Harry Evans Chapter 87: Would you eat the worms? (Patreon)

As was likely to become tradition by the time of Harry's graduation, the first thing that he did when he awoke on the first day of classes before any of his housemates, was sneak to the Room of Requirement under the invisibility charm. He had mastered it to such an extent at this point that it was starting to become nearly impossible to distinguish him from the background textures. The progression made sense, considering he used it for a very long time, several hundred times a year.

The castle was quiet. Despite how much Harry prided himself on waking up at the early and reasonable time of 6:00 in the morning almost every day, there were always other students and professors who either couldn't sleep or had the same habit. Today, however, it seems like he was truly alone. All of the students had probably stayed up late to catch up with their friends that they hadn't seen in a long time. All the professors were likely savouring the last bit of peace and quiet they would have before classes commenced.

It was always interesting to see such a bustling location as a school completely empty. The corridors seemed to stretch on forever without anyone to fill them and the silence was almost jarring. If it weren’t for the occasional snore from the portraits, it could have even been maddening.

Having already been at Hogwarts for two years, and being an adventurer at heart, Harry had already discovered several shortcuts that he could take to reach the seventh floor faster. It really was quite unfortunate considering his proclivity for the room there, that he had been placed in Hufflepuff which was on the lower floors of the castle. 

Finally having reached the tapestry of the beautiful troll dancers, he walked in front of the long blank stretch of wall three times before a simple wooden door appeared. He entered the room with all the caution that was reserved for it now that the Horcrux was gone, namely none, and immediately ran over to pick up the brown leather hat that was lying in the middle of the marble cathedral that the room liked to replicate.

‘I'm starting to feel very bare whenever I'm not wearing you,’ Harry admitted as the soothing mental probes of the sorting hat once again started assaulting his mind. He was beginning to experience extreme signs of restlessness, whenever he wasn't being actively attacked like this. It was almost like his mind was starting to crave the challenge.

‘I have to admit that the Headmaster’s office has lost a lot of its charm in comparison to the dynamism of a 13-year-old's wanderings,’ the Hat admitted right back. The two of them quickly updated each other on the situation, which was not much of a situation. The Hat had spent a few days in the Headmaster’s office and was unable to report on anything that happened inside of it. The quick mental back and forth ended, and the hat reverted to its form of the sword of Gryffindor, with which Harry then began to practise.

He was quite grateful after an hour or so of the exhausting swinging of the sword, that he had, as a first priority back then in his first year, learned a variety of hygiene spells. If he hadn't been able to clean up his sweat and his clothes with the swipe of a wand, he would have needed to return all the way to the Hufflepuff dorms to clean himself and change his clothes. However, with his magical skills, he could simply take a second or two after practice and then go immediately to the great hall. 

Other students were finally out by the time he left the Room of Requirement.

Breakfast was served from 7:30 to 8:50, and while Harry had never been a breakfast person, exercising first thing in the morning tended to build up an appetite. 

He noted as he neared the great hall, that despite Dumbledore's announcement that students should check the new and updated list of banned items, people seemed to be more concerned with the announcement that the rat race club would recommend activities on the following weekend.

Harry hadn't even known that Hogwarts had a rat race club, but that just showed how much of an ignoramus he truly was. He walked past the pimply-faced youths proudly boasting that their rat had trained the whole summer to now be the fastest in the castle, and went inside to stack up his plate with a variety of foods respectful of the proper English breakfast tradition.

The Hufflepuff table was almost entirely bare, other than for a few prefects discussing something at the end of it, so Harry remained alone for the entirety of his meal.

It was only at 7:50 when he was done eating, that Sprout herself came to the great hall and idly handed him his schedule for the term.

He looked through it and saw that his first class of the day would be Care of Magical Creatures. Something that he was quite looking forward to.

After all, what was more magical than mythical beasts such as hippogriffs and dragons? Who wouldn’t want to attend a class that lets one come into contact with the creatures from one’s childhood fantasies?

Of course, he'd heard some bad things about Professor Kettleburn. Like the fact that he'd been suspended and put on probation more times than Harry had years in this life and that he'd been put into the hospital wing by his creatures enough times to call it his home away from home.

However, supposedly the man had mellowed out a bit now that he only had one and a half limbs left.

Nevertheless, the class wasn't about to start anytime soon, so Harry still had time to do something else until then. 

He'd managed to get a functioning secondary want from Burgin & Burkes this summer around, however, ironically, this had actually convinced him more than anything else that he needed to get the trace off of his primary wand.

The secondary wand was all right, but that was it. His primary wand, of elder and phoenix ash in comparison, was excellent. It was only after he'd used an unfit substitute several times, that he’d realised the importance and the value of having a properly matched magical instrument.

That was why, he decided that this term he would finally focus a bit on enchantment. As had been suggested by the literature that he'd read last year, he had attained the magic sense necessary to break curses and enchantments. However, the second step of that was to actually understand what one was feeling. What better way was there to understand something than to create it?

He stood up from the large table and started making his way back to the room of requirement. Once there he could just take a slide down to the part of the grounds where the care of magical creatures class would occur.

