It was once again July and Harry was happy to be sent to the day camp again, two more weeks of learning crafts and skills. At almost ten years old he was now allowed to help the blacksmith by working the bellows. Seeing how interested the boy was the older man had even let Harry swing the hammer a few times to get a feel for the task. Harry couldn't describe the rightness he felt when he got to strike the red hot metal. Decked out in a safety apron and face shield with thick insulated leather gloves Harry got to strike the metal until it bent into the correct hook shape. His wood carving had progressed as well, now able to actually carve simple images and etch words and sentences into wood. Needlework he was doing well in too. The ladies teaching the group, mostly consisting of girls, had commented on how well he handled the needle. Fixing up a pair of torn pants had only taken him an hour and the stitching held up even when he tugged on it. Pottery he could do well enough but it didn't hold his interest as much as the other crafts. The instructor had chuckled when Harry had handed in a nicely formed vase and commented that he was doing his family name proud. Harry had gotten a chuckle out of the joke, after all a Potter being good at Pottery was a bit of dry humor that Harry could appreciate.
After the two weeks of day camp had ended Harry, still happy about getting to make things, decided to look into the Runes and Arithmancy books again. Both tomes had mentioned crafting Magical Items or Enchanted Objects in them and after two weeks of getting to make stuff Harry was interested in trying out this branch of Magic. The first thing Harry had figured out was that Arithmancy was Magical Math and it made normal Math seem simple and easy. While Mathematics played a large role in Arithmancy the inclusion of Magic tilted some of the calculations into having answers that would be deemed incorrect in his Math class at school. Runes was basically learning another alphabet, with each symbol having its own meaning or even multiple meanings when it was written next to other runes. There were also, according to his mother's notes, other written languages that could be used for magical purposes. Egyptian Hieroglyphics were a form of Runes, as were the Chinese Kanji symbols used in China and Japan. India had many ancient scripts that could be used in Runes with Devanagari being common among both Magical and Non-Magical people. It seemed that any script could become capable of holding Magical Meaning if enough Magicals learned and used it over time. The length of time seemed to be roughly five hundred years or more of use before script could have Magical Meaning imprinted onto it by anyone; though his mother speculated that the amount of Magical People that used the script played a large part in determining how long before it became capable of attaining Magical significance.
Harry spent the next few months studying Arithmancy and Runes while also learning a couple extra Charms. So far he'd learned how to replicate a Lumos Charm, the Incendio Charm, the Water Charm Aguamenti, the Levitation Charm Wingardium Leviosa, and the Knockback Jinx Flipendo. For some reason when Harry performed his Wandless version of Flipendo there was no loud bang like the text described. He'd retreated to the woods behind Privet Drive to practice it expecting the noise but it never happened.
His studies into making Enchanted Objects were going about as well as could be expected. Finding out, from the Runes text, that certain materials couldn't hold magic or that only certain materials could be used for certain effects had hindered his ideas. There were plenty of rocks Harry could use for enchanting and the forest behind Privet Drive was a wealth of at least a few different species of wood. But you couldn't just etch a few Runes into any old rock and make a talisman, charm, or trinket. Likewise you couldn't make a staff, scepter or wand out of any regular old branch. Arithmancy was required to figure out the best size and shape for any Enchanted Objects based on the material used to make them. Harry had used his burgeoning skills in both Runes and Arithmancy to craft a single, very simple, trinket for himself. He'd gotten the idea from one of the fantasy novels he'd read from the library at school. Harry had made a Hiding Stone, a small mostly flat stone with only four runes etched on one side, the four runes in question being from Elder Futhark; Naudiz for Need, Algiz for Protection, Mannaz for Man, and Odal for Estate and Possessions. When all four were etched correctly by a Wizard or Witch and imbued with magic it produced a trinket that made the person carrying it less noticeable. Alternatively it could be placed on another object to make the object in question less noticeable. It was easy to see through if a person wanted to find someone, but no one would notice the bearer 'out of the corner of their eye' as the saying went. Harry carried it around at school a few times and noticed the sharp drop in the amount of times he was called on to answer questions.
Excited by his first success, while pretending the eleven failed attempts he'd had didn't happen, Harry sat on his bed that night to take stock of his Occlumency. Once in his magical mind representation Harry set about looking at his 'bramble defense' as he'd taken to calling it. The branches had grown further outwards while layering over each other to increase the protection around his mind. The branches connecting to his body were larger than the last time he'd checked them as well. Returning to the silvery-grey core he tried to take another measurement by eye. Harry roughly estimated that his silvery-grey core had doubled in size since he first made it, now sitting at almost two meters in diameter. He really wished he could accurately measure his magic, or mana as several of the fantasy books had referred to it. Harry liked the idea of calling the energy behind his spells and other magic by a name like mana. It gave him something to focus on building up besides his knowledge. Like a measure of how magically strong he was, though he still had no way to actually quantify his mana so that he could measure it aside from trying to estimate how much bigger the silvery-grey core was.