Chapter 22

The New Year

The rest of the month of December passed by pleasantly enough. Some of the time was spent catching up on some homework that had piled up toward the end of the previous term. The rest of the time was devoted to games of Wizarding Chess and Exploding Snap punctuated by Occlumency lessons from Dumbledore. Dumbledore assured Harry that he was making good progress, but things weren't going quite as fast as Harry would have liked. He was getting better at keeping Dumbledore out of his mind using the portrait trick, but he had a sneaking suspicion that any Dark Wizard trying to read his mind was not going to politely give him 30 seconds to focus on a portrait and then mentally erase bits of it until it was gone. Dumbledore assured him that with more practice, the time required would go down until the point that he would be able to clear his mind almost instantly, but Harry wished that time would come sooner, because only after he had mastered Occlumency would he able to practice the much finer art of Legilmancy so that he might be able to read the minds of some of Voldemort's trusted supporters. Still, his increasing level of proficiency in Occlumency did mean that he was now able to clear his head each night and not have to worry about Voldemort infiltrating his dreams.

On New Years' Eve night, as Ginny Harry, Ron, and Hermione were sitting together in the common room, Harry got a bit of cabin-fever. Ron and Hermione were rather too busy in deep conversation with one another (Harry felt that the only reason that they were not doing something more personal than conversing was that he and Ginny were still in the room) to be of much company to he and Ginny. Thus, Harry told Hermione and Ron that he and Ginny would be heading down to the kitchens to grab some food from the house-elves.

After he retrieved his invisibilty cloak from his room (it was already past curfew) he and Ginny made their way out of the portrait-hole.

"I'm not really hungry," observed Ginny, as they began to walk down the corridor.

"Yeah, me neither... I was actually thinking we might go outside for a bit," said Harry.

"Harry, it's really cold out there, and I didn't bring a cloak..." said Ginny.

"Never fear," said Harry in a voice of mock-masculinity as he revealed two warm cloaks (one each for he and Ginny) which had been concealed under the invisibility cloak.

"Well, all right then, you seem to have thought of everything. Except... Well... I'm sure Hermione would say it's too dangerous to go wandering around the grounds by ourselves at night for no reason..." said Ginny.

"I have a feeling that Hermione's probably too... busy with your brother right now to say much of anything," countered Harry.

"Ooooh, I don't even want to think about that. They're probably snogging right now, aren't they?" asked Ginny, in a tone of exaggerated disgust.

"Probably. But, what do you say, will you go for a walk with me? It won't be dangerous if we're both out there, it's not like Voldemort's lurking on the Hogwarts grounds, and we won't meet Malfoy or anybody out there, he's still home for the holidays," said Harry.

"Oh, all right," Ginny conceded. "I wouldn't want to be controlling or anything... I'm just glad you're letting me in on this bout of rule-breaking."

When they left the common room, it had been about 11 pm, so by the time they made it out to the grounds, it was about a quarter after. The moon was nearly full, and was shining brightly on the light layer of snow that had fallen recently.

"Romantic, isn't it?" asked Ginny, after they had walked for a few minutes in silence, looking at the starry sky.

"Yeah, it's hard to believe in evil on a night like tonight, isn't it? Hard to imagine that someone out there wants you and me dead," said Harry. He was aware that he had probably ruined the mood, but he was sharing his emotions, which was, as he understood it, what Ginny wanted. She told him so often enough anyway.

"Yeah, well... Really, he only wants you dead. I mean, he'd kill me eventually if he took power, I'm sure, because dear old Dad likes muggles too much, but as of yet I don't imagine he even knows my name," said Ginny, laughing lightly.

"That's what I like about you, Ginny," said Harry, grinning. "Er, well... one of many things, anyway. You can find humor in the darkest places."

"Yeah, well... Only because I know he'll never really take power. You might be surprised to know this, but I'm actually more confident of that now that I know about the prophecy. I really can't think of anyone more suited than you to be the one to face the Dark Lord in the end. You've taken him out of power once already, haven't you? And I'm sure by the next time you face him, you'll have learned enough to finish him off properly," she said, smiling again.

"Thanks Ginny. You're taking this better than I thought you would. Better than I am, maybe," he said thoughtfully.

This was more sentimental than Harry usually got, Ginny reflected. Perhaps having such a caring, sensitive girlfriend was helping him to open up more than he usually would, she thought with a small smile to herself.

"You know, I don't know if I tell you this enough," said Harry, seriously, "but you're really the best girlfriend I could ask for."

Uh-oh, thought Ginny. Things were getting a bit too sappy now. He might tell her he loved her if they weren't careful, and she wasn't quite sure she was ready to hear that. Yes, she reckoned she loved him, to the extent that she had it worked out what exactly that word meant, and she thought that he loved her too, but she still wasn't ready to have it all out in the open yet. It put too much pressure on the situation, she thought. Better to just relax for a bit and have a fun, school-age relationship for awhile.

And so, in a timeless maneuver, she brought things back down to a school age level by saying, "You're an all right guy too," and suddenly reaching down and scooping up a handful of snow, quickly packing it into a ball and throwing it at Harry before he had a chance to react.

