Chapter 75

Harry's birthday was then spent lazing away in the Alley at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour eating ice cream and window shopping. A good two hours were spent browsing through the merchandise at Quality Quidditch Supplies. On a whim, Sirius bought twenty practice bludgers, fifty practice snitches, a professional grade Quidditch set, several older (and therefore outdated) model Cleansweeps, and a couple of extra beater bats. When Harry asked him if he was mental (because he thought it a waste to purchase so many of the same reusable Items), Sirius just grinned and told him that he bought them to help Harry improve his Casting Skill.

Their third and final day was spent buying Harry's supplies for the coming year; which included the books and supplies for Harry's electives (Arithmancy and Ancient Runes – Harry had no interest in Divination or Muggle Studies and Hedwig was too prone to jealousy for him to take Care of Magical Creatures). Sirius had gone really quiet when he'd learned that Harry still hadn't grown physically during the past four years (aside from filling out and putting on a couple of pounds) after attempting to take the thirteen year old to buy new school robes.

They returned to the castle in a rather subdued mood that evening after eating supper at one of the more popular cafes in Diagon Alley. Harry disappeared down into the Chamber immediately upon their return while Sirius headed up to the Infirmary to confront Madam Pomfrey about Harry's lack of physical growth. There had been an awkward few days as the two of them danced about the elephant in the room (said elephant being Harry's lack of growth). It was something that bothered Sirius far more than it bothered Harry because Harry was long used to not growing by now; even if he wasn't happy about it. Eventually, Sirius distracted both of them by introducing Harry to the new improved training regime he'd thought up.

Harry would soon learn to love and hate spell casting practice.

The next two weeks of summer were spent dodging twenty bludgers (that he wasn't allowed to destroy) while shooting paint spells at fifty fast moving targets in the form of the training snitches. The practice was done both on foot and on the older brooms that Sirius had bought and it forced Harry to learn how to fire spells while on the move without sacrificing his spell casting speed or accuracy. It was sheer madness… and he both loved and hated it. Sirius would often complicate matters by either taking up a pair of beater bats to launch the bludgers at Harry one after another (instead of just letting them fly about) or by trying to distract Harry with an assortment of prank items or spells.

Those practices were rather intense though and as such, Harry occasionally took a day off to just rest and recoup. It was on one such day, on the seventeenth of August, that he decided he wanted to give Hedwig a chance to stretch her wings under the sunny sky and so he took his Nimbus Two Thousand (the broom he'd been given in first year) and headed out onto the grounds to chase his familiar through the sky. Gaki joined them for a while, the owl had stayed in Harry's dorm with the window open since the owl didn't care for the atmosphere down in the Chamber of Secrets (active bludgers weren't exactly owl friendly, after all).

Everything was great right up until Harry ran into his first dementor.

There had been no warning aside from the sudden chill in the air. One minute he'd been laughingly playing tag with Hedwig and Gaki and the next he was suddenly falling from the sky as he became trapped in his memories; reliving the horror of Aincrad's last moments as he was forced to watch Asuna and Kirito shatter over and over again while Klein and Agil vanished in pillars of white light before the entire world crumbled around him. He was saved by Ronan (who'd been guarding the forest's edge at the time and seen him fall from the sky) but the damage had already been done.

Emotionally and mentally scarred from being forced to relive his worst memory, Harry withdrew completely and holed himself up in the Basilisk's Chamber within Salazar Slytherin's statue down in the Chamber of Secrets for the rest of the summer with Hedwig. He refused to see anyone, refused to speak to anyone, and refused to eat. He was drowning in grief and guilt over the harsh reminder of everything that he'd lost almost two years ago. Sirius stayed in the main chamber with him during that time but Harry never even noticed the wizard since he never left the statue.

Dobby, the House Elf he'd purchased through trickery from Lucius Malfoy (an elf he had pretty much forgotten about after he had ordered the Elf to never call him Harry Potter), finally brought him up to the Infirmary just five days before term started when his health took a turn for the worse due to his self neglect. He would remain in the Infirmary until September first when he was released just in time to attend the Start of Term Feast.

Harry had no desire to attend the feast but the thirteen year old had been ordered to attend the feast by his supposed guardian.

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