I am Happy to Publish Another Chapter of The Wandless Archmage
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The hospital wing smelled of herbs and something sharper underneath that Harry couldn't name. The ceiling was high and vaulted, lined with tall windows letting in the last grey light of evening. Rows of iron-framed beds ran the length of the room, most of them empty, white sheets pulled tight.
Harry sat on the edge of one, his feet dangling, and watched Madam Pomfrey work.
Her wand traced slow arcs over Cho's head, trailing a faint golden light that settled against the skin like mist before sinking in. Every few passes she paused, tilted her head, murmured something, adjusted the angle.
Cho lay perfectly still, her eyes closed. The gash across her temple had been cleaned, and in its place was a thin line of raw pink skin already knitting together under Pomfrey's spellwork. A white bandage wrapped her head, more precaution than necessity, and her dark hair fanned across the pillow in a way that made her look younger than eleven. Her chest rose and fell in the slow rhythm of deep sleep.
Harry couldn't stop watching it.
"Mr. Potter."
He blinked. Pomfrey had turned from Cho's bed and was standing in front of him, wand already raised, her expression shifting from focused to appraising.
"Let me have a look at you."
"I'm fine."
"That is not your determination to make." She set a hand on his shoulder, firm enough to discourage argument, and pressed the tip of her wand to his forehead. A warmth spread down through his skull, his chest, his arms and legs, like being slowly filled with warm water. It wasn't unpleasant.
She frowned, moved the wand to his chest, then his wrists, then back to his forehead.
"Magical exhaustion. Your core is depleted, which doesn't surprise me, given what I'm told you did tonight." She lowered the wand. "Your muscles are strained and you've the beginnings of a headache that will get considerably worse before morning if you don't rest."
"But nothing's broken?"
"Nothing is broken." She tucked the wand into her apron. "Sleep will restore what you've lost, though I suspect it will take more than one night. You may go back to your dormitory. There's no medical reason to keep you here."
Harry looked at Cho.
"She'll be fine," Pomfrey said, and her voice softened. "A concussion and a deep laceration. Serious for a Muggle, but nothing magic can't mend. She'll need time, the brain doesn't appreciate being rattled, but she'll recover fully."
"How long?"
"A week. Perhaps less, if she cooperates."
Harry nodded. He slid off the bed, and his legs felt strange beneath him, not weak exactly but hollow, as though something that usually lived in his muscles had been drained out and not yet come back.
He took one more look at Cho. The bandage. The pink line where the gash had been. The slow, steady breathing.
She saw the club and she didn't think about herself. She thought about you.
"Mr. Potter." Pomfrey's voice was gentle but firm. "Dormitory. Sleep. I'll send word to your Head of House."
Harry walked to the door. At the threshold he turned back.
"Madam Pomfrey? When she wakes up, could you tell her I was here?"
Pomfrey looked at him a moment, the professional mask giving way to something older and kinder.
"I will, Mr. Potter."
Harry left and walked back to Ravenclaw Tower alone.
The castle was quiet in a way it hadn't been before the troll. The corridors that had been full of screaming students an hour ago were empty now, the torches burning low, the portraits asleep or pretending to be. His footsteps were the only sound, too loud for the silence.
He didn't look at the third floor as he passed it.
The bronze eagle knocker was waiting. "What fills a room but takes no space?"
Harry stood there a long time. His thoughts arrived a half-second late, each one through fog.
"Light," he said.
The door swung open.
He climbed to the dormitory. Terry was asleep, or doing a convincing impression of it. Michael was on his back with his eyes open, staring at the canopy. When Harry came in, he turned his head.
They looked at each other. Michael opened his mouth, closed it, then said, very quietly, "She's going to be okay."
It was the thing Michael needed to say and the thing Harry needed to hear, and they both knew it.
"Yeah," Harry said. "She is."
Michael nodded once and turned back to the ceiling.
