Chapter Twelve: Fiery Mysteries

My second year at Hogwarts began peacefully. Paulina and I shared a compartment and talked about our summer. She bragged with minor success in her Occlumency studies, stating that her focus was much better now – which increased her reading speed and ability to memorize information.

As for me, I told Paulina about my awesome pranking spells and spent the majority of the journey teaching her how to cast them. She was still not interested in my Roaring Fart Jinx – to my great disappointment.

Aside from that, nothing really worth mentioning happened besides that Hufflepuff got a firstie with the name Poppy Woodpecker. I barely stopped myself from breaking with laughter when Professor McGonagall called out for the girl to step forward and put the Sorting Hat on.

Well, there was also the fact that Charlie Wesley became the Head Boy while Gemma Watson from Slytherin was nominated Head Girl.

My increased height and the overall improvement of my physique were also noticed by the female population. Paulina had a hard time glaring at all the girls that giggled and whispered to each other while checking me out.

In response, I just smiled roguishly and basked in the feminine attention.

…

The second day of my second year was a bit more eventful.

Lily Potter, wearing a sexy office outfit consisting of a long-sleeved white blouse tucked in a black knee-length pencil skirt completed with black tights and black pumps, invited me to her office after dinner. When Paulina heard that, she openly glared at the Professor, which caused the older woman to smirk in amusement.

"Don't worry, Captain Barbossa," I assured my pouting female friend. "Your loyal subordinate won't let himself be fooled by her womanly charms."

"Why would I even care?" Paulina shot back with a hiss. "You can do whatever you want with Professor Potter!"

"Then why are you insisting on accompanying me to her office?" I questioned with a raised brow.

"To make sure you don't get lost," Paulina explained as if that was obvious. I just smirked and shook my head in response.

Paulina developed a bit during her summer holidays, and my best guess was that she and most of the girls in my years fully entered their puberty by now. That explained their heightened interest in boys.

"Maybe I can even try and convince her to let you join us," I offered with a grin.

Paulina stopped to at me in surprise. "Would you really do that?"

"Yeah, most men dream of being together with two women at once," I replied with a cheeky wink. "If you understand what I am meaning."

"Johnny, you prat!" she slapped me on the back of my head, blushing slightly. "You are too young to think about something like that!"

"About what exactly, Paulina?" I pressed with a wide grin.

She huffed and stomped ahead. "Walk faster, Johnny. We are going to be late!"

…

Professor Potter wasn't surprised to see Paulina entering her surprisingly homey office along with me. She gave me a questioning look, and I just shrugged my shoulder, silently saying that there was nothing I can do.

"Before we start, I suggest we address each other by the first name," Lily suggested as she casually took a seat on the edge of her office table, crossing her long, shapely legs. Paulina and I nodded in reply and made ourselves comfortable in two armchairs before the professor.

"Very well," Lily started, smiling brightly. "My plan for our time together is to help and support. I won't demand anything exhausting from you, Johnny. But I will nevertheless expect certain progress from you. Our first activity will be to discuss the two books that I gave before your summer holidays."

My face split with a grin when I heard that. There was no reason to waste time with stuff I already know, so I decided to show off a bit.

"Lily, about that… ehm, I already memorized everything from the books and even created a new spell," I informed with a smirk. "Do you wish to see it?"

Lily and Paulina's eyes both took a skeptical look, but their gaze changed to genuine surprise and shock when they comprehended the meaning of my last words. I wiggled my eyebrows at them, looking utterly smug.

"Well, the incantation is Flammarys," I explained. "It's basically a stream of fire that will cover the target and continue burning similar to napalm, nourishing itself from the magic of the victim or the environment."

"That's…" Lily started but fell silent again, at a loss for words.

"Dangerous!" Paulina exclaimed, leaning over to punch my shoulder. "Johnny, what were you thinking?!"

"Tell that the pyromaniacs in the book," I pouted with a huff. "One of them wanted to create a spell that summons meteorites. He didn't manage that, but his spell still summons a giant fireball that could obliterate an entire building."

