Chapter 174: Of Cheeky Emeralds

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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

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19 December 1993, Hogwarts

Tracy huffed as she dodged another animated rope and used a cutting charm to cut through a swarm of others, "When I asked you to train us, Harry, I didn't think it would involve this…"

Harry stifled a chuckle and waved his wand in response. The ground beneath her started to tremble and she instinctively yelled, "Ascendio!". The ascension charm was cast perfectly, and she flew in the air just as the ground gave up under her. She stabilized herself using an Arresto Momentum or the slowing charm. It was a nice combination that Harry taught her and his friends for the first task.

Just as she was about to celebrate, the ground beneath her turned to ice, causing her to slip. She was quickly able to counter it using a Carpe Retractum on the end of the path, which got her to glide across the ice, an inventive solution, but one that was very risky. Harry proved that by using his wand to make a wall of ice appear out of nowhere. She was barely able to stop in time with a Slowing Charm, but that allowed him to charm a wall to create a strong gust of air, which knocked off the course.

Harry gave her a smug look, "And now you lost."

The girl groaned, "You utter bastard!"

"Now, now, Trace. That was very uncalled for. I go out of my way to train you and Blaise and that's how you repay me. Why do I have such cruel friends," Harry replied with a mocking tone.

"Fuck off, Potter," the still groaning Blaise, who had gone through the obstacle course previously, bit out.

Harry stifled the urge to laugh at their misery. There was something cathartic in beating up your friends when they've been acting like arseholes. He would never admit to them that he was being an ass on purpose and making his obstacle courses easy enough to look doable, only to become increasingly difficult the more they progress. Blaise wasn't even allowed to use his family magic, since no one was stupid enough to reveal their ancestral magics over a school tournament of all things.

They couldn't even complain too seriously since they were getting better with every session. Physical activity wasn't really Daphne's strong suit, nor his own, to be perfectly honest. But Tracy and Blaise seem to thrive in it.

He suppressed a smile as Daphne used some of the bruise balms that they made together to heal her, "You're getting better."

"Not good enough to beat your stupid course…" she muttered.

"Of course, you're not. I am in control over the course and you're the only one running. I am completely focused on you. You're a lot faster than before and your reactions are good enough. I think you'll be able to complete it in a few sessions, and we could finally move on from the mountain course. I've been working with Daphne at a forest course, then we'll finish with magical creatures. We should be completely done by the time the first task comes around after the Holidays."

Blaise and Tracy shivered at Harry's statement, the idea of a new obstacle course terrifying them to the core. Harry spent the past month or so coming up with an obstacle course every week, each with a different theme. They had started out with a plains course, where they had to work on their agility and endurance, but he would admit that the volcano course was slightly overkill. Sure, there wasn't any real lava and instead of fire, they were attacked by warm blue-bell flames that were cursed with a stinging hex. The animated constructs and the surprise change in the environment did help them, and Harry and Daphne did get more practice with curses, especially with different uses that they didn't think were possible.

Cursing was such a vast subject, one that has been vilified for ages. A curse is not really defined by the intent but by the inclusion of a lasting remnant once it runs its course. Even after the magic has run out, there will always be a trace left, one that was bound to either the magic, body or sometimes even soul of a subject. This could be done by adding an emotional component to the spell, which was very common before the subject was researched properly. A burst of magic in anger and wishing for something bad to happen to their enemy might leave a trace of this will, one as strong as the magic released. They were often harmless and too inefficient to be of some use unless the emotion was extremely intense or the wizard casting it extremely powerful.

Alas, it was very inefficient, and researchers discovered that the results were too unpredictable to standardize, until, that is, they realized that it wasn't only emotions that left lasting effects.

The Patronus charm was highly based on an emotional component, specifically happiness, hope, and joy, which makes it a very unreliable spell unless the person mastered his emotions or hypnotized himself to feel it at will. The effect of the spells and their general strength was very hard to estimate because of the emotional component, and these sorts of spells were ones that arithmancers and researchers really disliked, hence their other methods to reliably cast curses.

Harry couldn't find the exact theory, but there was an arithmancy component in every curse that allowed their effect to linger. Harry wanted to explore it further but there were just too many books on the subject, and he still spent most of his time researching magic involving other planes of existence. He was mostly helping Daphne out of curiosity than anything, even if the subject turned out to be more fascinating than he expected. Alas, the blonde was certain that it might help her sister's curse in some way.

Harry honestly didn't know; they hadn't gone to blood curses yet.

In a way, she might be right. Counter curses were just curses that literally released the exact opposite effect that the original curse held, negating both effects. However, Blood curses were very old and likely not performed with a wand. They were probably either made with just pure anger, but most likely using some kind of ritual, probably a sacrificial one if its effect lasted for so long.

It would be a long way coming, but Daphne was resilient on the matter. She even tried to pester Madam Pomfrey to teach her healing, to no avail. A formal education in healing required an unbreakable oath to not use the spells for any sort of harm, an oath that could only be sworn by someone with fully matured magic.

