Disclaimer: I am making zero dollars and zero cents in the production of this. No money for me. I don't own Harry Potter, the characters therein, or the ideas that are expressed through any of the books in that series. I am poor, and once again ask that you please refrain from suing me.

Strategy is Everything

Harry Potter walked into defense against the dark arts class with a pessimistic outlook on the entire thing. They were going to be once again learning nothing of how to defend themselves and instead be learning about why it is important to learn that type of thing. This was the reason that he had wanted to start Dumbledore's Army. It was because they never learned anything that they could use to save themselves in this class anymore. It was all theory work and learning about how in ancient times one wizard used a spell to save himself and another used a different spell. It was like learning history of magic, only on a narrower scale.

He looked around the room to see that all of the desks and chairs were now gone. He also saw that the few of his fellow classmates who had already arrived where as shocked and confused as he was about this one. He looked around the room for their professor, Clarissa, and couldn't spot her. She was probably in the study that was attached to the class. In any case she wasn't here so he had no one to ask about what was going on other than the students who were there. They all looked too confused to give him any answers anyway.

"Blimey! What is this!" Ron said as he came into the class, "Shouldn't there be desks and that sort of thing?"

The door to the study opened and the blonde haired, green eyed, professor stepped out of the study smiling before she answered Ron's question, "Desks would only get in your way, and I doubt that you would find desks in a situation where you were put against a dark wizard."

Hermione had followed Ron into the classroom and looked around slightly less shocked than everyone else. She had assumed that eventually they would some training like this. It was only natural that this would happen at some point. It wasn't going to be like last year where they had learned nothing about defending themselves. Their learning wasn't being gauged and lowered by the ministry this time. Of course there had been that chance that they still wouldn't' be learning anything, but it was a small one. It looked like the class had been set up into something to simulate battle conditions.

Ron looked around and then over to Hermione, "'Mione…what exactly is going on here?"

Hermione smiled softly and patted Ron on the back. He may have been great at comforting her and making her know that she was an important person in the Gryffindor house, but he wasn't always particularly quick on the uptake. She knew he would catch on fairly quickly when the teacher started explaining things in a little bit more detail. It looked like today was going to be another lesson in wizard dueling.

Clarissa cleared her throat softly, "Alright, I realize that some of you are still just coming in, but allow me to explain this so that you understand what is going on. I'm sure the students that arrive late will pick up rather quickly…" She smiled as she looked around the class.

Blake was leaning against a corner, his arms crossed over his chest. He remained completely silent. Harry had seen him standing there when he had come in. He hadn't bothered to go over and talk to him, even though the boy looked like he needed someone to talk to. It looked like he had a fair deal of troubles going on in his life. Harry was an expert on troubles going on in life. That didn't mean that he was going to go over and talk to the boy though. He had enough troubles without trying to pick up someone else's.

"We are going to practice strategies in protecting yourself. The best way to do this is through trying to protect ourselves from each other." Clarissa spoke softly before looking up to see Draco wandering in late, "To provide us with an example I'll take Draco Malfoy…and who would like to participate in a little spar with Malfoy?"

Draco sneered as he looked out at the rest of the class, "Why don't you choose Allendale over there? He looks like he could use something to keep him on his toes."

Harry glared at Draco. It was obvious that he had been waiting for a chance to get back at Blake over that punch that he had received during the feast. This was the perfect chance for him to throw some spells and some cheap shots at Blake for making him look so stupid. What was worse was that there wasn't going to be a way for Blake to get out of it this time, and Draco wasn't going to get sent to anyone's office for being a little bit violent. This was stupid.

"How about I take you on instead, Malfoy!" Harry took a few steps forward, pulling his wand out and getting ready.

Clarissa held her hand up, "No. That just won't do. I do believe that Draco has chosen wisely. I am not going to encourage anyone to blindly charge into a battle when there is a chance that they can avoid it. I wouldn't encourage any of you to run into a battle."

Blake slowly stepped forward pulling his wand out and lining up with Draco for the duel. Draco smiled like a Cheshire cat. He was going to play dirty and Blake was going to suffer. That was the way that Draco did things. He was the expert at playing dirty. He wasn't a Slytherin for nothing. They were good at taking advantage of any situation and changing it to their liking.

"Now students. The goal is to disarm your opponent. Use any method that you feel is necessary in order to do this." Clarissa smiled as she backed away, "You may now begin."

Draco raised his wand and instantly spoke the disarming spell, "Expelliarmus!"

Blake pointed his wand straight at Draco as he started his spell, "Lumos!" The flash of light caused Draco to instinctively shield his eyes, causing his spell to go off into the ceiling. Blake spoke again, quickly before Draco could recover, "Accio, Draco's Wand!" Draco's wand quickly left his hands and came bolting to Blake who caught it and remained standing, his wand pointing at Draco, Draco's wand tightly in his hand, "I win."

Draco growled, "He cheated!"

Clarissa smiled softly and looked at Draco with her piercing emerald eyes, "And how was it that Blake cheated Draco? I simply told him to disarm you. I didn't say that he had to go about it in a specific manner. Ten points to Gryffindor for that amazing use of strategy by Blake by the way." She slowly walked over to Blake to collect Draco's wand, "This leads us into today's lesson in strategy. Lumos and Accio are simple spells that, as Blake demonstrated, when used together have the ability to disarm an opponent. Draco was most likely not expecting a combination of simple spells and was most likely expecting that his disarming spell would be met by another one. His failure to prepare for spells that usually wouldn't be used in combat led him to defeat. Both students did very well. Let's give them some applause."

