Chapter Fourteen

Battle Formations

Roman Vestrit threw a curse at Alicia Ponder, a seventh year in Gryffindor House. She deflected it, and it bounced off to strike Poppy Lambert, Hufflepuff's Quidditch Captain. She gasped and fell back, though the power of the spell had disappated. Her older brother Colin was captain of Ravenclaw's team, and he was hexing his fellow seventh year Daphne Quill. She fell over, stunned, and he turned around to raise his eyebrows at Zacharias, who nodded approvingly.

Just then, Colin's teammate Saul Worthey hit him from behind with a Levicorpus spell, and he rose into the air with a shocked look on his face. Zacharias opened his mouth to yell at Worthey, it wasn't sportsmanlike, but Greg Kilburne got there first.

"Good, Saul. If you're up against someone more experienced than you are, surprise is all you've got."

Zacharias was annoyed, but couldn't deny that Greg was right. He kept his mouth shut.

Saul spun around and threw up a shield to protect him as Slytherin Barret Proust tried to hex him.

"Excellent, Saul," Professor Kilburne said enthusiastically. Then he spun around with an angry look. "Jack!" he shouted at his brother, who was raising his wand against Head Boy Chester Michaels. "Don't you dare use that curse during a lesson!"

Jackson narrowed his eyes at his brother, and Zacharias realized the boy didn't really like having Greg as his professor and Head of house. But it was Chester who spoke up.

"I told him he could, Professor. We wanted a chance to practice a few more dangerous spells."

Professor Kilburne's mouth drew into a sharp line. Zacharias answered Chester, keeping one eye on Colin and Daphne's progress.

"I know you think you're going to need those spells, but do not use them without our permission during the lessons that Professor Kilburne and I have agreed to give you. I don't want to send you up to Madam Pomfrey in a bucket, understand? You do not have practical experience defending yourself against spells like that, and until you do, don't throw them around."

Jackson and Chester nodded at Zacharias soberly.

Alicia Ponder, left on her own when Roman sportingly agreed to partner briefly with Head Girl Nancy Booth, whipped her wand around and hit Hufflepuff Chaser Algernon McDougal with a perfectly executed Bat-Bogey hex. Professor Smith started laughing, fond memories of his own schooldays dancing through his head. He thought wistfully back to the brief glimpse he'd gotten when Ginny Weasley had done that to Draco Malfoy. That stopped his laughter almost immediately. Dumbledore's Army, they'd called themselves, all proudly ready for battle, as they'd thought. Then they'd started dying. And now here he was trying to equip another "army" because somehow Thomas Tyrell continued to elude Aurors and everyone was afraid it was starting again.

Zacharias had been adamant when he'd agreed to start these lessons with Greg. Sixth and seventh years only. He refused to see thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds being trained in combat. They could bloody well stay out of it this time. This time, children weren't going to die.

"All right, everyone!" he shouted, casting a glance up at the horizon. "It's getting dark, that's enough, let's sort everyone out and get inside!" They'd decided there was less of a chance of destroying priceless artifacts or children's limbs outside. But it didn't do to be out after dark these days. Zacharias shivered as he herded them back into the castle.

---Break---

Drew felt gratefulness sitting warm in the pit of his stomach as he saw Hagrid's outline in the window of his hut while he led Ran to the greenhouse. Hagrid was keeping an eye on them as he escorted the boy across the grounds. Ran was nearly doubled over and gasping with every breath, Drew trying to hold him up with one arm and hold himself up with the other. He knew Ran was used to this moment, but it still twisted his gut to watch it. He wished he didn't have to, but they didn't want to leave Ran alone at all, not even when he was transformed. He was going to sit up in the greenhouse with Ran all night.

He looked up at the dark sky and glared at the full moon as Ran stumbled and moaned. He hated seeing the boy like this. He saw movement at the corner of his vision and spun quickly, but it was only Nymphadora Lupin patrolling the grounds—her husband was likely hiding out in one of the other greenhouses. She started moving toward them, but Drew lifted his hand away from Ran for a moment to wave in reassurance. They'd be fine without her. He finally got Ran into the greenhouse, and Ran crawled away to curl in a heap under one of the tables. He panted, twitched, and then suddenly hair sprouted from every inch of his skin and his panting became a low snarling noise. A moment later, and a werewolf pup was unfolding itself from the floor and getting gracefully to its feet, licking its lip and revealing a row of gleaming, yellowish teeth.

Drew's heart jumped, but Ran simply trotted forward and nudged him to let him know that he was fine. "All right, then," Drew said. "Are you ready?"

Ran yipped, and Drew pulled out his wand.

"Let's get to work. First, we'll work on dodging my spells. Obviously, you can't use a wand right now, and I don't want you to be helpless. With all the playing we've been doing, you pretty much know a hundred ways to take someone down, but there are other things you'll need to do."

Drew made suggestions for quick leaps, ducking, even a sort of rolling motion. Ran was quick as a werewolf, but Drew worked with him for a long time. He wasn't taking any chances. He felt a little guilty for this. McGonagall had agreed with Smith that no one under sixteen ought to attend the extra lessons, but Ran was in a unique position. Once a month, he was separated from the rest of the school and much more vulnerable. Even McGonagall couldn't object to teaching Ran how to defend himself.

