The next few days flew by Harry as if they were farts in the wind. After having given Dumbledore the information, he obviously couldn't use the Room of Requirement, which is where he'd been spending most of his time in his second year at Hogwarts. However, his magical sense was developed enough that he could train it just by walking around the magical castle and tasting the different flavours present, and he had started to outgrow the duelling dummy recently anyway, so he wasn't too mad about it.
The room would be there again next year, if it was under surveillance he could just pretend that he'd found it for the first time. It would suck a bit for Tonks, whom he'd now committed to helping, but she would have access for the entirety of next year.
Overall, Harry found himself, despite his sessions with James and Filius, with more free time than ever. In a way, this served as a vacation for him, and having decided to keep this relaxation going until the end of the year, he'd started studying for the exams early. If he had the material down pat already now, a few months before the exams, then there would be no need to study then, and he could simply focus on preparing for the duelling tournament, which Flitwick was helpful enough to sign him up for.
It only took him a few days, at the pace that he usually studied, to finish the theoretical load for Astronomy, Herbology, and History of Magic. The classes really were intended for children, and the rest of the year would just serve as revision. Charms and Arithmancy were difficult enough that he preferred moving with the rest of the class, while DADA often consisted of fun exercises with a variety of creatures and scenarios which he couldn't really read ahead for since the theoretical knowledge was useless without the practical experience. Transfiguration was chugging along as always, with him outperforming everyone but occasionally Cedric and McGonagall looking disapprovingly at his comparable lack of effort in the subject. They both knew that he could advance out of the year if he really tried.
Actually, thinking about it, Harry could conjure two very realistic and pissed-off hornets right now, and would probably be able to manage a swarm by the end of the year exams. Considering that conjuration of any kind was a skill learnt in the fifth year, that might just be enough to clinch an advancement. However, Harry really wanted to focus on duelling this summer, so he didn't know if he wanted to bother. There were a bunch of wandless tricks he could practise that would help him in the tournament, whereas any wand-magic would require him to go to a magical settlement or practice under supervision.
Although, hadn't there been wands in the trunk he'd ended up taking out of the room of lost things? Yeah, there had been, although the question if the thing would even work for him was still up in the air.
He wasn't feeling too pressured to go check anytime soon. He'd wanted the money to buy stuff in Diagon Alley and since he wasn't leaving school for another three months the whole point was sort of moot.
"You look like your thoughts are on another continent again," Penny commented as she walked up to him where he was leaning against the wall next to a suit of armour at the entrance to their little potions laboratory. Although it was definitely mostly Penny's. "Do mind that you book the return portkey."
"How were second-year Charms?" Harry asked instead of retorting with a witticism.
Penny blew a raspberry at him. "What will you be working on today?" she asked.
"I was thinking about working on the girding potion and the strengthening potion. I should have enough time to brew both. They're the most likely to come up on the exam, and I would like to experience how it feels to have super strength or super endurance."
"Do you have enough ingredients?" Penny asked doubtfully.
"Slughorn lets me nick whatever I want, especially since I'm set to pass my advanced classes with flying colours," Harry explained. "I wanted to ask you actually, if maybe you could brew more ageing potion and some more wit-sharpening tonics for me. Maybe a language tonic as well if you have time."
"Any specific music wishes, maybe a massage. What am I? Your personal potioneer?" Penny groused.
"Come on, I help you as well, you know. I get you the ingredients for your experiments and I help with your Charms and Transfigurations when you're struggling," Harry insisted. "The wit-sharpening potion is so useful for study sessions and I recently used up last year's batch, you can't not help me make some."
"And the ageing potion, I remember you having several vials left after France?" Penny asked doubtfully.
Harry blushed a bit, thinking about the fate that those vials in particular had experienced, and had helped him experience. "Come on, it's nice being treated like an adult every now and again. I used them up in the summer."
"I'm not going to help you become an alcoholic," Penny refused.
"I don't use it to drink," Harry said with a roll of his eyes.
"You better not, the last time we…" she trailed off with a far-away look on her face before shaking her head. "Anyway, it's not right."
"I can take a vow that I haven't used the ageing potion simply for its access to alcohol," Harry said with a roll of his eyes.
"Alright then, I'll make the stuff for you," Penny grumbled, "but not today. I specifically planned on working on the shrinking solution."
"You've been making a lot of third-year potions recently, is someone planning on trying to follow the footsteps of their much more attractive and charismatic older brother figure?" Harry teased, causing Penny to mime puking.
