a/n: As should be pretty obvious at this point in time, I have failed at NaNoWriMo, even the fake NaNoWriMo that I assigned myself. le sigh However, I do have an update, sooner than usual. As I do not have a beta yet, there will be grammatical mistakes. Could you please point them out to me? One "A-man", who never logged in, mentioned many, many grammatical errors, but didn't specify where they were. Please do, readers.
Wit of the Raven
Chapter Eight
Over the next few days, Harry and his crew gradually became more familiar with each other, and set a time for practicing magic every other day together, and collectively pooling knowledge. Harry learned how to navigate to a site using a Circle, which was more difficult than it sounded, since it required drawing fifteen characters, each in a specific, and more often than not, differently colored chalk, that weren't limited to the English alphanumeric ones, but also included Cyrillic, Sanskrit, and Hebrew characters, in order to compensate for the much larger range of Hieroglyphics that were replaced a millennium ago. Thankfully, he could write down points on a small piece of paper and stick it to his Circle with the standard sticking charm, for later use.
On Wednesday, after a rigorous maths class, Harry's quartet played half an hour of four player ultimate frisbee, Harry and Daphne against Neville and Hannah. Harry and Daphne had won, after Harry proved to be an excellent runner, despite his obviously slight stature, and catcher of frisbees, and Daphne showed near perfect form in throwing frisbees, ending the game with a magnificent hammer. Neville and Hannah, however, had kept it a close game, keeping Harry's team off guard with seemingly random switches between short passes and long passes, and a willingness to dive to catch the frisbee.
A few second years had asked to play right before the free period had ended, and Daphne had lent them her frisbee, so that the four of them could play amongst themselves while Harry's quartet was in class. They had plans to meet after magic class, which the other group had howled in laughter after Daphne had mentioned their next class. "Have fun, kids," one of the four, one half of a set of twins in the group had encouraged, although his tone of derision gave Harry a certain level of apprehension for the course.
The four ran from the Fields to the entrance to the Great Hall, and over to where Dock, Smith, Kingsley, and Williams, another quartet that had formed in their class was seated. Their groups sort of formed an eightsome of kids, since the last group had seemed a little too aware of the necessary qualifications for attending the institution, and was, in a few words, filled with egotistical bastards. Dock had initially approached McAndrews as their Ravenclaw, but he had politely declined, saying that he preferred to study on his own, and that his field of research was a little too limited to really be of any use.
Sitting in the grass, and chatting with their friends, Harry was the only one who noticed their teacher arrive as he was practicing moving his eyes from farsighted to nearsighted and back to twenty-twenty. As the teacher swooped in on his windstaff , Harry tapped Neville on the shoulder, motioning towards him, and Neville quickly disseminated the information. The nine children, including the two groups and the loner, quickly stood to attention, while the last group kept on laughing and giggling between themselves.
The teacher, a tall, and well-dressed man quickly descended from his Windstaff, and quickly and quietly introduced himself as Nectarus and told the children who were quiet to adjourn to his room, which was room 28 in the North Tower, before flying off again, presumably back to the tower. The nine of them quietly got up and left stealthily, careful not to alert the other four to their absence.
After finding the North Tower, which was between R and G towers, they quickly found room 28, which was the only room that didn't have a class in it. In fact, it was completely dark, and after it was illuminated by a light charm from McAndrews, it was revealed that nothing was in the room except for four rows of seven chairs each, all facing a blackboard. Squinting, Harry saw that the blackboard was empty except for the rune Perthro in the lower left hand corner. He thought for a second, before taking a seat at a desk, and beginning to silently practice his optomancy.
The other members of his group chatted for a while, with only a few odd glances in Harry's direction, but after fifteen minutes, Dock's group and McAndrews left, assuming that the teacher was a total flake and had forgotten their class completely. A few minutes later, Hannah started trying to urge Harry to leave, but he in a fit of pique, he just ignored her, practicing suppressing the cones and activating the rods in his eyes, in order to see better in the light. After a minute of begging and pleading with the unresponsive Harry, the remaining three simply left the room, leaving Harry alone.
After half an hour's work, Harry had finally figured out way that he had to apply magic to force the cones to suppress themselves, and could activate the shorter, black and white wavelengths of rod eyesight within only a few seconds. He was working on activating and deactivating dark adaptation more and more quickly, when the teacher suddenly appeared in front of the blackboard. "You're very good, Mr. Potter," he rasped, before clearing his throat, and activating witch-lights on the walls of the room, and striding to the desk next to Harry, which he wandlessly transfigured into a teacher's desk, pushing the other ones out of their previously perfect arrangement, and sat down in the new plush chair,
"Thank you, Professor Nectarus," Harry replied calmly.
