A Shadow Through Time

Harry glanced down at the book he held and cursed in frustration, this was going to take ages. Ever since he had received a notice from the ministry saying that due to the return of Voldemort the under age restrictions on magic were lifted for those over the age of fourteen Harry had been studying.

As soon as he got the message he had sent Hedwig to Flourish and Blots asking for books on duelling and combat magics as well as wards, a general spell book, a few on advanced charms and transfiguration and a one on occlumency and legillimency. His current irritation however stemmed from the fact that he couldn't get a single advanced spell to work. He had dived right into advanced combat magic like a true Griffindor only to find that his theoretical knowledge was not good enough to perform such magic. If he was going to learn such spell he would first have to study lots and lot of magical theory Arithmancy and perhaps Ancient Runes. In hindsight he thought it had been rather foolish of him to assume that he could become powerful by just reading a few books and practicing a bit. This was looking like it would take years to get good enough at magic to protect himself and others so that a repeat of the department of mysteries would never happen. Harry had been concentrating very hard on not thinking about this subject he didn't really know how he felt about Sirius's death, after all he had not really spent that much time with him but he was still the closest thing to a family he had ever had, so he avoided thinking about it by studying and doing exercise until he was to tired to think.

Thinking about his current problem Harry decided he had two possible solutions; one was to go to diagon alley and find the books and anything else he might need, or he could just order stuff again. Going to Diagon Alley would be better he thought but it was risky and as he had yet to learn any disguise or stealth magic everyone would know that he had been there which as he thought about it would not be good, thinking about it Harry was amazed that he wasn't caught sneaking around Hogwarts more, he hadn't even used a silencing charm!

In the end he decided to just order books and maybe a few memory potions and some other potions ingredients and visit diagon alley later on when he was more confident in his abilities after all it would not do to go rushing off to somewhere potentially dangerous unprepared again he had already made that mistake more than once and was determined not to make it again. So he sent Hedwig out again this time with a list of theory books that covered material from first year to well beyond Hogwarts curriculum.

When the new books came Harry delved into magical theory, Arithmancy and Ancient Runes with abandon. The memory potions helped immensely with learning everything although he still had to work to understand the material he no longer had problems remembering anything.

Arithmacy Harry found was a sort of magical equivalent of physics, it dealt with the laws for magic, what worked, why and how. It was through Arithmacy that complex spells and rituals could be worked out and the structure for wards designed or analysed for weaknesses so they could be brought down.

Ancient runes was a subject taught at Hogwarts, Harry however found it more accurate to just call it runes as they were not all old and there age had nothing o do with there function, it was not a history subject. It was by combining various runes with spells that wards and enchantments could be made permanent and there power could be increased dramatically. First by creating the effect then power could be added in again and again until the material the runes were engraved in could no longer withstand the energy flowing through it and would ether melt or shatter. This was incidentally why runes were usually carved in stone, metal or crystal as they could take the strain and heat much better than wood or other soft materials such as cloth that tended to catch fire if they became too hot.

Harry discovered that with the a better understanding of magical in general and how each specific spell worked allowed spells to be cast more efficiently. That is not to say that you became stronger but the effects of spells would be more powerful as less energy was wasted when forcing it into a spell incorrectly.

Harry studied magical theory and Runes for around a month before he was satisfied that he knew enough to be able to properly perform the moderately advanced magics without wasting energy. This was vital as for an average wizard they used a lot of power even when cast perfectly and though Harry was no average wizard he was still young, and therefore comparatively weak at least compared to how he would eventually be. In terms of magical theory Harry had surpassed any Hogwarts 7th year and most adults in fact but there was sill much that he could learn and at some point he determined to come back to study the theoretical subjects after he had got a long way with his other studies.

During his study Harry had discovered a few things, on of the more important was that wandless magic was not as hard as people believed. It was however quite different from what people believed. Spells were created with Arithmacy to work with wands, hence they required wands to work, but magic didn't. There were no spells with wandless magic only general techniques. To use wandless magic you had to will something to happen and then force magic from your core to make your will reality. Obviously this was very difficult as you had to know exactly how to do something in order to do it and it required immense force of will and concentration to create any complex effects and this was why wands were invented and wizards being the lazy sods they are forgot about wandless magic. Harry had been practicing and could make things move short distances if they weren't too heavy and his control was rather shaky.