"Really?" Paulina inquired with big eyes, looking intrigued.

I snorted in amusement. "Yeah, but the spell is crap. It takes way too long to produce the fireball, and a single slip in your concentration will break the spell, and you are forced to restart... well, that is if you survive the backlash."

"Lily, what is your opinion on that giant fireball spell?" I questioned, my tone as if I was the professor in the room.

"Giant fireballs?!" Lily repeated, her features darkened with disapproval. She hopped from the table and started walking back and forth, looking stressed.

Paulina and I observed her in silence.

"Johnny Vegaz," Lily started, exhaling a frustrated breath. She then turned to look at me with a stern gaze. "Professor Flitwick didn't give you these books to study weapons of mass destruction!"

"He didn't?" I replied in surprise written all over my face. "But Maesters of Fyre is full of potential weapons of mass destruction. And Mastering the Inferno even talks about theories on how to control Fiendfyre in order to maximize the damage done by the spell."

"Fienfyre!?" Lily exclaimed in horror.

"Yeah," I nodded and pulled said book out of my pocket before showing her the pages I was talking about.

Lily narrowed her eyes at these pages and frowned. "All I can see are moving images of fiery creatures."

"Me too," Paulina added. "Is that how Fiendfyre is supposed to look like?"

Confused, I looked at the pages before me that explained how to dominate the malicious 'spirits' of Fiendfyre. There were no pictures at all, only some artful lines here and there.

"Could it be that these pages are enchanted or something?" I suggested.

Lily nodded with another frown. "That's very likely."

She grabbed her wand and cast a few spells on the pages to scan the nature of the moving pictures. Her facial expression told me that her results weren't helpful at all.

"Your exemplar is a copy of the original," Lily mumbled in confusion. "Moving images shouldn't work at all because of that, and the magic that protects the text on Fienfyre is..."

She took a deep breath and scanned the pages again. "Magic is strictly neutral. Even the negative energy of the dark arts only latches itself to magic. But my scans tell me that these pages are completely made from the element of fire. This shouldn't be possible!"

"So, nobody but me can read these pages?" I wondered loudly.

"Try to read them for us," Paulina suggested, moving to stand behind me so she could look over my shoulder.

Lily looked expectant as well, and so I started reading the first few lines of text. I didn't notice anything strange happening, but I still stopped for a moment and saw that Lily and Paulina got all sweaty all of a sudden. Their eyes were unfocused as if they were captured in a trance.

"Ehm, did something happen?" I inquired curiously.

Lily broke out of her daze. "What?"

"Why am I all sweaty?!" Paulina complained loudly after breaking from her stupor.

"Alright, there is obviously a protection against reading the stuff out loud," I concluded while the girls were pulling at their sweaty clothes.

Lily's white top turned slightly transparent due to all the sweat, allowing me to see that she was wearing a red bra. I winked at her flirtatiously with a small grin when she noticed that I was checking her out. She huffed in response, appearing slightly amused. It almost seemed that she was actually taking pleasure in my attention.

'Fuck, I really need to grow up faster!' – I whined inwardly, cursing the fact that I still had to wait one or two years.

That's why I devoured so much dragon meat. It didn't only make me feel manly, but I realized that the stuff actually accelerated the maturity of my body. I even found out that dragon meat was so popular with men because it contained stuff that would make them 'manlier.' Like, it would make your voice sound deeper and more masculine.

The downside was that it would promote behavior typical for a dragon. Devouring the basilisk also seemed to have improved my fondness for snakes. Sometimes I found myself imagining Lily Potter wearing sexy, tight-fitting snake-skin pants.

'Huh?'

My ponderings were interrupted when I felt someone shaking my shoulder.

"Johnny!" Paulina yelled in annoyance. "Are you still here with us?"

"Yeah," I replied. "Did something happened?"

"No, but we need to change our sweaty clothes," she explained, pulling at her sweater with visible discomfort on her face.

"Paulina is right," Lily nodded with a faint smile. "And I need to tell Professor Flitwick about the dangerous content that is hidden in his books. So I think we finish our lessons for today and meet the coming Friday again after dinner if that is okay with both of you?"

