Chapter 53: Chapter 49: Securing the Mentors
"Finite," Percy Weasley invoked a bit too loudly, likely discouraged by his previous failures. They were learning the general counter-spell in today's Charms class and had been put in pairs of animator and dispeller. Harry, perhaps due to being distracted, had blessed the pillow with an animation charm that was a tad too powerful. Ever since he'd started practising magical sensing he had been getting more and more proficient with enchantment-type charms, as his magic became more easily nestled into its end destination.
The pillow did an energetic backflip as if to taunt the poor redhead, who again cast the spell to no success.
Considering that the general counter-spell was something that Harry had mastered to the point of being able to cast it wandlessly with some success, the class was quite literally beneath him. Which was why he decided to flip forward in the book to check what they were doing next week, while Percy continued battling with the pillow break-dancing on their part of the extended desk that encircled the podium from which Flitwick taught.
Harry was just reading up on the cheering charm, which was an interesting spell, in the manner that it affected one's emotions when a squeaky voice spoke up from behind the red-haired duo.
"Do try to rein in your frustration, Mr Weasley, it will only cause the spell to become more difficult to cast. It's a complex piece of work, only taught this early due to its sheer utility. There's no need to feel frustrated," Professor Flitwick said from behind the two.
The man then turned to Harry. "Perhaps a less powerful animation charm next time, Mr Evans, I feel that this pillow is a bit too lively to let anyone dissuade it from its efforts."
The pillow was doing cartwheels now, going in a circle so fast that it became nothing more than a blur of blue movement.
"Will do, professor," Harry promised and went back to the textbook after the man had left. After another minute or so the pillow fell on the desk lifelessly and its vanquisher caught his breath with a shaking wand arm and a red face. The boy barely applied his own animation charm to the thing before Harry already dispelled it and put the pillow under his sway again.
This time it seemed to be mock-performing some sort of opera. Slower movements, less energy. Harry nodded, satisfied with his control, while Percy glared at him, before sighing and getting back to work.
The class continued in the same manner, Percy suffering, but learning, and Harry reading and thinking about the curriculum. Once the lesson finally finished, Percy had been one of the only students other than Harry who had the spell done, for which the boy seemed grateful, albeit with a certain frustration.
Understandable, for someone as ambitious as this particular Weasley.
"You're not going?" Percy asked as he stood up to depart from the classroom with the rest of the pupils.
Harry, who'd remained sitting down, shook his head. "Go ahead, I have to talk to the professor about something."
Percy left with a nod, leaving Harry alone in the room with the short professor, who quickly fixed up any mess with a widespread repairing charm. So overpowered that Harry managed to feel its clean presence sweep across the room.
"I see you weren't dissuaded," Flitwick commented after the second-year student had walked up to him where he was arranging his lecture podium for the next class.
"Have you ever known me to be anything but stubborn and focused?" Harry asked curiously, at which the professor took down his glasses to wipe them, as he rolled his eyes.
"I guess not," he muttered. "However, while your classwork has been sufficient for me to technically consider your proposal, along with the conditions I set out, I do have to ask what else you've been doing this year?"
"What do you mean, professor?"
Flitwick waved a hand dismissively in the air. "You're just as ahead in third-year Charms as you were in first-year Charms. You seem to be managing all of your other subjects similarly well. Arithmancy hovers at EE, rather than the Outstanding I was expecting, but that's fine. You're essentially playing catch-up, and winning. Transfiguration has been progressing nicely, although Minerva is feeling a bit frustrated, as she feels you would also have the capacity to jump ahead in her class, but you simply refuse to put in the effort." He paused to inhale. "What I'm trying to ask is, last year you were similarly challenged by your class-work, perhaps just a tad less, and it was your extra-curricular project that took most of your time. This year you don't seem to have one, how come?" Flitwick asked.
Harry tilted his head and looked at the professor with some confusion. Did the man think that Harry had simply been doing nothing but wait for this conversation about duelling. "How come you think I haven't been doing anything, professor?" he asked curiously.
