Someday, I will own something of great value. This will not be Harry Potter, as J K Rowling already owns it.
I apologize greatly for not updating sooner, I'll give you a list of reasons:
1- I have a job now. I'm an apprentice cabinetmaker, I work 7-4:30, Mon-Fri, which has left me completely exhausted. Of course now that I'm done my third week, I'm much more normal, so I should have enough energy to sit at a computer once in a while.
2- My job also is during almost all of the library hours, so I can't get to the Internet.
3- The summer librarian wasn't here the last two weekends, so I couldn't even get online on my days off.
4- When I did finally get online, it was for a half-hour, and I had 62 e-mails. I've been swamped, and I'm still not done getting back on top.
5- I've been writing a timeline for my story. This way, I can look back and go, 'okay, Ryua first becomes friends with Hermionie in CH 6, book three', which is very helpful, but it took me six hours.
6- I have two new video games, and a whole lot of overdue library books I haven't read yet, so I have divided attention during my leisure hours.
7- And, most serious of all, and most basic, I have had writers' block. I've got a lot of the fifth book written, but I couldn't start this chapter. Now, however, I'm going to attempt it.
So, that's why I haven't updated, and I'm sorry if I don't get it up more than once a week. I'll try, but it's hard to write a story, and get it down to the library, on limited time, after a 9-hour day.
Snuffles and Studying
Ryua, Harry, Ron, and Hermionie trudged along the road in Hogsmeade, packing chicken and pumpkin juice. "Do you actually think Snuffles will talk to you if I'm around?" Ryua asked, shifting her pitcher of pumpkin juice.
Harry shrugged. "Maybe. I hope so, it seems really mean to make you lug that stuff all the way up here, then not have him talk to you."
"Well, this is where he said to meet him, we're about to find out." Hermionie said, putting her plate of chicken on top of Ron's.
Sure enough, Harry spotted a tail, ear, and one back leg of what was obviously a very large dog sticking out from behind a fairly small bush. "Snuffles? It's us, are you asleep?"
The dog unfolded itself, shaking out a few brambles, but stayed behind the bush, not quite growling. "Oh, Snuffles, don't be like that, she's our friend."
"No, I understand." Ryua sighed. "I'll go do something properly evil instead. And don't worry uncle, I didn't poison the juice." And she walked off, feeling slightly sad, but not really. She'd just go pick a fight with someone in the Hogshead, or something.
(Sirius Black, Cave above Hogsmeade, Ten minutes later)
"Harry, what are you doing hanging around with a Malfoy? You know what they're like!" Sirius was not really amused. He hadn't much liked Narcissa, although she certainly hadn't deserved to marry that slimy excuse for a human. And the offspring took after the father, of course, it was obvious from a single glance, not to mention a smell. That girl smelled like dark magic and pain, bad news...
"Oh, Sirius, Ryua's not like that!" Harry was quick to defend his friend.
"Yeah, she's much nicer than Draco..."
"Or her parents." Hermionie said as Harry set Ryua's pitcher of pumpkin juice on a convenient stone.
"And anyway," he said, "she already knew a lot about you. She's been filling us in on stuff no one else seems to think we should know, or what they don't know in the first place."
Sirius groaned. He's so naive... "Harry, she's a Malfoy. The entire Malfoy family, all it's branches... they all support Voldemort. Always have, always will. Same as the Lestranges, Crabbes, Goyles, Blacks..."
"You don't support him, though."
"That's not the point." Sirius snapped, picking up a chicken leg, one of the ones his niece hadn't touched, just in case. "I just want you to watch your step, Harry. With Peter running around loose, Voldemort's got at least one supporter free. And once he's back to full strength, the Malfoys'll be the first ones back on their knees."
Ron, who had also grabbed a piece of chicken, said, "I dunno, I can't see her kneeling to anyone..."
