Chapter 41: A deal with the twins

The concentration required for the spell was quite troublesome. He didn't want the spell to backfire and cause any damage to him. The last thing he wanted was for some stupid spell to knock him dead when he was going to all the trouble to escape death by Voldemort's hand.

"Harry stop overthinking and do the spell. All you have to do is focus your anger on the target and imagine the worst outcome. The rest will be done by the spell." said Sirius, from the two-way mirror.

"Yeah, easy for you to say. I can't exactly concentrate when I'm angry." Harry complained, wiping away the sweat building up on his eyebrow.

"Well, that's the tricky part when it comes to going deep into Dark Magic. You have to cast magic on instinct without any care while filling your mind with anger or hate or just plain loathing. If you second-guess the spell won't work." said Sirius, who proceeded to stuff a handful of chips down his throat looking so relaxed in doing so.

Harry tried to concentrate but he pulled back from casting the spell. Rounding on the mirror Harry frowned, not at all amused.

"Can you please stop doing that? I'm working here." Harry snapped.

"Hey, don't be snippy with me pup. When you are in a battle your enemies won't be lining up and standing perfectly still for you to pelt them with spells. They are going to be moving around and there will be many distractions. If anything, I'm not making enough distractions." said Sirius.

'Damn him for speaking sense.' Harry thought as he once again aimed his wand at the target trying to let the spell loose.

But, after one look at the small pig looking so fearfully at him, Harry lost his conviction. Harry shook his head and fired off the spell to the nearby wall.

"Intabeviscus."

The dark purple-coloured spell raced towards the wall behind the live pig. The wall became dented under the spell but other than that the spell was harmless.

"Harry if you want the Organ-Liquefying curse to work you need to use it on a live target." Sirius said, letting out a sigh.

"I won't harm the pig. It's just an innocent creature." Harry muttered.

"This is why I told you, you are not ready to use dark magic."

"Oh, don't get me wrong. I'll be quite happy to use the spell on a Death Eater or Voldemort." said Harry, dropping down into a nearby couch after securing his wand in the holster.

"Dark Magic is not something you can use in the heat of the moment without practice. If you can't use it against an animal, trust me you won't be using these spells against a Death Eater or even Voldemort."

"Well, maybe what I need is other dark spells that are less…gruesome." said Harry.

"That's what I told you in the first place." Sirius deadpanned.

"Well, that's spilt milk under the bridge. Give me another spell and this time just avoid any spells that deliver gruesome deaths. Just give me spells that can put a Death Eater down hard enough that they can't apparate away." Harry suggested.

"There are quite a few…let me look." said Sirius, flipping through the pages of a book.

"Aha! Found one. It's the lung collapsing spell. The incantation is Angustium. The spell forcibly shrinks the lungs making it near impossible to breathe." Sirius suggested making Harry frown.

"That doesn't sound like dark magic." said Harry.

"If you hold the spell for more than two minutes then the victim's lungs will shrink so small leaving the victim to die gasping for air. There is no counter curse for the spell. So…dark enough?" Sirius asked blandly.

"So, it's like the Cruciatus curse without all the psychotic emotions fueling the spell." Harry asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I suppose. Do you want to test it out?"

"Might as well give it a try." Harry said, shrugging his shoulders.

An hour later, Harry was lounging on his chair in the Chamber nursing a glass of orange juice courtesy of Dobby. He was magically and emotionally drained for the day. Fishing out a pair of ice cubes Harry pressed them against his head.

"Oh, my head." he groaned as the cold seeped into his head.

There was a distinct pop of teleportation. Harry opened one lone eye to see it was Winky dropping off Sirius in the Chamber.

"I warned you this was a bad idea." said Sirius, taking the ice cubes away and began waving his wand around casting charms on Harry's head.

Whatever spell Sirius used had the intended effect. Harry could feel his head becoming lighter and the constant throbbing near his ears settled down.

"If you knew for sure why did you agree to train me?" asked Harry, as his godfather helped him lie down on the couch.

"Some lessons cannot be taught. I thought it was better for you to learn from experience. If I had forced you to stop experimenting with Dark Magic you would have practised in secret without my supervision." said Sirius.

"I think I'm not suited for Dark Magic." Harry groaned, rubbing his ailing forehead.

"That's good. I'd have been concerned if you liked those spells. The darker spells fueled by hate and anger are for lunatics like my cousin Bella. Only someone who enjoys torture and murder uses the darker spells."

"You don't say. I thought I could do it you know. I convinced myself I just have to imagine the internal organs turning into goo or ribs rupturing and piercing into the lungs or something. Turns out these are not so easy scenarios to imagine or wish it happen on a pig." said Harry.

The two of them descended into a comfortable silence as Sirius finished up his work. Harry felt some comfort after whatever Sirius was doing to help him.

"I'll be taking away those books containing Dark Arts. It'll be better if you treat them as just reading material instead as a source of usable spells."

"But, I need some mean spells that can hurt Voldemort and his Death Eaters." Harry protested.

"Don't you worry about that. I'll only take away the books containing dangerous magic. There are still some Dark Arts books that are reasonably acceptable."

Harry reluctantly nodded as it was a reasonable restriction.

"I'll have Winky send a balm for the headache. Use it before going to sleep tonight."

"Alright." Harry agreed.

"I'll take my leave then."

"Wait!" Harry called out as he remembered something important. "I need you to send Kreacher here to meet me."

"For what?" Sirius asked, his eyebrows disappearing into the hairline.

