After walking into the classroom, Harry quickly spotted Hermione and Lily sitting at a desk towards the back of the classroom. Making his way over to them, Harry took a seat next to Lily, on the opposite side of Hermione.

“Where have you been!?” asked an agitated Hermione, leaning over Lily to get a better look at Harry’s face.

“Hm?” Harry looked back at Hermione inquisitively.

“We couldn’t find you anywhere, Harry” said Lily, “Was everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah!” replied Harry, ‘I can’t very well tell them about that book. Hermione would flip a lid if she found out about a book like that. She’d definitely report it to a teacher and have it confiscated. I’m much better off keeping the book far, far away from her’

“I had read about this interesting place in Hogwarts but the accounts were quite conflicting” fibbed Harry, “I just wanted to check it out to see if it was actually a dud or not”

“You weren’t off doing something dangerous were you?” asked Hermione, with narrowed eyes.

“Nothing like that!” Harry waved her suspicions away. “You’ll like this place actually, it’s really interesting”

“What place?” asked Lily.

“On the seventh floor, there’s this room called the Room of Requirement” replied Harry, “If you think about what you want and repeat that in your mind a few times, then the room will transform and provide whatever you want”

“Seriously?” asked Hermione with wide eyes.

“Yup, I tested out various different things we could do with that room. I even managed to create a huge room with targets, in case we want to practice spell-slinging. I also made a comfortable room with a huge bed and ended up sleeping off, that’s why you couldn’t find me” said Harry, mixing truth in with his lies.

“Oh, I see. That means, we have a place to have the club meetings then” said Hermione, her demeanour turning cheerful again.

“Yup, I’ll show it to you after classes. I’m sure you guys will love it” said Harry just as Flitwick walked into the class.

After that, the classes went on as they usually did. Thanks to the fact that he no longer had detention with Umbridge and that she was too scared of him, his days were truly peaceful. A peace that would be the norm for any ordinary student but out of the norm for Harry.

Taking advantage of that peace, Harry had made it a habit to spend at least a few nights every week in his reading paradise, as he liked to call it.

In that time, Harry had managed to finish ‘Chapter 2: Memory Manipulation’ and was almost at the end of ‘Chapter 3: Illusion Manipulation’.

The first chapter regarding emotions had only one power, emotion awareness. However, the second chapter onwards, each chapter had several powers he had to go through. Every single power had instructions on how to learn and a corresponding trial assigned to it.

The only complaint Harry had was that, every single trial he faced was harder than the one before it. So much so, that, the last trial he went through, the one in which he had to create illusions was so difficult that, despite having passed it, he was scared out of his wits. Scared to the extent that he wasn’t sure if he should go ahead and learn any further abilities from the book.

In the meantime though, he couldn’t help but feel proud of himself. He definitely had phenomenal physical abilities that could probably shatter mountains if he so wished and magical abilities on an entirely different level from even some of the best wizards and witches but even so, he felt he lacked in many aspects.

The situation where he had used Legilimency on Fudge had proven many of his concerns. Though he was able to cause hallucinations for Fudge but that had more to do with Fudge’s own weak state of mind rather than Harry’s proficiency.

Given the same situation, Harry was almost certain that Legilimency wouldn’t work on someone like Amelia Bones or most others higher up in the Ministry’s hierarchy.

Now that he had found a way to learn powers that even Voldemort, at least until he tried to kill Harry, had never learned, he couldn’t help but rejoice.

Now that he had such powers, he wouldn’t just be skilled in fighting and destruction but even in subterfuge. Though he may not have much of a talent for the art, he could still pull it off, if the situation ever called for it.

Harry was finally content. So, despite his fear, he was also curious, morbidly curious, as to what the rest of the powers in the book would be.

In such a manner, with Harry having a lot of thoughts racing through his head, time passed by in a flash and in the blink of an eye, an entire month went by.

