15 October 1992, Hogwarts
After the end of September, the weather over the grounds and the castle of Hogwarts took quickly a turn for the worst. The practical potion classes were especially bad, considering the humidity and how cold the dungeons were, the heat from the cauldrons was simply not enough to offset the cold. Most of the upper years were relatively fine, having learnt the warming charm before, but the younger students, including Harry's classmates, were often sick, and commonly necessitated visits to the infirmary.
However, warming charms were prohibited in the Potions class. Apparently, ambient magic could affect potions in unpredictable ways, so enchanted torches and charmed clothes could easily cause an explosion. So, yeah, people barely tolerated potion class, and Snape's personality did not help. Harry still didn't know why Snape didn't add a fireplace or at least something warm. Not everything had to be magical to work. There had to be a reason because it was hard to see why Snape would be so spiteful as to make his students freeze to death and the fact that they had shaky hands caused a lot of accidents.
Very few people actually stayed in the corridors or hung out outside near the lake. Summer was definitely over, and Autumn was showing itself to be quite miserable. If this was any indication, then Winter would be horrible.
Hell, the constant rain that started since October began caused the Black Lake's water level to rise so high that it was submerging many students' summer spots, and the way to the greenhouse was so muddy that Filch almost gets a stroke every time he tries to clean up. Why he was even cleaning up, Harry had no idea. It wasn't anywhere in his duties as caretaker since the house elves were supposed to take care of it. The fact that he was a squib didn't hurt matters.
Still, for Harry things were going relatively well. Longbottom and Malfoy were so focused on Quidditch that they forgot entirely about him, and even when they tried, word of his duel with Flitwick seemed to spread quite quickly, and they were pretty wary of him now.
So, yeah, for the first time in almost a year, Harry was completely at peace at Hogwarts. No one tried to harass him, no one tried to get him in trouble. Things were just quiet and if it wasn't for the Diary still being on the loose, it would be a perfect year.
Unfortunately, on that front, Harry got nothing. His experiments with refraction lenses were going quite poorly. The good thing was that the enchanted magical absorbent rubies and the Orichalcum worked well but the lenses were the problem. The results were there, but the glass was very fragile, even if it was enchanted. Ideally, these things would be made up of diamonds, but Harry had no idea how to synthesize diamonds in the exact shape of the lenses. So far, he's been attempting to use quartz which seemed to work quite well, but with the predicted date of the first attack beginning, he was starting to get worried he won't have a prototype in time in case the Basilisk attacked him.
Fortunately, a combination of ice magic and his Arcane Hearing might be able to save him. There would be no reason a creature as massive and as magical as a Basilisk wouldn't be sensed by his Arcane Hearing. He could technically fight with his eyes closed, or at least escape while slowing down the King of Serpents with his ice magic. Speaking of his Cryokinesis, his progress in the field was quite good, both in his control and raw power.
The books on elemental magic were vague and he could now understand how. Pure elemental magic required a certain mindset that was unique to every person and there were no standard spells. Well, there were technically a few fields, like creating ice, freezing something, manipulating ice, animating ice, and so on. But there weren't normal spells like Latin, and that was why learning it was so difficult and teaching it was nigh impossible. It was like magic used to be before Hogwarts, you figured out how it would work yourself. Even wands in this case were barely more than a focus and their biggest functions as the manipulation of one's magic with wand movements, were not used.
As for the magic crest, Harry figured out that the repelling magic circle really was the easiest one, especially since it took weeks to figure out another spell, which was just a standard shield. Damn, the Potter scion could understand how the Romans annihilated all other opposition with the sheer number of wizards trained with a couple of years of magical training. Memorizing some Latin phrases, and wand movements were so much easier than making a magic circle and understanding it. No wonder they conquered most of Europe.
All things considered, while things were slow, Harry was making progress. It was currently a Monday, and he sat down for lunch as he usually did next to his friends. Unfortunately, Tracy was being her moody self, to everyone's exasperation. The brunette just looked at Malfoy and sneered, "I want to punch him in his lanky face."
Blaise rolled his eyes, "Let it go, Tracy…"
"Let it go? Do you realize what this idiot did?" the girl responded.
Daphne rolled her eyes, "Yes, he bought the Quidditch team new brooms to buy himself a place in the team, and that got Flint to not hold any trials this year."
Yeah, the Quidditch trials being cancelled were a bit of a scandal. The trials were supposed to be useful not only for new talent to show itself but also for the current team members to not grow complacent and keep training so that they wouldn't be replaced. It was a good system that served the team for years, where everyone had a shot if they were ambitious enough. That was, of course, until Malfoy ruined the entire thing by buying his way in, and since he technically gave the brooms to the team members, not the team itself, or it would have been considered as a bribe and Madam Hooch would have banned the brooms and Malfoy from participating, Flint couldn't afford to lose the brooms, so decided not to hold the tryouts at all.
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