The sun was shining. It was a warm September evening. One of those last days of summer, which made people realise that not even a week ago, it had been August. The birds were chirping their sleep-shattering high-pitched chirps, the suits of armour were gleaming in the sun-light that pierced the not so virginal windows of Hogwarts and the atmosphere in front of the Charms classroom was awkward.
Harry didn't necessarily feel like he was a person that cared much about the opinion of others, or a weird atmosphere in a place where he had nothing to fear. But standing there amongst a bunch of students one year older than him, who were all staring at him, was an experience.
One that he wouldn't mind never repeating.
It would have been weird, and revealing had the Headmaster announced his advancement in charms to the whole school during his welcoming speech, but at this point, Harry would have almost preferred that over the weird looks he was getting. At least he was with the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs. If it had been a group of Slytherins and Ravenclaws he probably would have become an immediate pariah. For wildly different reasons. He glanced to his left where the Kent boy, with a bandage over his nose, was occasionally throwing him a glare along with some of his friends. He really had picked an interesting person to punch, hadn't he?
"Excuse me, are you, eh, lost?" a Gryffindor eventually managed to ask him. Harry looked the boy over from where he was leaning on the warm stone wall next to the door.
"Red hair, freckles, are you Fred and George's older brother, Percy?" Harry asked, causing the thirteen-year-old to grimace.
"I am. What have they told you about me? Is this one of their pranks?"
Harry chuckled. "Well, they mentioned they had an older brother in his third year. They said you're pretty cool, just that they like teasing you because of the way you react," he said while rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. Percy sputtered and Harry continued, "I mean I can see where they're coming from. You helped me out by asking me if I'm lost actually. It would have been weird to announce to everyone here without a prompt. But now they're all listening in any way, so I might as well tell you, slash them," he babbled and stuck out a hand, for Percy to confusedly shake. "I'm Harry Evans, second-year Hufflepuff. I tested out of second-year charms and will be joining you for this year and beyond. Please take care of me."
"Hullo, I'm Percy Weasley," the boy introduced himself, mechanically and unnecessarily, before noting the second half of what Harry had said. "I've never heard of that happening. Advancing a year," he said with a hint of suspicion in his voice. However, any answer that Harry could have given was drowned out by the door to the classroom opening and Flitwick's voice beckoning them to enter.
As the students filed in Harry couldn't help but notice the large amount of full bookshelves lining the walls of the room. Those hadn't been here before and considering how Flitwick had asked him, last year, at some point, if he had his permission to teach his search charm in class… Well, suffice it to say that Harry had a suspicion about what today's topic was going to be.
The suspicion was confirmed when Flitwick shot him an apologetic glance as he sat down next to Percy. He wasn't feeling too warm about his fellow Hufflepuffs at the moment. The boy threw him an odd look but otherwise didn't say anything, unlike Harry's neighbour to the right. An athletic kid with short-cropped hair who sat on his wooden chair as if it were a broom and who was leaning so far forward on the desk that it made him look like he was trying to catch a snitch.
"Hey, I'm Oliver," the neighbour introduced himself as if Harry couldn't have guessed.
"I'm Harry," the younger of the two responded and thus created an acquaintance of two people with very common names. After having introduced themselves, both of them turned their attention to the podium, from where Flitwick was clearing his throat.
"Good evening, pupils. I'm happy to see all your yearning faces, thirsting for knowledge, after so long of being bereft of it," he started. Some students groaned, but Harry, with his adult experience, noticed that the man was being slightly sarcastic. Not in tone, but in content. "I hope you'll acclimate well to the evening lesson strategy we're trying out this year. We want to see if having a bigger break during the day increases engagement in the curriculum," he lied, like a fucking liar. The only reason the lesson was happening so late was because they'd had to schedule Harry somehow.
"To start the year off, we're actually going to be learning a charm that was made only recently. In fact, it was introduced at the Charms conference of Columbia this very summer, by an anonymous contributor. Some of you will be interested to know that it is the youngest charm I've ever taught at Hogwarts, most, if not all the classic ones that are considered the foundation of any education are at least several decades old," the professor said, before swishing his wand throughout the air. Dozens of parchment rolls flew out from behind the man, making him look like the conductor of a library and soon every student found one of the rolls deposited in front of them from the table. Other than one Hufflepuff on the other side of the classroom. His roll had gotten stuck on the chandelier. The boy and the professor shared an awkward look and Flitwick corrected the issue before continuing.