Harry changed, climbed into bed, pulled the covers to his chin. He closed his eyes and saw frost on stone and blood on a wall and a girl who wasn't moving.
Sleep came eventually, though whether as mercy or punishment he couldn't have said. He dreamed of corridors that twisted and led nowhere, that seemed to breathe. He dreamed of a club raised high. And under all of it, threading through like a dark river, the sound of ice cracking on a frozen lake.
He woke to sunlight.
Bright, clean September sunlight pouring through the arched windows, and for a few seconds Harry lay still, breathing, letting the warmth press against his face.
He was exhausted. The depletion Pomfrey had warned about sat in his bones like the aftermath of flu, a heaviness that made even sitting up feel like effort. His head ached, not sharply but steadily.
The dormitory was empty. Terry and Michael had already gone down.
Harry dressed slowly, pulled on his robes, and went down the spiral staircase.
The common room was more crowded than he'd ever seen it. Students were clustered across every sofa, armchair, and patch of floor, and the noise hit him as he reached the bottom step, a wall of overlapping voices, all about the same thing.
"...heard it cracked the floor, like, actually cracked the stone..."
"...Robert said the torches exploded, all of them, and the corridor was frozen..."
"...my sister's a fifth-year and she said even the prefects couldn't stop it, the spells just bounced off..."
"...but how did they stop it? The professors?"
"No, it was Potter. Didn't you hear? Potter did something, nobody knows what, but the whole corridor..."
Harry stood at the base of the staircase, and heads turned. Not all at once, but in a slow spreading wave as students noticed him, nudged each other, fell quiet. Within ten seconds the common room had gone from a roar to something close to silence.
They were looking at him differently. Not the way they had after the Lumos, with excitement and delighted awe. This was respect with something living next door to it, fear, as though they were trying to square the boy in front of them with the thing they'd heard he'd done.
Harry's stomach tightened.
"Morning," Terry said from the sofa near the fire, his voice carefully normal. He was holding a piece of toast and had clearly been saving the seat beside him.
Harry crossed the room and sat down. The conversations resumed, quieter now, with more glances his way.
"How are you feeling?" Terry asked, low.
"Tired."
"You look it." Terry handed him the toast. "Brought it up from breakfast. Figured you wouldn't want to walk into the Great Hall today."
Harry took it. Terry was right. The thought of five hundred students turning to look at him over their porridge made his stomach clench.
"Thanks."
Michael was in the armchair opposite, legs draped over one arm in his usual pose of manufactured indifference. But his eyes, when they met Harry's, held none of the usual irony.
"The whole castle's talking about it," Michael said. "Different versions. In some of them you killed the troll. In one you set it on fire. A Hufflepuff second-year told someone you turned it into a block of ice."
"I didn't do any of that."
"I know. I was there." Michael paused. "What did you do?"
"I don't know." And it was true, or close enough that the difference didn't matter. He knew what he'd felt. He knew what had happened. He just didn't understand it, and until he did he wasn't sure he could explain it to anyone.
Michael studied him a moment, then nodded. He didn't push. That was one of his better qualities, knowing when silence was more useful than questions.
The portrait hole swung open and Professor Flitwick climbed through.
He was in his usual teaching robes, slightly rumpled, his white hair more dishevelled than normal, as though he'd been running his hands through it. But his eyes were bright and his step was quick, and when he reached the centre of the room and clapped his small hands the last conversations died.
"Good morning, Ravenclaw."
"Good morning, Professor," the room answered, with the ragged enthusiasm of students who had survived a night they wouldn't forget.
Flitwick's gaze found Harry first. He held it a beat. Then his eyes swept the room.
"Several announcements. First, and most importantly: Miss Chang is awake, alert, and already asking when she can leave." Relief moved through the room. "Madam Pomfrey expects a full recovery. She will remain in the hospital wing for about a week."
Harry let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. Around him students exhaled, smiled, nudged each other. A girl near the window pressed a hand over her mouth and blinked hard.
