Chapter 150: Spherical Mishap

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I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

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11 September 1993, Hogwarts

Harry dodged a cutting curse that was coming at him and made a magic circle beneath his feet to send him flying, avoiding the sprouting vines growing where he once stood. With another magic circle, he made a localized sphere of weakened gravity around him anchored with a small reservoir of magic, allowing him to cast other spells while it ran out.

This trick was very problematic to figure out, which was to use his magic circles as temporary areas with a certain effect. It was Harry ripping off the idea of wards and using them in dueling-like charms. He had never seen anything like this in any book, but then again, not a lot of people could use Magic Circle to temporarily act like a ward's anchor.

While still falling slowly, he sent a few icicles at his opponent, who shielded by summoning a small wall of wood from the ground, which was then animated to try to grab him.

He retaliated with a wall of fire, that quickly turned the attacking branches to ash, yet the wall itself stayed resilient. Harry grinned slightly as touched the gravity magic circle that was still glowing and modified it to increase the gravity drastically in the first few feet in front of it for a fraction of a second. 

It was a new addition to his magical crest, the ability to modify magic circles on the fly. The thing seemed resistant for some reason to give him full spells, choosing to just give him more in-depth knowledge about magic circles and how they worked. It was slightly disappointing since he expected more, but he would make do with what he was given. There had to be a reason, after all, some kind of necessary learning curve so that he wouldn't hurt himself with any new spells or if one of them malfunctioned. Although the crest seemed to reward him whenever he experimented with his magic, like small nudges and principles that would help him more.

Back to the duel, he had yet to activate the modified circle. However, instead of going through with it, he created another circle to telekinetically push him up in the air, out of the gravity circle's range.

With a thought, the circle activated, and the wooden wall collapsed, crushed on its own weight, revealing its castor whose eyes were widened in surprise. Smirking, he cast a simple stunning charm at her. He saw that she was preparing to redirect it, only for it to accelerate suddenly, making her miss the spell entirely, and knocking her out.

The last Potter quickly revived Daphne, who stood up with a small glare on her face, "What in Merlin's name was that?"

Harry answered with a smug smile, "I bent space in front of the spell to knock you off your rhythm."

She huffed, "That's a dirty trick…"

Daphne was right, of course, it was a dirty trick. Any dueler worth their salt can sense spells. It was very common in competitions to make spells faster or slower to confuse their opponent, and there were a few remarkable wizards and witches that could make the spell's speed vary after it was cast. It was technically allowed in competitions since the spells were allowed, and it wasn't really shared with the general public.

If Harry could guess it was probably a great feat of magical control and arithmancy, to add a small layer in each spell to modify its movements in a way that's decided while it was cast. It was pretty risky since the details had to be decided while the dueler was casting the spell, making them make predictions of the movements of their opponents that were two or three seconds in advance which is pretty long-term when it came to the average professional duel.

Of course, what Harry did was different. He cast a secondary spell after the stunning charm that compressed the fabric of space for a fraction of a second, making it seem like it accelerated suddenly. It was far more flexible than the other methods, but it was exponentially harder to pull off.

The last Potter simply shrugged, "You said that you wanted to participate in the under-17 duelling tournament in the summer, and these sorts of tricks are things that you're going to see there."

He was right, of course. But if he was honest, he didn't really do this only for Daphne's sake. He was practising his spacial manipulation, which was a lot harder than he thought it would be. It turned out that manipulating the fabric of space wasn't easy. Standardized spells, like the expansion charm, could be used by any skilled wizard, and Harry was pretty much modifying it on the fly to make this feat of magic, but that was literally all he managed to do. It took weeks for him to modify the expansion part to compress space, and that, alone, was a very worthy achievement.

Alas, the spell had too many components and no one ever wrote its arithmetic form for him to analyze. The fact that he could already do this much was attributed to his Arcane Hearing, which allowed him to isolate the concept of expansion to compression.

He tried to go around it by studying gravity magic since space and gravity were very closely related. Luckily, there were some more pointers on that front, but what people called 'gravity altering spells' were just conjuring multiple forces telekinetically to accentuate or decrease the effect of gravity, not actively manipulate it. Like that final move against Daphne to destroy her reinforced wood wall was essentially a downward telekinetic force that adds to gravity, not a real increase of gravity.

Thankfully, Harry was already somewhat knowledgeable on how gravity worked thanks to his past life, hence how he incorporated simple tricks into his magic circles. He was still a long way off any tangible result, but it was progress, nonetheless.

Still, he wanted to practice this spacial compression spell to make it so he could cast both it and the normal spell at once, to almost make it so the spell barely travels any distance to find its victims. It was hard, but he was getting better at it every day.

He stiffened when he felt Daphne hit his shoulder, "You haven't been listening to a word I said, did you, Harry?"

"Sorry," he answered sheepishly, "What were you talking about?"

"Just the usual, asking you to join me in signing up for the duelling tournament."