"The charm is not included in any commonly available textbook, as of yet. However, I have heard it shall be added to the most recent edition of the book of spells when it comes out in a year. If you open the parchments you will find the instructions on the top, along with a list of words written on the bottom. I would first ask you to read the instructions, which we will then discuss, before performing the task of searching for the words at the bottom with the spell. I'll give you, let's see, five minutes?" the man asked and nodded, as if pleased with himself. Harry was happy to see that at his words the students simply got to reading, instead of chattering with each other or making stupid sounds like children in their first year had often done when he was still in their class a year ago. He glanced at the instructions, just to check that everything was as he'd made it to be. It was, albeit a bit dumbed down, if possible.
He thought that he'd already made quite a basic manual back then. He shrugged and spent the next five minutes allowing himself to feel pride at what he'd accomplished. He had, essentially, left a legacy. A positive one, hopefully. The five minutes were over quickly and Percy was the first student to raise their hand.
"Why do we need to write the word down to use the charm?" he complained and Harry felt himself starting to answer the question before he bit his tongue. He looked instead to Flitwick, who twirled his moustache.
"The spell is quite formulaic, the wand gesture is especially long. Using a word that was written down eases the burden on a first-time learner. After some practice, you will learn to use the spell by simply imagining the word in your mind. But for now, parchment!" the man exclaimed with a happy hop, that almost made him take a tumble down the stack of books that he was using to look over the podium. He looked around and saw no more raised hands, to which he clapped his own.
"Why don't you try it! Remember the lock-movement has to be tight. Take a breath between the words if you're having an issue inserting the pause."
Harry looked down at the instructions and cast the spell, pretending to query for one of the words. But what he was actually querying for was the term Magic-sense, he felt the spell take hold and looked around, disappointed to see that there were no golden glows lighting up in his vision. Oftentimes books used a certain word once or twice, but unless it re-occurred often enough, there wouldn't be any relevant information inside. He'd been fooled often enough by this that he now didn't bother looking at books that used the word he was looking for less than seven times.
Since none of the books fulfilled his criteria he continued his search while the students around him butchered the pronunciation and the wand-movement of the spell that he'd so carefully crafted. He took a deep breath and cast again, this time looking for sense magic. Again nothing, although, he squinted his eyes and saw a book on one of the higher book shelves. Several of its pages were lighting up. Not thinking too much about it he summoned it to him, remembering at the last moment to use the incantation.
"How did you do that?" Percy demanded brusquely from beside him as he stopped in his attempts to make Harry's ears bleed with his pronunciation of littera. Harry looked up from the book he'd summoned, 'The Methods of the French Magical Militia during the war of English aggression.'
"It's just the summoning charm, I think you will learn it next year? It's very useful though, so consider learning it earlier," he informed the boy, who got red in the face, for some reason.
Harry cracked open his book, which seemed to detail the ways in which French magicals defended their homes from the English during the Hundred Years' War. All the way back in 1358. He was quite curious what the connection between mediaeval magical militias and magical sensing was. Due to his super awesome charm, he soon found the answer, even in a book without an index. He patted himself on the back.
Arcane Sight: The French magicals of the time, educated as they were in the newly founded Beauxbatons, seemed to have a special way of training that allowed them not to sense magic, but to see it. This was particularly important due to their usage of magical traps against the English raids. Being able to see the residue of the awaiting curse, they avoided falling prey to the precautions of their own neighbours, which allowed them to upscale the usage of their defences. They could not openly fight before their muggle compatriots for fear of being burned at the stake, as was so later the fate of Jeanne d'Arc. Their ability…
Harry skipped the next part, as the author rambled about how the ability of Arcane Sight influenced the conflict and contributed heavily to the fact that the English did not, in fact, hold on to any of the lands they'd conquered. He suspected that the author did not actually know how to cast the spell, or how to train the ability, or else he would have already mentioned it. His suspicions were confirmed by the end of the chapter.
So while I cannot ascertain what exact method Beauxbatons used to teach Arcane Sight at the time, for it was likely them who did so, it seems that the ability was much easier to acquire than the ability to sense magic. Sensing magic would have been much less represented in the magical population had it been the magic taught, due to its comparably heightened difficulty. I can only speculate that Arcane Sight was linked to the then part of the curriculum, sorcery, because those two subjects seemed to have been phased out at a similar time, to be replaced by Defence against the Dark Arts and interpretative dance…
The chapter about Arcane Sight ended there and Harry looked up from his book to see that class was closing out as well. Most of the students had seemingly managed to make the spell work and were now running around trying to find all the words on the instruction exercise. Harry felt a small bit of Schadenfreude when he saw that Kent was still struggling with the spell. He realised that making a spell was a very personal expression of who one was, and what one considered important. It would have been icky if someone like Kent had had an easy time learning it.
