29 The Results!

The Herbology class was as expected for Harry. Neville was finally able to shine brightly. After getting rid of his initial shyness, he was now more confident and didn't make the usual clumsy mistakes he was famous for in the story.

Harry didn't bother to stand out in this class as he didn't have much of an interest in herbology. It was an interesting subject but when the very existence of the magical world rests on your shoulders, it seems to not matter so much. So, he only did what was required and left after the class ended. As he was leaving, he saw Neville going towards Professor Sprout with an excited expression.

'Seems like he found his love for herbology after all', thought Harry as he walked out of the class.

Days passed by like flowing water and now it was almost November. The Quidditch season was about to start and you could see the effects of it all over the castle. Students were conversing about the game everywhere. It was the hottest topic anywhere within Hogwarts.

Among all of this, one thing that was discussed the most was the position of Seeker for Gryffindor. No one knew who it was and Woods had kept it under tight wraps within the team.

This was one benefit of Harry being the Seeker as it wasn't necessary for him to really practice teamwork or anything. Woods did a few trials with the team and Harry performed overwhelmingly well. As such, he didn't see the need to carry out many practice sessions for Harry and could instead focus on other positions. This prevented others from spying on Gryffindor's practice sessions and leaking Harry's selection in the team.

Even the reserve team was involved in the practice whenever Harry wasn't there. Ron was able to get into the reserve squad and just like the story, he was very suitable for the position of keeper. Woods saw his successor in him and trained him almost as much as the main squad. This made Ron really happy as he was finally able to be a part of something that was his own and wouldn't have to be a side character for Harry. This was a huge relief to Harry and he could see the number of grey spots visibly reducing in Ron's aura.

Also, Hermione came to spectate the practice sessions of Ron. This was something Harry didn't expect. It felt as if fate was trying to move things along the original storyline where Ron and Hermione end up together.

Surprisingly, Harry didn't feel upset or jealous over this. It might be due to his mental age being a lot higher than everyone around him that he couldn't feel interested in any female student since they were all technically kids in front of him.

The thought of interfering between Ron and Hermione did cross his mind but he pushed it down. He had much bigger things to worry about and something inside his soul was telling him that it was useless to try to get closer to Hermione. He couldn't understand why he felt like this but it was a pretty strong feeling and as he kept getting stronger due to his daily training, this feeling kept getting stronger. It wasn't just limited to Hermione. He felt a lot of things would be meaningless to do and it would be better to keep himself away from getting involved in the lives of everyone too much. So, he threw himself into his training with even more zeal and the results were visible after only a few weeks of practice.

He was currently standing in front of Flitwick and they were about to start their usual training session.

They were inside an empty class and they stood almost twenty feet away facing each other. They both did the magician's bow and Flitwick tossed a coin in the air. The moment the coin touched the floor, both of them flicked their wands. They had fired the same 'Expelliarmus' spell. Ideally, the two spells should have canceled each other after meeting at the center but instead, Harry's spell was the one that got canceled and Flitwick's spell went on to hit Harry. As soon Harry got struck with the spell, he felt the mana particles enter his body and force their way towards his arms. Suddenly, he felt a twitching sensation in his arms and his palms started opening due to reflex. But, he forcefully closed his palms and resisted the force trying to empty his them. Finally, he used his own mana to push out the 'foreign' mana particles. As this happened, he was able to relax a little.

This had taken him a lot of time to master but now he could do all this within a fraction of a second. It became almost instinctual to him.

This was the first lesson Flitwick taught him. They would only use a single spell for training and the focus would be on honing his reflexes and the power he puts behind the spell by reading his opponent's move. Flitwick had set two specific goals for Harry:

1. Harry needs to fire a spell that can cancel Flitwick's spell exactly at the center point between the two. He needs to do this consecutively ten times.

2. He needs to learn to control his body to negate any status affecting spell that hit him like Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Petrificus Totalus, etc.

The first point was pretty straightforward as this only needed him to strengthen his reflexes. Moreover, the ability to judge the power of spells was being trained inside the room of requirements every day so he wasn't worried about that. He was almost there in this aspect and that was evident in the spellcasting today. He was off by only a few centimeters from the center and even the final spell that hit him wasn't that powerful. Its power had been canceled by his own spell so only a very minor spell hit him at the end.

This was a great advancement in his magic control and there was a look of approval in the eyes of Flitwick as he saw Harry resisting his spell almost instantly.

