Harry watched as Penny added ingredients to her potion. They were in a new abandoned classroom close to the Hufflepuff dormitory.
They'd had a discussion about Harry's improvement in potions and had decided that while he was doing much better this term, going towards an Acceptable without as much effort as last year, they should keep up the pressure. Harry just thought that Penny liked spending time with him, the way she smiled whenever they met was quite indicative of that theory being true.
He sighed and glanced down at his own potion. "My colour is off, in comparison to yours, still," he said, earning a glance at his brew from the girl.
"My work has started improving. I started implementing some of the suggestions from that scribbled sixth-year Potions book you gave me. Your potion actually looks how it should, mine is just even better." she said enthusiastically and continued stirring, while Harry sighed.
"Hey, don't be down!" Penny said cheerfully as she stared into her cauldron, "It doesn't suit you." Her blonde hair whipped back and forth, threatening to spill into her work. The window behind her head showed a depressing rainy September day, as was much too common in Scotland.
"I'm not down." Harry replied, "I'm just fed up with sucking at potions. It's been more than a year, can't I get a break?" he complained, as his concoction turned just the wrong shade of orange. They were making a fire-resistance potion, and it should have been a bit more on the yellow side.
"I'm pretty sure that's how people feel in comparison to how you're doing in Charms, and Transfiguration for that matter. Oh, also, can't forget Arithmancy," Penny said, "Didn't you say that Professor Vector can't stop praising you, and using you as an example for the fourth years?" Harry snorted.
"She's doing that because she's a sadistic bitch with a bad sense of humour," he said darkly, thinking back to the looks he'd gotten from his new classmates after their first Arithmancy lesson together. Apparently, there were only so many, 'Look at the proposed solution from Mr Evans, isn't it elegantly efficient?' that they could handle. Or, if she was feeling particularly mean, she would comment on a botched calculation with a tut, 'Aren't you ashamed that a second-year is doing better than you?'
Quite frankly, most of Harry's classmates looked like they were on the verge of losing it by the end of that hour-and-a-half session. Harry had quickly vacated the premises after that, using some hidden passageways to get as far away from the fourth-years as possible. One of the advantages of exploring the castle at night and knowing that there were things to find.
"You shouldn't talk about her like that, how crass, what would your fucking aunt say to that!" Penny gasped, causing Harry to snort, while she blushed and laughed at her own words. She was cute like that.
Harry looked down at his potion and saw that it had reached its state of metastasis. The part of the process where it would have to sit for a day, exactly a day, 24 hours. No more, no less. It was why they were brewing this bad boy on a Saturday. Also, Harry had shown his friends how powerful his incendio charm could get, and they wanted to test out if it could eat through some magical protection. Harry prophesied that his fireball would destroy the object laced with his version of the fire-resistance potion, while Penny's version would hold.
"All right, I'm done here." He announced and started packing up.
"I'll be finished in a few minutes, delaying the last reaction to strengthen potency," the blonde girl said, still working on her brew. "You want to get lunch together after?"
Harry considered it, before thinking of the lucrative practice he could get in the room of requirement in terms of his dueling. He had a fight scheduled with Tonks tonight and it was time to go big or go home. "I think I have a date with some spell practice, not really hungry yet. Breakfast was big. Tomorrow after Cedric's try-out?"
"Alright. You do you," Penny said, somewhat sadly. Harry felt the need to reassure the girl somehow, but he couldn't think of a good tactic. He looked at her for a moment, hefting his leather satchel.
"Thanks for practising with me, let's see if you can take the heat tomorrow, eh," he said and walked off, waving at the girl with a raised hand. He got some sort of weird hand spasm in return, the other hand clutching the potion ladle and stirring. Harry shook his head after the door to the room closed behind him.
"That girl is way too passionate about Potions," he muttered and started his ascension to the seventh floor. It wasn't an overly long walk. He'd taken it so many times, ever since he'd started regularly going to the Room of Requirement last year, that it was almost an automatism. Once arrived he swiftly entered the room, put on the sorting hat and looked at IT.
