In Every Darkness
Chapter Thirty Four: Duel
2.9.1996
"Tha' all depens on wha' ye think they are," Hagrid said, smiling slightly at Hermione's surprise.
"They're hippocampi!" Hermione breathed. Most of the Gryffindors gave her 'so what are they?' looks, but the Ravenclaws nodded in agreement with Hermione's statement.
"Hippocampi? What's a hippocampi?" Ron asked, though Harry was sure he'd heard the name somewhere before, and was trying to remember where that had been.
"Honestly Ron, it's in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," Hermione told him, rolling her eyes. "and it's not a hippocampi, it's a hippocampus. The plural of hippocampus is hippocampi, just like with octopi."
Ron rolled his eyes at Harry. "Ok then, what's a hippocampus then?" he asked.
"They come from Greece," Hermione replied unhelpfully, then added, "they have the forequarters of a horse and the tail and hindquarters of a giant fish. They're usually found in the Mediterranean, though I seem to recall some merepeople found a blue roan … sometime in the nineteen forties, that was off the shore of Scotland. These here look like tadfoals."
"Tha's right Hermione," Hagrid smiled at her. "Ten points t'Gryffindor. Yeah, these here are tadfoals, and o'er the year yeh'll all be raisin' one o'em."
"Raising one of those," Ron pointed disbelievingly at the pool of 'tadfoals'.
"Yeah. It'll be fun," Hagrid said enthusiastically. "They grow t'be bout shoulda high, and reach their full growth afta four years or so … Ye'll just be keeping 'em alive for this year, then they'll be going back to their 'omes."
"Oh yay," Ron muttered sarcastically to Harry, who grinned slightly in agreement.
"Anyway, there's naught much t' do at the mo'ent, so we'll be lookin' at hippocampi in yeh books. Have a look on page three 'undred."
The rest of the lesson was fairly boring, as they learned about Hippocampus care. Both Ron and Harry were yawning by the end of it.
"Well, we've got Defence Against the Dark Arts next," Harry muttered to his friend. "I'm sure Tonks'll keep us wide awake."
"True," Ron agreed, packing up his book as Hagrid finished describing how you fed the creatures. "This was almost as boring as the flobberworms," he added disgustedly, glaring at the hippocampi in their tank.
"Not quite. At least these grow to be interesting," Harry replied, grinning as they began their way back up to the castle with Hermione, who was bubbling about Hippocampi.
"Wish she'd shut up," Ron muttered under his breath to Harry, but Hermione caught it.
"Do you, Ronald Weasley?" Hermione snapped at him, spinning around and glaring up into his face.
Harry slipped past and left his two best friends to argue it out. On the front steps of the castle he paused to reconsider. Looking back, he found that neither of them had moved a step closer to the castle, and Hermione was still giving Ron what for.
"Hey guys, come on! We'll be late for Defence!" he yelled at them, which immediately caused Hermione to forget her annoyance with Ron and race to catch up with Harry, dragging the unwilling Ron behind her.
"You're right. We can't be late for our first Defence Against the Dark Arts class this year," Hermione panted. Harry strode ahead of them, because the pair were still arguing.
By the time he reached the Defence classroom, the bell was about to ring and Ron and Hermione arrived behind him, panting heavily – too heavily to talk much, for which Harry was grateful.
"How come you're not out of breath?" Ron panted in Harry's direction. It was quite true, Harry was breathing easily.
"Because I've been training with my friend, and I went jogging practically every day," Harry teased his friend.
"Ooh, Potter went jogging? Why, so you can attempt to impress the ladies?" Draco's cutting voice came from behind them, even the Slytherin seemed a little out of breath. "Or so you can run away from the Dark Lord?"
"Can't call him Voldemort, Malfoy?" Harry asked coolly, glancing over his shoulder. Almost every student winced at the name, Malfoy included. "I have no need to run, or to impress ladies, Malfoy. But keeping fit never did anyone harm."
There was a sudden crash from down the corridor. Harry and the rest of the class spun around, Harry's wand leapt to his hand, a spell was on his lips. But he slipped the wand back up his sleeve and laughed when he saw Tonks disentangling herself from a suit of armour.
"Some help here!" she yelled at the class, and Harry quickly came to give her a hand. "Thank you Harry, five points to Gryffindor," she added. "Now, what are we going to do today …" she mused as she walked towards the classroom.