"Harry, you have shown a remarkable progress in our training sessions and I can see that you have worked very hard to get here. Always remember what I told you before. A true wizard battle isn't about the spells. If the difference in power is too overwhelming then no amount of spells and skills can save you. But if the magic power is almost similar, then what decides the battle are your reflexes and judgment. Also, you need to get to a level where spells like 'Expelliarmus' don't affect you. After all, it is absolutely humiliating to have your wand taken away from you by just a novice spell like this. I know you can use wandless magic pretty well but it is one thing to do so by choice and another to do it because you couldn't even keep your wand. So, practice more and only after you master this can we move onto the next phase of your training" reminded Flitwick and left the class.

Harry had heard this speech many times in the last few weeks from Flitwick. He was able to read all the books Flitwick suggested and when he showed a basic proficiency in the dark spells, Flitwick started his current training regimen. This has been going on for the last month and Harry could feel that he would master this before Christmas. He could only wonder what the next phase of his training would entail.

Also, his training with Snape was also progressing well. Snape constantly challenged his views on magic and forced him to think out of the box. This lead to the creation of a few original spells that Harry was really proud of.

Snape also asked Harry to learn Occlumency but stopped after he learned that Harry was already a master when it came to Occlumency and to some extent Legilimency. Harry also learned a lot about potions from Snape. Although Snape was a bit reluctant to teach him anything related to potions, he changed his mind when Harry displayed his true abilities. This was an opportunity Snape couldn't pass on as it was extremely rare for him to see someone with a similar level of talent as him in potions.

So, Harry was widening his knowledge and his repertoire of skills every day.

As Flitwick left the class, Harry went to the main hall for dinner and later for his daily practice to the spell arena. He had already cleared the first floor with and without his wand so he moved up to the second floor. This floor allowed the usage of spells of all seven years. He was struggling a bit on this floor. But the thing he was struggling with was very unexpected. He actually did pretty decently in his wandless magic but he couldn't clear it using his wand.

He did a lot of research about this and he could only conclude that it had something to do with the 'Wandlore'. There was no subject about the wand manufacturing in any schools around the world. Wands were predominantly used by European and American schools and as such, the actual number of wizards using wand was pretty small since the majority of wizard population resided in countries of Africa and Asia. There wasn't much interaction between these cultures but Harry knew that some African cultures used totems to channel magic while the Eastern countries used talismans and other artifacts like swords and seals to use magic efficiently. Each country was influenced by their historical culture and myths. The Eastern countries had the longest recorded history and were heavily influenced by their culture. On the other hand, America only had a history of almost two centuries and the European history was filled with wars and constant change of rulers. The environment also played a major role in this. India and China have some of the best conditions for human settlement so they have much longer sustaining empires throughout history. Even those who came to invade these two countries eventually gave up on going back and settled down there itself.

This was the reason for their diverse culture and long historical traditions.

As such, they didn't keep themselves restricted to any single type of magical inheritance and you could find many different types of artifacts used for spell casting. This also held true for the areas around ancient Greece, Roman, and the Persian empire. They also didn't use wands in their battles.

Thinking of this, Harry actually started thinking of the usability of his wand in the future. He was confident enough in his spell casting speed when it came to wandless magic but as he used his wand, he could feel that there was something holding him back.

He attributed it to the stages of spell casting.

He was able to control his mana to almost perfection and this was the reason for his rapid spellcasting when using his bare hands. But when he used his wand, there was an additional stage where the mana from his palm went inside the wand and then the spell was fired. This created a gap. Although the power of the spell was amplified due to the wand, the absolute control was lost. He had no control over the wand's spell casting process. Even if he could somehow understand the 'Wandlore' from Ollivanders or Gregorovitch, he could feel that it wasn't suitable for him.

He decided to talk to Dumbledore about this in his next meeting.

He had another motive for meeting the headmaster. He had accomplished the first challenge Dumbledore had given him.

It was a pretty simple one - 'Create a perfect Patronus'.

He was anyways going to do this but since he could get an additional reward for mastering the spell by the white wizard himself, he decided to do this a little earlier. So, he was going to get his reward and discuss his issue with Dumbledore when they meet next.

But before that, there was something else coming up.

Two days passed by and today was finally the day Harry could fulfill one of his dreams.

Today was 1st of November and it was the day Gryffindor went against Slytherin in the first Quidditch game of the season.

Today was also the day that would go down in history as the most unusual Quidditch game ever.