33 Chapter 33: Samhain Recovery

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1 November 1991, Hogwarts

The feeling continued for a few seconds, but it felt like hours. When the pain subsidized into soreness. Harry tried to walk only for the world to slowly darken. Mere seconds later, he fell down unconscious from the strain of what happened to him.

Harry blinked his eyes open and tried to remember why his body felt so sore. It was as if he had run a marathon the day before. Thinking back on the events of the previous day, he sat up abruptly and gasped.

The ritual! What happened after the ritual? The initial part was intoxicating, but the rest, what he assumed to be the Crest activation ritual was practically torture. He had never felt such pain in his life, and hopefully, he will never do so again.

The young Slytherin looked around and noticed that he was in his dormitory. Everyone was still asleep. Crabbe and Goyle were heavily snoring, and Blaise, Draco, and Theo looked passed out wearing their normal pyjamas. If it wasn't for the ache he felt whenever he moved his body and his memories, he would have thought that it was a normal morning.

Wait a minute, they were wearing their pyjamas? Harry looked down and froze as he saw that he was in fact wearing his own sleepwear. The Potter scion distinctly remembered passing out in the ceremonial robe provided to him for the ritual.

Did someone dress him to sleep? Harry blushed in embarrassment at the thought but shook his head and decided to figure out what happened. He palmed his wand which happened to be on his nightstand and muttered, 'Tempus!'

Pain. That was what he felt. Absolute pain. It was like pulling a muscle. Oh, the spell worked as the date and time had appeared out of thin air. But the very act of casting magic was agonizing. What was going on with him?

Harry grimaced until the spell fizzled out, sighing in relief afterwards. Did the ritual somehow screw with his magic? He needed to see someone like it. From the previous spell, he knew that it was the morning after the ritual, which happened to be a Friday. Luckily, he only had a History of Magic double class, a theoretical Charms double class, and practical Herbology. It was usually a pretty dull day, all things considered, without any magic casting, but Harry was glad for it, because it gave him time to figure out whatever happened to his magic.

Seeing that it wasn't even six in the morning yet, Harry decided to go into the common room and leave his classmates to their blissful sleep. He needed some time to himself, and he could still interrogate them about what happened to him the day before. The young Slytherin sneakily went to the bathroom to change his uniform, and when he removed his shirt, he froze at the sight of a tattoo on his chest. It was far bigger than anything he could have reasonably put on his body.

Here on his chest, a jet-black raven looked as if it was taking flight. It was so detailed. It looked like it was about to leave his body at any moment. No artist, no matter how talented, could have done something like this. It was beautiful, Harry would admit it, but he never felt the need to do something like this on his body before.

Numbly, Harry just put on his uniform and walked down to the common room.

He was met with silence, which was somehow deafening. Harry sat down on his usual couch and started to think. Casting spells becoming painful was a big issue for a wizard to have. The ritual was far more painful than it should have been. There were a few reports of slight pain and discomfort, but not something like what happened to him.

The raven was a clue about what happened. Harry's book did say that crests could manifest physically in certain ways, it was mostly just small marks or tattoos. In fact, they were rather common as a declaration of who is the head of the family – which would have a special mark in some way.

The raven was the manifestation of Harry's crest, but he had never read anywhere about any connection between the Potter family and the bird. These tattoos were often designed by the first holder of the crest and were often similar to certain family symbols or signets, which for some reason, wasn't the case for Harry.

The young Slytherin decided to just take a walk to the castle. He needed answers, and he needed to stop the pain whenever he used magic. Harry walked out of the common room and instinctively started to walk up the stairs. He passed by a few paintings, and it was then that he noticed that something was different.

It was subtle, but Harry could tell. The songs were different. Oh, their properties were the same, but Harry could hear more. It was like before, it was muffled, but now he could hear it clearly. Oh, it wasn't even the melodies themselves that were clear, but also the addition of something more. When Harry decided to focus on the painting of a beautiful landscape and listened to its song. There was this feeling of wonder and pride emanating from it.

He decided to look at the painting of a beautiful young woman and felt love and warmth woven into the painting's song. It was like he could feel the emotions tied to every enchantment. He needed to experiment on this further, with artefacts other than paintings as well.

Harry kept walking up the stairs while marvelling at the extra sense of magic that he had gained. He would need to understand how it worked and how he could use it properly, but it was an unexpected boon from the ritual. Additionally, the fact that he could use his magical hearing without pain boded well for the health of his magic.