"Aren't you supposed to plan the lessons before you come to them?" Harry asked her, arching an eyebrow as the Gryffindors chuckled.
Tonks looked thoughtful. "I dunno. Are you?" she asked after a moment.
"Yes," Hermione replied.
"Oh. Well, I'll do that tomorrow then!" Tonks replied. "Umm … Everyone sit down please!"
Harry rolled his eyes and did so. "Well, I guess we can start with introductions. My name's Tonks, I guess it'd be Professor Tonks to you lot, and like I said last night if anyone calls me by my … other … name, I'll put them on detention for the duration of the year.
"I'm an Auror, and I was one of the few that believed Albus last year. I'm not working for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for the moment, I asked to be excused from them so that I could teach here.
"Well, as an Auror, I usually prefer practical work. From what I hear, you covered enough theory last year anyway, and you are mainly disturbingly far behind when it comes to curses. With the Death Eaters back, trust me, you're going to need to know as many as you can.
"Harry, could you come up here please? I understand that you've done a bit of duelling – with Voldemort no less a few years ago – and you had a Defence Study group type thing last year. We can give a bit of a demonstration."
Harry got unwilling to his feet. He would have preferred to remain seated and leave the teaching to Tonks, but oh well.
"Now, just to make things interesting … Mr. Malfoy! Front and centre man!" she said suddenly. "You two are going to have a mock duel. Malfoy, I'm sure your father taught you enough curses for you to be able to handle this."
Malfoy glared at Tonks as he stood up and moved to the front of the room, before turning his attention to Harry. "Bow," Tonks instructed them both.
Harry bowed slightly from the waist, Malfoy barely bobbed his head. "Begin," Tonks said, and jumped out of the way as spells flew from both combatants.
Duelling sessions with Sirius had made Harry, if not an expert, at least prepared. He ducked the moment Tonks said begin, whispering "expelliarmus".
Malfoy very nearly lost his wand, but ducked, just in time. Already Harry had used "stupefy" and "impedimenta".
Malfoy looked at Harry with a wary respect in his eyes, but he'd already used three curses of his own. Harry had hardly paid attention to the words as he ducked two of the spells and used a shield charm to keep the third away from him.
So it went on, both of them hurled curse after curse at one another, neither appearing to gain the advantage. Harry kept to simple curses, trying to make Malfoy think that he didn't know that many, while he gauged his opponents strengths and weaknesses.
Soon he noticed something of a pattern. Malfoy stopped moving to use a curse, and remained still until he saw whether the curse had missed its mark or what.
Harry gave an inward, triumphant smile and waited for Malfoy to use a new curse. In the exact second that Malfoy cast his own spell, Harry sent one, but then he stood straight, making it look as if Malfoy's spell would hit him.
It worked – Malfoy's attention remained on his own spell, and he didn't see Harry's come towards him. At the last possible second, Harry threw himself to floor, just avoiding the curse, and reached out a hand to grab Malfoy's wand as it spun through the air towards him.
"Well done Harry! Thirty points to Gryffindor. Five to Slytherin for the effort, Malfoy," Tonks cried. "Now, does any one of you know how Harry managed to win that?" she asked the class, as Harry handed Malfoy his wand back and returned to his seat, barely acknowledging the congratulations of his companions.
"No one?" Tonks appeared disappointed. "Harry, can you tell us? It wasn't just luck, was it?"
"Malfoy stopped to watch his spell to see if it hit or not. He stayed still. I took advantage of that and shot a spell just as he did, he was too busy concentrating on his own spell to notice mine," Harry replied immediately.
"Good! Another … umm … five points to Gryffindor," Tonks declared, making the Slytherins look jealous and the Gryffindors look proud.
"Over the next few lessons I think that we'll concentrate on a few mini-duels between different people, and working out how people can turn a fight to the best advantage. I remember that from Auror training, so it won't be too hard," Tonks decided, just as the bell rang.
"You were fantastic Harry," Hermione grinned at him as they walked out of the classroom.
"Thanks Hermione," Harry shrugged it off. "I'm going to contact the DA group tonight, for a meeting in the Room of Requirement, after we've done some homework," he added hurriedly, to forestall Hermione's temper.
