Thank you to my new Patrons: Sabrina, TurtleTipper, tonright, Doof, Adam Blair, fdxx, Kevin, kris, Annie Ber, Zenku, Magnus, Kunta, Journeyman_Mike
AN: Huge Chapter.
Trigger warning: mentions of SA
-/-
The next day Harry woke up for lack of a better word, pissed off. His confrontation with the Mirror of Erised had served as an imagination seed for some weird dreams, and he knew for a fact that he never would have found the artefact had it not been the headmaster's plan.
When one read the Harry Potter books, it was very easy to deduce that Dumbledore must have manipulated Harry somehow, perhaps magically, perhaps not, into finding the mirror so that he could test his values through seeing his heart's desires. What the headmaster would have done had Harry Potter's most heartfelt desire been to have enough power that no one could hurt him again, no one would ever know.
Harry Evans himself had yesterday also not been on the lookout for the mirror but had somehow found himself walking into the room in which it was being kept by complete accident.
Suffice it to say that he hadn't believed it to be an accident the moment he'd entered the space and seen the artefact. The possibility of it being an accident also lost all credibility when one considered how quickly Dumbledore had gotten there, or perhaps had even been there already in the first place. After all, Harry hadn't seen the man approach or arrive or even lurk around.
He kept up his frown as he got out of bed and went to the showers. The fact that Dumbledore had so easily snuck up on him was problematic in a way that it implied that Harry's magic sense was not perfect. There must be some way to mask one's magical signature, so as to appear as a muggle. He didn't know if it was achieved through simple self-control of some sort or a spell in particular.
The thing was, considering how reluctant Hogwarts was to teach even the disillusionment charm, he was fairly certain that learning how to suppress one's magical signature was something that they would outright refuse to even have in their library.
Maybe in the restricted section?
It was a thief's skill to be quite frank.
He quickly finished showering, revelling in the hot water before exiting the facilities in a cloud of steam.
He still had a lot of time before his first lesson, so he quickly got started on his day. The best way to use anger in times like these was to go exercise, so that's what he did.
His feet ate at the stone corridors of Hogwarts like a hungry lion, and he was in the Room of Requirement, thankfully unoccupied in record time.
There, he swung the Sword of Gryffindor at the air around him as if it owed him money and enjoyed the slicing sound he was creating with his movements.
It was perhaps because of this anger, and the need to lose it in physical movement, that he tired faster than usual.
"Your movements were imprecise and sloppy," the sword commented from where he held it in his hand as he panted and looked at the ceiling of the cathedral that the Room of Requirements liked to shift into when one didn't query anything specific, but just a space. Had Ravenclaw been religious?
"But your free-form shadow combat was more creative than usual," Chanithachuah added as if to dampen the critique.
Harry nodded and quickly checked the time. His mind, once again unoccupied, went back to the encounter of yesterday.
Dumbledore had clearly wanted to test him, continuing the trend of him being afraid of people who were potentially powerful because he projected his own youthful grand ambitions onto them.
But, other than living a peaceful life, Harry didn't have any ambitions. Explore magic, sure, but not towards any particular purpose. Dumbledore was simply projecting onto Harry his own indiscretions as well as those of his ex-lover and his erstwhile pupil at Hogwarts.
Was it Harry's fault that the man had always been surrounded by psychopaths?
"He wants to see you for your contributions again?"
Harry nodded. "Yes, this evening."
"Have you given any thought to what you would ask for?"
Harry considered for a moment. He'd already done this whole song and dance with the headmaster and his first year when he had created the word search spell. Back then, he'd accepted an advancement in Arithmancy, which was this year, with the advent of the O.W.L., coming to an end.
Talking to the man was always like walking on a tightrope; he wanted to ask for something that he actually wanted rather than for something that would give a good impression of himself. But at the same time, he couldn't ask for exactly what he wanted, because what he wanted was personal instruction, which the paranoid headmaster would doubtlessly see as an attempt to learn the skills of the currently most powerful wizard in the country.
His mind suddenly flashed back to an old quote that he probably butchered. 'Why learn from the pretenders when you can learn from the masters directly? They wrote books, didn't they?'
"I think I have something," he decided.
"Good, always better to go in with a plan. Leaving now?" the hat asked from whence he'd returned to its previous form, and as it watched, Harry started going towards the door.
"Yes, I exercised too hard today and still have some time to burn before classes. I don't feel like eating breakfast in the hall," the boy replied.
Once he exited the Room of Requirement, he called for his house-elf, who appeared before him in all his newfound gentlemanly glory with a stiff bow.
"What can I do for the master?" the creature asked.
"Did you finish the task I last gave you? The diary?"
