field of his thoughts, before it broke through that as well, only losing some of its size and shine. However, just as it was about to crash into his mind and probably send through it a deadly tremor, a bright white stag, suddenly entered Harry's mind from a place he hadn't been paying attention to and crashed into the blue mental attack, destroying it and itself along with it.

Completely and utterly numb from what had transpired, still unsure if he was alive or not, Harry clenched his fists and brought his focus out of his own head and onto the outside world. The first thing he noticed was that he could move. His fingers bit painfully into the stone floor and he felt some of his fingernails break. The second thing he noticed was the cowled figure kneeling beside him. The person was average-sized for a male and his face was hidden by a shadowed hood. Not that Harry could have distinguished much anyway considering the only source of light was gone now, thankfully. Harry had a suspicion, however, who this mysterious figure was, because the stag symbolism had just clicked in his mind. Patronus, Animagus, the stag that had met Twix outside of the forbidden forest that one time and the male voice that he'd never heard again at the beginning of the year. Of course, who else but a marauder would be best equipped to enter the school even after one's graduation.

"How are you feeling?" James Potter asked as he brought up his wand and cast something with a soft green glow on Harry, who for his part, just stared at the man kneeling by his side, mind too tired to think of what he should do now, let alone an answer.

"I feel like shit," he eventually said, after a few more light shows from James, light shows that Harry assumed were diagnostic spells.

"I'd definitely suggest a visit to the mediwitch," James said, at which Harry nodded, "but can you tell me what happened first." Harry looked at the very suspiciously dressed man and wondered if James had forgotten to take off his cowl. While Harry knew that the man was an Auror, any other student wouldn't recognize the man through his disguise and would probably assume they were about to be kidnapped.

Hopefully, the fact that James wasn't bringing him to the mediwitch was an indication that he wasn't overly hurt by this misadventure and not that he was a witness who was about to disappear.

"Well, Twix over here, who used to be a professor," Harry said and flitted his eyes to the now corpse, "thought she had what it took to break Voldemort's curse on the defence position. Suffice it to say that she didn't have the necessary aptitude, not to break the curse, but also not even to find it in the first place. I don't know what this place is, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the defence position."

James looked around the room as Harry spoke and slowly nodded. "No, Hogwarts is big and there are more hidden rooms than any living person knows of. Headmasters, teachers and the founders themselves left behind chambers scattered throughout the castle. Some are dangerous, clearly. This one seems to be a chamber that hid a dangerous artefact. The defence curse probably led the former professor here and then the artefact did the rest."

Harry digested the information and tried to remember any special chambers or rooms besides the Room of Requirement and the Chamber of Secrets. There was nothing he could immediately think of, but it definitely made sense that there were more than just two places like this in the castle. The whole thing suddenly put his night wanderings into a different perspective. Hogwarts was not safe, he would need to remember that in the future and be more careful. He winced as a painful lance went through his brain.

"I can take you to the infirmary," the cowled James quickly offered, causing Harry to snort.

"Go for it, just hope I'm fine for exam week, can't imagine brewing a potion with my current headache," Harry replied and was promptly levitated upwards and led out of the chamber, which closed behind them, leaving behind no trace of what had occurred.

James, perhaps finally realising how suspicious the whole situation seemed, asked. "Do you not want to know who I am, or what I'm doing here?"

Harry looked at him as if he were an idiot, even if the gesture was difficult to pull off considering the stiff position in which he was being levitated in. "You're hiding your face, I thought asking would be pretty useless considering you're obviously unwilling to part with your identity. As to what you're doing here, it's not like I'm in any position to do anything about it if I don't like the answer. Mostly I assume you're an Auror who was trailing Twix for her obvious lunacy but failed to enter the castle as quickly as she did, which makes sense considering she used to be a professor. I don't know if Aurors are allowed here, but I guess it would explain why you're not showing your face." Harry rationalised, knowing in his heart, that the real reason he was letting a random stranger take him anywhere was the fact that he knew the man was James Potter, one of the good guys, hopefully.

Something he should rather keep to himself considering that obliviation existed for people who knew too much. "Also I mostly don't care, weird shit happens in the wizarding world and it's mostly best to keep one's nose out of it. I'm going to tell Pomfrey I fell down some stairs and forget tonight ever happened," he added, not sure if he was imagining the whisper of 'good,' that escaped James at his words.