His mind whirled. There was a reason that all curse-breakers knew at least a little bit about casting a curse. From this logic, it followed that people who wanted to break enchantments first needed to learn how to enchant. Enchantment and curses were oddly enough one of the few fields of magic in which destruction was harder than construction. The issue was that this sort of magic was self-affirming and would defend itself.

Once Harry got to the Room of Requirement he decided on what sort of enchantment he was going to create. He’d been thinking for a while now, after having magically cleaned his house back at the Privet Drive that at one time, how nice it would be to give Aunt Petunia a utensil which could clean the house for her. He'd seen Molly Weasley in the movies charm a set of tools to clean the dishes for her, and enchantment was basically just permanent charming. It shouldn't be something out of his grasp if he tried. Nothing ever had been since he’d started exploring magic.

He pulled out the silver teaspoon that he'd taken from breakfast and looked at it curiously. Enchantment was the next step of charming an object. So, it made sense to first charm an object. Perhaps with a charm that he was most familiar with. In this case, he chose the levitation charm.

He'd already explored telekinesis as a part of sorcery for many years. Additionally, levitation has been one of the first charms that he learned at Hogwarts, although he’d already tested it before arriving.

Considering that enchantment was based on wand magic, however, his comprehension of the charm would probably be more helpful than his comprehension of sorcery. 

“Well, there's no time like now,” Harry muttered to himself and threw the spoon into the air in front of him. He quickly pulled out his wand and pointed it at the falling object.

“Wingardium leviosa,” he incanted and started a rigorous testing process of his control and the parameters of the charm.

-/-

It was one hour later that Harry slid down a slide that the Room of Requirement had provided him. It took him half a minute and he was already on the first floor of the castle where he exited onto the still-sunny green grounds through a hole that opened up in one of the stone walls.

The Room of Requirements truly was a wonder. If only his dorms were right next to it, then he could have gotten anywhere in the castle very quickly. However, the fact that the Hufflepuff dorms were next to the kitchen made getting up there to do so a waste of time. He could have just got into his original destination instead of the room. If only there was a way to get to the room of requirement more quickly.

On the other hand, perhaps this was better. If he still had to walk places he would at least get some exercise, and secondly, he would get to know the castle even more. It was a bit of a dreary place sometimes, but it had definitely grown on him.

Harry frowned as he rolled a small, but relatively heavy, ball of silver between his thumb and his pointer finger. It was what the silver teaspoon had been reduced to after he’d exerted too much pressure on it.

He saw a group of students in the distance. They seemed to be going towards the shabby wooden complex in which the Care of Magical Creatures class would find place. He reoriented himself so that he was walking towards them.

Two heads from the group turned their heads to look at him. One with short brown hair, and one with long blonde hair. Cedric and Penny had both taken the elective as well.

As Harry walked he filed away the information he had gained through his experimentation. One of the things he’d learned was that he needed to enchant whatever moving object he would give his aunt, with velocity that wasn’t too high. If something moved too fast it could hurt someone. He needed to give people the option to dodge or get out of the way if the object ever went haywire. In a similar vein, he needed to make the option of movement one-directional, to protect the object itself.

The reason why the silver teaspoon was now a silver ball of metal, was because he'd applied kinetic forces from two separate sides crushing the thing into itself. It would hardly do for an enchanted broom he gave us aunt to simply self-destruct upon first usage because it was trying to move both to the left and to the right at the same time.

All valuable lessons that stuck with him much more than if he had simply read about them. A few more bouts of experimentation and he could start reading up on the theory to fill in the blanks of what he had found out.

“Only you’d start running off and practising on your own on the first day,” Cedric stated with a roll of his eyes as Harry joined the group. “Use the opportunity to sleep in. You're not going to get many more chances this term. We have two more classes than last year.”

“Talk for yourself,” Penny said with a giggle. “Harry has already been taking arithmacy as an extra for one year. He has one more class than even us.”

“With the O.W.L this year the situation will hopefully only persist for one year,” Harry said.

“Are you going to drop it after?” Cedric asked in a surprised voice. “Seems like you went to a lot of trouble to get in there early. To not do a N.E.W.T, I mean.”

“Arithmancy is useful, however, it's an incredibly intense discipline that might make more sense to pursue later on in my life when I'm more free to create my own schedule. It's one of the few magical disciplines you can study perfectly well on your own I'd say. Also, Hogwarts definitely delivers a good foundation to do so,” Harry said. He had been toying with the idea of not continuing arithmancy for a while now. After all, he only had so many hours in the day, and he should use them to take advantage of the professors he was still sharing a castle with. It was something that could be studied on his own in the future. There wasn't really a rush, he guessed, now that he had a good foundation in the subject.

“Well, don't think that excuses you from helping me for the next three years minimum,” Penny said with crossed arms.

Harry raised his hands up in a defensive posture. “Of course, of course, with how much help you've been giving me in Potions it would be ridiculous to not pay it back." Because Penny had essentially saved his ass for two years straight, it definitely wasn't something that he was going to spit on by not returning anything. Although, for his two friends he definitely had been the go-to for any academic and magic-related questions for a while now. But, he didn't mind helping.