"Naturally, the old man suspects nothing," the servant replied.
"Good, take me to the clearing. It's time to start working on the cabinet," Harry said roughly, at which Dobby lightly touched him on the shin, and they both dissolved and disappeared.
-/-
Magic sensing was a funny skill, Harry thought to himself as he ran his wand over the broken cabinet that he'd removed from the Room of Lost Things in his little cave kingdom near Surrey.
It was a passive skill that opened one's mind to certain perceptions, but he'd later learned that it simply served as a prerequisite, at least for those who were not quite that far along the road yet, to use certain detection spells which allowed one to better understand curses and enchantments.
It was these spells that he was currently learning and using to more closely analyse the structure of the cabinet, and it was here that he was reaching some stumbling blocks. The fact that he had to use his secondary wand since he was out of Hogwarts didn't make it any easier.
In essence, the thing was relatively simple. Relatively simple in the way that an atomic bomb was relatively simple. You split an atom, and you got a big boom, congratulations. But, how did you get there?
The cabinet's function was similarly basic. It simply punched a hole through time and space and connected to its counterpart, where one could then walk out of. Additionally, there was an enchantment that allowed one to safely shrink the artefact to transport it. These were the two main functions.
However, the form that this function took and through which it was executed was as complex as anything that he'd ever seen in university-level mathematics. Time and space were not very simple concepts, in physics with its equations, or magic, with its symbolisms. Harry was struggling to truly understand what he was seeing.
He furrowed as he analysed the cabinet from another direction. He had already done it from the front, from the back and from one side. Soon, he would basically be done looking at the thing from every direction. He still didn't completely understand how it actually worked.
The issue was likely that while he had practice on simple enchantments like floating and see-through spoons and self-cleaning brooms, this was perhaps a bit too big of a step up in complexity. Although he was sure that if he simply bashed his head into the cabinet for the rest of the year, he would manage somehow in the end, he knew it wasn't the most efficient way.
It was better to take a step back, record the findings that he'd made now and do some simpler projects to hone his skills and maybe read a bit on space-time magic. He still had that book about time magic from Burgin & Burkes that he hadn't managed to read. It had been a bit hard to find a time recently, but why not?
He took a step back from the cabinet and glanced back at the simple, bristled broom that lay on the floor next to the bed that Dobby had installed in the cave in case Harry and everyone needed to sleep over.
Applying a spell to animate the broom to clean had not been particularly difficult.
Turning that spell into an enchantment instead had been a bit of a struggle, but he was slowly getting there.
The issue was that after that, he would have to somehow make the animation enchantment coexist with the scourgify, which was much more abstract than animation.
"Enchantment is hard," he decided wisely, putting a hand to his chin and nodding his head.
Regardless of any difficulty, though, it had done its job. He'd calmed down somewhat from the anger that he'd woken up with. Now it was time to go back and attend classes.
This afternoon, he would meet up with Tonks to practise the Mind Arts, which would relax him further, considering that he always enjoyed spending time with her. Unfortunately, the work would likely be undone by the meeting with the headmaster that was to take place immediately after.
"Dobby."
A quiet pop, and the house-elf appeared before him.
Harry was just about to instruct the house-elf to send him back to Hogwarts when he had a thought.
"Dobby, would it be possible to set up a word that isn't your name to call you?" he asked. "Upon utterance, could you appear invisibly and take me to a place correlating to the word? For example, Cavus, for the cave?"
The house-ef seemed surprised by the question but quickly nodded.
He eventually nodded. "Dobby can arrive and leave unseen," he said, slipping for a second back into third person before coughing into his fist.
"Alright, can we set the code for this cave as Cavus, then, and then Suvac can mean that you should transport me back to where you found me. We can set more codewords later," Harry decided and held out his hand to the elf, who grinned cheekily at him. The house-elf tapped a longish, gnarly finger to his right ear.
Harry rolled his eyes. "Suvac," he said as if it was an actual incantation, and suddenly he was back at Hogwarts.
He looked around to see if he could see the house-elf, but he couldn't. He couldn't even sense him, for that matter. He looked at the empty seventh-floor corridor and slowly shook his head.
"This world has way too many exploits," he muttered to himself as he entered the Room of Requirements for a slide down to Herbology class.
He'd forgotten to eat breakfast, he realised with a sigh.
-/-
To counteract having forgotten to eat breakfast, Harry, at some point during his lessons, managed to sneak into the kitchens and beg the house-elves there for some food.
Thus replenished with enough energy to continue with the day, he managed to arrive at his last class of the day and leave it again without much issue.
"Good improvement, Mr Evans," Slughorn had said, giving him his first-ever Potions EE.