"Second," Flitwick continued, his voice brightening, "I am pleased to announce that the annual Hogwarts Duelling Exhibition will begin in two weeks. For those of you who are new," he added, glancing at the first-years, "it is a school-wide tournament held once a year, a competition and a showcase both, and taken quite seriously by all four houses."
He held up one finger. "Two categories. Years one through three, and years four through seven. You compete only within your category."
A second finger. "A match is won one of two ways. Force your opponent outside the boundaries of the field, or take their wand into your own hand. Not merely disarming them, a wand on the floor can be retrieved. You must hold it. The wand must be in your hand for the victory to count."
He paused, letting it settle.
"And one absolute prohibition. No dark magic. Any student who uses a curse classified as dark by the Ministry will be immediately disqualified and will face their Head of House."
"I should tell you," he said, his voice dropping the way it did when he was about to say something he cared about, "that it has been eight years since Ravenclaw won the Duelling Exhibition."
The room went quiet.
Harry looked up. Eight years. He turned the number over.
"Eight years, why?" he said.
Flitwick looked at him, and for a moment his expression was complicated, pride at the question and frustration at the answer and something that might have been hope.
"That," Flitwick said, "is an excellent question, Mr. Potter. And one I encourage you all to think about carefully in the coming weeks."
He let the silence sit, then moved on.
"One final matter." His eyes found Harry again. "Mr. Potter, your situation is unique. Given that you do not possess a wand, the standard victory conditions are adjusted. Your opponent wins by forcing you outside the field or by placing the tip of their wand against your neck. You win by the standard conditions: forcing them out, or taking their wand in your hand."
Harry processed it. The asymmetry was obvious. His opponents had two ways to beat him, one needing only a touch of wood to his neck. He had two ways to beat them, one of which meant getting close enough to physically grab the wand from a hand that was actively trying to hex him.
"Understood, sir."
Flitwick nodded. Then, lighter: "I want to see Ravenclaw competitive this year. Truly competitive. To that end, my office is open to any student who wants extra instruction in duelling. Tuesday and Thursday evenings, the next two weeks. I strongly encourage you to take advantage of it."
He surveyed the room one last time, that bright sharp gaze touching every face.
"Two weeks, Ravenclaw. Make them count."
He hopped down from whatever he'd been standing on and crossed to the portrait hole. Before he left he looked back at Harry.
"Mr. Potter. A word, when you have a moment?"
"Yes, sir."
Flitwick gave him a small nod, the kind that carried more weight than its size, and disappeared through the portrait hole.
The common room erupted.
Everyone talking at once, the troll already shoved aside by the prospect of duelling. Students compared spell knowledge, argued about which house was the real threat. A group of third-years had their wands out and were practising disarming charms on each other with mixed results; one sent a jet of sparks into a tapestry and had to be talked down from panic by a fifth-year.
Harry stayed on the sofa, turning over Flitwick's words. Eight years. He looked at Terry.
"Eight years," he said. "How does Ravenclaw not win for eight years?"
Terry opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn't have an answer.
But someone else did.
"Because we think too much."
Harry turned. A tall boy had settled into the armchair Michael had vacated, older, sixteen or seventeen, with sharp features and a prefect's badge. His name was Marcus Belby. Harry had seen him patrolling the corridors but never spoken to him.
Belby leaned forward, elbows on his knees, with the tired certainty of someone who'd watched the pattern repeat every year he'd been at Hogwarts.
"We're Ravenclaws. We analyse. We strategise. We read three books on duelling theory before we ever raise a wand." He held up his hands. "None of that is wrong. But it makes us slow. We think about the perfect spell, and while we're thinking, a Gryffindor has already thrown two hexes and a body bind."
Harry frowned. "So Gryffindor wins because they don't think?"
