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Harry Potter and the Hermetic Arts by HaikenEdge
 Books » Harry Potter Rated: M, English, Humor & Adventure, Harry P., Hermione G., Neville L., Fay D., Words: 121k+, Favs: 3k+, Follows: 3k+, Published: Mar 10, 2019 Updated: Dec 25, 2019 1,218Chapter 15: Pointless
Harry Potter and the Hermetic Arts
Chapter 15: Pointless
The Charms professor was as short as Harry, no small feat given the black-haired boy himself was a bit short for his own age. The first Charms lesson on Wednesday morning, a double session with Slytherin, consisted purely of theory, which Harry grasped almost as soon as the concepts left the diminutive professor's lips. Nonetheless, he continued to take notes in a notebook with pen and pencil, noting mirthlessly to himself that neither this professor nor his head of house, who taught Herbology, cared how he was producing study materials; he did not bother to count the ghost who taught history of magic in his considerations, as the specter did not even seem cognizant of his surroundings.
Of course, the single session of history after Charms had driven this point home; by the end of the lesson, more than half the students in Gryffindor were asleep, yet the ghost seemed no more aware of that than when Harry had surreptitiously bounced rock he had picked up from the grounds for the purpose noisily towards the front of the classroom. Adding in the lecture had once again been word-for-word lifted from the textbook, Harry questioned the ghost's value as a lecturer and considered the option of simply skipping attending the class except for exams to spend the time further pursuing his own interests, namely classes that he couldn't simply pass by reading and memorizing the textbook, and to also avoid the inane natterings of the ginger who clearly could not take a hint.
With only morning lessons for the day, Harry had spent the afternoon first revising for Charms and history, then in the library pursuing research on more on the theory of Charms. While the tiny professor had been fairly clear on the basic concepts of Charms, he had spoken nothing of visualization and energy management, and those were all components to spellcasting Harry had always known to be involved in magic, so he had decided it was he would have to research these elements on his own if the professor were to make no mention of them.
He had once again spent the evening in an abandoned classroom, practicing magic on his own. His study of alter self was coming along nicely; already he could transform his hands into bear paws tipped with razor-sharp claws and back, and along with his skill in growing wings from his shoulder blades, there was already much he could do with that single spell, but whenever he tried using it to mimic the appearance of somebody else, it never quite worked out the way he wanted it, almost as if his mental image of the person was not perfectly clear, and thus his result was always some bizarre facsimile that resembled a caricature more than the genuine article.
Thursday morning was double Transfiguration, once again with the house of the snakes. Professor McGonagall, a severe elderly woman who spoke with a Scottish accent that sounded nothing like Jack's soft, Ayrshire-influenced lilt; where he to guess, Harry would have thought her from near Edinburgh, but beyond that, he could not place the regional accent.
She had threatened the entire class at the beginning of the first lesson, warning them to not mess around in her class lest they be forcibly removed and never allowed to return. She had followed the threat with a demonstration, turning her desk into a pig and then reversing it, but as the lecture that followed quickly proved, the class was a long way from that.
Instead, after the lecture portion of the lesson ended, each student was given a match and was told to transfigure it into a needle via a spell the professor had demonstrated once. Harry mimicked her incantation and wand-waving as best as he could, mentally picturing the match transforming a silvery sliver of sharpened steel with a hole in the other end, but as he drew energy from the Astral plane and tried to pass it through the wand, as he imagined he would find it necessary, he found the stick of pine in his hand unwilling to let in the astral power, something he had absolutely never experienced before with any object he had made for use with magic.
Frustration starting to simmer, Harry tried changing hands, altering the way he enunciated the incantation, adjusting the way he waved the wand around, but through it all, one thing remained the same: his wand simply refused to allow Astral power to pass through it. It was beyond baffling for him; never before had Harry known an object crafted precisely to function with magic to so obstinately reject Astral power when he tried to pass such energy through it, and while it was true that he had only tried it with magical items he had created himself, he had a hard time imagining why magical items created by others would have such problems.