"Barely anyone gets it on the first try," he continued, "What tipped you off?"
Harry after finishing moving his eyes back into cone vision, he answered, "The rune in the corner, Perthro for silence and stoicism."
"Really?" he asked, seeming genuinely surprised. At Harry's affirmative nod, he noted, "Most people hear me breathing or see through my invisibility before they notice the rune, even though I had initially added the rune to make it easier. Have you learned the lesson?" he asked.
Harry closed his eyes, and exhaled slowly, before nodding. "Silence is golden," he said confidently.
The professor shrugged. "Close enough. It was actually 'Have patience, young padawan', but we can't all be perfect." Leaning back, and resting his feet comfortably on top of the desk, he asked Harry, "You ever hear of a magical threshold?"
Harry nodded. "It's where you can't use any more magic."
"You know how to make it larger?" The professor asked.
"Yes, professor. Practice, preferably with a core analyzer to avoid E.M.E." Harry responded clearly, remembering his lesson with Snape, and feeling satisfaction with his confidence.
"Damn, you're good," Nectarus said, laughing. "Well, I'll expect an essay on burnout and stuff by next week, at least a page, or 400 words, whichever is longer." Nectarus un-transfigured his desk, and shrunk and pocketed his chair, before turning to leave, as Harry groped around in his bag for his old essays.
"Could you wait for one second please, professor? I have a question about the essay," he asked. The professor nodded, and walked back over to Harry, sitting comfortably on one of the desks. Harry finally found his essay on burnout, and handed it in. "Is this satisfactory?" he asked.
"Prophetic much?" the professor grumbled. He sighed, and transfigured the teacher's desk again, re-enlarged the chair, and sat down. After skimming it over in a couple of minutes, he scrawled a big 'O' at the top of the paper, and handed it back to Harry. "Well, there's a threshold, and you can work to improve it, by practicing using your magic until you're almost out of magic. For example, when I was young, I'd practice by transfiguring pieces of wood into furniture, starting out small and getting larger as my threshold became higher. By the end of my Hogwarts schooling, I could transfigure a kitchen with a twig, I was so proficient and strong. That's the other way that you can more effectively use magic–become extremely proficient. That also comes with lots and lots of practice, but just knowing the theory is extremely helpful in itself."
Harry nodded, in understanding, before asking, "And what can you do now, Professor?"
Nectarus stroked his chin for a second, before responding, choosing his words carefully. "There are actually only eleven thresholds, in truth. You've passed the first threshold when you can first do controlled magic, and you can pass each consecutive threshold through practicing magic. When you pass every consecutive threshold, you'll experience a joy so joyous that it borders on painful, and you'll feel your magic grow. Typically, through practicing, you'll slowly build up a little bit of magic, but half of your total magic is gotten through passing thresholds. You can only pass through the third threshold after your twelfth birthday, the fourth after your thirteenth, and so on. You could theoretically pass through your second threshold right now. Understand?"
Harry nodded, and Nectarus finished, "Well, practice every night, and come back in three weeks, or when you pop your threshold. ."
Harry, chewing on his upper lip, asked, "Do you have a core analyzer?"
Nectarus nodded, and pulled a core analyzer out of the desk that he had transfigured. Harry looked at it skeptically, and Nectarus laughed. "This is how much I can do now. Go, Potter. It's 3:20."
Harry gave a little half-bow with his head, and headed towards the door. Right before he left the classroom, Nectarus called out, "By the way! Potter!"
"Yes, professor?" Harry called back, stepping back into the classroom.
"10 points. You're very good," Nectarus awarded, smiling.
Harry, astounded at his good fortune, thanked him, stammering, and nearly missed the admonition to not spoil it for the other kids while he was running out before the professor could change his mind.
He met up with his group on the lawn, playing frisbee with the twins' group. Seeing him, one of the twins gave a feral grin, and hammered the frisbee to his twin, before, pulling Harry off to the side. "So late from Magic class, Potter?" he whispered to Harry.
"Er, yeah," Harry responded awkwardly.
"Any other class, I'd think that you were giving the prof head, but Magic class, in the first few weeks, I just think you're good."
"Thank you, Mr. . ." Harry began, wondering exactly who this was, and where this was going.
"Fergo. I'm George Fergo, and my brother is Fred Graham. We're the Fog and Gof twins. Odd ones, though we don't really like to say who's up or down. It keeps you on your toes. But back to you, Mr. Potter. Figured out magic class on the first day. How did you spot Nectarus?"
Harry shrugged. "I didn't, I out-waited him. The rune for silence and stoicism was written in the bottom left hand corner."
