Chapter 35 : Before the Holidays
"Surpass your limits. Right here. Right now."- Yami (Black Clover)
"A little more to the left, bend a bit further, and hold it just like that!"
With nothing else to do, her bags already packed for the holidays the next day, Harriet decided to go see what Mutsuko was up to, only to find her in her room with Kanako, Luna, and a suspiciously fascinated Hermione, all watching a doll being manipulated in Kanako's hands while Mutsuko copied its exact movements.
With a bad feeling already settling in, Harriet stepped inside and shut the door behind her, worried someone might catch sight of this and decide they were all even weirder than they already thought. "What exactly is going on here?"
Mutsuko answered, visibly proud of herself. "It's thanks to that voodoo book you gave me! It's incredible, the doll has complete control over my body!"
Harriet understood immediately that whatever this was, it was somehow her fault. "You're just testing it out, right? You can get out of that state with a bit of effort if you want to."
"Break free? No, we already tried that before. Now I've handed over full control of my body to the doll on purpose, it's amazing. It just hurts a bit, like after a really intense workout that pushed past the usual limits, but it's fine." Mutsuko held perfectly still as she spoke, not breaking a single line of the pose.
"Wait, she's in p-pain!?" Kanako's voice shot up several notes, and she froze completely mid motion, not daring to move a single hair on her own body for fear of hurting her friend without meaning to. "I thought we were just having fun, and that she just had better control over her body than I do!"
"Don't worry, Kanako, it's nothing," Mutsuko said, well used to reassuring her friend by now. "I already set how far the doll's allowed to bend me before I even handed it to you. You're just filling in the movement, that's all, you genuinely can't push me past the point I already locked in."
After a moment, she added, "You know, you need a strong body for when you get Isekai'd, just imagine having a weak body and running straight into the Demon King's henchmen, or worse, the Demon King himself! If negotiation or intimidation doesn't work, you'll need a solid body to fight or run, after all! Never forget, an Isekai can happen at literally any moment!"
"I... I understand, I'll make an effort too, then!" Kanako said, visibly more at ease now, even if she was still holding herself more stiffly than usual.
"Training, apparently," Harriet said slowly, still processing. It was worth noting that Mutsuko's pose still hadn't changed one bit, if Harriet hadn't already known how flexible she was, she'd have wondered whether the girl was quietly snapping her own bones. "So you set the limit yourself beforehand, and she's just the one moving inside it, without even knowing where the line is."
"Exactly! That way she gets to have fun and I still get all the benefits." Mutsuko said it like she'd explained the obvious, a little sweat trickling down her face, proof that this was taking real effort, though she never once dropped her delighted, proud smile. "It's for training. I never imagined something this useful even existed! You know how our body sets its own limits to protect itself? Normally, you'd have to be born different to ever get past that. But someone with magic, magic that heals and reinforces the body if it takes on a bit too much? She can get past it just fine. So I let the doll take over completely, push a little further than last time, then let everything heal back stronger before I try again. Bit by bit, no lasting damage, just pure improvement."
"And if you ever get that limit wrong?" Harriet asked.
"Then it hurts a lot more than it should, and I get my control back," Mutsuko admitted, still smiling. "But I've been testing my own limits since I was eight. I know myself pretty well by now."
"That's exactly the part that sounds like torture to me," Harriet said, frowning. "Wizards heal better than most, sure, but that's not the same as healing perfectly. Get the measurement wrong even once, and that's real, lasting damage, not something magic quietly fixes overnight."
"We're here for that too, you know," Luna said mildly, not looking up from her journal, one eye still drifting toward Mutsuko every so often. "Better that we're around to keep watch while she's starting out, than leaving her to do this all alone in a corner somewhere."
Even the most scatterbrained one here somehow ends up the most reassuring person in the room, Harriet thought, watching Luna. Myself included.
Hermione nodded slowly at that, her earlier fascination settling into something a little more careful. "She's right. And the idea itself is good, the principle actually makes sense, our bodies keep more in reserve than we ever use, and most people never get close to their real ceiling because their own brain won't let them try. What Mutsuko's doing is just removing that ceiling in small steps, and using magic to heal properly in between. But that only works if the steps stay small, and right now, she's the only one deciding what counts as small." She looked toward Mutsuko. "I never imagined an eleven year old could be this capable, honestly. I just want her to still be capable in a year."
"Fine. As long as you three are actually keeping an eye on her and not just holding the doll for fun, I'll allow it," Harriet said, looking at Mutsuko with something caught between exasperation and genuine fondness. "My little protagonist can't end up in the hospital wing right as the holidays are starting. Imagine missing out on an entire adventure arc, zero XP gained."