Harry leaned back in his chair and zoned out while the class ended and Flitwick assigned a few inches on the charms of the revelio family tree, of which Harry only knew one other.
"You're going to have to try harder than that, you know. If you want to pass the exam, constant participation in class is required," a voice from his left suddenly said. Harry turned his head and saw that Percy was addressing him as he packed his bag. "Anyway, you missed out by not paying attention and practising. The spell is genius, I'm going to the library to test it out right now." The boy sniffed, before leaving. Harry watched him go and tilted his head.
"What a dweeb," he eventually muttered as he stood up and leisurely made his way towards Flitwick, who was putting the room back in order, now that all the students had left.
"Sorry about that, Mr. Evans. It's an important spell that I felt like I needed to teach. Naturally, you are exempt from home-work, this time," the man said while he cast the repairing charm on some damaged books.
"I actually wanted to ask about something else, professor," Harry replied as he held out the book, page open on the chapter about Arcane Sight, to Flitwick.
The professor took the book in hand, looked at the front page and hummed. "Yes, French militia tactics. Let this be a lesson Harry, if you ever want to be a duellist, you'll have to trawl the oddest subjects in search of tactical inspiration. What about it?"
"I've recently been reading up on curse-breaking and the books have mentioned the need for the ability to sense magic. This mention of Arcane Sight is the closest thing I've found so far, and I wanted to ask you if this particular method, or maybe another one, is available at Hogwarts."
Flitwick looked at Harry sceptically over the rim of his glasses. "Looked up curse-breaking?" he asked, "You've only been back to Hogwarts for two days." He sighed. "Well, it seems a bit fruitless of me to see how you're doing in terms of classes until next term if you're already taking up such extra-curricular projects the moment the train arrives," he said as Harry smiled awkwardly.
"Curses are interesting. I read a compendium about a professional who'd encountered over a hundred different ones in his career. For the magic sense skill, just being pointed in the right direction would be fine."
"Well, Arcane Sight, unfortunately, is lost to us for the moment. And if it isn't, people are keeping it to themselves, just like curse-breakers and enchanters have their own methods of being aware of magic, which they usually pass on to their apprentices. However, the ability to sense magic is something that every witch and wizard can accomplish, theoretically. It's a subject quite beyond the Hogwarts curriculum, I'm afraid, so you won't find any literature on it. Or maybe you will? Well, anyway, to develop the skill at your age would mark you as a once-in-a-generation talent. Most wizards need to practise magic for at least a decade before they develop a good enough awareness of themselves that they can then turn this awareness outwards. There is usually a lot of meditation involved, which is a hard skill to master on its own and then on top of all that, Hogwarts is a hard place to develop the ability, due to how much magic is already present," Flitwick explained.
"Are you capable of doing it, professor?" Harry asked and got his answer by the slight pride entering Flitwick's face.
"I am yes, it's an indispensable skill in the duelling circuit and I dare say one can't get anywhere without it. It lets one notice traps, identify spells and gauge the exhaustion of one's opponent," he said, before looking down at his watch. "It's getting time for us to head elsewhere, though, Mr. Evans. As mentioned previously, do seek me out to discuss duelling after the winter break, but for now, I think you have enough on your plate," the man said and looked at Harry pointedly. The second-year sighed.
"Out of academic interest, how one would go about training the skill, after having fulfilled the requirements of experience and meditation?" Harry asked.
"Well, in that case, you would be advised to go someplace non-magical, without your wand, but with a powerful magical artefact. Then you would meditate and try to spend all the magic in one's body until the body develops a magical vacuum. This usually ricochets in helping become aware of the powerful artefact one brought, beyond the usual senses. After knowing how the skill feels, you just have to train it. It's also something that happens naturally, after a few decades of practising magic, if one pays enough attention while one does so," Flitwick said and dismissed Harry, who left, mind swirling.
"Didn't the Indians have chambers with null ambient magic inside?" Harry felt Flitwick mutter to himself questioningly, before the door of the classroom banged shut behind him, depositing him on the empty corridor late in the evening.
Harry didn't have any engagements tonight, nor did he care for the history of magic lesson awaiting him the next morning. He decided to take an executive decision to head to the Room of Requirement. He needed to practise his duelling as much as possible before he faced Tonks and until then he could brainstorm how to best approach being able to sense magic, then execute the plan after the duel. Considering that the skill was said to be important in both of the things that interested him this year, it seemed critical to look into it more.