Harry Evans: Memoirs of a well-lived Death (SI)

"Up," Harry said imperiously, but not putting any intent behind the phrase. The broom lying on the grass to his right did not budge. Just as he'd expected. "Up!" he said again, commanding and demanding the broom to fly up into his extended hand. The wood slapped almost painfully into his palm. The Ravenclaws who had been giggling at his apparent inability to get his wood up, abruptly shut up.
Cedric, who had already mounted his own broom on his right, gave him an encouraging look.
"Now, put the broom between your legs, jump and stay afloat!" Madame Hooch shouted. A fit woman seemingly in her fifties with short grey hair and eagle eyes.
"Just don't think about it not happening," Cedric whispered unhelpfully to Harry before promptly jumping up and beginning to float with his legs extended backwards, feet hooked against the little metal bars at the back of the broom.
Harry considered his friend's words and then jumped. He'd read up on brooms and their enchantments. The basic first step was that they were made to hover a metre or so above the ground unless the owner willed otherwise. One would think that trying to stay afloat on a wooden broom high in the air and going at fast speeds would be murder on one's ass and balls, but it was actually quite comfortable when one considered the cushioning enchantments. The whole thing was even more comfortable than a women's bicycle. He wobbled from the left to the right and back again without intending to do so and grimaced at the lack of control he had over the thing. Bicycles were mechanical and propelled purely by one's own muscle. This was something else.
"Go forward, to me, to me!" Hooch shouted again, having mounted her own broom and was now flying backwards away from the tightly packed line of Hogwarts students who started awkwardly and haltingly in some cases flying towards the woman. Of the students slowly traversing the grass field in the shade of the castle, Cedric was at the forefront. Following him were two Ravenclaw boys. Harry was in the back, his flying interspersed with short abrupt breaks. The whole experience honestly felt like his first driving lesson, before he'd learned how to use the stick properly.
"You're doing great Harry," Penny beamed from next to him, moving at her own glacial, but much more fluid pace. She was obviously holding back a bit to stay level with him. Harry smiled at the girl and let go of some of his nervousness. His flying became less jagged as a result. Eventually, he and Penny reached Hooch as some of the last students to do so. They ended up spending the rest of the flying lesson sticking closely together and chatting about classes, Harry being the one to limit himself when it came to the later stages of the exercises since Penny had a slight fear of heights.
"Ever thought about becoming an animagus?" Harry asked the girl as they were making their way to the library after flying so that they could study together. Cedric had stayed behind to fly more with the other boys, "You'd probably be a bird, then you wouldn't have to be afraid of heights, since you could fly," he elaborated.
"Who ever heard of a bird scared of heights," Penny shot back as she hugged herself and cringed. "I'll take a land animal any day of the week. Even if it's a skunk. What do you think you'd be?" she then asked.
Harry thought for a second, "I've never actually thought about it. Probably a dog of some sort," he said, causing Penny to blush and start laughing. Playfully pushing her Harry looked out of a window and caught a glimpse of a pack of first-years flying circles around each other. "What's up with you all of a sudden?
Penny brushed a tear from her cheek and grinned at him with a slightly embarrassed look on her face. "Sorry, it's just that our neighbours recently got a young dog right before I went to Hogwarts. His defining characteristic is that he humps everything he can get his paws on!" she said, before bursting out into laughter again. Harry joined eventually, despite not thinking the joke that funny.
"I was more thinking about the other characteristics that dogs have, but I can see what you mean."
"Don't worry Harry, if you ever start humping everything in sight I'm sure Madame Pomfrey could do something to help," Penny reassured him.
Feeling a bit uncomfortable with the direction this conversation was going, Harry asked the girl about her favourite Quidditch team, which got him a five-minute rant about the Wigtown Wanderers. It was a perfect length to cover the time it took to get to the library where they both occupied a table in the far back and cracked open their respective books. Harry was working on some arithmancy which was supposed to determine a spells wand motion and Penny was reading a book about the history of Potions in Scandinavia, like a fucking nerd.
"What's Professor Twix doing going into the restricted section like that?" Penny asked curiously, causing Harry to pause in his calculations. He didn't mind, seeing as they weren't really that fun anyway. He looked up to see that once again their thin defence professor was entering the forbidden section of the library.