"Gryffindor wins because they act," Belby corrected. "Reckless, some of them, but in a duel reckless is fast, and fast is dangerous. A Gryffindor throws a Stunner before you've finished deciding between a Shield Charm and a Disarm. By the time you've chosen, you're on the floor."
"And Slytherin?"
Belby's expression darkened. "Slytherin fights dirty. Not dark magic, they're not stupid enough to get caught, but sneaky. They bait you. They feint. They aim for weak points, your footwork, your ego. They'll let you think you're winning and pull a spell you've never heard of, because it's not in the standard curriculum. They study obscure hexes the way we study theory, except they actually use them."
A sixth-year who'd been listening from the next sofa leaned over. Sandy hair, the look of someone about to say a thing he'd been chewing on a long time.
"The real problem," he said, "is that nobody's inventing anything new."
Harry looked at him. "What do you mean?"
"Wizards have stopped progressing." The boy gestured vaguely at the room, the castle, everything. "When was the last time someone made a genuinely new spell? Not a variation. Something from scratch?"
"Snape," Belby said. "The Wolfsbane improvements. What, fifteen years ago?"
"And before that?"
Silence.
"Exactly." The sandy-haired boy crossed his arms. "We learn the same spells our parents learned. The curriculum hasn't changed in decades. Dumbledore, Flitwick, McGonagall, they're brilliant, but they're teaching magic developed centuries ago. Nobody's pushing the boundaries. Nobody's asking what else magic can do."
Harry sat very still.
He thought about the cupboard. About the night he'd said Lumos and light had come, not from a wand, not from a textbook, but from his own hands and the need not to be in the dark. He thought about the fire between his palms, fed by nothing but will.
That wasn't in any textbook.
If wizards had stopped pushing, stopped asking what was possible past what they already knew, then everything Harry could do existed in a space nobody else was exploring.
"So what you're saying," Harry said slowly, "is that nobody wins because they're better. They win by how they use what everyone already knows."
"Basically," Belby said. "Gryffindor uses it fast. Slytherin sneaky. We use it carefully. And Hufflepuff..." He trailed off with an almost apologetic grimace.
"How long for Hufflepuff?" Harry asked.
"Forty-nine years," the sandy-haired boy said.
"Forty-nine?"
"Loyal and hardworking, not aggressive. Duelling takes a willingness to hit someone, and Hufflepuffs, bless them, would rather make you a cup of tea."
Terry had been listening with his head tilted, the look he wore when he was processing faster than he could speak. Now he leaned in.
"But if nobody's innovating," he said, "if everyone's using the same spells the same way, then someone who fights differently, someone who does something nobody's seen..."
He looked at Harry.
Harry looked at his hands. Open palms. Empty. No wand. No spells from a curriculum that hadn't changed in decades. Nothing but what he'd taught himself in the dark, and whatever Dumbledore was helping him build on Saturday mornings with sawdust and tea.
He was wandless in a tournament designed for wands. His opponents had tools refined for centuries, hexes and charms and shields he couldn't cast, because every spell in existence assumed a piece of wood in your hand.
But they wouldn't know what to do with someone who didn't play by those rules. They'd never faced an opponent who fought with empty hands, because no such opponent had existed.
Eight years since Ravenclaw won. Forty-nine for Hufflepuff. And in two weeks a boy with no wand was going to walk onto a duelling field against students who had every advantage the wizarding world could give.
Harry closed his hands.
He didn't have a plan. But he had the one thing none of the books held: nobody knew what he could do. Including himself. And in a tournament where everyone knew everyone else's playbook, the unknown was the most dangerous thing in the room.
Harry stood.
"Where are you going?" Terry asked.
"Hospital wing. I want to be there when Cho wakes up."
Terry smiled, the first real one Harry had seen from him since last night. "Tell her we said hi."
"Tell her I want my Transfiguration notes back," Michael added from across the room, and the dryness was so normal, so perfectly Michael, that Harry almost laughed.
