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HRA# Chapter 71: McGonagall’s True Legacy—Dismounting with Authority!
🕑 Added 2025-03-18 19:41:55 +0000 UTCSo, what’s the deal with Professor Trelawney suddenly showing up in Harry’s Divination class? A meeting of peers, perhaps? What on earth is going to happen in the club session later?
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Uh, well, you can only say that students are the same everywhere—doesn’t matter where they’re from. If Harry ever found out they’d already dubbed this class “Divination,” well… hmm, good thing he doesn’t know.
By two o’clock, Harry stepped out of Hagrid’s hut. Looking out, he saw a vast stretch of grass packed with a sea of heads—so many that if he were an ordinary first-year, he’d probably be too nervous to even speak. Too bad Harry isn’t ordinary.
The crowd today was mostly made up of students from Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. Slytherin had only sent a handful, totaling just 267 people.
Sure, that might not sound like much—267 isn’t exactly an army—but for anyone who thinks they’re extroverted and fearless, try reciting a poem on the side of the road. If you can get through it without your voice trembling or speeding up, then yeah, you’re probably not shy. For a lot of people, though, speaking their mind in front of 200-plus people—or even 50, or heck, a dozen—feels downright impossible.
Among all the classes at Hogwarts, this one definitely qualified as a “big lecture,” spanning four houses and seven years. But for Harry, this was nothing compared to the nerves he’d felt standing on a platform shouting to tens of thousands of troops below. He’d led soldiers into battle; the stares and whispers of others were like fleeting clouds to him—meaningless. Plus, back in Azeroth, the gear heroes wore tended to stand out.
As the saying goes: chefs have their aprons, doctors have their coats, and shaman priests, naturally, have their own vibe.
To make sure this rowdy bunch of kids could clearly tell the difference between a wizard and a shaman priest, Harry had gone out of his way today to wear an outfit that, by wizard standards, was downright revolutionary.
Gone was the standard student wizard robe. Today, Harry sported a wolfhide coat, topped with a helmet crafted from the upper half of a wolf’s head. Sharp-eyed students could even spot the beast’s gleaming fangs dangling by his cheeks. Thanks to years of training and a few wizarding potions, Harry had shot up in height—towering nearly a head above his fellow first-years. His broad shoulders and the glimpse of toned muscle peeking through the gaps in his leather gave him an imposing, almost hulking presence under the beastly hide.
To put it bluntly, he was about the height of a goblin shaman—except maybe two heads taller.
Perched on his shoulders were two wolf heads, one on each side, and orbiting around them were four elemental orbs—earth, wind, water, fire—spinning endlessly. A little special effect Harry had added himself, of course. The outfit wasn’t enchanted, after all—no magical gear here. The materials came straight from the Forbidden Forest, so it didn’t come with any built-in perks.
Behind him, Harry carried the totem he’d carved earlier, etched with the full story of his exploits. It added an extra layer of gravitas—and, admittedly, made him look even more eccentric.
But you had to hand it to him: the students ate it up. Especially those eight whirling elemental orbs—they stunned the crowd into silence. Well, that, and maybe the primal, almost prehistoric vibe of his getup.
A rush of wildness and mystery hit you square in the face—something fresh and unforgettable.
Say what you will, but the shaman priest image was established right then and there, distinct from any wizard. Harry even caught a few senior girls whistling at him… uh, he chose to ignore that.
The warhammer still hung at his right hip, though it felt less comfortable than it had at the start of term. No shield today—Harry had owl-ordered a quick-draw wand holster for his left side instead. That was the one thing on him that students might actually relate to.
Pulling out his wand, Harry pressed the tip to his throat and muttered, “Sonorus.”
A simple amplification charm, ensuring even the latecomers stuck in the back could hear him loud and clear.
The chairs dotting the grass had been conjured by Dumbledore with a flick of his wand. Somewhere out of sight, the headmaster had casually dusted his hands off—old hat for him by now.
“Welcome!” Harry raised his voice to the students before him, unfazed by the details. “Honestly, when I got your applications, I didn’t expect my Shaman Priest Club to be this popular.”
“Wait, isn’t this the Divination Club?!” a voice shouted from the crowd.
Harry didn’t bother tracking down the heckler, just kept going. “Sorry to disappoint, but my club has only ever had one name: the Shaman Priest Club,” he said, calm and earnest. “Here, you’ll touch worlds beyond the reach of ordinary folk, uncover secrets hidden in the corners of existence, wield the power of the elements, and call back the spirits of the dead. Compared to all that, predicting the future? That’s just the most basic trick in a shaman’s bag—and even then, it’s got its own unique flavor.”