"That would be the absolute worst! It's like when a limited time event pops up with exclusive items and you can't get them because you weren't logged in!" Mutsuko said, thoroughly enjoying the bit.
Hermione spoke up again, turning to Harriet, her tone shifting back into something more familiar, more comfortable. "By the way, Harriet, since someone still needs to keep track of exactly how far she's pushing each time, I was thinking of trying to find a charm that could give the doll an actual script instead. That way the range and the timing would be locked into the spell itself, not just whatever Mutsuko decided that morning. I already had an idea, using Piertotum Locomotor, the spell that animates statues and suits of armor so they can move and fight semi-autonomously, and building off that. What do you think?"
At that, Harriet, intrigued, sat down next to Hermione, and the two of them started discussing how such a spell could actually work.
It made for a rather peculiar little scene: the two of them deep in theory, an eleven year old playing with a doll that carried real consequences, muttering "stay calm, stay calm..." under her breath, another bravely filling in the movement without knowing quite how far she was really allowed to go, and Luna floating somewhere between both worlds entirely. It was certainly strange, but as long as it made sense to everyone involved, it was fine.
...
Telling herself a light workout before leaving might do her some good, Harriet made her way to the Room of Requirement and asked it to conjure an obstacle course modeled after the one from The Witcher, the training grounds Ciri uses at Kaer Morhen at one point, except improved, with traps that shifted and rearranged themselves constantly rather than staying fixed in place.
It certainly wasn't something she could have attempted early on, her body simply hadn't had the physical means for it back then, but the more time passed, the more her control over her own body let her pull off feats that would have been unthinkable not long ago. Still, the most impressive part of it all remained her reaction time.
It was something she'd already confirmed during her little cat and mouse games with the Slytherins, but it was also, she suspected, something innate. If she remembered correctly, the original Harry had shown flashes of that same trait in the films too, even if it had never been spelled out directly, so it was probably something tied to being the Girl, or Boy, Who Lived, she thought to herself.
Whatever hadn't come through clearly with Harry Potter was likely just down to him needing glasses to see properly in the first place, and not even having the right prescription half the time, though his raw talent had still managed to show through despite that. Normally, for a human being to react to something, the process runs like this: the eyes detect the information, the brain processes it, the brain sends a signal to the muscles, and finally the muscles carry out the movement, a sequence that takes roughly 0.15 seconds start to finish. Not for Harriet, though. She'd already come close to the biological ceiling for human reaction time, close enough that she could respond almost half the "normal" time.
The course itself unfolded in front of her: narrow beams suspended over drops that shifted height without warning, blades swinging down from the ceiling on invisible triggers, floor panels that gave way the instant her weight settled wrong, and walls of spikes that slid in and out of the stonework in patterns that never repeated the same way twice. She moved through it the way water moves around rock, barely slowing at each obstacle, reading the shift in the trap before it had even finished shifting, her feet finding the next solid foothold before her mind had consciously decided where to look. A blade dropped, she was already past where it landed. A floor panel gave way, she was already three feet beyond it, weight shifted onto a foothold that hadn't existed a second earlier. By the time she reached the far end, breathing a little heavier than usual, the course had been cleared, a solid workout, nothing more.
A little more worn out now, she pulled out her magical grimoire and studied it closely. She hadn't used the "Zone" that would have gotten her better results, she still needed to build up her base properly first. The Zone took a heavy toll, both physically and mentally, and it wasn't something she could afford to rely on.
But the real reason she was looking at the grimoire now was something else entirely. Apparently Yuna knew what it actually was, and had mentioned it might be something similar to what she herself carried, some kind of "gift from god," and that she'd explain it properly once they saw each other again.
It was something that had been with her for as long as she could remember, and it had first properly shown itself during her earliest bout of accidental magic at the Dursleys', the one that had set her on the right path in the first place. She had no real idea who, or what, had actually given her this gift, but she was grateful for it regardless.
As for her mana circuits, they kept clearing out bit by bit, and she genuinely couldn't wait to have them fully functional, to see what kind of transformation that would actually bring. For now, every time her mana flowed more smoothly through her body, the benefits that came with it were already excellent.
Will I even still be human by the end of this, or am I going to turn into some other magical species entirely... Actually, let's back up. Are witches and wizards even considered human, strictly speaking? Well ... I think I'm human, so I'm human. Let's just go with that, she thought.
She sat there for a while, turning her own life over in her mind, before finally standing back up and heading out.
"First time I'm going on holiday in December," she said to no one in particular. "Hopefully nobody bothers me too much, I've got things to do. And for once, I'm actually looking forward to it!" she said, practically buzzing with impatience.
A/N: If you want 5 more chapters, check the synopsis for more info.