Arithmancy was a way to better understand several branches of magic, including Potions which meant that Penny would become a potions master faster if he helped her now. Which would benefit him in the end as well.

“Maybe you should just ask him for duelling lessons. I would join for that,” Cedric said. “I saw some of the photographs from the tournament, looked proper wicked. Even if you got put on your ass."

“You focus on Quidditch, you’ll hardly make it as a professional if you split your focus,” Harry retorted. One thing that he didn't feel like doing was teaching his friends duelling. Although, perhaps knowing of the potential chaos to come it might improve their survival ratio so he would be morally obligated.

“Professional quidditch player…” Cedric trailed off looking into the blue sky.

“Great, now you've made him go into this happy place,” Penny complained.

“I know you took care of Magical Creatures and Arithmancy, which makes perfect sense for someone who wants to do Potions in the future. But what did Cedric take as a second elective?” Harry asked.

“Divination. He heard it was really easy from some upper-years and decided that he couldn’t resist,” she said as she rolled her eyes.

“Well, it could be an interesting subject,” Harry hedged. “But I think it's one of the disciplines that if you're not born with a talent, it's kind of a waste of time. Unless your interest is purely academic.” He looked at Cedric who was still probably daydreaming of flying for his favourite team, or maybe for England in the world finals.

“His interest is purely out of academic interest for sure,” Penny said. “Academically interested in getting an easy grade,” she muttered to herself.

“The time you gain by not putting much effort into one class can be reinvested into something else. It's not a bad decision, per se,” Harry retorted.

“I’d agree with you if it was you making the decision. But you know just as well that the only reason he did it was because he doesn't want to do Arithmancy or Ancient Runes.”

“Muggle Studies?” Harry asked.

His blonde friend simply rolled her eyes. “What a joke, no one wants to do Muggle Studies. I probably learned more from you than a 7th-year student doing their N.E.W.T on the subject.”

The redhead shrugged. “I wouldn't know, I haven't done it,” he said as the large group of students, which for once, comprised all of the houses, arrived at the ramshackle section of the Hogwarts grounds designated for the Care of Magical Creatures class.

Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to create a class consisting of all four houses considering that Care of Magical Creatures was the most popular elective, and thus the group was still larger than a core class consisting of only two houses.

However, if nothing else the grizzled old man missing both his legs and an arm shut everyone up sufficiently enough to not make Harry doubt that it would probably go well. Probably, because Kettleburn didn’t have a great reputation.

“Welcome students to one of the most exciting classes that you will ever take at this grand institution!” The silver-haired professor greeted the students who arranged themselves in a loose half circle around the man. Behind him was a fenced-off field with a lot of cages and what seemed to be lettuce spread about on the ground.

“Of course, we will have to postpone the excitement towards the second term of the year so that you all gain enough skill with handling magical beasts that you can leave this class with all of your limbs attached,” the man joked. “Only two students have not managed up until this point during my tenure, so I'm sure that you bright young minds can do it as well,” Kettleburn continued, drawing some discontented murmurs from the students. Particularly the Slytherins. Very fearful, that lot.

“That is why this year we will be starting with quite a simple creature that should get you into the correct mindset for dealing with other sentient beings. If you think that we will be spending time in this class learning how to fight creatures, I will remind you that is what Defense Against the Dark Arts is for. This is called CARE of Magical Creatures for a reason,” the man said, causing some Gryffindors to look slightly discontented.

Particularly Fred and George who apparently had been looking forward to learning how to fist fight trolls.

Although to be perfectly honest, if his troll-fighting teacher was missing three of his limbs, Harry wouldn't trust him particularly much.

“For the first question of the class, I would like to ask all of you to examine the creatures lounging about uselessly in their cages behind me. If you have an answer to their identity do tell me along with your name.” The professor stepped aside, or rather, hobbled to the side. The entire fenced field behind was revealed, and the class of about 25 students walked forward to look at the cages. They were iron and looked very stable, which was disproportionately menacing for the brown lengthy fat blobs vegetating inside of them. 

Penny raised the hand from next to Harry, along with some Ravenclaws.

Kettleburn pointed at the blonde.

“Penny Haywood. These are Flobberworms. They’re essential in the creation of several portions, particularly the Wiggenweld potion. They’re herbivorous, and don't have teeth.” She lowered her hand.

“Flobberworms are the classic start of any magical creature instruction. These little things don't even have a threat rating, that's how useless they are. I once heard a man claim a bite from a Flobberworm as an excuse to not attend the wedding. Suffice it to say everyone who has taken the class was astounded because as we have now found out, they do not have teeth. Two points to Hufflepuff,” the professor announced.

“You're probably wondering what we should be doing today,” he teased as he walked in front of the fence towards a door.

Harry wasn't really wondering, all the lettuce on the ground sort of made it obvious.

“We will be learning the most essential way to care for magical creatures, namely their diet!” Kettleburn announced.

Well, Harry had hoped for more Dragons and Hippogriffs, but he was adult enough to realise that this wish would have never been fulfilled anyway.

Quite frankly there was too much excitement in his life often enough.

He’d take the worms.