113 Chapter 110
"Okay Harry focus, focus, focus!" he muttered and tried to remember all he knew about wards.
Wards needed to be anchored. This one was centered over the mirror. Harry quickly started looking around the mirror, trying to find the wardstone just like the one he'd found at the Dursleys, until he saw runes on the mirror's back glowing blue.
The mirror was the wardstone. Elated at making at least some progress, Harry started looking around trying to find anything that could stop the ward, trying frantically to anyhow save his friend.
Quickly pulling out Gandiva, he shot an explosive arrow at it. It vaporized to nothingness before even touching the mirror.
Suddenly, he stilled, remembering the ward's description.
. . . A magic draining ward spell capable of growing, sucking any magic it touches . . .
And he knew what to do.
Harry walked to the front of the mirror and hesitated. Ron had once told him about how one of his uncles died of a small magical overdose. And his Runic Burnout description said it started causing damage it HP after his MP was filled. This would kill him. He knew it.
His head snapped back towards the door when Hermione's screams stopped completely.
She had screamed her throat dry and was curled up, tears streaming from her eyes as the ward continued leeching on her magic.
'So many plans I had.' he thought with a sigh, 'To be fair, dying trying to save a friend isn't exactly the worst end possible,' he thought as he placed his hand on the mirror and pushed a few points worth of mana into the ward.
Then, steeling himself, he tugged!
Ping!
Runic Burnout Lv-5 (44%)
A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.
100 MP absorbed takes down 1 HP
Do you wish to use it on: Exhaure Ward?
YES/NO
Harry pressed yes. With an audible snap, the ward disconnected from Hermione and started growing smaller.
Harry could feel the mana from the ward pouring into his body as his reserves filled themselves and a red window popped up flashing in his vision.
Extreme mana overdose risk. Risking potential fatality. Recommend abort!
Harry ignored it and kept pulling, his spirits heightening as he saw Hermione sit up and look around. Her eyes widened and she struggled to get onto her feet.
"Stay where you are Hermione. Don't move. This ward just tried to suck up all your magic. You need rest. Let me handle this."
"Harry…what are you doing?" she almost seemed too scared to ask.
"I'm breaking it. Absorbing it. Destroying it. Sucking back the magic from it. Call it whatever…" He replied as he pulled up his HP.
HP: 85/600 (+10 HP per second)
"How are you even doing that!? And you can't absorb this much magic at once! It would kill you!" she screamed, her throat entirely too hoarse.
"Probably," he said, "But this ward sucks on magic and grows, so the moment I try to cross its borders it'll start sucking my magic and grow. I have to end it here. From the inside."
The ward was nearing the mirror now, growing smaller and smaller. Nearing the end. There wasn't much more time left, Harry thought.
"Harry I'm sure Dumbledore is coming. Let him handle it. Don't do this please."
"I'm sorry."
His eyes had started glowing gold as colors of all kind flooded his vision and replaced the objects that he saw in the room. He could see the golden brown of the bricks of Hogwarts around him, the violet of the mirror and a shivering soft blue silhouette where Hermione was. He could see her struggling to get up and fall down, her legs too shaky to support her.
"Hermione."
"Yes Harry," her voice shook terribly.
"I think I'm seeing magic."
"What…what does it look like?" She seemed to have given up, her blue silhouette lay unmoving near the end of the door as she kept talking to him in between sobs.
"Beautiful. A bit too bright. But beautiful."
There were a few more moments of silence, where only Hermione's sobs wrecked through the chamber. Harry was struck by the parallel of tonight's events with the time with John the werewolf had died in that forest all those months ago.
"Hermione"
"Yes Harry"
"I'm glad we became friends."
"Me too," Harry heard before his world exploded in a white light and his heart let out a small flutter of heartbeats, and then stopped.
"Did he just-"
"Yes."
"But-"
"Yes."
"We have to do something," The man, the one that had given Harry his powers on a day that now felt a millennia ago, said with his features awash with light from the floating screen he was staring at with shock evident on his face. The screen was playing out the events of the chamber of the final trap.
"Indeed," said the woman resolutely to him as she turned to the screen and pointed her wand at it.
In the bright, vision-obscuring light that had filled the last chamber, the Mirror of Erised shattered.
The complex switching spell that Dumbledore had set up lost its intention detecting artifact, nullifying one of its requirements.
It activated and started scanning for its remaining requirement, the purest magical core without dark magic. Coming upon Harry's overflowing magical core, the spell activated and the philosopher's stone was switched to the possession of the purest magical core in the room, dropping into Harry's bleeding hand.
It slowly dissolved and entered Harry's bloodstream, the high concentration of magic in the atmosphere and in Harry's blood causing it to bond with his very DNA.
Harry's heart gave a giant heave and started beating again.
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