It was now the middle of august and Harry had improved dramatically in magic. He had first gone back over all his school books and those that he would study in 6th and seventh year and learnt all the spells that he hadn't before because he hadn't really tried. His better understanding of magic had helped immensely where before he had to struggle to learn spells most came easily to him know taking four or five attempts to get right and maybe fifteen to twenty to perfect. He had realised why the hat had said he could go to Ravenclaw there was a great sense of satisfaction to mastering new spells and learning new things.

His study of occlumancy had gone reasonably well he had found that it was better to learn occlumancy at the same time as legilimancy as both required mental strength and it was much easier to build such strength by attacking others minds than having your own attacked especially if there are no other legilimancers around to attack your mind. Occlumancy consisted of organising you thought, memories and emotions and then building mental shields to separate these groups and then building more shields around the whole lot. This separating of thoughts from emotions was what allowed users of occlumancy to hide emotions so well, as they could shut them behind shields to stop themselves thinking about them, although this was not a good idea to do for extended periods of time. The next part was the difficult one and was where Harry currently was. When first created the shields were hopelessly weak, too weak to stop any form of legilimancy at all. The however the shields automatically strengthened as the mind that created them grew stronger and more skilled. To increase mental strength though was difficult as it required that strength to be used and this meant ether having somebody attack your mind repeatedly like Snape had done to Harry or you had to repeatedly attack others minds which was preferable as it was not painful. When Harry discovered this he realised that this was exactly what Snape had been doing, he must of assumed that Harry had already constructed shields for some reason and that puzzled Harry as he could not work out why unless Dumbledore had told him and that was a troubling thought.

In this building of strength Harry had two advantages though one was Voldemort, with his emotions constantly flowing down the link to Harry they were now constantly battering against his shields and so keeping them out was rapidly strengthening his mind. The second advantage was his practice of wandless magic, he had already determined that it depended on mental strength to focus the magic, so the more he practiced wandless magic the stronger his mind got and hence his ability at occlumancy and legilimancy and the same was true for the reverse. His current strength in occlumancy allowed his to completely block off Voldemort's emotions but Harry was sure that he couldn't stop an actual attack. Due to his budding skill he performed all legilimancy wandlessly which was a feat that normally only masters could perform.

On that topic his wandless magic had improved substantially, he could now move around big heavy things reliably, open locks create a weak shield that was about the equivalent of a protego shield spell, set things on fire and violently shove around things like a banishing charm.

In advanced magic Harry had made some progress. He had found that even with his greater understanding of magic the spells were still very difficult to learn and so he had decided to learn a small number of the most useful spells and perfect them before trying to learn more. So far he had learnt a shield spell which had the incantation "Aegis" it was a corporal blue sphere that completely enclosed the caster and allowed the casters spells to pass out through it so it could be held constantly, if you had the power. Procella was a spell which conjured a storm of bolts a lightening that with skill could be directed to strike multiple targets or to deliver a huge bolt to a single enemy, obviously it did a lot of damage. Argentum Telum was a silver bolt that was designed to destroy shields though it put a fist sized whole in anything else it hit like walls, doors… people. He also learnt Explodra a much more powerful version of Reducto, a spell that crated a bar of awesomely hot flame called the dragon fire charm, a spell that created a globe of pure force that could be thrown at opponents and was powerful enough to crush cars called the thundering hammer due to the thrumming noise it made as it passes through the air and finally an advanced stunner that enervate didn't work on a and a spell that chained up people with steel manacles to stop them escaping.

Harry had also learnt a few healing potions some advanced disguise and stealth spells, a few tracking spell and how to apparate. He had found a charm that when put on a room automatically fixed anybody who had been splinched, as long as all of them was in the room. So Harry had learnt by apparating from one side of his expanded room to the other until he felt confident to try further, after a bit of practice apparating around the country he had worked on become silent and while he had not achieved it completely he was much quieter than the twins.

Harry now faced a bit of a dilemma. He had got to the point that learning new spells wouldn't help really he needed to practice fighting again other wizards and magical creatures such as trolls and vampires if he was to improve, he was also concidering learning how to use a sword and maybe martial arts encase he was disarmed. And secondly he was supposed to be going to Hogwarts in about two weeks and he wasn't sure he wanted to. Something was bound to go wrong again and he had learnt so much on his own that he felt he could teach himself better. In the end Harry decided to make his visit to diagon alley first and look for alternatives hopefully before everyone went for Hogwarts stuff as a street full of school children was a perfect target for a death eater attack.

AN: Do I need a Beta?