"Cheap shot!" complained Harry, as he bent down to scoop up a bit of snow as well. Ginny took this time to retreat a few steps. As Harry threw his snowball, she ducked down, allowing it to soar over her arched back, as she packed another snowball. They ran around the grounds, making enough noise that they had occasion to wonder whether they might not end up waking Hagrid in his cabin.

After they had run themselves pretty much to exhaustion and were beginning to remember just how cold it was outside (especially with snow covering one's cloak) Ginny glanced at her watch. "Ah, three minutes to midnight..." she said.

"I'm not sure whether I can kiss you... You might just be using this as a ploy to get close to me so that you can drop a snowball down my back," said Harry teasingly.

"I'm sneaky, but I'm not that sneaky. How about a snow-truce for the rest of this year?" she asked, putting an effort into making her voice sound innocent.

"Er, well... it's against my better judgment, but all right," said Harry, and as midnight approached, so Harry approached Ginny. He was rewarded with a spectacular kiss to ring in the new year.

Two days later, the term started again in full force, and with the first Tuesday of the term, the Defense Against the Dark Arts dueling club had another meeting.

"The spell that I'm going to teach you tonight is rather complex. All the spells that we've been learning so far have been mostly pretty basic, as the focus of this club to this point has been speed, as is natural for a dueling club. However, I feel it necessary to teach this spell to you. I will caution you that if you ever find yourself in a real duel," at this point in the lecture, she looked over at Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, as it was widely recongnized that they were the four members of the club with the most probability of getting into an actual duel in the near future, "you should not use this spell unless you are confident of your opponents inability to turn it back against you. The best way to do this would be to disarm your opponent, or render him speechless using the incantation which I taught you during an earlier meeting."

She continued. "The incantation for this spell is 'lysiarmus,' and its effect is to break a wand, rendering it completely useless for good, which is why you wouldn't want this spell to bounce back at you. As wands are very powerful magical objects, the spell takes a lot of force to overcome this magic. For all practical purposes, it'd be much simpler to take the wand and snap it with your bare hands, but obviously you'll never get the chance to do this in an actual duel (unless you launch a disarming spell that gets your opponents' wand far enough away, but that's doubtful), so this spell is your best bet. Obviously, we can't practice such a spell in a fair duel, as we wouldn't want you all breaking your wands. Thus, I have struck a bargain with Fred and George Weasley and have consequetly come across a large number of fake wands," at this point, Tonks gestured at a box of fake wands, "which will turn into miniature rubber forms of various barnyard animals whenever they are broken. I apologize that no true duels will take place tonight, but it will probably take you all several attempts to actually break your opponents' wand. When I told them what I'd be using the wands for, the talented Weasley twins actually did manage to make these wands just as hard to break as the genuine article. Although they tend to use their smarts for jokes, they really can do some useful things."

They broke into pairs and began to practice the spell. Cries of "Lysiarmus" echoed throughout the room, but nothing else happened.

"You're going to have to focus harder than that!" encouraged Tonks. "Really want to make that wand explode into a barnyard animal replica!"

Harry and Ginny were taking turns holding a fake wand while the other shot the spell at it. On Tonks' instructions, the real wands were kept well out of range when this was going on.

After several dud attempts, Ginny was actually the first in the class to break a fake wand. There was a small round of applause from the crowd of increasingly frustrated students as the wand Harry was holding turned into a small rubber goat.

Harry, because of his naturally competitive nature, could not stand to be shown up for too long, even by his own girlfriend, and therefore put new focus into his attempts to break Ginny's fake wand. Hermione turned Ron's fake wand into a toy sheep at about the same time as Harry turned Ginny's into a miniature rubber cow. Ron got his next, and after that much of the rest of the club struck successes too. By the end of the meeting, each student had broken several wands, and felt confident that they could actually use this spell in a duel.

"Congratulations," said Tonks, as they all prepared to leave the classroom, "but I would caution you not to use this spell except in actual combat with dark wizards, as the penalties for using this spell on, say, a random Slytherin walking down the corridor, would be rather severe. Wands are very valuable and thus, while this spell is not on the level of "Unforgivable," it certainly could award you some hefty legal trouble if used inappropriately."

Harry left the club that night confident in the knowledge that having Tonks as a DADA teacher this year would help him next time he was in a duel.

A/N: Ew... The first part of this chapter got rather sappier than I had intended, but I'm going to put it up anyway. I have finally come to terms with the fact that I have no control over where this story goes... I'm not steering, I'm just recording what comes into my head... Oh well... By the way, as this update would suggest, I have decided now that I shall definitely continue with this fic, and i hope to update both this and the parody fairly regularly between now and mid-July when Book 6 appears. It currently appears that this story will have 8 more chapters (unless something really unexpected makes it into my head), so I plan to update this story (hopefully) at least once every three or four days. As always, reviews are encouraged, because not only does it give me more motivation to write, it also helps me to know what i'm doing right and wrong with this fic. By the way, thanks very much to Old-Crow, Mearas, and Phoenix3790 for the encouraging reviews, and phoenix, i hope this was quick enough for you : )