Capítulo 62: Chapter 59: Looming Shadow
The next few days passed peacefully for Harry. He practised potions and prepared for his other exams. Arithmancy was something of an actual challenge, and he was finding that it took about as much time as all the other core subjects, sans potions, combined. It was also, on the other hand, incredibly useful. He was starting to see connections in potions recipes, improvements he could make to spells with just some finagling.
The possibilities were endless.
His motivation was as well.
He didn't do any of the things he'd recently been enabled to do, which would have maybe been cooler. Harry had something that other children didn't have. Impulse control and patience. He was currently at Hogwarts receiving private tutoring from a former duelling champion. Modifying spells, creating new ones… These were all things that would tantalise Flitwick, amaze him even.
But Harry had spent too long getting the man to unleash his inner pride as a duellist and project it onto Harry, making the boy's future dominance of the circuit the man's future dominance of the circuit.
If Harry bounced Charms ideas off of the man, they would have less time to practise the basics. And the basics were the basics for a reason.
"How often did you say you managed to practise the disarming jinx?" Filius asked, stupefied.
Harry closed his eyes and repeated the number that had slipped out of his mouth when he'd been asked about how practice had been going.
"14.581 times."
The professor brought up his hands to take off his spectacles and rub at his eyes. "How, even? I gave you the instructions a week ago."
Harry blinked. "Well. Mathematically speaking, Filius, it makes perfect sense. We met on a Saturday afternoon. After that I practised for 4 hours; starting quicker and ending slower I can cast a disarming jinx about once every 2 seconds. If I didn't need rest periods in between that alone would have constituted about 7000 attempts. However, I do, and I only managed 900 that first day. Which is quite pathetic. Only four a minute, really. I read a lot in between. Sunday was easier as my magic had gotten used to the spell, and I managed 1200 in four hours. Then Monday was off, due to the werewolf attack and I practised the whole day. Maybe ten hours in total. And so on," he explained.
"And you didn't," Flitwick trailed off. "Fall unconscious during any of this? Feel a metaphysical cramp?" he asked.
Harry slowly shook his head. He knew what the man meant. He'd already experienced such magical cramps when he'd been all alone practising sorcery as a child. He was intimately familiar with the feeling and knew when to stop right before it occurred. A bit of rest and meditation got one fixed right back up in about half an hour. It was more of a mental strain that occurred when one over-drew on magic, and that was much more manageable than a physical issue. The mind was more forgiving than the body if one knew how to use it properly.
"Well, don't hold me in suspense, Harry, show me!" Filius exclaimed, throwing out his arms to encompass the repurposed charms classroom, all of its furniture shoved to the side to make space for their session. The student only looked around confusedly, not sure where to aim. But he did pull out his wand.
"Send it to me," Filius insisted. "It's the best way to test it out." He swept out his hand and did something with his wand, some sort of red band appeared on the side of the two people now facing each other. It was ethereal and simply floated there in mid-air.
The student obliged his teacher and the smallest twitch of his wand and a mental flex of the incantation sent out the spell at the man. Then another, and another. Flitwick batted them all aside with contemptuous ease, but his eyes gleamed brighter after every deflection.
Harry eventually stopped his onslaught and he noted that the band was now glowing yellow bordering on green.
"Wonderful," Filius exclaimed after he took a glance at it. He answered the question that Harry hadn't had the time to ask. "A spell of my own creation. It's used to measure the velocity of spells, useful when you're trying to train yourself to send out different combinations at different speeds. Or, simply to see how much progress has been made. I'm quite frustrated I didn't measure you last time we met. I just knew that you were still too slow, which is why I gave you this task."
"What's the verdict?" Harry asked curiously.
"0.4 seconds. I set the thing to become green at 0.3 since that's the standard without which there isn't much point in participating in adult competitions."
"So I could have it on that level by next week if I did a repeat performance?" Harry wondered, but Filius shook his head.