Thankfully, meeting the headmaster in the evening wasn't something he had to dread for two hours before going there, because he still had one meeting before that.
He made his way to the Room of Requirement. For one of the rare times, he was actually meeting someone there. He had planned to show it to Cedric and Penny, but they had brought with them Neville and Harley, and thus he had been unable to.
However, there was one person who knew about the RoR other than himself and Dumbledore, and that was Tonks.
"How's N.E.W.T year treating you?" Harry asked as he entered the cathedral-like room where Tonks was already lying on a pink fuzzy sofa, waiting for him.
"It sucks," the older girl deadpanned at him with a mouth that was not as much turned downwards in a frown as it was turned downwards in a grin that reached to the jawline.
"That's disgusting," Harry complained.
"She was blessed with many powers but chose not to use them for good," Tonks sang shrilly in Harry's voice.
"I see that all the studying has made you go a bit loopy, huh?" the boy said, shaking his head as he took over the girl's control of the room to summon his own couch to sit on.
"Mucho study, make Tonks go gaga," the girl babbled.
At that point, Harry couldn't do much else other than roll his eyes and ask the room for a glass of water, which it promptly delivered.
"How did you do it, Harry? I have to ask?" Tonks suddenly asked after a few seconds of silence once she saw that he wasn't going to engage with her weird mood.
"Do what?" the boy muttered.
"The magic sensing, and the occlumency. The combination is giving me the headache of all headaches. It feels like my head is being pounded on by a troll with a spiky club every day of the week. It's not helping with the classwork. The only reason I'm not failing already is because of the work ethic that I managed to acquire last year," the girl explained, at which the boy hummed thoughtfully.
It was probably true that learning occlumency alongside magic sensing while also being in one's N.E.W.T year could be a bit overwhelming.
Thankfully, he'd done the occlumency in year one, everything else simply being a continuation. Magic sensing had happened in year two, and classes had never been particularly challenging.
"It's tough, I get it. I had headaches when I was doing occlumency and headaches when I was learning magic sensing. Thankfully, I didn't have to do both of them at the same time, while also doing my N.E.W.Ts. I think you're decisively unlucky in that regard."
"You know," Tonks started. "It was pretty genius of me when I figured out how to finally change my internal structure enough to not get periods anymore. I don't know how I would be dealing with this while also on the rag," she said.
Those words, for some reason, made Harry remember that the first time they'd met back in his first year, on the morning of the second day of Hogwarts, she'd been complaining about stomach cramps, which had obviously been girlspeak for period pain.
He made a face.
"I don't want to hear it, honestly," he said. "As for the headaches, I can tell you that they will get less bad with time. Magic sense is something you should pick up on fairly easily, and the better you get at occlumency, the less you'll suffer." He suddenly stilled. "So, without further ado." He raised his wand into the air dramatically and pointed out towards her.
Tonks immediately shot up to sit on the couch that she'd been lounging on and put up her arms in a surrendering gesture. "Wait, wait, not that fast, okay? There's one thing I wanted to ask you before we get them into the whole molesting my mind thing."
"Tonks, I'm not molesting your mind. I'm barely even been tickling it, okay," Harry responded.
He lowered his wand, willing to listen to the girl's lamentations before he gave her another headache.
"You said at some point, I don't remember when, that there was a spell that could bump my DADA grade from an O to an O+. You think you could lead me through it, and I can start working on it independently throughout the year?"
"So we're going to prioritise DADA?" Harry asked curiously.
Tonks gave him a queer look. "Of course, it's literally in the name of the job. Dealing with dark wizards. It's probably what they want the most."
Harry shrugged. "Sure, let's do it. The spell can probably also get you an O+ in Charms, although I don't know what the deal is with reusing them for two different exams. What do you think is your second priority? For the plus, I mean," he clarified.
Tonks hummed thoughtfully. "Probably Transfiguration, I've always been pretty good at it, and I think it would be easier to Charms."
"Can I suggest Charms instead, actually?" Harry asked. "Think about it from the perspective of the examiners. They already give you an intrinsic + for the fact that you're a metamorphmagus. Being excellent in another field rather than Transfiguration would diversify you more as a candidate." He paused. "Also, I'm not as good at Transfiguration as you, so I can't help you as much."
"You know what," Tonks said, crossing her arms, "that makes sense. But, first, let's get the DADA + out of the way, and then we can figure out Charms."
Harry nodded, having already something in mind but knowing that he didn't want to overload the poor girl who was already suffering.
"It's called the Patronus charm, you've probably heard of it."
"I have, yeah, I've also heard it's supposed to be very difficult. How am I supposed to get it done while busy with everything else?" she asked dubiously.