Of course, teaching him how to disarm his opponent and get in the way of attacks on other students might be crossing the line. But really, what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

---Break---

Hagrid turned away from the window, only to poke his head out his front door. He waited until neither Tonks nor Lupin were in sight then swiftly lumbered up the hill to the castle. He was meeting Matt, Bear, and Basil in an empty classroom on the ground floor, where they assured him no one else would be coming this late in the evening.

He agreed with the kids that it was wrong not to give them some instruction just because they were young. Hagrid wasn't even planning to teach them a lot of offensive spells, mostly just defensive stuff they could use if they were being attacked. Hagrid honestly couldn't see this Tyrell bloke wanting to attack first years, but he was a nutter, wasn't he? If a first year happened to be in his way . . .

"Hagrid, thanks for coming," Matt greeted him as he ducked inside the mostly empty room. This room hadn't been used for anything in years, and now the only things in it were Matt and his two friends. They hadn't even told their other first year friends they were doing this. Basil had explained this when they'd come down to his hut to ask him for the lessons. If the other first years wanted extra instruction, they ought to think to ask for it. Basil wasn't about to jeopardize his own training by giving the information to loose lips. Hagrid was impressed by that, thought Basil was a very bright kid.

"Well, let's get started," Matt said with a smile.

Hagrid smiled back, and knew this was the real reason he'd agreed to do this. Matt was a Potter now. Who knew what that name would drive Tyrell to do?

---Break---

Maddy stared up the length of Pierce's wand and into his face, which was sober. She abruptly forced a pig's snout on herself, making Pierce jump in surprise, and she triumphantly turned her wand on him with a laugh. Lana shoved her shoulder, laughing as well.

"Pierce, how could you fall for that?" Lana giggled. "You already know she's an Animagus."

"At least we know it'll work," Maddy said, resuming her face's original shape and the laughter gone from her voice. She pushed a lock of blue hair back from her face and turned to the other students gathered in the room. "Come on, guys, we've really got to practice."

The rest of them were just sort of lounging around, and Maddy felt annoyed. But they got serious enough when she said something. Douglas and Morgan, who'd been leaning over something they were studying but really just playing with each other's hands, nodded soberly and took their wands out. The two other fourth-years they'd invited, Hufflepuff girls Sadie Greene and Sukhvinder Suresh, also stopped giggling and came to attention.

"We don't really know that many spells," Sadie pointed out as she faced Lana. "How are we supposed to practice what we don't know?"

Lana shrugged impatiently. "We'll work on what we do know. It's better than nothing. At least this way we'll be prepared."

Maddy noticed the sly elbow Morgan dug into Douglas' side. "What?" she asked him sharply.

Douglas and Morgan looked at each other and grinned. "We were watching the training session Smith and Kilburne were giving today," Morgan said.

"We took notes," Douglas added with a gleam in his eye.

Morgan plucked a crumpled piece of parchment from Douglas' robes. "Here we are. Spells. A few instructions from Smith on how to use them. We even wrote down a couple of effects we noticed, when they actually managed to hit each other."

Maddy caught Pierce's eye and they smiled grimly. "All right, then," she said. "Let's get to it."

---Break---

"Protego," Lysander Sorenson said lazily with an equally lazy flick of his wand. His sculpted features were marred with a frown. "Lark, you're not trying very hard."

Despite this accusation, sweat stood out on Lark's forehead, and she stared at her boyfriend with sober eyes. "I am trying, Lys."

"Trying not to hurt me, you mean," he replied. He shook his head. "We decided to practice because we want to get better, remember?"

"Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot, Lysander Caius Sorenson," she said sharply. "Look, it's kind of difficult to start throwing hexes at your boyfriend. I don't want to hurt you."

"I don't want to hurt you, either," he said, his voice softer now. "But I do want to improve. We're both pretty quick, we'll be able to defend ourselves against each other. I just don't think that's good enough. We need to be quicker, and we need to be stronger. That's not going to happen unless we're blocking spells with some force behind them."

"I know all that," Lark said, and she wiped a tear off her cheek. "I don't like this, Lys. This feels so weird. How can all this be happening again?"

Lysander felt a pang go through him as he saw his girlfriend struggle with her fear. She'd told him, once, that she used get up in the middle of the night to sleep in her younger sister's room, back when Voldemort was still in power, just in case someone came after them. Lysander understood, he hadn't let his brother out of his sight for nearly three years when they were kids. Well, they weren't kids anymore, and their younger siblings weren't really, either. Maybe there was a little more they could do this time.

He wrapped his arms around Lark, who pressed her face against him for a moment, seeming to gather some strength from the embrace. He thought he was gathering something from it, too. Then she stepped back, her face clear but no happier.

"All right," she said, lifting her wand. "I'm ready."

Lysander raised his wand as well. "Just pretend I'm coming for Lana," he said quietly. He kept Apollo in the back of his mind as they resumed their practice. It worked.