"Can I show off my Flammarys spell the next time?" I asked with puppy eyes. "It's really awesome, and I need some awed feedback so I can feel better about myself."

Paulina rolled her eyes at me, muttering something under her breath.

"Professor Flitwick will probably join us the next time we meet," Lily replied with a nod. "He can examine your performance, and if you really managed to develop a new and functional spell, you might want to register it as your creation. Professor Flitwick can help you with that."

Having discussed everything, Lily wished us a good night, and Paulina and I left her office towards our common room.

Arriving there, my female friend wished me a good night, too. She wanted to shower her sweat off and do some Occlumency training before going to bed.

"I can help you if you want," I offered cheekily. "And I wouldn't mind sharing a bed with you after we are done."

"Prat!" Paulina huffed with a blush, punching my shoulder before racing off to the girl's dorm.

"Paulina and Jessica would make great friends," I muttered to myself, shaking my head with a grin.

I returned to my own room for more privacy, closed the door, and then teleported to the Chamber of Johnny to see if feeding Jessica Jones' blood to my fire showed any effects already.

Feeding her blood to my fire didn't give me any direct benefits, but I felt a very slow developed happening inside me. My benefits were small, but an improvement was an improvement, nevertheless. I could sense that I got stronger by a few percentages ever since I let my fire consume the blood. That didn't sound like much, but one must keep in mind that I could lift a two tons heavy boulder without much of an effort. If I were to guess, I would say that I was five and a half tons strong right now.

Devouring the basilisk improved my physical qualities the most. The potent magical essence that dwelled in the body of the millennium-old snake was the best material I could hope for when it comes to improving my own body. It was similar to these Chinese fantasy stories where the protagonist finds the blood of some ancient beast, and then drinks the stuff to temper his body with it or something.

But physical strength wasn't worth much if one could do magic!

Even the mighty Superman was vulnerable to magic!

Well, back to the main topic…

Absorbing her blood also gave me a relatively good understanding of Jessica's power. I was now aware of the fact that she was under the influence of some kind of cosmic energy that turns your hair and eyes pink for some strange reason. Oh, and she also possessed superhuman strength, superhuman durability, and healed a lot faster than normal humans – this also gave her superhuman longevity. Her brain and mind enjoyed a resistance telepathic influence and stuff like mind-magic, and she could fly at will.

She had the classic hero skillset.

However, Jessica's flying ability was 'locked' and she couldn't use it to its full potential. She only used it to jump really high so far. She told me that she tried to fly several times but always ended up losing control and then crashed into stuff, or once even dropped into the ocean.

Due to my understanding, I could tell that she needed to get a mental push that would force her to use her flying abilities at full power. The best idea I had regarding this was to throw her out of a plane and hope that she would survive it on her own. I could definitely save her with my teleportation ability, but I wouldn't tell her that.

Since Dremoria was a part of me, somehow, I also gained some understanding of Killgrave's powers. No benefits in terms of special powers, but I was now strangely aware of the full nature of his ability. That information would prove itself useful if I ever planned to create a powerful mind-control drug. With the help of the stuff that was already available in the Harry Potter world, I could basically cook a liquid Imperius and enslave someone to my will totally.

Even so, I would only ever use such stuff if it was absolutely necessary. Introducing such a tool to the game would only attract all kinds of trouble. People often forgot that while power makes you powerful, it also attracts the greedy, the ambitious, and all kinds of nasty opportunists. The more power you have, the more freedom you have to sacrifice because you have to watch your back all the time.

I was a firm believer of Murphy's Law, that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Just the thought about creating the mind-control drug made me feel uneasy, as if I was playing with fire.

Having said all that, my current ambition was to prepare for my first… hunt!

My target was the so-called Tebo, a magical warthog that could turn invisible. I already had the Disillusionment Charm, but turning invisible 'wandlessly' was without question the superior technique. With one single mental command, I could enter a full ninja assassin mode.