Harry returned her look. "It took me only a few months to learn it back in my second year. Do you really think that you, with your higher expertise in wand magic, will need longer than that?" he countered.
The girl narrowed her eyes at him. "It's not the same," she claimed.
Not willing to get into an argument, Harry waved her off. "Let me just show you then," he said. "The biggest issue that people have with the spell is the fact that it's light magic. They're unused to it, so they don't understand the core requirements. The emotional basis for the patronus is happiness. So if you have the ability to remember a happy memory and feel the feeling that it evokes, you will be able to learn the spell quite easily. If you are someone who tends to dwell on the negative and who can't see the good in any events, let alone the present, then you will have immense struggles. I don't think you're the latter, so…"
"I wouldn't say I'm the former either, though," Tonks said dubiously.
"Do you think I am?" Harry retorted. "I think I'm pretty well adjusted and not leaning towards any direction in particular. Come on, I'll show it to you now," he said and raised his wand. The wand movement was a simple spiral, and the incantation wasn't difficult. "Expecto Patronum," Harry incanted, not thinking about anything in particular.
As expected from such a weak attempt, barely any silver mist escaped the wand. Perhaps five or six hairs worth.
"It's okay, Harry, you don't always have to perform," Tonks said gently, looking at him with pitying eyes.
Harry's lip twitched, and he didn't know if he wanted to smile or frown. "A wizard never comes late or early but precisely when he is needed," he said back, probably butchering the quote. But who had time to remember quotes verbatim anyway? He wasn't some basement dweller with 16 hours of free time a day.
"That was me casting the spell without any of the emotional components to show you how the incantation looks like. Now I'll show you what it looks like if I remember a happy memory," he said, thinking of, to keep it mild, the first time he'd finished fixing up a car, sold it, and bought his uncle and him ice cream. They'd sat on a bench enjoying their successful project that day. It had been a hot summer day, but they'd been in the shade.
"Expecto patronum!" A bright silver shield emerged, hovering ephemerally in the air over Harry's wand before quickly dissipating.
"That was me thinking of a happy memory," Harry said. "The reason the spirit guardian didn't manifest yet is because I wasn't happy, but simply thinking of a happy memory. The point in the end is to simply feel happiness. The killing curse, for example, doesn't need a hateful memory, but it requires the user to feel hate and the desire to end someone's life. The patronus is similar in a way," he muttered.
By the way, Tonks' eyes suddenly gained a worried look; she didn't necessarily agree with his comparison using the killing curse. He waved her off.
"Dark wizards are thought to, in general, be incapable of casting the patronus. Theoretically, at least, it seems that learning to harness negative emotions and call on them when needed prevents doing the same for positive ones. Now watch me with the pure feeling of happiness," he said. "It's just a matter of practice," he promised.
Once again, he raised his wand, committed to the movement and spoke. "Expecto Patronum." He allowed all the feelings of gratitude and happiness that he had gained from this life and that were flowing through his mind every day of the week to find their purest expression. Sure, there were struggles, but mostly there was just contentment and joy. Happiness, in other words.
A blindingly bright raccoon emerged from the tip of his wand and started flying through the air, doing backflips and somersaults. It flew over to Tonks, hovering in front of her face for a bit, playing peekaboo before suddenly dissipating.
"These are the three levels of the spell. You should be able to manage the erectile dysfunction level without any experience, and after that, you have to start working on the happy memory level," Harry said. "Come, try it."
Tonks reluctantly stood up, likely feeling inadequate in comparison to Harry. If she had voiced it, he would have urged her to get used to the feeling because it was what most people felt when they spent any amount of time in his proximity.
The girl raised her wand and unconvincingly committed to the wand movement while saying a muttered incantation. One single strand of silver burst from forth before dissipating in the wind like a smelless fart.
Unnoticed and forgotten.
"Come on, I'm sure you can do better than that," Harry encouraged. "Now think of a happy memory. Maybe when you passed your driver's exam or your O.W.Ls, just something."
"Expecto patronum," Tonks cast again with more conviction. What emerged was the barest hint of a mist, which also quickly left.
"See? Harry prompted. "In comparison to the little string, that was a large improvement." Harry complimented, at which she blushed and awkwardly rubbed the back of her head.
"I think I can manage this, yeah," Tonks said with confidence. "Can we work a bit on this first before we switch to occlumency?" she asked.
Harry narrowed his eyes. "You're not just saying that to avoid getting a headache, are you?"
Tonks looked from one side to the other, not meeting his gaze. "Nooo…" she said unconvincingly.
"Because I don't care, honestly. I can help you with the patronus today", Harry said, at which the girl brightened.
