Through a Half-Breed's Eyes
Ginny pretty much jumped me as soon as we made it back to our dorms.
'Are you sure what we did was all right?'
'Are you sure the oath will hold him?'
How do you even know how to make magical oaths?"
And so forth.
First thing I did was congratulate her on holding her composure together for the entire time, and not dropping my name once. I know I went over it with her before we did our little ambush, but I'm glad she kept her head on straight, rather than panicking.
Second thing I did was mention something she wasn't exactly happy about.
Namely, the oath I made him swear?
It meant less than shit.
Now, here's a funny fact about magical oaths.
They're dangerous, extremely useful, and, if done correctly, can completely remove an obstacle.
They also have an upkeep cost. And the amount of magic used in the upkeep, isn't tiny.
That is why there isn't a mandatory oath to be sworn by absolutely everyone.
One oath? Fine.
Takes a bit of magic from both ends. Mostly to punish whatever sorry bastard breaks the bargain.
But if one person demands an oath from a group of people, he or she has to pay the cost for every single individual involved. It'd be more or less fine at first, but around the fifty mark, it begins to become obvious that your magic isn't working correctly any more.
Theoretically, you could sacrifice a powerful enough mage's magic entirely to bind an entire organisation, but that'd be a rather massive life decision, and leaves the entire thing open to being sabotaged by just killing the damn oathkeeper.
I mean, there's other ways around it, but they're either stupid, or don't work correctly anyway. Some of the time, it's possible to accidentally, or even purposefully break those oaths, and repercussions are often either delayed, or nonexistent.
So anyway, I had to explain to Ginny that, while the oath wouldn't technically protect us, I'm pretty sure that we scared him enough that he won't try anything. The important thing was that we bluffed him hard enough that he truly believes that he's under oath, and that if he breaks it, he'll die.
I mean, there are ways to break a magical bond, but if you screw up breaking it, you die. In fact, if you break a bond, one way or another, one of the two oathkeepers will either die or get hit by the backlash. And backlash generally sucks to be hit by.
The secret's to make the other person take the hit.
Either way, Ginny's still not entirely convinced that we're entirely safe. She's asking me to help her practice some combat spells, maybe get an edge on the competition.
Practice has officially begun: Ginny's gone ahead and made a list of a couple of spells she wants to learn, mostly from the textbooks.
Nothing major, to be honest: a couple of direct-combat disruption spells, and some weird conjuration-thing she calls the Bat-Boogie hex. Oh, and the 'standard' rotation: the Reductor Curse (directed, explosive spell), Shield spell, and the Stunning spell (as well as its counterspell).
The spells I added to the list were a little bit different.
I added in my own steam curse, a cloaking mist hex, and the rather entertaining anti-shield spell my father came up with when he was experimenting with dispelling enchanted objects at a range.
Who would have thought that a spell that rather violently expels magic from improperly enchanted items would be extremely effective against magic-fed shields?
Oh, and the Patronus charm, but neither of us has particularly high expectations towards being able to cast the damn thing.
About a third of the spells on our list are 'appropriate' for our year level.
Yeah, right. Like that's going to stop us.
From the list, we managed to separate the spells into a couple of categories.
There were the spells that we could practice in our dorm, which are more or less harmless. The stunner, a few of the disabling hexes, and the mist spell were all on that list.
And then there were the spells where we both know, and acknowledge, that if we attempt to cast within our dorm, we'd be staring at a nice, solid hole in our wall. Or grievous bodily harm.
So, we spent our next Saturday kicking back and forth various ideas on where to practice the spells. The forest was out, because of our little demon infestation, and neither of us felt lucky enough to go scouting for spare rooms to practice in.
Also angry unicorns, but I didn't bring that up.
I briefly touched upon the chamber where the big snake was, but Ginny shook the idea off. Although it'd be perfect, she lacked not only the knowledge of where it was, but also of how to get inside.
After that, we got right to throwing the disabling hexes at one another. I dropped her four or five times, while she only was able to force me to my knees once or twice.
I had to explain to Ginny that, no, her magic was fine. I was just extremely resistant to magic. I said it was in my blood.
She's been giving me a weird look since then.
I know that this secret is flimsy. Risky. But I need to keep it…
On the plus side, I'm slightly better at bluffing my way through the spellcasting that's native to the school now: I didn't slip into my old stances, or cast an obscure spell even once.
Though I might need to start introducing them over time. Pivoting and follow-through for non-physical spells doesn't really do much, but they do help mobility a bit.
Dammit.
Well, it seems we're fresh out of places to scout out to practice spells.