"How am I supposed to know?" he asked, causing Penny to roll her eyes.
"You're a total dweeb Harry, I'm pretty sure you spend three hours a day in the library."
Harry considered her words and mentally admitted that he did spend a large amount of free time in the library. Especially since he'd found both the arithmancy and magical theory book he needed for his spell creation project. When he wasn't in the library he was practising magic somewhere in the gigantic castle they called a school. He'd recently mastered a cosmetics charm that removed the need for him to ever wash his hair. It also made them incredibly luscious. He tousled them and watched the way Penny's eyes followed the gesture.
"Well, she's here almost every third day. No clue what she does, always the restricted section though," he answered.
"Maybe she's preparing lesson plans there, away from students," Penny said with a shrug, before taking a glance at his paper. "What are you even doing?" she asked dubiously.
"It's arithmancy," Harry replied.
"Isn't that an elective in the third year?" Penny complained. "Please, just practice Potions, you're almost killing me every lesson!"
Harry scratched the back of his head, "I don't know Penny, it's not like I haven't been trying. It just doesn't work for me," he said, causing the girl to sigh.
"I guess I get it," she said, looking at the three pieces of parchments he'd filled up with calculations, "I'm probably going to be the same with arithmancy, but I want to take it so badly. All the books say it's important for developing recipes."
"I'll help you, just as you're helping me, alright," Harry promised and reached over to squeeze Penny's hand.
"Thanks, Harry. I appreciate it. I don't know if helping me with some numbers equates to me almost dying once a week from your explosions, though."
"I'll also help you in Transfiguration. You need all the help you can get."
"Hey!"
It ended up being a fun afternoon spent in the library until Pince threw them out for being a bit too loud at one point. Afterwards, Harry took Penny to the kitchens where the house elves press-ganged them into eating an entire three-course meal instead of the sandwiches they actually went there for.
-/-
"How was the flying?" Harry asked as Cedric entered the dorm they shared with the other Hufflepuff boys.
"It was great!" Cedric answered, "You really missed out. I'm definitely looking forward to being able to bring my own broom next year. I have a Comet, not even close to a good broom, but It still trumps the school ones though," he finished and then threw himself onto his bed, pulling out a quidditch magazine from somewhere and starting to read while lying in bed fully clothed. Harry looked doubtfully at his own bed and imagined how gross it would be if he fell onto it in his outside clothes. He grimaced.
Although, magic could solve most issues.
"Well, at least you get to fly," he told the boy.
"Definitely. Bad flying is better than no flying. You should join us!"
"Perhaps," Harry said, feeling slightly tired from all the work that he had been putting into arithmancy and magical theory recently. In addition to the curriculum and spells that lay outside the curriculum, such as the disillusionment charm, he felt that he was at maximum capacity recently. Maybe some zooming around the sky could refresh his batteries. He was even studying on Sundays these days, something he'd never done before unless it was for a very important exam.
Maybe he wasn't as talented as the original Harry Potter, but it should still be fun.
-/-
Harry knocked on the door to Professor Flitwick's office and entered after a squeaky voice bid him to. It was the professor's office hours and it had been three months since he had initially come to the man after class to ask about spell creation. It was the beginning of December and Harry would soon go home for Christmas. Not much had happened in the last months, except for Harry studying, deepening his connection to Cedric and Penny and occasionally saying hello to Tonks and the Weasley twins. He hadn't made that much progress with the disillusionment charm and thus he was reserving the day of the final quidditch match sometime in May to go visit the room of requirement. Otherwise, however, he had been quite successful in his goal of mastering all sorts of household and personal hygiene charms. Most importantly though, he felt like he had made tangible progress in understanding what factors went into spell creation and had written up a valid research plan to attempt and create the desired effect. He had, however, recently hit a roadblock, which he wanted to introduce to Flitwick so the man could ponder it over the Christmas holidays. Harry meanwhile would enjoy his Christmas by focusing on lighter topics. With all the classes, homework and extracurricular study he was doing he was beginning to feel slightly burnt out with structured magic and was looking forward to setting fire to objects with just his mind for a change.
"Mr. Evans, what can I do for you?" Professor Flitwick asked while vibrating in his seat, before hastily adding, "Please sit."