Without even thinking about it, Harry found himself on the seventh floor, specifically, in front of a certain tapestry of an idiot attempting to teach trolls how to dance ballet. Harry barely even thought about the Room of Requirements to solve his issue. Did he subconsciously think that it might be helpful in his plight? Harry was practically walking on autopilot, lost in his head trying to figure out what happened.

Well, what could he lose? It's not like he could ask anyone about it. Family crests are very private matters. Big families often have members that are healers especially to deal with such matters. There was no mention anywhere about a Potter magical crest, and Harry didn't really expect much from his crest outside of a few family potion recipes, which was the area of magic that his ancestors often focused on.

Still, Harry decided to go for it and walked towards the wall while thinking, 'I want a place that can help my condition. I want a place that can help my condition. I want a place that can help my condition.'

On the third turn, a door surprisingly materialized. Harry honestly, didn't expect anything but slowly walked inside. It looked like a mix of a magical workshop and a bath. There was no explanation about what happened other than a book that was opened on the conjured desk.

Harry slowly walked there and saw the title of the opened page, 'Forceful Expansion of Magical Circuits and its consequences'.

The young Slytherin immediately started to carefully read the document. Oh, it was very complicated – probably a thesis for a healer of some sort – but the premise was slightly understandable. It described the event of someone having atrophied his magical circuits, either by not casting magic at all or by having been under a curse that muddled the flow of their magic, who later became free of their plight. Magic remembers, and thus, he remembers how much intake the body used to handle and will try to constantly channel the previous capacity of magic. The forceful magic tended to oversaturate the magical circuits, causing them to overheat with every spell, which caused a lot of pain in the process.

Yes, this was a very good estimation of what happened to him. For some reason, the magical crest decided that his body should output more magic and so overwhelmed his circuits with more magic. The good news was that it was a temporary issue that would continue until the circuits compensate for the increased input. The bad news was that it would hurt like hell every time he cast a spell until that time.

Thankfully, the thesis described a method of using a pre-ritual bath to moderate the output, making the expansion slower, but also less painful. Pre-ritual baths were artefacts whose purpose is to absorb the excess magic of a wizard or witch, to stop it from affecting especially delicate rituals. The room seemed to have provided Harry with one, and slowly, the young Potter took off his clothes and sank into the bath.

The feeling of relief was immediate. Harry hadn't noticed how much his body ached from the magic when he woke up and just sighed in pleasure when it did its work. With a small dip in this bath every day, he would be able to cast magic, while the magical circuit expansion happened during the night, while he was asleep.

Harry was so relaxed that he almost fell asleep while in the tub. It was when he looked at the clock in the room and realized that he almost missed breakfast, that he quickly got up to go to the Great Hall.

Once he was dry and clothed once more, he palmed his wand and decided to see if the bath worked. He waved his wand while murmuring, 'Lumos Maxima!' and a ball of light appeared out of his wand and floated in front of him. Oh, his body ached slightly more with the magic, but it didn't even come close to the agony he felt earlier.

But this was a temporary solution at best, a band-aid on top of a wound. Harry will still have to deal with the magical circuit expansion for weeks if not months, and the ritual bath will only help so far. The more magic he casts every day, the more painful it will become until his next bath. That meant that Harry would need to spend less time experimenting with magic, which was a huge downside in his opinion.

There was still the issue of why Harry's crest decided that he didn't have enough magic. He was already on the upper tier of the magical power scale. He was powerful for his age. In his mind, Harry imagined Albus Dumbledore and Tom Riddle to be around as powerful as he was at his age. There were no psychological blocks on his magic to cause any atrophy, so why did the crest decide that Harry's usual magic generation was more than what his circuits could handle?

Well, it was something Harry needed to research further, but there was practically no source material other than the badly translated book he found in the Room of Requirements. Still, Harry tried to hypothesize on the reason, on his way to the Great Hall, where he sat down to have his usual breakfast and a good dose of coffee.

The young Potter noticed that Hermione wasn't sitting alone but seemed to be arguing with Longbottom and Weasley. The fact that they had come to rescue her seemed to destroy any aversion they had towards each other. Harry didn't really know how to feel about that and just chose to continue eating.

Immediately, he was accosted by Blaise, Daphne, and Tracy. They immediately sat next to him. Daphne was the first to break her silence, "Are you alright, Harry?"

The boy nodded, "Yeah, why is that?"

"You're kidding right, mate?" Blaise interjected, "You sort of screamed in pain during the ritual yesterday and just passed out. What happened, Harry?"

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Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.