"You must have noticed that it becomes tougher to shave off every extra decimal. I assume you were at about 0.6 when we duelled the last time. Already impressive. Assuming it took you a week of almost continuous practice then perhaps two more could put you at 0.3."
Harry frowned. "What's your speed?" he asked.
Filius blushed, and Harry got the feeling that he was about to receive some false humbleness. "0.1," the man said. "Perhaps a bit more."
Harry sputtered. "How do you even deal with spells coming at you that fast?" he asked in disgust.
Flitwick grinned boyishly. "Well, as can be seen by my success, most people simply didn't. Deal with it that was. Quite frankly, my strategy was simple and straightforward. Hit harder, hit faster, dodge."
"I need to deal with it though, but how?" Harry insisted, at which he just received a shake of the head.
"Practice. You need to gain muscle memory. In duels of that level, you don't have time to think, even an Occlumency-enhanced mind can't keep up anymore. You need to train your fundamentals, have the perfect movement ingrained in your very being so that, when it becomes necessary, you can do it by sheer instinct alone."
"That's what our sessions are for," Harry muttered. "I can't practise that alone, and that's why the dummy was of limited aid."
Flitwick nodded. "Yes, on a basic level, it's good to have the experience, but it's only with an experienced teacher that one can learn the necessary movements quickly. If one doesn't have access to that, one must learn from one's mistakes. A frustrating process, I can assure you. One loses a hundred times before reaching an appropriate level," he said as if speaking from experience.
Harry looked at the half-goblin and realised that not many would have been enthused to teach him. He probably figured it out on his own, which was why his tactics had been so simple.
"If this is the level of a former duelling champion," Harry muttered. "Then what exactly did the duel between Dumbledore and Grindelwald look like?"
"A horrible thing, I'm sure. I've seen similar things and I wouldn't have lasted more than 15 seconds myself, against either combatant. Dragons of earth bearing down on flames that burn brighter than the sun. Atmospheric changes, spells that bend around shields and allies to always strike true. Attacks of the mind, of the spirit. Magic used in ways I've never even considered," the professor replied solemnly. "Duelling hones the basics, to go beyond that one must have a gift. I consider myself a master of the fundamentals. But if you ever wish to go beyond that, I'm afraid I won't be able to help you."
"Is there a way to view a battle like that?" Harry asked curiously. "In a pensieve perhaps?"
"A horrifyingly complex and expensive magical artefact. The headmaster has one, and there are a few in the ministry. Perhaps you could have asked to see some memories as recompense for your spell last year. But I don't think anyone is interested in dredging up memories of those horrible times for no reason," Filius said, essentially warning Harry not to approach Dumbledore and ask to see the duel between him and Grindelwald, or him and Voldemort.
"It's all right, professor. Perhaps I'll start asking for memories as payment for future services, but for now, let's focus on the fundamentals," Harry said.
Flitwick squared up from where he'd gotten lost in thought. "Perhaps we could use some of my memories of past duels and ask the headmaster for use of his pensieve," he mused, before shaking his head. "You're not even experienced enough to follow what's happening. It will all be too fast. I assume I can trust you to continue practising the disarming jinx, then?" he asked.
Harry nodded with some distaste. It wasn't fun, but winning was winning, and winning was potentially surviving. "Yes, you can rely on me for that. I'll get it down to 0.3, believe it," he said. "That's my wizard way."
"All right," Flitwick said happily. "Then, let's get back to the basics!"
They did. Go to the basics. The fundamentals. Until Harry was barely capable of moving and had to leave the classroom as if he were a slug.
Sometimes he wondered why he put himself through this.
But he knew why.
-/-
Working almost exclusively on the disarming jinx had an interesting effect on the time that passed. In a way, it stretched out forever. Harry had finished learning the patronus, he wore the hat for occlumency practice, and he didn't feel like going to the room of requirement to work on his magic sense. But the latter improved anyway, just with walking around the castle, now that a minimal amount of functionality had been secured.
Revising for the final exams didn't take as much time when you were smart and knowledgeable enough about the subjects to have already mastered most of the fundamentals.