Harry smirked at the half-eaten platter of cookies on the man's table and wondered if it was there for the students or the professor.
"After our discussion on spell creation in September," Harry started, Flitwick nodding along eagerly, "I've found, read and incorporated the two books you suggested to me, professor." It hadn't really been an easy task. They were both thick tomes and no matter how well written they may have been, they'd been difficult to comprehend at times. This didn't seem to escape Flitwick.
"The whole thing, front to back?" the man asked dubiously.
Harry nodded. "I needed one month per book, really. For the past month I have been working on a research proposal in regards to creating the spell we were talking about," he said, before holding up a hand and pulling out from his leather satchel almost a dozen papers bound together with a paper clip. He slid it over to the professor, who adjusted his glasses and picked up the sheaves.
"Potential search command spells by Harry Evans, academic supervisor yet to be determined," the half-goblin read aloud.
"I've narrowed down the calculations and magical theory aspects going into the incantation to determine potential matches on pages three, four and five," Harry said, causing the professor to flick to the corresponding pages, which he quickly read before going further.
"It was quite easy to determine that due to the spells' intended similarities to the homenum revelio spell, revelio would be an easy choice as a second word in the incantation. However, it required some calculations to determine that the first word should perhaps be only three syllables to match the second one. This should add stability. Seeing as this is a spell that doesn't need to be pushed to its boundaries in terms of magical output the possibility of four syllables for the first word and thus seven for the entire incantation was deemed unnecessarily risky," Harry explained as Flitwick followed his calculations, quickly reaching the last section of the proposal.
"Your conclusion seems solid, I'd need to look it over a bit myself later, but, three syllables seems like the obvious choice," Flitwick said, peering from his high chair over the documents and looking Harry in the eyes. "I see here that you are considering the incantation littera revelio, amongst others," the man said before flipping over to the next page, which detailed the wand movement. "A downwards lockpick with a wide horizontal circle. Cumbersome," he commented, "but seeing as this is a utility spell it shouldn't matter overly much. The circle represents knowledge which can roughly symbolise the littera of the incantation, but literra will be pronounced with the lock-pick and not the circular motion. However, it just doesn't work the other way around because one can't do a downwards after a horizontal, only before," Flitwick mumbled as his eyes flew over the page and he seemed to consider some things.
"The work on incantation and wand movement are both good, however, the combination of the two makes the whole thing a bit heavy. It will take a lot of focus and a lot of power. Formally speaking though, the argumentation is airtight. Nonetheless…" The man paused, "might be better to start from the beginning and to try to find a one-word incantation." He said, almost asking himself as he pulled out his wand and twirled it in the air. Bright numbers appeared in the barely illuminated and cluttered study.
"The formulaic aspects being airtight at the sacrifice of efficiency is almost intentional," Harry mentioned. "It wasn't necessarily planned, but in hindsight, I personally wouldn't want to have it any other way. This is a non-combat spell, it will never be needed in the middle of something time-intensive when one can't focus and wants to conserve energy. I'd rather have it annoying but formulaic rather than non-formulaic but efficient."
"A matter of personal opinion," the professor replied, before flipping to the last page, quickly glancing through it and astutely picking up on the main issue of Harry's proposal. "I see this is the section that requires the most work. Meaning against form, definition of search parameters and blurriness of results. The ideas are nearly ingenious but they mesh together like a house on fire," he concluded and crossed his arms in thought.
Harry sighed. "Yes, I've had some issues narrowing down how to define the search terms. More specifically, how can I encompass a unit of meaning such as 'animal transfiguration' into a thought that can be reflected by text, when I have no idea what that text may look like, as I haven't seen it yet. On the other hand, defining the search by the form wouldn't account for things such as different handwriting, spelling, different languages or even damage to the book. Honestly, I've been running in circles all week."
"I noticed that you've been distracted in class recently," the professor said as he put down the collection of papers with a sigh. The man took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "There is a solution, perhaps, to your conundrum of form vs. meaning. However, it won't be one you will like and I want to preface it with something else."
Harry nodded and continued waiting patiently in his chair.