He walked toward the hospital wing with the guilt that hadn't loosened since last night. Cho was hurt because of him. The corridor was destroyed because of him. Something dark and cold had come out of him, and he didn't know what it was or where it ended.
The Great Hall was louder than usual the next morning, or maybe Harry was just more aware of it. Every conversation carried a sharp edge of excitement, the troll and the duelling announcement competing across all four tables. Students leaned across benches gesturing with forks, and every few minutes someone would glance at the Ravenclaw table and look quickly away when Harry caught them.
He was halfway through eggs and toast, between Terry and Michael with an empty seat beside him that should have been Cho's, when a voice behind him said, "Harry."
He turned. Tonks stood behind the bench with her arms crossed, her hair a vivid orange this morning, her expression trying hard to be stern and failing.
"Wotcher." Then, dropping it: "Are you okay? I heard about the troll and nearly lost my mind. Someone in my common room said you'd been taken to the hospital wing and I spent half the night trying to find out if you were okay."
"I'm fine. I wasn't hurt."
"You weren't hurt." She repeated it flatly, like a sentence she didn't believe. "A mountain troll the size of a small building swings a club at your head, and you weren't hurt."
"Cho pushed me out of the way."
The mock sternness dissolved into something softer. "I heard about that too. How is she?"
"Pomfrey says a week. Concussion and a cut, but she's awake."
"Good. That's good." Tonks blew out a breath and ran a hand through her hair, which flickered pink before settling back. "You scared me. I know we've only met once, but I felt responsible somehow. Like I should have been there."
"You're a seventh-year. You were sent to the Hufflepuff dormitory."
"Doesn't stop the feeling." She dropped onto the bench beside him without asking. Terry and Michael looked startled to have a seventh-year suddenly join them.
"Right," Tonks said, reaching across Harry for toast. "Enough about trolls. Something important. Have you heard about the duelling exhibition?"
"Flitwick told us yesterday."
"Then you know what's at stake." She took an enormous bite and spoke through it with cheerful disregard for manners. "Forty-nine years, Harry. Do you know how long that is?"
"Forty-nine years."
"It's a lifetime. It's an embarrassment. It's a stain on the noble house of Helga Hufflepuff that I intend to personally scrub clean." She swallowed and jabbed a finger at him. "I'm winning it this year. Seventh year, last chance, and I'm not leaving Hogwarts without that trophy."
"I thought Hufflepuffs would rather make you a cup of tea than fight you," Michael said mildly.
She pointed her toast at him. "That's the stereotype, and like most stereotypes it's wrong. We're loyal and hardworking, which means when we decide to do something we don't stop until it's done. It's not that we can't fight. It's that nobody expects us to, so we get counted out before the first spell."
"What's your strategy?" Terry asked, leaning in with the keen interest of someone already building a mental file.
"Hit hard, move fast, make them underestimate me." She grinned. "Being a Metamorphmagus helps. Hard to aim at someone when you're not sure which face they're wearing."
"That's allowed?" Harry asked.
"It's not a spell, it's a natural ability. Nothing in the rules against it. I checked. Twice." She looked immensely pleased with herself.
"Tonks."
A new voice, calm and measured, from behind them. Harry turned to see a boy approaching, tall, fifteen or sixteen, with a strong jaw and grey eyes and brown hair slightly windswept. He moved with the easy athletic confidence of the older students Harry had seen on the Quidditch pitch, wore the yellow-and-black of Hufflepuff, and carried himself in a way that made people move aside without being asked.
"Ced!" Tonks lit up. "Harry, this is Cedric Diggory. Fifth year. My reluctant duelling partner for the last three weeks."
"Willing partner," Cedric corrected, extending a hand to Harry with a warm, easy smile. "I volunteered. Mostly because watching Tonks trip over her own feet while casting Stunners is the most entertaining thing at Hogwarts."
"I tripped once."
"Four times. In one session."
"The floor was uneven."
"We were in the Great Hall."
