Chương 47: ITW,H - Chapter 47 - Back at Hogwarts

(Word Count: 1, 848) Winter break passed by too quickly, and in no time at all, Harry was on his way back to Hogwarts. On the train, he sat with Dean and Saemus, his two friends that he hadn't seen over the whole break and caught up. They thanked him for the footballs, and promised to get a pick up game going some time when there's less snow.

"Did one of you bring the ball with you?"

"Of course, we brought them with us!" They both said.

"Think we'd miss out on a chance to trounce those purebloods? They'll learn not to mess with us muggleborns!" Dean declared, and he dug out from his luggage his shin guards. He held them up for Harry to see and grinned wickedly.

"They don't have these!" Harry laughed. When they arrived, it was time for dinner in the great hall. He looked around and found Ron, sulking alone at the Gryffindor table. Harry plopped down next to him, throwing an arm over his shoulders.

"Wotcha, Ron! How've you been?" Harry said. Ron shrugged off his arm, giving him an annoyed scowl.

"Terrible! I've been all alone here at the castle, being pranked by the twins everyday. I couldn't even find anyone to play wizard's chess with me! How do you think I've been?" Harry was a bit taken aback.

"Um… sorry? It couldn't have been all bad, was it?"

"Well… I suppose it wasn't all bad. I did find something pretty cool! It was a large mirror that showed the future! It showed me as the quidditch captain, and head boy!" Ron grinned at him.

"You're the seer, though. Did you see anything like that in my future?" Harry was surprised. He hadn't expected Ron to come across the Mirror of Erised without Harry to show him. Ron wasn't really the type to explore around. Harry had figured it wouldn't be an issue to just leave it be. It was in Dumbledore's care, after all. As for seeing his greatest desire, Harry wasn't all that interested. He already knew what he wanted. Harry just smiled back.

"The future is what we make of it, Ron. If you work hard to get those things, then yeah, I can see you being quidditch captain and head boy. But how'd you find something like that? I didn't know Hogwarts had a mirror that did that." Ron sighed.

"Yeah, I had no idea either. I was running away from Fred and George, when I hid away in an abandoned corridor. The mirror was just in one of the rooms there. I wouldn't bother going to look for it though. It disappeared the next night! You reckon it's still somewhere in the castle?"

"It might be. You never know with Hogwarts. It likes to shift things around."

"Harry! There you are! I've been looking everywhere for you!" Hermione found the two of them at the table.

"Why didn't you sit with me on the train? Where'd you go?"

"Ah, I was sitting with Dean and Saemus to catch up," Harry said.

"Well, I ended up sitting with Neville, but it would have been nice to sit with you as well. Oh! Hello, Ron," Hermione said, noticing Ron sitting there for the first time. Ron scowled at her.

"Hello, Hermione, finally noticed I'm here, did you?" Ron snarked at her. Even after Halloween, the two of them never really got along. Hermione hated Ron's lack of care towards his studies, and Ron never liked her nagging to do the homework himself, or her care for the rules. They ended up arguing a lot. Really, Harry was the only reason they talked to each other.

"Did you think you were being funny, sending me something like that for Christmas? I'm not an idiot you know!" Harry and Hermione looked at Ron in confusion.

"Your idiocy aside, what's wrong with chocolate? Don't tell me you're intolerant, because I've seen you eat plenty of chocolate before!" Hermione snarked back at him. Ron blustered, "What do you mean, chocolate!? I'm talking about that enchanting kit! What, did you want to make me feel stupid? Ancient Runes is a third year class! Why would I know how to follow along with the steps in first year?"

"Wait a minute," Harry interjected.

"Ron, Hermione didn't send you that Enchant-Your-Own-Lamp kit. I did." The wind was taken out of Ron's sails and he looked at Harry in confusion.

"What? You did? But… why? I've never learned anything like runes before."

"Well, your two great passions I've noticed are quidditch and chess, so I figured that if you got into enchanting, you could learn how to make your own quidditch broom or your own chess set. Who knows. I'm sorry that you didn't like it."

"Wait, no. That's not it. I just thought Hermione was…" Ron looked over to Hermione, who had her arms crossed, and was glaring at him.

"You know how she is." Hermione scoffed.

"You're such an idiot, Ronald. I didn't even know there were enchanting kits, and I certainly wouldn't spend so much money on you."

"I'm not an idiot!" Ron shouted. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"Alright, guys, that's enough. Hermione, why don't you sit down next to me here? Ron, You don't really need to know too much about runes to get started. You just need to make sure you get the sequence of runes correct, and it tells you the imagery you need to focus on as you carve it. Just try it out, and if you fail, then hey, at least you tried, right? It doesn't really matter that much," Harry stepped in before they started fighting again, and calmed things down.