The students in the room began to clap slowly as Clarissa brought Draco's wand back to him. Blake didn't waste very much time in heading back to his corner to stand and wait patiently for the rest of the class to begin. Harry watched Blake go back to the corner and lean against the wall. It was like he had known that this was coming and had made battle plans in his head long before it had ever started. The last things that would have gone through Harry's mind when he was in the middle of a battle would have been charms as simple and apparently useless for combat as Lumos. He sighed. It didn't matter. Draco had been publicly humiliated and that was always something to enjoy.

Ron smiled softly as he looked over at Harry and Hermione, "You know, if he keeps that up, I think we might have to have another party."

☼

Ron slowly walked up through the stands of the Quidditch field. He looked out at the younger students hoping to fill the vacant positions. He looked down at his clipboard. First was a few of the younger students trying out for positions as chasers Ginny was one of them, and after seeing how well she had preformed last year when she filled in as seeker for Harry, she was a write in. Ron sighed as he leaned back on one of the benches and watched as the new tryouts flew around, passing the quaffle to each other. This was showing the skill in passing and catching. Ron took a few notes of the more notable students. It wasn't even like he wanted to job of team captain, but he had been told by McGonagall that he got the position. It wasn't like he was going to turn it down then.

"How am I supposed to do this? This doesn't say anything really. I need to put them up against someone so that I can show them what they'll be up against…I can't tell if they are going to freak out when someone comes at them or not based on this…" He sighed softly, "I might as well just be picking at random…" He watched as one of the students tried to get fancy and dropped the quaffle, "Well, that eliminates one…"

He was slowly dividing the papers into piles. One was of students that, while showing potential, weren't what he was looking for. Another was of all the students that he wasn't sure of. The last one had Ginny in it, and was where people would go if they were going to get in. Ginny was probably their best bet for one of the Chasers. She was fast, and she was in a state of controlled recklessness while she was playing. She was perfect to dive right into a game and not worry if she got hit.

He looked through the other lists of positions that were going to be filled. No one could compare to Harry when it came to seeker. No one was going to be taking his keeper position away from Ron. That meant that there were two possible positions open for Beaters. He sighed softly and looked at people applying for the position and then stopped. He stared at the name of the top page and read it out loud, very softly.

"Blake Allendale…" He spoke softly, "A boy of many talents that one is." He smiled, "This is perfect…with those two beaters from last year gone and the extra chaser here who isn't a complete clutz, we have a team…now I just need to find out if Blake is any good." He stood up, "Alright, Chaser hopefuls, clear the field and come here. I've got some talking I'd like to do with you. Harry I hate to ask you to do this, but I need you to fly around for our beater hopeful as a target, okay?"

Harry nodded. He was standing in the middle of the field now and took flight on his broom. Blake wandered out to the middle of the field and took to flight on his broom, his beater's bat in hand. Harry blinked as he looked down at Blake who was going a little bit of warm up while Ron talked to the chasers about what was going on there. Harry slowed down a little to be flying next to Blake.

"So, you're going to be our next beater?" Harry asked as he looked Blake over.

Blake smirked as he looked over at Harry, "That depends if our boy Ron decides that I'm any good or not. I'm sorry in advance if I do any damage with these bludgers though. I'm sure you understand that I kind of have to go all out, right? No hard feelings, eh?"

Harry smiled, "You'll do your best to hit me, and I'll do my best not to get hit. Sounds fair." He then bolted forward with a good deal of speed.

Ron had just finished explaining how he wasn't ready to be final in any of his decision making and that they would all just have to wait for him to tell them if they had gotten in. He watched as Harry zoomed off and hovered at one end of the arena, and Blake hovered lower to the ground at the other end. He opened the chest with the bludgers and threw one of them into the air. He was then amazed at how fast everyone started moving.

Blake was instantly at the bludger, dealing a hard blow to it and sending it in Harry's direction. Harry was quickly moving out of the way. Blake was chasing the bludger down to smash it again. It was all instantly put into action. You had to be watching constantly or you would miss what exactly was happening. Ron was baffled by how quickly everything was going. He didn't even need to watch the rest of this to know that Blake had enough skills that he was worth considering, and since he was the only one who actually wanted to be in the position, it made him part of the postion.

Blake was going up now and Harry was headed to the ground. Harry was going the right thing. He was trying to keep his distance. That wouldn't have been the way that seeker would have moved in an actual game, but it didn't matter. Beaters moved wherever they needed to in order to get the right angel. Blake was doing his part. And then it happened. Blake shot down, his bat pushing the bludger down in front of him. He was flying right at Harry. Harry looked up and thought about swerving. It wasn't going to matter. He hadn't seen a strategy like this before. He had no idea how to react.

Blake stopped just before he smashed into Harry and then just before the bludger would have smashed into the seeker knocked the bludger in another direction, "Heh, sorry, Ron. I would have hit him with it, but we can't have me breaking our star seeker's face, now can we?"

The rest of the team was completely silent, with the exception of Ron, who spoke four words, "That…was bloody brilliant!"

((AN: Sorry that this took so long to do. And to any of you hardcore Draco fans, you can't make me like him or stop having people hit him in my story, especially when it is Blake that is doing it. Why do you think I had him sign up to be beater? Next chapter is going to focus on Hermione again. There wasn't enough of her in this chapter, and there was no way that I could justify there being more of her. For all of my fellow Hermione fans, "Yay! Another chapter focusing on Hermione next!" Also for anyone reading this, I'd like to know your opinion on Clarissa.))