CHAPTER TWELVE: AN OLIVE BRANCH

Miss Militia led him to a second testing room. This one was larger, reinforced, and significantly more intimidating. The walls gleamed with tech-integrated

Miss Militia led him to a second testing room. This one was larger, reinforced, and significantly more intimidating. The walls gleamed with tech-integrated plating, and there were embedded turrets along the ceiling rails. Observation windows ran the length of one wall, armored glass several inches thick.

Harry stepped inside. The door sealed shut behind him with a pneumatic hiss.

Armsmaster’s voice crackled through the overhead speaker. “This test will evaluate your ability to withstand directed force. Please confirm you are ready.”

Harry offered a dry smile to the ceiling. “I’m ready. But just so we’re clear, I’m not exactly bulletproof.”

“That’s what we’re here to determine,” Miss Militia replied through the intercom. “We’ll start with rubber rounds. Escalation will depend on performance.”

“Brilliant,” Harry muttered, taking position in the center of the room.

He closed his eyes, let the tension bleed out of his shoulders, and centered his breathing. 

They were watching for fear, for panic, and anything that showed he was inexperienced. What they got instead was discipline.

When the first turret snapped into place with a loud mechanical whir, Harry’s arm was already up.

“Protego.”

The word left his mouth like a command, and the air shimmered—just once—before settling into a faint, translucent curve in front of him. The barrier wasn’t visible so much as implied, like the haze of heat above asphalt, as the space in front of him bent light subtly.

The first shot—a rubber bullet the size of his thumb—cracked through the chamber fast, loud, and dangerous.

It hit the barrier, though there was no sound of impact, and stopped. For half a second or even less, it hung there, then it dropped to the floor with a soft, anticlimactic tink. There was no deformation on the bullet. 

“Reactive forcefield,” Armsmaster narrated. “No visible emitters, no projection hardware, and no heat signature. The energy matrix appears to self-sustain without external input.”

Another shot. Then another. The turrets fired in staggered bursts, each round targeting different angles: his legs, his shoulder, even the space near his temple. The shield flared with each impact—just briefly, and enough to catch the light—but it held. 

“Impact absorption confirmed,” Armsmaster said. “Consistent across variable angles. No energy bleed-through.” 

“No barrier fatigue either,” Miss Militia added. “It is still stable.”

The barrage ended, and silence returned.

Harry exhaled slowly and lowered his hand. The shimmer faded, the air smoothing back to normal.

“Protego,” he said, “is a basic defensive charm. Most students learn it by sixth year.”

Armsmaster continued undeterred. “No delay between casting and effect and no observed strain. Shield appears to respond to intent rather than specific gesture. Duration and resilience scale with… internal reserves, source still unknown.” A pause. “Upping velocity.”

There was another short pause, then a mechanical whine as something heavier powered up. Ominous.

“Warning shot from a low-grade laser emitter,” Miss Militia’s tone was cautious. “Tinker-made. Calibrated below lethal levels.”

Harry didn’t flinch, but he did swallow once.

“Protego Maxima.”

The shield surged into full form now, no longer a faint shimmer, but a dome of refracted light, iridescent and radiant. It enveloped him completely, arcing over his head like a bubble, and the air bzzzted faintly with static.

The laser fired, a beam of white light slamming into the dome, and splashing. Energy scattered across the surface in jagged coronas of color, trying and failing to break through, before finally dissipating into harmless light.

In the observation room, someone cursed under their breath.

Armsmaster was already speaking into his recorder. “If this were a forcefield generator, it would need a backpack-sized energy core and predictive AI subroutines to match that level of performance.”

Miss Militia folded her arms. “This is not a parahuman power.”

“No,” Armsmaster agreed. “It isn't.”

Back inside the chamber, Harry sighed as the attack petered out and the shield vanished. “Are we done yet?”

The door unsealed with a hiss. Miss Militia stepped into the room, her boots tapping lightly against the flooring. Her posture was alert, but not hostile, more wary now.

“You didn’t even flinch,” she said.

Harry didn’t smile. “I’ve had worse.”

. . . . .

The conference room smelled faintly of metal and hand sanitizer, oddly impersonal. Harry sat at one end of the long table, posture slouched, and fingers tapping idly on the polished table in front of him. A cup of tea sat nearby, steam curling upward, untouched.

Across from him sat Miss Militia and Armsmaster, flanking a woman in a gray suit: PRT intelligence, judging by the badge clipped to her lapel and the laptop in front of her. It was open, but she hadn’t typed a word yet.

Miss Militia broke the silence. “You’re not hiding any injuries? No delayed stress reactions?”

Harry shook his head. “No. The shield held.”

“You anticipated the conditions of the test?” Armsmaster asked, not looking up from his tablet.

Harry raised an eyebrow. “You mean the bullets, or the death-ray?”

Armsmaster didn’t react to the sarcasm. “The dome your spell created had no discernible origin point. It was projected at a variable radius, automatically adjusting coverage.” Armsmaster looked up. “That’s not how forcefields behave.”

“Not your forcefields,” Harry muttered.

The woman in the suit finally spoke. “Where did you learn to cast that?”

“Hogwarts,” Harry said flatly, eyes fixed on the tabletop.

She frowned. “That’s not a recognized—”

“I told you,” he said, looking up now. His voice wasn’t raised, but something hard edged into it. “I’m not from here, I’m not a cape, and this isn’t a power I triggered. It’s magic. I studied it. I practiced it. It obeys its own rules.”

Armsmaster scrolled through data feeds. “Your shield is long-lasting, yet there was no external power source detected, no mental strain, and no Psionic residue.”

The intel officer nodded. “And Thinker scans failed again. Eleventh Hour ended the session early this time, reporting disorientation and bleeding from the nose.”

Miss Militia sipped her coffee. “We’re not calling it ‘magic’ in the official reports.”

Harry didn’t say anything. Instead, he gave a tired, amused smile.

The woman in the suit closed her laptop with a soft click. “Until we have measurable data, we’ll assign provisional ratings. Stranger classification increased to five based on reasonable conclusions, derived from both reported active and passive deception. Trump is raised to a ten since we can't determine the upper limit of his capabilities.”

“Apart from the fundamental laws of magic, the only limit on any wizard is their degree of skill, knowledge, and imagination,” Harry said softly. 

That earned a pause from them.

He leaned forward slightly, meeting their gazes one by one. He wasn't trying to be confrontational, but he was acting far from cooperative. “You want to understand what I am so you can control it, but you can’t. I’m not a parahuman. I don’t fit in any of your neat, little categories.”

Miss Militia didn’t look away. “We’re not trying to control you. We’re trying to keep people safe.”

Harry nodded, leaning back. His point was made. “I understand that, but I haven’t hurt anyone. I don’t even plan to. And, with all due respect, I’m getting bloody tired of being treated like a bomb waiting to go off.”

No one responded right away.

Then Piggot’s voice came through the intercom, not soft but not clipped either. “Acknowledged, Mr. Potter. Effective immediately, your status is upgraded. Observation continues, but you’re cleared for limited movement within city limits with escort protocol in place.”

The intercom clicked off.

Miss Militia stood. “You’ll be taken back to medical to rest. We’ll speak again tomorrow.”

Harry rose slowly, sliding his hands into his pockets. As the door opened and the guard stepped forward, he paused in the doorway, glancing back at the room.

“You’re all asking the wrong questions,” he said. “It’s not what I can do. It’s why I’m here.”

Then he stepped out, leaving a quiet, uneasy silence in his wake.