The Art of Peace

Chapter 8

To Learn the Impossible

He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior.

~Confucius

Harry picked himself up off the street in amazement. Had it worked? Did his 'Obliviate' really get through? If it had, then that had to be his luckiest moment ever, not counting his grabbing the portkey in the graveyard. Shivering in anticipation of what could have happened he made his way back to the apartment. There was no doubt about it; he had gotten off easily tonight. He made his way back to the apartment expecting to be attacked at any moment. After what seemed like hours to his deadened limbs he arrived. Stumbling in the door, he made his excuses to Sifu and plunged exhausted into bed.

The fire's glare reflected in the red eyes of the Dark Lord.

"Wormtail," he hissed, "bring Lucius to me."

"Yes, Master."

A moment later another man entered the room.

"Master?"

"Lucius, you have failed me."

"Master! The men I sent were your chosen! I did my..."

"Crucio!"

Lucius' screams filled the room, echoed by Voldemort's laughter.

"What news on the boy?" Voldemort asked, releasing Lucius from the spell.

"N-none, my Lord. All five men were obliviated and the memory blocks cannot be removed. Only Schatten remembers anything. He claims to have fought a vampire or some other creature that moved like one, but that is impossible. No vampire would attack one of your servants, Master."

"True. Your incompetence will not be fully punished. Do not fail me again, however, or you will not survive. We will leave Marseille alone for now. Whatever prowls its streets has not harmed us here and we have more important things to attend to. Leave me!"

"Yes, Master."

"Wormtail, I have something for you to do."

"Yes, Master?"

"Scream. Crucio!"

Harry awoke with a start, the pain in his scar almost overwhelming. Breathing deeply Harry settled into one of the meditation exercises he had learned, willing the pain to go away. When it was finally bearable, he let out the breath he was holding with a hiss. Why did the dreams have to start again? At least this had been helpful and no one had died. If Voldemort was leaving him alone it would be safe to remain here. As the pain slowly faded, a relieved Harry went back to sleep.

The next few days went by in a blur. Sifu never asked why Harry had been in such bad shape that night, and Harry never told him. He trusted Sifu with his life, yes, but this was not Sifu's burden to bear, it was Harry's. The routine of watching Claude, studying, and training at night came as a relief from the stress of the previous days, and before he knew it, they were going to register the two boys for school.

École Secondaire de Chambroid was an impressive looking school, with a brick façade facing the street. Harry entered the building nervously with Claude and Sifu close behind. They had already eolled Claude at a local primary school and now needed to enter Harry into his classes. Being fifteen, Harry would have one more year to decide what his selected studies were going to be. For now he just needed to take basic classes covering math, science, grammar, and history. The math and science would not be too much of a problem, he had had a basic coverage of them back in Little Whinging, but the grammar and history would obviously be French, something he had no experience with. His books on wandless magic were in French, of course, but the grammar was very out of date, and he certainly had not learned modern French working on the docks. The placement test proved this. As expected, he scored well in all subjects but grammar and history. The instructor who gave the test, Professor Raines, assured him that with work he could make it into the more advanced classes in the latter part of the year. As he was a foreign student (they had introduced him as Sifu's nephew who had just moved to Marseille from England), there were tutors who taught French as a Second Language courses.

Once he was registered in all his classes, the three of them left the school. He was in the normal classes for everything but grammar, where he was in the remedial class as well as being signed up with a tutor. The remedial class made Harry nervous, as he was sure he would be with all the bullies and their followers in the school. There was no doubt he could take any one who came at him, the past weeks of solid training had guaranteed that. The problem was to do it without hurting them. To injure someone who could not injure you in turn was to sow the seeds of violence, and that was the first thing Sifu had drilled into his head when training started. However, he would take that bridge when he came to it. For now, the only thing on his mind was lunch.

As they were walking down the street, Harry watched for signs of wizards as he usually did. There were a few walking here and there, but as they were mostly families and couple out for a mid-afternoon stroll, he dismissed them. When they turned a corner onto the main thoroughfare, he paused. There, in plain sight, was a man wearing a black cloak, his face obscured by a large hood. The man was quite obviously ill at ease in the crowd, and his hand was just as obviously holding his wand inside his cloak. The other hand a small prism that was flashing various colors as people walked past. Just at that instant a wizarding family walked by, causing it to flash a brilliant red. Harry's eyes narrowed as he realized this must be a crude form of magic detector. He did not know who or what the man was looking for, but in the aftermath of the past few days it was best to be cautious. Without a word he turned, grabbing Sifu and Claude as he headed back into the winding streets.

Severus Snape was frustrated. First the Potter boy had the gall to be like his father, and then he had to go and run off, and now he was not letting himself be found. And Dumbledore! As much as Severus respected him, he was definitely not on his good list for sending him on this hopeless quest. Why bother with it in the first place? If Potter wanted to leave his protection with all the people who were after him, his blood was on his own head. Stupid Gryffindors could not leave well enough alone, that was the problem.

Sighing in disgust he pocketed the Magiscope and walked up the street. He had decided this would be the most likely place to spot Potter, but four hours of standing there had been for naught. The morning had been similarly worthless, spent trying to convince stupid muggles that he was not a salesman and just wanted to know if they had new neighbors. The dogs had not helped either. Three times he had been attacked by a dog after its master decided he did not like him. Three! And he could not use magic! What a perfectly awful day he thought, heading to the next location. Maybe the third time was the charm.

