Title: Proving Adept

Author: Knife Hand

Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated

Spoilers: Nothing Specific, general for first few books.

Rating: M

Disclaimer: I do not own Hermione, or Luna, or Ginny, or Cho, or... I would buy them all but I am broke.

Summary: The bindings on Harry's Magical Core should have killed him in a magical explosion, instead his system re-routed the unusable Magic into other, more physical, areas. Now 14 and ready to go to Hogwarts, Harry is not the meek and ignorant weapon Dumbledore expected.

A/N: In this fic, Hogwarts School starts First Year when the students are 14 and goes for 5 years till they are about 18 with their OWL's. After that the students either go into the work force or go to Magical University. Also, Harry has no glasses.

Harry Potter dusted the chalk off his hands onto the backside of his black, fitted, long legged gym pants and wafted his white, tight, tank-top. His bare feet made almost no sound as he walked across the padded mats as Jonas took his place and the Coach helped lift Jonas up onto the Rings. Kelly, who was waiting on one of the side benches in her white leotard, tossed Harry as towel, which he used to dry his messy black hair. While not tall or 'buff', at fourteen Harry was well muscled and had a compact strength and flexibility from years of Gymnastics.

Sitting down on the bench next to Kelly, and flipping the towel to hang over his shoulders, Harry pulled a water bottle out of his gym bag and took a deep drink. His arms had a semi pleasant burn as the Rings were an upper body strength orientated apparatus.

"That was pretty good, Harry." Kelly said, redoing the tight ponytail that she kept her dark hair in when practicing and competing. "You almost nailed the new dismount. How long has Coach been having you do that one?"

"Two weeks." Harry said. "When you up next?

"Next on the Floor." Kelly replied. "Once Lindsay is finished."

Harry looked over to the 'Floor' and saw Lindsay start the second last run of flips and tumbles of her routine, her bare legs flashing along with her light blonde hair.

"I better get ready." Kelly said as she stood up, placing her hand gently on Harry's shoulder. "Hold my bench space?"

"Of course." Harry said as Kelly moved off.

There were about thirty teens, male and female, either working on the various Gymnastics evolutions or resting on the benches that ringed the walls of the gymnasium. Thanks to one of the Dursely's nosey neighbours this place had become his haven nine years ago. After he had been left with his Aunt and Uncle, until the age of five he had been neglected, treated like a slave and housed in the cupboard under the stairs, until Mrs West at number six had asked what interests Harry had and how it was not good for a child to be cooped up inside all the time. In their panic, they had moved Harry out from the cupboard into the smallest bedroom and had enrolled him at the Gymnasium, which was a forty-minute walk from number 4, which they refused to drive him to, and was the cheapest thing around.

When he had shown up for the first lesson in a pair of baggy pants and a loose t-shirt, Harry had been forced to explain to the Head Coach that his relatives would not pay for any sporting uniforms or equipment. The Head Coach has offered him a job. The coach would buy him the initial uniforms and Harry would arrive half an hour before and stay half an hour after to help set up and pack up the Gymnastics equipment with the six coaches. Harry had been diligent in his work and the Head Coach had been more than content with the arrangement. It had not taken long for Harry to work of the original uniforms and began to get cash for his work. There had been the offer to waive the fees in return for his work but as the Dursley's paid directly to the bank account for the Gymnasium, Harry declined that offer as this way he got cash in hand.

Harry picked up one of the folded towels from the pile on the floor below the bench and tossed it to Lindsay as she walked towards him. She snagged the towel and began wiping down her body before sitting down on Harry's other side to where Kelly had been. Harry and Lindsay chatted, joined by Kelly when she finished her Floor routine, until the end of the training session. The two girls picked up their gym bags and went out to meet their parents while Harry moved over to help the Coaches pack up, starting by working on the winch that raised the Rings as the coaches started on packing up the Parallel Bars and Pommel Horse. Half an hour later, with the gear all stowed, Harry shouldered his gym bag and walked down the street headed back to the Dursely's.

