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.
Chapter 54: Chapter 50: What Cerberus?
For all intents and purposes, things had been going rather well for Harry Evans in recent times. Having received private instructions and promises of such from very talented individuals indeed, all evidence pointed to his future development as a very powerful and skilled wizard. However, a new moon followed shortly after his discussion with Flitwick, and with this moon had come a disaster which had shaken Hogwarts to the core.
"A moment of silence, please," Dumbledore bade into the Great Hall, of which the colourful house banners had for the day been replaced by black. Harry, alongside his neighbours at the Hufflepuff table, lowered his head and closed his eyes, following the headmaster's direction to think of the dead.
He hadn't known the family that had been ruthlessly slaughtered by the werewolf in Hogsmeade, he hadn't even ever been to Hogsmeade. But it was a tragic fate indeed to hear once a howl from inside one's house and then to watch your loved ones be ripped apart while you tried desperately to prevent the slaughter and fail.
By all accounts, those had been the last moments of Edgar Huntley, an American wizard who'd moved to Britain for his wife and his three children. It wasn't information that Harry had known before, but considering how tightly the Daily Prophet had bit into this story, it was hard to escape from the ever-escalating focus put on this rogue werewolf apparently intent on haunting the British isles and who was moving closer and closer to Hogwarts as it did so.
Sharing a disquieted look with Penny after the respectful silence ended, they both sat and stared listlessly at the food delivered upon the tables as dinner. Cedric made some abortive gestures to load a few cuts of veal onto his plate, mumbling about training but stopped once he remembered that training had been cancelled for the day.
Harry's eyes kept wandering to the second page of the Daily Prophet, one of many littering the table, open on various stages.
'Minister Crouch: "A new bill to more tightly constrain the movement of Britain's werewolf population is becoming more necessity than a possibility,"' the man said, before promising to catch the werewolf with the help of senior Aurors and the Department of Magical Creatures.
In a very callous manner, perhaps, Harry considered that he should pay attention to reveal his patronus in the newspaper when the moon cycle was further away from the full moon. If another attack were to occur, then surely his exposition would be found on one of the latter pages.
Disgusted with the direction his thoughts were heading, Harry abruptly stood up from the table. For all that, this werewolf business did not concern him and he did not want to get involved, and for all that he was perfectly happy to remain in the castle indefinitely, unlike those already complaining about the cancelled Hogsmeade trips, the discourse still worried him.
In a way he was beginning to understand the distaste the magical population had on lycanthropes. It was scary to consider the existence of a person, who might under the light of the full moon turn into a ravenous beast, intent only on ruining his fellows and devouring their flesh.
"You coming?" he muttered to Penny, who was staring listlessly into her silver plate, seemingly gazing at her reflection.
"Dinner?" she queried weakly.
"Do you have an appetite?" Harry retorted, at which the girl nodded and stood up.
"Cedric?" Harry asked, but the boy preempted the question by beginning to force food into his mouth in a mechanical and unnatural manner more befitting a robot.
"The atmosphere is like a funeral, and it is a funeral. I can't believe they still haven't caught the beast," Harry muttered to Penny as they left the great hall.
"It's not as easy as it seems," the girl replied sullenly. "You can't detect a werewolf once it reverts back to a human. It could be anyone. This whole thing feels like a children's story. Like one big warning not to open the door to anyone on the full moon, or even to leave the house."
"It makes me worried about my family, despite the fact that they're all the way south in London and knowing they're more likely to die in a car crash," Harry admitted.
"This is horrible, I don't have the words," Penny murmured and they aptly stopped speaking. Her great sense of empathy now being a detriment as everyone around them grieved and suffered.
"We can only distract ourselves and wait for this to be over. We're only second-years. There's literally nothing we can do."
"You said you wanted to try to brew some potions," Penny suggested lethargically. "I thought you didn't want to anymore. Now that your grade is a comfortable A in the subject."
"Not much to write home about, but yes, there is some stuff I want to brew," Harry muttered. The both of them silently struck the way to the room in which Penny, currently, was mostly doing her potion experiments and whatnot. For all that the castle was cut of the same stone everywhere, it was always possible to orient oneself on the paintings.
For example, Harry knew the exact position of the painting of a snake devouring the world which was hanging on one of the walls they passed, and through this knowledge, he could find his way to where he needed to go.