"Harry, no offence, but if you were my brother I'd poison your breakfast."
"Well, if you were my sister, I'd eat it," Harry responded and they both chuckled. "Thanks, Penns, means a lot to me. I'd brew them myself, but it's just a waste of time when you compare our results. If you need help with the advancement, just tell me and I'll help you out. I'm not nearly good enough at Potions to offer insights, but I know a bit about how to set up a good study schedule and what the requirements for advancement are," he offered, more seriously.
"Thanks, but I don't really need help with Potions," Penny said with a sigh. "Maybe just keep my other grades up. I doubt they'll let me take the test if I'm failing other subjects."
"I have a spell that would get you an O+ in charms if you showed it off in your OWLs, as long as the rest of your work isn't too atrocious," Harry offered, getting an odd look from his friend.
"Harry, I don't have the time to learn a spell that's so difficult it would get me an O+ on my OWLs. That's in three years."
"It's actually not that hard," Harry said with a shrug.
Penny put a palm to her face and looked at the ceiling for guidance. "What's the spell?" she asked.
"It's the patronus, the only spell that will protect you from dementors and some other very dark creatures. It's Light Magic, which means it requires a specific state of mind to cast. This is where the difficulty lies. It's why you would have just as many chances casting it as an older you would. It's all about being able to bring yourself into a state of happiness which can serve as fuel for the spell," Harry explained.
"Can you show me?" Penny asked curiously, lighting up at the mention of Light Magic. It was probably something used by the main characters in wizarding children's tales. Unfortunately in reality the art was a bit more useless, filled with situational spells for which one usually wouldn't be able to bring up the requisite emotions in the heat of battle. Although, if someone could cast a Patronus in the middle of a swarm of dementors, they could also probably cast a love shield during a fight.
"Sure," Harry agreed, thinking that even if he only managed a powerful shield, it was still something to be proud of. Although, he felt lighter than ever today and the feeling of happiness that was requisite for the spell was easier to bring up than ever. He brought up his wand and cast the spell, "expecto patronum."
A white mist emerged, as always, before slowly thickening into a solid shield, from which sprang, for the first time, an actual animal form. A racoon jumped from the shield and frolicked around the room in the air, doing twirls and jumps, before landing next to the window looking out at Hogwarts's grounds, and dissipating into bright white-blue motes of light.
"That's so cute," Penny crooned. "It was a racoon, right?" she asked the stricken Harry, who stared aghast at the form that his guardian animal had taken. He wasn't mad, per se. But why had the original Harry Potter gotten a majestic stag, and he had gotten a raccoon? An animal mostly known for searching through the trash of unsuspecting humans.
"Yeah," he muttered. "It was a racoon."
"Will mine also be a raccoon?" Penny asked curiously.
"The animal changes depending on the person, it's a bit like the animagus form."
"Are the two the same?" she asked, causing Harry to thoughtfully tap at his chin.
"I don't quite know honestly. It would make sense, right?" he wondered, before shaking his head. "Anyway, that doesn't really matter. Would you be interested in learning it at some point? It's the best I can offer right now."
Penny shook her head. "Let's do it after I successfully advanced. I want to put all my focus into potions at the moment."
"That's the spirit," Harry cheered her on, and they got to brewing.
It was in the usual calm and copacetic fashion that they shared the room, their cauldrons bubbling and their ingredients disappearing at an alarming rate. Harry, for once, was not failing completely, as the strengthening potion had a lot of the steps that he'd already needed for the potions of last year. What he did notice, with his newly developed magical sense, was the way that he and Penny differed in their potion-making. Penny's magic was tranquilly interacting with the growing ball of yarn that was her cauldron, whereas Harry's magic ebbed and flowed, sometimes adding too much, sometimes too little. It destabilised the overall process, but not to the point of catastrophic failure.
At this point quite fed up with the subject, Harry wasn't too excited to have potentially found the reason for his persistent failure. However, it was nice to know at least where the issue might lie. Perhaps he would have a few sessions in which he experimented with this particular part of potion-making, which he'd never found mentioned in any book.
Not today, though. Today he had to send a letter to a certain reporter, who with her animagus form would hopefully be able to sneak her way into Hogwarts.
He would perhaps have been more willing to accept the snide looks that he sometimes got from the other Hogwarts students, particularly those of a particular blood type, so to say, if the duelling tournament he was planning on winning wouldn't have put him in the spotlight anyway. Since he wanted to stay in the magical world and continue learning and working, a good national reputation was better for his future career than a bad one.