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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 16: Young, Fast and Out of Control
Harry Potter and the Hermetic Arts
Chapter 16: Young, Fast and Out of Control
Harry was on his way out of his dorm and to the library Friday morning when he ran into Roger, who was coming back from breakfast.
"You won't believe what happened at breakfast," Roger announced excitedly.
"Yeah?" Harry asked conversationally, "What happened?"
"Truman and the other prefect declared House Hufflepuff was withdrawing from the House Cup to focus on more important things," said the blonde, grinning. "When Professor McGonagall took house points, Truman said it didn't matter, 'cause Hufflepuffs weren't participating in the Cup. Professor Sprout looked like she was going to turn green; I don't think the prefects talked with her before they decided to make the announcement.
"Then, Clearwater and Hilliard, the Ravenclaw prefects, stood up and proclaimed Ravenclaw would be joining us in not being in not participating the House Cup. Professor Flitwick was livid!"
"Good," said the black-haired boy, shouldering his bag. "I'm going to the library to do some research for Transfigurations. I'll see you at Flying at eleven-thirty."
"See you there," Roger called to Harry's departing back.
~ooOoo~
The two and a half hours Harry had spent in the library trying to figure out why he couldn't perform the spell he had seen Hermione cast with little effort had paid no dividends; even with help of Madam Pince, who Harry thought rather attractive in her own austere librarian way, the volumes he read that morning gave no indication why he had difficulty with the transfiguration. Like the librarian, Harry was annoyed by the other students who tried to talk in the library, and when several at his table started to chatter, he growled softly from the back of his throat and shot them a look when they turned toward the noise he had made, his lip curled back in a feral snarl and violence flashing in his piercing green eyes, sending them packing in a hurry and leaving the table in peace. From her desk, Madam Pince had seemed to approve, as she had favored the black-haired boy with a small smile when their eyes had a moment later, and he had acknowledged the smile with a slight nod.
He had made sure to place the books in the cart by the librarian's desk with a nod when he had finished with them, rather than leave them on the table or try to return them to the stacks; previous experiences at the public library had taught him librarians preferred to have the books returned to the circulation desk so they could track the number times a book had been pulled from the shelves without being loaned out to a patron, and having a book returned to the wrong location within the collection made the volume impossible to find later except for by accident. Madam Pince's appreciative nod had made it known that he was doing things the right way in the Hogwarts school library, and he had left for Flying with a sense of knowing he still knew how libraries functioned even when it was a completely different system of filing.
Finding the part of the grounds where the Flying lesson were to take place was not difficult; there were already a series of brooms in neat lines on the grass, which swayed in the cool breeze. Checking his watch, Harry could see he was sixteen minutes early, and he set aside his haversack and robe as he took the opportunity to warm up for what he thought might be some strenuous physical exercise, and he knew an eight-minute workout regimen that would get him at least warm for what was next, having already heard from the annoying ginger and his mousy friend that the lesson went straight into the flying.
He was upside down, up on his hands and in the middle of a handstand push up when the first other student arrived, and as he had expected, it was Hermione, who clearly, like himself, would rather be early than late.
"What are you doing?" asked the bushy-haired girl, having twisted her entire upper body to try to look the black-haired boy in the face.
"Warming up," Harry said, doing another pushup. As his watch beeped, he let himself drop lightly into the vinyl mat under him, quickly slapping the button on the face of the watch that switched the next timer, and he exhaled slowly, trying to maintain his breathing rhythm. "Gryffindor had this earlier in the week. This annoying ginger said they went right into the Flying, but if you paid attention in P.E., you'll know you should stretch before doing any strenuous exercise to reduce the chances injuring yourself."
"I'm not very fond of exercise," Hermione admitted somewhat reluctantly.
"Well, I'm not either, but you need it for a healthy body," said Harry. As the alarm on his watch beeped again, he slapped it and stood up, starting on star jumps, making sure to use the correct form as he did each to reduce the strain on his knees. When the watch beeped again, he stopped and once again breathed out slowly, trying to maintain a steady breath as he swayed.
"What are you doing?" asked the brunette, obviously curious.
