52 Chapter 52

Harry had played around with his new Dragon Patronus for a couple of hours before he started to become tired. Mental stamina was pretty much the only factor that limited the size, time length and number of spells a wizard or witch could cast before experiencing 'magical exhaustion'. But only repeated training could increase it. Well, that and eating souls.

He had been in the Room of Requirement as soon as dinner had ended, researching everything to do with magical methods of tracking or hunting. So when he started to feel tired around 2am after experimenting as much as he could in the limited conditions of the RoR, sleeping sounded like a good idea.

Having a House-Elf teleport him back to his room in the Ravenclaw Tower, Harry's head had barely touched his pillow before he was asleep. It was only a solid eight hours later that he began to stir, luckily, it was the weekend, and he didn't have classes.

It hadn't taken long for Harry to reason out why his Patronus was a kick-arse Dragon. Mainly, it was because that had been what he was trying to produce, and secondly, he shared more than a few traits associated with Dragons.

According to the Chinese Zodiac, Dragons symbolise such character traits as dominance, ambition, authority, dignity and capacity. Dragons prefer to live by their own rules and if left on their own, are usually successful. They're driven, unafraid of challenges, and willing to take risks.

The Muggle mythology on Dragons generally had them depicted as having an underground lair or cave and are envisioned as greedy, gluttonous with voracious appetites. The Dragon is a symbol of evil, in both the chivalric and Christian traditions.

But in the Orient, it symbolises supernatural power, wisdom, strength, and hidden knowledge. In most traditions, it is the embodiment of chaos and untamed nature. They were also portrayed as very possessive of what they consider belonging to them.

Any one of these traits could be used to describe Harry/Chad. And with the knowledge that the caster could influence the form the Patronus could take, who wouldn't try for a Dragon? The result had been stunning to witness, way better than a poxy Deer.

The sheer size and brightness of his Patronus on his first cast had been from him focusing all of his power and concentration on producing the Hungarian Horntail as large and realistic as he could. His magic had filled in the gaps and then overpowered the spell. The first cast had ended up using a fair bit of his mental stamina.

Harry had then dismissed and recast the spell multiple times until he was able to do so comfortably. By the time he had tired himself out, he no longer needed the incantation or the wand movements. Just jabbing his wand and picturing his bad-arse Dragon with happy thoughts was enough to make it appear in all its menacing glory.

He understood that 'Happiness' was the anathema of Dementors, but it made no sense for a defensive spell. Nearly any other emotion would be more rational to use, yet none of them would produce the same results as happiness. Magic, it just wasn't logical.

But that didn't matter. After a week of practising, he had been able to adjust the size, make it zoom across the room to Boppy and relay a message, and fail when he used tailor-made Masking Spells to prevent a Patronus from locating Boppy, even if he was in sight.

During this time, Harry had been salivating over becoming an Animagus and being able to morph into a terror-inducing creature of death and destruction! Although he didn't currently have the time to become one and having such a colossal form would have its downsides.

With such a large target, it would be easy to hit with spells. But that's not to say Dragons didn't have any defence against this! Dragonhide is highly resistant to the spells cast by the average wizard, even capable of deflecting them. Also, having a massive fire breathing tank charging at you wouldn't give you much time to act.

Still, just like all living creatures, Dragons can also be killed by the Killing Curse. But it would take multiple wizards or an exceptionally powerful wizard to cast it a few times to do so as their magic resistance is legendary. So much so, that like the Basilisk, their hide is used for magically protective armour by wizards.

But imagine being able to fly through the air and spew down fire on your adversaries! Not to mention, suddenly becoming a massive death machine in an enclosed space with your enemies!

There was also the problem with being outed as an illegal Animagus.

Animagi need to be registered because they can bypass specific magical securities, and the Ministry of Magic had used their brains for once to make a registry.

Since it wasn't common for people to become an Animagus, if they had a list of all those that could do so, their suspect list would be considerably smaller. Still, having a Dragon as his animal form was not guaranteed since there had been no known cases except in the stories he had read in his first life. And Harry was not going to be relying purely on Fanfiction.

It had misled him a couple of times now, but using different emotions to form a Patronus was the least of them. The first had been inheritance vaults, with Harry eager to find out what a magical blood test would reveal. As if greedy goblins that hate wizards would leave forgotten vaults full of gold untouched.

Then had been the Acromantula silk, but that had turned out to be fine since it could actually be used and was a superior material to anything that was currently on the market. But the most significant shock fanon knowledge had given him was the Point-Me Spell!

He had continually ridiculed stupid wizards for not using the Point-Me Spell to find hidden Muggle treasure or long lost forgotten ruins to loot. Turns out, the reason they didn't wasn't that they were idiots, (though they still were just not in this case) it was because the spell only caused their wand to point north!

The fabled Point-Me Spell was just a glorified compass! It had been such a shock when he had found that out as he had planned to exploit the spell to go treasure hunting when he had some spare time. The charm didn't even have its own page, as he found it when researching how to track people and was just noted as being useful to help against getting lost.

Still, after that devastating reality, it just left him to worry about house-elves and phoenixes being used to track him. Since he was pretty sure Dumbledore wouldn't bother to go through the effort of creating a Taboo word in the hopes Harry might use it. Luckily, Boppy was a house-elf, and funnily enough, knew all about house-elves...

"Don't worry Master, it is easy to hide you from House-Elves not bonded to you. Leave it to me, our ninjas will take care of this!" Boppy dutifully informed him when he asked for his advice.

"Thanks, Boppy. That takes a load off of my mind, not having to worry about the Hogwarts' elves tracking me will make things much easier."

"There are always five of our elves watching over you at Hogwarts, Master, there will be many more when you leave!"

Although Harry knew this as it had been part of the precautions he took to protect against the Dark Lord while at school, it made him feel much better at how earnest Boppy sounded about his safety.

"Thanks again Boppy. You are the best Head-Elf a wizard could ask for! Now, what do you know about Phoenixes, can you stop them as well?" Harry hopefully inquired.

"Not so much, Master, but we can easily follow them if they Flame-Travel! They are easy to find with the amount of fire magic they use to travel! Our elves stationed at Hogwarts to help you have already noted how the bird travels after you identified it as an enemy." Boppy happily informed him.

Once again patting himself on the back for his idea to send Boppy to school and improve his vocabulary, Harry thought about what he had just heard. It seemed although they might not be able to contain the bird, they could at least harass it while close to the ground.

And since they didn't really have to worry about killing it as it could just come back to life, he could either let them chop it up or take it out himself with a Killing Curse. Probably better to kill it with the Unforgivable, since he had proof that it would come back from it. Who knows what slicing it up with magical swords would do to the bird.

All he would need to do was collect the ashes and place them in a special cage. A phoenix was a rare source of precious materials that Harry wanted. Whether it would become an ingredient farm or his loyal pet depended on if Fawkes was loyal to Dumbledore through nefarious means or by its own volition.

Though Harry was pretty sure the firebird would not be willing to pump out tears and feathers for his experiments, so it would most likely end up confined and harvested for magical components. Either way, Fawkes needed to be neutralised before the Christmas holidays, and Harry needed a way to get Dumbledore to leave Hogwarts.

It was time for Sirius to rejoin the wizarding world!