"That's an interesting perspective," James said tentatively, "but I can't deny that the Wizarding World can be a very dangerous place. Are you at least enjoying quidditch?"

"I play with my friends sometimes, but I usually practise Charms in my free time, they're super fun. I'm even top of my class." Harry said, deciding that to avoid getting his memory wiped he should build up a rapport with the man. It seemed to work because despite the awkward situation that the meeting had occurred the two chatted away for a few minutes before James dropped him off in front of the hospital wing after asking for some reassurance that Harry really fell down some stairs.

After knocking on the doors persistently and weakly due to the state of his body Harry quickly found himself taken care of by the tyrannical mediwitch and got to sleep over in the infirmary next to Penny, who was due to be released the next day, most of her memories apparently having come back by now.

Harry himself had gotten a clean bill of health. His biggest issue was the debilitating stiffness that his body had developed due to being paralyzed in one position for too long, in addition to the tears in his muscles he'd created by fighting against his bindings. His head had been declared injury-free, so the mind battle hadn't damaged his brain physically at least. Mentally? Whatever steps it would require to fix something in his mind would probably involve seeing some things he would rather keep hidden. It was thus with a whole plethora of ache-reducing potions and spells and with a potential mind magic-related aneurysm coming up that Harry went to sleep, not at all worried about anything and completely optimistic about the future…

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Chapter 28: Chapter 25: Waking up

Harry awoke from a nightmare and slowly opened his eyes to gaze at the sunlight penetrating the hospital wing and illuminating its sterility. He couldn't remember what he'd dreamt, only that he'd hated it. He lay there and stared at the arching ceiling for a while, before turning his head to the left to check up on Penny. He almost fell out of his bed as he noticed a bundle of messy blonde hair and blue eyes staring at him from his bedside.

"You're awake, finally! I'm Penny, who are you?" the girl exclaimed with a smile.

Harry looked at her sadly but frowned as she started laughing.

"Hah, I'm just yanking your chain," Penny said as she climbed onto his bed. They were still young, so both of them easily fit. "How are you feeling?"

Twix, hostage, boggart, old man, corpse, death. He looked up to the ceiling and considered the question. Twix was dead, never to bother him again. James Potter hadn't felt the need to obliviate him and had even saved him from being lobotomized by whatever artefact had been hidden in the chamber. He rolled his shoulders and flexed his toes, feeling, not rejuvenated, but alive, which was more than could have been said about him yesterday. All in all, yesterday had been the fourth most traumatic thing to have ever happened to him and overall he was quite happy with the fact that while it had been uniquely horrifying, it had only lasted one day and carried with it no seeming consequences. Hadn't the original Harry Potter brushed off situations much worse than those he'd experienced yesterday? Murders, monsters and dark lords. Maybe the Evans family was just built different.

"I actually feel quite good," Harry said as he swept his gaze downwards to look Penny in the eyes. The blue in them reflected oddly in the light and he flinched as the colour reminded him of the meteor. "More than fine, now that you're up. Do you remember?"

Penny nodded. "I remember everything, apparently the forgetfulness potion wasn't done yet so its effects were broad but shallow," she said as she looked him over. "I heard you dragged me out of the room?" she asked. Harry nodded and Penny crawled towards him to give him a hug, a full-body one. The boy closed his eyes and reciprocated. A few tears slipped from his eyes and he realised that he hadn't been getting as many hugs at Hogwarts as he was used to. Back home Aunt Petunia always gave him one a day and before that, he'd had…

"Are you crying?" Penny whispered gently in his ear, causing Harry to shake his head. "Alright," she whispered and one of her hands travelled up his head and started stroking his hair. They squeezed each other like that for a few minutes or so, for all intents and purposes two recently traumatised children locked away in a castle in Scotland with their only families far, far away.

"You know, I think I usually compliment you on your potion-making, but I think your tenderness is one of your greatest qualities, just wanted to let you know," Harry whispered as the two first-years untangled their bodies. Penny blushed and looked down.

"Thanks."

"I'm glad your memories are back," Harry said, causing Penny to suddenly perk up and turn around. She took something from his bedside table and handed it to him.

"This came by owl for you this morning!" she said suddenly as she pushed the letter into his hands. Harry tilted his head and took the parchment, opening the seal, which seemed to be the standard school emblem. The paper crinkled as he unrolled it and he read allowed for Penny's convenience.