"Forty-five seconds of exercise, then fifteen seconds of rest," the boy said, trying to keep his breath from going ragged as he stood with his hands on his knees. "I've got about a minute left of this, so let me wrap this quick."
His watch beeped again, and he quickly slapped it, then stood up straight before bellyflopping forwards onto the mat, pushing himself up off the floor and pulling his legs under him before standing back up. Wobbling slightly, he repeated the progression until his watch beeped twice, at which point he flopped into the mat, rolling over onto his back and breathing hard.
"Are you all right?" Hermione asked, concerned.
"Yeah," Harry growled. Slowly, he rolled off the mat and sat up, carefully rolling the mat back into a cylinder and dropping it into his bag, before toppling himself into it, to Hermione's surprise.
Looking into the bag, she could see nothing, and she called in after Harry, "Are you okay?"
"Gimme a sec," came the shouted response, and Hermione sat back. A minute or so later, he rose out of bag, a bottle of yellow fluid in one hand and a plastic-wrapped piece of food stuck in his mouth, looking much better than before.
"Are you all right?" Hermione asked again, concerned.
The boy bit into the food in his mouth, then took a swig from the bottle before chew rapidly with his mouth closed. After a moment, he swallowed, then took another drink before saying, "Warmed up a little more than I probably should have," he said, exhaling deeply. Quickly, he stuffed the rest of the bar of food into his mouth, then tossed the wrapper into his open bag before going to where his robe was, holding the both of the bottle between his teeth as he pulled it on and wrapped it tight around his still-warm body.
As other students began to filter in, Harry and Hermione talked quietly, mostly about what they had been taught in lessons thus far. It was not long before Madam Hooch, the Flying teacher, marched arrived in a brisk march. With her short, gray hair and angular features, Harry thought she looked very punk rock.
"Well, what are you all waiting for?" she barked. "Everyone stand by a broomstick! Come on, hurry up!"
Standing, Harry shouldered his bag and strode up to a broom at random; Hermione made her way to the broom next to his, the only Ravenclaw in a line of Hufflepuffs, and Harry wondered to himself whether she had made any new friends yet.
"Stick out your right hand over your broom," called the Flying instructor at the front of the cluster of students, "and say 'Up!'"
Students spoke, pleaded, shouted and barked the command at their brooms. In the cacophony of the jumble of voices, Harry could see the broom Hermione was working with roll over on the ground out of the corner of his eye.
The broom he was standing over, however, did nothing.
"Up!" growled Harry, putting the edge of anger into his voice, but the broom seemed oblivious to the threat of violence.
As the gray-haired woman went around to the students, showing them how to mount their brooms, Harry bent over and picked up the one he was working with by hand. He could feel Hermione's disapproving glance; she had gotten the broom to fly into her hands after a few attempts, but Harry had a sense the broom would react to him about as well as his wand had.
After ensuring the students knew the proper way to mount a broom, Madam Hooch instructed them to kick off from the ground hard when she blew the whistle, and a moment later, she did just that.
All around Harry, students began floating off the ground as the brooms levitated under them; even Hermione was able to do despite her earlier admissions of nervousness.
Harry remained firmly on the ground, despite kicking his foot quite hard against the grass.
Taking a deep breath, the black-haired boy tried kicking the ground again, and when that failed, tried jumping of the ground, but neither did the trick; gravity maintained its hold on him, even as other students started descending back to the grassy ground.
Growling to himself, Harry drew power from the Astral plane, letting it flow through his body before trying to pass it into the broom, expecting the same kind of resistance his wand had given him.
Instead, the broom sucked in the Astral energy hungrily, and then suddenly, he was off like rocket, a conduit between the broomstick and the Astral plane as flew out from under his legs, pulling him hand-first into the air in a straight line, bucking like a bronco in a Wild West show.
From the ground, Madam Hooch was shouting something up at him, but he couldn't hear her with the air rushing by his ears.
