Aeternum: Group Chat

Chapter 14: Magical Particle Manipulation

Dumbledore sat behind his desk as he held a lemon candy in his mouth and moved his fingers slowly, all the while maintaining an enthusiastic and happy smile. The winter/Christmas holidays had arrived and it was a time of little relaxation for him; with all his responsibilities, he really had little time for himself that he could enjoy.

Fawkes, who was looking at his friend, tilted his head, as if he was a little puzzled by his old friend's mood. However, Dumbledore ended up sighing a little when he felt someone walking up the stairs to his office. And, when the person arrived in front of his door, he smiled even more strongly, causing the door to open, revealing a Minerva McGonagall with her hand raised, about to knock.

"Please, come in Minerva."

The woman pressed her lips slightly at the director's manner before entering and gently closing the door.

"What can I do for you on this wonderful day, Minerva?"

"I'm a little worried, Albus," she said seriously as she stood in front of the headmaster's desk.

"Worried? Why, if I might ask?"

"Young Mr. Potter..." McGonagall replied, causing Albus to raise an eyebrow in curiosity, urging the professor to continue.

"While Mr. Potter has had an increase in good grades and a clear improvement in his studies in general, his attitude leaves a little to be desired. He barely speaks to anyone and, when several of his classmates speak to him, Mr. Potter ignores them as if they don't exist."

"I'm worried that he's isolated himself and causing trouble."

Dumbledore sighed a little. Ever since he spoke to Harry that night of the Yule Ball, he had been keeping a closer eye on him. And, thanks to that, he was able to understand Harry Potter better. His current ideas on friendship were a bit radical because he didn't really trust anyone right now, maybe only Sirius Black.

But could he blame him?

No, the answer was clearly a big no. He couldn't blame him with everything that had happened in his life, a short life so far. In his opinion, Harry had been greatly disappointed when it came to meeting people or how people around him acted.

"You can't blame him, Minerva. Harry doesn't trust anyone right now, and he really has no reason to."

Minerva frowned a bit at the headmaster's words.

"I myself have to admit, that in his first year I wasn't careful enough to ensure his safety. In his second year, he had to face a challenge and danger that almost killed him. In his third year he learned the truth... no, we learned the truth about Sirius Black. He had to go through the terror that is those dark creatures and now, this year, he has to deal with the tournament because he was made to enter against his will."

Dumbledore inhaled a little before exhaling heavily, the lemon candy long since swallowed and he looked at his friend and colleague with a slightly tired and disappointed look on his face.

"I, as headmaster, didn't do much to help him. And the teachers, have simply ignored him at times when he needed help from someone wiser and more experienced. This made Harry's opinion of adults plummet too low, and let's not even talk about most of the students."

"In his opinion, the adults he's met so far are good for nothing but helping him study - this is his opinion of teachers - and the students, to him, are sheep who just go along with the rest, pointing their fingers at anything that catches their attention."

Minerva lowered her head a little, feeling guilty for not having helped Harry Potter when he asked for her help.

"So we just leave it? Can't anything be done?", Minerva groaned a little. "We can't just leave it like that, Albus!"

"The thing is, Minerva...", Albus rubbed his forehead a little as he looked into his friend's eyes. "It's too late now."

"Harry has already formed his opinions and he won't change so easily. If we try to butt in so abruptly, he'll consider us unwelcome people and move further away. The damage is done and I regret that. Perhaps I should have done something sooner to eliminate rumors, but that would also make many see it as favoritism. Or that I protect Harry Potter as if he were my disciple and my successor."

"And we both know that the latter is very possible."

Minerva gritted her teeth a little, she knew that what Albus said was true. Even among the younger students, there were several who were more mature than normal, as well as intelligent. Pureblood families raised their children that way, and they wouldn't hesitate to give information to their parents: people who were politicians within the ministry and would become nuisances for the smallest of things.