“I’ll say it again: thank you all for showing up today. May the Earth Mother bless you.” He scanned the sea of faces—some attentive, some skeptical, some smirking—and gave a slight bow. “Because after this class, at least nine out of ten of you won’t be back.”
“A professor with a serious streak, eh?” Dumbledore tilted his head toward McGonagall, whispering with a playful grin.
Right beside him sat the poster child for serious professors.
McGonagall shot Dumbledore a look but said nothing.
Meanwhile, as Harry’s words sank in, the students—predictably—stirred.
“Hey, Harry! I feel like I’ve heard that line somewhere before!” someone yelled.
The shout sparked louder laughter among the crowd. Good thing Dumbledore and the other professors were there to keep things in check—otherwise, these kids would’ve gone wild. “No clue,” Harry shrugged. “I’ve barely been at Hogwarts half a year.” Amid the chuckles, he pressed on: “I get it—this all sounds a bit ridiculous to you.”
“A first-year wizard, raised in the Muggle world his whole life, only touching magic for the first time two months ago, now starting a Shaman Priest Club and teaching you lot spells no one in the wizarding world has even heard of—not even the most famous old-timers? Yeah, it does sound pretty absurd.”
Harry locked eyes with the crowd. Wherever his gaze landed, the laughter died out. The students fell silent.
“But so what?” he asked, his tone suddenly effortless and unshakable. “I’m Harry Potter. For me, nothing’s impossible.”
No more pretending—Harry was leaning hard into his “born-with-divine-strength” persona. Let it spread through these Hogwarts kids to their parents, and from there, to the whole British wizarding world.
Truth be told, folks in Europe lapped this stuff up. Muggles had their God, wizards had Merlin—and if anything, wizards were more superstitious about magic than Muggles were about their faith.
And Harry’s counterargument was just too damn reasonable—reasonable to the point that these students didn’t even know how to argue back. Because when they stopped to think it over, they realized things really did seem to be exactly as Harry had said: ever since the very first day Harry Potter stepped into this school, he’d been proving to the world just how extraordinary he was.
“I’ll teach you the true essence of the elements, let you hear the deep resonance of the earth!” Harry suddenly raised his voice, thrusting his hand upward with a sharp gesture.
In an instant, a totem forged from the earth element materialized beside him. With a flick of his command, it plunged into the ground with a resounding thud.
The next moment, amidst the students’ gasps of awe, the soil to Harry’s left began to churn. In the blink of an eye, a towering giant made entirely of earth rose from the ground. It didn’t have legs or feet in the conventional human sense—its body was composed of several floating chunks of soil, some large, some small, disconnected yet hovering in midair.
Standing at the height of three grown adults, it was clear to everyone that this being had been sculpted from the dirt beneath their feet. Yet once it fully took shape, its form shifted into a solid, rocky hue that looked sturdy at a glance.
And Harry’s words kept coming, one after another, without pause.
“—Let you feel the wild fury of the storm!”
As those words fell, a fierce wind whipped up out of nowhere. The sky above was still bathed in brilliant sunlight, yet flashes of lightning streaked across it, followed by the booming rumble of thunder exploding so close it made the timid girls shriek in fright.
Compared to the bulky, broad-shouldered rock monster from before, this new creature was clearly formed from compressed wind. Its frame was sleek, its left arm bearing a shield crafted from swirling clouds. With a sudden swing of its right hand, a bolt of lightning arced forth like a spear, striking the ground and leaving a charred black scar amid the students’ startled cries.
“Or perhaps the mercy of flowing water!”
Far off, the surface of the Black Lake erupted with a deafening splash. Countless gallons of water surged upward, forming a translucent pillar that barreled toward them as if intent on swallowing Hagrid’s hut and everything around it. As it drew near, it morphed into a crashing wave rushing straight at them.
The students screamed—some leapt to their feet, ready to face it head-on with bravery; others ducked in panic, scrambling to find something, anything, to hide behind. The quick-handed ones had already whipped out their wands, digging holes in the ground and preparing to dive in.
But alas, it was all for naught. The overwhelming tide swept over them in an instant, drowning out even their cries in the roar of the surging waves. It was a long moment before the bolder ones dared to open their eyes.
To their astonishment, they touched their robes and found them not only dry but radiating a cool, refreshing sensation that seeped into their very bones. The exhaustion from staying up late playing cards with friends the night before? Gone. Some of the witches even noticed that the pimples on their faces had vanished without a trace, their skin now smooth and flawless.