Although Daphne was able to wrangle a few public texts that had enough basic healing charms to be useful. Healers really were a private lot, but they probably had the biggest repository of magical knowledge in the world, especially when it came to unsavoury spells.

The blonde was satisfied for now, but it did not help that she was practically a prodigy when it came to healing. It would not take long for her to finish the books the resident mediwitch gave her, which would drive her mad since she wouldn't be busing herself.

Hopefully, it would be after the first task since he was already wasting enough time training Blaise and Tracy in their weird attempt to impress the Court of Slytherin. Speaking of the duo, they were being fussed over by Daphne, who has been slightly overbearing since she started up on learning how to heal.

Harry slipped past them and left the Room of Requirements on his own. He had a lot on his mind, and he felt like a walk would be appropriate. Most of his thoughts were about the book he translated, which contained what seemed to be very old fairy tales. Or at least, they would have been, if it wasn't for the fact that he recognized one of them.

It was a tale about a staff of legends, about a pearl of wisdom, and about a mantle of mysteries.

Their names were different, but it was just so similar to the elder wand, the resurrection stone, and the cloak of invisibility.

This was centuries before the Peverells even came to be, before Ignotus, before Cadmus, before Antioch. The tale was different. There weren't any brothers meeting Death, just a very old wise mage that condensed a shard of the magic of Yggdrasil, the world tree in a single branch, that put his knowledge in a gem and put the veil between life and death into his mantle. He gave those weapons to give humanity hope against the monsters who would wish to destroy it. To protect the world from something…

The rest of the story wasn't written in Ancient Greek for some reason and Harry couldn't find any other language to match the text. It was the very last story in the book, and he could feel it in his bones that it was important.

It was a story about his family, about his legacy. How did the Peverells even connect to this story…

Was he supposed to look for the stone? He hadn't even mastered the cloak fully yet, especially the phasing aspect of it. He had tried to activate it many times, out of curiosity, but it seemed resistant for some reason.

As for the stone, he wasn't sure he would be able to get past Voldemort's defences and dispel the curse on the ring. But wouldn't it be fine to destroy another of the asshole's Horcruxes?

What were the Deathly Hallows, really? 

He needed to know.

He needed to understand.

He needed to… get up.

Wait, when had he fallen down? He stood up quickly, raising his wand, only to see a familiar golden mane of hair. He almost mistook her for Daphne for a second but realized that it was just Astoria, her sister.

He hadn't really spent time with the girl, which was weird since he felt like he knew her well enough because of how much Daphne liked to brag about her.

Astoria got up just as quickly as him and grinned at him, "Head in the cloud, Potter?"

He smiled back, "I suppose that it must look like that for a shorty like you."

She tried to send a stinging hex at him, which he simply redirected towards the ceiling. She followed up with a familiar ice spell that Daphne often used in their first year whenever someone tried to harass her. He smirked, "That's a familiar spell…"

"So, Daph used it on you?"

"Not successfully, no. So, what's a firstie like you doing in a place like this?" he asked.

She raised her eyebrow, "How is that any of your business."

"Well, it is my duty as your upper year and your sister's friend to make sure that my little youngling is well. And being alone in a deserted part of the castle isn't a good sign."

"Stop calling me that!" she exclaimed, but Harry stood his ground and just raised an eyebrow.

The girl quickly deflated afterwards, "I was trying to practice a spell, alright!"

The last Potter just smiled at her kindly, "Which one?"

"A summoning charm," she muttered.

Well, that was surprising, "Why on Earth would you want to master a spell that is taught to fourth years?"

"Samuel Fawley challenged me to it."

"And you accepted because…"

She gritted her teeth, "Because he said that since I went to the hospital wing so much, then I should just go home and not bother to learn magic after all. It's not like I would use it for long…"

"Ah," Harry exclaimed, "So, you let him bait you into an unfair challenge."

"He had no right to say that!" she yelled.

"He did not. But that does not change the fact that accepting a challenge like this was a bad choice. You are more than your illness and you need to accept that."

"Easy for you to say. You don't understand…"

Harry interrupted her, "Of course, I don't understand. No one will ever understand what it feels like to live with a countdown on your life. But it wouldn't really be living if all you do is be scared and angry at the sword on your head. I'm not telling you what to do, only that you will enjoy life a lot more if you stop focusing on the death part and choose to experience life instead."

Astoria looked down and Harry raised her shin slightly, "Now, why don't we work on that summoning charm of yours."

"What?"

"Come on! Don't tell me that you don't want to see that boy's stupid face when you do a summoning charm in front of him?"

The blinding smile that Astoria gave him made him feel oddly nice. In the end, it took them three hours for the girl to get the spell down. She didn't even come close to mastering it. She had to know exactly where the object was, but it was more than impressive enough for a first-year.

He went to his dormitory with a smile on his face, feeling more at ease than he had for over a month. 

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AN: Alright, this is the end of the Semester. The next chapter will be at the start of the next one, which will begin with the first task of the tournament. As usual, let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions...

I also wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.