By the end of the lesson, Harry was ready to put his fist through the desk in front of him or break his hand trying. He had made no progress in turning the match into a needle, and it was the first time he had spent so much time on trying a spell with so little indication of progress; even when he had cast deliberate magic for the first time and then began experimenting to teach himself new ways to use it, he had always made visible progress, albeit progress often being things going spectacularly awry. At least the professor had not cared how he had taken notes, and he had managed to palm a box of matches to take with him as he left the class.
The entire experience had put him in a surly mood heading into Defense Against the Dark Arts, and the Quirrell's lesson did nothing to lighten his irritation. The classroom reaked of garlic, and he stammered when he spoke; when he was asked how he fought off a zombie, which he had said he had done to receive the turban he wore from from an African prince, he instead started talking about the weather. At lesson's end, Harry was no more knowledgeable about the subject than when he had went in it, and that felt like a waste of time he would never get back. As there hadn't been any notes worth taking, Harry had no idea how Quirrell felt about his usage of notebook and pen for the task.
The only bright spot amidst his sullen mood was Hermione; at the end of the lesson, she had sought him out, suggesting they revise for potions, which they had together following lunch, meaning they had just over two hours before returning to the dungeon. Harry had agreed to the suggestion, albeit with his own ulterior motive, and it was not long before he and Hermione were once again in an abandoned classroom, a place where they could talk aloud.
"You had Transfiguration yesterday, right?" asked Harry, before Hermione could start on Potions.
"Yes?" asked Hermione, unsure where the question was going.
"The lesson ended with trying to turn a matchstick into needle?"
"Yes?"
"How far did you progress?"
"I made my matchstick silver," Hermione, her chest puffing in pride.
Wordlessly, Harry produced to box of matches he had stolen, opening it and dumping its contents out onto the desk between them. "Show me," he said, as he pulled a single match from the pile on the table.
Hermione frowned. "Professor McGonagall…"
"Said not to mess around in her class," Harry retorted before the bushy-haired brunette could finish her thought. "This isn't her class. Or any class, for that matter."
Hermione's furrowed brow did not change. "Transfiguration is dangerous," she protested.
"If it was really as dangerous as they're saying it is, we wouldn't be allowed anywhere near it," Harry argued back. "You know what's really dangerous? Guns. They're so dangerous, we're not allowed anywhere near them, and there are even laws the say we can't have them."
Hermione tried to find a counterargument but could not in the heat of the moment. Sighing, she drew her wand, waved it and incanted the proper chant, then tapped the match with the length of wood in her hand. Instantly, it turned silver all over and pointed on one end.
Harry picked up the transfigured match with one hand, examining it closely. Despite the color and the point, it was still obviously wood, which Harry proved when he snapped it in half. Frowning, he looked up at Hermione. "How did you do it?" he asked.
Hermione blinked. "I performed the wand movements and incanted the spell, then touched the wand to the match," she said, looking at Harry like he was asking the most obvious question.
Harry sighed when he realized the difference between himself and Hermione; she did not need to think about how things worked and simply accepted that they did, so his asking her how she did it was akin to asking a child how they breathed. Quickly, he drew his own wand and separated a match from the pile, then imitated the very things Hermione had done.
Nothing happened to the match.
The brunette's frown deepened. "I'd have thought you'd be able to transform the match into a needle," she said.
"Turns out I'm not a magical prodigy after all," Harry said, biting back his sarcasm as he pocketed his wand. "Can you show me again?"
Hermione happily obliged, and another match turned silver and pointed.
"What are you doing for visualization?" Harry asked.
"Visualization?" Hermione asked.
"A mental image for what you want to happen," said the black-haired boy. "You are doing that, aren't you?"
Hermione's face flushed, and Harry had his answer. "Well, I…"
"Why don't you try it again while visualizing the match turning into a needle?" he suggested, as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the deck of cards he kept there, quickly dumping it out into one hand before tossing the box to the far side of the pile of matches.