With the Demons as close as they are, we couldn't find any place obscure enough to toss the real destructive spells around. In fact, neither of us are sure whether or not we're even able to muster enough magical control to cast them yet. So, we've just stuck to throwing around more and more disabling spells around.
It took a bit of convincing, but Ginny's begun to add the Bat-Boogie spell into her rotation when practicing with me.
It's an interesting spell, for sure. It uses snot as a spell reagent. Since it actually has a reagent, unlike the previous spells we were throwing around, it's slightly stronger than the other spells of its power and class. Either way, it goes through my spell resistance (since it is a conjuration, not a disabling spell), and I actually need to dispel the thing, rather than just powering through.
On my side, I added in my steam curse, toned down to only leave skin red and sore.
Ginny's more or less becoming proficient with her Jelly-Legs Jinx, Leg-Locker, and Slug Vomiting (It didn't properly catch when used on me, but man, it felt, and tasted horrible!) Jinx, and Bat-Boogie, but she's still suffering a bit in the power department. She's got more than enough power right to incapacitate a student four years older than her, but not quite enough to get me. We'll need to work on that.
I, on the other hand, have taken to a rather different setup. My go-to spells are all a little bit less versatile (although I'm working on that), but hit hard. I think I'd probably be able to pull off a stunner with a little bit more practice, but right now, I'm sticking to the standard Disarming Jinx, Blinding Mist, and the occasional Knockback Jinx. I can't quite control the last one very well, so we've set up a bunch of cushioning charms on the walls.
Several times, Ginny's asked me about whether or not it's a 'ladylike' thing to learn how to duel.
I didn't really answer her, but I'm hoping the look I gave her answered her question.
Does Granger have an identical twin sister?
Ginny and I were going for a walk, as a break from our little practice, when we saw Granger go running off in one direction, before appearing from a different hallway, headed in the completely opposite direction.
Perhaps there's a clone spell or something kicking around.
Food for thought, I suppose.
What classes am I going to take next year?
Well…
Ancient runes, for sure. I'm obviously fluent in Infernal Runes, and could probably pick up Nordic, and Greek pretty easily.
I don't think they'll teach us Deep Runes, but if they do, I'm ready to learn that, too.
The other subjects aren't really that useful to me.
I'm pretty certain Care for Magical Creatures is going to be more dangerous for me than anyone else, to be honest. It seems like a disaster in the making.
I'll see if there's a magical item fabrication class. That could be fun, and useful.
Ginny's staring at the list on her side of the room more or less quietly, but I don't think I'll share her electives. I'll go check though.
She's not certain she'll have time to pick up as many electives. Apparently, she really wants to be on the Quidditch team, at least as a secondary chaser, and isn't sure whether she'll have enough time to both practice, and keep ahead of her work.
What she was angsting about, however, was whether or not she'd even make the team!
Apparently, she believes her brothers, who apparently say that she's no good.
Stupid girl honestly believed that she wasn't going to make the team in a heartbeat!
I've seen her reflexes first-hand. I've seen her on a broom, heck, I'm pretty sure that if she got a decent broom, she'd be able to keep up to me, if I was using my wings!
I ended up giving her an impromptu pep-talk, the main points mostly focusing upon 'Anyone who wouldn't let you on the team is a blind idiot' and 'You'll make the team, or else I'll be right behind you when you go to whup the captain's ass'.
I then bet that she wouldn't make the team, with the wager of helping fund her a new broom if I lost.
I think I might've overdone it with the wink.
She did end up rolling her eyes at me, but will probably be wearing that smile for the next while.
I bumped into Luna today, who was by herself, busy examining the walls of one of the upper floors.
She was muttering something about some sort of invisible creature.
Now, I'm not to certain about the creature, but the way she was describing it, really sounds similar to a ward leak. While generally that's not a good thing, it does mean that there's a lot more available ambient magic than I thought there was.
Luna greeted me with her standard 'Fel', and I returned my standard eye-roll.
Our conversation was a little bit weird, starting with wards, and then eventually ending up with magical creatures, of all things.
In retrospect, it was pretty obvious that our discussion would end up with magical creatures.
At the end of the day, Luna agreed that it was possible that Nargles (I don't think that's the name for them, but who am I to disagree) could potentially be accidentally-manifested ambient magic, created by strong emotions in wizards. Their other properties could just be a side effect of the type of magic that was leaking. I did get a couple of head tilts and stares, but that was par for the course.
As she left for the Ravenclaw Common Room, her parting comment was that school was much more interesting when not being bullied.
I'm not quite sure what to make of that.
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