Death is but the Next Great Adventure

Spells For Dummies

In the last chapter: Harry manages to fool Dumbledore and reveals to the man he's a parselmouth to gain his trust. He has a moment of mutual understanding with Anthony in the hospital wing. Harry's summer begins, and so does his summer lessons with his companion; from curses to dueling to the language of the dead. Harry realizes his godfather and Remus have grown much closer than simple 'friends' and has a little 'chat' with them both.

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The curse soared through the air in a stream of violet light, aimed right at Harry's chest. Harry quickly shielded himself and sent back a curse of his own that, if used on a person, would distract them by making them feel as though their skin was being separated from muscle, bones, and tissue by thousands of insects burrowing painfully beneath their skin. Although there wasn't any physical damaged done by the curse, the psychological damage was enough to distract an opponent long enough for Harry to get the upper hand. A milder curse Harry had learned recently.

Fortunately, he wasn't using the spell on an actual person.

Harry followed the curse with a fatal cutting hex with the forceful slash of his wand, cleaving a deep valley into the wooden neck of his opponent. As expected, the figure slumped lifelessly back into its default training-dummy position, waiting for the exercise to start again.

Harry had found three life-sized training dummies in one of his 'excavations' of Grimmauld Place's storage cellar. They were at least half a century old with only the most basic and rudimentary dueling charms and spells making them work and were marred and burnt in certain places from past practices. Harry suspected they had been used for very basic dueling training for children and adolescents.

They weren't in the best of shape, but with a little creativity and craftiness on Harry's part, the dummies could be used to simulate an actual fight; equipped with a deadly arsenal of curses, hexes, shields, and charms, the dummy could move and dodge and fight just like a real person—if a real person had a poll and wheels instead of actual legs, that is. Harry could set it to different levels of difficulty and could use more than one at a time.

Ever since his encounter with the Basilisk in the chamber, Harry knew that he could know more spells than any Auror and still be beaten by an average Hogwarts student if he didn't first gain experience using those spells. Harry might be immortal, but death was a last resort. Being away from his body and unaware of what's happening in the world of the living leaves him far too vulnerable. Harry could wake up surrounded by dead people that he was meant to protect or without his wand or cloak or any number of things. Either way, the goal was to not have to rely on his 'special ability' to get him through everything.

That being said, he would admit to dying once or twice during the first few test runs with his dummy.

It was about three weeks in to his summer and Harry had already sent a few letters back and forth between his friends. Hermione was in France with her parents for the summer, so her letters were a lot less frequent, but significantly longer than the others. The Malfoys were spending time with cousins in Russia—which Draco endlessly complained about in all of his letters. Anthony was staying in Britain that summer like Harry so he vowed to drop in at Grimmauld Place sometime soon.

Harry had been half-surprised when, only a week into summer, he found a letter from Ginny among the rest of the post. Harry had thought it might take the girl longer to write, considering everything that had happened, but looking back on how happily she had joined his group of friends, it really should've been expected.

Her letters were always short, concise, like she had written it multiple times before sending out the most to-the-point letter she could draft. Harry didn't mind though, he found it rather endearing and so very like her personality—at least, from what he could tell in the short week he'd spent around her before school let out.