Feeling slightly bolstered by his moderate success, Harry concentrated on the quill stuck in his ceiling. He willed it to burrow out of the ceiling and float slowly down to his desk. He could see the quill start to move and feel something stirring inside him. Last time it had been a jolt, quick and powerful. This time it was a slow moving flow inside of him. The quill extricated itself from its prison and floated ever so slowly down to the top of his desk. When the quill had landed, the flow inside of him stopped as well.
Harry turned his attention to a small book on his desk. He focused inside of himself on that feeling of the magic flowing through his body hoping to duplicate it. He willed the book to levitate off the desk. He could feel the magic slowly start to build up inside of him and flow through his body. Moments later the book was lifting itself off of his desk and hovering above it.
Harry tried this on a couple other objects increasing the weight of them as he went. After levitating his bed a couple inches off the floor, then slowly, soundlessly letting it drop back to the ground, he decided that he had levitation down pat. So he decided he would move on to a different spell.
He decided to try a summoning charm next. He once again concentrated on letting his magic build up and start to flow just like it had before, then shifted focus to his quill and willed it to himself. He felt the magic inside of him shift a bit but struggled to keep it steady so as not to lose control of the spell. As a result the quill alternated between floating in the air and coming towards Harry, seemingly unable to make up its mind.
Harry stopped and let the quill drop to the floor. He picked it up and placed it on the desk again before stepping back and giving it another shot. He felt the same shift in his magic and had to rein it in with the same results on the quill. He paused to think about what was happening. There was obviously something different. It was like he was casting a summoning charm and a hover charm at the same time.
The question was: why is this happening? Was he just having a harder time controlling his magic because this was a more difficult spell? If he were able to stop his magic from struggling with him, would that solve the problem? Harry really wished he had someone he could ask these questions to. He tried a couple more times with the same results and began to grow frustrated. As his frustration increased, he seemed to have even more difficulty with the spell and the quill would often buck in the air or go in the completely opposite direction and shoot around much faster than Harry had willed it to go.
He decided to call it quits for the day before the quill ended up poking his eye out and realized that it was evening already and that he had completely missed lunch. He went downstairs and into the kitchen to find his aunt and uncle sitting down to dinner, Dudley was nowhere to be seen. 'Must be out with the gang' Harry thought to himself. 'Otherwise he'd never miss a meal.'
The Dursleys pointedly ignored Harry as had been the custom so far this summer. As he helped himself to some of the pork roast his aunt had cooked he could feel the waves of tension streaming off of his uncle. It took all of the large man's energy just to hold back the surge of insults begging to be let loose on Harry. But he was obviously able to rein in all of his ill will for he simply glared at his nephew before turning back to his food.
Harry ate quickly and in silence before dumping his plate off in the sink and rushing back upstairs, eager to escape the tension and to return to the comfort of his solitude. Harry spent the rest of his evening pouring over his old textbooks yet again to learn all that he could from them before finally crawling into bed and letting sleep overcome him.
Dear Ron,
I heard back from Harry today, which I guess is obvious since I asked Hedwig to deliver this. I also got your message earlier. It sounds like he was in bad shape for several days and is just starting to come out of it, which is hardly surprising. I'm guessing that he chose to write Ginny first because it was a safer note to write; he could avoid talking about the more sensitive subjects, and he figured that she wouldn't press him since she doesn't know him as well as us. I wouldn't worry too much about it because I'm sure you'll be hearing from him tomorrow.
I'm so anxious to get our OWL results back. I hope they aren't delayed at all because of everything going on at the ministry right now. I've finished most of the summer reading for the NEWT courses I hope to take. Have you started studying yet? You know that NEWTs are incredibly important, and you can never start preparing too soon. You really can't expect to get any NEWTs with the amount of effort you usually put into studying. You'll need to work extra hard these next two years. I'd be happy to write up a study schedule for you to help keep you on task and up to date.
I have another letter to write and a long overdue conversation with my parents to plan, so I'm going to have to cut this short. At least think about opening a book, and let me know when you hear from Harry.
Love from,
Hermione
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