AN: Quite important authors note below today, please check it out
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The fact that a unicorn had been killed in the forest wasn't something that managed to reach the student population in the next few days. Harry guessed that Dumbledore and the staff, who doubtlessly knew, considered that information to be on a more need-to-know basis, and the student body didn't need to know.
Harry snorted at the fact that Filch apparently thought that a student had committed the crime. The man had been noticeably jumpier in recent days while also stalking the corridor with his cat and interrogating random first years.
It was unknown what the man was planning on doing when he found and confronted a wand-wielding magical powerful and morally bankrupt enough to kill a unicorn of all things, but some things better remained a mystery.
"You're going to McGonaggal's office hours today, right?" Cedric asked from next to Harry as both of them finished dinner.
"Yep," the redhead answered. "Got myself some questions to ask." His focus on the cabinet during his vacation had paid off. He'd finally managed to piece together all its parts. Of course, understanding it didn't mean he could fix it, but he was now willing to start trying.
It was just.
Well, he was a bit tired of that particular part of enchanting, and with the new year, the dueling tournament was starting to loom close again.
This time, it would find place in Helsinki, Finland, and Harry wanted to see if he could improve on his wasp creation and enchantment with the help of the resident transfiguration mistress. The mist was coming along quite well, and he didn't really need help with that.
"More extra-curricular projects," Cedric observed with a sigh.
Harry rolled his eyes. "Please, you've been practicing duelling on the regular now, that along with Quidditch practice and Quidditch matches?" he paused for dramatic effect. "You're a bit of a nerd yourself these days," he whispered dramatically.
Cedric paled, his disgustingly handsome features starting to resemble more and more how he would look like when he started reaching the end of puberty. Hell, already now, Harry suspected that the boy would get his fair share of owls for Valentine's Day. The romantic ambitions of the female Hogwarts population had seemingly been fully unlocked now in the third year where they had a place to go that wasn't the castle.
Madam Puddifoot would reap another cycle of victims between her pink and garish walls…
"You can't say that," he demanded weakly.
Harry raised an eyebrow. "I don't know, Cedric. Top of your class in Transfiguration and Charms, from what I hear. Decent in all other subjects… Maybe you haven't realised this because you've been comparing yourself to me and Penny, but you're sort of in the top five academically in your year. And the extracurriculars, well, they speak for themselves, no?"
Cedric dramatically grabbed Harry by the scruff of his robe and desperately shook him. "A cure, please, tell me there's a cure."
Harry twirled his wand beneath his robes and conjured a pair of glasses on his nose that had lenses as thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle. He elongated his teeth with more transfiguration and said his next words with a lisp. "Would I look like this if I knew of a cure?" he asked. "The transformation, it's already begun. There is no hope," he lisped sadly. With another twirl of his wand, a pair of glasses appeared on Cedric's nose as well.
"Noooooo!!!" The boy broke down wailing as his vision became obscured.
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There was no real particular need to fix the vanishing cabinet now that Harry had Dobby, but at this point, it was a matter of pride. He'd somewhat underestimated the difficulty because a sixth-year Draco Malfoy had managed to pull it off, and now it was too late to quit without getting fraudchecked.
The fact that Draco had likely focused exclusively on the cabinet, technically had more years of formal education, while Harry was focusing on duelling, learning and teaching, the mist enchantment, the mind arts with Tonks and dealing with a dark lord.
But, he was a reincarnate; these things weren't supposed to matter, he whined in his head.
"Mr. Evans," a pleasant surprise professor McGonaggal said after Harry entered her office for office hours.
The woman looked peppy enough, likely having also recovered somewhat from the vacation.
"Biscuit?" she asked as Harry looked around the sparse but somewhat austere office before sitting down in the wooden chair in front of her desk.
Harry shook his head but took the woman up on her offer of tea.
"So what can I do for you?" the grey-haired woman asked, adjusting her green witch's hat as she leaned back in her chair and folded her hands together on the mahogany table in front of her. "Have you finally decided to pursue an advancement in the field of Transfiguration, which I have known you are capable of for a while?" she asked.
Harry shook his head. "I don't think I'm quite ready for such a workload as you think, professor," he replied politely. "I might be able to pursue that next year when I drop Arithmancy, but no sooner than that."
McGonaggal tilted her head, somewhat like a cat. "Dropping Arithmancy, Vector won't be too pleased with that. She said that you have immense talent for the art."
A shake of the head. "I think it's as useful as anything, but I'm also reaching the point where it would be more efficient to self-study a year's worth of material in the summer and perhaps pursue it again more seriously after Hogwarts, so as to not waste my access to masters of more immediately applicable wand magic."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Were it any other student telling me that they intended to self-study a year's worth of the second driest subject at Hogwarts during the summer, I would hesitate to believe them," she admitted before shrugging. "However, if anyone can manage, I trust you will be the one."
"The expressed faith is balm for my soul," Harry replied somewhat blankly and took a sip of his tea. "Leaving the potentiality of advancement for next year, I came here primarily to discuss matters of Transfiguration."