One morning, on the first weekend of October, Harry, Hermione, Lily and Ginny had settled in for breakfast just as the morning owls came in. Hedwig, as per the usual, flew towards Harry and settled down on his shoulder.

Ever since Harry had started showering her with affection, Hedwig would join Harry for breakfast whether she had a letter to deliver or not. She clearly seemed to enjoy the sense of closeness they had started sharing so she would show up at the table to snuggle up with Harry for a few minutes before devouring his breakfast.

This morning was slightly different from the usual routine as she had come back with a letter which she placed down in Harry’s lap just as another owl dropped the Daily Prophet on Hermione’s.

Harry started unfurling the letter, curious as to who would be writing him and just as he was about to open it up, he heard a loud voice next to him.

“Oh my god! Harry look at this!” said Hermione in an extremely excited voice as she passed the newspaper to Harry.

Curious, Harry set the letter down and picked the newspaper up. The front page had two large moving photographs on it. Both faces that Harry was extremely familiar with.

On the left was the picture of Sirius Black, Harry’s godfather and his father’s best friend, looking properly groomed and giving off a clean look compared to the last time his picture showed up in the newspaper.

On the right was a short, balding man with a face that had a striking resemblance to a rat. A man that Harry had, not more than two months ago, single-handedly captured. Peter Pettigrew looked a lot more miserable than what Harry remembered, not that he cared.

Reading through the article, Harry couldn’t help but smile. The article went in depth about how Pettigrew had betrayed Harry’s family and was the one responsible for you-know-who killing them, while, Sirius was the one who had tried to hunt Pettigrew down, only to be tricked, with Pettigrew faking his death and pinning all the blame on Sirius.

It even went on to say that the Ministry should have made sure of the details before they imprisoned an innocent man, making him suffer for almost two decades, forcing him to escape on his own and prove his innocence.

The article went on for almost three pages, covering details that even Harry wasn’t aware of, despite being involved in the thick of things.

Smiling happily, Harry turned back to the letter. Opening it up, he realised it was from Sirius. “Oh, the letter is from Sirius” said Harry, causing Hermione to lean over excitedly, trying to read the letter.

“What does it say?” she asked hurriedly.

Reading through it, Harry couldn’t help but laugh, “Looks like there was a lot of bitching about Fudge in the courtroom”

After the excitement died down, Hermione turned to Harry, “Oh right, Harry. We’ve found the group of people who want to learn from you”

“Oh really? When are we meeting?” asked Harry.

“Let’s meet in the Hog’s Head in Hogsmeade today, since we have the Hogsmeade visit planned anyway” said Hermione, “I’m sure we’ll all need to discuss it to see if there’s anyone uncomfortable with the idea of learning from you, so we don’t have any problems down the line”

“Sure, sounds fine” replied Harry. ‘Now that there’s no threat of Umbridge shutting down all clubs, teams and what-not, I don’t have to worry too much about someone overhearing us. We’re just students who want to get together to practice for all they know’

The day then went by sluggishly as they lazed around until it was time to leave for Hogsmeade.

Making their way to the village, and down to the Hog’s Head, the trio, joined by Ginny and Luna chatted happily.

“Brr” shivered Ginny, “It’s starting to get colder”

Grabbing on to Hermione’s hand, she said, “See, my hands are freezing now!”

The two giggled and fell back a little as the group approached the pub. Entering inside, they found the pub to have only a few patrons. Taking a seat at one of the only large tables, Harry and the others ordered some butterbeers as the other students slowly trickled in.

In no time at all, the place was packed. Harry scanned the faces and couldn’t help but feel surprised. There were a lot more new faces than he had seen in his past life. There had been twenty-something students in DA in his past life but there were almost forty of them sitting in front of him right now.

I thought I'd be able to introduce the female lead in this chapter but I mis-estimated the length of content I had planned before the meeting.

Oof, sorry about that!
She's there in the next chapter though, promise!