Wooden shell, stylized and evil face, wand held in its right arm. The puppet of evil. He scowled at it and entered his stance. He'd learned the disarming charm, to no avail in approaching any sort of victory.
Protego, the shield charm, only let him hold on to dear life as the puppet blasted his defence to bits. But he got better, oh how he got better and now it was time to improve even more, even, further, beyond.
He attacked, the puppet dodged, counter-attacked and so it went for one hour, two hours, three hours…
-/-
Harry fell on his back, chest heaving and lungs cramping. He felt like he'd run a marathon. How long had he spent dodging and spinning and attacking and defending against the cursed duelling partner that the room had given him? All the while fending off mental attacks from the hat.
"Four hours, four breaks." The hat supplied, "I think you might be certifiably insane, or just too competitive for your own good."
Harry scowled at the high ceiling of the room as the void of magic that he'd created within him strained to re-establish its functionality. It would be fine by the time he had to duel Tonks, but for now, he was spent. "And I'm not any closer to beating it than I was before."
"But, you've exhausted your automatic magic draw, which was the point, right. Frightening that it took you that long, really," the hat mused.
"It's hard being me, excellency is a curse," Harry sighed and sat up in his position as the hat laughed at him. His head spun and just the act of sitting up caused his lungs to heave. His legs were jelly, which made it easier to put them in a lotus position.
"Alright, room," Harry said out loud, addressing the room of requirement, giver of pain, pleasure and learning. "I require an environment in which I can develop the magic sensing skill as quickly and efficiently as possible," he said and closed his eyes. He'd noticed in his sojourns to the room, that it was oddly shy in changing in front of him. It was quite human in that regard, changes happened best when he either exited and re-entered or when he closed his eyes.
Hadn't this been a part of quantum mechanics? That certain particles existed in superimposed states of uncertainty and ambivalence when unobserved, and it was only when they were being perceived that they had a fixed location? Well, anyway, after giving the room a few seconds he opened his eyes again and froze when he saw nothing.
His surroundings were all black, pitch black, he couldn't see the hand he was waving in front of his face, nor could he see anything else. He almost sweat-dropped as a pained grin affixed itself onto his face.
"Oy, are you serious? We doing some anime-training bull-shit here. Blindfolded level dark room, what's next, you going to try and hit me with a stick?" he asked. His voice sounded odd as if it wasn't vibrating very far through the air.
'Harry,' The hat suddenly said from within his head, 'I can't seem to be able to speak with you out loud, only like this. Whatever you may have wanted, what you got was…'
'A sensory deprivation chamber,' Harry thought back with a grimace as the absolute silence of the room descended into his ears after he'd finished talking.
'The Room of Requirement is a complex intelligence, almost as complex as mine," the hat said. 'Just that in addition to being capable of independent thought, abstract reasoning and interpretation, it also has access to probably all the knowledge within the castle, even if it seemingly can't bring books from the library here. Perhaps a remnant of Rowena's opinion that libraries were sacred and communal studying should be encouraged.'
'Where are you going with this?' Harry asked.
'I'm saying that if sensory deprivation is what the room thinks you need to learn the skill, it might actually be true," the hat claimed tentatively.
'You know people can experience hallucinations and psychosis in environments like this,' Harry thought with a grimace. 'But yeah, anyway, let's give it a try.' He finished, before beginning to sink into meditation.
That's what Flitwick had said. Empty yourself of magic, then meditate in an environment without too much of it. Something that this room probably represented at the moment? Obviously, he couldn't check that there was no magic present, considering he wasn't yet able to sense its presence or its absence, but he decided to trust the room for the moment. The only thing lacking was the presence of a powerful magical object. Unless the room or the hat on his head counted. Which, realistically speaking, they probably did. Other than a Horcrux Harry couldn't think of any magical artefacts more powerful than a millenia-old hat with telepathic abilities and its own personality, and what was probably the central intelligence of a magical castle that had had more than a hundred thousand magical students walk through its halls since its conception.