"Yes, I think Flitwick would be more suited to help you in terms of career advice," the woman muttered. "What have you been struggling with then?" she asked before waving her hand in the air. "Just show me."
Harry nodded and pulled out his wand. A wave of his wand and the incantation "Animacreo" kickstarted the conjuration process, and Harry felt with his magical sense as the life he had created twisted itself into existence out of thin air.
The wasps buzzed angrily in the air, their natural instincts, which Harry had imbibed into them by staying as true as possible to their real biology, began kicking in. Still, an animation charm took control almost instantaneously, and silently, pacifying the small swarm.
McGonaggal blinked; there was nothing to be surprised by as Harry had already discussed the wasp conjuration months ago. She knew what he'd been working on.
"I know you can make more, I assume you want to discuss something else?" she asked as Harry bid the wasps to land on her desk in a circle.
The professor pulled a monocle from somewhere in her robes and put it to her face, leaning in curiously. "If you're looking for advice on how to animate them more quickly, I can only tell you that you require more practice. A conjuration spell being cast and summoning forth the conjurations leaves a small window in which animation can already be cast," she informed him.
That wasn't anything Harry didn't know already. It was still a work in progress. The issue he was experiencing with the wasps was a bit more double-pronged. "They're a bit useless, I've recently realised," he admitted to the professor, who raised an eyebrow and bid him to continue.
"I can make a small swarm, but hardly a number that's going to be world-changing under any circumstances. I can send a few to the left, a few to the right, a few to the bottom and a few down the middle, but I think we can both agree that a larger swarm would be better," he elaborated. "I've been struggling with that, swarm creation. Alternatively, I'd also be happy with less if I could enchant them with the basic elemental resistance and maybe invisibility, but that's also proving challenging."
McGonaggal chuckled. "It's already impressive for any Hogwarts student to enchant a single entity, especially a conjuration, as they tend to be more fundamentally unstable. Your struggling with enchanting a swarm is hardly surprising; in fact, I don't quite know what you were thinking you'd accomplish," she chided.
Harry blushed and rubbed the back of his head. "Well, you know me. I generally think I can do something, rather than that I can't," he said.
"The headmaster would doubtlessly use this opportunity to tell you that this belief, that anything is possible, is a fundamental requirement for any more complicated magic beyond the Hogwarts curriculum." She paused. "I'll do something else instead and just tell you to manage your expectations."
Harry huffed and crossed his arms.
"To make a small number of wasps viable in a duel, as you're likely intending, would take a more focused approach to Transfiguration than you've shown so far. It's a complicated discipline," she said. She pulled out her own wand from one of her wide-brimmed sleeves and gave it a small twitch. Seven wasps suddenly appeared in front of her, not much different than Harry's own. Then, not even a second later, they disappeared from view. Harry, with his magic sense, also felt that they hadn't just become invisible.
She'd done what he'd been struggling with for almost a year now in under a second.
"Let me break down what skills I needed to do what I just did," the professor said strictly, entering her professor mode. Another wave of her wand dispelled the wasps. "I created the wasps with no wand movement and without an incantation. Their creation took less than a second. During this time, I cast the requisite animation charms and let them latch onto the constructs before they were even formed." She tapped her wand to her chin. "It's not often I get to explain such complex theories," she said.
"Regardless, a conjuration creates a coordinate in space at which the conjured entity will appear. The formation of the entity is dependent on the skill of a user but will never be instantaneous, even if it looks as such. However, what is instantaneous is the vector point from coordinate to creation. Essentially, there is something there from the moment you cast the spell to when an entity is formed. A vortex, some refer to it. An animation charm cast while the vortex is restructuring the necessary materials can be thrown like a," she snapped her fingers, "like a sticky film of animation intent which can catch itself on the vortex and seep into the entity once it is created. The sticky film builds a bubble around the vortex, animating it immediately when the entity emerges. In a way, the entity was animated already before it emerged from the vortex. Are you with me so far?" she asked.
Harry slowly nodded. This was a much more in-depth explanation of the conjuration part than Flitwick had been able to provide back when Harry had come to the man with the idea. He would review this conversation later to understand more. The mind arts were good for memory.
"Good, this is a step that you're still struggling with, and quite frankly, there is no point in continuing on to the enchantment until this is done," she said. "As for how long, I would say mastering this part would take." She shrugged. "It depends on the person naturally, but it's something I would expect from a particularly talented seventh year if they started from scratch and focused exclusively on this as their only extra-curricular project… I'd give it six months."
Harry tilted his head as he quickly calculated. "I've been working on the wasps on and off for a year," he admitted. "Assuming that a fully dedicated student would put in 14 hours a week, I've been doing about a fourth of that."
McGonaggal slowly nodded. "Which still means you're progressing faster than my example. But you're only halfway there. My recommendation is to increase the size of the swarm and forget the enchantment for the moment. A large swarm can dissipate to cover an even larger surface. There won't be many duellists below the age of seventeen who can cast a spell of sufficient coverage to deal with it easily. If you focus on this route, I don't see a reason why you couldn't have a swarm by summer."
