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-/-
Revealing the location and the utility of the Room of Requirement to Flitwick had not been a gamble or a very thought-out decision, but simply returning the favour.
The Charms Professor had been helping Harry for essentially free for two and a half years now.
Receiving the opportunity to give back to the man rather than just continuing to take, that was just common courtesy, really.
Anyway, the diadem had long since been removed from the room, Harry's own training there had been completed, and he currently primarily just used it to summon the sorting hat and relax.
He trusted Flitwick to keep the use of the Room to a minimum so that it wouldn't get too crowded.
They'd even discussed a schedule so that their use wouldn't accidentally overlap.
Flitwick would be using it three times per week, each time for a two-hour session of training his magic-sensing ability.
Harry would have access to the rest of the time.
They would continue meeting on Fridays for duelling practice.
"Well, the fact that Flitwick can learn from the room instead of taking more of my very limited time is another benefit," Harry muttered to himself as he waited in the abandoned classroom, sitting on a window ledge, leg swinging back and forth.
"Wandless magic, mind magic, those would have been much more personal learning experiences. I made the best decision possible," he concluded.
The door to the classroom suddenly creaked open, revealing the golden trio who warily stepped inside.
They seemed unsure of something.
"I don't bite," Harry told them, at which their shoulders untensed and they fully shuffled into the room in which the tables and chairs had already been cleared to the side.
Harry liked to think that he'd improved the world since coming into it. He'd revealed the location of the Horcruxes, helped make Tonks stronger, helped the boy who lived, and helped Cedric get some green-curse dodging experience.
Was he maybe doing those things because he was trying to avoid the responsibility of acting on a personal level, excusing his contribution as having made the most likely participants of any future conflict more competent?
"Er, hi, Harry," Harley muttered, twirling her curly hair around her finger.
The redhead chuckled. "Harley, Hermione, Harry, Neville", he suddenly said, turning to Neville. "Should we call this club the Hhhn meet-up?"
The joke fell flat; nobody laughed.
"Tough crowd," Harry muttered with a sigh.
"Are you doing okay?" Neville suddenly asked with a red face. "I read the papers, Dad said it was a right mess."
"It was a right mess," Harry agreed. "But it's blown over now, so let's just ignore that ever happened, eh? Hopefully, your circuit will have a bit less drama if you ever decide to join."
Neville fidgeted. "Well, politically, Dad, he said that if the circuit is really filled with, well, people like that, it might be better not to."
"You should listen to your father," Hermione suddenly piped up and crossed her arms. "He knows best," she claimed with her nose in the air.
Harry waved an arm. "Let's just leave it. What's more important is what you three worked on in the summer, and if you want to continue our sessions this year. I think you made a lot of progress very fast last year, so I think it would be a waste of potential to quit it."
The trio had very different reactions to the praise.
Hermione kept her nose pointed at the direction of the ceiling, soaking it in. Harley simply nodded, as if her having talent was a given, while Neville blushed and scratched the back of his head.
"I'd continue, the practice also helps with my classwork, I understand magic better now," Neville mumbled while the two girls nodded along.
"I knocked my dad on the ass this summer when we had a practice match; he underestimated me way too much," Harley said before grinning. "I want more of that."
Hermione fidgeted, and to Harry it seemed obvious that she wasn't that interested in duelling itself as a concept but rather just wanted to spend time with her friends.
"And what did you work on this summer?" Harry reiterated, rather than forcing the girl to admit what she was likely thinking.
"I read Duelling Throughout the Ages by Quintus Quaffel!" Hermione exclaimed happily. "Did you know that the circuit only came into existence 200 or so years ago? Before this, different countries simply had their own legal and illegal arenas." She paused. "I visited Neville's home for a week; his dad helped us practice against transfiguration."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "He gave you the animal drill? The one where you have to untransfigure conjurations and blast transfigurations?"
The trio shared a look and nodded.
James had run Harry through the very same practice back in his second year. It was very good for training reflexes, categorising threats and knowing what to do when facing transfigurations.
"He didn't want to at first," Neville grumbled. "Said I should enjoy my summer. Mom knocked him over the head and told him that if I'm asking for something, then that's likely what I want to do to enjoy it." He flushed. "He showed me the drill, but otherwise he just taught me a bunch of prank spells."
"My dad said no at first, too, something about baby girls," Harley said nonchalantly. "Then I just started ambushing him around the house every day and made him fight me. After a week, he decided to just formalise it and face me for an hour every day like a man."
Harry blankly stared at the girl. "Are you serious?" he asked.
Harley rolled her eyes. "No, that's my dad."
Silence pervaded the room until Harry clapped his hands. "Well, it seems the three of you all had fun over the summer. I'm happy some of us did at least."
