Chapter 5 - Lessons

The Tuesday after the Hogsmeade weekend, the trio were excited for their class with the Alfheim teacher. They had done one hundred questions of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. According to the speech given on the first day of that class, next they were going to start with weaponry or magic.

They were disappointed. It turns out that they had to listen to a lecture then they had a discussion on money management.

The next five lessons, they talked about different types of weapons. They also got to see the possibilities of what a weapon could do by watching demonstrations.

The week after that, they got to pick out which type of weapon they wanted to learn how to use.

They didn't get to actually touch a weapon until the week after, the last week of November. They were then assigned one of the weapons that they wanted for their use during class.

The majority of the class, including all of the Gryffindor boys, wanted to learn how to use a sword. Hermione, the only Gryffindor girl, decided on a bow and arrow. Each of the four offered weapons had at least a couple students wanting to learn how to use them.

Their first lesson with the weapons was how to take care of their assigned weapons. For this class, the group was split up by what weapon they chose to learn how to work with. Each group had at least one member of the Alfheim group as an instructor.

The last three lessons of the year in the extra class were about how to hold and the proper stances to be in when using the weapons.


When the students returned, the first two lessons of the second semester were a review of what they had learned about their weapons the previous semester.

Finally, on the twenty-eighth of January, they moved onto magic. Unfortunately, it started with a lecture.

"Hello ya'll. Today, we start learning about magic from Alfheim. We call our magic Majutsugo. It is divided into seven categories. These categories are element based. The seven elements are Dark, Earth, Fire, Holy, Illusion, Water, and Wind. Each of these elemental categories can be further divided into three to four groups. These groups are Benign, Malign, Recovery, and Utility. I think that from the names they are all pretty self explanatory. At this level, we'll teach you a Malign Spell from each of the categories of magic. Any questions?"

Several hands were raised. Tsuboi-Sensei called on one student randomly. "Are you really going to teach us dark magic? Isn't that illegal?"

"What we'll be teaching you is Dark magic. As in the element of darkness, the opposite of brightness. Not your type of dark magic, therefore not illegal. Any other questions?"

This time, only one hand was raised. "When do we start?"

"Next week," several people groaned at the fact that it would be another week until they got to work on magic in this class, "but, if you're dead set on starting today, that can be arranged. The first step is finding your magical core. Can everyone do that?" All he got were blank looks. "Okay, guess not. How do you use magic if you don't even know what a magic core is? That was not a rhetorical question. Someone please answer."

Hermione tentatively raised her hand. At his nod, she spoke. "Well, we use wands to channel our magic, Tsuboi-Sensei."

"Oh, so you guys can't do wandless casting?"

"We can do Accidental Magic which is wandless. Some really powerful people can use wandless magic, but not everyone can."

"I see. Well, that makes things more difficult. The only one of us that actually uses a wand sometimes is Asuna. When we cast spells, we just say the incantation and gesture with out hands. Since she is the only wand user among us, she will take over from here." With that final remark, Tsuboi-Sensei switched places with the girl with Weasley colored hair.

"Okay, for us, casting with a wand is pretty simple. You just point at your target and say the incantation. I'll go ahead and assume that you all know how to point a wand at things. Therefore, I feel it is safe to turn you back over to Kl- Tsuboi-Sensei.

"Alrighty, that was simpler than I thought it would be. Now, since you guys know how to channel magic, let's begin with the incantation. We will start with the element of Darkness, otherwise known all Dark Magic. The incantation for the simplest spell of that category is ya jan. For Earth, the incantation is do jan. Hi jan is for Fire. Se jan is Holy. Ma jan is Illusion. Zu jan is Water, and fu jan is Wind. Who can tell me what is different and what is the same with all of the incantations?"

He pointed to Hermione when she raised her hand. "They all end in 'jan', and they all start with two different letters. All seven categories start with a constant followed by a vowel."

He grinned. "A little more than I was looking for, but completely correct either way. Each of these incantations are two words. The first word designates the element. The second word tells the effects. All seven fire a projectile at your target. Each one of a different element. For the rest of class, ya'll can practice saying the incantations but do not cast. If you cast, you'll have a week's worth of detentions. We'll start on casting next week. That's all for today."


"Alrighty, class," Tsuboi-Sensei beamed at the class of fifth years, "today we start using magic. You'll have two class days to learn to cast the spell before we'll move on to the next spell. After all of the spells have been learned, we will review for your final in this class.

"As you can see, we set up a special place for you to practice your spell casting." Here, he gestured to the targets that had been set up along one side of the room. "Since there are more of you than there are targets, you'll need to get into groups of five, as we only have four targets and there are 20 of you. Every group needs to have at least two houses represented."

It took a while, but eventually, everyone was in a group of five with at least one member of two different houses in each group.

Looking around and nodding in approval, Tsuboi-Sensei continued, "We will go alphabetically through the elements. Who can tell me which element is first?" Picking at random, as most of the students had raised their hands, the student answered with Darkness. "Very good. Can anyone tell me the incantation for the spell?" This time, only Hermione and the Ravenclaws raised their hands. He picked one of the Ravenclaws. They answered correctly with ya jan. "Excellent, five points to Ravenclaw. Now decide what order y'all will go in. Y'all get one shot at the spell before switching to the next person in line. Y'all will rotate through your groups repeatedly until class ends. Whoever gets it on their first try gets five points, getting it within your first ten tries gets you three points. Anyone who manages it today will get one point. Begin once you've decided your order."