A couple of hours after he saw Snape, Harry finally made it back to the apartment. He had not even tried to explain to Sifu why he turned around, just gave him a story about wanting to go to a particular restaurant. After eating at the restaurant, which just happened to be almost ten blocks away from where Snape was, they finally made it home, tired and ready for the night to end. Sifu, however, had other ideas. He decided that since Harry had not practiced as much as he should have the past few days he needed an extra hard lesson to make up for it. Working for the past few weeks had given Sifu a large number of exercises to use on Harry and he used them all. Starting off with the generic strength and flexibility exercises, he quickly moved into the horse-riding stance and various strikes and blocks. He then started Harry practicing his throws. This was the most enjoyable part of the workout, although Harry was on the floor for half of it as Sifu demonstrated the techniques. The basic holds and disarming forms were easy to perform, but the techniques Sifu was showing him were unbelievable. All Sifu had to do was hold Harry's hand and he was making him do whatever he wanted him to do. The only noises were Harry hitting the floor and Claude gasping when it happened. Sifu's explanations did not help, as he was demonstrating them with almost superhuman finesse. Finally, Harry stopped.

"How do you do it?"

"Do what?" Sifu asked.

"Everything! I mean, you make the throws look so easy, and when I try to get out of a hold it is like you are moving before I think about it. Are you sure you aren't a wizard?"

"Yes, I am positive. Much of what I can do comes from an inordinate amount of practice. I know what you are doing because in the close quarter's situation I can feel your muscles tense and when I cannot feel that, I can see where you look before you move."

"But still, you are so good!"

"Well, almost a quarter of a century of practice does tend to help a little," Sifu replied with a smile.

"I suppose it might. Do you really expect me to do what you just did, though?"

"Of course not. I am just showing you what can be done. You would need a lot of practice. In two or three years of hard and constant study you will know almost all the techniques I could show you, but you would have still only just begun your training. Martial arts, especially what you are learning, are more than techniques, or katas, or palgays, or whatever you want to call them. They are called the martial arts because they are just that, forms of art. The greatest sensei ever can still learn something, and no matter how long he lives that will always be the case. What you need to learn more than anything is the state of mind. If you believe something can happen and possess the necessary skills and training to think about attempting it, you can do it. Watch."

With that Sifu launched into the most awesome display of aerial acrobatics Harry had ever seen off of a broom. His body was a blur, moving forward and back, up and down, right and left, as he fought off dozens of imaginary attackers. Finally he stopped, barely even breathing hard.

Harry's voice was shaking as he asked, "What was that?"

"That," said Sifu with obvious pride, "was a form I developed after realized the truth of what I just told you. I had been studying in a small dojo and one day I was reading a book about o-sensei Moerihei Ueshiba. There were many accounts of phenomenal feats he had done that should not have been possible, but one in particular affected me greatly. It said that once he was challenged by a team of army sharpshooters to prove his claim that bullets could not touch him. They lined up six of them on the firing line with o-sensei about 25 meters away. As one they fired, and in the smoke from the guns o-sensei appeared behind them, throwing one of them before they realized he was there. He explained to his student, Shioda, that he saw the first bullet as preceded by a white light of energy from the gun, and he merely avoided it like a strike. He then leapt to bridge the gap and attacked the shooter with a simple grappling move. This showed me that many things we think impossible are just highly improbable, and that is very different."

"Wait," Harry interrupted, "Is that really true?"

"Yes, it is a true story. Shioda went on to become a highly respected aikido master in his own right and only died a couple of years ago. He was there at the demonstration and personally vouched for its veracity."

"So if I believe I can do it and have the proper state of mind, I can dodge bullets? Is that what you are saying?"

"Yes, that is what I mean. To be able to do it you have to believe though. If you did not believe you magic existed, could you do more than accidents in extreme stress? If you did not believe you could walk, could you walk? All we do in life requires a leap of faith. As I once heard it said, 'Faith by its very nature must transcend logic'. When I realized this it opened many new doors for me. It caused problems ads well though, because my sensei did not hold with my view and I ended up having to leave when I refused to give up my belief that he was holding back his own progress. I probably could have phrased it better when I told him that, I suppose, but if I had, I would have never met you and had my theories proven."

"How did I prove your theories?"

"By being a wizard. I never believed in magic, but you did, and look what you can do. Your studies prove it as well. I have looked at the various books you have, and from what little I understand, they all point conclusively to the same thing. To do this wandless magic as you call it you must truly believe, and only by believing can you achieve the proper state of mind. Yes, my meditation exercises probably helped a bit, but your belief planted the first seeds, and that is what I needed to see. After that it was the least I could do to attempt to show you the same."

"Well, thank you, I think. I need to think a while about this before I figure it out. That's a lot to hear at one time, you know?"

"Yes it is, and for that I apologize, but your circumstances are somewhat different from a normal person's, and I think you will be able to handle it. That is enough for tonight. To train the body is good for you health, to train you mind is good for your awareness, but only by training both can you achieve enlightenment. Sleep well; we will talk more on this in the morning."

Sleep was the last thing on Harry's mind though. To be able to anything just because you believed it possible was a pretty hard idea to get hit with. Obviously he was not going to go out and jump in front of a car because he believed it would not hurt him, but to be able to attempt the improbable and succeed was an enticing prospect. There was one thing that bothered him though. When, not if, he confronted Voldemort, would belief stop the inevitable Aveda Kedavra? It was with this disturbing thought that his tired body finally succumbed to sleep, dreaming of the impossible.