Chapter 21: Future plans and thinking caps

"Does the wit-sharpening potion actually make you smarter?" Penny asked, tilting her head as she looked at the list of potions that Harry had drawn up to add to her own.

"No, it's just an hour or so of clarity. Essentially it makes you more focused by blending out distractions."

There were three potions that Harry was particularly interested in. The wit-sharpening one. It wasn't particularly useful in an exam situation, no matter how many students tended to try, but it increased one's productivity. This meant that in regards to studying and brain-storming, one could probably save several hours of effort a week with fastidious use of the potion. The only issue was that one needed to brew it, which probably set one back for as much time as one had gained with its use if one was as bad at brewing as Harry. Penny, however, was significantly better and with her help he could probably create a batch large enough to last him for a few months. A cauldron contained more than a dozen vials.

"Well I'm curious about the effect of the wit-sharpening potion, but what's the point of this language tonic," Penny wondered before giggling. "Are you planning on learning mermish?" she asked.

Harry rolled his eyes.

"Me and my family are going to France this summer, I know muggles can't drink potions, would have been nice, but at least I can brush up on my French," Harry said, causing Penny to make googly eyes at him.

"You speak French?" She asked.

"My grammar sucks, but I can communicate well enough. My German and Italian are quite good though," Harry said, causing Penny to raise up her arms in protest.

"Wait, wait, wait," she said quickly. "Why do you speak so many languages?" she ended up asking with a confused tone of voice.

"Honestly, learning languages is the basic part of the muggle school curriculum. Just that muggles do it the hard way without any potions," Harry huffed. While the statement was true, it wasn't really why he knew the languages.

"Of course, it would be wizards, who actually have access to such cheats, who don't even bother."

"Wow, I guess I missed out on just going to the village school to learn writing and maths I guess," Penny said while scratching her head.

"Well, you got to practise potions and learn about magic earlier than all the muggleborns so I guess it evens out. I sure wish I'd had more opportunities to study magic before coming here."

"It's not like it mattered, you're way ahead of everyone in most classes," Penny complained. "And you're going to France, all I'm gonna do all summer is be home with my grandma and mom."

"I can write to my aunt and uncle if you can come along," Harry suggested, knowing that it was more a matter of politeness to write. They would never refuse him this after how long they'd tried to make him be more social with kids his age, "and maybe I can come to visit your house for a bit as well, I've never been to a magical home."

Penny beamed. "That would be so cool! I'll write to my parents as well," she said, before looking around the room they'd been using to brew potions and sighing. "Well, we've run out of ingredients to make anything anyway, so I might as well go do it now and then start studying for the exams. You wanna come with me?"

Harry shook his head, "I'm going to go work on finishing my spell," he said. Penny, already being so used to the excuse, simply nodded.

"I thought it was done," she commented, however.

Harry shrugged. "It works, it's great, we're just formalising the written section to send off for admittance to the international charms database."

"I'm jealous, I bet you'll get offered a Charms apprenticeship the moment you leave, different masters will be hounding you."

"We will make the contribution anonymous actually, we can always revert the decision after all, also, you really aren't one to worry about that Penny. I'm pretty sure that the way you're throwing yourself into Potions you'll be done with your mastery by the time we graduate," Harry complimented, causing Penny to blush.

"Well in that case we can be mastery buddies," she joked and got up to leave, "and the ageing potion?" she asked as she made to leave.

"Have you never wondered how you're going to look when you're an adult?" Harry asked. "We could even take pictures," he suggested pointing to his satchel, resting as it was on the wooden table the furthest away from the cauldrons. His camera was in there, as usual.

"That's a great idea, let's hope we get the ingredients to try everything then, huh," Penny said before slipping through the door.

Harry chuckled to himself when he was finally alone. He wondered how Penny would react if he told her the real reason he wanted the ageing potion. 'Oh yeah, I'm actually an adult reincarnated into this body and cursed to not have sex or drink or be independent in any significant way. An ageing potion would give me a short reprieve from being a magical dwarf.' He sighed, hopefully the potion would last until France, then he could maybe have the first truly adult conversation with a complete stranger for the first time in eleven years, hence the language tonic.

