The Darker Side of Magic

Theo looked rather baffled, at this point. "You mean you can do magic without a wand?"

Harry nodded.

"Then what happened with Malfoy...that wasn't an accident?"

"Well, that was. But I can do other things just fine."

Theo's eyes glinted, and he was smiling now. "Wicked! What else can you do?"

"Well, I can make it windy sometimes, and I can make cups explode...anything glass, really. I can light candles, and unlock doors, make it so people don't notice me, and..."

"And?" Theo said eagerly.

"Sometimes, I can make muggles do what I want. Like...once, I thought really hard about it, and I made my cousin stare at the wall for 10 minutes, and then walk in a circle three times."

"That's brilliant, Harry!"

"I know, right? My Aunt and Uncle thought he'd lost his marbles...but then they figured out it was me, and I got locked in my room for a week."

"...well, that's not brilliant, but the rest is."

"It is?" Harry asked, genuinely curious.

"Of course! Though, I wouldn't advertise that last one."

Harry tilted his head to the side. "Why's that?"

"Well, it sounds kind of...dark, you know."

Harry nodded slowly, recalling how concerned he was the first time Tom coaxed him into doing it. "I suppose that makes sense."

"Anyway," Theo said, "You must really be a genius. I've never heard of anyone doing that sort of thing. You must be really powerful!"

Harry smiled bashfully. "You think so?"

"Oh, for sure."

"Thanks!" Harry chirped, soaking up the compliments, "But...don't tell anyone, ok?"

"What? Why?"

"Well, too much attention isn't always a good thing, right?"

Theo grinned at him. "It will be our little secret, then."

Harry gave him a half smile. "Ok."

"Expelliarmus!"

"Reducto!"

"Protego!"

"Bombarda!"

"Reducto!"

"Protego!"

Harry's reductor curse was so strong that it threw Theo backwards, allowing Harry to finish the duel with "Expelliarmus!"

He grinned as Theo groaned. "You lasted more than three minutes this time!"

Theo scowled at him. "Yay me."

It was May, and Harry and Theo had been dueling each other twice a week for the last four months. It was less fun now, because Theo had figured out that he was going easy on him, and had insisted he didn't; so what were once 10 minute duels full of flashing lights, running, dodging, sneaking around, and hiding, were now condensed to under 5 minutes, much to Harry's disappointment. He still dodged a bit more than he had to, but he wasn't about to tell Theo that.

Harry found that he enjoyed dueling more than perhaps anything else he'd ever done in his life. It was the perfect balance between school and Quidditch – it was both intellectually and physically stimulating. Theo quite enjoyed it as well, and Harry thought their frequent dueling sessions had allowed them to bond a great deal and strengthen their friendship; Harry had never experienced anything quite like collapsing on the floor with Theo after a long series of duels, laughing at each other as they tried to catch their breath.

Hermione had joined them a few times, but she wasn't quite as keen on getting herself "blown up", as she put it. It was true; Harry and Theo spent most of their time hurling blasting hexes and reductor curses at each other (because, to be honest, they hadn't really mastered anything that didn't involve blowing things up...Tom said that it said a lot about their personalities), much to Hermione's undisguised annoyance.

After Hermione had let them teach her a couple of curses, Theo had warmed up to her a little more, and had even started addressing her directly by her surname, and more than that, rather amiably. Harry was pretty sure that it was because the other boy was amused by the fact that they were technically teaching Hermione the dark arts without her realizing it. She took to it quickly and easily, though, and Harry thought it was a shame that she was so against learning dark magic, because she seemed to have a talent for it. The fact that she could keep up at all with Harry (who literally had the Dark Lord in his head) and Theo (who came from a family of dark magic practitioners) said a lot.

Harry felt a bit bad about not making it clear that the spells she was learning from them were technically dark magic, but he didn't want to scare her off. The fact was that most useful offensive magic was technically dark arts, and Harry wanted Hermione to be able to protect herself. It was likely that being friends with him would expose her to a lot of wizards and witches who disliked muggleborns, and who might even want to hurt her...and the best way to protect her was to teach her how to protect herself. He was sure she'd understand one day, she just needed time, and if lying to her a bit would help keep her safe, he'd do so gladly.

Harry, Theo, and Hermione also met once a week to practice occlumency. This is where Hermione's skills really showed, because she took to the mind arts very quickly – she mastered meditation within a month (it had taken Harry almost half a year to learn to meditate, so he was very impressed with Hermione's progress), and she was exceptional at organizing her thoughts. Even Tom was impressed with her (not that he said so or anything, but Harry could tell). And that was really saying something.

Thus far, Tom was very pleased with the arrangements Harry had made to supplement his education at Hogwarts, and had been very eager to have Harry learn legillimency. Tom believed legillimency to be the "highest form of torture", an evaluation which made Harry feel very uncomfortable, but he couldn't deny the usefulness of the subject. He'd started practicing on Hermione and Theo in April – he was rather shocked that they let him, to be honest. Apparently they both had a lot of faith in his benevolent nature, which made him really happy...but at the same time somewhat worried about their sanity. Sure, Harry was a very nice person, but nice people do terrible things all the time - like Tom.

All he really did was scan their surface thoughts – legilimency was really hard, so he wasn't able to do much else, and they knew that. Still, he didn't want them to only have his word to go on, so he took a proactive role in putting precautions in place to preserve his friends' privacy. In other words, he'd mentally agonized over it for weeks. Tom said he was being an idiot, but he couldn't bring himself to invade the privacy of his friends...apparently they trusted him more than he trusted himself.

In the end, Tom had mentioned in passing that he could swear a mild blood oath; intrigued by the concept, Harry had looked up a book in the restricted section on the complex subject of magical oaths. After a week of research he swore a blood oath to Hermione and Theo that he wouldn't go seeking out any of their memories. The deal was, should he break his oath, he'd be subjected to pain a little milder than the cruciatus curse while in the process of breaking their agreement. What they didn't know, of course, was that over the past three years, he'd built up quite the pain tolerance, and Tom seemed very certain that he'd hold up better under the curse than most.

Hermione had been very uncomfortable with the whole oath thing - it was pretty dark magic, after all - but Harry had promised her that it wasn't anything unusual (a lie), that many more commonly used oaths had more serious permanent consequences (the truth), and that it wasn't really that dark at all.

...

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