Chapter twelve

Training

The next day, was the first day of DA training. They all met up in the Room of Requirement for Harry's first lesson, Disarming.

All the humans had lined up in front of a Training Dummy that carried the likeness of a Death Eater, it even had a wand to be able to be disarmed when the members casted the spell correctly. Neville was up first with Harry standing next to him. With a nod from his teacher, Neville flicked his wand in a circle and said "Expelliarmus!" but the spell backfired, causing his own wand to fly out of his hand and crash into the wall.

"I've got it!" Sparx called out as he flew away to retrieve the wand.

"I'm hopeless," Neville stated in a depressed tone,

"No, you're just flourishing your wand too much" Harry pointed out, "try it like this" he then flicked his wand in a smaller circle than Neville did and shouted "Expelliarmus!" and with a small flash from Harry's wand, the wand the dummy was holding flew out of the dummy's hand and to the side.

Spyro and Cynder watched the class from the side and were happy to see everyone improve on the spell, though Neville still had trouble with it. Eventually, Harry took a break and sat on the floor next to the dragons.

"You are doing extremely well with this teaching job Harry," Spyro complimented, "they all seem to really understand the spell now"

"Thanks, Spyro" Harry smiled at them, "I was just wondering if you two have any wisdom or magic that we could teach them at some point?" Cynder looked up at this, as she had hardly slept a wink that night trying to think of different defensive styles that could help the DA against the Grublins, should they turn up.

"Actually, I have been thinking," she started, "they are only learning how to defend themselves with magic, but that won't be enough if they were to be disarmed or if they were up against Grublins. But me and Spyro both know a fighting style called Dragon-Kata, and I am sure there could be a way of modifying it for humans" Harry thought about this for a moment before calling Hermione over and explaining Cynder's idea to her,

"that's actually really smart thinking, Cynder." She complimented, "I don't think I have ever heard of any wizard learning Martial Arts due to having magic at their disposal." She then pulled out a blank notebook from her bag, "how about we stay here after the lesson and you two can show me all the moves you know, and I can jot down ways that humans could do them?" Cynder looked at Spyro who nodded,

"I like the sound of that"

So, once the lesson was finished, and everyone else had left, Hermione pulled out the empty notebook and readied her quill as Spyro and Cynder targeted their Training Dummies. They had agreed that their skills that require wings would not be able to be replicated by humans, so opted to avoid those moves.

Cynder went first. She leaped at her dummy to gain a bit of height, she then smacked the dummy with her front left paw with such force that the dummy swayed so much it almost fell over but was stopped by another smack from the dragoness' right paw which started it swaying even more before she backflipped in the air to strike the dummy backwards with her hind legs. This combo sent the dummy clattering to the ground as Cynder landed as gracefully as a cat. She looked over at Hermione and was impressed to see that she was already jotting notes down in her notebook.

Once Hermione gave the thumbs up that she had gotten everything for that move, it was Spyro's turn. He instantly lunged forward and grabbed the dummy by one of its legs with his mouth, and with his momentum, the dragon was able to smash the dummy to the floor to his left, then his right, and then he started spinning the dummy around and around before finally letting go and sending it clattering to the ground.

Hermione was impressed, and she had a clear vision as to how humans could replicate those moves. It went on like that for about an hour, and Spyro and Cynder showed her a lot of different moves, from simple jabs to heavy hitting combo moves. After they had gotten everything they needed, they snuck out of the Room Of Requirement and whilst the Dragons went to Hagrid's Hut, Hermione headed to The Library in order to make Dragon Kata possible for the DA.