Flitwick faltered. "Well, I would assume at least one professor would have known about such an extra-curricular project, but I've talked to them all and they all said they hadn't discussed anything of the sort with you."
Considering those words, Harry quickly caught the inconsistency. He'd been practising with James, for some time now already and the man also knew that Harry was working on his duelling independently. Had Flitwick asked James, and the man simply hadn't informed the head of Ravenclaw? Or was Flitwick lying to him about nobody having said anything? "Well," he began, "I've been working on duelling, I got a bit of help from Professor Potter and some friends," he said, not wanting to even hint at the existence of the room of requirement. He would soon give up its location and the Horcrux likely hidden inside it. But first, he needed to deepen his magic sense so that he could distinguish what was safe to loot from the place and what wasn't. There were probably at least some galleons in the room of hidden things, and Harry quite frankly didn't want to just let them slip through his fingers.
Flitwick stroked his short beard as he considered the second year over the rim of his glasses, "That's all?" he asked, sounding a tad disappointed. "There's not much to do in Hogwarts in that regard…" he trailed off.
Harry got the distinct feeling that the man wanted him to explore other extra-curricular activities as well. Perhaps he'd set up too high expectations last year, technically he was doing even more, to be fair, but he really didn't want to tell Flitwick about his burgeoning magical sense. He was a paranoid man, boy, considering the fate that had befallen his mother. That was why he carried a bezoar around with him everywhere, to protect himself from poisons. The ability to sense magic, if otherwise furthered, would probably be similarly useful. After all, it was probably hard to ambush someone who could feel your spells without seeing them.
Wait, Harry thought. There was one thing that he'd been working on that he didn't mind sharing.
"Well, other than learning some more spells for duelling, after mastering the ones you suggested for me, I have also been working on other things. One spell in particular has been proving to be very difficult," Harry began, at which Flitwick immediately perked up.
"Is it a charm?"
Harry nodded. "I stumbled upon the topic of dementors, and it motivated me to start learning the Patronus charm, it's been quite hard to master," he said, the implication being that he'd been working on it for longer than just two weeks now. The spell was actually quite hard, similar to the disillusionment spell which he'd taken several months to learn last year, and it still wasn't completely mastered.
"That's not really something most Hogwarts students would have an easy time with. What stage are you at?" Flitwick asked.
"I can create a shield, but I'm struggling at the shaping stage," Harry admitted, at which the professor nodded.
"Managing anything at all can already be considered impressive. Would you mind showing me?"
"Give me a moment to gather the appropriate emotional fuel," Harry said and pulled out his wand, turning around to direct it in the middle of the tables that encircled them. It didn't actually take him a minute, but it was always better to ask for more and then impress by needing less. "Expecto patronum," he cast once he'd mustered the necessary happiness and watched as a bright white mist erupted from his wand to create a dome-like shield before him. Occasionally it sprang forward, as if to create a specific shape, but failed to do so each time. Eventually, the spell became too difficult to hold, forcing Harry to drop it.
Turning around to see Flitwick's reaction he was surprised to see that the professor wasn't looking all that surprised. Hadn't the original Harry Potter been praised for learning the patronus in his third year? he wondered.
Then he realised that with the way he'd been excelling in all academic and magical subjects, he was probably skewing the professor's capacity to distinguish between what was normal and what wasn't. In a way, he should really apologise to the other students of Hogwarts for making their lives harder.
"Do you want to advance to another grade?" Flitwick eventually asked curiously, after seemingly having mulled over what Harry had just shown him.
The second year thought about the question and wondered about the usefulness of such an action. Currently, he was investing all his energy into duelling and magical sensing and was just following the coursework like a normal student would, one lesson at a time. Ignoring of course the useful spells he'd learned in advance because they served a particular purpose.
