The morning papers were an incoherent mess, the thing he could make out most clearly was that he was getting even more strange looks the normal. From what he could piece together from the papers Britain had seen its worst rioting since Voldemort's war, though it had only last a couple of hours, and no one had died. One unfortunate wizard had lost a leg in a way that no healing could fix, and Pro-Dumbledore papers had reported that he was too poor to afford a fancy magical one. The reasons why they were angry also seemed unclear, Pro-Voldemort, Anti Ministry, Anti Dumbledore or Anti Greengrass. This unclear rage had been enough to unify all the papers in condemnation although the Dumbledore papers were generally less forthright with their condemnation. Foreign papers just thought it seemed to show the barbaric nature of Britain, French papers thought it showed that they were right that wizards shouldn't be allowed to roam freely.

'H-Harry.'

Harry turned from the table to see Neville Longbottom behind him. Poor awkward, rotund Neville.

'Er my Grandma… well I mean I… its just that-' Harry heard Daphne giggle. He gave her a quick glare and leapt to his feet.

'Neville, lets walk.'

'My grandmother said it was terrible what they're saying in the papers about you.' Neville said as they walked in a random direction away from the great hall.

'And what do you think?'

'Er, I guess it depends if their telling the truth or not.' Neville said, blushing.

Harry laughed.

'Yeah, fair enough I guess.' He said and shrugged. 'Some of it is true some of it isn't, but they really twist how they show things too. Hitting him with a severing charm was probably a bit much, but he was really trying to murder me mate, you don't have a lot of time to consider when your trying to save yourself from a Deatheater.'

'Ah huh.' Neville replied. Harry thought that describing violent assaults he'd committed probably wasn't the best approach if he wanted Neville to get over his fear of him.

'Sorry that Daphne was laughing at you.'

'It happens.'

'It shouldn't' Harry said shaking his head. 'You shouldn't accept people being cruel to you Neville.'

'I don't just 'accept it', I just can't do anything about it! I trip over my words all the time, and people see how bad I am in class and think they can do whatever they want to me.' Neville said anger rising.

Harry smiled at Neville's reddening face.

'You didn't trip over any of those words Neville. Your trying to get into duelling club right? I'm trying to make a duelling club practise group, you should come.'

'Impressive thing to be able to levitate at our age.'

Harry jumped, nearly losing focus and dropping the desk he was floating over to the side of the room.

He turned to see Asa stood in the doorway.

'Er, yeah I guess. Hi, Hello.'

'Hello.' She replied, and swanned into the room. 'Daphne invited me if your wondering.'

'Oh cool.' He said, putting the desk down at the side of the room, next to the pile.

'I'm sorry by the way, for ignoring you these past couple months.'

'Yeah don't worry about it.' Harry said, muttering the Levitation Charm under his breath so he could continue to clear a space in the middle of the room.

'Potter, for light's sake, put that desk down and actually look at me.'

Harry slowly moved his wand down until the desk tap against the floor, and turned to face Asa and her glare.

'I do have a first name you know, Asa.'

'Harry. I'm sorry I acted so childishly after you beat me in duelling club.'

'Apology accepted, but we are children you know Asa.'

'You don't act like much of one Harry, nearly killing adult Wizards and all that.'

Harry had thought the Fletcher thing would bother him more, but Harry rarely thought about the actual incident. It didn't really feel real.

'Do you have a preferred conspiracy theory? Voldemort ones are the most common but I've heard some good ones about Werewolves and Vampires lately.'

'I'm very open, I believe something different every week.

'Great stuff, do you want me to help me prepare the room or are you just going to stand there?'

As it turned out desk levitation wasn't so impressive, since Asa could do it too, though she was much slower and informed Harry that if she had done as many as he had she would have ended up exhausting herself before practise started.

Harry was forewarned about the next arrival due to being able to hear Daphne talking the ear off whatever poor fool had accompanied her here, but he did get a shock when he saw it was Neville who had accompanied the dark haired witch.

'Hello Harry!' Daphne said, and gave a wink to Asa. 'I managed to catch Neville here in the corridor. I apologised to him and he kindly offered to accompany me here. He's a very good listener!'

Harry glanced over at a shell shocked looking Neville.

'I'm sure he is.'

Everyone else in dribs and drabs, and quickly formed back into their normal friendship groups. On his left Neville, Ron, Seamus and Dean, on his right Draco, Daphne, Blaise and Asa, and in the middle, alone, with her back straight and arms crossed was Hermione Granger.

'So yeah hi everyone. Obviously we've got duelling club but we just do actual duels, and Professor does give good instructions and advice, we don't get to actually practise spells, so I thought it'd be a good idea to start a group where we could. Obviously mastering the shield charm would really help us, so I'm going to let Hermione take the stage.'

Harry started to walk forward, taking up Hermione's old position as she went to the front of their little crowd. As he turned back to face her he saw her take a deep breath, so Harry flashed her a thumbs up.

'I'm sure by know you all know the incantation of the shield charm, and all the correct wand movements and so on. Well maybe not everyone-' Hermione gave a significant glance in Neville's direction, who blushed in response, but then moved on. '- but regardless what we will be practising today is various forms of spell-concentration.'

Harry thanked his lucky stars that Hermione was doing well, if she could do anything in a non-awkward manner it was lecture.

'All of you currently do three forms of spell-concentration, you do the movement, you say the words, and you use a wand. As at least Harry knows, you don't need to do any of these to cast a spell, they just focus your magic, making the spell less wasteful and more like to actually go off. There are three different additional methods we will try out to today to help accentuate your focus. The first you likely do frequently by accident, and this is imagining.' Hermione said, placing her left hand on the side of her forehead. 'Imagining if what it sounds like, spell performance noticeably improves if you imagine the spell happening in your mind.'

