CHAPTER 37 - LIQUEFACIO
Light was standing in front of the class, trying to make some sense of the scene he was looking at. The third graders were running around, practising the Freezing spell on one another even when he strictly forbade it. It led to half of the class objects being turned into icicles and some of the students as well. Those who were not spelled yet, were desperately trying to repel attacks of the bolder part of the class led by a group of cheeky boys.
Light seriously wanted to go and scream at the headmaster that his stupid punishment for Mello inspired a rebellion. But he must have admitted to himself, he let his guard down for a bit. He was too distracted by meeting his father at school and his thoughts were elsewhere. He was afraid of what might happen when professor Wammy shows his father the article. Then… one moment of inattentiveness and he ended up in a classroom full of ice.
Light vaguely remembered Lawliet mentioning in his letter that being with 3rd graders might be beneficial for him, but at the moment he really couldn't see… how?! There were spells and charms flying in the air around him and the class was a complete utter chaos. Misa was running after the students, yelling at them to stop, trying to disarm them, but for some reason, those devils were unbelievably quick in their defences. Whatever Lawliet was teaching this class was obviously effective. Light needed to figure out something fast. Or he would have to explain to the headmaster why there was an infirmary full of students with runny noses.
He searched the class with his eyes, his sight landing on Misa again. She had just lost her wand and had been cornered by two boys with wands aimed at her. But they were hesitating to attack a substitute teacher and searched for encouragement from another classmate, who was obviously taken as a leader. This boy, together with one other, was currently focused on the last group of students, four girls and one boy, unhit by the spell. They were hiding behind one of the classroom corners. They were fighting back, sending spells against the two, but it was no use. Those boys were nearing the group with each step. Light only had a split of a second to react when he saw one of the boys raising his wand against the girl who fell out of her shelter and stumbled to the ground. He hurled forward and stepped in front of her.
Then, three things happened at once. The spell hit him, he felt the ice growing around the lower part of his body and the group of young aggressors became as unmoving as him. But they were not spelled, just shocked.
Light was lucky, in a way, because if he was a little smaller or the attacker a little taller, the spell would hit him in the chest and cause him to freeze completely. The current set of events led only to him being imobile from waist down. Which was uncomfortable and the cold was spreading through his veins, but it meant he could still react to whatever was going to happen next.
The boys were watching him with wide eyes and didn't know what to do. They were too surprised to even put their wands down.
Whatever they intended to do by causing this chaos, freezing their substitute teacher definitely wasn't it. Light judged by the expression on their faces. But he didn't understand why they didn't see it coming. It felt natural to stand in a way of a spell, if it meant to save someone he was responsible for. But it was also true, that it took him quite a long time to wake up from his thoughts and react to the situation anyhow.
The whole class fell uncomfortably silent. Everyone was looking at Light, waiting for what was going to happen. The good thing was that these boys were obviously not going to attack once again, because that would really pose a problem. When Light was sure he's got the upper hand again he gave the leader a hard look and with a complicated but elegant swing of his wand unspelled the lower part of his body. The icicle that surrounded him quickly melted into a puddle and Light used another spell to dry himself and the floor.
The shock on the faces of the students was priceless. Light just smirked and then turned around, towards the girl who was sitting on the floor and staring at him with her mouth opened:
"Are you alright?" he asked and offered his hand to help her stand. The girl nodded slightly and hesitantly let him help her stand up. Light put on his best smile, when he felt that the girl, and in fact, all the students were suddenly looking at him with slightly different eyes. Full of curiosity and fascination. Then he turned to the infamous group of boys again.
Light knew he should punish them, turn it into a lesson, to make sure they would never turn their wands against their classmates again. But he wasn't exactly sure how to do it. He briefly thought about letting the attacked students freeze the aggressors, but that was out of the question. It would only strengthen the violent tendencies.
What would Lawliet do? What the hell would he do? Light was asking himself internally. Something unconventional but just, something to make them cooperate….