George gave him a funny look. "And you just happen to know the rune for silence and stoicism, eh? Love the runes?"
Biting his lip, Harry shook his head. "I've been working on silencing wards for the past few days. Nearly all of them are centered around Perthro."
George stared blankly at Harry's face for a second, before smiling. "Both of us think that sounds good. You want to join the Vikings?"
Harry cocked his head to one side, and queried, "The Vikings?"
"Yeah, the Vikings. We're a Ladder. That is, to say, a secret society comprised of several different groups, passing information. There are other ones, like the Greeks, which we were temporarily part of, the Japanese, the Igbo, loads. We're centered around mischief, fun, and illicit dealings. The Greeks, which our older brother Charlie Weasley is part of right now, is Philosophy and the Arts. The French are high fashion and snobbery. You get the drift?"
Harry nodded quickly. "Yeah, I think so." He paused for a second, before asking, "Why do you and your brothers have last names?"
"Fog and Gof have always had different last names, and the last ones were our uncles, Gideon and Fabien. They died fifteen years ago, so mum knew that if any twins were born to her, they would be Fog and Gof ones. Weasley is our dad's name," he answered, pulling a small ball with golden wings out of his pocket, and releasing it for a second, before catching it again and hauling it back in.
"I . . . what?" Harry asked eloquently.
George gave him a funny look, before his eyes went wide. "You're a muggleborn and you came out of Magic class first in your class? Much better than usual."
Harry gave George a severe look. He was beginning to see that George was the kind of person who liked to jump to conclusions. "No, I'm not a muggleborn. I was just raised muggle."
George shook his head. "It amounts to the same thing, if you only learned about magic a couple of months ago. Bloody impressive. Anyways, to avoid running out, magical bloodlines run through blood, but also run through related blood, just in case, to a lesser extent. While the actual bloodline is strong, it sends signals to the related blood not to procreate, but when a bloodline dies out–off comes the lid, and the holder of the blood starts making that kind of baby. Baby pops out–or babies, in our case, and our blood starts sending the signal to stop making our kind of child. Capisce?"
Harry tilted his head, his face the personification of confusion. "Not quite. Your blood?"
George nodded seriously. "Yeah, my bloodline. See, bloodlines function matrilineally, or patrilineally, so your mother would have had a bloodline, as well as your father. You carry on your father's bloodline, which is his father's bloodline, and his father's father's bloodline, and so on. You have a sister?"
"No," he answered quickly.
George nodded in understanding. "So you carry your mother's bloodline, but can't use it at all. You're acting head of whatever your mother's line was. You know your mother's last name?" he asked.
"House Evans," he breathed, finally understanding Neville's comment.
George nodded again. "So if you have a daughter, then your daughter will be your wife's daughter, the next girl in line. If you have any successive daughters, the first will carry your mother's line, and you will be obligated to change her last name to Evans, and educate her in the Evans way as your mother would have seen fit. That happened for our uncles, who are sort of our fathers, and our mother had to pick up the slack."
"I think I understand," Harry said slowly, processing the information, "but what is the advantage of a bloodline? Why would you want it to stay alive?" he asked.
George seemed taken aback, but answered the question. "Well, bloodlines are full of all kinds of useful stuff. For example, our bloodline makes us odd twins, and gives us a sort of telepathic communication. There are also all of these neat tricks that only we can do, work with enchantments. You probably have a pretty passive one if you haven't noticed it yet, so I doubt it's going to be throwing fireballs, or walking on water."
Harry thought for a second, considering the Potter family history, and decided that it was probably something Herbology related. "Maybe, say, an affinity to, like, charms, or transfiguration," he asked, being intentionally vague, keeping in mind the admonition to keep secrets.
George nodded happily, and began again, "Yeah, you've got it. Really quite efficient, eh? But back to the Vikings. You want in? We have one group in every year, so that there isn't any infighting, and we don't have a group for your grade yet, so you guys could join. If you disbanded, all bets would be off, though, and you'd be the only person still in."
Harry logged this in his brain, and asked, "So what do you get out of it? And us?"
"We pass the Viking traditions on to the next generation, m'boy! That and camaraderie. You get our knowledge, and books." He seemed to think for a second, before asking, "Do you know what the books are?"
Harry shook his head no. "Assuming that you're not talking about regular books, then no."
George nodded his head thoughtfully. "Yeah, there are certain books, which you gain access to through another rite of passage. We have some of them. You want to obtain them. They're very, very good news."
Harry began walking back to the frisbee game. "I'll have to talk it over with my teammates." George nodded, and walked back over to his brother, who tossed Harry's team the frisbee, and motioned for his group to move out.