"...I think she'd sooner die. And stop eating Sirius' chicken, Ron, you can have more when we get back to the castle." Hermionie removed the platter of chicken from Ron's reach, settling back down between Ron and the food.
"Fine. Just be careful, alright? Voldemort doesn't exactly let his followers have much of a choice in the matter. Now, what's been happening at school, I want to know everything."
They did fill Ryua in on the conversation, of course. She was a little sad that Sirius would be quite so against her, but that was life. She was glad Harry had an adult to talk with, however, she understood completely.
And so they started teaching Harry how to jinx, curse, hex, and otherwise disable anything that might come his way. Not only would it probably make Sirius happy to know Harry could defend himself, Ryua was glad to finally be able to help Harry with his tasks. She suggested no end of curses, and Hermionie wrote down some of the more basic ones, especially ones they'd be able to find in a library to study. Harry proved to be a fairly good student, and Ron and Hermionie came to dread his practices as much as Ryua's demonstrations.
"Oh, quit whining you two. We haven't hit you with anything that bad." Ryua said, hands on hips as Ron clambered up from the corner where Harry's Impediment Jinx had just thrown him.
"Not that bad?" Ron's expression was incredulous. "You try getting hit with stunning spells and jinxes and stuff over and over!"
"Well, if you don't believe me, I could always demonstrate some worse ones..."
"Ahh... no, that's just fine, Ryua, Harry'll be just fine with legal curses, thanks." Hermionie clearly didn't want to get hit with any more spells.
"See Harry? Snuffles was right, she's dangerous!"
"Of course I am, Weasley, but only to people who deserve it..." Ryua said, twirling her wand casually through her fingers.
"Er... why don't we move onto shields, and we can curse you two for a while?"
Ryua grinned, "Okay, but you have to wait until I've taught him a shield charm."
"Wait. I thought you said you were rotten at charms..." Harry looked a little nervous.
"Not the ones that you can actually use for something."
"Hey, Accio's useful!"
"Yeah, I guess. I don't know what it is, but trust me, I can make a shield charm. Now, do you want an absorbent one, or reflective? Or, I read about that can inflict as much pain on your opponent as you have anger..."
"Er... I thought spells like that were illegal too."
Ryua sighed. Trust Hermionie to have read which shields were illegal. "Oh, fine, I'll just teach you a basic bubble then."
Two hours later, Harry still couldn't get a proper shield in place. After Ryua had hit him with a curse hard enough to knock him right unconscious for ten minutes ("I thought he had a better shield than that...") Hermionie had taken over. Ryua had taught him two different shields, and Hermionie and Ron had coached him through a third, and none of them seemed to work. "Well Harry, it's really up to you. I can sit here cursing you all night, if you want to keep practicing, but with luck, you won't need a shield anyway."
"Yes, you should be able to stun whatever it is from a distance, before it can attack you. Just keep those quidditch skills in practice, and dodge a lot."
"And if all else fails, mate, just run really fast in the other direction!" Ron piped up from the corner. Even he'd been able to shatter Harry's shield on the second try.
"Maybe you're right," Harry sighed, dropping the shards he'd been trying to weave into a shield. "I need rest more than anything."
"And we need to study for exams. Just because you get to goof off doesn't mean we can." And with that, Ryua left for her common room. Studying curses with the Trio had been a pleasant distraction, but the problem she'd been ignoring still remained. Tomorrow morning was her Charms exam. And she really didn't want to come home with a Below Average, which was what her mark was riding at now. She sat down in her customary fireside chair, and pulled out her textbook, determined to pound the information into her head.
Three hours later, she realized she'd been reading the same paragraph about animal noise charms for a while now. Well, she thought, I can't do any more tonight, that's obvious. Hopefully, Flitwick will put a lot of stress on trivia and shield charms than actually charming things... otherwise, I'm screwed.
