At The Heart Of The Matter

Authors Note: Thanks again to ALL my reviewers! I know this chapter may seem short, but a lot of time went into researching for it. Harry Potter is still not mine!

Year 3

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Year two had closed out successfully in Harry’s mind. He had made huge strides in Blood Magic/Runic Magic, and he was fairly confident in Weaponry and Martial Arts, having studied these last two years to master the basics. He was ready to move on to the more advanced studies in these areas.

They had all taken their NEWT’s under the watchful eyes of their instructors, and had done extremely well, none earning anything lower than a A, but most receiving EE’s or O’s. Harry was through with the Occlemency training, and during the next year, would start with Legilimency. So, on August 10th, he was handed his third year schedule.

Harry’s Schedule - Year 3

6:30 - 7:00
Shower/Stretching/Warm-up
7:00 - 8:30
Running and Weight Training
8:30 - 9:00
Breakfast
9:00 - 11:00
Advanced Studies/Grey Arts
Monday & Wednesday - Adv. Transfiguration/Conjuring & Adv. Charms
Tuesday & Thursday - Grey Arts/Adv. DADA
Fridays - Dueling with Magic
11:00 - 12:00
Lunch
12:00 - 2:00
Martial Arts and Weaponry Training
Monday - TaeKwon-Do/Karate
Tuesday - Fencing/Knives/Throwing Stars
Wednesday - TaeKwon-Do/Aikido
Thursday - Japanese Katana/Dim Mak
Fridays - Open Study of Disciplines
2:00 - 4:00
Specialized Study
Monday - Animagus Training
Tuesday - Dueling incorporating Magic/Martial Arts/Weaponry
Wednesday - Wandless Study & Dueling Wandlessly
Thursday - Cloaking/The Breath
Friday - Open Study of Disciplines
4:00 - 5:00
Legilimency
5:00 - 6:30
Dinner Break
6:30 - 9:00
Advanced Blood Magic/Runic Casting
9:00-
Relax and Sleep

No schooling on weekends, but must do physical workouts

Harry, while looking over his new schedule, let out a long suffering sigh and said, “This year is going to be my own personal hell on earth. I know they are trying to prepare me, but I’ll collapse before the end of each day. I really think Moody and Chen-Li are trying to kill me!”

From somewhere down the hall, Harry heard a bark that said, “I heard that Potter…aren’t you suppose to be in the Gym….get moving….NOW!” he recognized the voice of Mad-Eye.

“Damn slave driver! It’s not even 7:00am yet!” said Harry, under his breath, glaring at the door. Turning to Katie, he gave her a quick kiss saying, “Love you! I’ll hopefully see you later….if I don’t die first!”

“I can still hear you Potter!” shouted Moody again.

“You better get going, Harry. I see you later. Love you, too!” and with another quick kiss, he left for the gym, so starting one of the hardest years he would ever experience.

Harry’s advanced magical studies and Grey Arts where getting to be very fearsome. He was applying his knowledge of transfiguring objects into darts, spears, knives, and other projectiles, and learning to charm them, overlaying the spells, to send them hurtling towards his targets. The layering of spells is what his primary goal would be this year. It took extreme concentration and a mass amount of magical power and ability to do this. Flitwick told him that by the end of this year, he wanted Harry to be able to layer four spells at once. Harry, after learning how hard it was to layer just two, gave the little professor a look that said, ‘Are you crazy….I’ll never be able to do that’, and the return look sternly said, ‘Yes you will.’

Harry had learned that Filius Flitwick, while usually very kind hearted, was a fierce instructor when it came to the advanced studies. The Grey Arts, he was learning, were more than borderline dark, in his book anyway. Learning how to disembowel another human, shatter bones and skulls with precision, cast flesh and muscle eating acid spells, and many more gruesome spells left him feeling sick many days. He couldn’t believe that sweet, gentle Arthur Weasley was a master in this field of study, and it taught him never to judge a book by its cover…Arthur was truly SCARY in this element.

Chen-Li was doing is own version of SCARY! ‘The man is insane’ thought Harry. He learned the basics in the first two years on the philosophical aspects of martial arts, and the simple movements of the hands, legs, feet and arms, in the goal of flexibility, agility, speed and balance, Chen was now progressing into the lethal forms of these arts, taking into consideration Harry’s height and weight, he settle on Taekwon-do, Aikido, Karate and Dim Mak.

Taekwon-do is characterized by its fast, high and spinning kicks. It derives from Korea, and tae means "to strike or smash with the foot"; kwon means "to strike or smash with the hand"; and do means "as a way of life". His long arms and legs making his reach astounding, and potentially deadly.

Aikido, places greater emphasis on the motion and dynamics of the movements involved and it involves throws and joint locks that stem from Jujitsu. Aikido focuses on using an opponents own energy to gain control or throw them away from you. Chen wanted Harry to be able to use both forms fluidly in combat. Taekwon-do being more of an attack style, and Aikido a more defensive style, neither being truly limited in such a general characterization.