"Thanks, Harry!" the girl said sincerely. "These headaches have been killing me. But I promise after today I'll work on the patronus on my own and go back to the normal schedule," she said.
Harry shrugged. At this point, Tonks had become such a friend that he didn't necessarily mind how they spent time together as long as they did. All activities between friends were simply a pretence to talk, as much as most emotionally constipated men refused to acknowledge that.
"Let's go for it then," he said, rubbing his hands together, taking it as a challenge to teach someone a fairly difficult spell. He'd been doing a lot of teaching recently, actually. He hoped that it wouldn't become a trend; being a teacher had always been one of his least favourite jobs.
"Now immerse yourself in the happy memory for about a minute before even raising your wand," he advised. Thus started the tutelage session.
-/-
In comparison to her efforts in magic sensing and the mind arts, Tonks progressed her ability to form a larger and more solid silver mist at a relatively quick pace. It seemed to Harry that the girl was more talented in the more straightforward applications of magic, which made sense since she still hadn't even finished her schooling. Not having the theoretical foundations to understand the more subtle applications of magic was ok when one hadn't even finished Hogwarts. However, where was one supposed to acquire it afterwards?
After two hours, the two of them parted ways, both relatively happy with how the time had been spent.
Tonks had managed to produce a decent barrier, which would likely save her against a single dementor and had thus made good progress on the spell that would likely get her an O+ on her N.E.W.T in either Charms or DADA, or maybe both.
Harry, for his part, was happy that he'd helped his friend and also that he'd killed some of the hours that he still had before he went to meet Dumbledore for whatever asinine test the man wanted to meet for.
Feeling a bit at a loss for what to do, the boy walked the Hogwarts corridors with a far-away look in his eyes before one of his swinging hands brushing the side of his robes reminded him that he had an unread letter from Skeeter that he had gotten earlier but hadn't felt like opening yet.
He ducked into an empty classroom, which was thankfully not occupied by a smooching couple for once and decided to get the letter-reading part of the day out of the way. After all, he didn't know how much his meeting with Dumbledore would destabilise him, and if Skeeter's letter was in any way urgent, then it was better to send a reply sooner rather than later.
He hadn't expected that reading the letter would be much more strenuous than his meeting and would disturb his emotional equilibrium more than he could have ever imagined.
Dear Harry,
As unfortunate as it is that I must write the words I am currently penning, it is information that you have specifically asked me to seek. Your remarkable intelligence and emotional awareness, despite your age, give me hope that you will be able to process the news before we reconvene post haste to discuss my findings more closely. On to the core matter at hand. In regard to your mother's assault in Hogwarts, I have been making several inquiries based on the previous files available to me because it was my father who had written the original story in the Daily Prophet all those years ago.
My search led me to once again analyse the medical records that he had scrounged up at the time. That was when I stumbled upon a medical curiosity that likely escaped my father's notice due to his gender. I will not go into detail, but after having consulted a Mediwitch as to the meaning of the content of this medical report, I am sadly forced to come to a rather horrible conclusion.
As you already know, your mother was sexually assaulted during her sixth year at Hogwarts. However, the expert interpretation of the medical report suggests that this was not the extent of the crime. I'm struggling with how to phrase this, which is a new feeling for me; however, I think you should first hear it like this before we discuss it in person. There is no way around it, but tell you that, I'm sorry to say that your conception was the result of artificial insemination.
This doubtlessly means that the attack on your mother was premeditated and likely had a more nefarious purpose than previously thought.
I am truly sorry to be the bringer of this news, and I would suggest we meet in Hogsmeade for the upcoming visit weekend due to your recent ability to leave the castle.
Best regards,
RS
Had anyone been present in the abandoned classroom on the floor of Hogwarts that Harry was in, or perhaps even paying attention to the windows of the room that faced the Forbidden Forest, they would have seen a man's silhouette wracked in a scream of desperate rage followed quickly by the combustion of the material in his hands which quickly expanded and filled the entire room with fire.
Harry screamed a sound that he had never thought would escape his throat in his life, and the anger and hatred bubbling out of his heart and through his body suffused the surroundings around him. The flames his accidental magic had summoned became cursed rather than just hot. In that very moment, he could have likely cast the most potent killing spell to ever grace the British Isles.
But he wouldn't.
Not until he found the person who'd done this to a 16-year-old Lily Evans.
And not before he made them suffer pain beyond their imagination, after which the green flash of light would be nothing but a pleasant release from a broken, bleeding and mangled body.
Someone was going to pay.
-/-
AN: Read ahead on Patreon! Also, the vote is decided over there. The next interlude will be Snape