"What did he want, Harry?" Neville asked. As they got to know each other better, they had gradually switched over to first names, instead of last.
Harry described the Vikings invite, leaving out why he was invited, in order to avoid spoiling magic class, and citing their quick formation as the reason for why the Vikings were interested.
Neville gave a wide grin. "We're moving up in the world already, Harry! An invite to a selective club, and the Game in just two days! This is great."
Daphne briefly interrogated Harry on who they were, and her eyes seemed to light up at the words 'Fog and Gof twins', not at all allaying Harry's suspicions as to how the Greengrasses hunted, but in fact augmented them.
He shook off his fears, and they agreed to meet again at dinner. He walked back to his dormitory, and intending to read a bit, got out his book, when he remembered his circle. Slipping the book into his pocket, he got out his circle, enlarged it, and selected the "Games" option when he got the tiles to pop up again. Instantly, a question appeared on his screen: "Comfortable?" Harry thought for a second, before grabbing a pillow, and sitting down on it. The tile adjusted to his new height, and he selected the option: "Yes!". The next thing he knew, he was situated in small cottage, in a village off the coast of Air. After a few seconds of confusion, in which he wondered how he knew that, he realized that he had some memories that hadn't been there several seconds before.
"Whoa," he whispered. Thinking for a second, he 'remembered' that, of course, the memories had been implanted in his head by the innovative new AI system that incorporated some of the most recent Impo technology. A little more thinking along the line of innovation 'reminded' him that although he could only spend up to one hour in there per day, that one hour would be equal to four hours in game time. Incredibly excited at first, he thought of practicing magic as he had promised Nectarus in the world before he 'remembered' that magic, of course, worked completely differently in Element, the world that he was currently in.
Harry stood up from his pillow, walked to the door, and stepped out, when a giant tile appeared in front of his face, asking him to either choose a new face or keep his current one. After choosing his current one, almost as if acting under a compulsion, he walked towards the town square, which he 'remembered' walking to nearly every day of his life, but saw something peculiar there, a bored looking traveling Magi's school, with several different looking Mages lined up in front of it, looking quite bored. His recently acquired memories classified them instantly from left to right as Summoner, Necromancer, Illusionist, Druid, Sorcerer, and Healer.
Walking up to the Sorcerer, since he had only recently discovered that he was, in fact, a sorcerer, and the novelty hadn't yet worn off, he 'remembered' to bow low, and ask, "May I become your apprentice?"
The Sorcerer gave him a bored look. "You're not worth my time right now. Go clear out an infestation of giant rats. Once you've done that, and learned a spell, come back, and I'll let you become my apprentice."
Harry nodded, following his 'memory's' lead, and walked back to the house, thinking the particularly peculiar thought that this way of altering his memories was singularly boring and crude, although objectively speaking, it was quite intelligent, using the available resources. What other way would one alter memories more smoothly? Harry felt somehow smug, although he couldn't figure out why.
He sat down on his bed, and considered his possibilities. Should he do as the Sorcerer advised, and kill some rats? Or should he go off exploring into the wilderness? He rolled over idly, before standing up, and stretching. Looking back at the bed mindlessly, he noticed a book, and realized that even if he couldn't practice practical magic, he could at least study theoretical magic. Wasting no time, he quickly set to reading Purebloods are Better: For Mudbloods, and finished it in two hours. After quickly taking a break, in order to obtain his book on staffs, he returned to the OR, and spent the next two hours reading over the section on Windstaffs. Near the end of the chapter, he was rudely kicked out of the game, and presented with a tile in the real world that read in huge letters, "Get a life!"
Harry sighed, realizing that his four hours were up, and feeling particularly restless after four hours of straight studying, he picked up the shrunken Windstaff that he had taken to keeping in his room, and trudged outside to the fields. Picking a blade of grass, he used his staff to perform the minor transfigurations that he knew how to do, namely ones that simply stretched the item. In terms of difficulty of transfiguring, it went, size transfigurations, temperature transfigurations, inanimate to other inanimate, living to living, living to inanimate, and finally, the most difficult of all, inanimate to living.
Harry stretched the blade of grass to the size of a light green sheet and switched from his regular staff to his Windstaff, and after mounting it and flying slowly forward, and then suddenly pointing the nose directly up, he cast, "Sheetardium Leviosa!" Nothing happened, and scowling, he switched back to his staff, and repeated the incantation. Again, nothing happened, and he switched back to his Windstaff. He thought for a second, and muttered, "Bladardium Leviosa!" as he shot straight up again. The sheet of grass nicely followed the movements of his staff, and he found that it took less energy on his part than the same spell had with his regular staff.