Light's eyebrow shot up when a plan came to his mind. He cleared his throat: "Alright… I believe that part of you proved that you managed the freezing spell quite effectively…" He made a small pause and looked over the class. There were seven completely frozen students, another eight with at least one frozen limb, four aggressors and a group of four unhit girls and one boy.
"... the challenge however, is how to unspell it." He continued and headed back towards the front of the class like nothing had happened at all. On his way he started waving his wand from one side to another, sending contra spells towards all the frozen students while talking: "There are four ways to get rid of the effect of the Freezing spell…"
The frozen students slowly came back to life and those who had only their limbs affected were testing how much they can move it. The cough started echoing in the room, followed by the sound of the Accio spell, which Light casted in the middle of the speech, causing packets of handkerchiefs to land on every table. While the students, including Misa, seemed completely bemused, Light paid them no mind and continued: "The first one is the Regelo counter spell which can only be casted by the wizard who casted Glacio in the first place. It is ineffective in combat, but good to know for common use. Second one is the warming potion which is effective, but it takes a few hours to prepare…"
Light started writing the possibilities on the board and gave the students time to recover and to go back to their desks. He heard steps and shuffling, so it was obviously working. Before long he felt a familiar presence next to him and knew that Misa also took her place in front of the class. But aside from the occasional cough, the class was silent.
"The third possibility is to wait until the spell fades away naturally, but it is a dangerous solution, because there are too many variables. The strength of the casted spell and the wizard, the place where the victim was hit… so it is never good to wait too long, because there is a risk of the vital organs of the person failing before the spell fades away. And then…" he finally stopped writing and turned towards the class which was still a mess of icicles, but every one was behind their desks: "...There is the Liquefacio spell which can be casted by the victim if they are only partly paralysed or can be casted by someone else. But… that spell is in the curriculum of 6th year."
Everyone was looking at him, still expecting something to happen. Light narrowed and folded hands on his chest. He looked at the group of infamous boys who were sitting almost in the back:
"You… What's your name?" he asked one of the boys, the one who was the first to turn his wand against his classmate. He was a brown haired guy with piercing green eyes and wasn't exactly tall. But he seemed strong, in more ways than just his magic. Everyone in the room turned towards him but the boy didn't let them know he was intimidated.
"George." He answered simply.
"George… which of these solutions were you going to use?"
He answered without hesitation: "None."
Light sneered: "Okay… and which one would you use? Now that you know about their existence?"
George was not sure where Light was heading with this and all his defences were on high alert: "The sixth grades' spell… the rest of them are useless."
Light nodded and started pacing in front of the class: "I wouldn't say useless but… ineffective in certain situations. So why is that, that this spell is not in the curriculum of the 3rd grade? Together with the Regelo and the warming potion?" Light asked and slowly looked over each and one of them. They seemed nervous and they were shifting their gazes elsewhere, trying to look like they were not even there: "No… no one knows?"
"Is it because of the movement of the wand?" The girl to whom Light helped suddenly asked: "...Because it's a more advanced pattern?"
Light smiled at her: "That is also true, but not necessarily the reason why to put off the spell for three more years."
The silence spreaded across the room and Light took a long time before he finally broke it off: "It is because you are not expected to use any combat magic until the sixth year."
The class suddenly started murmuring. Some of the students were frowning, thinking about it, others were whispering between one another. Then George spoke up again:
"That doesn't make any sense. Many of the spells we've learnt from the first year can be used in combat. Why do they teach us these at all, if we are not expected to use them?"
Light smiled and leaned his butt against the teacher's desk: "True… but you are strictly forbidden to use them for anything else but self-defence. Until the duelling classes in the sixth year. Am I right?"
Silence. Now even George looked a bit pale. It made sense that they were only taught the contraspell that would condition them to work with one another. If they only learned Regelo, they could never use the Glacio spell to attack unless unspelling the other person or risking they would eventually die.
