Dumbledore and Harry's Adventures

The Dark Tiara

Harry sighed contentedly as he drifted through the air in his magically reinforced and levitated clothing. It was a nice change of pace from the strenuous aerial acrobatics he performed during his daily training sessions. For most days he would spend half an hour flying unaided through the air (not too high while outdoors, as he had to perform simultaneous pushes and pulls against the ground to maintain a level altitude) in an erratic jerking fashion so that he could avoid being hit by spells cast at him from all three adults in his life. Of course, he then got to spend the next half hour flying around and casting spells at those three adults while he enjoyed watching them scramble out of the way (well, Sirius and Remus scrambled, Albus seemed to barely move and yet avoided nearly 95% of the spells).

This feeling, floating with his eyes closed, was pure bliss. He focused his magic through his left pinky toe to pull himself towards a wall. As he sensed himself nearing an obstacle, he repelled his right hip from another wall to slide out of the way of whatever was approaching (probably Dobby in the hammock that Harry was levitating). If asked, he would be unable to describe what exactly it was that let him detect his surroundings (nor how much of it was magical instinct and how much was physical instinct), but the best he could say was that Albus's training had honed his Seeker skills to a ridiculous degree of effectiveness. While on the ground, his dodging skills were top-notch. But, in the air, he was nearly untouchable.

Of course, Harry was extra relaxed because he was done with Remus's tests. It had been a bit more than five months since Christmas, with tomorrow being the first of June. As such, Harry had spent the past two days taking tests to assess how far his schooling had come. He had been pleasantly surprised to find that he felt confident about his performance, even in his weaker subjects (especially Potions).

After Albus had described the idea of a "Potions Seer", Harry had ironically found himself better able to focus on his Potions studies. It had taken a few weeks before he realized how disheartening it had been to see a young kid like Marcus (with whom Harry still corresponded on a weekly basis) take so easily to a subject that Harry struggled with. It was a relief to know that there was a reason why some people were simply going to have more of an affinity for a branch of magic than him. As the pressure to become an instant expert fell away, he realized he had subconsciously been more focused on finding a way to make Potions come easily to him, rather than buckling down to study. After all, casting unique magical spells came almost naturally to him, so it had only made sense that everything else in magic should come just as easily to him. Harry conceded that perhaps there was a shortcut to mastering the subject, but it seemed that with his lack of natural affinity for the field he would simply have to study it the hard way until he knew enough to see the shortcut. With that understanding, studying became just another facet of training. After several months of being able to focus, he now felt much more competent in both the theory and practice of Potions (along with Ancient Runes and Arithmancy).

Speaking of unique magical spells, that uniqueness was something that Harry was pleased to discover. On one of the occasional visits to Grimauld Place (either when they stopped over between Spain and Japan, or between Australia and Canada, it was hard to keep track as the transport vehicles took nonsensical routes), he found himself pondering one of his early discussions with Albus about his approach to magic. Though a magical effect could be insanely difficult to achieve, dreadfully unethical to attempt, or simply not worth pursuing, nothing was impossible when it came to magic. Harry took that belief to be a matter of fact, so why would it be so difficult to clean the grime in magic rich environments? Clearly his own experience showed that the cleaning spells did not work effectively, but that would imply it was impossible to achieve, which meant that Harry was doing something wrong. As his mind had looped over that conundrum, he remembered another facet of Albus's philosophy for magic. Albus believed that magic liked to reward those who made their own way through the dense foliage of magic's metaphorical jungle. That is when he realized that he had been using a spell that came from the well-worn pathways of magic that others had long tread, so of course he would encounter the same limitations that others had.