"The Draught of the Living Dead is supposed to be difficult," Penny worried as they walked.
"The instructions passed on by the half-blood prince should be helpful," Harry reassured her. "I'll do the Wiggenweld then, and help you in the incubation phases."
They walked in silence after that, knowing that the requisite ingredients had already been gathered with the assistance of Slughorn. Harry was curious about the fact that Penny didn't at all seem interested in why he wanted to brew again, after so long a hiatus, but decided that it was best not to ask. It was perhaps due to the subduedness of their steps, in light of recent events, that they managed to sneak up on a conversation around the corner, on the fourth floor, without the speakers having noticed their approach.
"I told you I'd find some sort of work in Britain if only you didn't!" a male voice exclaimed.
"It's the only thing I ever wanted to do! Why do I have to sacrifice my dream, when it doesn't even involve having to leave the country!" a female voice, that of Tonks, responded.
"Because I want us to be alive. Aurors are currently out and about seeking deadly beasts. Professor Potter looks like he hasn't slept in days," the other voice replied, more calmly. Not having talked to the boy much, Harry still suspected it belonged to Charlie Weasley, Tonk's current boyfriend.
"Someone has to do it," Tonks said.
"Why you, you're not Potter or Black, you might-"
"So I'm not good enough, is that it!?" Tonks screamed. "Why would I be? Untalented clumsy Tonks, she'd trip right into a werewolf's mouth if you let her," she said angrily.
"I didn't mean to-," Charlie began, but was cut off again.
"I don't care what you meant," Tonks sobbed. The conversation stopped before quick footsteps left the corner at which the conversation had occurred behind.
"Wait!" Charlie shouted, before similarly running off.
Harry shared an awkward glance with Penny.
"Young love, am I right?" he asked, as they waited for the footsteps to disappear completely.
"Well, I hope whoever I end up dating supports my dreams. Being a Potions Mistress is also dangerous," Penny muttered with a red face as they started walking again.
"There's no point to life if you're not chasing your dreams. Just a bunch of regrets and laments," Harry said. He thought about how the only years of his life that he'd ever truly regretted, had been those he'd spent not pursuing a goal close to his heart. So introspective was he, that he did not notice the hopeful look Penny gave him after he uttered those words.
"What's your dream then?" the girl asked eventually, as they entered the room that she used for her brewing.
Harry considered while he put down his satchel. He hadn't really thought much about what dream he had in this world, but beyond simply surviving the answer was actually quite clear. Magic was wonderful and the one thing he didn't think he could ever live without again. It brought immediate gratification to pursuits related to its discovery and strengthening, which was a rare pleasure indeed when one was doing something actually meaningful.
"Magic is my dream. I want to continue exploring it for the rest of my life," he answered.
"A family?" Penny asked, as she set up her workplace, and made an additional one for Harry to make his potion in.
Harry had indeed wanted a family, back in his old life. Now, he wasn't so sure anymore. It wasn't something he wanted to think about. He wasn't even sure if he ever wanted to be in a long-term committed relationship again.
"I'm twelve, Penny. I have a family," he thus answered. "You?"
"I'm thirteen already," she said, avoiding the topic. They put the personal matters aside and started working. Penny on the draught of the living dead, which was a potion that could put whoever drank it into an eternal sleep. It was a poison, essentially, and it would do Harry good to try and sense it in contrast to the regenerative draught he was creating. He wanted to see if he could distinguish the two brews into good and bad, dark and light, essentially. His time frame for clearing the Room of Requirement remained tight. He wanted to help his friends by next year, use it to further themselves, like he had. Also, he wanted to off-load the responsibility of his meta-knowledge, and for that, he needed the Diadem Horcrux, if it did indeed exist in this world. He would start with Potions, but hopefully, by the end of the year, he could manage what he needed to do.
They brewed in silence for a while, Penny reading extensively from her notes and those of the half-blood prince, while Harry stubbornly stuck to the instructions of the textbook. He'd been improving his brewing recently, to acceptable levels, but every time he went off script it just messed him up further, even if it had technically been supposed to help the potion be more potent.
"Book says I can test potency by dropping in a leaf," Penny murmured at some point.
