Harry Potter The Final Straw

Life was slowly returning to normal in the castle following the winter holidays. Well, as close to normal as you could get for Harry.

Since the end of the first task, Harry had discovered that he no longer needed to vocalize his spells in class. He had to remember to say the spells aloud to keep this new talent secret.

Harry had told Hermione about the change, she had urged him to keep that skill hidden, and he agreed. Her reasoning was sound, as it would give him an advantage for a few precious seconds if something happened. So every day during his practice in the Room of Requirement, Harry would devote an hour solely on silent casting.

He noticed that his wand movements were decreasing. He no longer needed the lengthy flicks, swishes, and loops to get his spells to perform. The only people he could compare his new casting style to were the Headmaster and Professors Flitwick and McGonagall. Harry spent a good portion of his class time watching the adults in the castle to see how they performed magic. Some of the seventh year students were also capable of complete silent casting all of the time, but not everyone seemed to have the ability to master the skill.

Hermione had questioned him for hours over how he cast his spells silently and verbally. She was now able to cast most of the first year spells silently. Additionally, she was intently working on mastering the second year ones too.

Another side effect of the first task was that Harry now felt more in touch with his magic and the magic around him. It took him a few days to get the second skill under better control. There was so much magic in Hogwarts that it was difficult to sort everything out at first.

As Harry's control over sensing magic increased, he discovered a few other benefits of the skill. The first thing that Harry figured out was how to sense the magic on objects. He could tell if there were charms, wards, hexes, and curses on objects. He had found a tracking spell on his glasses that he quickly removed. He found one after searching his person for an hour that angered him.

There were also a couple of other spells that were on him that he was going to have to research what they were. He planned to ask Hermione and Remus to assist him in identifying them. One of the spells he found on himself was very dark in nature and it was worrying him more than he wanted to admit.

After Hermione explained the theory behind the tracking spell, it took Harry three days to figure out how to undo the spell. He used his own magic to break down the tracking spell and remove it.

His jubilation at removing the tracking charm was short lived though. The dark curse that attached to him did not respond to the same method. Harry had pulled some of the dark tendrils free but as he tried to remove the remainder of the curse, he felt a tugging sensation from the area around his scar before it snapped back into place on his forehead.

"Damn it!" Harry exclaimed while rubbing the scar on his forehead.

Hermione looked up at Harry's shout to see him pressing his palm to the scar on his forehead. "What's wrong?"

"Whenever I get close to removing whatever this dark curse is on my forehead it feels like it just snaps back into place." Harry barked out in frustration.

"Hey, it's okay. We will figure this out together. I'll ask Remus to send us a book on curse scars." She said while rubbing his back. "What does it look like when you are visualizing the connection?"

Harry looked at her in surprise. "You know, I don't know. I am not visualizing anything. It's more like sensing its connection to Me." he paused in thought, trying to recall the sensations from trying to remove the connection to his scar. "It feels…really evil." his voice just a whisper as if to ward off the feeling.

"Do you think that your scar is somehow related to the vision that you had the day of the World Cup?"

Somehow, his scar and that vision were connected, they concluded. They just didn't know why, or how, the correlation existed.

"Yes, I still think that's the best explanation that either of us has come up with so far." Harry replied glumly. "You know, when Hagrid first took me to Diagon Alley he told me that this was no ordinary curse scar. I wonder what he meant by that?"

"I don't know Harry. We should talk to Remus and Sirius about that later. Why don't you take a break for a bit and tell me about the other spell that you found on yourself." Hermione said.

Harry's visage darkened at the mention of the second spell and he stood up to pace around a bit. "It's a form of a monitoring charm." he said darkly.

"What? Who would do something like that to you?" Hermione asked. She was outraged that something so invasive, and without his consent, was being put upon him. His emotions were easy to pick up through their bond. He was angry but resigned.

Then she realized why and one word confirmed her fears. "Dumbledore." It was a statement, not a question.

Harry flopped back down onto the couch next to Hermione and sighed deeply. "Yes, it was him. I have been watching him enough to get a feel for his magic, he is the only one capable enough to cast that spell, and that has had access to me. My guess is that it was placed upon me while I was in the hospital wing or when he delivered me to the Dursleys."

Left unsaid was that it was probably put upon Harry before he was placed with the Dursleys thirteen years ago. That made Dumbledore's lack of supervision even worse, because that spell told him everything about Harry's condition.

"Aren't you going to remove the spell?" Hermione asked in concern.

Harry rubbed his hands down his face in frustration. "I'm not sure if I should. It's been damaged somehow but if I remove it he is going to know right away and that could pose all sorts of problems." he said remorsefully.

"Why don't you remove it this summer? That way he can't confront you immediately and we will have time to come up with a cover story if he does ask." Hermione said hopefully while gazing into Harry's bright emerald eyes.

"That could work. We'll ask Moony and Sirius before we do anything though." Harry said.

Glancing down at his watch, he realized that it was almost curfew. "Come on. Let's get back to Gryffindor Tower before we get detention." Harry said as he pulled Hermione up from the couch.

"You're right. We have double potions first thing tomorrow morning and we need to be at our best for that class." Hermione said as she re-shrunk the trunk and put it back into her pocket.

Harry had out his invisibility cloak and the Marauder's Map for their trip back to the tower. With a flick of his wrists, he draped the cloak over them and stepped out into the empty hallway.

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