This left Harry in an odd middle point between being utterly and completely bored and exasperated at the number of times that he cast the disarming jinx on any given day. On the other hand, however, he could feel himself improving. And just like all those professional athletes, who trained day in and day out to shave that one half a second of their sprint, he was growing addicted to the grind.
It would be weird when he finally mastered the spell, at that point, he would have worked on it for so long that stopping would create a gap in his schedule. He would have to rely on Flitwick in that case, to give him something else to work on.
"You look lost in thought," Tonks commented as she entered the room they'd decided to meet in. She looked better, in a cosmetic way. The bags under her eyes were growing lighter, and she walked with more pride since she'd started throwing herself completely into trying to become an auror.
"What's the most recent count?" she asked the boy who she'd walked in on in one of his rare rest periods, which interspersed his practice.
"41.871," Harry replied dully from his spot by the window. The sun was setting.
"Completely ridiculous," Tonks responded with a sigh. She closed the door behind herself.
"How was the session with Professor Potter?"
"Illuminating. He gave me some good tips. Said that even if I'm only slightly better at transfiguration than DADA, I should focus on it. It's rarer to get someone with an O+ in transfiguration than in DADA in the auror academy applications. Said it would stand out more. We worked on some general tactics I can work on in my free time," she explained.
"He's useful, that one," Harry mused. "Sad it had to end. Fucking werewolf." He noticed that his social skills were in a free-fall during the disarming jinx sessions since he was so focused on one thing that he forgot how to do other things. He noticed that he said the wrong thing the moment it had slipped out his mouth.
"I'm sorry that the attacks inconvenienced your private tutoring sessions," Tonks growled with an angry glare.
"Sorry," Harry said quickly.
Tonks huffed. "Whatever. What do you even train so hard for? People would think you were even more of a maniac if they knew about the disarming jinx thing. Are you trying to be an auror as well after all that duelling?"
Harry snorted. "James asked me the exact same thing. Said I'd make a good auror," he said, looking up at the ceiling and thus missing the betrayed look that passed over Tonks' face. "I don't think it's a job for me. Working with the ministry. The paper-work. I just want to do magic, without any of the bureaucracy. I don't owe this world anything," he said softly.
"God, you can be so obnoxious, sometimes. No, most of the time actually," Tonks spat out and pulled out her wand. "Let's just have this duel, I have things to do."
"It's almost 10pm, by the time we're done the only thing you'll have to do is get to bed," Harry taunted as he stood up and faced his nemesis.
"You always try to have the last word, it's annoying," Tonks said.
Instead of replying and proving her right, Harry simply twitched his wand, starting the duel. A blazing red bolt of light flew in Tonk's direction, a second one quickly followed, and a third soon after.
Tonks simply swept out her wand. "Protego." A blue shield made of small hexagons flashed into existence in front of her. It stayed in place for only a second as Tonks did something else with her wand, this time silently, but it was enough to absorb Harry's offence. By the time the shield crumbled, there was a swarm of sparrows flying around Tonks. From that point onwards, whenever a disarming jinx came close to the girl, one of the birds would fly down to block it. Meanwhile, Harry lightly stepped around whatever spells the girl sent at him, the practice with Flitwick coming in handy.
"That's a nice conjuration," Harry complimented idly as he side-stepped a bombarda, which tried to force him into the path of a smaller flipendo. He simply ducked underneath it. "But they can't protect you from this," he said and thrust his wand at Tonks, creating a great cone of fire that enveloped her entire half of the room.
He'd gotten very familiar with how hard he was allowed to hit the castle with his endless practice of the disarming jinx. And the castle was very resilient indeed. He kept the stream of fire until the stones grew cherry red, knowing that the girl could handle it.
After a few more seconds he cut off the spell and made himself invisible as the flames cleared up, revealing Tonks encased in a ball of water. The birds were still flying around her. "You think I wouldn't learn something to counter-" the girl started, before realising that Harry was nowhere to be seen.