"Just not an enchanted one?" Harry queried.
McGonagall shrugged. "I don't quite know what you're expecting, Mr. Evans. The easiest creatures to conjure are birds and snakes, which is something that can be taught in the fifth year. All other creatures are much harder to form. I understand the effect you are going for with the insects, but it's a harder path with delayed rewards."
"I'll take the advice at face value," Harry decided. The vanishing cabinet had been kicking his ass and the Mists of Moria, a singular enchantment on an area, had also been kicking his ass. Thinking that enchanting a swarm of wasps was something he'd manage anytime soon had maybe been a bit delusional.
It seemed he was finally reaching the kinds of magic at Hogwarts which didn't come as easily as previous things had.
"You seem very easy to convince for someone who's been enamoured with the idea of enchanted wasps for as long as a year," McGonaggal asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I don't believe in seeking expert opinion if one then doesn't respect the opinion," Harry retorted. "Also, one thing you've said makes a bit too much sense. I've been stretching myself too thin recently. I should focus more time on fewer projects. A larger swarm by the summer sounds…" he gritted his teeth. "Decent."
"You do realise that a large animated swarm of wasps would be enough to get an O+ in your sixth year," McGonaggal offered with a chuckle. "With a sufficient mastery of the basics, the wasps you can conjure now would already be enough to advance you a year."
"I'm not interested in grades," Harry replied almost automatically, sighing out his desperate need for a swarm of enchanted wasps. In the future, could he conjure them into having a more deadly neurotoxin in their poison sac? He wondered. No, bad Harry, he refrained from slapping himself.
"I'd suggest you work on forming the animation as a film and simply let the properties do their magic and stick to their vortexes. Once you have that down to less than a second on a larger number of wasps, we can speak again." McGonaggal paused with a tight smile. "Perhaps before you leave for summer vacation?"
"Is that a challenge?" Harry asked with narrowed eyes.
"A challenge would require stakes," McGonaggal said slowly. "How about, if you fail to conjure a swarm of at least a hundred and animate them within a second in the vortex stage, you advance a year in transfiguration this very summer."
Harry's mind spun. His efforts had been too dispersed recently. The vanishing cabinet, the Mists of Moria, fights to a metaphorical death with Quirrell, duels with Flitwick, teaching Neville and Tonks and Draco and Hermione and Harley and Penny and Cedric.
Where was the single-minded focus that he'd put into the disarming charm? In many ways, the disarming charm had been his greatest weapon during the tournament.
He needed to remind himself that he wasn't pursuing magic just for pleasure at the moment. That could happen once he graduated and went to live somewhere safe. Right now, he should focus on combat effectiveness.
Swarm. Mist. Basics. Did he need a vanishing cabinet when he had Dobby? Teaching Tonks and the kid squad… Well, considering the possible future, that was a bit more necessary. He could ditch the cabinet and the idea of enchanting the wasps. That would free up a few more hours every week. Three additional hours on the swarm size and animation film, three more on the mist.
As for what he could get from McGonaggal, there seemed to be no real narrative inertia to this world, and things had changed. James was running for Minister, Quirrell was not just possessed but was Voldemort, and the majority of Horcruxes had already been destroyed.
But if there was one thing that had been made clear in the books, it was that dementors would always be a problem. Either sent by the ministry or by a dark lord.
Harry already knew the patronus charm, but perhaps rather than focusing on having a vanishing cabinet backup to his Dobby-mobile, he could instead build a redundancy for not having his soul sucked out.
Books on how to actually become an animagus were quite restricted, and it was a form of magic that required registering with the ministry, which destroyed most of the surprise effect. He could ask Skeeter, after all she'd managed somehow, and it must have been available if one looked when one considered that James, Sirius and Peter had managed in their fifth year. But still, it would be good to get some advice from an actual master.
He looked up at McGonagall, noticing that he'd been thinking for a bit too long to be polite. "A challenge? I guess discussing the animagus transformation with someone who's mastered the art would be something that could come in handy one day," he responded.
"Only theoretically, of course," McGonaggal responded sarcastically with a tight grin before sipping her tea.
"Of course," Harry said. "Just theoretically."
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AN: IMPORTANT NOTE: I am bribing you! (extra chapters opportunity)
I recently released a new original story on RoyalRoad where the only thing that matters are lists. To get onto those lists I need followers, so I decided to celebrate a bit. This is my promise, my ninja way. As an incentive for readers of my other stories to check out my new stuff, I will post one extra Harry Evans chapter for every 100 new followers from this moment onwards!
I can release about 16 Harry Evans chapters in quick succession without fundamentally changing the situation over on my Patreon, so that's what I'll do if you guys help me out! Once I'm out of Harry Evans chapters I will go on to offering chapters of my Pokemon story, and then Video Game Cultivator last.
Thanks in advance: Time Looping For Dummies by Bor902 on RoyalRoad.