Harry held on with both hands as tight as he could, wind whipping through his jet black locks as he tore through the air above the grounds with the control of a rider on an unbroken stallion, faster than he could ever remember going in a car. While the broom certainly did turn when he muscled it in a direction, it was bucking so wildly that he could barely hold on, let alone control it in any meaningful way. All the while, Astral energy flowed through him and into the broom.
Suddenly, the broomstick spun in the direction of the castle wall and charged right at it; with barely any time to reach, Harry barely managed to brace himself just as the broom jerked in a sharp turn, sending him into the hard stone with centripetal force as he finally lost his grip.
Violent pain shot up from Harry's leg, but he didn't have time to think about it now; he was in freefall, three, maybe four stories up off the ground and plummeting head-first towards an impact, though in he could see Madam Hooch was still standing there, shouting up at him and making no attempts to intercede in his fall, but still, everything seem to suddenly slow down.
The boy's mind raced. He guessed he had a maybe a second before his face would be in the grass, all senses knocked out of him. Yet, somehow, he remembered the Player's Handbook, and more specifically, feather fall, a first level spell that had no material component, no somatic component, and only a verbal one. What he needed to do, of course, was figure out the incantation in real time before he was dead.
In the next couple years, Harry would sometimes wonder to himself how he was able to come up with the spell without having methodically figuring it over first, but through gritted teeth, he whispered a chant so far below his breath, he might as well not have articulated it, even as he clenched his eyes closed and braced for impact.
"Muto auram."
Suddenly, he found his descent slowing, until he wafted to the ground like a feather, touching down lightly. Only then did he look at the source of the pain in his leg and saw bone sticking out from a tear in this trousers.
It was the last thing he remembered before the black of unconsciousness claimed him.
~ooOoo~
Harry awoke with a start and a groan, sitting up and immediately feeling a dull throb of pain in his right thigh. Looking around, he saw he was in a medical facility of sorts, with white flagstone floors, cots and room dividers straight out of a World War II movie, though he could make out the castle walls of Hogwarts in the backdrop, and he silently wondered to himself why the supposedly best magical school in the world was so behind the curve; without ceiling-to-floor dividers between patients, illnesses could transmit between them with a cough or a sneeze.
He was roused from his thoughts by a motherly-looking gray-haired woman in a nurse's uniform that matched the decor coming to him, obviously drawn by the sound he had made waking up.
"Mister Potter, I'll need you to drink this," said the woman, her voice soft and low as she tried to place a small cup of viscous off-green in his hands.
Instinctively, Harry recoiled, and she nearly dropped the cup. "Who are you?" he asked, though he could take a guess from her clothes. "Where am I? What is that?"
"Mister Potter, I am Madam Pomfrey, the matron here at the Medical Wing of Hogwarts," explained the woman, a touch of concern in her expression and voice. "This is Skele-Gro; it'll help mend your broken leg, which I set while you were unconscious."
Harry cautiously accepted the cup; bringing it to his lips, he gagged as what he could only identify as the scent of rotting fish wafted into his nostrils. There was no way he could know whether it was a poison or a serum that could compel some sort of behavior from him, but with the matron watching him like a hawk, he had few options but to drink it. If only there was a distraction of some kind…
As if on cue, a student Harry could not identify came through the door, the chubby Gryffindor Harry knew from Astronomy, Herbology and History of Magic leaning heavily on his shoulder. The matron turned her head as the student helping the mousy brunette started speaking rapidly, and Harry took advantage of the moment to dump the contents of the cup onto his trousers, then pulled the blanket up to hide the growing off-green stain.
"Thank you ma'am," said Harry, has the nurse turned back towards him, placing the now-empty cup into her hand while making a face that looked like he was fighting the urge to vomit all over the matron's dress. "I might sick all over you," he added, retching, and the nurse hurriedly rose, clearly not wanting to be vomited on.
"I'll come back and check on you after I check on Mister Longbottom," declared the nurse, and Harry nodded, feigning weakness. Once she was out of earshot with her back turned, Harry made the prana mudra and whispered "creo corporem", letting Astral power flow into his body, particularly into his leg, where it throbbed.
