Harry potter : Forgotten Lord

Following his target was rather easy; she didn't even notice his presence. Professor Flitwick had provided him with a list of students who he believed were suitable for helping him.

Naturally, his head of house had asked why Harry was interested, and he had, in turn, given the professor a few half-truths to explain it.

He didn't particularly like lying to his head of house, but he just didn't like sharing his business with others either, especially people he had only just met, or hardly talked to outside of lessons. After all, he had a right to his privacy, but at the same time he didn't want to possibly alienate the professor so early on in his schooling. There were many years of school yet ahead of him.

And 'trust easily given is also easily discarded,' as one ancient philosopher once noted. He would only trust those who had earned it; he wouldn't make the same mistake others had by blindly trusting others.

Submerging into his codex, he pulled up the memory of the discussion, looking for anything that he may have missed or done wrong.

Entering his head of house's office, he saw his head of house was waiting for him to sit down. After the usual exchange of pleasantries about one's health, they got to the matter at hand. "Harry, what can I do for you today; surely you have better things to do than talk to little old me" Professor Flitwick asked cheekily, with a smile, looking at his student with curiosity.

Chuckling in response to his joke, he answered similarly with a light smile, "Well, I was wondering if you knew of any students that could possibly help me train in the practical side of DADA," he raised his hand to stop his head of house from interrupting him, already guessing what the next question would be.

"First, Penny is and has been extremely helpful, and could no doubt help me with this as well, but I believe it would be unfair to her. She has her own duties, as well her OWLs to study for; it would be selfish of me to take up any more of her time," he answered, seeing Flitwick nod in understanding before continuing on.

"That is also the reason why I discounted 5th and 7th years; I could ask 4th years, but they themselves have yet to master the OWL material, coupled with the recent history of poor DADA professors, I thought it would be best to seek out an individual who's taking DADA due to passion and career interest.

After all, these students would naturally spend significant additional time studying for it, to make up for the lack of adequate teaching in the subject. Then I remember from some of my readings that a strong proficiency in Charms is needed for any Auror candidate, hence the reason why I came to you," gesturing to his head of house.

Flitwick just nodded before sipping some tea; he looked at him again, seeming to be weighing him up, before speaking again, his voice laced with interest. "Indeed, very logical reasoning, something that I would expect from all my Ravenclaws. However, I'm most interested in finding out what your motivation is," the half-goblin asked with a surprising amount of seriousness.

Deciding to take his own slow sip of tea to buy himself some time to come up with an acceptable response, he answered, "I was rehashing the fight with the troll in my mind; I realized that I never really had to aim. Since it was so big, and almost at point-blank range the entire time, it was near impossible to miss. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was more lucky than skilled. Frankly, I'd rather rely on skill, than luck," looking over the desk, he saw Flitwick nod in understanding.

He took another sip of his tea, "Luck can come and go, but skill remains; the more skilled you are, the less 'luck' you might need to come out on top," he admitted sagely, hoping it would help persuade his head of house to help him.

"Good to know that the events of Halloween didn't go to your head, unlike some students," Flitwick replied in an equally sagely tone, clearly referring to Neville and Ron, whose egos seemed to have gotten even bigger, which made them even more unbearable to be around. However it did have the benefit of keeping Draco and his goons focused on Neville, rather than everyone else.

They spent several minutes in comfortable silence before continuing, Flitwick obviously thinking about students who could be of help. "I can think of several individuals who could help you improve; I'll shortly send you a list with a couple of names," he replied.

"Thank you, hopefully one of them will agree to help me," Harry replied.

"Now off with you, I need to get back to my marking," with that his head of house dismissed him.

"Thank you again for your time Professor, and thanks for the tea," Harry responded with a sincere smile.

Pulling out of the short memory, he continued to shadow one student his head of house had recommended. He was currently following them under his father's cloak. Flitwick had given him five names; however two of them were from Slytherin so he discarded them immediately, due to the fact that he was distrustful of them. Mainly because they would most certainly try to take advantage of him, mostly due to his age, and a number other factors, plus he didn't know where they stood on the whole blood status issue.

He knew there were exceptions to the rule in Slytherin, such as Daphne and Tracy, but they were few and far between. It had taken ages for them to move away from just being associates working together for mutual gain in their classes, to being friends of a sort.