Once he was out of sight of the Gymnasium, he ducked into a pathway behind two rows of houses. Almost a kilometre of strait and almost always completely deserted pavement, with tall fences on each side and overhanging trees, it was as private a place as you can get in Little Whinging, and it cut the total travel time between the Gym and Number 4 from forty minutes to just under twenty by cutting out the detours around the two gated estates that flanked the pathway. Walking normally the pathway took twelve minutes to traverse, but Harry 'Jogged' and made it through the pathway in six, and he was not pushing that hard. Once, for the hell of it he had gone as fast as he could, and sprinted the entire pathway in just over one minute, but he was almost completely drained after doing it. It had been lucky the he had not done it on a training or competition day.

That was a trick Harry had learnt very early on. He could focus his energy into various areas of his body and those areas would work better. For example, he could focus on his lungs and legs in order to run faster, the lungs working to absorb oxygen and expel carbon dioxide much more efficiently and the legs enable the muscles to work faster and harder. This was by no means an easy task, it had taken him four years of extensive study of biology and anatomy, and a few painful muscle tares, to get the best results, and the more he 'amped up' his body the faster he was drained by it. It was a trade-off, he could do a minor improvement for an hour or two or a significant improvement for a minute or two.

It was not just his muscles or lungs he could 'supercharge' either. He could increase his hearing, smell, taste and sight as well, though controlling them was even harder to learn than controlling his muscles. The first time he had ramped up his hearing he had been so inundated with sounds that his mind overloaded and he went deaf for six hours. With a lot of practice, he had learnt to focus his hearing to just what he wanted to hear, such as a single voice in a crowd or the beating of a specific person's heart.

He was also able to 'smell/taste' the broad strokes of someone's emotions. Unlike most of his other abilities, this one was always 'on', though usually at a low level and he could increase it to get a much better sense of what a person was feeling. It was not mind reading, it was more telling if someone was angry or excited or scared even when they had no visible expression. This one had taken Harry the longest time to even realise he had it. The first time he got an inkling was when he had eaten his first lunch at the Gymnasium. It had been leftovers from the previous night and it tasted overpoweringly sweet. Harry had always put heaps of sugar and other sweet ingredients into his own food as every time he ate with the Dursleys there was always a bitter taste in his mouth. It had turned out it was not the food, but his relatives hatred of him.

He had slowly begun to be able to tell the difference between the 'taste' of emotions and the taste of food, and able to supress the emotions 'taste' when he was eating. He had also learnt to recognise a few different emotions. Hatred was bitter, Anger was sharp, Happy was mellow and almost fruity, Elation was slightly sweet, Exhaustion was mildly yeasty, like the smell of warm bread. There was a new one that he was trying to figure out that he had been getting from both Kelly and Lindsay for the last month or two. It was an earthy, almost mushroom like kind of 'taste'.

Harry walked in the front door of Number 4 and instantly knew something was different. He was always aware of his relatives' emotions, a survival mechanism, and while their usual Anger and Hatred were still there, they were buried under the raw meat kind of 'smell' of abject terror.

"In here… Harry." Vernon called when he heard the front door close.

Harry's Uncle had never called him by his first name before. He entered the living room and saw his Aunt and Uncle sitting on the couch looking at a stern looking older lady, dressed in dark green robes and her hair up in a sever bun. He could feel excitement, control and a bit of anger, though not directed at him, coming from the woman.

"Harry, this is Professor McGonagall." His Aunt began. "She's from a very… special boarding school and would like to talk to you."

That day, Harry's life changed dramatically.

TBC…

A/N: I have taken the concept from RPG's (in particular Shadowrun) of the ability to use Magic to enhance the body instead of manipulating the outside world. In this story, Harry has a lot of his magic 'bound' so that he has only the 'average' amount of magic for casting, with the 'bound' magic being focused internally to enhance his body in various ways. In Shadowrun terms he is a Mage/Adept/Face. If that means nothing to you, his range of skills will be revealed in the story, but don't expect him to be able to cast spells first time every time or lift Hagrid with his pinky or anything. He will be powerful in his own way but not godlike.