Without losing the spell, he followed as Snape had directed he do, and looped the only Wind based spell he knew around the Leviosa, a charm designed for filling sails with air, Lehr. It was easier than it was with a staff, since there were several movements that were small on his wand, but pretty easy to execute on a staff. He got it after a couple of tries, and he was pleased to see the sheet billow in the direction his wand was pointing.
After playing around with the spell for a little while, he dispelled the charms, but left the huge piece of grass on the ground, figuring that it would decompose. Harry mounted his Windstaff, and worked on familiarizing himself with it, at first just practicing moving around slowly on it, and working from the ground up into the air, but later on going gradually quicker and quicker. There were some older kids out on Windstaffs too, but most of them were doing tricks, rather than accustoming themselves to its workings, and he decided against asking them for help. Self-reliance was good, he knew it.
An hour and a half of flying around passed, at which point he had begun to do less dangerous versions of the stunts that he saw the other kids doing, like small dives where he pulled out of before he was ten meters away from the ground, he noticed that the other kids were flying back to the castle. He checked the time with his other staff, having noticed that he could control his Windstaff with only one hand, for the slower speeds at least, and upon realizing that it was indeed time for dinner, he flew with them towards the castle.
Harry found his small group, and ate with them, discussing what they had done that afternoon. He discovered that they had all played around instead of studying, like he had asked them to, and in a fit of pique, lied and said that he had just explored the castle a bit, deciding to withhold the knowledge that he had cut his studying time by a fourth by using his circle, and how he had figured out how to cast some spells using his Windstaff. A few seconds later, he got a headache, and he moaned internally. He knew that he should be virtuous, even if his friends weren't, but he just couldn't. And after all, he justified to himself , Professor Snape had advised him to keep his secrets. He was just following advice.
His headache eased, almost reluctantly, and he soon forgot about it. In the middle of the meal, Dumbledore stood up from his place the Teacher's table, and after applying a voice enhancing charm, he announced, "Someone has parked his or her gigantic green sheet of grass blade on the lawn. This will most likely kill the rest of the grass, and could he or she please remove said gigantic green sheet of grass blade from the field after his or her meal? Thank you." he closed. He abruptly sat down, and dispelled the charm. Harry groaned, and banged his head softly against the table.
"I'll be right back, guys," he muttered, walking away from the table amidst laughter from his friends. He flew out to the sheet, and after briefly debating whether to shrink it, enlarge it until it was see-through, or cut it up into tiny bits, he opted to simply shrink it. With the image of curling up in the foetal position to present less surface area for Dudley to wail on in his mind, he shrank the blade, and quickly returned to the hall.
After the four of them had finished their dinner, they went to the practice room that they had booked for that night, in order to pool their knowledge. When they got there, they noticed that there appeared to be a mattress and pillow in one of the corners, a suitcase next to it. Neville laughed a bit, scornfully. "Must've been one of the Gryffindors who couldn't handle the initiation." Harry arched an eyebrow and Neville explained, "You have to face a fear to get into the common room, he must not have been able to take it."
A girl with short, angry brown hair, who seemed oddly familiar to Harry stepped into the room, and hissed at Neville, "I saw your initiation, boy, screaming at a few insects before closing your eyes and charging in. You can't close your eyes and charge through fire."
"Fuck," Neville muttered under his breath to Harry, "The only girl to have a reason not to pass the initiation, and she's camping out in this room."
". . . . And believe me, I tried," she continued, glaring balefully at Neville, "Why do you think my hair's so short? I had to lop it off after it caught on fire and wouldn't stop burning."
Neville seemed to be shrinking, as his shoulders sank lower and lower, and Harry took pity on him. "Well, since Neville clearly didn't know that you were, well, you, on his behalf, I'd like to say that he begs your forgiveness, and apologizes most humbly. Whether or not you accept our apologies," he began.
"I don't," she interrupted, angrily.
". . . we have booked this room for our practice," he continued, unfazed by her outburst, "And although we don't mind you being in here too, you will have to be quiet, and you will have to help us set up privacy wards."
She scowled, and after shrinking and performing a lightening charming upon her trunk, she stalked off, probably towards the library. "Who was that?" Harry asked a mortified Neville.
"Granger, Hermione. She goes back every day and tries something different to get through the first. Last night was going along the edges of the vestibule to get in, but her hair caught on fire, and she had to use a severing charm when she realized that the usual water charms wouldn't work." Gathering his wits again, he commented , "She does have a tremendous grasp of Water charms, though, especially since from what I gather, she's a muggleborn. Some of the charms she tried to use I had only ever heard of, like the localized rainstorm charm. One of the prefects had to knock her out and take her to the hospital wing before she could finish, she was so close to burnout. She's a driven sonuvabitch."