The lions were discounted as well, simply due his doubting that they would take it seriously enough. And would probably just use it as a chance to hex him and joke about it later in the common room. So that left the last candidate on the list, a puff, by the name of Tonks. However, he already had some doubts after seeing how clumsy the girl was over the course of the week following her, since the meeting with his head of house last Sunday evening.

But she also had a number of factors in her favour, first, was that Puffs were well known for honouring their deals, and second, from his observations, the girl seemed to be reasonable. Then there was the fact that she was already doing her own hard training outside of class, so there was chance he would be able to strike up a deal to co-train with her.

After a while of following her, they reached and entered a disused classroom; the girl then going about setting up several 'targets' by transfiguring random objects in the room into targets; these reminding him of the typical targets at an archery range, with a gold bull's-eye in the centre, before the mentioned targets started moving randomly, likely via animation charms.

Watching her dance around and dodge imaginary spells, it felt like she was preparing for war, with the way she was simultaneously firing off spells and hitting the targets with a surprising amount of accuracy. Every time one of the targets was destroyed, it would be repaired by magic, and continued its intended task.

Harry continued to watch the heavily concentrating girl for a further five minutes, who was now panting heavily and sweating up a storm from dodging and rolling away from imaginary spells, while countering with her own spells. If he was honest, he would definitely say that he was impressed, never before had he seen someone taking their studies to this level before, it was worthy of a Ravenclaw.

Finally, the animation charms on her targets ran out and they fell to the floor, closely followed by the girl who fell on her back and looked up at the ceiling while panting hard and trying to regain her breath. He waited a few moments before making his presence known, appearing from thin air behind the girl before he spoke, "That was impressive." This statement caused the girl to jump up and turn around quickly, levelling her wand at the now visible Harry.

"Who in the hell are you, and how did you get in here?!" the girl yelled, her hair changing towards a crimson red colour, whilst keeping her wand levelled at him, rock steady despite her obvious fatigue.

Looking around the room a bit before answering "Does it matter? If I intended to harm you, do you think I would have taken the time to talk to you?" he shot back before continuing, "After all, you were so intently practising, that at any point I could have cursed you in the back. Besides if this how you treat someone with a business offer then I may have to find someone else," before starting to make his way over to the door.

"Wait!" Tonks yelled out, lowering her wand. "What is it you want to discuss?"

"Simple, I am in need of a partner to practise practical DADA with, since the teaching quality here is so low," replying to the question in a factual tone. "I'm sure you'd agree with me that the teaching standard has dropped in the subject over the years, surely you have noticed the same during your own time here," shooting the question back in turn.

"How does that involve me then?" she replied, her hair changing to a more pinkish shade.

"Simply put, you were the most suitable choice for additional instruction, as I know you desire to work in law enforcement after graduation," Harry replied, surprising her with his knowledge, whilst picking up one of the fallen chairs and moving it behind one of the desks, before making himself comfortable. "I can help you with that," he finally added.

"From what I know, a lot of positions in the ministry are based on contacts, rather than personal skill.

And I also know that if you want the best equipment for some of the more high-risk positions, and therefore the best chance to see old age in one piece, you have to buy it yourself," he looked intently over at the young woman, while sitting down at the desk, before gesturing to the fallen chair opposite him, his intent clear.

She made no move to join him, yet he continued on, "The standard dragon-hide combat vest costs around two thousand galleons. With all the supporting gear on top of that, you're looking at the same again, just for the standard gear alone. Do you know how much you earn per year as an auror?" He asked.

"No, I don't," she admitted. "But you tell me, you're the Ravenclaw out of the two of us," Tonks replied in an annoyed tone, now moving towards the offered chair and putting her wand away.

'Good, I got her attention; luckily I read up on magical law enforcement' he thought, before continuing his speech, as soon as he saw that she was comfortable. "For your first two years of training, you're looking at around two thousand galleons per year.

After you complete your basic training and become an auror, you're looking at around six and half thousand a year. You won't reach nine thousand galleons a year until you're a grade 3 auror, and that's typically only after six to eight years of frontline work coupled with your two training years.

So all told you won't be there until you're around 26, at the earliest, unless something major happens to get you promoted faster than normal. Of course, you will have to compete against your male counterparts for any position, who will be favoured over you," he said disapprovingly.

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