Tonks waved this away with magnificent indifference. "Details. My spellwork is solid even if my coordination's a work in progress."
Cedric turned to Harry, and his expression shifted, not dramatically, not with the wide-eyed staring Harry had grown used to, but with a quiet, genuine regard. "I heard about the troll. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Harry said, for what felt like the hundredth time.
Cedric just accepted it and moved on, and Harry liked him immediately for it.
"We should go," Cedric said to Tonks. "Professor Sprout wanted to see us before first period. Something about the greenhouse three incident."
"That wasn't my fault."
"You turned a Venomous Tentacula bright pink."
"It looked better pink."
Cedric looked at Harry with the patient expression of someone who'd long ago accepted that Tonks existed on a different plane of reality. "Good to meet you, Harry."
"You too."
Tonks stood, stuffed one more piece of toast into her mouth, and pointed at Harry. "I'll see you at the exhibition, Potter. Don't let Ravenclaw beat us."
"I thought you were rooting for me."
"As a person. As a competitor, I intend to crush you with the full might of Hufflepuff house." She grinned, hair flashing yellow. "Nothing personal."
She and Cedric vanished into the flow of students heading for the doors, Tonks nearly colliding with a suit of armour and Cedric catching her elbow without breaking stride, as though it was something he did several times a day.
"She's going to hurt herself before the tournament even starts," Michael observed.
"She's going to be terrifying in it," Terry said quietly. "A Metamorphmagus in a duel? Imagine trying to target someone who can change their height and face between spells."
Harry finished his eggs, set down his fork, and stood.
"Where are you going?" Terry asked.
"Flitwick's office. I have a question."
The walk took Harry through the Charms corridor. The door was open, warm light spilling into the hallway. He knocked on the frame.
Flitwick was behind his desk, which was buried under stacks of parchment and books propped open at angles. A quill scratched away on its own in the corner, writing what looked like a letter. The office smelled of peppermint and old paper.
"Mr. Potter." Flitwick looked up and smiled. "Come in. Sit down. Tea?"
"No, thank you, sir."
Harry sat in the chair opposite. It was slightly too large, his feet barely touching the floor, which put him at about Flitwick's eye level.
"What's on your mind?"
Harry had been turning the question over since Belby and the sandy-haired sixth-year laid it out with the casual certainty of people who'd long ago made peace with an uncomfortable truth.
"Professor, why have wizards stopped making new magic?"
Flitwick's quill paused mid-stroke. He looked at Harry a long moment, his expression shifting from surprised to something graver. He leaned back, folded his small hands, and took a slow breath.
"That," he said, "is a question most wizards never think to ask. Which is, in itself, part of the answer."
He was quiet a few seconds.
"The wizarding world is not like the Muggle world, Mr. Potter. Muggles are always building, always inventing, with a restlessness that borders on desperation. They have to. Their survival depends on it, because they cannot rely on magic."
He held up a finger. "We can. We have had magic for millennia. And because it already solves most problems, the reason to innovate is far weaker. Why invent a new spell when the old ones work? Why push a boundary that's comfortable where it is?"
"But people have invented new magic," Harry said. "In the past."
"Yes. And those people were extraordinary." Flitwick's eyes brightened. "Albus Dumbledore, for one. In his prime he made discoveries in alchemy and transfiguration that reshaped magical theory itself. His work with Nicolas Flamel on dragon's blood alone would have secured his legacy. He didn't just learn the existing rules. He asked questions nobody else was asking and found answers nobody else was looking for."
Flitwick crossed to a bookshelf, pulled down a thin volume with a dark blue cover, and held it up.
"But here is the truth of it. Wizards like Dumbledore come along once in a generation, if that. And the rest of the world, instead of pursuing its own discoveries, simply waits."
"Waits?"