She knew that Albus had tried to make the magical society of Great Britain advance more towards the current era. But, the pureblood supremacists… no, not even necessarily just them, also the more traditionalist and conservative families would disagree. They had all been so comfortable with their ways of living that they didn't think about moving forward, they simply preferred to stay stuck where they were and worry more about things like family businesses that, honestly speaking, didn't bring them much benefit, but more of a feeling of superiority over less influential or poorer families, even over muggle-borns.

Albus Dumbledore might be a man with political and magical power, but between this man and his own families, most people in high ranks of the ministry or within the most powerful families, they would almost without a doubt choose what would bring more benefit to themselves than to society or the next generations.

Dumbledore might have allies, but they couldn't compare to the opinions of the old families. And almost nobody cared about the opinions of people outside the country, like allies of the ICW. Because as long as the secrecy statute and some magical laws were maintained, the ICW didn't care much about how a country was run.

"I don't like this, Albus," Minerva commented dryly as she breathed through her nose, a little angrily.

"Neither do I, Minerva. But what do you think we can do in this case? Between pushing Harry further away, or letting him be and waiting for him to open up to some people, I prefer the latter."

"Besides, young Harry has improved fantastically in magic. And I'm not even talking about classes."

"What do you mean?" Minerva frowned a little, especially because of the huge smile Albus had.

"Sit down... this is some very interesting information and theory."

. . .

Harry was sitting in a chair as he looked at several papers and two notebooks with their pages open on the table. His phone was on the same table, having just been used to buy the house he was currently using. The house wasn't too big, but it had everything needed to live in, and it had a semi-spherical design.

This home came inside a Hoi-Poi capsule. Harry bought it from the chat group shop for only a hundred chat points. It was a useful thing for a reasonable price, not only because it was a fully equipped house, but also because you could take it with you anywhere, using the Hoi-Poi capsule.

Since the holiday period started, he didn't even bother to recharge the rooms in his uncles' house, he simply created a shadow clone when he was inside one of the Hogwarts express cabins and was arriving at the station. While the clone was leaving, he stayed until the station started to have less people and hid his face with one of his shirts over his head before walking towards London.

From there it wasn't hard to get out of the city and take a bus away from the city. And, right now, he was in a more hidden location in the Forest of Dean.

And if you're wondering about the money... Well, Harry was a wizard and, also, someone who trained in the shinobi arts. Getting some money wasn't hard for him.

"This spell would be hard to learn. But, it's not that big of a deal either, as long as only I can use it, then it's good. In fact, if only I can use it, all the better," Harry muttered as he took one of the sheets of paper and wrote some things down with a pen.

"Out of all the people I know in this world, I can only think of two who can use this: Dumbledore and Voldemort. They're both really experienced and have researched a lot of magic. Dumbledore even knew about the 'magic' contained in the skulls of wizards and witches."

Harry created a shadow clone and ordered it to cast a spell on him.

Shadow clones were created with someone's chakra, so they also had spiritual energy. And, for someone like Harry, who was a wizard, his clones could use magic. But, when the clone cast an expelliarmus, even he was surprised by the result as Harry raised his hand and the scarlet beam scattered in all directions in glowing specks like fireflies.

"That was a charm...", Harry gave a dead-eyed look to his clone, who just chuckled lightly before vanishing.

"But it's good to know it's working properly."

The 'attack' didn't really have a name. But, being able to properly sense magic particles from his Senjutsu training, Harry made use of this to disperse the magic that was thrown at him. His first step in creating this was to meditate and see if he could manipulate the magic particles in a cruder way than just throwing magic.

By doing this, Harry was able to form a sort of cone-shaped barrier that dispersed the magic thrown at him. This was just his first and most improvised form. The result Harry wanted to achieve was to create a barrier around an opponent with the slightest movement, causing them to be unable to use their magic properly.

He didn't know if that end result he wanted would be possible, but he would try his best.

"There's also the thing about names..." Harry muttered. He had already figured out about the connections that made magic possible, but if that was the case, then what good were spell names? He knew they had some kind of effect, but he didn't know exactly what.

If he could figure this out, then maybe it would be easier for him to use magic.

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