Harry had never studied like this before.
In his old life, homework had been something you did between Quidditch practice and trying not to die.
Now, it was war strategy.
He'd begun reading three textbooks at once — The Theory of Magical Motion, Practical Transfiguration II, and a dusty tome he'd borrowed from McGonagall called Fundamentals of Elemental Stability.
He didn't just read them. He absorbed them.
Every paragraph seemed to crack open something new — a rule, a rhythm, a hidden connection he'd missed the first time around.
The more he learned, the faster he went.
By the second week of November, he'd already finished half of the second-year Charms curriculum and was trying to reconstruct a third-year spell model using notes he wasn't supposed to have.
Hermione was not impressed.
"Harry, you can't just jump ahead like this!" she hissed one night in the common room, eyeing the mountain of parchment around him.
"Why not?" he said, scribbling furiously. "Magic doesn't care what year I'm in."
"Yes, but you should! You're missing foundational theory — casting above your level is reckless!"
He grinned. "You sound like McGonagall."
"I'll take that as a compliment," she snapped. "At least she respects proper sequence."
Harry barely heard her — his quill was scratching diagrams, drawing concentric rings of spell trajectories and force feedback lines.
Hermione leaned over his shoulder. "What's that supposed to be?"
He didn't look up. "I think… it's how magic breathes."
She blinked. "Magic doesn't—"
"Not literally!" he said, half-laughing. "Look — see how the wand movement echoes? There's a rhythm. Every spell has one. If you match it, you don't need to force it."
Hermione opened her mouth to argue, then paused. "That's… actually not wrong."
Harry smirked. "Told you."
"But your model is all over the place!" she said, exasperated. "You've got levitation and transfiguration in the same framework!"
"Yeah, because they're both transformation of motion," he said quickly. "Levitation changes position, Transfiguration changes form. They're cousins!"
Hermione stared at him, torn between admiration and horror.
"You're infuriating," she muttered.
Harry grinned wider. "And efficient."
⸻
A few days later, Harry tried to prove his theory in practice.
It was after class, the Transfiguration room empty except for him and Neville, who'd stayed behind to ask McGonagall a question.
But the professor had stepped out, leaving them alone.
"Harry, are you sure you should be—" Neville started.
"Relax," Harry said, waving his wand. "I'm just testing something."
On the desk before him sat a pile of pebbles.
He'd been reading about magical resonance — how every object has a "baseline harmony" that resists change.
If he could match that frequency, he might not just change the pebbles — he could make them respond to him directly.
He whispered, "Mutatio Terrae."
The pebbles trembled.
Neville took a nervous step back. "Um, Harry—"
"Wait—almost there—"
The tremor deepened.
The pebbles fused together, forming a single slab of stone.
Harry grinned. "See? It's working—"
The slab pulsed. Once. Twice.
Then the floor beneath them shuddered.
"Harry!" Neville shouted.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the flagstones. The air filled with a grinding sound — like the castle itself was groaning.
Harry's instincts kicked in. He dropped to one knee, pressing a palm flat to the stone, pushing calm into it.
"Stop," he whispered. "I get it — stop."
For a second, nothing happened. Then the tremor slowed.
The cracks sealed. The stone stilled.
Neville let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Blimey…"
Harry exhaled too, chest heaving. "Okay. That was… more than expected."
Neville frowned. "You tried to control the castle floor?"
Harry winced. "Technically, just the stone."
"That is the castle floor!"
"Right. Point taken."
⸻
When McGonagall returned, she didn't shout.
That made it worse.
She stood by the desk, surveying the faint scorch marks on the floor, and said evenly,
"Mr. Potter, would you care to explain why the castle briefly attempted to rearrange itself?"
Harry swallowed. "I was testing magical resonance."
"Ah. On the architecture."
"I didn't mean to!"
Her look softened slightly — not pity, but recognition. "No, I believe you didn't. But you did mean to overreach."
He looked down, ashamed.
She sighed quietly. "You have an extraordinary gift, Harry. But raw magic is not a substitute for theory. Without grounding, even brilliance collapses under its own weight."
He glanced up. "Then how do I fix that?"
"By learning the difference between movement and balance," she said. "And by remembering that even the strongest magic must stand on something solid."
Her gaze turned pointed. "You will spend the next week studying magical foundations with Professor Flitwick — properly. I expect a written reflection on what 'grounding' means."
Harry nodded quickly. "Yes, Professor."
"Good." She paused. "And thank you for catching the floor before it swallowed Mr. Longbottom."
Harry turned red. "That was luck."
McGonagall's lips twitched. "Luck is often the child of instinct. Try not to make it a habit."
⸻
That night, Harry sat again with his notebook — ink-stained, half burnt, pages covered in cramped handwriting.
He wrote slowly this time.
Resonance Theory – Addendum
Tried harmonizing with solid earth.
Discovered: the deeper the magic, the heavier the consequence.
Fire moves. Air dances.
But earth remembers.
I didn't just touch the stone — I touched everything connected to it.
The whole castle felt me.
Lesson: Understanding isn't enough.
You need grounding — something solid beneath curiosity.
He tapped the quill against the parchment, thinking of McGonagall's words.
Movement and balance.
He'd been sprinting through theory, devouring books as if knowledge alone would make him stronger.
But it wasn't speed that built mastery — it was depth.
For the first time, he realized how much he didn't know.
And instead of fear, it made him excited.
He looked out the window, the full moon washing the castle in silver.
"Alright," he murmured. "Let's learn properly this time."
⸻
The next morning, Hermione found him already in the library — not experimenting, but reading.
She blinked. "You're up early."
Harry grinned, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "I figured I should probably learn what I'm breaking before I try to fix it."
Hermione smirked. "Miracles do happen."
He pushed a chair toward her. "Come on, help me out. I need the structure, and you're annoyingly good at that."
She blushed slightly but sat down. "Deal. But only if you promise not to explode anything until we're done."
"No promises," Harry said, laughing. "But I'll try."
⸻
End of Chapter 20 – "The Weight of Earth."