However, in preparation for the hunt, I had to come up with a 'Thermal Vision' spell first. It was the best way to hunt such a beast, and it baffled me that there wasn't such a spell already available for me to learn and master. The stuff I read on the Tebo mentioned that the magical folk of Africa used special traps to capture the beast.

It couldn't only turn itself invisible, but it was obviously a lot larger and fast than your average warthog. Its leathery hide was very thick, plated with bony plates, and magic-resistant to the point that most spells would simply bounce off. The pictures I saw showed a car-sized, bulky beast with a slightly elongated head that looked like a white skull covered in spikes. Its main weapons were four large canines and a set of sharp front teeth that can cut off a limb with a single bite.

The beast was also highly aggressive and attacked intruders that entered its territory on sight and unprovoked. If it saw you, the Tebo would go invisible and charge at your with murderous speed, mauling you to death.

But I was confident in my ability to handle the beast with the help of my teleportation skill and a thermal vision spell.

"Maybe I should try to get myself a shotgun for good measure," I muttered while lazing around my favorite chair, munching on dragon meat.

Obtaining a gun was easy. New York was probably full of supervillains and thugs, and I only had to find the hideout of some bad boys and girls and steal their toys.

Killgrave and Jessica Jones' existence made me curious to see if there were more people like them running around - since most of the Marvel stuff happened after the turn of the millennium. I would probably visit New York very soon and-…

"Fuck," I cursed, my eyes widening. "Wasn't Black Cat raped in her youth?!"

Black Cat, also known as Felicia Hardy, was my wet dream when it comes to the Marvel Universe. Then came Susan Storm from the Fantastic Four and Emma Frost. They were my personal goddesses of beauty. I wouldn't be sad if I can't have a relationship with them, but nobody harms the divine trio of beauty!

"Fucking bloody hell, I need to protect her!" I exclaimed with my heart beating wildly.

With that said, I jumped into my ninja costume and teleported to New York. My aim was to find and break into the Empire State University and see if Felicia Hardy was already a student there.

Naturally, I knew quite a lot about Black Cat since she was one of my favorites. The guy that was going to assault her was called Ryan. He actually saved her from another rape attempt during a party. They became a thing after that, and later, Ryan demanded to push their relationship to a new level and make it more physical. Felicia protested, but yeah… it didn't help.

Instead of accepting her status as a victim, Felicia trained hard so she could beat up Ryan to hell and back. But that guy died in some accident before she could do that, and then she became the Black Cat, following in her father's footsteps.

My aim was to prevent her tragic past from happening and maybe try to motivate her into becoming Black Cat earlier.

…

Hours later and I existed the Empire State University with a sigh of relief.

Using the unlocking charm Alohomora allowed me easy access. I turned some offices into a chaotic mess until I found files on former students, students that were attending the university, and those who would join next year. There were some files on younger people that were classified as high potential candidates; one of them was Peter Parker, who would enter his first year in high school the coming year.

The future Mister Spiderman would visit the Midtown High School, located in Forrest Hill, Queens. Another lead to follow since there was a high chance that Felicia might go to that school - recalling that there was an alternate reality where she and Spiderman went to the same school.

And since the night was also young, I made us of a Reparo to vanish the huge disorder I created, and then started to teleport around towards Queens until I eventually found my desired target location.

Breaking into a high school was easier than into a university, stupidly easy. And it didn't take long before I finally found the information I was looking for the entire night.

"Jackpot," I whispered with a victorious grin.

Felicia Hardy was a senior in her last year and would finish her high school education this year. My next action made me feel uncomfortable, like a creepy stalker, but I also memorized Felicia's private address and whatever I could find on her.

"Hmm, I should introduce her to Jessica and befriend these two," I muttered to myself, deep in thought.

The latter could act as her big sis and maybe motivate Felicia into taking martial arts lessons. I would naturally present myself to the young future Black Cat as well and impress her with my super awesome everything. If that didn't ignite her spark, then nothing will.

With the first step of my little project being successful, I cleaned up the mess I created and returned to Hogwarts to continue my studies.

*bampf*

…