He closed his eyes, not that there was really a need, and retreated into himself. He hadn't meditated in a week or so, but after having reached a certain level it was a skill that was impossible to forget. He first threw away the impressions and emotions of the day and then the week. What was left after all of that were his underlying anxieties. The realisation that his future knowledge was mostly useless and that he could only try to become as powerful as possible before leaving at the end of his schooling. His questioning if he should go to Dumbledore and give the man all the information he had, if he had a right to gamble with the life of James Potter by not releasing vital information. Most present was the fear though, the fear of being found out, what would happen to him, what people would try to do to him.
Perhaps it was time to deposit the information he had anonymously, at the headmaster's metaphorical door, he'd learned Occlumency after all. But now was not the time to be thinking about these things. Now was the time to
L
E
T
.
G
O
Harry floated in an empty void, literally and metaphorically, he felt as if his physical body was being uplifted and wasn't touching the ground anymore. For the first time since he'd started meditating, or in his life in general, the effect he was capable of achieving with meditation was being mirrored by his actual surroundings.
What had Flitwick said?
The thought lazily tumbled through his mind, like a tumbleweed through a western flic.
Flitwick had said that one needed experience using magic, enough experience to feel it flow within oneself. Harry had that, he'd practised sorcery for more than a decade. He grasped that perception, that sense, the only one he had left, other than other physical impressions of his body and turned it outwards.
It was like flipping a switch. Whereas inwardly he felt a void, where magic had used to run, connected to his body or his soul through the well he'd been borne in, he now felt that void outside of his body as well. And he knew that it was a void. There was nothing. Just, if he focused, a ball of magic, different from what he could summon forth himself, sharp, dangerous, ancient, sitting right atop his head.
Harry woke up from his experience gasping for breath in a manner that was completely different from what he'd experienced after duelling the dummy for four hours. He scrambled forward to his feet, the sudden light blinding him even through his closed eyelids.
"You alright?" The hat asked while Harry went towards where he thought was the exit. He didn't answer.
'Hey kid, you alright?!' The hat asked more urgently, directly into Harry's head. The thing about telepathy was that since it was a purely magical endeavour, one wasn't limited by the amount of vibrations the air could transfer, or the power of one's lungs, or one's lack thereof. So when the hat decided to get loud in Harry's head, it got loud. The boy winced and sat back down on the floor. He fluttered his eyes open, before closing them again, while the spin that was his perception in general since he'd asked the room for what he needed attacked his senses.
"I'm, ok." Harry managed to spit out, trying not to hurl.
"Trust Rowena to come up with something so sadistic," Chanithachuah muttered as Harry once again started approaching the door so that he could exit the room. "Are you still up for it?"
"It worked, didn't it?" Harry replied, which was the horrible thing. The entire experience had worked. He'd felt the presence of the hat on his head. Old, powerful, sharp. Although, the latter was probably coming from the sword hidden within the hat, not his mentor.
Anyway, despite not necessarily wanting to repeat the experience, the fact that it had given such tangible results so quickly, was too much for him to pass up on.
"I'll be back tomorrow," he said, as much as it pained him to do so. The hat shook its head as Harry gently laid it down, where it would probably be transported back to the headmaster's office. Not that the man seemed to care much, apparently. Or maybe it was kept somewhere else during the year. Harry's headache was too big for him to bother asking.
"Have a nice afternoon," he said and left the room.
"You too, kid."
The door slammed shut behind him and Harry cast a tempus to check how much longer he had before he was supposed to have a practice round with Tonks. His eyes almost fell out of his skull when he saw that he'd spent several hours under the room's spell. He cursed, as this meant that he only had three hours to recover unless he wanted to re-schedule. But he didn't.
If he was too on top of his game he'd look ridiculously strong for a second year anyway, better to manage expectations somewhat, he thought. Or perhaps, was he underestimating the average Hogwarts second-year? He was sure that they could put up a decent fight. After all, hadn't Twix taught them well?
Maybe he could challenge Penny or Cedric next time, to see where the average level lay. But for now, he closed his eyes. Now he had to rest as best he could for his bout with Tonks. His stomach grumbled and he decided that he could rest in the kitchen while letting the house-elves spoil him.
