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Harry Evans Chapter 96.5: The scorpion and the frog
🕑 Added 2024-11-13 03:00:06 +0000 UTCHarry slowly but surely moved his wand in small cutting gestures over the dead wasp on the table before him.
He gently split it down the middle right through the torso and held up a magnifying glass to inspect its insides.
His wasp conjuration had been doing very well and he was quickly approaching being able to create a threatening number. Now, with the duelling tournament over for another year, maybe two if one didn't count the next, it was time to deepen his skills.
One very critical piece of advice that James Potter had given him last year, was to explore in any way that he could the animal that he chose to utilise as a weapon. That was why Harry had taken some notes on wasp anatomy and behaviour from the muggle world and was cross-examining these along with the specimens that he summoned to himself from the forbidden forest, or from elsewhere somewhere in the fields around Hogwarts.
He'd never thought that he would one day be using magic to bring wasps to him, rather than repel them.
Double-checking against the anatomical drawing of the creature he identified a small yellowish tube-like organ in the middle of its torso. That must have been its stomach. He hummed thoughtfully as he telekinetically poked at it.
One would think that magic could surmount the need to understand the anatomy of a creature one wished to create. After all, it wasn't like it was actually alive. It was simply animated to move. However, it was indeed more beneficial to simply understand it on a biological level as God intended. Animals were already fully enclosed functional systems. Replacing their functions with magic, which became necessary for malformed conjurations, simply consumed more of it and made all other manipulations more cumbersome.
“Evans, that's disgusting, please stop,” a voice suddenly said from beside him.
Harry blew a strand of red hair that was getting slightly too long out of his eyes and looked up in annoyance at the Hufflepuff prefect who was standing behind him and looking down at him in disgust.
“Mind your business Stormar,” he snarked at the boy he knew from his Arithmancy class.
“I'll mind my own business when you stop dissecting insects at the breakfast table, Evans. Some of us are trying to eat here,” the boy snarked right back with his wide and expressive mouth.
Harry paused and looked around himself. He’d caught the wasp on his morning jog and had thought that he would simply dissect it at the breakfast table in the great hall before anyone else arrived.
There weren't many people yet, but they were slowly trickling in. He must have lost track of time.
“Where did everyone come from?” he asked.
“From the dormitory,” Stormar replied with a roll of his eyes before turning around and going back to sit with his friends once he saw that Harry had heard the complaint and was going to listen to it.
The younger boy for his part put the wasp away in a little tin box and into his pocket. The anatomical and biological information went into his satchel, and he was just about to stand up and leave to continue his research somewhere else when a large black owl suddenly gained his attention.
Not for a good reason mind you, but because it was flying right towards him and looked exhausted enough that it might-
The owl crashed into the table right in front of him, hooting weekly and extending one shaking talon with a letter attached to it.
Harry for his part unbound the letter before bringing up his wand and waving it over the owl. A diagnostic spell revealed that there was nothing particularly wrong with it. It was just incredibly tired.
A few pieces of bacon and bread along with a cup of water seemed to improve the situation, while a minor Episkey corrected the slight tearings of the muscular structure that had occurred from the vigorous flight.
The owl hooted gratefully, before lifting off once again. It would probably rest in the owlery before returning fully.
Not feeling any magic in the letter that he had been given, Harry started opening it. Then he saw who it was from. Only one person he knew used such toxic green ink and he didn't currently feel like dealing with them.
He rolled the parchment right back up and stuck it in his satchel along with everything else.
He was feeling quite tired today and he didn't have an urge to know exactly what Skeeter had to say just yet.
Starting this week he would be having lessons with Quirrell, Flitwick, Neville, and his two friends. All of this while also teaching Tonks Occlumency and duelling her as well.
He knew that it was important to learn how to fight, and he was quite frankly enjoying it very much. But today it was making him falter a bit. After all, in addition to all of that, he also had normal classes, one of which was Arithmancy which was turning out much harder than he'd expected. He’d looked at the homework and had found himself surprisingly flummoxed and for one of the first few times at Hogwarts had to ask an older student for help.
