Harry Potter Breaking The Chains

"Well, here we are," she said gesturing toward a door on their right. They were in a corridor on the fifth floor. "The door will always open for you. You can set a password on it to open up when someone else uses that password, but I would advise you not to make a habit out of using this office to meet with your friends. We are giving it to you because you have extra responsibilities that the other students don't have, and we thought you could use a space to yourself in order to help facilitate your extra role."

"Yes ma'am. Thank you."

"You're quite welcome, Harry. And please, when we are in private, call me Minerva."

"Yes ma'am, I mean Minerva. Merlin, and I thought it was going to be weird calling Remus by his first name."

She actually chuckled lightly, "Well I imagine you'll get used to it eventually. But I will still expect you to address me as Professor McGonagall in class and in front of other students, is that understood?"

"Perfectly," he replied.

"Excellent," she stated. "Well, I should be getting back to my classroom. You really did do an outstanding job in class today, Harry. I'll expect this level of work from you from now on now that I know what you're capable of."

"You can count on it," he said lightly.

"Indeed. Good day, Harry."

"Good bye… Minerva." That was definitely just weird. As she left him at the door, he finally opened it up all the way and took a good look at his office. There was a desk on his left-hand side facing the wall on his right with a high backed chair behind it. A small fireplace occupied the wall on his right. Two plush armchairs and a small sofa occupied the space between his desk and the fireplace. Two barren book shelves adorned the wall on the far side of the room. It was a cozy office. Nothing grand, but it would be enough to suit his needs.

He sat in his chair behind the desk to get a feel for it. It was comfortable but kept him sitting upright. He would not be able to slouch in it for it was too rigid, making it ideal for getting work done. Harry moved from the desk to one of the armchairs in front of the now empty fireplace. These chairs, he found, were extremely comfortable. He stood and gave the sofa a sit. The cushions almost seemed to mold themselves to him, they were so comfortable. He reclined and waved a hand to summon his bag to himself. He pulled out the book on wards that he had started the previous day and spent the rest of the time before lunch reading.

Harry met his friends for lunch. Afterwards, he and Ron walked out onto the castle grounds and down to Hagrid's hut for their Care of Magical Creatures class. They only reviewed animals they had covered in the past, so the lesson didn't contain any excitement or near death experiences. Unsurprisingly, the class was relieved at the boring lesson. When the lesson was over, Ron and Harry walked back up to the castle together.

"Tell me why I'm still taking Divination again," Ron grumbled.

"Because your mum made you take 6 classes and Divination is much easier than History, especially since you've become so gifted at predicting your own death. Just think, now that I'm not in the class, you can predict my death as well. She'll probably give you extra credit," Harry joked.

Ron smiled. "You're right. Trelawney loves talking about your death. This will be so easy."

"Well I'm glad I could help. Have fun in class," he called out cheerfully.

"Prat."

"Git."

Harry watched as Ron walked toward the North Tower. Harry went up several flights of stairs to the Room of Requirement. He walked back and forth in front of Barnabas the Barmy thinking of a room where he could train and practice dueling. When he opened up the door, he found himself in a large room. There were some bookshelves lining parts of the walls, and set to one side of the room were several dummies. Before going any further, Harry turned around and locked the door, following it up with the best privacy and imperturbable charms he knew. He preferred that his training sessions remain private.

Curious, Harry went over to the dummies and took a good luck at them. He wondered what they were for. As if in answer to his unasked question, and in fact it probably was, a small booklet appeared on a nearby table. Harry walked over and read the title "Training Dummies Instruction Manual." He browsed through it for a couple of minutes then shut the book and grinned widely. This was more than he had hoped for. It would be perfect.

The training dummies could be activated to move around and cast spells at you. You could limit the spells which they would cast by demonstrating which spells you wanted them to use. You could also set a difficulty level on each of them ranging from novice to dueling master. He activated two of the dummies to start with and demonstrated the stinging hex to them. He set them both to the level of a Hogwarts graduate thinking that would be a fair starting point for this activity.

With everything set up to his satisfaction, he called out "Training dummies begin." He immediately set in motion. He wasn't actually casting spells back at his opponents. This exercise was meant to increase his reflexes and reaction speed. He was simply dodging spells shot at him from his two opponents.

He found that as long as he could keep a fair amount of distance between himself and his opponents, dodging was fairly easy. But with two opponents, it was easy for them to close in on him, making things extra difficult for Harry. He was pleased to see that the dummies seemed to be able to work together somewhat cohesively to try to trap him. He was hit numerous times throughout the training, but towards the end he was getting the hang of it. In the last few minutes, despite his fatigue, he didn't get hit once.

He stopped his training with an hour to spare before dinner began. Rather than head back to the dormitory to wash up and get changed, Harry merely thought about his need for a shower room. Lo and behold a moment later he was walking through a new doorway leading to some showers. He stripped down and entered. After he finished cleaning himself off, he waved his hand over his clothes to clean them.

With a half hour left until dinner was served, Harry headed over to Gryffindor Tower to see what his friends were up to. He entered the common room to find Ron and Neville playing a game of chess at one of the tables. Ron was winning as usual, but Neville wasn't doing half bad. He looked like he was giving Ron a lot more trouble than Harry usually did anyway. Harry greeted the two but did not sit with them. He instead chose an open sofa in front of the fireplace, which had a fire in it that strangely enough didn't seem to be giving off very much heat. He took the book on wards he had been reading back out of his bag and continued where he had left off.

Several pages into his reading, Harry felt the sofa cushion shift as a weight was added onto it. He looked over to see Ginny smiling at him. "Whatcha reading, Harry?" she asked brightly.

Harry held up the book so that she could read the cover. "Wards?" she asked simply, cocking an eyebrow at him.

"Uh huh," was his succinct reply.

"Care to explain why you're reading about wards?" she prodded.

"I find them interesting. It's actually kind of surprising that they don't teach us at all about them here at Hogwarts. It would be extremely useful even just to know the most basic ones for life after Hogwarts," Harry explained.

"And since when have you taken such an interest in them? And in reading in general?" she returned.

"Since the summer," Harry supplied concisely.

"Speaking of the summer," Ginny steered, "when do I get to talk to you about some other interesting events that happened this summer that I have questions about?"

Harry looked around the room to make sure no one was listening in. "Not here, Gin. I promise you that we'll talk soon, but please don't bring anything like that up in public. No one, and I mean no one, has any idea about that, and I would very much like to keep it that way," he whispered fervently.

Ginny adopted a contrite look. "Okay, Harry. I won't bring it up any more, but can we talk soon, please?"

"What are you doing tonight?" he asked her.

"I've got nothing planned," she responded.

....

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