Hermione nodded, separated a match from the pile, repeating her wand movements and chant with her look of concentration on her face; when she touched her wand to the wooden match, there was a moment of nothing, followed by the match shimmering and transforming fully into the shape of a needle, even though it remained wood.
As Harry absent-mindedly shuffled the cards in his hands, Hermione studied the wooden needle on the desk before her in awe. "I couldn't do that before," she said.
"It's still wood," said Harry, cards in hand. "Did you visualize a metal for the needle?"
"I didn't," she admitted, before pulling another match from the pile and repeating her previous gesture and chant. This time, when she touched the match with her wand, it become a piece of steel with a pinpoint at one end and a rounded eye in the other.
"How did that feel?" Harry asked.
"It felt great!" exclaimed the bushy-haired girl. "I finally did it!"
"I didn't mean emotionally," said the boy, and the girl's face fell. "No, I mean it's great you did it, but I meant to ask, how did the magic feel?"
"How did the magic feel?"
"There's a sensation when you use magic, right?" asked Harry, drawing upon his own experiences as he tried to explain it without giving too much away. "Like, the feeling of something passing through your arm, maybe?"
"Oh, like that," said Hermione, finally understanding what Harry meant. Her face turned contemplative for a moment. "It felt like something warm was here, in my tummy," she said, patting her abdomen as she did so, "and when I cast the spell, it flowed up into my arm and out of the wand."
"Can you describe the warmth?" Harry asked, mindessly shuffling cards.
The girl was thoughtful. "It's a little like being in a warm bath, but on the inside," she said after another moment of thinking. "Like warm soup."
Harry set down the cards and pulled his wand again, imitating the motions and sounds Hermione had made; this time, rather than try to direct the power had drawn from the Astral plane straight into the pine in his hand, he sent it through his nervous system, to his belly first, before brought it back up to his hand and trying to pass it through the wand.
Once again, the wand remained inert, unreceptive to Astral power; when he touched it to the match he had separated out from the pile, once again, nothing happened.
Annoyed, Harry put down his wand and picked up the deck of cards again, shuffling them as he tried to settle his mind. Across from him, Hermione once again performed the spell, and when the match turned into a perfect needle, she looked like the cat who caught the canary.
"Again," said Harry, and, as he watched, Hermione obliged, turning another match into a needle.
"Again."
Hermione happily repeated the spell, and another match became a needle.
Having committed the sound of Hermione's chant and the way she moved her wand to memory, Harry put down the deck of cards once more, taking up his wand and imitating what her actions, a clear image of the wooden match transforming compositionally into a steel needle in his mind. As he drew Astral power through his body, he let it linger in his belly for a moment letting it flow back into his arm and to the wand; when it once again remained dormant, he tried to force the Astral power into pine wood.
Almost explosively, the wand went flying from his hand, and Hermione barely ducked in time to avoid being struck in the face. As it struck the desk behind her and clattered to the stone floor, Harry's frustration nearly boiled over, and it was all he could do to growl, "Maybe we should revise for Potions.", instead of putting his hand through the desk.
Hermione wanted to object, wanting her friend to be able to do the transfiguration spell like she was able to, but a single glance at the raven-haired boy's dark countenance and the protest died on her lips; for the first time, she felt an aura of danger radiating from him, and thought better than to persist. There would be other times she could try again, like after Potions.
~ooOoo~
Double Potions had been half lecture, half practical; during the lecture, the Potions professor once again took house points for his use of pen and notepad for note taking, but during the practicum, Harry had once again tuned him out and produced a working version of the potion required for lesson, though he had to once more turn to the textbook for specific directions, as Snape's instructions were once again lacking in detail.