"I have something to discuss with him." Harry said, evasively.

"What do you want to do with Kreacher? Don't tell me this is about that SPEW Hermione started."

Harry chuckled and shook his head which made his head hurt.

"No. Just send Kreacher but not today. I'm too tired today. I'll explain everything later."

Sirius agreed albeit reluctantly.

Harry watched Sirius leave the Chamber with Winky. Letting out a sigh, he leaned back and nuzzled into the couch.

'Perhaps a bit of light sleep should chase away the headache.' He thought, closing his eyes and drifting off to a peaceful slumber.

XXXXXXX

The library remained pleasantly vacant leaving Harry with a certain amount of privacy. It was a good thing as the Gryffindor common room was overcrowded these days. The approaching end of the year exams has taken up the focus of Hogwarts students. This left Harry with more free time in his hands comparatively.

Not that he was relaxing in the library. Since most of his free time was taken up by practising for the Third Task it cut to his assignment time. So much so that he was forced to allocate a portion of his research time in the library to focus on completing the assignments. Last week, it was just Snape who was demanding essay after essay in ridiculous lengths as assignments. Now, Professors Sprout, Vector and Babbling were taking the lead.

Out of the three Professor Babbling was the most troublesome one. At times Harry felt like the Ancient Runes professor was sort of punishing him and at the same time rewarding him. The runes professor had called him into her office and assigned him a boatload of assignments in the form of essays and some faulty rune clusters that he had to compile and weed out the errors. This was quite a lot of workload but Professor Babbling insisted that he complete the work as he had skipped an entire year by landing in her class in his fourth year.

On the other hand, Professor Babbling also gave him an interesting project. While initially, Professor Babbling insisted to focus on improving the shield-ring the runes professor greenlit his other project with some modifications. Instead of finding a way to shield muggle technology he was asked to work on a runes project that allowed the muggle technology subservient to magic. The professor wanted a rune cluster that can take control of muggle technology without destroying the circuitry.

It was certainly going to be an ambitious project to be sure but if it succeeds he was not ignorant of the implications. If he could develop a runic cluster that can control muggle technology then the potential use of such knowledge was dangerous and exceptionally valuable. While this was the case, Harry was not so naïve to think that this was not attempted before. Surely, scores of wizards and witches must have attempted something similar in the past.

Of course, Professor Babbling was no simpleton. She most likely assigned him this project to keep him occupied and not bother her. Or she wanted to see some progress because she wanted to see a tangible project plan he can show after the summer holidays. He was even allowed to formulate a project team. If he could impress the professor with the plan and the project group members when the next academic year starts, he was promised more help and perhaps even a grant for all the expenses incurred.

But, the work was still on the back burner for now. There were other important events to keep an eye on with the Third Task coming up. This is why he was waiting for two people to show up for a secret meeting in the library.

As he finished another page of the Herbology assignment he was joined by two more people at the table.

"Welcome you two. I was thinking you guys forgot our meeting." said Harry, looking into the identical faces of the Weasley twins.

"Why are we here Harrikins?"

"Did Hermione put you up to this?"

"If she did…"

"…we totally had nothing to do with those….

"…drawings of Krum chasing after her as a paper plane."

Harry looked from George to Fred each time they were switching their speech and it was hurting his head.

"Well, that's quite the story but I didn't ask you two troublemakers here for any of that. I've come to learn that you two have been duped by Bagman with a bet, right?"

Suddenly, the easy-going look of the twins shifted to serious.

"How do you know that?" asked Fred, frowning just like his twin.

"Doesn't matter. I also know you two have been working towards making that joke shop idea of yours a reality. I'm here before you two with an offer that you cannot refuse."

The twins looked confusedly at each other before blinking owlishly at Harry.

Harry meanwhile noticed that Madam Pince could check up on them if there was too much sound. So, he immediately put up a silencing ward around the table.

"Harry, exactly what….

"...are you offering?"

"I am offering you full funding for your joke shop. Whatever amount of galleons you need I can raise that amount to make your joke shop a reality." said Harry.

"No Harry. We can't do that."

"Yeah. You should not waste your galleons on us."

"Who said I'm doing this for free? You two are going to build me something. The details are in this parchment." said Harry, as he pushed the parchment towards the Weasley twins.

"What is this?" asked Fred, taking the parchment and exchanging a hesitant look with his brother.

"This is a test. You'll get all the resources you two need free of cost for completing this project. If you complete this project within two weeks you'll not just have secured the funds for your joke shop but I'll even introduce you two to two Marauders."

"Wait! What did you just say?" asked Fred, eyes wide as saucers.

"Did you just say we can meet with two Marauders?" asked George.

"Yes." Harry said, laughing at the face the Weasley twins were making. "Don't forget you'll also get the necessary funds for your joke shop as well. Not to mention I might be able to persuade the Marauders to chip in and help you guys with the joke shop."

Fred and George suddenly reached across that table and took each of Harry's hands into theirs. Tears of joy were running from their eyes.

"Where do we sign?" the twins asked in unison.

Harry smiled at the two while rejoicing at a job well done. Enlisting the help of the twins should take some load off of his shoulders. He could now allocate more time to training for the conflict ahead instead of getting bogged down by schoolwork. Helping the twins to fulfil their dream was just an added bonus. He was also sure Sirius would actually enjoy working with the Weasley twins. He was hoping he could rope in Remus Lupin as well given enough time.

'It's time I dismantle Dumbledore's faction and create my own. The war is about to begin.'