Harry clenched his jaw as he felt his bone start to knit back together; it was a deeply unpleasant sensation, like an itch deep within his flesh that he could not scratch, twinged with numb tingles and stabbing pain as severed nerves were re-attached and muscles fibers grew until they met, wrapped around and rejoined each other.
Still, it took about a minute for the agony to finally fade away; when press his hand firmly on his thigh to check whether the injury was truly gone, he felt no signs of even soreness, and he secretly smiled to himself, relieved to have mended his injury without any more risk to himself.
When the matron returned, having put the chubby brunette boy into a bed, Harry looked to her with hopeful eyes. "Can I go now, ma'am?" he asked.
"Not for a couple more hours, Mister Potter," said the matron, waving her wand and incanting something, before frowning. "Mister Potter, how is it your leg has completely healed in the space of the few minutes I was away tending to Mister Longbottom?"
"I don't know," lied the black-haired boy innocently. "I've always healed faster than most people," he added, deciding now was a good time to continue to build his cover with something that would sound innocent enough. "Even when Dudley would beat me every day, I would be all fine by the very next morning."
The motherly matron looked absolutely appalled at what she was hearing. "You're all right now, Mister Potter," she said, using as soothing a tone she could. "Who is Dudley character?"
"My cousin, ma'am," said Harry, fidgeting in the bed.
The school nurse's brow furrowed in a frown as she digested the information, and Harry sensed what had transpired during his Sorting had not made its way to the matron's ears.
"Mister Potter, would that explain the scars on your back?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered, and he could see her frown deepen. "Is something wrong?"
"I'll need to have some words with Professor Dumbledore," said the Matron, "but otherwise, you're free to go, Mister Potter."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Harry, shucking off the covers and swinging his legs off the bed. Standing up, he took a step towards his bag, which was on a chair near the bed he was just in, put his right weight his right leg as he lifted his left for the next step, and immediately stumbled to a knee, letting out a low growl of pain.
"Mister Potter, are you hurt?" asked the matron, as she rushed over to Harry, concern clear in her voice.
"It hurts a bit when I put weight on it," Harry admitted through gritted teeth, slowly rising to limp over to his haversack over the matron's protests. Opening it, he dumped himself weakly into it, landing on the lift inside.
Finally out of the matron's sight, he allowed a smile to break across his lips. Quickly shimmying out of his still-damp trousers, he tossed them and his pants into the hamper where he kept his dirty clothes, changing into some fresh underwear and a pair of clean, untorn trousers before riding the lift back out of the haversack, grabbing his cane-shaped rod from where it hung from a hook on the mouth of the bag on his way up.
"Mister Potter," said the matron, as Harry ascended from his haversack. "Where did you go?"
"I wanted to change my trousers," Harry said, leaning heavily on his cane. "They were torn, bloody and I think I pissed them."
"Why do you have a cane?" the matron asked, suspicious of the boy's new walking stick.
"I always thought Dudley might cripple me one day, so I thought I'd be prepared," Harry lied. "May I go now?"
"You may, Mister Potter, but I want you to tell me if the pain gets worse."
"I will, ma'am," said the boy, smiling tightly before limping out of the Medical Wing.
He waited until he had turned the corner and was sure nobody was within sight before he gave the cane a twirl and spun around lightly on the balls of his feet, tipping an invisible hat like he was in a musical. Then, he was off to find an abandoned classroom; he had missed lunch, so he would need to have a quick meal, but after that, he still had a few hours to experiment with magic before he would need to be at the evening's Astronomy practicum.
Author's Notes: This is not a story about house points, and frankly, this version of Harry wouldn't care about them anyways, so I took the liberty of writing it mostly out of the story as it pertains to him. While it will be brought up a few times at critical junctures, it's more of a matter of flavor, because, let's face it, Harry doesn't about it, and this story is written almost entirely from his perspective.
Harry's not going to be a broom guy. Then again, he can already fly on his own anyways, through growing wings or manipulating air, so why would he care about brooms for flying besides the novelty?
If you want to review, please do so. If you don't but have questions, feel free to send me a private message. And if you don't feel like either, feel free to carry on with your life.
Thanks to Shinshikaizer for the original story treatment, and goalie12345 for copy-editing.
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