"Dear Mr. Evans, if you wish to discuss the possibility of starting the arithmancy elective one year early, as you discussed with the headmaster, find me during my office hours before the end of term. Professor Vector," he read, causing the girl on his bed to giggle.

"Harry, did you really?" She began as she started laughing. "Did you really become even more of a nerd?" she finished and buried her face in her hands to stifle her laughs. The boy rolled his eyes at the gremlin.

"Excuse me, I seem to remember that you're way better at Potions than me, which technically makes you a bigger nerd," he retorted with a huff, wondering how come academic ambition was always so poorly regarded by other children, when in fact, after social competencies, it was the most important part of life. He took out his wand and cast a quick tempus, seeing that it was already noon. He'd slept for a long time, understandably, when you considered how shittily and how long his night had run. Thankfully it was a weekend, so he hadn't missed any classes, just study time that he didn't really need considering how far ahead he was in most subjects. Harry was too old to be stressed about exams.

"When are her office hours even?" he asked, "It's not like I've ever been to her class."

"It should be in the study hall, there's a big board with information about all the professors," Penny said. "You wanna go now?"

Harry tilted his head and tensed his body, not noticing any ache. He considered for a moment if he should inform Madame Pomfrey that he wanted to leave and ask for permission. "Are you cleared to go?" Harry, causing the girl to shake her head.

"Supposed to sleep here till tomorrow, but I feel fine, I swear," she exclaimed and jumped off the bed to prove her point, only to catch her foot on the side and fall on the floor face-first. She lay there for a bit as Harry peeked over the edge of the bed at her.

"You alright?" he asked the ungraceful starfish cleaning the floor with her robes.

Penny extended an arm upwards without changing her position and shot him a thumbs-up.

"Well it's obviously got nothing to do with your memory, falling on the floor like that," Harry proposed. "So I say we might as well go out and come back to sleep when curfew starts. Shant be missed I imagine," he said, trying to remember what Pomfrey had told him about leaving. Something about not even thinking about it until she checked him over again.

"Yeah, we'll be fine, we're not babies," Penny said with a snort as she slowly righted herself off from the floor into a sitting position, in which she cradled her red forehead and slightly teary eyes. Harry got up from the bed and cast a few repairing and cleaning charms at his robes.

"Off we trot then," he said to Penny as he gave her a hand in standing up. She clutched it as if it were a lifeline and Harry was sure that he contributed more energy to get the girl up right than she did.

They were definitely going to get yelled at when they came back, Harry decided when they left the hospital wing. But the smile Penny shot him as they did so convinced him that it was healthier to go than to stay. For a girl of Penny's age, being confined to bed for even a day was too long, and the terror of losing her memories needed to be fought as early as possible. If there indeed were any, magical children had an odd relationship to physical and mental trauma, he'd determined today. He guessed it made sense, in a world where one's parents might turn one into a toad as a punishment for not doing one's chores.

"Have you ever been transfigured into anything as a punishment?" Harry asked his best friend as they both entered the mingle of the Hogwarts corridors on the weekend, quickly being lost in a sea of black robes and stressed students.

-/-

"Good day Professor Vector," Harry said as he entered the woman's office, which he'd found to be open today in the afternoon. He observed the strict-looking, but young woman with a messy brown bun who scribbled some notes on a parchment before looking up at him. She bid him to sit, which Harry did. The chair was comfortable, and he took the opportunity to look around the office, of which the predominant characteristic was the large number of blackboards scattered all throughout, containing different equations, most of which he didn't understand. To his surprise, some contained formulas of muggle maths, which he also didn't understand. He turned back to the professor, who had been observing him with keen yellow eyes and steepled fingers. "I've come to talk to you about taking arithmancy next year, instead of in my third year, I got your letter this morning," he explained.

"Yes, the headmaster contacted me regarding your request. An interesting spell you made, I've never seen the need for something similar, I guess that after you gain the competency to make such a spell, you've developed other strategies of finding books and have no need for it anymore," Vector said as she leaned back in her chair. "You're muggle-born, how far along were you in maths? Quirrell told me you finished your schooling already, precocious."

Harry blinked, surprised at the question and tilted his head thoughtfully. "You've asked around?" he concluded, assuming that someone not even set to potentially teach him for another two years would not have a reason to look up his school files. The woman raised an eyebrow at his question.