And when they turned around, following the shocked gazes of their peers, they saw it: a towering figure made entirely of water standing behind them. Like the others, it had no legs or feet, but its humanoid upper body glistened, formed from the crystalline waters of the Black Lake. Under the sunlight, it shimmered brilliantly, and they could even see schools of fish swimming within its translucent form.
“And finally—the unrelenting wrath of fire!”
As the last totem pole was driven into the ground, the chill November breeze that had been brushing their faces abruptly turned warm. A wild, vivid gust swept through, grazing every single person present as if rubbing against their cheeks.
Leaves torn from the trees by the wind spiraled upward in the hot current, crackling with a rustling sound. No one saw when the spark ignited, just as no one could pinpoint when the flames erupted into a towering inferno. And within that blaze, which seemed to set the very sky ablaze with red, a giant strode forth, its right hand raised high, wreathed in roaring fire!
No student could muster a laugh now—not a joking chuckle, not a mocking snicker. They could only crane their necks upward, staring in stunned silence at the four colossal beings encircling them from every direction. The sheer presence of these creatures was undeniable, whether it was the searing heat, the wind and lightning, or the dust and flowing water—an overwhelming sense of something other.
“Storm, Earth, and Fire, heed my call!!”
For a moment, the only sound across the clearing was Harry’s commanding roar.
His voice jolted the students awake, as if stirring them from a trance. They couldn’t help but rise to their feet, eyes fixed on Harry—particularly on the four totems planted before him.
Each totem glowed faintly with a distinct light: one wreathed in swirling dust and stone, another crackling with lightning and cloaked in wind, a third burning with unquenchable flame, and the last encircled by flowing water.
The four totems stood arrayed before Harry, his hand passing unscathed through the storm, the flames, the water—untouched by their power.
“This is the destiny of a shaman,” Harry said softly. “We are the balancers of the elements, wielding the might of the four great forces, fated to reconcile their conflicts and guide them toward the path we desire.”
His voice was quiet, but this time, not a single student could laugh. They gazed at him with awe.
For the first time, these students—here for a mere club activity—felt a reverence for their instructor, a deep respect for someone who wielded both power and wisdom.
Professor McGonagall had been right: giving the new students a proper show of strength was indeed a correct and effective approach.
“What exquisite magic,” Professor Flitwick couldn’t help but exclaim.
The diminutive professor, with his goblin ancestry, could no longer sit still in his chair. He leapt to his feet, itching to rush over and bombard Harry with questions—how had he done it? Why could he do it?
Even Headmaster Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall—both of whom had witnessed Harry summon a water elemental in the underground corridors—couldn’t suppress their gasps of admiration. Compared to that earlier water elemental, the four elemental giants Harry had conjured now were far grander, each easily twice its size and then some.
“Um, excuse me, may I ask a question, Professor?” A stammering voice suddenly piped up from the front row—it was Hermione.
Though she, too, had seen that earlier water elemental, she was no less shaken. She’d even instinctively called him “Professor”—despite the fact that the head of a student-run club hardly qualified as one.
“Of course,” Harry nodded. He raised his wand and cast an amplification charm on Hermione, ensuring her voice carried to the students in the back.
“The elements—I mean, do they fight among themselves? I heard you mention their conflicts.” This wasn’t a rehearsed question from a plant; it was something Hermione had puzzled out herself. “What does their fighting mean for us?”
“An excellent question. And from now on, you’ll need to refer to them as ‘they,’” Harry praised her, then turned to address the others in a loud, clear voice. “The answer to that question is also a truth every shaman must etch into their soul: the elements are not mindless forces devoid of intellect, reason, stance, or morality.”
“The elements have their own needs, their own desires. They think, they aid us—but they can also resent us, even deceive us!” Harry declared with utmost gravity. “That is the instinct of every element: to claim more of the world for their own dominion!”
“The fire element yearns to set every corner of the world ablaze. The water element dreams of drowning the earth in endless oceans. The earth element seeks to conquer ever more land, while the wind element craves dominion over the entire sky!”
As Harry spoke, his words stirred the four elemental giants surrounding the students into motion. At his bidding, they turned on one another in a clash of primal forces.
The instant the fire elemental met the water elemental, a massive plume of steam erupted. Scalding vapor rained down from the sky like a shower, streaking across the narrow patch of air above and falling onto the faces of the students huddled in the center.
It wasn’t searing—rather, it felt oddly warm.
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T/N: If you find any typos or incorrect names, please leave a comment. Thanks, and enjoy reading!
