ITW,H - Chapter 119 - School Days (Patreon)

(Word Count: 2,495)

Harry cupped his mug of hot chocolate with both hands, letting the warmth seep into his frozen fingers. It was December now, and winter was in full swing. The grounds of Hogwarts were now covered in a blanket of snow, and the cold had now seeped into the castle. 

On a morning like this, Harry wore a thick sweater beneath his school robes, along with the heavier winter outer robe and a long scarf.

His clothes did have some temperature regulation charms built into them, but that was only within a small range. He still had to dress appropriately for the season.

It would be all too easy to simply cast a warming charm to keep the chill away, but Harry liked the need to bundle up in winter clothes. He liked the chill on his face, and the cozy warmth of a mug in his hands. There was a magic to those moments all on their own.

To his chilled fingers, the mug was almost too hot, but that's how he liked it.

Harry eyed the delicious drink, and gave in to the temptation. He sipped at the hot chocolate delicately, so as not to burn his tongue.

“Ah!”

Harry recoiled. He burnt his tongue anyway. Hermione giggled.

“I told you to wait for it to cool!” She scolded gently, though she had a smile on her face.

“Yes, but it just looked so good!” Harry said.

They were in the great hall, the two early risers some of the first students awake. Hermione was bundled up in her own sweater and scarf, her cheeks rosy and her nose red from the cold. She was cupping her own cup of hot chocolate, though she was blowing on it gently like a smart person.

After blowing on it for a bit, she took a sip.

“Ah!” She recoiled, having burnt her own tongue.

“See? It takes forever to cool down,” Harry said with a grin.

“Don't laugh! I thought it would be cool enough,” Hermione said. She glared at him, holding one hand to her lips, gingerly touching them.

They chuckled together, and spent the rest of their breakfast enjoying the warmth of the mugs.

~ ITW,H ~

In the library, Harry had temporarily paused his shelf by shelf reading a while back in order to research undetectable expansion charms. His end goal was to be able to create his own internal environment spaces. Moonrise Remedies only had one habitat suitcase at the moment, and it could accommodate sixty to seventy werewolves at its absolute limit. That was not nearly enough if the company actually wanted to succeed in its long-term goal of making safe full-moon transformations available to every werewolf who needed them. They would need more trunks eventually.

The cheapest way to do that, would be to learn how to make it. Though he would need to get certified and register each one with the ministry. They didn't like it when wizards had such large spaces hidden away from them. It was far too easy for dark wizards to use these expanded spaces as hidden refuges.

The other reason was because he was simply interested in them. The magic was just cool. He loved his trunk to death. By far, it was the best purchase he had made so far. He used it for everything. So it was only logical that he should learn how to make one on his own, as well as the more advanced options.

So far, Harry had read up on the history of the spell being made. Nobody knows who developed the spell, though judging from the time it first started making its appearance—right around the time Hogwarts was founded—many attribute it to Rowena Ravenclaw herself. The first spell listed was how to expand a space within an enclosed area. This one was hard to actually confirm it worked, because this also expanded everything and everyone inside the space so it appeared to remain normal. 

This was a very useful first step in laying the groundwork for the magical theory—it was the first prototype of the modern-day spell—but it wasn't very useful in practice.

The next version was much better. Capacious Extremis expanded the space without changing the size of the things inside it. It also allowed for an entrance into the expanded area to be made, allowing someone to actually enter and leave it. That was the version used in most magically expanded bags, tents, trunks, and other storage items.

Harry had already learned both of these spells in the past few weeks.

Harry only needed to learn the spells needed to create the internal environment. These environmental spaces seemed to have a larger internal volume. Even the smallest of these have a volume at least twice as large as the largest regular extension charm. 

The easiest that he could figure out was how to make a fake sky inside. It was the same spell used in the Hogwarts great hall, which mimics the sky outside. 

At least, that's what Harry theorized, because he was never able to actually find anything on how to make an expanded space have an actual, working environment, so he was left making educated guesses. He had searched every piece of literature the library had on the subject, and none of them contained any working theory about how to create one.

If the restricted section didn't bear any fruits, he would have to send some inquiries to the bookshops about it and see what turns up.

Hermione had found this topic just as fascinating of a topic as Harry did, and she recently started reading through some of the books Harry recommended to get familiar with it.

Later, the two met together at the Room of Requirement. As Harry paced in front of the entrance, he thought of a large internal habitat he could study.

He opened the door to what seemed to be the outside. There was a large field of grass, some rocky cliff faces, and a forest of trees in the distance. The air was fresh and clean, and the sun glared down at them like a hot summer's day.

Hermione gasped. “I didn't know it could even do that!” She said excitedly.

Harry grinned. It was one thing to see it in a game, but seeing it in real life was completely different.

The reason why he came here was that he wanted to fly around to the edges of this expanded room/environment to see if he could glean any information from it.

He pulled out his broom.

Together, they flew out as far as they could, eying the ground to see where the cut off was, since the sky showed no sign of any wall. It turned out, this whole area was surrounded by rocky cliff faces. When Harry approached, stopping just above the cliffs, he reached out a hand into the empty sky, and felt an invisible wall. The boundaries of the room.

Hermione reached out and felt the wall too, marvelling at the magic. “Amazing! It’s like it’s not even there! Even in the great hall, you could sort of see the roof beyond the fake sky, but this is completely realistic.”

To test it out, they flew around the complete perimeter, seeing if they could find any sort of runes or hint of the underlying enchantments, but no matter what diagnostic spell they used, neither of them could reveal any of the secrets behind this space.

‘Is this even a true spell?’ It had Harry doubting. Normally, wards and other enchantments would give some sort of information about the spells used, even if you couldn’t interpret it. Even the philosopher’s stone revealed some things when Harry was prodding it. The only explanation Harry could think of for the lack of information was either Rowena was truly a prodigy in hiding her magic—if she even had a hand in creating this space, though that was rather likely—or this space was not truly a spell at all. 