Hannah said, "That was the spell that made my mum only get an A on her charms OWLs! She tried it the other day?" Neville nodded, and Daphne let out a low whistle.
After around twenty seconds of uncomfortable silence, Harry decided to take charge. He knew to do it. "Okay, I'll start. Professor Snape, who I stayed with over the summer if I hadn't told you, thought that one of the most important spells to learn was the levitating charm, for which the object, followed by 'ardium Leviosa' is the spell. For example, for a feather, it would be Wingardium Leviosa. For this desk," he pulled out his wand, "It would Deskardium Leviosa." Thinking of kicking off the ground with his Windstaff, the experience of flying through the air, of quick movement, he overemphasized the wand motion, which was a small flick of the tip of the wand, for the rest of the kids' benefit.
The desk rose into the air, slammed into the ceiling, and Neville gave Harry a confident smile, as if to say, "I knew I was right with you, kiddo."
Harry was somehow slightly annoyed by that, although he wasn't exactly sure why, and continued to teach the spell. "As you could see, the wand movement is a slight flick with the wand, and the desire is to levitate an object. I overdid the wand motion, and you can see what happened with that."
"Harry has a peculiar problem with overpowering his spells, however," Neville interjected in a slow drawl. "So you might not get the same effects as he does."
"Try it," Harry instructed, not deigning to respond to Neville's comment. After around fifteen minutes, all of them got the spell, and could lift things as heavy as a desk, although not as strongly as Harry.
"Don't worry," he encouraged, "You'll get better with practice. Now, who wants to go next?"
Neville volunteered, and explained the Tor spell to Daphne and Hannah, with special attention to Daphne, who subtly encouraged it. Harry sighed, and worked on his optomancy, working on decreasing the time it took to adjust the rods and cones in his eyes, closing them and deactivating the cones, before opening them and activating them again. He tried first deactivating both of them before activating the rods, which seemed to work a little faster, and kept on going from there.
Once Daphne and Hannah got the hang of Tor, Daphne began to teach how to cast the disarming charm, Expelliarmus. "Well, you have to, uh, say Expelliarmus, and the motion is like so–" she moved her arm jerkily upwards, along with her arm, almost hitting herself in the face with her wand.
She laughed nervously, and Harry thought for a second, before casting, only moderately modifying the motion, so that he moved his off-hand in front of his face before jabbing his wand in an upwards motion. "Expelliarmus!" The wand flew violently out of her hand, landing on the chalkboard.
She laughed a little, trying to hide the relief that she felt at being able to teach it correctly. Harry made his vision slightly sharper, noticing from the rising and falling of her chest that her heart rate was falling rapidly. Hannah and Neville both got the concept a little later, although Neville's exasperation and Daphne's heart rate went up when Neville couldn't get the spell to work until Harry showed him his addition to the spell. "See, imagine that with this hand, you're knocking they're wand hand down, and with your wand hand, you're grabbing their wand out of their hand."
Neville's mouth formed a silent 'O', and he tried the spell again, with much more success. "Man, that's such a cool spell!" he enthused to Daphne. "I wish my uncle taught me such straightforward hunting spells like that." Still using his slightly sharpened vision, he saw the muscles in her neck tense up, and she shrugged. The muscles didn't loosen afterwards.
Hannah explained the basic theory around sending an image search over the GWM, which was that one needed to give the circle an image, and select the search option. After a great deal of time, the circle would give back several results with some margin of error, and give coordinates for where the shot was taken from, and where the object was, in feet away from the Earth's center, radians towards the North Pole from the equator, and radians towards Japan from Greenwich. Hannah gave the rest of the kids copies of a search function that she had created, and instructions on how to install them in their circles.
After the four of them had disseminated their knowledge to each other, they packed up their stuff and left the room. As Daphne was picking up her books, Harry whispered to her, "I need you to wait behind for a few seconds after everyone else." She gave him a questioning look, but nodded in agreement.
Hannah left, and Neville was about to leave, when he looked behind himself, and asked Harry and Daphne, who were both obviously quite ready to leave, "Aren't you coming?"
Harry nodded tightly. "I just need to talk to Daphne about something quickly. Don't worry."
Neville gave Harry a small accusatory look, and Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes, instead giving Neville a small smile back, reassuring him. Satisfied, Neville left. Abruptly, Harry turned to Daphne, and whispered, "You're not doing a very good job."
Taken aback, she asked in the same tone of voice, "What?"