Karate, was a style that somewhat encompassed both the above styles. Like taekwon-do, it involves striking with punches, kicks, knee/elbow blows and other open handed techniques, but also incorporated the joint manipulations, locks and throws known to aikido. Karate also utilized vital point striking and grappling, and focused on the art of chi, which involved maximizing the power through the twisting of hips and joint snapping at the very second of impact.

Dim Mak is an ancient form of martial art, and is extremely dangerous and only taught to the most advanced and trusted student, usually. It stems from the art of acupuncture and utilizes the natural flow of energy by disrupting it at the pressure points in the human body. By attacking certain points, the results can lead to illness or death. Chen made him take an oath to never show another living soul this frighteningly deadly art.

The combination of these four forms were all directed towards making him lethal with out the use of his wand or magic in general. Even studying these forms for the next three years, it would take many more to truly become a master. Chen had said that his advantage, even though he would not become a master for years, was in the fact that most wizards had no experience with martial arts at all.

Shacklebolt had, in the first two years, focused the sword training on mastering the basic moves in footwork and blade work. Foot work consisted of moves such as: Advance - Basic forward movement; Advance-lunge - an advance followed immediately by a lunge; Ballestra - Very rapid attack made by a jump-forward and lunge; Forward Recovery - A recovery from a lunge; Passato-sotto - An evasive action by dropping a hand to the floor while lowering body under oncoming blade; Retreat - Basic backwards movement.

Blade work used moves such as: Attack - the initial offensive action with sword arm raised: Beat - a sharp controlled blow to the weak middle of an opponents blade; Compound attack - an attack or riposte incorporating one or more feints to the opposite line the action finishes in; Coule - an attack or feint that glides along the opponent’s blade; Cut - an attack made with a chopping motion of the blade; Feint - an offensive attack into one line with the intention of switching to another line before attack is complete; Parry - a defensive action designed to deflect an attack performed with the forte of the blade; Riposte - an direct attack with right-of-way followed by a parry.

Now, Harry was ready to move onto the more complex movements and combinations in the elaborate sequences he used for his training. If people thought he was a site to behold before, they hadn’t seen anything yet. He was learning to use distance, timing, reach, and movements of both himself and his opponents to execute an instantaneous re-calculation or to change the attack to vary from opponent to opponent and situation to situation. He studied tactics: picking the movement and attack, combining footwork and handwork in deciding what attacks were likely and what to do first; and strategy: was it better to attack or defend, whether to repeat a previously successful tactic or avoid it, and so on.

The combining of his martial arts training and the fencing he had learned were also joined when Chen and Shacklebolt had him start learning the art of Kenjutsu, or Japanse sword fighting. The katana is a long, slightly curved, razor-edged sword that is held mostly in a two handed grip, and is primarily a slicing weapon, unlike the foil in fencing, which is more a spearing weapon.

For cutting, there was a specific technique called 'ten uchi.' Ten uchi refers to an organized motion made by arms and wrist, during a descending strike. As the sword is swung downwards, the elbow joint drastically extends at the last instant, popping the sword into place. At full speed, the swing will appear to be full stroke, the katana passing through the targeted object. The segments of the swing are hardly visible, if at all. For horizontal slashes, a similar concept is applied. However, the right hand is allowed, by some practitioners, to slide along the handle, closing the gap between the two hands. This allows for several more inches of reach, when swinging towards the opponent's right flank.*

His dueling training was coming along both magically and physically. He was able to hold off Filius and Arthur, during the magic duels for 20 minutes, and Remus and a few of the Aurors for about 30 minutes, winning some, but losing most. This frustrated him, but his instructors had all pointed out that they had years more experience and knowledge, but he was rapidly gaining on them. They all felt that by the middle of fourth year, he would win most times. His sword fighting was still laughable at this point, against Chen and Kingsley, both having been masters for years, but against others who had been learning or those who had some past sword experience, he was art in motion.

After about 6 months, he was able to completely transform into his animagus, the Repalliator. Harry could enlarge his body mass around the end of April, but was still unable to use the cloaking/chameleon aspects. He would really start working on those as the third year rolled into the forth.

Harry also had a breakthrough in wandless magic. It had come during one of the Legilimency lessons, while focusing to try and find a certain memory Paole had asked him to look for, he “felt” the magic moving through Paole, and then himself, and had immediately pulled from the other’s mind and cast an Accio on a book laying on the desk about 20 feet away. When it came to him, he started jumping around like a kid and yelling out victoriously. Harry started making a log book on how each spell “felt” as he cast them with a wand, and then refocused that same feeling using his own hand and arm as his focusing tool.

‘The Breath’, was also slow going, as he was only able to freeze someone for a few seconds. The hardest part of learning this aspect of his Chuzzor heritage, was fear. He was afraid of hurting or accidentally stealing someone’s magic, so until he could over come his internal struggle, he wasn’t making much progress. Finally, in May, Moody had been able to fine tune the training dummies from the DOM to simulate true magical ability, and Harry, being unafraid of damaging them, was able to begin mastering ‘The Breath’. By the end of the year, he had complete control over whether he wanted to just slow someone, or completely freeze them. In late July, he had successfully taken half the magic of one of the dummies, but he had been knocked out for several hours due to the influx of that magic into his body. Roderick’s journal had said, that with practice, his body would grow more accustomed to taking in someone’s magic temporarily without leaving him exhausted.