"Well, anyway," Harry said as he stood up and tapped himself on the head, almost simultaneously applying invisibility and the muffling charm. "It's time to finally get to the bottom of the Mind Arts," he muttered and left the room, making his way to the seventh floor. It was there that he'd left the two books he'd taken from the library, paranoidly assuming that they had some sort of tracking charms on them or whatever. Now it was time to look into them.

"Come on Adrian, we'll never find him like this," a tired young voice said from around a corner, making Harry pause to listen in. He recognized that voice.

"We need to show that mudblood his proper place. I have no idea how he keeps disappearing, but he always goes somewhere in this direction with that blonde ditz after classes," another answered.

Harry tilted his head and walked around the corner to look at two Slytherin first-year boys talking next to a knight's armour. One of the boys was Montague. Harry considered for a second if he should do something, but he could hardly report the two to the professors considering they hadn't seemingly done anything other than aimlessly wander around yet. Honestly, did they have nothing better to do, like perhaps work on their classwork?

Well, whatever, Harry thought as he left the two snakes behind to make his way to the seventh floor. School was chaotic enough without moronic bullies, their DADA professor had literally been expelled after fighting the other professors in the halls. There were much more important things to focus on. The snakes would probably lose interest during the summer break in a month, they most likely didn't have enough attention span to remember that he existed if they didn't see him during that time.

It was a head-shaking Harry who arrived on the seventh floor and nonchalantly made his way into the room of requirement, specifically the iteration hiding his pilfered two books on the mind arts.

He sat down on the floor of the otherwise completely empty gothic church surroundings and picked up, 'Ye Olde Minde Arts, Cautions and Instruction'. It looked promising, he thought and started reading the slightly outdated English.

Time passed as Harry engrossed himself in the literature he'd so desperately attempted to gain access to over the past year. But after some cursory reading he didn't have a choice but to put down both the books and tiredly rub at his eyes and lay on his back. He looked at the high marble ceiling of the church-like room where he found himself.

The first and only step one can do alone when pursuing a mastery of occlumency is clearing one's mind. Only when one is adept at this task can one initiate practice with a Legilimens, first learning to sense them through the emptiness of one's mind and then learning to repel the probe through practice.

The books were informative, they had clear instructions on how to clear one's mind. Similar to the meditation practices that Harry was already doing and had arguably mastered. Not surprising, considering that he'd been trying and improving his technique for a decade. The book even had explicit descriptions of how to quickly notice an attacker's presence, or how, in a practice scenario, the intruder could model his attack to be as informative as possible.

All the tips and tricks and spells and advice wouldn't help Harry though, because he simply didn't have a practice partner. There were possibilities, for sure, but none of them were good. He could ask a friend to learn Legilimency with him and then practice with each other. But that would mean that one additional person would know his secret. Something which, in the secret-keeping business, wasn't a good idea.

How had people like Dumbledore, Voldemort and Snape learned the skill in the original books? None of the three men seemed like the type to let someone poke around in their heads. In the case of Voldemort and Snape, they'd likely just killed their teacher afterwards, but Dumbledore? Had he practised with Grindelwald?

Likely, Harry thought.

Magical contracts were also a thing, technically one could hire a teacher and pay them to make the promise to let themselves get obliviated of any knowledge gained afterwards. Which was of course likely a tough sell for more paranoid magical. After all, who was more prepared to counteract an obliviation, than a Mind Arts practitioner.

At the end of the day, Harry was standing in front of a dead-end, a start that was shared with all the other projects he'd attempted since coming to Hogwarts, he felt. There was always something. He'd find a solution eventually, sure, but he needed Occlumency now, not in a few years.

He didn't have a friend he could trust to keep his secret, nor did he have a friend whom he could obliviate after the fact because he had no friends to properly learn the skill with anyway. He didn't have the connections to get a private tutor, nor did he have the money for it. He couldn't let anyone know his secret, not even any of the teachers. Which left him with nothing. These two books assumed that one would have a practice partner, and didn't expound on any alternative, leaving him utterly and completely screwed.