The second-year wasn't capable of firing off any spells while in his invisibility mode, but he used the opportunity to reposition by walking in a parabola towards Tonks. He was aiming to get her from behind, in a non-fun way. However, while it did take the auror-wannabe a second to process what was happening, she was quick to react. She dropped the water and waved her wand in a complicated motion, the sparrows circling her head suddenly all morphed into iron spikes which were pointing outwards menacingly, Tonks holding up her wand and keeping them steady in the air.
It looked like a perfect defence against a werewolf, a bunch of heavy-duty weapons one could fire outwards in all directions with some heavy telekinesis.
Harry wasn't a werewolf, but a wizard. He dropped his invisibility when Tonks glanced to her right, the wrong direction, and sent a bombarda her way. The girl cursed and dropped her spikes. Whatever projectile-firing spell she had wouldn't be strong enough to reach Harry through the kinetic force of the explosion. She was forced to drop her levitation and perform another shield spell. It was of a more permanent variety than the previous one.
Harry knew he had her on the back foot, he started a barrage of disarming jinxes. They battered away at Tonks' shield with loud bangs like thrown hammers hitting a stone wall. Tonks couldn't drop the shield unless she had a perfect answer to the pace of attack that Harry was setting. And the spells were coming so fast that she clearly didn't.
Inevitably the shield broke before Harry's stamina ran out, the disarming jinx had become his absolute speciality. A powerful one as well, showcased by the fact that Tonks was absolutely blown backwards by the spell, her wand basically flying to Harry's hand in a straight line, rather than the arc it usually travelled in.
Tonks groaned from where she was slumped against the wall, and when she came to herself her hands immediately flew to her neckline where she fumbled around before calming down.
"Break a necklace?" Harry asked as he approached and gave the girl her wand back. He pulled out the bezoar that he carried around his own neck and showed it off. "I know that issue. No clue where to find a good chain these days."
The girl shook her head and pulled down her robes, just enough to show him a pale collarbone and an obelisk-shaped little flask of golden liquid that glimmered, even in the low light of the room.
"Felix Felicis. Reward for making the best draught of the living dead in class," she said tiredly. "Got it just a few days ago."
"That extra studying is already paying off, huh. I'm jealous," Harry said as he eyed the little vial. It disappeared under the robes quickly.
"You wouldn't be the only one. Everyone's been asking me if they can have some," Tonks muttered. Which explained why she'd taken to carrying it around with a necklace.
"You know, in hindsight," Harry said as he theatrically stretched his arms up, getting some satisfying cracks from his spine. "These duels are really eating into my mind-numbing repetitions of the disarming jinx. Maybe I should start considering asking for payment," he teased.
Tonks shook her head. "I need it, I'm not sharing it with anyone," she said seriously, and Harry backed off.
"Another duel?" he suggested while wondering if Penny would share some liquid luck with him when she inevitably won some in four years.
It really was crazy that Slughorn just gave out that thing to students. It was an incredibly valuable and difficult potion to make. Students likely didn't even know what they had and would likely drink some in the hopes of getting laid. It was so much more though. Essentially a get-out-of-jail card for any dangerous situation. Although, probably not even liquid luck would save some schmuck from Voldemort if they got involved in a duel and the latter really wanted to kill them.
"Sure, another one is fine," Tonks said as she stood up and brushed herself off. "But tell me what the secret behind your disarming jinx is. The thing hits like a truck."
Harry laughed. "Trick? You of all people should know that there isn't a trick. I literally have just been casting it at a wall for several hours a day for almost a month now."
Tonks grimaced. "Merlin. I wish mine were that good, but I don't know if I have the patience for something like that."
"Well, if you do an hour every week for the next year, you'll get to where I am now," Harry said with a shrug before raising his wand. "En garde?" he asked.
Tonks raised her wand in return. "En garde," she said with a serious nod, and they were off again.
-/-
Harry ended up winning more than he lost, by a thin margin. Tonks seemed unsure if she should be proud of him or angry at herself.
Death loomed.
All the pieces for the second disaster to come had been set.
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