Susan had a gleam in her eye. "Any examples?"
Harry nodded. "Well, I want all of you to try and learn how to make your own mind scape if possible. I know not everyone can, and Hermione told me that the Occlumency book I gave her doesn't do the same thing that I do." His eyes darkened. "I originally was going to focus on more basic stuff, like spells to copy papers for backup, spells to bind papers into books, spells to search books for terms and stuff. But last night changed my priorities."
Susan seemed to have slipped into some sort of professional persona. "I noticed you seemed out of it after dinner. What happened?"
His eyes went dark. "The greasy man at the teacher table attacked my mind."
Susan seemed stunned. "Wha... Really?" She quickly gathered herself. "I will have to get a message to my Aunt about this. It is hard to prove, but having multiple reports will help build a case against him. I think he is the Potions Professor, Severus Snape." Hermione seemed shocked as well. "A teacher!? Oh... Oh Harry, are you sure?"
Harry nodded. "Jim was organizing my memories at the time, so we had few defenses. When you felt me zoning out I was rebuilding from the damage and creating fake duplicates of my mind to prevent this kind of thing in the future." He grinned. "I made millions of bubbles that look like my mind. If he tries again, he will have to spend years searching through them... And may Merlin help him if he pops one."
Padma looked up from some flower she was drawing on the paper pad. "What is inside them?"
His eyes took a hard green light. "Pain." The light seemed to darken. "A lot of it."
Terry pushed his pen and paper aside. "So what can I do to keep Snape out? I heard from some of the older kids that he is a really mean teacher."
Hermione dropped into her lecture voice. "He is probably preforming a wand-less, word-less Legilimency attack." She pulled out the Occlumency book Harry had pointed out to her. "It was covered here a bit. He has to look you in the eyes, and it is not nearly as strong as when you use a wand or say the spell."
Padma looked troubled. "How... how long does it take to protect yourself from this kind of attack?"
Hermione frowned. "Using the book's method, years. Part of the reason is that no one is able to help you practice unless they can use Legilimency to test your shields. But then again, Harry is not really doing Occlumency, as far as I can tell. Normal Occlumency doesn't speed up time for you, or work while you are asleep, or allow learning new abilities or changing your body from your mind scape." Harry shrugged. "My method uses more magic. You know how I changed your cores to be more stable, and have more threads and stuff?" He saw confusion on Terry and Padma's face. "Ah, well, I can see magic like threads. I can change how other people's magic works, to allow them to use thread magic to some level, like this." Everyone's paper started moving in complex patterns while being chased by the pens. He shrugged at their astonishment. "I learned magic this way first. My wand came much later. Anyway, I stabilized their cores and gave them some ropes and threads of magic to work with."
He then pointed at his chest. "I personally have threads, ropes, cables, and cords of magic. MANY of them. But most witches and wizards have one, maybe two ropes. The threads all wrap around their core as far as I can tell. If the core wraps up completely, it seals up and you are a squib." He held out his wand, missing some of the odd looks it got from the others. "The wand uses the magic of animals and plants to force a thread or rope out of your core and into the wand itself, which is how you do magic. The wand focuses the magic." He tapped Hermione's arm and gestured towards her wand. She passed it with a look that pretty much informed him that NOTHING SHOULD HAPPEN TO IT.
"Now since I can control my threads and stuff, I can use any wand perfectly." He waved Hermione's wand, making sparks appear. "I also made sure that the girl's wands perfectly connected to their cores." He was blushing now and purposefully ignoring Hannah and the faces she was making.
Padma leaned in. "Well, why not give each of them a whole bunch of ropes and stuff like you?"
Harry sighed. "I noticed that if I added much more than I already did, then their core color started to go dimmer. Their magic can only handle so many ropes or threads, so I made sure to stay way into the safe range. In Hermione's case, since I reduced the number of threads, her magic actually got stronger." He nodded to Susan and Hannah. "Their magic stayed around the same strength, but it will be much easier to control and much more precise than before. All three can do some basic wand-less stuff now, or at least the stuff I discovered like the fire lance and grabbing stuff." He floated the wand back to Hermione who seemed pleased at the idea of having stronger magic.
Hannah raised a hand. "Since Harry fixed my core, my magic has been almost completely different. I used to always have to strain to cast any spells, like I was fighting myself." She wiped a tear away, grinning. "I slept better last night than I have in months, and I have never felt so close to my wand before."
Terry's eyebrows had risen quite high at this point. "So... Are you willing to check out our cores too?" Harry shifted in his seat. "Uh. Sure... just. Ok, so it feels weird." He was trying to ignore the giggling from the other girls and Padma's eyebrow raise. "I didn't really expect it when it happened, but it was... well..."
Padma leaned over to Hannah. "Did it hurt?"
She smiled. "Nope! Although that might be why Harry feels so awkward about it." Her smile got bigger as Harry avoided her eyes. "Felt quite lovely, really." The other two girls nodded.
Terry might as well give his eyebrows away, since they had risen off his face at this point. "You sly dog."
Harry could have been a tomato. "Hush you. I didn't expect it, I had never touched someone's core before. I think I used far too much magic to do it." Hermione checked the time. "Harry, do you have a way of keeping track in your mind about what time it is out here?"
Desperate to move onto a new topic, he nodded. "Wisdom found a spell called Tempus that should work great for this." He waved his tiny wand in an even smaller motion, and green glowing date and time floated. "I can keep this up for a few days, so no issues about us losing track of time."
He reached with a rope from his chest and connected it to the working spell, pulling it away from his wand and floating it over the table. When he looked up he saw everyone's faces in shock.
"What?"
So apparently changing the source of power for a spell from a wand to wand-less magic was SO unheard of, everyone just sort of... stopped. Mentally. Harry sighed. Thank goodness he had learned these unwritten rules BEFORE classes started. Snapping his fingers to get everyone focusing AWAY from the clock in the middle of the table, Harry grinned. "Ok, just so we are clear on this, everyone wants to come along, right?"
Three firm nods (And two hesitant ones) later and Harry reached out for a small thread from each child.
Padma felt odd, like she was being pulled along by the hand, by someone trying to keep her from slipping on stones just after rainfall.
As the world faded into view she gasped. All around her were bubbles of light, glistening like raindrops, as far as she could see. Green mist was being swirled as the orbs rotated, bounced off each other, and orbited in complex patterns.
Around her she saw colors fading into view. Hermione in an orange shirt, Susan in purple, Hannah in blue, Terry in yellow... she looked down. She was now wearing some tight pants and a pink shirt... and it was awfully form fitting. Not too tight, but not exactly loose either.
Determined to not make a huge deal out of this, she looked around for Harry.
.
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