"Waits." He set the book on the desk. "For the next great witch or wizard to push things forward. Everyone else learns what's already been discovered and assumes someone brilliant will eventually come along and do the hard work. Meanwhile the curriculum doesn't change, the spell libraries don't grow, and the boundary of what we believe magic can do stays exactly where the last genius left it."
Harry frowned. "That's like building a house and then standing inside it forever, waiting for someone else to add a room."
Flitwick pointed at him. "Precisely. And what happens to a house where no one adds rooms?"
"It gets crowded. People stop thinking there's anything outside the walls." Harry paused. "They forget there could be."
Flitwick smiled, real warmth behind it. "You understand it better than most adults I've spoken to about this. Better than most of my colleagues, if I'm honest."
He sat back down, his expression turning almost melancholy. "And it isn't only wizards who have pushed the boundaries. There have been witches, working in places that got far less attention than they deserved." Something careful entered his voice. "Andromeda Tonks, for one."
Harry straightened. "Tonks's mother?"
"Yes. Before she married Ted Tonks and was disowned by the Black family, Andromeda was one of the most gifted witches of her generation. Not for combat or theory, but for healing." Quiet respect in his voice. "She developed three original healing incantations at St. Mungo's. Three. Most healers go their whole careers without one. Her work on nerve regeneration for curse damage is still used today. Quietly, without much recognition, because healing doesn't make headlines the way a new combat spell does."
He looked at Harry. "Innovation doesn't always look like what you expect. Sometimes it's Dumbledore and the twelve uses of dragon's blood. Sometimes it's a woman in a hospital ward finding a better way to mend what's broken."
Harry thought about Andromeda, the tall, elegant woman from Diagon Alley who'd invited him to visit anytime. He hadn't known any of that. She'd seemed like a mother, not a revolutionary. But maybe those things weren't as different as he'd assumed.
"So the wizarding world is just waiting," Harry said slowly. "For someone to come along and invent new magic. And nobody knows when."
"Nobody ever does." Flitwick looked at him with an expression Harry couldn't quite read. "The interesting thing about pioneers is that they rarely announce themselves. They simply start doing things nobody thought possible, and the world rearranges itself around them."
He wasn't a pioneer. He was an eleven-year-old without a wand, trying not to fail his classes.
"Thank you, Professor. That helps."
"I'm glad." Flitwick looked at him a moment longer, the look of a man who had been waiting a very long time for something and was beginning to think it might have arrived. "My door is always open, Mr. Potter. For questions, for practice, or simply for tea."
"Thank you, sir."
Harry stood, crossed to the door, and paused. "Professor? One more thing. Andromeda Tonks. Does Tonks know what her mother did?"
Flitwick smiled. "I suspect she does. Though whether she values it the way she should is another matter. The young rarely value their parents' achievements until they've tried something equally hard themselves."
Harry nodded and left.
He walked back toward Ravenclaw Tower, his mind full.
The wizarding world was waiting. It had been for years, decades, maybe longer. Waiting for someone brilliant enough or brave enough or desperate enough to push magic past walls everyone else had stopped seeing.
Dumbledore had done it in his prime. Andromeda had done it in a hospital ward. Neither because they were told to, but because they saw something that wasn't there yet and decided to build it.
Harry didn't know if he was that person. He didn't know if the power in him, the light and the dark and everything between, would lead anywhere past surviving his first year without a wand.
But nobody else was asking the questions he was being forced to ask. Nobody else stood where he stood, at the edge of what magic could do, looking out into the empty space beyond it.
The eagle knocker regarded him. "What grows without being alive?"
Harry thought a moment. "Knowledge."
The door swung open.
He climbed the stairs, changed, and lay in bed.
Two weeks until the duelling exhibition. A wandless boy against students with centuries of spellwork at their fingertips. And under all of it, a question bigger than any tournament.
If nobody was pushing magic forward, what happened when someone started?
Harry closed his eyes. He didn't have the answer yet. But he was closer than he'd been yesterday, and tomorrow he'd be closer still.
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