"Congratulations on your O.W.Ls!" Hermione suddenly piped up.
"Thank you, Hermione, I'm sure you'll blow my results out of the water when it's your turn," Harry replied briefly before tapping himself on the chin and thus missing the girl's blush.
"Last year, we worked on the knockback jinx and the disarming charm. Some of you managed to remove the wand movement, some of you managed to remove the incantation," he praised before continuing. "As I already explained, the knockback jinx is directly linked in terms of effect to the exploding Charm. Flipendo is a ball of force; Bombarda is a ball of force that explodes. Being able to explode something is always a very useful solution to many problems, so I was thinking that if we get this down, your duelling styles don't change too much, but your arsenal is essentially upgraded. Similarly, I can tell you that the maximum version of the explosion Charm, which we can set as the goal for this year, is a spell that will accompany you your whole life. The sooner you get it down, the sooner you can master it and incorporate it in your style."
"Isn't it a fourth-year spell?" Hermione asked suddenly.
"The disarming charm is a second-year spell, and you learned it last year. I'm sure you can manage this challenge as well," Harry replied calmly and raised his wand, before pausing. "If you end up getting detention because of it, just don't tell anyone it was me who taught you." He slashed his wand left and down. "Anyway, the wand movement is a slash left and a half slash down. An L, so to say. Incantation is Bombarda. The use in duelling is that while an opponent might opt to dodge a disarming charm, they'll often have to shield against an explosion, which puts them on the back foot. If you want more theory, go read up on it in the library."
He turned around with an idea as his three students started practising the wand movement without casting the spell.
A twitch of his wand brought over three tables, which he promptly transfigured into a human dummy each. He paused.
The sentient duelling dummy in the Room of Requirement hadn't been a challenge for him in a very long time. Maybe the kids?
Well, whenever Flitwick was done with the room, he could consider it.
"Duro, duro, duro," he cast three times, fortifying the dummies. He turned to the trio who had stopped to watch him intently.
"I think you understand the assignment," he said with a smirk. "As for motivation… Whoever destroys the dummy first gets to duel me with a partner of their choice for their start-of-the-year exam. The other two will have to go at it alone."
He stepped to the side.
"Bombarda!"
"Bombarda."
"Bombarda!"
Harry crossed his arms and watched as the dummies shook, trembled, but refused to break.
This was just as much a test of his ability to reinforce an object as it was a test of his students' explosion charms.
A trio of explosion users… Was he contributing to the violent explosion of any Death Eaters that the trio crossed in the future?
He sure hoped so.
-/-
Harry held up the clear liquid vial to the light streaming through the window and looked at the forest view behind it.
"As discussed, here's your three doses of felix felicis," Snape told Harry from his position behind his desk in his personal office.
The same desk that Quirrell had sat behind last year. Curious that.
Harry pocketed the vials in his robes.
"Don't ever think of taking more than one per year," the professor continued. "And don't even try to take more than three in your life without consulting a Potions Master." He fixed him with a glare of his beady black eyes. "The consequences would be… painful."
"Death," the student answered. "It turns out that consuming all your luck for several months in one day leaves one… prone to accidents. If done too much, deadly accidents."
"The warning is generally reduced to toxicity. Where did you find the alchemical principles behind the potion?" Snape asked curiously.
"Pozioni, un libro di fatti e teorie by Grenuldus Gabbloni," Harry replied. "I cross-referenced the information with A szerencséről és a szerencsétlenségről by Januszca Travestis."
"I wasn't aware these books were in the Hogwarts library," Snape muttered.
"They aren't," Harry replied. "But I wasn't going to take a potion I didn't understand." Dobby had proven his worth, going on a book acquisition mission to the continent to spend Harry's money.
"Relatively new research, although I don't understand a word of Hungarian, gibberish language," Snape said with a shake of his head. "At least you do your due diligence. Respectable."
"From what I read, the potion takes half a year to brew, but we only made our deal two months ago. Had some in reserve?" Harry asked.
The dark-clad man nodded from behind his desk and steepled his fingers. "The effects of Felix Felicis can be life-changing. I dedicated several months to trying to find a way through which to ingest more than three servings per lifetime. I never succeeded, unfortunately. This is the vial I retained throughout those years to motivate me."
"If I may ask, what were the results of the ingestions?" Harry said curiously.
Snape frowned. "You may, perhaps, it will help you understand what effects you can expect. I took the first vial at age sixteen in an attempt to help the investigation into… Regardless, it wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped, but it actually led me to graduating Hogwarts early and leaving for Germany. In hindsight, that probably saved my life as I was butting heads with the young Death Eaters in Slytherin at the time and likely would have been killed had I stayed."
"So it gives you what you need, not what you want," Harry muttered thoughtfully, thinking back on his experience of fighting Greyback with Tonks at the end of the second year. He paused. He had ingested half the potion back then, actually.