-/-
"Damn, did you get the license plate number of the truck that hit you?"
Those were the first words Tonks said to him when she entered the abandoned classroom that they'd decided to meet up in.
It was sort of a special location because you needed to go up a ladder to get there, which was the reason why it wasn't suited for Potions practice. Also, it was in a fairly deserted section of the castle. How incredible, that the population of magical Britain had once been large enough to fill out this whole school. But now, the whole institute was barely functioning at half capacity.
"Har, har, har," Harry said while rolling his eyes, from where he was leaning against the wall. Add a sword sticking out of his stomach and he would look like the perfect dead mob in a video game.
"No, really, I don't know if I have the motivation to even beat you up, with how pathetic you look," Tonks said sadly as she dramatically leaned against a window ledge and glanced out into the forbidden forest. "What's your deal anyway, mister grade-skipper, why pick a fight with me?"
Harry looked into her eyes, which were pink today, just like her hair. "I don't want to fight you, I want to duel you. Have a bout, get loud and sweaty. My academic prowess is unquestionable, what's left for me to do? Try to skip other subjects as well? No, I want to see how I fare, before I enter the U17 duelling tournament this summer."
"England has an U17 dueling circuit?" Tonks asked curiously, "Why didn't I know about this?"
Harry shook his head, "It doesn't, but Europe does."
The young woman looked at him a bit disbelievingly.
"You want to go up against the whole of the continent?" she asked, at which point it was Harry's turn to give her an odd look.
"Why not? It should be fun. It's not like I think I'll win, it'll just be a valuable experience. And even if, in a few years I might have a chance. Someone has to be the best, why not me?"
"Someone has to be the best, why not me," Tonks said and shook her head. "I guess that's the mindset you need to do what you did, you little nerd." She sighed before walking to the other end of the room and raising her wand. "What am I then, your stepping stone?" she asked as she adjusted her posture.
Harry stood up and bent his knees, wand out. "You're just the only student I know who'd probably be able to beat me. All my other friends are in their second year as well, so they wouldn't stand a chance," he said dismissively, causing Tonks to bristle slightly, for whatever reason.
"You know duelling is not allowed in Hogwarts, right? Not since they disbanded the duelling club."
"You scared?" Harry taunted.
"Scared of getting detention because I put you in the hospital wing," Tonks muttered as she narrowed her eyes.
"Let's just stick to spells that won't inflict serious damage. No fire, lighting or cutting, I'd say."
"Alright, on the count of three?" she asked and upon getting Harry's approval, she started the count-down.
"Three, two, one, go!" She counted down and then immediately cast a jellifying jinx at Harry's legs, who simply side-stepped. His disarming charm, which he'd sent out wordlessly, whizzed towards Tonks' torso. However, just as it was about to hit Tonks silently cast a protego, which Harry's spell slid off of. The fight entered a short break period, where Tonks turned to Harry incredulously.
"Silent casting?"
"If you're speaking, you're not trying." Was his reply, at which point Tonks' face grew red and she went on an actual offensive, rather than just a faux one. She sent what seemed to be a stunner, which Harry dodged, before retaliating with a silent flipendo. They exchanged a few spells like that, simply side-stepping each other's attacks before sending their own. Essentially, Harry noted, they were at an impasse. He frowned as he looked at the girl rhythmically keeping up with him. He needed to change stuff up. This was the type of shit he could do with the practice dummy.
The next time Tonks sent a stunner his way Harry dodged under it by ducking to the floor and holding his wand to the dust that they'd whirled up with their rapid footsteps. The dust turned into a pair of medium-sized snakes, which he sent at Tonks with a muttered animation charm, before desperately throwing himself out of the way of a purple spell he didn't recognize. It whizzed past his ear and ruffled his hair. He glared at his opponent, who was frowning at the two snakes that were slowly moving towards her. She turned to him to raise an eyebrow, at which point he simply shrugged.
