Chapter 5

Walking down to Herbology with Hermione, Dudley got his first proper look at the massive grounds of Hogwarts. It was enough to take his voice away for a moment – the forest at the very edge of the grounds, the forbidden forest he remembered from last night looking especially beautiful, but also dangerous. A small hut sat just next to it, with small amounts of smoke emanating from the chimney. That wasn't the way they were going, as the greenhouses are down the side of Hogwarts at the other end of the grounds, but he wanted to take it all in. Upon approaching the greenhouse with Hermione at his side, Draco Malfoy and his usual cronies, but including fellow first year Slytherin Blaise Zabini, decided to call out from behind after remaining pretty much unnoticed the whole walk there.

"Brave of a Mudblood to join in a wizard's duel as the second to someone like Potter. I bet you don't even know any magic yet." The blonde boy sneered at him while Blaise looked at him with a look of absolute loathing, but remained silent. Crabbe and Goyle, as usual, said nothing, choosing to stare at the pair menacingly.

"It's rather fitting that two Mudbloods would be friends, stick to your own kind, and Potter too, he acts like he's one of you filth." Draco spat at them.

Scared, but not really knowing how else to react, Dudley fell back on something that until recently he used a lot, his strength and size. After all Malfoy was smaller than him so he could easily take him in a fight.

"Harry gave me some pointers last night", the boy bluffed. "I can punch you harder than he did, do you want to take that risk?" At once Dudley felt more at home intimidating people. Or at least he would have if the look on Blaise's face didn't get, if at all possible, even more loathing.

"You think your filthy Mudblood fighting holds any weight against a wizard's magic?" Blaise snarled, like a cornered animal, and drew his wand. "It's time someone taught the pair of you your places."

"Oh, honestly I've had enough of this, Flipendo." Hermione intoned and, to the amazement of all there, the quartet of Slytherin boys were sent away and the two muggle born students left quickly as to not earn Snape's ire for fighting, or rather defending themselves, outside of the common room.

Their haste was all for naught, as upon finishing their lessons for the day and returning to their respective common rooms, Dudley was stopped by Professor Snape, who had also sent for Hermione to find out what happened, so he could decide who to punish. Dudley however felt like a man being led to the gallows, knowing he wouldn't see tomorrow. Snape's office was very bizarre with jars and vials of, what Dudley could only describe as, "gross stuff".

"Before Miss Granger gets here, I want to take this moment to remind you of the little talk I gave the House last night, in which I strictly said not to fight outside the common room. Did you decide the rules don't apply to you, Mr Dursley?" the potions professor asked him in a relatively calm voice, considering the horror stories he had heard during mealtimes while others would talk. He had yet to see Harry at mealtimes and so listening was all he was able to do.

Dudley decided on honesty, an unfamiliar tactic, but seemingly the best one.

"This morning I woke up with the word Mudblood carved into my forehead while I slept by one of the Slytherins [my housemates] and I decided I had to put up with it, being unfamiliar with any level of magic [to get rid of it], but happened to bump into Hermione and she performed a perfect healing charm, 'apiski' I think it was." He went to continue, but a gentle knock sounded at the door and Snape told them to enter.

Hermione entered the office with a look of dread plastered on her face, but nonetheless looked determined to get through this without incident.

"Mr Dursley was informing me of your usage of the Episkey healing charm to help rid him of some rather... upsetting injuries this morning. Can you confirm this?" he inquired, suspicious of their whole tale.

"Yes, Professor Snape Sir, I couldn't let a friend go in front of everyone like that if I can help it. It's just not right, sir," she answered almost confused. "Then after breakfast Dudley and I walked down to Herbology only to be followed and antagonised by Malfoy and his crew and almost cursed by one of them." Hermione went on for a few minutes like this explaining in entirely too much detail culminating in the retelling of her successful casting of flipendo, until she was interrupted by the potions Professor.

"You don't deny the casting of a spell on a group of Slytherin first years then? Knowing it was against the rules you still chose to disregard that little fact, didn't you?" he asked rhetorically already "knowing" the answer.

"But professor, I believe the boy who nearly cursed the two of us is the boy who carved Mudblood on Dudley," She countered.

"She's right Professor he was looking at me with pure hatred and even hissed at us," Dudley corroborated her story.

"Perhaps the two of you would like to give me your memories and we can clear this all up?" he cut across the two of them. "I can't see any reason you wouldn't want to provide evidence." He finished thinking they would be reluctant to do such a thing, but was shocked when they raised no concerns and agreed to the extraction of solid proof.

Some time later and Professor Snape had exited the Pensive and told the two of them to leave. He left with them, only diverging to go to the Slytherin common room while they went to the library to begin their charms homework.

When arriving at the library, they went over to the section on wand movements and found a book titled "Incantations, movements, and intentions." Which was a bit overkill but interested Hermione enough where she 'had to read it. After a while she started reading a passage out loud.

"While Incantations and wand movements can help guide magic towards the result you desire, the intent is the single most important thing in spell casting. 'Casting a healing charm when you mean someone harm may lead to their damaged heart being replaced by a nondamaged heart, however they now have two hearts and a considerably shorter life span.' But of course the ramifications of casting a spell with counter-intuitive effects to the result you desire have scarcely been researched and as a result we know less about the impact of such a deviation from the initial intent of the spell that we believe any manner of results could be reached, depending on the relative power level and imagination of the spell caster."

Dudley was awed, even the rules and restrictions of magic can be overcome with enough mental skill and magical power. Maybe he could be the one to do some research into the art of intention-based casting and be able to use familiar spells with unfamiliar outcomes.

While Dudley was having this mental realization, Hermione went back to silently reading the earlier parts of the book detailing wand movements and incantations for their homework and deciding on how she could encourage Dudley to also do extra work with a few inches of parchment on intention, not knowing just how eager he would be to study more into this unrehearsed aspect of magic.

Helping Hermione find her other friend's toad really was the best outcome of his train ride he could have hoped for.