Chapter 13: Recap

Over the next few weeks I fell into a strict schedule. At 5 am I would wake up and do my morning exercises. Those consisted of running a lap around the Black Lake, approximately ten kilometers, then going into the Room of Requirements for some light weight training. I took care to never push it too hard so as to not stunt my growth. 

After that I would go to classes. Charms was my favorite, with Transfiguration a close second. Surprisingly, I loved potions, but unsurprisingly, I hated the teacher. Snape made it a point to make the class as miserable as possible, constantly taking away points or messing someone up by interrupting them. My only saving grace was that I wasn't in the same class as the Gryffindores or Slytherins. Believe it or not, Snape was actually one of the fairest teachers out there when it came to the Ravens and Puffs. He hated us equally, so we ended up getting the same treatment. 

Herbology was alright, but I couldn't see myself actually putting any work into the subject outside of class like I did with charms, transfiguration and even potions. To make any of the knowledge useful, you'd have to have your own garden which was far too time consuming for my future plans. I resigned myself to buying everything I needed for future potions, my wallet crying already. 

We had flying classes every Tuesday and Thursday. They were fun, but not exceptionally so. I enjoyed flying and I wasn't as bad as I expected, but I wasn't some quidditch genius like Harry was. He had already been drafted to play on the team and had his first game by now. Seeing him fly like he did humbled me to the point I knew I'd never try out for the Ravenclaw team, even if I had the time or the interest. 

HIstory was history. It was probably my least favorite class and was just an excuse to do homework for other classes. I read ahead in the textbook whenever I got the chance and simply zoned Binns out. Somehow Hermione was still taking notes every class period, even though I knew she had read the entire book like I had. Old habits die hard I suppose. 

Defense was one of the classes with the highest potential for learning useful and fun spells, but Quirrel ruined it. The smell of garlic was overpowering, and his stutter made it nearly impossible to focus on the lesson. Much like history, I resigned myself to learning the material outside of class. 

Outside of the classes, I had gotten much closer to my little group of friends despite the fact most of my day was training. Tony, Michael, Su, Lisa, Harry, Hermione and I had made the study group a regular thing whenever we all had homework or simply wanted to hang out. I had gotten to know them all much better and at some point stopped seeing them as characters on a page, but as my friends. 

Harry had stopped hanging out with Ron as much, pretty much dooming the already mangled plotline. He would still sit with him in classes or eat with him every now and then, but far more of his attention was spent on Hermione, Tony and I. Because of all the positive influences by two Ravenclaws and one Raven in a Lion's clothing, Harry's grades shot up and his potential was starting to be revealed. 

After a few talks, muggleborn to 'muggleborn' with him, I seemed to have reignited his wonder in magic. Where he initially saw Hogwarts as just a school and the homework as a chore, he now saw it as a means to better his life and escape from the powerless feeling he had from the Dursleys. 

Over the course of the last few weeks, Harry went from an average student to one of the best in his year with the help of the study group and his natural talent. 

And of course, there was the training. I had gotten strong enough that I decided to incorporate some heavier weights into my training regiment, still keeping it light enough that it wouldn't permanently harm my growth.

I also went beyond the first level of the training dummy and started training at the second one. This allowed for the dummy to take some steps to dodge and cast higher tier spells, along with casting them faster. The wait in between spells was now less than two seconds, which pressured me into increasing my cast time.

The dummy was much more powerful than any student was shown to be, at least up till the fourth year. Any older student with an interest in dueling or defense could easily take one of these down, but I would be hard pressed to find a student under 15 that was able to stand against even the second level. 

I assumed it was a relic from the past, most likely before the statute of secrecy was created. Witches and Wizards had a much harder life back then, with muggles constantly launching crusades against them. Therefore, any safe haven such as Hogwarts was sure to train its students to be able to defend themselves once they were out of school. 

Dueling was quickly becoming more than training for me. I began to genuinely enjoy the activity, using it as a time to relax and let my frustrations out. Sometimes I would even enter a strange meditative state where everything seemed easy and obvious. Time seemed to slow and I was able to cast much faster. It was in this state that I first defeated the dueling dummy. 

Besides the magical side of my training, I had also begun to train dodging. I figured there was no reason to waste magical energy if I could simply step once to the side. Not to mention the Unforgivables. If I was truly going to step up and fight back against Voldemort and his supporters, I would need a surefire way to stop their favorite spell. As of now, dodging was the best way I had available. 

To do this, I would set the training dummy back to level one and restrict the usage of my wand. I would keep it on me for safety reasons, but if I used it once I would consider it a failure. That, paired with using the martial dummies with swords and other melee weapons, caused a rapid growth in my abilities. I estimated I would be able to stand against the third level by the end of the year. 

One of the main factors to my growth was the spells I had learned. I had begun to search out new and powerful spells in the library in my freetime and managed to find a few that would suit my purposes. The only issue with this was the speed of learning. 

I loved magic, and I was sure I was decently talented. However, I was no Tom Riddle. If I were to guess, I'd say I was roughly on Harry's level of pure talent, if not under even. The only advantages I had was my work ethic and strong foundation from my wandless magic practice. 

The spells themselves were far more complex than one would be led to believe. They went beyond simply waving your wand and saying some funny words. Each spell had to be expertly crafted with the wizard's intent and magic. If either of those were off, no matter how good the pronunciation, the spell would fail. The wand movements were simply crutches for the wizard to correctly shape his magic, while the words helped them shape their intent. Only after hundreds of focused casting of a spell would someone be able to freely cast it without these crutches. 

Without a natural talent in the art, spellcasting was actually quite difficult. It was easier for me to understand why so many wizards and witches settled with mediocrity when they could have the world in their palms with a few spells. It was a lot of hard, dedicated work. The path to greatness would have to be paved with blood, sweat, and tears. 

Of course, this wouldn't stop me from standing on the apex of this world and learning every spell there is to know. The more I practiced magic, the more obsessed I became. Every day of my life was filled with studies, friends, and of course, lots of magic. 

Before I knew it, Halloween had arrived.