'The other methods are diametrically opposed. One is calming and meditative and the other is placing yourself under pressure, danger, threat or generally any situation . Obviously the first is not very useful in a duel, or really any situation where you may be called on to use the shield charm, but if you achieve a spell once your more likely to be able to do it in future.'

Hermione paused and looked around the room.

'Any questions?

There were a couple moments of cold silence before Harry piped up.

'No, let's start!' He said slightly too quick and loud.

'So, how come they don't teach us these methods in class?' Harry said to Hermione's back.

The ten of them were sat sprawled around the centre of the room, thoroughly exhausted, luckily it was a Saturday afternoon.

'Huh?' Hermione replied, clearly she'd been mentally somewhere else when he asked. 'Oh well, they do eventually, but it's considered dangerous, as you can burn out your magic.' She said, rolling over to face Harry.

'What?' Harry replied, shocked. 'And you just ignored that?'

'There were no actual accounts of it happening to anyone in any of the books I found, I just think our educators are acting with an abundance of caution. If you want to succeed and excel, cannot act with caution, you need to push boundaries.'

'That's not what I expected you to say, but cool.' Harry replied. None of them apart from Hermione had actually produced a shield charm today, apart from Harry getting a bit of golden mist to come out of his wand, and Draco's stinging charm had gone straight through that, but they had only practised the shield charm for like fifteen minutes at the end. Before that they had focused on working out if people responded best to calming or pressure inducing techniques, and which of these techniques people responded to best. Harry was unsurprisingly a pressure guy, but it turned out Neville was too, you just had to turn the thumbscrews enough, something Draco had enjoyed far too much. Harry thought Draco was clearing a clam guy but he refused to admit, brushing off Hermione's attempts to make him meditate or do deep breathing or whatever.

'Right we should clear out, it's getting on.' Harry said, standing and brushing himself down. 'I'll put everything back where it was, you guys getting going.'

'Your exhausted, Harry! Don't be arrogant I'll help you.' Hermione exclaimed.

'I'll stay too.' Ron offered.

'Alright, but three is more than enough, get out of the way the rest of you.' Harry said waving his hands.

Once everyone had departed the three of them started levitating tables. They worked in silence for a while, before Ron began to speak.

'You're good at teaching Hermione.'

'And you learnt well Ronald.'

And then nothing again, but Harry was glad for those few words.

Once they were finished Hermione made her excuses and left leaving the two of them to walk the halls.

'I know it's still a while away but do you want to come round to mine during the Easter hols?' Ron asked, some small amount of nerves in his voice.

'Er, yeah sure. Where do you live?'

'It's a small wizarding village called Ottery in Devon. About eight families live thereabouts, they used to be further apart but they got moved closer together so we could have joint wards, you know, because of the war. I mean it's a bit ramshackled but its home.' He said, shrugging.

'Wait, you moved the houses or you moved house?'

'We moved the houses.' Ron said, as if it was the most boring thing in the world.

'That's a thing you can do?'

'I mean it's a bit of a palaver, you need a group of people to do it, and you can end up dropping your house if you aren't careful, but yeah it's pretty doable. Can't muggles?'

'No, I mean I guess it's possible but it'd be more effort than it's worth. You'd have to knock out all the pipes and rearrange all the electric.'

'Electric, what's that?'

Harry opened his mouth, but then just blew out air.

'I was going to ask Draco once what a house elf is, but he started and I just stopped him, it was far too much. Electricity is a thing like that. Anyway you've got a lot of siblings right?' Harry said, trying to put the conversation back on track.

'Not siblings mate, just sisters.' Ron scoffed. 'It's been a bit mad growing up with them, being the only boy, you know, being treat as the special one. But it's a bit less mental these days Charlie just moved out, so it's just the five of us now, plus mum and dad. It'll be easier now with er-' Ron hesitated for a moment '- you know er money and stuff now too.'

'Right Ron, don't take this the wrong way, but your mum is on the Wizengamot right? I mean I saw her there so dunno why I'm asking.'

'Yeah?'

'Well I mean, it doesn't pay? Or like I mean I don't want to say your mum is corrupt or whatever, but surely you can make some money off it. My Uncle is always going on about how much money Muggle members of parliament make.'

'No, it doesn't pay.' Ron said shaking his head. 'And there isn't any money to be made voting for the stuff my Mum votes for, defending the rights of magical creatures, muggleborns and wizards. If she was willing to vote to consolidate the power of the big families or let the French buy whatever they wanted we could be living in a Palace, but she's not, so we aren't.'

'And you agree with her?'

'I mean yeah I guess. I don't think about it so much, but Dumbledore is the only hope for Wizards, isn't he?'

'There's certainly no one else on offer.' Harry said, offering up his reluctant agreement.

'You know Harry back in the day every family was on the Wizengamot, that's what the name means, room for wizards in Gothic. Don't ask me why they picked Gothic.' Ron said, waving a hand. 'But eventually they stopped letting new families on, and then over the past thousand years loads of families have died out and that's how you've got your 'Sacred Twenty Eight', there's nothing special about them.'

'Huh.' Harry said in reply, before looking around himself. 'Right Ron I should got that way-' Harry continued, pointing a thumb down an adjoining corridor. '-but see you soon, tell me the details about me coming round and I'll be there.'

'Yeah mate, see you.' Ron replied, setting off the other way for Gryffindor Tower.