At the end of Potions, Hermione had pulled him away to an abandoned classroom, insisting he once again try to transfigure matches into needles, and he obliged, though each attempt was no more successful than the last. In between his attempts, he asked Hermione to explain her methods and had her demonstrate the spell repeatedly; at his suggestion, she began transforming matches into needles of different materials, and, without even changing her chant or her wand movements, the bushy-haired girl succeeded for every time he failed. Still, he had kept his annoyance at bay, in no small part thanks to Hermione's willingness to describe her process to him one step at a time, even patiently repeating herself when he asked her to.
Still, there was only so much fruitless labor and frustration he could let build and keep hidden; by the end of the hour, Harry begged off, lying and saying he wanted to have an early dinner. After walking Hermione to the library, he headed across the castle in search of another abandoned classroom; once securely inside, he dumped the rest of the matches out of the box and onto a desk.
His mind ran through the mudras he knew, the techniques and forms at his disposal, and then his experience in creating the rod he had used for muscle ups every morning since arriving, since it involved both plant and mineral; it would be a compound spell, something he still had little experience with, though little was still better than none.
Raising his right hand, index finger pointed straight up and the remaining fingers loosely curled downwards, he grasped it in the fist of his left in the bodhyagri mudra, while in his mind's eye, he pictured wood matches turning into steel needles. "Muto herbam, creo terram," he said, drawing power from the Astral plane into his body, through his nervous system then once again out, touching the pile matchsticks and passing the energy into them.
On the desk, the heap of matches shuddered; then, one matchstick at the top of the pile smoothly transformed into a perfect needle, before another swiftly followed, and soon, there was a cascade of steel as the jumble of wood fell apart, the rounded sewing implements unable to retain the shape of the pile as they moved around during the transmutation.
Harry looked upon the scattered needles in satisfaction. It wasn't that he couldn't turn matches into needles; it was that, for whatever reason, the spell he was being taught wasn't functioning in the way it was meant to when he attempted them. Maybe it was the wand, which refused to accept Astral power. Maybe it was that source of the magic wasn't just from inside him, the way Hermione had described the feeling of magic when she was casting spells. No matter what it was, it wasn't working for him, and he was going to figure out why.
But first, he would need more matches. Smiling to himself, he considered casting dispel magic, using the tattva mudra and a chant of "perdo vim" in concert to remove the magic in play, but knew he would still need to round up the matches from on the floor, and in an unused classroom no less, and decided against it. Instead, he went back to experimenting with alter self, which didn't need matches.
~ooOoo~
When he entered the Hufflepuff common room, he found an older student awaiting him, stopping him just as he cross the threshold.
"Potter, you need to start using parchment and quills," said the older boy, trying to shove rolls of the paper substitute, inkwells and feathers into the smaller boy's hands.
"Yeah, no thanks," Harry said, refusing the take the proffered objects.
"Potter, if you don't take these, as a prefect, I will have to deduct house points," said the prefect.
"Why do you care?" the black-haired boy asked suspiciously, still refusing the stationary.
"Professor Snape will continue to take house points from Hufflepuff if you don't use parchment and quill," explained the prefect, as though that explained everything.
"What are house points and why do we care about them?"
The common room was suddenly very, very silent, and Harry thought he could hear the distant sound of quill scritching against parchment.
"Potter, whatever do you mean?" the prefect asked, absolutely flabbergasted.
"I mean, what do we get for house points?" Harry asked.
"At the end of the year, whichever house has the most house points wins the House Cup," explained the prefect, in a tone one might take with a small, confused child.
"Why do we care?" asked Harry.
"It's the House Cup," said the prefect, as though the answer was self-explanatory.
"So?" asked Harry.
"It's the House Cup," repeated the older student.
"What does it do?"
"What?"
"What does the House Cup do?"
"It doesn't do anything. It's the House Cup."
"Do our names get engraved on it, like the Stanley Cup?"
"No? And what's the Stanley Cup?"
"A normal people thing," said Harry, not bothering to explain. "Is there a record of which house won the House Cup any given year?"
"Not that I'm aware of."
"How about who individually contributed the most to acquiring the House Cup?