It was the moment where Light could have started the lecture on how it could have ended badly, and how they should never do that again. And it was true. If Light was a little less skilled, or didn't know the Liquefacio spell, they would have a huge problem. Because these kids didn't even know how to cast Regelo yet.
But Light had no intention of scolding them, it would be no use anyway. He left them boiling in their own consciousness for a few more seconds, before he spoke up again:
"But it is true… that this spell should be taught together with the freezing spell and I see no reason why not to show you how to cast it."
Everyone looked at him with wide eyes. Some of them even started smiling. Misa made a quick step towards him and whispered: "Light, what are you doing?"
Light didn't react and looked at the class: "I only have two conditions. Until tomorrow, George and his friends will teach the rest of the class how to conjure the Glacio spell. Perfectly. And without practising it on other people. And you…" he looked at the girl he helped save… "What's your name?"
"Mirabel." The tanned skin girl answered.
"Mirabel, you and your friends will teach the rest of the class how to use the shield spell properly. That includes George and his…crew."
For a moment, Mirabel looked like she was about to protest but then she nodded.
Light looked at the rest of them again: "If by tomorrow, at least 80 percent of you will manage to cast both defence and attack perfectly, I will forget about the curriculum and teach you the Liquefacio spell together with Regelo. What do you say?"
"What if we refuse?" George asked, obviously pissed but before Light could react to that, Mirabel turned towards the boy and said: "Shut up, George! You're causing problems to all of us. Just take the fucking olive branch when it is offered to you."
Both Light and Misa were stunned by the girl's choice of words. But more funny was the effect it had on George. Instead of vomiting the same vocabulary back at her, he rolled his eyes and folded hands on his chest: "Yeah, fine…"
Light really wanted to laugh at that, but he restrained and kept his face stoic: "Alright… now that we agreed, hurry up, you only have one more hour until the end."
Watari was not quite sure how to cope with the information he gained from Yagami-san. That poor Light needed to be betrothed until the end of the school year. Practices like this were common when he was young, of course. But that was almost a hundred years ago.
"We are not in the middle ages, in the name of Merlin…" Watari murmured under his moustache and got a little out of breath as he was just climbing stairs towards the DADA classroom and L's office.
Of course the whole situation was unjust towards Light and it only explained deeper why Light hated being an omega. Watari himself was mad, because it showed that the Wizarding elites were still trying to avoid change at any cost. In that light, restraining the most talented young omega in England by marriage made sense. And the probability of Light finding someone open minded and acceptable until the end of the year, was small.
Of course, L was the first to land on Watari's mind. He was powerful, well situated and in many circles he was respected. He was also tolerant, open minded and he would support Light in his career. Watari was sure about that. And by what he saw until now, he was sure they liked each other. Their match would seem like the most logical thing to happen.
But… There was a catch.
The rule that two officers in a relationship couldn't serve in the same office, which would inevitably close the door for one of them. And because L would never give up on his Auror's position, the one out of favour would be Light. Then, the whole point of the union would disappear.
Watari shook his head: "For the first time L shows a romantic interest in someone and of course, it was bound to be someone he can not have." He turned behind the corner and saw the said romantic interest with his own eyes. Light just exited that DADA classroom and he looked dashing. His eyes were sparkling and he was obviously holding back his smile. It was a 90° turn against the sadness and dread he saw in the boy's eyes in the past two days. Light didn't even notice Watari and headed towards the different corridor.
The old man only shook his head and thought: Well… L obviously knew what he was doing when assigning him as a substitute.
Flock of students started exiting the classroom and Misa Amane ran out, screaming at Light to wait for her. But Watari paid them no mind anymore. He headed towards the classroom, greeted the 3rd grade's students who were passing by and entered the room. He meant to go straight to L's office but he stopped speechless when he saw that most of the classroom was covered with ice. He looked at the group of students who were left there, arguing about something. But they fell completely silent when they noticed their potion professor.
"Good day, Professor Wammy." They all sounded like one man and Watari knew immediately that they'd done something wrong. But he decided to let it slide. The teacher of this class looked content and no one seemed hurt. A little ice was not hard to undo.