When an object, location, house, castle, etc. had enough magic in it, either through the location, enough spells cast inside it, or enchantments placed on it, they had the habit of gaining a semblance of sapience, like wands or the Weasley’s car that went off on its own in canon. It was entirely reasonable for Hogwarts itself, with all of the enchantments and wards placed upon its walls and the long history of magic being prominent here, to have gained its own partial sapience. Perhaps the Room of requirement was its way of reaching out to the students inside its walls. If that was the case, then this effect wasn’t a structured spell, it was the accumulation of Hogwart’s magic reaching out to the needs of the students inside it, similar to accidental or, as Harry liked to call it, wild magic.

He shared his thoughts with Hermione. “That makes sense! I’ve always had the feeling that Hogwarts was alive, in a way. The way the moving staircases seem to play around with students sometimes, or help them get to where they need to go, it feels like they’re alive.”

“It doesn’t seem like we’ll be able to glean anything then,” Harry sighed.

~ ITW,H ~

A week later, Harry and his friends were at the top of the large hill leading down to Hagrid's hut. The snow was perfect for sledding.

They each had their own sled in their hands.

“Weren't there rocks on this hill?” Dean asked with a frown.

“I remember there were some big ones. What if we hit one?” Neville asked.

“Then you'll land in the snow, it's no problem!” Seamus said.

“Faceplanting into the snow still hurts,” Dean muttered, mostly to himself, “I had a bad accident once, there was this rock—

“Madam Pomprey can patch you up, no problem," Ron said.

“I didn't expect there to be something you're worried about, Dean! Don't worry. There are a couple of rocks you'll want to look out for, but we can avoid them easily enough. I'll go first, just follow my path,” Harry said, giving Dean a reassuring pat on the back, and a nod to Neville.

Remembering precisely where all of the rocks were on the hill when it was still clear of snow, luckily, there was a single path where they could travel straight down and avoid all of them. Harry set his sled down at just the right starting position and angle so his path to hit that sweet spot.

“Look, you want to set your sled just like this,” Harry said.

He gave them a grin then jumped onto his sled, face first, gripping the sled on either side. “Wooohoooo!” He yelled, powdered snow flying into his face.

His path threaded the needle between the now-snow-covered rocks, only visible as small lumps that were nearly impossible to see from the top of the hill.

When he got to the bottom, he was going so fast he shot past Hagrid's hut by a good bit before coming to a stop. Luckily, the path to avoid the rocks angled away from the pumpkin patch, which had a small wall around it, so he didn't crash into anything.

He turned back to look at his friends, tiny in the distance, and waved.

“Come on down!” He yelled.

Hagrid came out of his hut. “Harry? What's all this yelling about?” He paused, noticing Harry's frozen red cheeks and nose, and the sled dragging behind him. “Oh! Yer sleddin’! How'd you get down without hitting any of the rocks?”

“Hey, Hagrid! Avoiding the rocks is easy, there's a straight shot you can take to avoid them. You can see the path I took there,” Harry gestured to the clear track in the snow.

Ron was now coming down fast, though he was sitting regularly, gripping the reins hard to keep himself steady. “Aaaah!” Ron shot past them.

A few moments later, Ron was trudging through the snow pulling his sled behind him to meet up with Harry and Hagrid.

“Merlin, that was fast!” Ron said giddily. “Come on, Harry, I want to do that again! Oh, hey, Hagrid!”

Now Neville was taking his turn. Though as soon as he started down the hill, it was obvious Neville hadn't placed his sled properly, and he angled off course. One of the metal runners beneath the sled hit a rock, and it flipped, sending Neville flying into the air. He landed on his back, and he slid miserably the rest of the way down sprawled out.

Neville came to a stop right at their feet. From the ground, Neville met Harry's eyes and groaned in pain. Harry and Ron chuckled. “You okay, Neville?” Harry asked.

“Yeah… I’m okay. Just give me a second,” Neville said, laying there on the ground.

Harry accio’ed his sled for him, and it slid along the ground and stopped right next to Neville. Then he enchanted it so it would travel back up the hill, sticking close to the actual path so it didn’t get in the way of the other sleds. He was getting quite good at animating things to do what he wanted now, so the sled would wait for its turn before aligning itself properly. Now Neville wouldn’t mess it up and crash again. He could just stay on the sled the whole time.

“There you go, mate.”

“Thanks,” Neville groaned, and pulled himself back onto the sled, and it slowly slid forward up the path.

“Can you do mine, too?” Ron asked, “I don’t want to have to walk all the way back up every time.”

“Sure.” Harry did the same for Ron’s and his own sled.

Dean and Seamus both had taken their turns and they were walking back from beyond Hagrid’s hut. Dean had come down too soon after Seamus and had nearly ran him over. Luckily, Seamus jumped out of the way.

Harry enchanted all of their sleds, and they rode back up the path in a line. With the automated sleds, it ended up feeling like riding a ski gondola or a roller coaster. Neville passed them by, shooting back down the hill. “AAAAH!” Neville clutched his reins in terror, but he made it down smoothly.

Everyone cheered from their own sleds.

They took a few more turns before other students, including Hermione and Ginny, found them.

After that, it devolved into a mess. Some of the students became impatient to take their turn and tried sledding down a different part of the hill, only to hit a rock and go flying. After several attempts, and some students eating rocks, to the laughter of everyone watching, they eventually gave up until some of the older students took pity and began vanishing the rocks.

Eventually, dinner was called and they all went back inside for some more hot chocolate to warm themselves back up.

“Ouch!” Harry cried, gently prodding his burnt tongue. Hermione rolled her eyes.