Harry Potter Isn’t Holding Back Anymore

November 1st – The Times reported a "massive gas explosion" in the little village of Scotton, just east of Ripley, at 10pm the night before. One hundred civilians died in the explosion, with massive damage to the infrastructure. When Evan's mates heard on the radio the news, they looked at him with raised eyebrows. The Prophet, however, didn't mention anything.

It was the first day of Individual Skills Training - 7-weeks of training in the basic skills a Royal Marine needs to survive. Training starts out with Basic Field Craft: basically, how to survive in the field if your separated from outside support (how to create shelter, how to camouflage, find food and water, begin a fire, and basic first aid); navigation – how to read a map, know your location, determining what is the best path from Point A to Point B under different scenarios; and how to call-in coordinates; and of course, more physical training.

Evan used his anger from the attack in Scotton to focus on his training for the day. He pushed himself and the team to do their best. His instructors took notice that the runt of the troop was the one motivating those lagging behind, or literally pushing them so they could keep up, despite his own obvious exhaustion. They already noticed his team mates would seek him out when they were having difficulty in understanding strategic material or maintaining their weapons, or to perform basic first aid. Many times, he seemed to know who was having what difficulties, and stepped up to help them overcome them. He did it unobtrusively, without fanfare.

During field training, Evan found he had a knack for evasion and hiding (thanks to the books Dobby bought, and to wandless magic.) He learnt to cast the smell suppressing spell, silencing spell, and a track-erasing spell all wandlessly. When he was learning the smell suppressing spell, he screwed up once, resulting in a very pungent odor instead – the Sergeant asked if he had encountered a Polecat (cousin to skunks, can spray a very noxious liquid when agitated.) Although he had learnt the disillusionment charm during the Tri-wiz, he now knew how to do it wandless as well. Later in the day he learnt two important lessons: (1) it was just as important to practice his skills without magic as it was with – not using magic made it harder to blend in with his environment, and thus made it even easier when using magic. (2) he by accident imitated a chameleon! He had been so focused on blending in to his surroundings without magic that his intent and focus caused his clothing and skin to blend in as well! The Sergeants were impressed with his creative use of camouflage paint!

One of Evans' favorite exercises was night-time "king of the hill" exercises – during these exercises, the instructors were stationed on top of the hill equipped with starlight night-time vision glasses and the troops were tasked with "capturing the flag" at the top, without being caught. Evan was able to make it to the top undetected almost every time using his knowledge of herbology to stimulate fast growth of plants, using disillusionment charms, silencing charms, and distraction charms while climbing the hill. He was one of the first to make it to the top. He was reminded by one of his instructors that "if you don't use every resource at your disposal to succeed, you are unlikely to succeed".

After a few successes, the Sergeants had Evan lead a team in the exercise. Before starting the exercise, he took his team aside to plan. They figured that the "most likely" paths were heavily staked out, so they reconnoitered other paths. There was one section of the hill with steep rocky terrain. While it was riskier, it was likely to be ignored by the Sergeants. While they were strategizing, Evan tried to wandlessly hide their heat signatures based solely on intent as he didn't know a spell, and silenced their feet - He knew he couldn't make the plants grow in front of his non-magical teammates, but nobody would be aware that their heat signatures were obscured. He wasn't sure, but hoped he was successful with the spell. It took them over an hour to make it to the top, but they did, and they captured the flag successfully, to the surprise of the command staff.

....

Do you want to read ahead by more than 60 exciting premium chapters?

Then join my p*atreon right now.

Link: p*atreon.com/Sonic_Spectre (Remove the *)

Free members can unlock upto 2 chapters.