"I just remembered, I ingested half a vial a year and a half ago. What impact does that have?"
Snape startled and stared at him.
"You forgot?" he hissed.
Harry nodded. "There was a lot of other stuff going on."
Snape snorted. "Half a vial, the potion needs to be dosed to work properly. Taking half simply means you wasted much of its potential. It is toxic, that part is true, although it is usually the metaphysical imbalance that kills people who try to abuse it." He shook his head. "The toxic elements have left your body by now. For future reference, when somebody hands you a potion vial, you are to drink the entire thing to get the desired effect. In lieu of this information, you are only allowed to take two doses in the future."
Harry laughed out loud. That answered the question if Tonks had really needed to meet Greyback back then. Turns out she'd used the potion incorrectly and hadn't increased her luck by that much. Had she taken the entire thing, she probably would have simply stumbled upon a good therapist. That was what most people really benefited from in the end.
"None of the books mentioned this fact," Harry muttered thoughtfully.
"It is considered somewhat obscure," Snape drawled. "And Felix Felicis is a potion primarily brewed by Potions Masters, for themselves."
"If I downed this vial," Harry asked. "Could I defeat Voldemort in a duel?"
Snape snorted. "No, but you would manage to escape in a manner that would discourage pursuit. The potion essentially forces the most probable solution based on the situation. If you drank it while falling off a cliff, a passing wizard would conjure you a mattress to fall on. You wouldn't suddenly learn how to fly since that outcome is much less probable. Unless, of course, you were close to cracking the secret on flight right before the incident."
"I see," Harry muttered. "Perhaps it would be wise to keep it for emergencies, then?"
"Drinking it now may also lead you to making a series of decisions that would disarm an emergency from occurring," Snape pointed out. "My second use involved me deciding to skip a conference at which I was invited to talk. I instead met a valuable associate that day. For a long time, I thought that the lucky part was meeting the associate, but it's only years later that I found an issue in my research. I had made a calculation error in the very beginning. Had I presented that in front of all my peers… It would have set my career back by years."
"So what is the best time to take it?" Harry asked curiously.
"Early on in life, I would argue," Snape replied. "My first dose made me leave Hogwarts. A decision that I have been benefiting from for fifteen years due to the life I've built abroad. The second dose saved my career and my international reputation, again something highly beneficial which has majorly impacted my life since. The third dose? That's personal."
"Understandable," Harry said thoughtfully. The only reason Snape wouldn't tell him would be if it was highly inappropriate, if he was ashamed. Or? Maybe the result of the third dose involved Harry.
"My suggestion?" Snape. "Pick a day when you have countless options on what you could do. The potion will guide you to making the best decision of your life. I wouldn't recommend taking it in Hogwarts, as you don't have the capacity to leave and thus lack options. Perhaps in winter. Alternatively, if there is a skill-set you really wish to acquire, taking it when you are in an environment you can work on that skill-set, you will make years of progress in one day because of a lucky train of thought or encounter."
"Do you think Voldemort ever took it? Grindelwald, Dumbledore?" Harry asked.
"Doubtlessly," Snape replied. "Although they likely took it in their youth, as I did. Perhaps it helped them solidify their paths, which they obviously benefited from… Until they didn't."
"The younger the better," Harry muttered.
"The best time to plant a tree is now," Snape said. "Felix Felicis is a seed that shifts your life in a better direction. The earlier you find yourself facing the right way, the further you will get."
"Thank you. The other arrangement?" Harry asked.
"It will be hard," the professor replied. "Perhaps next summer, if we're lucky, this winter."
"The training arrangement?" Harry asked.
Snape nodded and suddenly stood up, the chair behind him scraping painfully against the floor.
"Let's start now," he said darkly. "You made enemies; there's no time to dawdle."
Harry smirked. "In the office?" he asked, looking around the relatively tight space.
The professor snorted and bid him to follow out of the office and down into the DADA classroom. The man swept his wand out, which caused all the tables and benches to move. A twirl layers a protective cover over the classroom.
Snape went to stand on the other side than Harry, his wand at the ready.
"Let's first assess your levels," he said. "Habsburg was an unworthy measuring tool."
Harry's wand was already in his hand, a smirk on his face.
"Yeah," he said, curious how Snape would stack up against his previous instructions. "Let's assess your levels," he joked.
Snape sneered.
No preamble.
The room exploded.
-/-
AN: Everybody was kung-fu fighting, nananananana. There's currently still an extra chapter poll up on Patreon for subscribers. Either Harry Evans or Video Game cultivator is gonna win it. 35% to 33 of the vote. One person has the power to change destiny if you so desire. (The extra chapter will also be posted here publicly.)