Harry had also learned why his searches seemed to stop at a high level. FIRST you had to search for things to search... then you had to search those things for things to search. Then if those things contain other things, THEY needed to be searched. It was a form of recursion, it needed to re-search an object if that object contained others. For example, bookshelves should be searched for books, books should be searched for pages, pages should be searched for words.
He looped the magic into itself, along with a tiny counter. If it tried to search for longer than 8 objects deep, it would give up... that should keep it from searching forever if there is a book that has itself inside or something.
Harry had a working prototype, but the spoken version required two parts. The first half would set up the spell, create the sphere that would do the searching, and prime it with instructions on how to work. The second half just set the search terms.
That way you could cast the first part and enchant it into an object, and use the second half to actually search without complicated wand movements and stuff. Exhausted from all this dream work, Harry absently took another sip of tea and accepted a book from Wisdom about American Goat Breeding. Sometimes it felt good to do research on silly and pointless things.
On the third floor of Hogwarts a man with a purple turban was being sneaky. Thankfully no one was around, because nothing was more suspicious than a grown man pretending to walk on tiptoes to escape tripwires down a dark hallway. He was also muttering an almost constant stream of quiet words, which if overheard could be summarized as "FINE, I am going to the scary corridor, you are such a pain in the neck."
Needless to say, that was paraphrased. Professor Quirrell did not have that kind of backbone, which honestly was the cause of a lot of his issues.
His current issue was opening a door that had a suspiciously unwatched and badly cast locking charm. Well, the door was fine really. The three headed Cerberus, on the other hand, was eager to meet his new possibly delicious friend.
As the garlic smelling man tried to catch his breath he heard someone coming and hid in the darkness...
Why was Dumbledore walking backward down the hall at this time of night? At least he was wearing a proper robe this time.
Both silent observers felt mixed things. On one hand, they thought the old man had lost it, was loopy, had no clue about anything.
But he kept showing up. Seemingly randomly. Doing things that made sense after someone thought about it. It was like accidentally painting a house, but somehow it seemed believable until that last brush stroke.
The teacher went back to his room. He had a dog to get around. Severus Snape was going through some of the more advanced potion books. Potter would be shown up this time, he wouldn't have a chance to flaunt his privilege THIS time. Spoiled brat would learn to respect his betters.
Some of the questions even Severus had forgotten over the years. Some snot-nosed brat would be crying in minutes.
He cackled as he opened another book. This one wasn't even a potions book, but was a French Dictionary. After a pause, he shrugged. Why not? The boy was probably brain dead anyway. He would just claim it was an important French ingredient or something. Maybe take off MORE points for not knowing too.
Severus thought he had felt someone entering the forbidden corridor. He knew he was supposed to check it... well, his snakes should know better. If any other student passed on, he should probably get an award for raising the school intelligence level.
The greasy man continued reviewing random books, building questions and memorizing them while laughing at that damn Potter brat finally getting punished for getting in the Dark Lord's way and getting sweet Lily killed. That damn boy.
Daphne has thrown the same pillow at Tracy over twelve times now.
"You STILL Like Pot-"
Thirteen times.
It was finally Friday, and Harry was moving in a bit of a daze. He had spent time the night before having an emergency planning session with Jim and Wrath, and they had a basic idea of how they hoped today's potion lesson would go. Most important priority of course, was to reunite Delta Team. Honestly only Harry and Wisdom seemed worried about the situation, since Jim felt his operative would do well and Wrath... well he never really felt concern anyway.
If Snape didn't instigate a mind connection, Harry would have to do it himself. He had never tried connecting to someone without their knowledge and consent, and it felt wrong somehow. But either way, Delta Duck would be coming home.
Harry did not approve leaving friends behind.
At this point he was focusing on other projects to avoid obsessing about the rescue, if that was even possible. The potion suspension spell was his main focus. It had lots of little fiddly bits that he felt were... not needed. Sure, it mattered for a potion probably that individual molecules don't gain additional spin or speed, but a muffin? If he was planning on using this as a food preservation spell, the heat/cooling aspect should stay, the time aspect was the most important part, but a lot of the motion stuff could be stripped off. Honestly, from what he could tell in the theory, the ability for the spell to preserve momentum of all parts of the liquid inside is what made this a Master level spell to begin with.
The motion section required analyzing the motion of the liquid, recording all flows, stopping all flows, storing data recorded ABOUT those flows into the spell itself, and finally including a self casting charm that would restart all flows within the potion when the spell was released.
The changes Harry was applying to the charm would make it dangerous to use in advanced potions, but simple to cast. It would work fine on basic potions that had no complex stages in the middle of brewing, it would work REALLY WELL on food in general.
As he fiddled with the wand movements, he found shortcuts and motions that would accomplish a similar result but was less precise. The food would be able to warm or cool by a half of a degree, instead of taking no changes. It would age away EVENTUALLY, in a few thousand years, instead of constantly adjusting itself to prevent it. It would require a wand motion now around what you wished to preserve, since it no longer had to recognize a cauldron and determine the material, heat, hot and cold spots, etc.
As far as Harry could tell, he may even be able to teach this one silently to others, although he did manage to fit the word "Stasis" to it after some experiments. The word had to be said half way through the fourth wand motion, but it worked and could be easy to remember, and with enough practice even that shouldn't be necessary.
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