"I guess I'll give it another shot," Ron grumbled. That night, Harry placed a very subtle suggestion onto the instruction manual of the kit. One that suggested for Ron to actually finish it. Hey, if Ron was going to be a butt about this, Harry didn't feel bad about a bit of subtle manipulation. Besides, it was productive. Maybe this will leave a lasting motivation towards enchanting. ~~ ITW, H ~~ Time passed by quickly as Harry threw himself back into his studies, and pretty soon another month had passed.

There wasn't much going on, so Harry was able to make some huge progress in his training. [Name: Harry James Potter-Black Level: 22 => 25 5. 3% Stats: [+15] Power: 75 => 90, [9], [22] Control: 90 => 93 Focus: 92 => 94 Classes: Mind Arts 12, Magizoology 11, Dueling 5, [+3] Skills: Occlumency 4, Legilimency 1, Serpensortia 5, [+4] Perks: Potter Family Magic, A Mother's Love, Horcrux, Parselmouth, Black Family Magic, Animagus, Natural Occlumens, Magical Growth, Emotional Empowerment, Harvester, Empathetic Sensing, Insight, Seer, Wide Wormhole, Teamwork Makes the Dream Work, Spellchainer] Somehow, his Power started skyrocketing compared to his other stats, making his stats roughly equal for once.

To make some nice round numbers, he spent 13 points to bring both Control and Focus up to 100. Then put the remaining 2 points into Power. Power: 90 => 92, [9], [22] Control: 93 => 100 Focus: 94 => 100 For skill points, he wanted to save up one more point so he can get the 5th level in Occlumency so he left those alone. For the three class points, he put all three into the Mind Arts, bringing it up to 15, unlocking the next perk.

[Memory Infusion: You can infuse spells with a set of emotions or memories to aid it in its objectives. Hint from Magic: Best used for animating charms. Don't give anything all of your memories. That always ends poorly.]' Interesting.' Harry could think of several ways to apply that. One of which would have been useful in his Christmas day prank. If he was interpreting this correctly, he could animate a set of instruments to play exactly what song he wanted, using his memories.

Sure, he could do it already, but that was the hard way. Mostly because he had no idea how to actually play anything, which got in the way of forming the proper intent on how he wanted to animate the instruments. Now, using this, he could just give the instruments the memory of the songs he wanted, and they would play themselves accordingly. Also, he could make some very smart golems, so there's that. It looked like he would have to dig into animation charms now.

Harry knew some of the simpler ones, but the main one, Piertotum Locomotor, taught towards the end of 6th year Charm's class, and he had only just begun looking into that year's curriculum. Outside of system progress, during these two months Ron had finished his new lamp from the enchanting kit. He was so proud of himself that he kept turning it off and on again, even during classes. He got himself a detention from Snape and the glowing stone was confiscated.

Even with detention, it wasn't enough to dampen his spirits. So it was safe to say that Harry's plan worked. Actually, now that he was thinking about it, Ron's birthday was next month, on March 1st, so maybe he should buy him another kit from the same company. He would just get the next one in the series, which walked him through getting the light stone to hover and follow behind him when commanded.' Yeah, I'll do that.'

This time, he won't place a suggestion on the instruction manual, so it would be up to Ron to actually get the motivation to do it. Early the next morning, at around 6AM, February 1st, Harry had been awake for a while now because of that same old nightmare that haunted him: Voldemort killing his mother. As usual, he was in his trunk-study reading through some of her journals, when the voices of some of his snakes hissed in his mind.

'$Master! Wake up, you sod! $'' $You shouldn't call master names like that. $''$What? Who knows if he's still asleep. He needs to wake up$''$You know he can just vanish you, right? $''$Yeah, but he wouldn't do that… right? $''$Of course he would. If I were him, I'd eat you. $''$Um.. You know I didn't mean it, right boss? Kind and forgiving Master? $''$Alright, that's enough guys. What is it? $' Harry rubbed his temples to clear the headache that dealing with these snake summons gave him.

It was almost enough to regret summoning them. But they were useful.

'$Master, you said to tell you when anyone besides Hagrid enters into the forbidden forest. There's two young girls here walking through the woods. $''$Can you describe them? $' Harry asked. In response, Harry received several mental images, depicting Daphne and Tracey from several different angles. They were both in casual skirts, blouses with the sleeves rolled up, and large brimmed pointy hats to shade their faces. Despite the skirts though, they had leather boots on, a large knapsack, and a walking stick.

They seemed kitted out for a long hike.' Now where are you two going?' Harry couldn't help but to be curious, so he collected his things and turned into a crow to catch up with them.