Blood Magic was, for the most part, a supervised independent study now. He knew the runes and how to set the parameters to activate, so he was left to study old tomes and scrolls and modifying any series that he thought useful. He had taken to using some of these runic castings in a pranking war that had broken out shortly after Christmas. The twins learned quickly, after Harry had used the runes of Mannaz, which stood for ‘The Self’ , and used Thurisaz to instill ‘Vital Eroticism’, making Fred and George need to wank off constantly for a week, that getting into a prank war with Harry just wasn’t worth it.

He and Katie had managed to go to a few parties and enjoy the amusement park some, but needless to say, Harry was pretty much spent by the end of each day, using the weekends to recuperate for the upcoming week.

Unfortunately, the prank war had been only one of a few fun times he had had this year. What had started as a promising and loving relationship with Katie had, by the time June had rolled around, come to a stop. Harry was just so busy and exhausted that he rarely had the time or the energy to devote to their relationship. Katie had sat him down one night in what was a rare case of catching alert and awake and they had decided to call it quits.

“Harry, you know I love you, but I can’t keep accepting that I’m not your number one priority. I thought when we started this relationship that I could handle it, knowing that your training has to come first, but having lived it, I just can’t. I’m sorry.” she said with tears streaming down her face.

He leaned over and gently wiped them away and quietly said, “I know that you feel unimportant, but that was not my intention. I do love you, Katie, but I have to learn all that I can, and this year has been the hardest by far. I’m the one who is sorry, I should’ve known not to get involved seriously until I was sure that you could come first.”

“I knew going in that I would not be first. This is not completely yours or my fault…it just happened. I have loved the time we did spend together, and I hope you fall deeply in love when all this training and Voldemort stuff is over. You have a lot to offer someone, I’m just not the one.”

“God, Katie….you are an amazing woman. Thank you for understanding for as long as you have, and know that you will always hold the spot of my first love. Tell me this is not going to be ugly after you walk out of here. I couldn’t handle you hating me.” he said with his own teary eyes.

“No! I could never hate you, Harry. What we had was good for awhile, but now….it won’t be a nasty break, because it was no ones fault…it just turned out the way it did.”

“Thanks, Katie. I will miss having you with me, but this is for the best, at least for now.” and with one last loving kiss, they were done. It was well into the fall of their forth year in the warp before either of them was seen with anyone else. As promised, they remained cordial and friendly, and as time went on, and the pain lessoned, they became even better friends.

Neville, Blaise, Oliver and Justin from the guys, and Hermione, Bianca, Su-Li, and Alicia from the females, seemed to be making the biggest strides both in their magic and physical trainings. Neville, who was very close in power to Harry, and was excelling in the Grey Arts, and seemed to not be as bothered by them as Harry was. Blaise was his closest competitor in fencing, and had even managed to best him once.

The next time they sparred together, Blaise had said, “Damn! You are like a man possessed, Harry! What the hell just happened?”

“You were just trampled….completely and thoroughly!” said Kingsley

“I get THAT! What I want to know is, where did this come from all of a sudden. You weren’t this good last week.” Blaise said, looking to Harry for an answer.

“Well, I was pretty pissed that you won last week, so I made sure it wouldn’t happen again. I did do a good job at whooping your butt, didn’t I?” Harry finished with a smirk.

“Yeah, well….that hurt, a lot! Physically, I feel like I just went 10 rounds with a giant, and my ego is a bit damaged as well.” Blaise said rubbing his sore arms, and chuckling at his ego comment.

“Sorry, Mate. You know how I hate to lose. Be ready next week, I’ll be!” Harry said with a smirk.

The one person who seemed to be excelling in all areas the most, however, was Alicia Spinnet. She seemed to take to the rigorous schedule and more personalized instruction and was nearly as good with the sword, martial arts, and the advanced magic’s as Harry himself. It was great the way everyone was progressing, but there were definitely some standouts.

As the third year drew to a close, Harry was sitting alone, which was an uncommon occurrence these days, out by the pool, looking up to the sky late one night in early August. He thought, ‘God…what a year. My body was put through the ringer, and my head feels like it will explode with all the studying………..I do miss Katie….I wish things could be different, but she deserves someone who puts her number one. I still have a lot to learn….I hope five years was enough time….” and he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

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Well, for those of you who wanted more detail, there you go. I do not have any experience it the martial arts or with the use of a sword, but I did my best with the help of the internet. Most of the information on martial arts, fencing, and katana were primarily taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The * was a direct statement from that sight. Thank you for reading, and please don’t take my head off about the quick breakup with Katie, she was never going to be the love of his life….that’s still to come. She did show him what love was and they did have a year together.