Rise Of House Falken (Harry Potter Fan Fiction) - Chapter 31

The time passed quickly due to my hectic schedule and it was soon the end of the term feast. Nothing interesting happened during the year other than the fact that the DADA fell of the moving stairs. He survived but the incident made him believe in the curse and he decided to quit.

Other than that it was a boring year. It looked like I had to wait until Harry started school just to go through some exciting and dangerous adventures.

At the feast, I was sitting at the Ravenclaw table as the Great hall was decorated with Slytherin banners. Yes. Slytherin had won the cup due to Snape’s favouritism but the Gryffindor House had won the Quidditch Cup. With both Bill and Charlie Weasley on the team, the team was very strong but it was going to change next year as Bill had already graduated this year. Due to Quidditch, Gryffindor was the close second in terms of total points.

I stayed at Hogwarts during Christmas and Easter holidays as I did not want to miss any opportunity to soak in the ambient aura of Hogwarts. The increase in my magical reserves was many times more when I stayed here so I wanted to make use of all the opportunity I got.

People started losing the special interest in me as the year went on and by the year end, I was treated as any other pureblood heir in the school. My bad performance in practical made me less of a threat for purebloods and also made muggle borns leave me alone as they did not want to ask the help of someone who performed at the same as them.

I had to lie to my friends that I had more interest in reading things about this new world than practising spells, so my performance in practicals was not good. I told them that only OWL and NEWT grades mattered in the outside world so I was not going to put much effort in my studies and concentrate more on things I had to learn about my place in this world. They were satisfied with my explanation and did not bring up the topic again. They both had scored the highest in the Ravenclaw house while I was at the bottom of top 10.

The only problem I faced during the school year was the amount of ȧssignments required to be submitted for different subjects. I wrote the first few ones very well in the required amount and got Outstanding in them. But later with my increasing work load, I decided that the marks in school was not much important and performing well in the Owls was enough. So I started writing shorter ȧssignments. I had the knowledge but no time or patience to write 4 parchments when only 2 was needed to explain the topic. So I started getting mixed grades with E and O depending upon the mood of the Professors. Snape gave me only Acceptable but I was happy that it was not a Troll.

Coming to my studies, I reached OWL level in all subjects that were not taught in Hogwarts like healing, duelling, alchemy, law and languages (French and Spanish). The ROR was a great help in improving my duelling skills and I could say for sure that now I could take on a couple of 7th years alone without any problem. I had time remaining after everything so I used it finish my studies in Ancient Runes and Arithmency. So I was now NEWT level in Arithmency and Ancient Runes.

My studies in Runes helped me to find a way to solve the problem of not being able to empty my magical core quickly enough for my daily exercise. I developed a Rune sequence which when activated by my magic absorbs it quickly and then dissipates it into the surroundings without any problems so all I had to do was to keep it activated untill my core was near depletion. It was done in only 5 minutes. This will save me a lot of time in the future. I also created weight runes to help me exercise as there was no weight training goods in Hogwarts. These runes made it possible for me to adjust the weights of objects I apply them on. So I used a transfigured dumbbell with these runes for my daily exercises.

I also decoded the marauder’s map and made a more advanced copy of it which included the ROR and position of the chamber of secrets. I could now add more details to the advanced copy to make the perfect map of Hogwarts. They had roamed through all of Hogwarts and mapped it just to make this map and then apply a powerful Homonculous Charm to track the movement of people in the mapped area. I still called my advanced version the Marauder’s map as a show of my appreciation for their ingenuity in making it. I was also able to find a way to hide my presence in the marauder’s map whenever I wanted. So I could now safely leave it in Filch’s office for the twins without caring about the twins knowing about my adventures. Since I did not make any mess in his room Filch did not know that someone had broken into his room and stolen something. So there was no increase in security and I could easily return the original map to the cabinet.

During the year I also practiced my Legilimency on my unsuspecting classmates. It was quite easy to read the minds of most of the students in Hogwarts due to their lack of training so I could read their minds easily with passive Legilimency itself. For the ones with basic shields I had to cast wandlessly and after many trial and errors to try to find the flaws in their shields and then by going through those faults I could read their minds without them noticing my intrusion. It was a lengthy and slow process but it was getting faster and faster with practice.

I did not try it on the heirs as I knew the heir ring would inform them about the attack on their minds. So now I was researching ways to block the ring before I read their minds. I had my ring to practice on but I had not found a way till now.

Now it was time to go back to London and the orphanage. Sherry would join me later after she was done helping the other elves with the cleaning after the feast.

I confirmed that I was right that the trace was placed on wands when everyone entered Hogwarts for the first time via the lake. It gets removed during maturity automatically when our magic changes. In areas with heavy magical activity the trace does not work properly due to interference of the high amount of magic and magic can be done with wands there without the ministry finding out like in Diagon Alley. Wandless magic is not detected by the trace as trace applied to the wand only senses the magic that flows through the wand. So I could continue to do my exercises without any problems.