It was not long before Penelope came to tutor him on Ancient Runes.
Neither did it take her long to realize that the way Harry was now going to learn runes had changed drastically.
Nor did it took her very long to understand that Harry was now essentially a prodigy in that particular subject because of all the things he could do with his next subject now.
Of course, Harry was still learning new things about this new way of carving runes and with time, he did realized that not all his hard work over the past few weeks had been a waste.
For example, the rune symbol of power still provided a lot more power to the runes for some reason than simply carving 'POWER' in the wooden plank.
The same was true for a lot of other symbols as well and Harry was now carving all the symbols he had learned so far one by one to check the extent of it.
He supposed it was similar to how saying 'Wingardium Leviosa' generated a better result than if simply pointed at the feather and said 'Float'. And how the result became even better if he said 'Wingardium Leviosa' in Paseltongue.
Some languages were just more powerful than others.
He did not know why that was. Maybe he would research the reason behind it sometime in the future as he did not have either time or magical knowledge to go in for such a research right now. For now, he'll just have to made do with what he had.
Harry tried to teach Penelope about the new way of carve runes but just like how Hermione failed in Transfiguration and charms, Penelope failed in Ancient Runes.
They had just never practiced focusing their will and intent like he did.
And he had been doing magic based on simple will and intent for the past 4 years without any help from any other source so it was a given that they won't be able to replicate his results anytime soon.
Regardless, now Penelope had also joined Hermione in her 'Paper Pushing and Pulling' exercise.
And unlike Hermione, who had been practicing diligently for the past few weeks and was now able to move the paper after every third try, Penelope showed little to no result in her exercise.
Not like he had expected her to. In fact, he knew how hard it was to do wandless magic. Which was the reason why so few wizards and witches were able to do it.
He had little doubts in his mind that not even Dumbledore and Voldemort would be very efficient in it because wandless magic was not simply doing magic without a wand.
You needed will and intent to do it which was not very necessary when performing spells with incantations and wand waving. That was a fact that few people understood.
In fact, many wizards and witches before him had tried to perform wandless magic. But instead of focusing on will and intent, they focused on pushing more magic out of their body which of course didn't work and bore them little result.
If you compare wandless magic to a boat, then the 'will' part would be the direction and 'intent' would be the destination. Without it, no matter how much power you put behind rowing the boat, you would never reach your destination.
So after telling both Hermione and Penelope to continue with the exercise, he went back to the project that he had been intending to start for such a long time.
Using runes on the Handgun.
—————
If Flitwick was surprised to see Harry attending his class once again, he did not show it and simply started the class like every other day.
But the rest of the class did not have his years of experience and openly gaped at him like he was some kind of exotic beast.
Well, he was a celebrity in their world, a mysterious one at that and his recent escapade with the troll did not help his obscurity by any means.
Then there was the fact that he had decided to not use his Shroud of Concealment in the class. Which was a mistake because by the end of the class, he was close to losing his temper and hexing all the idiots still staring at him. Even if more than half of the idiots were girls who were gazing at him with a starstruck gaze.
Frankly, it was a bit disconcerting. But there was a reason he was here.
If Flitwick was surprised by the fact that he stayed to talk with him after the class, then he did not allow the surprise to show it in his face either.
But he did indeed looked surprised when he asked the professor to teach him how to duel.
Now under ordinary circumstances, Flitwick would not have showed such favouritism to him and would have probably refused to teach him. And he would be right to do so because being a professor who had to handle 7 different classes while being a head of house took a lot of time.
But Harry was a special case and after Headmaster Dumbledore heard about how Professor Babbling had refused to teach him Ancient Runes, he had authorized, no, he had practically given them an order that they would have to teach Harry Potter if he ever came to them in order to learn something.
For some reason that the staff members couldn't fathom, the Headmaster was willing to go to great lengths in order to accommodate Harry Potter.
Flitwick knew that it was not because of Harry's fame and he knew that it was not Harry's unparalleled genius either but he just couldn't figure out the reason why the Headmaster was willing to go to such lengths to keep Harry in Hogwarts.
But at the end of the day, he was a teacher who taught in Hogwarts and had to follow Dumbledore's orders. Plus, he himself wanted to get to know the boy even better. So when Harry asked him to teach him how to duel, he accepted readily without much question.
And that was the day Harry Potter formally started to learn how to fight. Or duel, as the wizards like to call it.
So from now on, Harry will officially learn how to fight. As simply learning more spells and gaining more power won't make him the better fighter.
Especially when he would have to contend with people like Antonin Dolohov, Balletrix Lestrange and Voldemort in the future.
Hope you like this chapter :)
Have a nice day.