"I think that it would be possible, but that I would need to dial down my other projects to manage to do so. The spell work is growing incrementally harder and if I had to master all the fourth-year spells by the summer, in addition to the normal coursework, then it would probably leave me with very little free time. Why do you ask?"
"Well, if you advanced another year, then you would be in Hogwarts for two years without having to attend any Charms lessons at all. You would be sixteen and seventeen years old respectively, which would be a much better time to enter the duelling circuit. The time you would have free by having finished Charms and Arithmancy by then, we could use to advance the goals you seem to have in regards to duelling," the professor suggested kindly.
It was a good suggestion, really. If he finished Charms and Arithmancy in his fifth year then he could truly focus on becoming a duelling champion. By that time he would also have a much larger repertoire of spells and would have, presumably, hopefully, managed to beat the dummy in the Room of Requirement, which he still wasn't anywhere close to. However, while this would be a decent plan had his goal been to become a successful duellist, Harry's intention was actually to become an effective fighter. Duelling was simply the best way he had available.
His future knowledge wasn't that accurate, obviously, but it was accurate enough for him to have realised that Potter or not, trouble was brewing in the Wizarding World. Ministry officials were taking over the Defence against the Dark Arts role, in search of something at Hogwarts. The prophecy presumably haunted the boy who lived and Voldemort was just as likely to return on the back of Quirrel's head next year, as he was to be resurrected any time now by some unfortunate contrivances of fate. Blood-purism determined public policy and action and Harry Evans was a twelve-year-old kid who was more than anything, likely to be mere collateral in any coming conflict. At least the way he was now. It was hard to combine the real and unreal dangers lurking all around him into something he could actually prepare for. Considering that at his current level of fighting ability, he couldn't even beat an average sixth-year however, it was very clear that he needed to up his game as fast as possible.
While Hogwarts was the fulcrum of a great danger, it was still a danger he knew, to some extent. Due to his knowledge, it was also the best place to grow as strong as possible. He had to stay, but not stay as a normal student, with normal ambitions. He had to run, sprint even, no matter how much others insisted that he should be content by walking.
Also, duelling was fun. The spells he'd exchanged with Tonks had all been sharpened in their bouts and fighting someone who wasn't actually trying to hurt him was as exhilarating as any sport, drug or sexual encounter. In a way, he enjoyed the suffering he had to go through to become stronger, a wizard to watch out for. Why else would he subject himself to the humiliation of being beaten by a duelling dummy, the torture of complete sense deprivation and the grinding mental decay experienced when learning Occlumency? Perhaps his ambition could have remained fettered in a world without magic, where the biggest reward for a lifetime of work was becoming rich, or having power over others.
But in a world of magic, where personal effort could very well amount to becoming something akin to a god? There was no reason to not work harder than anyone considered sane, there was no reason to look back and there was no reason to not try to ascend.
Harry noticed that he'd been staring at Flitwick, glassy-eyed, for a while now while he considered his options. He refocused his gaze and looked at the man. Whatever lay in his eyes seemed to scare the man, as he took a step backwards.
"Starting to duel at 12 seems like it would create a better duellist than if one were to start at fifteen," he said distractedly, before furrowing his brows. "Perhaps that's the pragmatic answer…" he trailed off. "The reality is, however, that there is an itch," he put a hand on his heart, "right here. It's burning me up from the inside. I need to be challenged in a way that's more meaningful than mere academia, or I might just go insane."
"If I help you enter the tournament, you won't win it, it's impossible," Flitwick said lightly, "you're a great student, with perhaps a bit of an ego. That ego will be broken the moment you enter. Nobody does so under the age of fourteen, and even that is only to gain experience. They'll pull your name through the mud for having the audacity to enter. Your blood-status. Your age," the man said softly.
"Your heritage," Harry realised and looked at the half-goblin, "with the importance wizarding society, at least in Britain, puts on blood purism. They must have despised you. It's why no one knows you were once at the top of the world. They probably were ashamed, rather than proud, of your achievements," he breathed with wide eyes.
