His Guardian Angel

Chapter 8

"Retract-you must finally have cracked! The very idea-"

"Now, now Severus, I know how much you enjoy a challenge with potions. And what's more, I'm very aware of the little experiments you used to do to fool Mrs. Norris. Giving mice wings was a nasty little trick indeed, the poor thing used to run in circles trying to find a way to catch them." Snape snickered and sipped from his mug before responding.

"I concede. I'll make the bloody potion but I can't guarantee it'll work. I would need test subjects and you know how strict the ministry is with testing unregistered-"

"Oh hush, you know better than anyone the results your potions will get before anyone or anything consumes them."

"I presume you'd like me to make sure they're big white fluffy wings as well? Should I make them fully functional? Exactly how far are you willing to push my limits here?"

"Oh, as realistic as you can manage. But feathered wings would be nice, we wouldn't want to scare Tom to death. He'll be a child after all. Oh, and Severus? The colour isn't too much of an issue, I'm more concerned about functionality." Severus rolled his eyes, finished off his coffee and then strode out of the office. Harry could hardly believe what had just occurred, but decided not to question his luck too much.

"Ah, Harry. Tell me, have you managed to come up with some sort of plan?"

"Yes sir, but it will require a lot of work."

The two planned for days on end, thinking of every possible scenario and accounting for it. It was only a month later when they had the most solid plan they could possibly form before Dumbledore decided to switch back to training Harry with magic.

To circumvent any suspicion about Harry's background, they worked tirelessly on his wandless magic. To Harry, it was even better than working with a wand. As long as he had enough intention behind what he wanted to do, he could cast more spells than he'd ever imagined. The lack of a need for actual spell names worked wonders with him-he was even able to transfer that intention to using his wand as well to perform some of the most complex spellwork Dumbledore had seen.

The trick was to find his magical core and learn how to manipulate it. Dumbledore had told him it might take him years to fully learn it but he'd done it in less than a month. He was fueled with a fiery passion to save Tom from himself and his endless struggles through his life. The two practiced with first year spells and worked on Harry's aim until he was almost spot on every single time. By the time the next school year started, Harry had worked through most of the spells he knew and was creating his own magic. He no longer needed to say the spells to get the desired effect and had even managed to start combining ideas and intentions into spells. According to Dumbledore, magic took to him like it does to unicorns.

Delores Umbridge. Dumbledore had told Harry that they'd be getting a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, but neither one of them had been given any notice as to who it would be. Dumbledore had only found out the day the students would be returning and even then, Harry hadn't had any time to meet her. Apparently she had skipped her introductory meeting with Dumbledore in favour of setting up her new rooms.

Harry and Hermione had eyed one another with worry when she had finished with her appalling speech.

Their first defence class had been atrocious. While it wasn't uncommon for teachers to go over the year's syllabus with their classes before they actually started teaching anything, it definitely wasn't common for teachers to be mad at the students for asking questions. Hermione had asked if they would be using spells to learn them properly during class since the book didn't depict any wand movements or spell inflictions for the incantations and the entire class was appalled to hear that they would only be learning the theory. This had quickly been followed up by Seamus asking what if they needed to defend themselves against someone who broke into their home. Umbridge's response to this was simply to deny Voldemort's existence and that no death eaters were wandering around free.