It was hard to say if it was Harry who was more surprised by this, or if the sixth-year Hufflepuff girl who he knew was taking Arithmancy was more confused than him.
He suddenly realised that since Penny was now in her third year and also taking Arithmancy, she would likely be asking him for help with it as well.
He still had approximately an hour left before the first lesson of the day and he decided that he needed to clear it on his own with some meditation in a calm room before he continued with today as it was and simply aggravated his mental state further.
Thus taking the first hidden passageway he encountered when exiting the great hall, he quickly found himself on the First Floor. He walked from there in the direction that was opposite where the library was at because he knew that even at this time of day there would be some annoying Ravenclaw student, namely Hermione, already taking up space and walking around incessantly.
He thus found himself in an abandoned wing of the castle surrounded by the usual moving paintings and armours in front of a door that he knew led to what had last year been a very empty room with no clear discernable purpose other than perhaps just a place to hang out.
Imagine his surprise then, when he opened it and found himself confronted with a large mirror.
He furrowed his brows as he stood still. “I don't believe in coincidence,” he said, before promptly turning around and making to leave. Wasn't it too convenient to stumble upon the mirror of Erised randomly like that? He suddenly paused. While the mirror was certainly dangerous, he was an adult man with the ability to rip himself away from seeing a scene that fulfilled all his heart's desires. After all, he had mastered Occlumency.
That counted for something, right?
He turned around and looked at the mirror in the middle of the room. At the moment it was serving simply as a reflection, he was too far for its enchantment to grasp his heart.
It wouldn't hurt to try, would it?
Harry took a step towards the mirror, then another, quickly followed by one more. He felt with his magic sense when he entered the range of the powerful artefact.
It probed at his mind like a wriggling tentacle but also extended towards him another cord which seemed like it was going to some place deeper than that.
He furrowed his brows, and for lack of a better word, tasted the artefact.
It was, to his magic sense, everything that he had expected the Mirror of Erised to be.
Visually as well, he could confirm what it was. He’d even seen an illustration once, and a book about the magical wonders of the world.
The touches of the magical enchantment didn't force the issue when they were repelled by his willpower and shields. It wasn’t malign.
However, due to his rejection, the only thing that he saw in the ornate golden mirror was his face.
Come to think of it, he didn't look at mirrors very often, he mused. What was the point? Take care of your skin and do what you can for your diet and you will look the way you look, nothing you could change after that. Nothing worth changing in the end. Humans were just humans.
The image that was staring back at him was that of a 13-year-old boy, just that due to his above-average height fueled by good nutrition and exercise, he looked more 15 than 13. In addition, the serious facial expression and the lack of any sort of childishness in the facial expression made him look even older, perhaps 17.
It wasn't a figure anyone would mistake for a child unless they knew the real age of the body and filled out the blanks according to their preconceptions. Harry knew that if he put aside his black robe and took off the shirt he had underneath what would appear would be the corded wiry body of a warrior. Similarly if one were to peel apart the thin layer of skin hiding his skull to crack it open, one would find the thoughts and habits of an adult.
He knew that to see what lay in his so-called heart he would have to remove his protection. He tilted his head and did it. He dropped, for one of the first time in years the constant attention that he gave his Occlumency and took care to peel away the instinctual protection that his magic offered his body and soul simply by existing within it.
In response to this, the image looking back at him from the mirror did not change as much as one would expect.
The only thing that happened was that he was suddenly 21. Legally an adult in both worlds, in all countries. Someone who others could still treat as a child if they wanted to, but to whose opinions he didn’t have to legally listen to anymore.
His surroundings weirdly enough remain the same. The same dark and stony room in Hogwarts.
He was even wearing the same clothes, his hair was the same length and his expression was set to the intentional neutral that he put it in when not interacting with people.