He groaned, "Look, I told you many times that I'm not interested in showing off for people, by casting a set of restricted spells with no thought about it. Sure, it's a good display of counter-cursing and strategic thinking, but very few people actually appreciate it. I saw last year's final in The Prophet, and it was just a bunch of people sending blasting curses and shield charms. I just don't think that it would be fun for me to beat students without it being at least a bit challenging."

"But it could land you sponsorships, which you could use if you decide to duel full-time. I know I'm interested…"

"No, you're not," Harry answered while shaking his head, "You either want to be a healer or a curse breaker. And since you already know that I'm interested in curse-breaking, you're probably leaning towards healing."

She gaped at him for a few seconds before steeling her expression, "How could you possibly know that?"

"Because of your sister, right? I didn't notice it at first after a few hours together I could tell that there was something wrong with her, some kind of curse, I believe. It has to be something very obscure for your parents not to have found a cure by now."

She looked furious, "No, they just gave up! On their daughter! Mother tried at first. For years, she sent her to healers all around the world, curse breakers, but nothing worked. Father didn't even try. Apparently, it's a curse that's been in the Greengrass bloodline for centuries, which affects the youngest daughter in the family. In the end, they just gave up and told me that they didn't want to make whatever time Astoria had into constant visits to healers and to let her enjoy her life as much as she could. But I refuse!"

The blonde had tears in her eyes and looked down, murmuring, "I just don't want to lose my sister."

Harry knelt and gave her a small hug, "Tell, you what? I'll do my best to help you become the best healer in the world, and we're both going to look into your sister's condition together. How does that sound?"

She just hugged him tighter, "You promise?"

"Yes, I promise."

They stayed there, in silence, for a few minutes before Harry had to ask, "So, what's with your obsession with this tournament? I know that you liked duelling since it helped you learn to defend yourself, but you never really cared about the tournaments."

She looked down once more, "Astoria said that it would be cool to see me win after I told her that I was in Flitwick's club."

Harry grinned, "She really has you wrapped around her finger, doesn't she?"

His answer was a glare and a stinging hex that he redirected to the wall, "Enough with the violence, woman!"

She grinned, "What can I say? You taught me well."

"I didn't expect that it would come back to bite me in the ass!" Harry exclaimed back.

"Speaking of bites in the ass, what are you going to do with your Runes project?" the blonde asked.

And wasn't that a horrible topic to switch to? To say that Ancient Runes class was a disappointment would be an understatement. Oh, he had no problem with Professor Babbling, who was really passionate about the subject, but with the curriculum. They would spend the entire first term learning Elder Futhark but would not activate any runes. In fact, activating runes was a big part of the second term, so they weren't really going to cast any magic.

It made sense. Runes were dangerous, and understanding the alphabet, as well as knowing the exact procedures and dangers of how to activate runes, are very important. But still, for someone like Harry who had memorized half that stuff in his first year, it was just so boring.

The only silver lining was that they had to come up with a runic matrix for the end of the term, one that they would learn to channel during the second one. They could use any runic language so Harry could benefit slightly by learning a new language. He was leaning towards Egyptian Hieroglyphs. He didn't know what rune matrix he wanted to create, but learning the language alone would benefit him in the long run.

The bummer was the fact that this was a group project, specifically, this was a group project where partners had to be from different houses. It was some new initiative from Dumbledore after the war, to make all group projects spread out between houses. It would have worked, if not for the fact that Gryffindors and Slytherins could barely speak to each other without the whole thing turning into a giant battle royale.

In Ancient Runes, it was traditional that Ravenclaws and Slytherins partner up with one another, and Hufflepuffs and Gryffindor do the same in turn. He was interested in partnering up with Padma Patil since she was pretty level-headed, but Daphne had gone after her the moment it was announced. Su Li was immediately snatched up from Lily Moon. Morag McDougal was taken since she was friends with Tracy. He literally had never spoken with any other Ravenclaw in his life and that made things awkward. He was never good at the whole 'socializing' part.

He genuinely had no idea who to ask to be his partner. It was just so awkward to go to someone random that he never spoke to in his life and ask something like that.

Wait, was he that anti-social?

"Yes, you are." The blonde spoke up.

"Wait, did I say that out loud?"

"You did, yes. And I agree, you're very anti-social. Come on, you barely even talk to anyone outside of me, Tracy and Blaise. You're very dismissive of other people, Harry."

The last Potter snorted, "That's because other people aren't interesting…"

The blonde let out a burst of laughter, "You'll never know unless you actually talk to them."

He huffed in response, "I wouldn't have to do any of that if you hadn't gone after Padma like a bloodhound."

"It's not my fault you didn't take the initiative," she answered cheekily.

They continued arguing for what felt like hours. This time, he realized how much he had been stressed in the last few days. It was amazing how Daphne could just get him to relax. This was actually the first time since he came to Hogwarts that he stopped thinking about his dreams.

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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.