Ron glared at him, but said nothing, obviously not wanting to anger their friend any further. He'd had enough tongue-lashings for one day.
"Come on then, we'll go to lunch now, then the library and then we can have the meeting after dinner."
Sixth and seventh year students had the time after lunch to themselves to study – they had a lot to study for, after all, with the NEWTS coming ever closer.
Ron sighed, but nodded when Hermione glared at him.
"Letting the Mudblood decide everything for you now, are you?" Malfoy appeared behind them.
"Malfoy!" it was Arabella Figg. "Such language in the halls! Ten points from Slytherin and another detention. You come with me now."
She grabbed the protesting Slytherin by the arm and dragged him away with her.
"Why does someone always have to step in before we can get Malfoy?" Ron grumbled.
"At least that way we don't get into trouble," Hermione replied calmly. "You are a Prefect, you shouldn't go looking for trouble!"
Ron leaned towards Harry when he was sure Hermione was out of earshot. "Sometimes I wish I wasn't a prefect," he muttered to his friend, who just grinned at him.
"Come on, let's go eat," Harry replied, hurrying to catch up with Hermione, who had been waylaid talking with Pavarti Patil about something.
Ron and Harry caught up with her just as the two girls finished their conversation and together, Gryffindors famous trio moved on, into the Great Hall.
Harry glanced around, seeing people waving happy greetings from all tables – save Slytherin, of course. Most of them he recognized, and most of them were from DA, the year before.
He smiled wearily and waved back at all of them, suddenly feeling a little overwhelmed by the return to Hogwarts Castle.
Sitting down, Harry only wanted to eat lunch, but now it seemed that everyone was wanting to come and talk to him, greet him, congratulate him on the fight the year before.
He supposed they hadn't at breakfast because he'd arrived a little late, when everyone was sitting down and eating already, and people had been half asleep then.
He got in only a few mouthfuls of food in the half an hour he spent in the Great Hall, and was incredibly thankful when Hermione chased off his 'admirers' for want of a better term, and dragged him and Ron both to the library.
"Well, it seems that only homework we got today was Potions, or Charms in your case Ron, and I have Arithmancy, but even if you do finish your homework Harry, you really do have to study up on Ancient Runes," Hermione said decisively. "Let's get started."
Harry sighed and went to look along the shelves dedicated to Potions books. He could go into the restricted section of the Library now, since he was studying advanced subjects, but somehow, now that he could go there, he didn't really want to.
He found a book entitled 'Truth Potions' which looked promising, flipping through it, he saw the words Verax Onis and Veritaserum in the contents page.
With a shrug, he took the book back to the table. Hermione looked over at him from where she was searching the shelves and glared. Harry presumed he'd gotten the book that she was looking for.
He just shrugged and grinned at her, and mouthed 'do your Arithmancy homework first, then you can have this'.
Hermione nodded in agreement and changed sections in the library to find the books that she needed for Arithmancy.
Harry did some of his homework, though it was incredibly boring… Well, reading the book was ok, there was some interesting things in there, but the essay bored him silly.
He reached into his pocket and found a gold galleon coin, tapping it with his wand to rearrange the date and time on it. Then he tapped it once more, which changed the date on every other coin, and made them burn with heat for a second.
Everyone who had one of the fake coins would now know to look at them and find out what Harry wanted.
"Come on," Ron groaned, bored with labouring over his charms homework. "Let's go to dinner."
Hermione looked up from her Arithmancy homework, which was written in neat, small writing and which had been doing without stop since she returned to the table.
Blinking, she looked outside and saw that night was falling. "Have we been here that long?" She asked, a little vaguely.
Ron snorted derisively and stood up, stuffing everything into his bag. Harry whisked out his wand, sending everything he'd been doing into his bag and stood up also.
Hermione sighed and packed up with swift efficiency, following the two boys out of the library. "Did you have to call everyone while I was in the middle of my homework?" Hermione asked Harry, and Harry remembered that she must have felt the coin burn.
"Sorry, I though I should give people some warning," Harry shrugged it off.
Dinner was a quick affair – Harry was once again the object of attention, and so he fled quickly, hiding in the Room of Requirement while he waited for his group of friends and 'students' to arrive.
***
Not a cliffie, but a … not so nice place to leave off *grins*
~WolfMoon~