"It's why I was surprised you even know of the title I once held," Flitwick muttered.
Harry blinked, "It's why you were reluctant, trying to steer me off. You were trying to spare me."
"It would be alright if you entered and won, but if you did so at too young an age, only to lose…" Flitwick trailed off, smiling bitterly.
"Professor," Harry began, coming to a grand narrative realisation, "don't you want revenge?" he asked. Flitwick remained silent, so he continued. "There must have been some reason you once stood on that podium, receiving the trophy. Some desire to prove them all wrong. But they didn't change, did they?"
Flitwick shook his head with a faraway look.
"Facts are logical, hatred is irrational. If one does not believe in the former one can only lean into the latter. Let's prove them wrong, professor. I'll lose the first time I enter, maybe even the second. But the third, I'll show them that they are weak, pathetic and sad. That magic is might, that might makes right, and that in a world where a single individual can change the course of history with a wave of their wand… that prejudice is just a foolish recourse of the tribal idiots living among us," Harry said as if in a trance, swaying his body and licking his lips like a snake, tasting the atmosphere of the room.
If he could convince Flitwick to train him, not as a favour to a student, but as a part of a personal agenda with emotional stakes. Then he would likely receive support beyond what he'd gotten before, from any professor, in this world or last.
The half-goblin shook his head, resolutely. "I've let go of bitterness, I do more to change minds by teaching children at Hogwarts than I ever did disarming opponents in a ring," the defence sounded rational but weak.
"But it's not as satisfying, is it," Harry concluded. "I'll win anyway, you know that professor," he switched tracks, "what chance do they truly have against someone like me," he said and raised his arms, pointing to himself as if he were a prize bull at an auction. The implication was that he was a genius and that once focused in a direction there would be none capable of standing before him. The truth was that it would be an adult competing against children, not a fair contest in any definition of the word.
Victory.
"The youngest person to ever win the U17 international duelling tournament, a misnomer by the way, as it doesn't usually have any Asian or African participants, is Gellert Grindelwald at age 14. I believe you will find it hard to match that achievement, but 15 is still prodigious," Flitwick acknowledged, "I'll help you as I would any talented student, without an agenda," he decided firmly.
Harry closed his eyes and breathed out. "I'll win anyway, professor, why not make it mean something. Why not make it a statement, from us filthy half-bloods to the rest of the world."
Flitwick seemed to mull over the words. "Britain is really the worst of the lot. Most other countries are quite a bit more progressive." He sighed. "But, I guess they do deserve a kick in the pants every now and again. Especially after that horrid article," he mumbled, before sighing. Looking Harry up and down he eventually gave his final approval. "Quite frankly, Mr. Evans, rather than simply being in awe of your talent, your progress has been beginning to seem more terrifying than wondrous recently. Let's meet on the weekend, assess your abilities and start working on the basics, but for now, shoo. I have a class to teach," the man finished and demonstratively waved Harry away.
"You won't regret it, professor," Harry said with a smile and left, satisfied that he'd secured himself another expert invested in making him a better fighter.
Leaving the classroom he passed through a waiting throng of students who he'd shared charms classes with last year. The second-year Ravenclaws and Slytherins. They glared at him as he walked through them, but they were too beneath his notice for him to bother meeting any of their gazes.
The one jinx someone tried to shoot at him once he'd exited the crowd, he simply side-stepped, without looking back. His magical sense had alerted him to the slow-moving beam, which splashed harmlessly on a suit of armour, instead of on his back.
He heard the incredulous whispers that erupted from behind him but was too focused on planning out a training schedule in the Room of Requirement to really focus and make out the words spoken.
It was time to let go of the responsibility of knowledge. It wasn't his job to worry about Horcruxes and dark lords. It was time to let go of anxiety and let the adults handle the situation. Let the wizarding world deal with the problems they'd created, and give him the time to focus on what was really important.
His magic.
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