"Ryua, if you'd come up here please." With a slightly sinking feeling in her stomach that she refused to let onto her face, Ryua walked up to Flitwick's desk. She'd woken up nervy that morning, and forced herself to eat something (she couldn't remember what) at breakfast, reviewing her notes the whole time. It appeared to have paid off for the written test, anyways; she'd known at least half the questions. Now, she just had to see what he wanted her to do for the practical. "Please make this dinner set dance into the sink, scrub off the dirt, and into the case. Avoid cracking the porcelain, if you can."
Ryua sagged. She'd hated the dishes unit. She hadn't been able to make it dance, clean, or put itself away. Pulling out her wand resignedly, she tried weaving the proper spell. Hermionie's and Flitwick's voices echoed in her mind, sculpting her hand movements, setting the proper incantations in her mind. Unfortunately, none of this seemed to have much effect. Taking a deep breath, and trying to ignore the snickers from the class, Ryua tried drawing directly through her magic, like she'd learned this summer. She pulled at the now upset pool of silvery power, but couldn't connect it to her spell, it kept slipping stubbornly back down into the pool. She looked over at the pile of dirty dishes lying so innocently and unmoving at the end of Flitwick's desk, seeing him shift as if to call her off the test.
Her sense of pride exploded within her. Straightening up, she stepped back a few paces, whipped her wand down at the dishes, and snapped, "Arachipedia!" Eight furry legs sprung with surprising speed out of the bottom of everything on the desk, even the forks and knives, and one of Flitwick's quills that had gotten left too close. She'd found that particular curse in a book about playing on someone's greatest fears. It was meant for use on an arachnophobe, like Ron.
"Tarrentallegra!" she hissed, flicking her wand at them. For some reason, she was having no trouble with this dancing spell, as the cutlery and china started jerking around the desk, reluctantly following her wand down the cleared path. She immobilized the quill with a quick word, realizing Flitwick probably wouldn't like his quill dunked in soapy water.
Once the last of the spoons had toppled into the sink attached to the end of his desk, Ryua paused for a moment. Now, what curse can I use to fake out Scurgify...ah. "Incendio!" As the water heated up to a boiling temperature, she said, "Banshichante!" That one had come out of an old book one of her great-great-great grandfathers had stolen from some Court Magician in France, and as for the effect... Everyone winced as a piercing sound, somewhere between a banshee's scream and an insect's hum penetrated the room. Setting her jaw to keep her teeth from vibrating, Ryua forced the sound into a funnel aimed at the sink. After twenty seconds, she couldn't stand it anymore and released the spell, refusing to sigh with the rest of the class in relief. With her left hand, she used gesture magic to lift up the dishes which had been blasted sonically clean.
"Wateraga!" A blast of water from her wand hit the dishes she was still holding in midair, which she then set down on the still jerking spider legs. She directed them into the box with a flick of her wand, then said, "Finitae Incantatum." The legs stopped jerking around, then dissolved, leaving a jumble of clean plates in the box.
"Well. That was... creative."
"But sir, she didn't use a single charm!" Draco whined from his desk. When Ryua glared over her shoulder at him, he gulped and shrank into his seat.
"Well, that is quite true, Mr. Malfoy. Although, I see all of the dishes, clean, intact, and in their case. That does fulfill the requirements I set for the test, doesn't it?"
Ryua wouldn't let herself get excited, not until she heard him say it...
"Although your unorthodox methods weren't what I had intended you use, you still completed the test, in a fairly respectable time, although not as fast as if you had started immediately. Therefore, I see no reason not to mark your practical exam as an Above Average. Miss Malfoy, you may take your seat."
Ryua sat down hard in her chair. She couldn't believe it. She couldn't bloody well believe it. She'd cursed her way through a Charms Final Exam, and gotten a very acceptable mark, and by the cheerful expression on Flitwick's face, had impressed him. If she could keep doing the written work properly, and use hexes to accomplish the actual result... maybe she could pass her OWL next year after all. Draco, who had shattered two glasses and a plate through carelessness when they waltzed off the desk, didn't look nearly so happy.