"Fair embellishment." He said and headed to L's private quarters. The moment he closed the door behind himself he heard an eruption of laughter.
"These teenagers…" he murmured and looked carefully around the place. There seemed to be no message, no evidence that L would be back, or that he stopped by. There were only the three last copies of the Daily Prophet on his desk. The copies that he didn't have time to read yet.
Watari learnt, during the past 13 years, that waiting for the boy to come back from a mission, can not be shortened by anything. He still remembered the first time he waited for L like this. The boy was just 14, already working for Auror's office externally and he ran away from Hogwarts to chase after a dark sorcerer. Back then, Watari should have seen it coming, because L was complaining about the progress of the office very loudly. In L's opinion, they were doing everything wrong. So he just took things into his hands. It took two weeks for the boy to reappear. He went straight to the Auror's office and handled not one, but two dark sorcerers. Much to everyone's surprise.
Those two weeks were some of the longest in Watari's life. He was so afraid he was going to lose L. The boy was like his own son. And Watari knew what it was like to lose a child. He experienced it many years ago. And he didn't want it to happen again.
During the following few years Watari did his best to accompany L on his missions. But soon he realised he was getting too old and he eventually had to learn how to wait. But it was never easy. Minutes were hours and hours were days. Days felt like years. And no matter how good Watari was at occupying himself with work, it never stopped him from worrying.
The old man conjured himself a cup of tea and sat down on L's favourite chair. He looked around at the mess of papers L left behind when leaving and with a quick movement of his wand cleaned the whole room. When all the papers were piled in columns, Watari noticed an opened notebook at L's conference table. He leaned forward and took it into his hands. It was an evaluation notebook. Watari read a few notes and smirked. L was really unbelievably thorough with his evaluation. Every student had his own page and L was truly observant with some of them. Watari purposely searched for a page of Light Yagami and read L's notes:
Arrogant, hard headed, blocked within his second gender. Said the first note. But the other, dated only three days ago said: Determined and capable of deep self reflection. Overthinker.
Watari raised an eyebrow. It wasn't what he awaited. Not that he expected L to write poems about Light, but he thought he might find out something about the boy's power outbursts. But there was nothing there. Except for the page with a table of all the points, which was what caused all the mess earlier.
Watari was not mad at L anymore. He could imagine different ways to deal with the situation, but he also understood L's motivation. He just wanted to be fair. Moreover at classes, there was not much that anyone could say against Light Yagami. Watari himself must have sometimes stopped himself from giving Yagamis' boy more points. So in a way, it made sense. Light deserved to be evaluated according to his abilities. But that didn't excuse him from the outburst. As well, it didn't excuse Light's schoolmates from acting so crudely. It made the old man think that maybe they were all failing as teachers, when they didn't manage to raise these kids better. When they didn't manage to chase jealousy and envy out of their hearts.
Watari let out a heavy sigh and wanted to put the notebook back on the table. But when he was about to close it, a piece of paper fell into his lap. The old man raised an eyebrow and took the paper to his hands. It was folded in a half and it opened when Watari lifted it. His eyes landed on its content and he immediately understood what it was. A small calendar. A few weeks ago, he asked L to start one, to mark days he felt better and days he felt worse. So they could find out the source of his relief as it was obviously not just the potion.
He frowned. According to these notes, the situation was getting better. A few weeks ago, L only felt better on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. But for the past two weeks, it's also Saturdays. So there was something the boy was coming across these days, that was making his wound better. Now, they just needed to identify what it was.
Light had a great problem to exit from the DADA classroom without looking like a peacock and smiling from ear to ear. He was extremely proud of himself and had to bite his lower lip, not to let everyone know. The second part of the class went peacefully. Mirabel and George were both excellent leaders and managed to organise their classmates without ripping out each other's throats. Of course, it didn't go without an occasional row, but altogether? It was a success. Light couldn't wait for tomorrow, to see if they would actually manage to keep their part of the bargain.