It made sense, of course, it made perfect painful sense. How could one learn to defend one's mind if one never got attacked? How did one learn to attack if one never had anyone to assault.

There was only one hope, Harry realised, to resolve his current conundrum, before he had to take even more drastic measures in his attainment of Occlumency. A small voice in the back of his mind whispered that perhaps he was overestimating the need for the Mind Arts. After all, how often did he even think about his reincarnation anymore? Only when Penny smiled at him or shook her head, painfully blonde, blue-eyed, cheery and smart as she was. She existed in a juxtaposition of being a younger version of who he'd lost. How likely was it that anyone would read his mind at that specific moment? He asked himself, before refuting his thought pattern.

He didn't know how a Legilimens might judge his age and origin and thus also didn't know if he could discard the fear or not. Between having Occlumency and not having it, having it was infinitely better, because not having it could very well be a death sentence.

He stood and woodenly walked out of the room, books in hand. Precious knowledge on how to properly train one's defences, what shortcuts there were and which ones should be avoided. All utterly useless if he didn't find someone to practise with, Harry thought as he stepped out of the room. The sheer paranoia and anxiety he felt at having his mind as open as it likely was would kill him by the next term. The only other option being to leave the magical world behind. Something he refused to do, after the power that he'd tasted here at Hogwarts. 'Please, oh please, room,' Harry thought as he paced in front of the room of requirement. Give me someone, or something that I can practise occlumency with.

A door appeared, as it always did when Harry wished for something. He walked in front of the blank stretch of wall. He put his hand on the knob shakingly, realising in the last second that the room might give him the diadem Horcrux to practise with, considering that it must use some form of the Mind Arts to influence its wearer as it had in the books. He opened the door, hoping that the diadem was not what he would find. Growing dizzy from worry and finally falling to his knees as he saw what the room had chosen to give him, Harry laughed and cried tears of joy.

"How ridiculous, of course, of course," he said feverishly. "Why didn't I think of that?" He gazed upon the sorting hat, which was moving its top in confusion, seemingly trying to ascertain its surroundings. Harry scrambled on all fours to reach the hat and to look into the folds that were its eyes. "Oh hat, oh hat, you beautiful hat, will you help me in my time of need. You are the only one who can, you know. You're sworn to secrecy about what you can reveal about the students on whose heads you sit, surely?" Harry pleaded at the piece of leather, which shrank back at Harry's desperate fleas.

"Erm, sure, not a word from me, but, no offence, kid, where am I?" the hat confirmed before asking in a raspy voice and it was then that Harry noticed that while its eyes and mouth and body were animated, it didn't seem to be able to move sufficiently to look either up or to the side. Harry, wanting to garner points with the stylish fashion statement, took this as a cue to lift the hat up and slowly turn around his own axis to showcase the room.

"Wise hat, we are in the Room of Requirement. A room that takes the form desired by the person wishing it into existence. I assume it was left behind by Rowena Ravenclaw, I do not know how she managed to create this wondrous piece of magic and I can only imagine that it is her magnum opus," Harry explained, being for once entirely truthful with the information he possessed, which in his case was not much. "The room can seemingly access, or replicate most things present in Hogwarts, serve as a storage space and has a vividly intelligent input into not only what the seeker wishes, but what they need."

The sorting hat whistled, "Damn, ok Rowena, big flex," it said, before coughing. "Bloody show-off," it muttered, before turning from where it had been looking at the elaborate architecture of the ceiling, to Harry. "What did you wish for, then? Disclaimer, I don't do re-sorting."

"I am most thankful for the house I have been sent to, I can't imagine a better fit in the whole school," Harry schmoozed but also told the truth. Hufflepuff was pretty great. "No, oh wise one, I hath need of your aid in preventing a terrible fate and if you were to be so willing to provide this aid I would be ever-most in your debt and would shower you with whatever gratitude you desire."

"Wow, ok. You do realise I'm a hat, right? I don't really need much," the hat said, causing Harry to wrack his brain as to what he could even offer the animate object. Indeed it was a hat, what would it even want? "But what do you need help with anyway, I am supposed to help students out, I guess."