Tonks raised her wand, likely to dispel the transfiguration, when Harry got a devious idea. He thrust his wand forward, "Lumos!" A bright strobe light, as bright as search-light, but in all directions, emerged from the tip and filled up the room. He heard Tonks grunt in pain and shock; he dispelled the light and sent a silent disarming charm to her location as he remembered it, while he blinked spots out of his eyes. He heard the spell impact something but still sent another one. The same sound.
"You little cunt!" Tonks cursed from behind her shield, which he was able to see after a few seconds of rapidly blinking. The snakes were still rapidly approaching, but not for long as Tonks caught another one of Harry's spells on her shield and disparagingly waved her wand at the animals. They crumbled into dust, only to rise up again as a pair of angry-looking dogs. Harry frowned and sent a quick knock-back jinx at the dog on the right before it could jump him. The transfiguration was knocked to the ground with a whimper, where it remained. But considering that the other dog was now jumping at him with a wide-opened toothless mouth and Tonks had just sent a disarming charm his way. Well, Harry had to choose. And even if the dog didn't have teeth, he'd still rather prefer just getting disarmed, so, he blasted away the transfiguration with a silent flipendo and tried to dodge the spell, but failed. He watched sullenly as his wand flew from his hand into that of a panting Tonks.
The girl clutching two wands was red in the face, this time from exhaustion. Harry was suddenly aware of his own tiredness and sat down with a sigh. He realised that he could have blasted Tonks with an aguamenti and decided to keep that tactic in mind for next time.
"Bloody hell, what are your parents feeding you?" Tonks cursed as she walked over to hand him his wand, before sitting down next to him and looking him up and down. "That was impressive," she eventually said, sounding frustrated.
Harry shook his head. "My transfiguration was pathetic. I need to work on that." He determined, "Your dogs were impressive, thanks for making them toothless."
"Your snakes weren't?"
Harry blushed and looked away, "I didn't think they'd actually get you, I was just panicking."
"That light spell sucked," Tonks complained, still blinking rapidly. Even her eyelashes were pink. Harry snorted. "What?" The girl asked.
"I can't believe you also pinked up your eyelashes, that's so cool," he said forlornly. "I wish I had a cool innate magical skill," he said with a sigh, he'd tested out if he had parseltongue when he was a child, but nothing had come of it. Just a scared garden snake.
"It's nice I guess, but I'm pretty sure you have some talent, I mean, you know, considering everything," Tonks reassured him.
"Hard work isn't a talent," Harry said as he rolled his eyes, before standing. "Come on, let's go again," he said, causing Tonks' eyes to widen.
"Again?"
"Well, yeah, doing it once isn't really training for anything. Unless you're already tired. I mean, I get it, at your age." Harry insinuated, which got Tonks to jump up quite quickly.
"You prat, I'll show you old," she muttered as she took up her stance again, at the other side of the room. Harry wondered if she could manifest a tick mark on her forehead, like in those Chinese cartoons.
Although, tick mark or no tick mark, the fact that the first thing Tonks did was conjure a flock of birds which she sent at Harry, could tip him off on her mental state well enough. She was a bit salty.
They ended up going at it an entire seven times before Harry fell down exhausted. Understandable considering what kind of day he'd had before even coming to this session. Out of the seven times, he didn't win once. He would rectify that the next time they met, which was going to be in a week, Tonks had agreed with a slight scowl, apparently not pleased with her own performance, before leaving him alone in the tower to brood on his...
-/-
"Why are the quidditch trials on a Monday afternoon? That's so weird. I thought weekends existed for exactly this reason." Harry complained to Penny, who was sitting next to him in the stands, watching Cedric along with the other Hufflepuff hopefuls warming up by jogging around the pitch.
"I think the captain of the team wants to start training the new members as early as possible, and all applicants coincidentally had time off today," Penny said as she nodded in the direction of a tall girl who was cheering on the players, some of which were already flagging. Harry snorted at the thought of anyone unable to run for five minutes trying to join a sports team of any kind, even if it was only a school one.
Cedric thankfully, was still keeping up with the group, which had by now dwindled from nine to six.
"What spots are open again?"
"You know, you're really going to have to start going to the matches if Cedric makes the team. You'd think you would be more interested considering that you won us the house cup last year." Penny chided.
