Dumbledore and Harry's Adventures

The Black Box

After a week of training for six hours a day Harry had learned much.

The primary thing he had learned was that Oliver Wood's fanatic Quidditch training regiment was a breeze compared to what Albus considered to be a beginner training schedule. Oliver would take advantage of inclement weather for his training. Albus used a series of wards and spells to create the inclement weather in the section of the Bordale estate that Pierre had said he could afford to rebuild after they left France. On the bright side, Harry could now manage a full thirty minutes of dodging before needing a long break to recover.

As for the spells, that was a mixed bag. Albus had been right about how Harry had internalized how to forge his own paths. When using his wandless techniques, he was able to quickly figure out how to create the effects that he wanted. With a simple touch he could now set an object ablaze or banish it across the field. Out of necessity he had learned to immediately banish whatever he set ablaze (a nasty burn on his hand acted as great motivation). He was still figuring out how to stun by touch by visiting the abattoir that supplied meat for the local magical community. For some reason the effects ranged between making the victim a bit woozy to (on one occasion) ceasing all bodily functions. For obvious reasons, Albus was not keen on Harry trying the spell on humans.

Unfortunately, other than his Hyper Jumps (Harry gave up on convincing Albus to call them something else), his wandless magic required physical contact. Even the distance of a millimeter was enough to stop the spell from taking effect. Which meant that he had to learn to cast the spells with his wand.

Harry had decided to forgo learning Albus's method for the moment, what with the threat of self-liquification or putting himself into a coma for a year. This left him with learning spells the old-fashioned way. On the bright side, his tighter connection with his magic meant he could learn the new spells quickly and could cast them silently once he had internalized the pronunciation and wand movements. It also seemed like the more he cast the spells with his wand, the better his wandless versions became.

Of course, the learning of spells was outside of the six hours of training. After breakfast, for half an hour, Albus would stand next to a training dummy and fire a ceaseless barrage of stinging jinxes as Harry would try to take down the dummy. Any stinging jinx that connected would count as a kill, and Harry would start over again. This continued until Harry would collapse. Harry had yet to take down the dummy.

After resting for half an hour, Harry would then go on the defensive. He was still working on getting a shield to work properly, so it was primarily a session of him diving and running around the field and Hyper Jumping whenever he had the magical reserves. For every session, Albus would have conjured a new set of obstacles and areas where Harry could hide for a few seconds before Albus's spell barrage would destroy the barrier.

After another half hour of rest (primarily lying on the grass in exhaustion), Harry would then get an hour to practice and perfect his spells or experiment with combinations of magic and spell chains. Albus stood watch to offer ideas, or to act as a sounding board, or to stop Harry if it looked like he was about to try something that could cause liquification (it hadn't happened yet, so Harry wasn't sure if Albus was serious or not).

Following that, they spent half an hour perfecting what Albus called the Jump and Hit, where Harry would Hyper Jump to the dummy and cast a spell. Each Hyper Jump would be followed by a different spell. Albus had a timer to track how long it took for each Jump and Hit combo. The slowest combo would get repeated the most. Albus called it the first of Harry's secret weapons, with hopefully more secret weapons to be discovered over time.

After that was lunch, followed by a repeat of the morning's schedule.

On the second day, Harry asked why they bothered with the rest of training, when Harry could use the Jump and Hit to take anyone out at will. In response, Albus volunteered to take the place of the dummy. Albus stood in the middle of the field, not using his ability to see magic, with eyes closed, facing away from Harry, with no magic active, wand held loosely in his hand. He had told Harry to take his time and attack when he felt he had the maximal chance to get the drop on Albus. After seven minutes, Harry made his Hyper Jump without a noise and thrust his arm forward to cast a wandless levitate on the old man. The next thing he knew, Albus was waking him up from the ground as it was dinner time. Harry stopped questioning the training at that point.