"I do not know what I can offer you, other than taking you perhaps to see the world outside of Hogwarts, in all its intricacy. Have you seen the extent of the modern world through the eyes of the muggle-born? I am sure Dumbledore could offer you a similar journey, but I would actually have the time to fulfil my promise," Harry suggested, before answering the second question. "As to what I need. I am afraid my mind hides a horrible secret. What I need is simple. A practice partner with whom I can master Occlumency," he explained.

The hat hummed, "I haven't left Hogwarts in a while, about a thousand years really. Mostly because I don't see the need, I like it here and it's someplace quiet to compose a song for the big event."

"You'll love it," Harry assured. "You like music right?" he asked, presupposed the answer being yes and continued. "I'll take you to concerts, the best musicians and lyricists in the world come to London often enough that one can go to a concert every week. I'll enchant books on literary and poetic theory so that you can read them in some of the best universities in the world," Harry promised, lavishing the hat with more promises than Antonious had lavished upon Cleopatra to get a crumb of that pussy.

The hat stared at him, "You seem a very desperate young man, although I can imagine why if you would truly face the fate you described." It said, "I'll help you. Keep me entertained and I'll help for longer."

Harry quickly nodded, "You will be the most lavishly entertained hat in all the world," he promised solemnly.

"Just one thing," The sorting hat said. "I need to be back for the sorting ceremony, how do you plan on returning me? If you don't notify them quickly that I will be back, the staff might panic and change their plans for the sorting next year, potentially finding another method, making me lose my job."

Harry tilted his head, not having considered the fact that the hat was afraid of losing its position, it wasn't like he could somehow stealthily go to the headmaster's office and return it after every practice session. Crossing his eyes in an attempt to make the room send the hat back to whence it had been found, Harry observed as if nothing happened. He pondered the conundrum for a moment, "I'll send a letter, telling them that I've taken you and that I will return you via owl at the end of the summer," he suggested.

The hat balked.

"You'd send me with one of those ruddy birds, do you have any idea what they'd do to my leather?!" it shouted.

"No, no I'd never!" Harry quickly assured. "I'll just return you in person if I get caught, well, it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission." Whatever punishment he would receive would be less dangerous than continuing to not know Occlumency.

"Good, don't make me get close to those bloody pigeons and we have a deal. Let's start then, shall we?" the hat asked, causing Harry to look around confusedly.

"Now?" he asked.

"No time like the present." the hat replied and tried to do a little hop towards him.

Technically Harry needed to go to the owlery from where he could send an anonymous letter to the headmaster that he'd taken the hat, but seeing as he had the practice partner he'd been looking for, for so long, he couldn't force himself to delay any longer.

"One second, let me clear my mind," he muttered as he sat down to meditate. The first step to learning Occlumency was clearing one's mind so that one was more easily capable of even noticing when there was an intruder afoot. It was only once one had done this that one could actually fight back.

Technically noticing an intruder successfully was already being a level 1 Occlumens, as one could upon having reached this step, simply break eye contact. Level 2 was being able to prevent a specific memory or piece of knowledge from being found and so on until one reached level 5 at which point one was able to repel all attacks and even send out false data.

Harry's eyes snapped open after a few minutes of calming his mind, eyes looking like tranquil lakes. "Alright, I'm ready," he said confidently and picked up the hat. "What memory will you try to find?"

The hat shrugged, as much as a hat could shrug. "Most embarrassing childhood memory?"

Harry grimaced thinking about what he'd once said to six-year-old Sally from across the street.

"Alright," he said and unceremoniously plopped the hat on his head. Maybe he hadn't had a practice partner to sharpen his skills, but he'd been meditating and learning how to effectively and quickly calm his mind for almost a decade now. He should at least be able to notice the intrusion-.

"Damn, can't believe you told a six-year-old her face looked inharmonious and made her cry right there in front of everyone. Couldn't you have held back a bit? It was literally her birthday," the hat said.

Harry grimaced. "Again."