Unbeknownst To...

Hogwarts Preparations with Riddle Edition

It was currently mid-August as Harry stood in the middle of the duelling room, surrounded by activated dummies, practicing his wandless magic. He knew he needed to exercise his core lest he become less powerful than the mini-Voldie. No, he was not going to let that absolute git get one over on him, not going to happen. He had taken his OWLs at the Ministry earlier in the month, and he had made sure that he had at least done as well as Riddle, if he happened to conjure a Patronus for DADA and get extra credit, well, he managed to get one up on the teenage Voldie.

He didn't appreciate Riddle's attempts to push him down. They had spent more time with the Blacks and Malfoy as a buffer of course, but Riddle was a straight up pain in the arse. They had gathered up at one point to help him with sending a letter to Hogwarts and Riddle had the gall to play on his supposed Frenchness in his critique of the letter. In the end, Harry played on Riddle's inability to speak more than just English. Oh he knew Riddle could speak Parseltongue but it's not like Riddle would be reckless enough to give him proof- just in case, he used that against him. He didn't know how he would do that, but he would if he could. To the others it sounded like friendly bantering, but the two of them knew they were engaged in a rather fascinating powerplay.

But why on Earth was the teenage Voldie so insistent on keeping him, a random boy he didn't even know below him? It was almost as if he could sense that Harry was a threat, and a dangerous one at that. How? He hadn't shown any powerful feats of magic except for his patronus. All they did was have a piano battle and Riddle straight up decided that he was going to make things difficult for him. Even if old Voldie had stalked him through time and merged with his younger self or something of the likes that would give him a more detailed profile of himself, it would be full of useless information as he never let Voldemort see anything beyond his Golden Boy persona, even in his mind where he knew Voldemort had peeked in which he made sure to reciprocate.

He shot a wandless wave of magic at the dummies surrounding him, imagining them as the Death Eaters responsible for his predicament. The dummies got shoved back enough to give Harry more space, but not enough for any real damage to occur. He shot a a barrage of spells in quick succession, working to hone in reflexes that would allow him to dodge and send wandless spells at the same time. Since his spells done wandless are weaker than his spells with a wand, he had to learn to cast quicker and better. He brought his entire focus to the task at hand as he dodged, cast, and weaved.

He was frustrated beyond belief, his well orchestrated plans that he had are now null and he had to make new ones soon. He hadn't even considered time-travel to be a variable that would throw all plans out the Universe. He was irritated and angry but he had been able to channel that into performing bizarre feats of magic that exhausted him enough to no longer be angry.

The ten dummies surrounding him upped in intensity as he brought himself up to an intricate dance, humming Beethoven pieces to keep up his fast tempo as he weaved between dangerous curses. He dodged out of the way of a purple flame as he tapped into his elemental abilities to freeze the dummies around him in ice blocks, buying him time to think up a strategy. He suddenly got the urge to check on the time and his eyes widened as he realized he only had fifteen minutes before he had to meet his friends plus the infuriating git. He was not going to consider Riddle a friend, he didn't even know why he allowed himself to spend time with the jerk if they were going to insult each other under the guise of good-natured bickering. Oh right, because the two were way too curious about each other.

He deactivated the dummies with a wave of his wand, stashed some potions to his belt, added a set of goblin made daggers to his thighs; they were soaked in basilisk venom had been charmed to always return to him and to be invisible to anyone but him. He threw a freshening on himself, gave himself spikey blue hair, wore casual robes over his basilisk hide armour, transfigured his dragon hide boots into running shoes and disapparated to Diagon Alley.