Harry clarified, "If Neville knew what to look for, you'd already be found out. You're not the same kind of hunter as the rest of us."
Daphne sank to her knees, and dropped her books. "I can't believe I was so stupid–Greengrasses have pretended for the benefit of other hunters that we hunt Chimeras and Nundus like everyone else for hundreds of years–how did I fail so miserably?" she moaned.
"It was the lupusnip," he said shortly, unsure of how to deal with her. Suddenly, he knew what to do. "Look, I won't tell anyone, you can keep your secret," he said confidingly. "I'm sure that you're not the only person in your family who has let it slip that you hunt sentient creatures, since it has been hundreds of years. Besides, how would your family get clients if they didn't tell anyone what they did?"
"We use a pseudonym," she breathed, clearly a little soothed.
"Well, it's not the end of the world, is what I'm trying to say," Harry backtracked, "But if you don't want Neville to get a clue, you're going to need to brush up on your Charms work. Lemme guess, your family encouraged your love of potions, since they'll work fine against a vampire or werewolf?" She nodded, woefully. "You're still going to need to brush up on your charms work. No self respecting hunter would have nothing more than a disarming charm to defend him or herself from a charging werewolf."
She sighed, and forcing herself to smile a bit, she said, "In for a sickle, in for a galleon, eh? I can briefly transfigure any of my body parts into silver or wood, if need be, and my saliva into Holy water."
"But can you teach Neville how to turn his body parts into silver for long enough that he doesn't think that you're a weird sort of hunter?"
She sighed. "I see where you're going. I'll try to study charms some more, but it's quite boring for me."
Harry shrugged. "You just need to know enough to teach us all something new once a week, you don't have to become a slave to it."
Harry made to leave, when Daphne called after him, "Why don't you just tell Neville?"
Harry smiled. "I have no reason to. I was raised muggle, and don't share his deadly fear of love. And if you couldn't tell, would fabricated love be any less wonderful? Ignorance, like love, is bliss."
Looking behind him as he walked out, he sharpened his vision enough to see her mouth the words, "Thanks, Harry."
He turned back towards where he was walking, and stopped abruptly before he ran over Granger, who sneered at him, before continuing on, up through G. Tower. Harry knew that he should follow her, but didn't have an explanation for himself why. She looked back over her shoulder at him every few seconds, but didn't say anything.
At the top of the climb, Granger strode into the room on the left, and Harry followed. The first think that he noticed about the room was that it was full of fire. The second thing was that the ceilings were very low, and the walls close. There would be no way to avoid the fire.
Without a word to Harry, she cast, "Cum Gekkonidae." Without further ado, she climbed up the side of the wall, à la Spiderman, and moved forward on the ceiling, feeling the ceiling in front of her. Harry guessed that it was to check for overly hot spots. He sat down, and looked through the small pile of lightened books that he always carried with him, picked out the Standard, and dispelled the charm that kept it light. After casting it, he immediately felt significantly weaker, and he simultaneously cursed his wand and felt glad that he knew how to rectify his weakness in the future, at least partially.
Leafing through it, he found the flame freezing charm, and considered how the charm functioned, and would want to attack the problem. After a few minutes of reading, he called up to Granger, "The spell isn't simply an illusion, is it?"
She screeched back, "Is my hair burnt off because of an illusion?"
He took it as a no, and after a brief review of the spell in the book, he cast the spell, bending his arm and twisting his shoulder so that his arm was perpendicular to the floor, and then twisting his wrist so that the staff functioned as a pointer to the edges of the fire, and remembering moments stretched out in front of the Dursley's radiator, the heat trapped in the radiator and far away from his skin, incapable of dealing any damage to him. Knowing that the spell was designed for a much smaller fire, he forced some extra magic from his blood into the shrunken staff, to compensate. The procedure was much simpler than attempting to minimize the effect of his spells.
Squinting at the fire, he wasn't sure if the spell had worked, and in order to test it, he ripped a page out of his notebook paper, and flung it in. It didn't light on fire, and tentatively, he reached his hand towards the fire. Although it seemed quite warm, actually reaching into the fire was still a little painful, although he decided that pain would have to be his punishment for poor spell casting.
Pulling his hand out of the fire, he called again to Granger, "Come down! I have a question."
He could see her hang her head in annoyance, although since she was upside down, her head went in the opposite direction that it normally would. "Why can't I answer it from here?" she complained.
Harry rolled his eyes. It was a pity that she was so difficult, although he knew that she would be useful, if only he could make her his friend. "No, it's something down here that you have to see," he informed her.
She visibly sighed, and reluctantly made her way back down the wall. "Okay, what do you want?"
