Chapter 16: Firewhiskey
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He didn't dare go inside. He was 10 after all and a pub full of drunk men was not the best place to be for someone like him.
So he stood outside the pub and waited for him to come out since he couldn't observe anyone through the glass no matter how hard he tried.
Or so he intended to do until a man walked out of the pub, opening the door for a fleeting moment, letting the conversation inside spill out.
His Gamer's Mind separated all the voices and with crystal clear clarity, he heard,
"How are you Arch-"
"A bottle of firewhiskey Tom!"
"The ministry is taking a big fat dump on all over wizards and witches ever-"
"Lily Potter's son coming to Hogwarts this year isn't he Matil-" The woman's voice was cut off as the door closed.
Harry was shocked to a standstill. He looked around, knowing that he couldn't open the door himself, he desperately hoped for something… anything to open the door.
Suddenly, a strong breeze came and blew open the door as a brown screen popped up.
Ping!
New Skill discovered! You have discovered your skill as a magical!
Accidental Magic Lv-1 (43%)
Allows you to control your magic in short sporadic bursts. You can try to use it in any way you wish but it may not obey your every command.
Cost-20 MP per minute
30% chance of Harry using a randomly selected magical ability when in a situation of great distress
Harry couldn't care less at that moment.
"Aye. I tell ya Jemma, James and his friends were big troublemakers in my day. If little Harry is anything like him…"
"True that. Though he cleaned up pretty nicely when he got together with Lily."
"Aye that woman could clean up anybody. True spitfire she was."
"I heard from Minerva that poor Harry is growing up with muggles. The Boy Who Lived! Muggles!"
"The poor lad. Must be hard for him. Lily was a good mother to him for the time he had her."
"Her eyes used to light up like tho-"
Harry used a foot to keep the door open and remained outside that dingy pub till sunset, thoughts of Mr. Diggle all forgotten.
He stood there, mindless of the pain in his legs as he listened to the patrons talk about his parents and magic and their school times, soaking in all he could about his mother and father and the life that he never had.
Despite the tears streaming down his face, it was the happiest day of his entire life.
I always did have a soft spot in my heart for this chapter, especially for the ending, so I hope you like what I've done with it. There were a LOT of issues with it, so I had to fix it up.
I took some time off writing and finished the plot planning and framework of Book 3, just cos I was feeling inspired.
That scene with Vance in the last chapter really got me going. More updates coming tomorrow.
P.S. Did you notice that Dedalus told the Floo Lady that his nephew was coming? ;-)
P.P.S. If you see any issues with the chapter, grammatical or otherwise, do let me know. I try my best, but I am just one guy after all. :-)
Book-I:Carrowing Times
Chapter 3:
With an angry frown on his face, Harry stood in the garden at the spot near the rose bush where he had fainted on Sunday.
After reaching home much later than he had planned the previous day -resulting in the Dursleys arriving earlier than him- Aunt Petunia
had promptly grounded him, given him a list of chores to make up for the days he was gone, and told him to clean up the mess that Dudley's party had caused.
It wasn't ideal, but what was he supposed to do? Leave early from the only place that he had ever gotten any real knowledge about his parents from?
It said something about his situation that drunk patrons in a run-down pub in central London were better at being kind to him than his own Aunt Petunia without even knowing that they were being kind to him.
But chores were fine by Harry so long as they got his family out of his hair since all he really wanted to do was get to the garden and find out what had hurt him that day.
And after the last day's revelation, he decided, a little monotony would not go unappreciated.
Thus, he spent most of his morning out in the garden searching through the grass around the area, trying to find that stone marked with strange little squiggles that had knocked him out and drained his mana.
Yet no matter how much he searched, he was unable to find it. Sighing with resignation after a while of searching, he went about getting ready for school.
Class, to him, was as monotonous as always, but after the previous day's hijinks, he could finally read and collect information at a fast enough rate for him to keep up with the stuff that was being taught. So, as a pleasant surprise at the end of the first half of classes, he got a ping from the Game.
Due to you paying attention in class, for the first bloody time, you have gained 1 INT!
Harry was rather pleased with himself for getting those extra stat points and the fact that he had actually managed to read with relative ease throughout the day.
His English reading skills now only affected him by -35%, meaning that he understood 65% of what was being taught.
It also meant that he wouldn't have to go over the day's work in his cupboard again just to understand it, which opened up another couple of hours of free time for him.
Free time he could use to discover his skills and grind them.
Soon, lunchtime rolled around, and Harry decided to test out his new powers. So far he knew of only one skill he got for being a wizard, accidental magic, whose success rate seemed pretty… accidental. There were still some other powers, like talking to snakes, which he had done.
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