"Light… Light! Wait for me!" he heard Misa yelling at him and he turned around to wait, until the blonde caught up. She was kept by a student asking something, before Light left the class. When she finally stood next to him, she was out of breath, but was unable to keep the flood of words anyway: "Light! That was amazing… how did you… I mean the spell and the kids… how you managed to make them work together… that was… just… wow."
Light couldn't keep his happiness to himself and smiled so brightly that the whole corridor suddenly seemed full of sun: "It wasn't that hard in the end. George obviously has aspirations to be their leader, he just needs to put his energy into something more useful than bullying others."
They both started moving again when Misa said: "I think they just wanted to get rid of us, to tell you the truth."
"Yes, I am quite sure about that too. Luckily they underestimated us." He smiled and gave Misa a wink.
"You…" She said with a laugh and stopped again.
"Huh?" Light turned towards her.
"They underestimated you." She emphasised and her face was somewhere between amusement and astonishment.
Light was smiling from ear to ear when hearing her praise. He was in an extremely good mood and he felt like he could share it with the world: "Ah, don't be silly, I just thought about it first. You would come to the same solution."
Misa shook her head: "No Light. I wouldn't. I was seriously thinking about starting screaming for help and later taking away their house points."
Light frowned. He really thought the solution was quite obvious: "No, I don't believe that. You've seen their faces, they were hungry for the Liquefacio spell from the moment they saw me conjure it. It was written all over their faces. You would come to that too." He said and continued walking. Misa aligned the steps with his and was silent for a moment. She was glad Light had such a great trust in her abilities, but she knew very well that pedagogy and work with children probably won't be her strong suit. Light, on the other hand, seemed natural. He was able to dock out of the complicated situation, set the right example and make the kids interested in learning. It almost felt like something Lawliet would do.
Light was beaming and Misa was deep in her thoughts when they crossed the entrance to the great hall. Misa suddenly caught the sight of frozen Mello with Matt standing behind him and without much thinking tugged Light behind the corner.
"What are you…" Light squeaked but Misa put a hand over his mouth: "Shhh… quiet!"
Light frowned and watched as Misa peeked behind the corner, to the great hall. He followed her lead to figure out what she was looking at.
There was literally no one in the hall. Not a single student, not a teacher. There was only the ginger headed boy from Hufflepuff, standing behind Mello. The blonde boy was still frozen, most of his body was in an ice-block, the only parts that were out were hands and head. His right hand was reaching out towards the place where Takada sat earlier, wand still in his hand and the left hand was behind him. The Glacio was casted perfectly, so he was frozen completely, waiting for the headmaster to set him free.
Light had no idea why they were hiding behind the corner, when there was no one but Mello and Matt. Then Matt suddenly reached out and caressed Mello's frozen left hand. It was such an intimate gesture that Light felt like he was spying out on lovers. He looked for a moment longer and felt almost bad for Matt. There was something wrong about the scene, but he couldn't explain exactly what. It felt like Matt only came to Mello from the back, because he didn't want Mello to know he was there.
Light had no idea what came over him next. He acted completely on his instincts. He took out his wand, swung it in the air and whispered: "Liquefacio."
ANNOUNCEMENT! PLEASE READ!
Dear readers,
Today it's been exactly two years since I posted the first chapter of Auror's curse. This story was originally meant to be a 10 chapters long b-side project, but it turned into something gigantesque that is growing more and more out of my control with each chapter. However, I love every second of it. And it is you guys who keep me going. So thank you, thank you, thank you so much for all the comments, kudos, bookmarks and support you have been giving this story for the past two years. It means the world to me.
And because no birthday celebration can be without a gift, I had prepared something for you guys. You can find it on the new instagram account Auror's curse - the Death Note fanfiction. I hope you'll like it.
Anyway, happy birthday, Auror's curse! I wish you many more chapters, enthusiastic readers and a bit of lawlight action. Because damn… the slowburn is frustrating.