"Was I not supposed to?"

Harry shook his head. "No, I'm just surprised. The information you have is correct. I finished the first half of my muggle education before coming to Hogwarts, although most will correctly argue that actual learning only starts at university. Maths was never a particular strength, nor was it a weakness of mine. It's something one can get by on with enough practice, the requirement for creativity and intuition only comes later. I've done statistics, algebra, the beginnings of calculus and all the stuff leading to that. I passed it with a decent enough grade."

"From my understanding, being decent in topics almost a decade beyond one's reach can be referred to as talent," Vector pointed out. "Also, calculus is nothing to sneeze at. It's not a part of most curricula until university. But whatever, I don't care about your false modesty, I just wanted to know where you were at."

"I'm surprised at your in-depth knowledge of the muggle educational system, professor, my understanding was that the wizarding world disdained their non-magical counterparts," Harry said tentatively, causing Vector to snort.

"Numbers are numbers, different systems can all learn from each other," she pointed to what appeared to be a framed diploma on a wall that was almost obscured with blackboards. Harry unceremoniously stood up and walked closer to the wall, until he could distinguish the letters.

"A Master's degree in Mathematics," Harry said in surprise, before laughing, "at MIT." He wiped a stray tear from his eye and looked to Professor Vector, who was now leaning back in her chair with a small smirk, exposing the fact that she wore muggle clothing underneath her robe. A pair of jeans and a pullover that hid what must have been a very curvaceous body. "What about god, country and queen?" Harry asked.

Vector scoffed. "Cambridge was barely even dipping their toes into computer science when I went to university, MIT was the place to be when it came to computational mathematics and modelling."

"Are you muggle-born?" Harry asked and got a shake of the head for his trouble.

"Half-blood, but back to you," she retorted. "Why do you want to start arithmancy one year early, shouldn't you value your precious childhood while you can?" she asked, jokingly.

"Well, de-accelerating has obviously never been my strong suit. As for arithmancy, I'd be lying if I said I really cared for the field in itself;" Harry admitted, making the woman frown a bit for the first time since he'd entered the room, "however, I view it as a sort of meta-skill, to improve one's capacities for all other fields. I hardly could have made the charm I made without it, nor can a poitoneer properly modify a recipe without using some arithmancy.

Essentially, I guess you could say it's a useful piece of knowledge to have because it boosts one's success in all other fields. It also helps that I could stagger out my O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts a bit."

"Your motivation is crap for someone making the request you're making. Don't you know that teachers like to hear that students are passionate about their subjects?" the professor mocked as she idly twirled what Harry suddenly realised was a pen in her fingers. Harry locked eyes with the woman.

"While teachers like having the subjects be of interest, humans dislike being lied to," he said as he stepped back to the table, but instead of sitting down, he stayed standing and stared the professor down. "Also, I've always had the feeling that people in STEM liked directness. So I'll take this opportunity to be frank. While I haven't done arithmancy enough to see if it's a passion or not, I assume a negative, however, with the knowledge of it I will be able to work wonders in other fields. For this purpose, please help me, not just pass the exams, but also be the best arithmancer I can be," he said with an unwavering gaze, green on yellow.

"You know, I've met a bunch of wannabe geniuses, but you at least seem to have the maturity to go along with it. What are your plans for the summer?" the woman asked.

"Going to France, spending time with my family and calculating my ass off. Because of the trace arithmancy will have my undivided attention for the entirety of the vacation."

"I like the commitment," Vector said as she leaned forward on the table and propped her head up on her right arm while smiling at him. "I'll send you the syllabus for the first-year course after your other exams, don't want Flitwick or McGonagall on my ass for distracting you. I'll test you a week before Hogwarts starts, if you get an EE you get to join and I'll make arrangements, if not then tough luck. Sounds good to you?" she asked.

Harry nodded. "My issue has never been not being able to prove myself after being given the opportunity."

"Alright," Vector replied, "then that's it, now scram, I have work to do." She dismissed him and Harry left, slightly bitter about being referred to as a genius but mostly happy with how the conversation had gone. Getting something to work on for the summer was a good deal, sorcery was one thing, arithmancy was another, and it was good to have a balance. He left the room with one last glance at the professor.

A degree at MIT, he snorted as the door closed behind him. Who would have thought he'd meet a university graduate at a school for magical children.