"The quality of the work you brought, is quite frankly astonishing and through our conversation, I have no doubt that it was you alone who did it. This is also partially because there were some easily avoidable missteps present, which could have been avoided with some light collaboration," the man said, causing Harry to blush at the fact that he hadn't wanted to seek assistance before getting completely stuck because of pride. "The theoretical knowledge to create this research proposal can perhaps be found in the mind of a fourth-year student at our fine institution, however, it seems that it is the rare pupil who can accompany that knowledge with such vision, determination and willingness to create something new," Flitwick said passionately as he waved his arms, looking honestly quite funny. "Congratulations Mr. Evans, for accomplishing something which I've never seen students, four years your senior, even attempt," he finished sincerely, causing Harry to look down and mull over his response.
It had been a recurring theme, during his muggle schooling, to be lauded as a prodigy, and praised for his knowledge, his skills and his work ethic. Something that he felt no pride in show-casing, because of his current mental age. To exhibit any less of the aforementioned qualities would have been nearly impossible.
"Thank you, professor, for your kind words. I hope that one day, once this spell is finished, it will help me and others. Such as Professor Twix, who I have been seeing in the library a lot recently, in using their time more efficiently," Harry said, doing the good old thank you for the praise, but I find it unjustified, so let's switch topics.
"It would be a spell of incredible utility, although what Professor Twix is doing in the restricted section isn't really related to finding a particular book," Flitwick said, before sighing. "Now onto the bad news." He paused. "Your spell, in terms of meaning search, will most likely remain a dream for the moment. Many wizards have tried to decode meaning and its properties. None have succeeded to the point which your spell would require."
"What then?" Harry asked, "Am I supposed to concentrate on form and elicit only one in a hundred of what I'm actually searching for?"
Flitwick looked Harry in the eyes, before sighing again. "If only it were as easy as we'd like it to be, eh," he muttered, before continuing, "Spells are variable, form is a step that comes before free form. By creating the spell now and beginning to practise it, you could introduce variability into the form you are looking for. Then, casting it again, with another, slightly different form in mind. Or you could even one day learn to hold several forms in mind when casting the spell. Who knows," he paused. "How do I explain this?"
This is where Harry interrupted the man, "I understand, I think. Better to make an imperfect spell, get some use out of it, stretch it to its limits and then use it as inspiration for something bigger in the future, than get stuck on the stage of trying to perfect something but suffering for ten years before making progress."
"Essentially!" Flitwick said with a smile, before glancing at the clock. "Time is running short. Why don't you think about my suggestion over the holidays before reconvening next year? Your spell is almost done, but you should finish it and practise it under supervision."
Harry nodded, grabbed his research proposal and stood up from the chair. "I'll revise the last chapter with simply the form in mind. It shouldn't take long. I was never planning on casting the spell on my lonesome."
"Good, good. Terribly unsafe, that," Flitwick agreed, hopping off of his chair and escorting Harry to the door. "I expect great things from you Mr. Evans and perhaps while as an educator I shouldn't be saying this… You can let your coursework slip a bit if this is the extent of your extra-curricular projects. Learning out of one's initiative is the best learning. Now off you go, it's late!" the professor finished before slamming the door in Harry's face.
Harry huffed and looked down at the leather satchel which held a sheaf of papers that represented essentially three months of his free time. He'd been working on the thing for about three hours a day for so long…
"Hopefully I can finish this soon and finally find a book on the Mind Arts," he muttered, before shaking his head and beginning to make his way back to the Hufflepuff dorms. It was late, the discussion with Professor Flitwick having apparently taken much longer than he'd thought.
Pausing for a second Harry looked out of a window onto the Hogwarts grounds below. Not much was visible due to it being night now, but the starry sky illuminated Hagrid's hut and the forbidden forest beyond. Snapping his fingers to produce a small flame Harry looked at his reflection in the glass. Messy short red-hair, pale, green-eyes growing body. "You're a wizard, Harry," he said, before turning off the fire with a simple thought. It wasn't often that he was able to look at his reflection without lamenting what he'd lost. But today seemed to be one of those times. "Maybe because I have all the pieces of an identity in this body now as well. Friends, dreams, hobbies, ambitions, realistic expectations of the future and competencies. Almost makes me not wish that this had never happened," he tilted his head and swung his arms as he walked, "but what's missing?"