:)Ch142

Harry was paging through a large tome that was open on his lap. He was sitting cross-legged on top of one of the bookshelves that raised into the air over a dozen meters within his home. Normally he would be sitting at his desk, or at least in a chair. However he was pretty sure that Ahsoka had destroyed the chairs that weren't in his study. Besides at the moment he was opening and flicking through books at such a rapid pace that he'd spend all his time running back and forth searching for books on what he was looking for.

Instead he was sitting on top of one of the shelves, and summoning different books to him and banishing them back or simply tossing them to the top of another shelf when they didn't really have information he wanted. Half of the books he had grabbed likely hadn't been opened for centuries before he was even born. Who knew if the information was still accurate? Or if any of it was subjected to the Wizarding World's typical brand of information censorship.

If it was useful, then it should be hidden and never spoken of. This book in his hand had a section on the subject that currently vexed him, and it had Harry running his hand through his hair as he considered what he was reading. After so many years, he figured he was past getting himself into trouble with magic. With age comes wisdom.

Of course, that didn't seem to stop Harry Potter's uncanny ability to royally put his foot in a massive flaming pile of dragonshit without really intending to.

He had never looked at the dynamics of Apprenticeships in the magical world before. He had never taken on one, officially or otherwise. Nor had he ever considered doing so himself.

Sure he had taught for a few years at Hogwarts, so he was familiar with teaching students. Done it as a favor when several friends had asked he take over teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. Seemed that they didn't like the completely useless drivel put in some of the classes. A few of his friends had gotten together and asked him, and he had been reluctant but willing to give it a shot.

He had also taught non-magical courses under an alias from time to time. It was a requirement to get his doctorates. He actually found that he enjoyed teaching and had an aptitude for it.

But those were students he occasionally offered extra focused tutoring, not magical apprentices.

Neither of his wives had ever taken on any apprentices. Tonks never cared enough to go for a Mastery, though she could have in transfiguration if she ever cared to get tested. Daphne had gotten several Masteries and could definitely could have taken on an apprentice in arithmancy or potions, but never had bothered with it. She definitely didn't enjoy teaching groups of students.

She had taught for a year at Hogwarts, and when she found herself claiming to understand why Snape was so upset all the time, she knew that it definitely wasn't for her.

Thus, Harry had no idea there was any sort of special circumstances that surrounded apprentices.

He hadn't even thought much about his words as he spoke them to Ahsoka. He had merely assumed it was another word for student. That assumption was apparently wrong and he was correcting his misunderstanding now.

She was upset, lashing out with a major burst of accidental magic, from the combination of occlumency and triggering events. He honestly thought she might have topped his own tantrum that destroyed the Headmaster's Office the night after they destroyed half of the Department of Mysteries.

He was just trying to make sure she knew she wasn't alone and that he was there for her. Of course he had put his foot right into it.

"Bloody saving people thing," Harry muttered under his breath. The information he had found had been mostly general but the book he had now touched on different bonds and included a section on the Master-Apprentice bond. He knew when he started and encountered the words 'extremely rare' that the Harry Potter effect had struck again with a vengeance.

His eyes raced through the words and what he discovered didn't mollify him in the slightest. Usually a master and apprentice was just that, a legal arrangement. Teacher and student. Expert and protégé.

But apparently rare times the arrangement created a bond of sorts. The phenomenon was Almost exclusively only seen with powerful wizards. The most infamous example was Merlin and Morgana. Master and Apprentice turned lovers, who then turned bitter mortal enemies. There was other possible names he noted from history, including Nicholas Flamel and Albus Dumbledore.

Most of the information afterward was just guesswork and supposition.

Apparently it had to be entered mutually by consent and desire of both parties with both sides acknowledging it verbally.

He sighed inwardly he knew they both had fulfilled that. Ahsoka with her master comments and comments about being his apprentice and just recently his rather blunt statement to that effect as well.

It was the rest of it that concerned him.

A true apprenticeship was rare because apparently it wasn't fulfilled until both parties agreed that the agreed upon area had been mastered.

Which lead to a whole other problem since he'd agreed to teach her 'magic'. Without any real specifics… and that's what he intended when he made the statement.

To be honest most of that wasn't his main concern. It was the theory that a bond like that created some bleed over effect with the apprentice taking on magical traits and burdens, both positive and negative from the Master.

That did not excite him one bit.

Not at all. Of course it also supposed that such a bond couldn't just be broken without mutual consent and only then with consequences for both parties that were theorized could be up to and include loss of magic and death.

The book theorized that it was what finally destroyed both Merlin and Morgana. They had shattered their bond and just disappeared from history.

"Fan-freaking-tastic," Harry muttered as he closed the book with a snap. Despite his mood, he knew better than to assume that the book was accurate when making guesses about history.

Though he knew from his own history that no one did know what happened to Merlin, the man had just disappeared entirely. He had done quite a bit of research into it and had come up with next to nothing. Though he had traced the presence of the man and legend through many old historical sites.

His attention was drawn away from the book as he felt a warning from the monitoring charm he had cast on Ahsoka. He silently thanked many years of dealing with women, knowing that when someone, especially a woman, cries themselves to the point of exhaustion they tend to only sleep for an hour or two before needing to be up to at least clean up.

So he was utterly unsurprised when he felt the monitoring charm on her tell him that she was stirring.

He

hopped

off

the

bookshelf

carelessly dropping the not-insignificant height to the ground, leaving the book up there carelessly. Dobby would get it at some point. Besides, if he were to put it back in the wrong place, then Dobby would just scold him later. The damned little wannabe gnome was worse sometimes than Hermione when it came to organization and messes.

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