Harry dropped the Murlock Sap into his cauldron unceremoniously, letting the disgusting green sludge sink to the bottom of the cauldron. Then he turned off the flame and walked over to the window of the room that was already open. They were quite high up in the castle, but he thought it would be possible, he mused as he looked out the window and stretched out his right arm, wand in hand, to point at the forbidden forest.
"What are you doing?" Penny asked in a worried tone and came over to hold onto Harry by the robes, seemingly afraid that he would plummet to his death.
"Getting you a leaf," Harry replied, before concentrating on the spell he wanted to cast. "Accio leaf," he cast and looked expectantly at the big green blot that was the forest. Naturally, a leaf would have been too small and too green to really see against such a background at first, so he patiently waited. But it never arrived.
He turned his head to Penny, "I don't think-," he started to say, before something flew violently into his ear, causing him to fall into the room, tumbling to the floor in a pile with the other Hufflepuff. Lying thus atop Penny, looking her in the eyes as he did so, while she struggled for breath, he plucked the mysterious object out of his ear and held it up for both of them to see.
"It worked," he exclaimed happily as he waved around the oak leaf.
"Get off," Penny forced out, tears coming to her eyes as she tried to shove him off her.
Noticing the compromising position they were in, Harry rolled to the side and handed the leaf to Penny. "Sorry about that," he said.
She looked at him warily as she backed off towards her simmering cauldron filled with pink liquid. "Don't worry about it," she muttered, before curiously dropping the leaf into her potion. They both watched as it landed for a second on the surface before it disintegrated into little flakes which drifted upwards alongside the fumes of the potion.
"Maybe you should try to advance a year in Potions, that was a sixth-year brew," Harry mused.
Penny blushed and glanced at his potion, which had finished dissolving the sap and now rested at an acceptable level of light green. Muddy green, in this case. "You also did well," she praised.
Harry rolled his eyes and they both bottled their potions, getting about a dozen vials of each. "No, really," he insisted.
"It's mostly due to the half-blood prince, he inspired me to start to make changes to the process and to think more critically about the instructions," she deflected. "It's also because of you, your work ethic rubbed off on me. I didn't even realise that you could spend so much of your free time on extra-curricular projects and have so much fun doing it until I saw you go through it."
"Well, most spells I've learned have also been in thanks to the person who created them. Does show-casing those spells to advance grades make me undeserving somehow?" Harry teased.
"What would I even need to do to advance?" Penn asked, seemingly opening up to the idea.
"Well, in my experience you'd need to be able to do this year's curriculum to an Outstanding level, next year's to a level that Exceeds Expectations and then showcase two or three things completely beyond your years, such as the Drought of the Living Dead, or any other NEWT-level potion," Harry said.
Penny blinked in surprise. "That doesn't sound that hard," she exclaimed. "I can already do most of that."
Harry could only shrug. "It isn't that hard. I mean, look at it this way. If you count classes plus homework, we spend about four hours every week on Potions. That means that in a school year, we work on the subject for about 120 hours. You, I know, do at least an additional nine hours of experimentation a week. Essentially, you've had as much practice in making potions as a fourth-year already."
"I also make them at home," Penny mused.
"It would probably help you get a good apprenticeship if you manage to skip a class."
"You're right, I'll think about it. I don't really mind brewing a potion I already know in class since it allows me to experiment on it, but maybe it would be a good idea," she said. Then she turned her attention to their collection of vials.
"Now. Wanna tell me what you want with these potions?" she asked.
Harry shrugged and stepped up to the table with the vials. He closed his eyes and hovered a hand over the two different sets of potions. He grinned as he felt a small difference in the magic between the two. One was safe, the other one wasn't. It made sense that his ability distinguished the two sets by safety, that was what he was mostly concerned about, after all.
"Well, it's always good to have some healing potions on hand," Harry said. "And if we ever have to break into a corridor guarded by a Cerberus, I think we should be able to make it fall asleep by giving it a steak laced with the drought of the living dead. In case the music doesn't work," he said as he took the vials and put them into his satchel, leaving Penny some of them as well.
"Harry, what Cerberus?" the girl asked, clear exasperation in her tone.
Harry only laughed and made to leave the room. "You should practise your potions, miss overachiever," he said.
"Harry! What Cerberus?" Penny screamed after him as he exited the room and shut the door.
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