Harry stretched in his seat as he watched the yellow and black-clad players and player-wannabes start mounting their brooms and doing zoom-zoom manoeuvres in the sky. They were quite fast, but he could keep up somewhat. He imagined that his perception for fast-moving objects, and dangers, had improved ever since he'd started abusing the duelling puppet in the Room of Requirement. Or rather, since he'd started getting abused by said puppet. He winced as a bruise on his left butt cheek throbbed. He'd taken a nasty fall yesterday and no matter how magical the ointment at Hogwarts was, it wasn't magical enough to heal stuff in less than a day. Unless you went to Pomfrey and got some of the good shit, which he wasn't doing since he didn't feel like answering questions on how he managed to get hurt on a daily basis. Maybe he should look into healing? He idly thought before a hand was brought up to slap him in the face. His head whipped to the side and his cheek stung like a mother-fucker. He looked at the offending hand, his right one, as the people around him turned to stare at the kid hitting himself for no reason.
"Merlin, Harry, what's wrong with you." Penny groaned as she shot him a disquieted side-ways glance.
"Just had a stupid thought, needed to get it out of my head," Harry replied while thinking about his current schedule. He had a similar amount of things to do as last year, with his duelling and learning how to sense magic, but now both of those activities were linked with profound physical and mental suffering, which spell-creation hadn't been unless one counted Arithmancy as a torture method. He quite frankly barely had time for class work, let alone picking up a completely new subject like Healing, which wasn't even offered at Hogwarts. Sensing magic seemed like such an important skill to have if one was a wizard, that Harry could honestly imagine ditching some classwork in lieu of it, but he needed to keep his grades up if he wanted personalised instruction from Flitwick.
He focused his attention on the tryouts and frowned when he noticed that Cedric was involved in a competition with three other bees. They were all hovering high above the pitch and glancing around frantically. "He tried for seeker, then."
"He was never going to listen to us." Penny said, before rolling her eyes, "Boys."
"Tell me about it," Harry replied.
"You don't get to say that. What have you even been doing? You've just been disappearing on us the whole day, every day. Then you come back exhausted and Cedric says you sleep like a dead person." Penny complained, at which Harry could only helplessly shrug. He couldn't really tell his friends about the room of requirement, just in case they stumbled on the diadem Horcrux trying to explore it. All that he could say…
"I've been practising a lot of duelling spells. Did you know Flitwick was once the world champion in the international duelling circuit?" he asked, switching the topic slightly.
Penny's eyes widened and her jaw dropped, "Really? Professor Flitwick, so what, you've been practising with him?"
"Unfortunately, no. But what he did say was that if I stay consistent in class he'll consider showing me some stuff after the winter break. He wants to make sure that I'm not overburdened with the recent
developments."
"So what have you been doing exactly?"
"Well, he gave me a list of spells, I found some forms and exercises in the library. I'm working myself to the bone. If I can come to him after Christmas with good grades and show him that I've had time to get better at duelling, then he'll have to take me." Harry explained. Penny looked mildly hurt at his words.
Harry awkwardly scratched the back of his head, "Look, I didn't think you'd be interested, Cedric has been focused solely on flying, to the point where he's been doing badly in Transfiguration and I know you prefer Potions."
"Well, I would have liked to have been asked, so I could have said no on my own terms." Penny sniffed.
"Sorry about that, I mean I only started looking into it last week, you know. I can show you the spells this weekend if you want." He offered, at which he gained a small smile.
"Sure, after potion practice?" she asked. The red-head rolled his eyes.
"Yes, after potion practice, but anyway, I have to go now, I have detention with Professor Potter." He said and looked out into the field, just in time to see Cedric dive and come up with a golden snitch in his hand. The boy hollered. "Congratulate Cedric for me, for getting the position," he said and left the stands, noting that some Slytherins and Gryffindors were also present. Probably scouting out the competition.
He exchanged a brief glance with Montague, who turned around to see who was going down the stairs and leaving in the middle of the tryouts, but once he recognized Harry he quickly looked away, disinterested. At least something was working, Harry thought and made his way to the castle.