"No, but we're Hufflepuff, we're loyal and support each other!"
"When you apply for a job, can you put the House Cup or house points on your CV?"
The prefect frowned. "No."
"So, why do we care about something that does nothing, has no impact on our real lives after Hogwarts, and we're not even going to be remembered for winning or contributing to?"
Silence hung heavily in the air as the students in the common room processed the words that had been exchanged, which was soon broken as they began to murmur amongst themselves.
"Why do we care about the House Cup?" asked the prefect, looking suitably confused.
"Were you told we should care?" Harry asked, looking at him sideways suspiciously.
"Kind of?" the older student said, still perplexed. "I just assumed…"
"Well, Hufflepuffs are supposed to be loyal and support each other, right?" asked Harry.
"Yeah!" agreed the prefect, nodding in affirmative.
"So, it was just natural you'd support Hufflepuff in getting house points, right?"
"Of course!"
"Didn't need to ask, because loyalty doesn't need questions."
"Yeah!"
"So, do you know why you've been told you care about house points?" asked Harry, and the prefect nodded vigorously.
"It's so the staff can control the students," the black-haired boy said, lips curling into a smile. "There's what, fifteen adults on staff, and about three hundred students?"
"Sounds about right," the older boy said.
"Well, then, there's no way they can be in enough places to keep control of the students without a system of controls in place," said Harry. "That's all the House Cup is, really, a system for the staff to control the students, through the carrot and the stick, where you get points for doing good things and lose points for breaking rules."
"What's wrong with following rules?" the prefect demanded indignantly.
"None, if they're sane," Harry answered, "but we shouldn't be following the rules just because house points are on the line. If one of the rules demanded each House sacrifice their weakest member to the great god Imhotep at the end of the year, or the House loses house points, would you do it?"
"Of course not!" said the prefect. "That would be wrong to do."
"Then we don't need house points for us to tell wrong from right," said Harry, and the prefect nodded. "So, why do we care about house points?"
The prefect couldn't find an answer, not even a long moment. "I don't know."
"We shouldn't," said Harry. "In fact, the house points are pointless; they exist as a system of control for the adults to keep the students in line, but as you've seen and heard about Snape, the staff will abuse it for their own ends."
"What should we do, then?" asked the prefect, seemingly lost.
"We should stop caring about the House Cup," Harry said, drawing gasps from around the room. "Look, I'm not saying we should go out of our way to do things that will lose house points, but we shouldn't let losing house points stop us from doing what we want to. I mean, Snape takes points left and right because I'm using a notepad, a pen and a pencil to take notes, but using a notebook to take notes doesn't make it more difficult for me to study; in fact, it's actually easier, since, instead of digging through rolls of parchment trying to find the one with the subject you're looking for, notebooks are actually capable of taking tags and dog-ears, so it's way easier to organize and find what you want to revise. And pencils are way better for writing than quills; you don't have to worry about blotting ink, and you can even easily correct mistakes without having to scratch it out or start over."
"So, we should just ignore the House Cup," repeated back the prefect, still in a state of shock.
"Yeah, that sounds about right," said Harry. "Well, I'm going to my room, and you can keep the parchment and quill."
Harry walked back to the bedroom he shared with Roger; after an entire day of frustration, it felt great to finally be able to go off and just break down something that made no sense to him.
He had no idea the havoc he has just wrought.
Author's Notes: This Harry loves the library, and gets along with Madam Pince. Who'd have thought?
For everybody who predicted Harry wouldn't be able to use wand magic, congratulations on observation. Was I that obvious?
Never understood the value of the House Cup for the students; all it really is is a tool of control over the students. Always surprised no Ravenclaws figured it out; for supposedly being the house that values intelligence and the pursuit of knowledge, they're remarkably uninsightful. Guess they're just not that clever.
Review, mind-control, yada yada.
Credit to Shinshikaizer for the initial story treatment, and goalie12345 for copy-editing.
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