Harry pulled out the Standard, and holding it at arms length toward the fire, and away from Hermione, he gestured towards the flame freezing spell. "Well, shouldn't this spell work?" he asked.
"No, no, if you look down there, it specifies the kind of spell it was supposed to work with, you have to cast it quite a few times in order to get the same kind of volume– look, if you'll hand it to me, I can just point it out to you–" Hermione held out her hand for the volume, but Harry kept on holding it, pretending to be observing it.
"Wait, where on the page did you say it was? You don't need to touch it to tell me where it is, you know, just the top, middle or bottom," he said, still keeping it out of Hermione's reach.
After a few seconds of trying to retrieve it using words from Harry, culminating in Harry whining, "Well then why don't you get out your own copy?" she stalked over to the book and forcibly grabbed it out of his hands, and examined the page for the quote she had mentioned. Harry took this opportunity to shove her bodily into the fire.
She shrieked, and cursed, and once she realized that she wasn't on fire, she cursed some more. "How the fuck can you do this? I try for half a week, and no success, but you get it nearly instantly with your stupid fucking flame freezing charm! What the fuck!" she complained vocally.
"You just needed to adjust the charm for the volume, silly," he laughed.
She growled, and stomped through the fire, using her arm as a machete through the jungle that was the fire, until she reached the threshold of the Gryffindor dormitories. The fire disappeared, and Harry let the charm go. He attempted to gather his books, but stopped when he realized that he had unwittingly dispelled the charms on all of the books, instead of only the Standard. After quickly recasting his lightening charms, which nearly took him to burnout, considering his earlier activities, he made to leave, but stopped when he heard her voice.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm Harry Potter!" he laughed as he left the room.
"I fucking hate you, Potter," she yelled venomously after him.
Walking down the corridor, in the low light, hearing footsteps behind him, he turned his head, and saw her following him. "Stalker tendencies much?" he asked her, his voice still full of mirth.
"Shut it Potter," she sneered. "I'm just going this way because my stuff is still in that classroom."
He laughed, and dropped back, so that they were walking side by side. She glowered at him the entire way back to the classroom as he smiled brightly at her. After a long stretch of corridor, she finally turned into the classroom that Harry and his group had been practicing in, and idly and angrily performed the neat Pack charm that McAndrews had proudly displayed, with equal dexterity, and none of the tiredness that he had displayed after it.
As she walked back out of the classroom, trunk in tow, he suddenly recognized her. "Oh!" he exclaimed.
"What," she drawled sarcastically, "You just realized that you're a stupid douche? Because the rest of us realized that–"
Ignoring her, he eagerly said, "You're the girl from the boat, who helped us win first place!"
She stared blankly, before accusing morosely, "Fuck. You're the guy with the nice Fazzy, aren't you." He nodded, and she groaned, before more resolutely deciding, "You're still a wanker, Potter."
"Love you too," he said jauntily. In a small part of his brain, he noted that before a few months ago, he never would have said that. For a second, he speculated that there was some weird and foreign magic operating on his mind, bring his behaviors and thought patters 'round to match some sort of twisted scheme, but he ignored that small part of his brain, in favor of confidently telling her, "We'll meet again, Granger."
She seemed to barely restrain herself from sticking out her tongue, instead settling for stomping back towards her dorm, while Harry walked back towards R. Tower. There was so much to do. He knew it.
post story A/N: Thanks goes to A-Man for his lack of fear in giving a harsh review, criticizing my grammar even though he doesn't know how to spell conscious. Please though, next time at least give an email address so that I may inquire as to where my worst clichés are, and tell you that if you want to read a story, it might be necessary to pick up a dictionary a few times. Don't make me go all pugnacious on you.
More thanks goes to SaphireGoddess57, who is amazing, and talented, and who I love very, very much, even though our correspondance totals less than three thousand words in all. She has left an amazing and spectacular review, with loads of extremely helpful constructive criticism, which I have used.
Speaking of wonderful reviews, I was quite happy to hear why people loved or hated story alerts, and have come to, myself, love the story alert. Thank you, readers.
Calling for BETAS! I need one. Badly. If you don't feel like you're up to the task of Beta-ing (it's a rigorous one, believe me) but are still interested in hearing spoilers and/or being a board for bouncing plot bunnies/twists off of, please tell me, either in a PM or review. There are no requirements for being a Beta, although a fair grasp of the English language would be nice. Any Beta hired would be required to not be afraid to announce if a sentence seemed awkward, even if it was grammatically correct.
Also, reviewers, don't forget that there will not be any ships in the foreseeable future.
This has been EDITED: Thank you Idhren for the idea as to how to do spells while atop a windstaff.