Prodigy

“Professor, it's been a week, and there is still no sign of harry coming out,” Sirius Black was sitting back the recliner he had conjured and was sipping a butter beer. Beside the recliner was a small hut that Sirius had transfigured to sleep in. “Are you sure that he is in there?”

“Patience, Sirius. I'm sure that he is in there,” came the reply. It was the same reply to the same question that had been asked way too many times in the last seven days. The wizened old man had exercised the difficult art of patience much lately. The Headmaster of Hogwarts was now sitting behind a desk tending to the paperwork of his station. He had moved his desk there after the second day of waiting and built his own hut for the nighttime behind him. Currently there were owls flying in and out almost every minute tending to the different tasks Dumbledore set them on.

Sirius took another sip and decided to wait more to see his godson. If Dumbledore was right, why wouldn't Harry come out?

Inside the Potter home, Harry was in fact looking back at the two men, genuinely intrigued. They must really want to see him if they were so persistent. But would they take him away? He didn't want to risk that. The owls flying in and out intrigued him as well. Was that how wizards communicated? Harry looked over to Hedwig contemplatively for a moment. If the men stayed around much longer, perhaps Hedwig would carry them a message for him. What that message might be, he didn't know, but it held little risk, Harry thought. If they were still there in a month, then he'd send Hedwig. Meanwhile, he had much work to do.

The work on his potions chart was progressing well as he learned more math and discovered more patterns.

Entry 7

The men are still outside. I burped again.

I've finally got all the potions ingredients listed in order of magical power. Several patterns have emerged that have puzzled me, however. It seems that many of the ingredients near each other in the list have similar properties. I ran an experiment on a basic potion changing one ingredient to another with similar properties and got the same result. It makes me wonder if it there isn't something inside the ingredient that has the desired effect, and not necessarily the ingredient itself. I'm trying to isolate the different components of some and see what I come up with.

Entry 8

I've successfully created a potion with partial ingredients! It was a tough process, and I'm still learning how to do it, but by applying different systems, I can separate the ingredients into smaller components that are either effective or not. I've started a new chart / journal recording these new substances. I don't know what to call them, so I'm just assigning them a number like “a1” for now. It works, and I understand. Work continues.

Entry 9

NEVER apply heat to substance u5. I better record this is several locations. The results, while spectacular, are also quite destructive.

Entry 10

It's been a while since I last wrote, and much has happened. It appears that the men outside have left, but it is also possible that they have merely hidden themselves. I was just about to send Hedwig out, too, but they are no more. Well, that's on less worry.

I've completed breaking down all the potion ingredients into their base substances. At first it was taking a long time to do each one by hand, but then I figured out that there is a basic system to it, and I made a machine to do it for me. Building the machine was really fun. I'm still tweaking it, making it do more and more.

Right now, I can put an ingredient on it, and it will attempt to break it down into small substances. If it's successful, then it checks a record of all the substances discovered so far and makes a note of it, or creates a new entry with all of it's properties. I'm hoping to add more to the machine as i go along.

I made the machine as I went, conjuring or transfiguring the objects I needed. Getting a power source was tricky as normal electricity doesn't seem to work with magic that well. Actually it doesn't work with magic at all.

Now it does!

It was such a simple thing, once I figured it out. All I had to do was create a sort of interface for the two to 'talk' to each other. I started out trying all sorts of random things, before I realized I was going about it the wrong way. A simple look at the potions table showed me exactly what I needed. B42 now has a proper name: Liquid Lightening. It worked like a charm. NOTE: never let Liquid Lightening come in direct contact with your skin. The contact is very... electrifying.

Sometimes I crack myself up. Hedwig didn't find that joke funny at all. She wasn't even the one that experience the truly shocking event.

I've had to start another journal recording all of my progress with the machine and getting electricity and magic to work together. The paperwork is actually getting to be quite large for all of this. Hmmm... That gives me an idea.

The idea that entered Harry's mind at that moment would eventually change the world. It was so outrageous to the magical person and impossible to the non-magical person, that no one had ever even attempted to build one. Harry, of course, didn't know any of this. He just chugged along, working on his idea. It took him two months to build, and another month after that working out all the kinks. In the end though, he had done it. He had built the first magical computer.

The interface was simple. He could record data through a keyboard, or any pluggable piece of equipment he built, including his potion ingredient reducer. Then he could display the data, or manipulate it in all sorts of interesting ways. It was a machine of endless potential, and it's use would only allow him to work faster.

One of the first things he did was charm a round stone to record his voice. The programming for that was pretty simple with the help of magic. Then he built a scanner to scan in all of his notes. It turned out that it just took way too long. He wanted to progress, not take time putting notes into a computer. So he built a device that would do the scanning for him. Once all of his notes were entered, he decided not to stop there, and put in Prometheus's journal as well. Then his mothers. Then the Flamel potions book. Soon, the entire library had made it's way into the computer. It was categorized and numbered, and Harry was set to learn some more.

## End Chapter ##

I took pity on you all for such a short chapter earlier today, so I decided to sit down and write this. It made me stay up late, so you better appreciate it! Also, this will not be a crossover as nearly everyone hated that idea. The sequal is still a possibility, but this story will be complete in and of itself it crossovers aren't your thing. The sequal is going to be unlike anything you've ever read, though, so you might consider it anyway... So long and thanks for all the fish!