However, Harry didn't know how the mirror achieved this, but he knew that while Harry had only gained eight years, the world around him had changed. It was not shown visually, but it had changed. Beyond anyone's wildest imagination.
The mirror could not show anything because what it was showing was something that had no real visual equivalent. In the world of the mirror, there was no more greed, and thus there was no more war. There was no more envy and thus there was no more murder. There was no more selfishness, and thus there was no more hate.
It was a world conveyed to Harry solely through metaphysical means.
The purity of it nearly made him shatter.
The contrast between what he felt existed in the mirror, and what he knew existed, in reality, made him want to raise his wand and cast fiendfyre at the wretched thing that was showing him something that could never come to exist.
“I can't understand why anyone would wither away in front of you, you pathetic piece of badly tempered glass,” he said out loud to the object while slamming his barriers shut one by one. The emotions he was feeling, the false image of the world, disappeared.
“Harry my boy,” a voice suddenly said from behind him, and Harry knew that he had fallen into a trap.
“Headmaster,” he interrupted whatever the man was going to say. “What a coincidence to see you here. Not getting lost in a false reality are we?” he mocked with a playful smirk as he turned around to find himself facing the purple-robed old master of the school.
If the man was fazed by Harry's very quick understanding of the situation and his response, he didn't show it.
“Alas, those who live in their dreams, stand still in life,” the headmaster mused out loud while stroking his beard. “Do you know about this mirror, what it is?”
“The Mirror of Erised. Known to show you only your heart's deepest desire, nothing more, nothing less. Some would say one of the world's magical wonders, I hesitate to call it anything but a trap for the idiotic.”
“Our hearts are often more honest than our minds. This disarms us into a weakness we usually do not show. What did you see Mr Evans, if I may ask?”
Harry shrugged. “An impossibility. A world without hate, without war, without greed and selfishness. Something so impossible, so unachievable, that it is not even worth dwelling in the fantasy of it.”
“Ah, to once again have those grand dreams, all I see is receiving a nice pair of woollen socks for Christmas,” the headmaster joked.
Harry grinned as he took a step past the man. “Something barely more achievable than my vision then. To get socks rather than the self-important artefacts and books others might think a dignified figure such as yourself might enjoy… Socks would mean that there was someone in the Wizarding World who perceived you as a human being, rather than a political figure, a war hero or the headmaster of a magical academy. That is the issue with the mountains which are so high that they are seldom attempted. Once you reach the peak, you find that you've become unequivocally and completely alone.”
Harry's footsteps rang through the mostly empty stone room as he walked out. “Don't worry headmaster, I won't return to this room. There is nothing of value here.”
“Could you come to my office tomorrow evening after dinner?” the old man said quietly as Harry was opening the door to leave. “It seems that we should once again discuss your contributions to the school.”
“Of course, headmaster,” Harry said, calming down his beating heart with the fact that the man likely meant the international recognition given to Hogwarts with his participation at a duelling circuit, rather than the destroyed Horcrux that Dobby should have delivered by now. “I look forward to our conversation,” he said and closed the door behind him, leaving in the room with the enchanted mirror an old man aged 110, with no family whom he could speak to, hardly any friends who didn't idolize him and only a phoenix to fill the void of true companionship.
-/-
AN: Dumbledore is sort of a sad figure when you think about it. His brother doesn't talk to him. In Hogwarts he has only subordinates and outside only hero-worshippers.
Comments
bor902
very good point, thank you
AnonymousJohn
You have two Chapter 96’s here on Patreon.
bor902
tomorrow
allen pellissery
When do you update again
bor902
Harry being a child yeah, I didn't start getting my parents christmas gifts till I was 14 as well I think
Gremlin Jack
You something equally tragic about Dumbledore? Giving and receiving Christmas gifts was always made a big deal in the novels, yet not once did canon Harry send Dumbledore a set of warm socks for Christmas.
Hawk
Tftc
Green0Photon
Woo update! A bit sad tho
