The next day was Sunday, which meant that everyone finally had time off. Ron was looking forward to signing out a broom with his brothers and doing a bit of flying. There was a small amount of trepidation at flying with Fred and George, who tended to enjoy causing Ron to slip up and fall at every opportunity, but at least they would be on his side, right?
"Come, Ronald, the first meeting of the Crimson Demon Clan is taking place."
Ron looked up from his breakfast, a bit of egg still on his face. "Huh?"
"Did you not hear?" Megumin planted her hands on her hips and glared at Ron. "There are forces at work that would lay me low. As such, I am calling upon my allies to band together against the Death Eaters and other minions of darkness."
Ron squinted at the tall blonde girl beside Megumin. "Since when did Longbottom get minions?"
"She means those who serve Lord V-Voldemort," Darkness said, only stumbling over the name a little.
"We had a discussion last night in the girls' dorms," Hermione explained from the other side of their short and manic ringleader. "You're the only boy Megumin thinks is the right sort of material for fighting against the Death Eater that tried to kill her and Yunyun Friday night."
Hearing that he, Ronald Bilius Weasley, was "The Right Sort" was something Ron had been waiting to hear his entire life. It was rather disappointing it was from a buck toothed lunatic who seemed to consider herself the lackey of a self proclaimed demon, but still.
"The right sort for what?" Ron asked suspiciously, managing to wipe away the egg with his sleeve.
"The Crimson Demon Clan!" Megumin said proudly. "We five shall stand against this coming darkness."
"Look, if Longbottom is going to continue to insist on going by Darkness you're going to have to quit calling the baddies the allies of darkness or whatever," Ron told Megumin, trying to ignore the developing headache. "It's confusing."
Before Megumin could respond, Yunyun hurried over, looking nervous as usual. "Um, well, n-none of the other Hufflepuffs want to join us. I-I tried to tell them, but, well…" She swallowed, then smiled at Ron. "A-are you g-going to be our f-friend?"
Unlike Megumin, who seemed both daft and mad, Yunyun struck Ron as a fellow overshadowed soul. He rather wished it was her that had ended up in Gryffindor instead of her cousin. This was largely because Ron had not yet spent enough time around Yunyun to realize that her form of madness was simply less boisterous.
"Well, what does being in this club of yours involve?" Ron asked.
"We shall train hard together to take on those who have injured our families," Darkness put in before Megumin could dissuade Ron by trying to persuade him. "I know your uncles Fabian and Gideon were killed. My parents...they're…" Darkness swallowed and managed in a rough voice, "As good as dead. And a Death Eater tried to kill Megumin and Yunyun in the forest. If they're after them, they'll be after us too."
That was enough. Ron wasn't in Gryffindor for no reason, and he stood, nodding. "Right. I suppose if this is your version of an anti-Death Eater group I'll join. What are we doing?"
Megumin took out her newly returned wand and grinned. That was the first sign that Ron had made a mistake, but like a true Gryffindor, he went on well past the point of good sense.
"We shall master new and deadly spells!"
And, because Ron was an 11 year old boy and more than a bit of an idiot, he found himself grinning at the idea of learning new and creative ways to get himself killed.
"Well that's alright then. Let's get to it!"
Despite getting her wand back, Megumin was still restricted to the castle. However, that did not mean she had no recourse for practicing things she really shouldn't. Hogwarts had a student body of only a few hundred students, and a staff of less than twenty, and a castle that could have housed an army. As such, there were plenty of out of the way places and abandoned classrooms you could skulk off to, especially in the upper levels.
And so, a rather dusty and out of the way classroom was located, and the first meeting of the Crimson Demon Clan of Adventurers (British Outpost) began.
"During our climactic and thrilling encounter with the Death Eater, Yunyun and I learned several new spells!" Megumin explained, striding back and forth across the front of the classroom, dust motes stirring up in her wake.
"Oh? What sort?" Hermione asked eagerly.
"We must warn you; they are dark, terrible curses, that could very well cost you your soul," Megumin said seriously.
Since Megumin said it would cost you your soul when asked to pass the marmalade at breakfast, no one really took her all that seriously.
"Are you just going to talk about it, or are you going to show us?" Ron demanded. He was just realizing that he was the only boy in a group of four girls, all of which were considered odd even by Hogwarts standards. At that particular point in time, he was seriously reconsidering trying to go back and hang out with the boys.
Unfortunately, Ron would soon be labeled as a member of the Crimson Demon Clan by the student body at large, and thus both cracked and an idiot. The other boys in his dorm would tease him and say that Ron was infested with cooties.
Though after about halfway through their fourth year they started calling him "You lucky bastard."
"Yunyun! Let us demonstrate!" Megumin declared.
For once, Yunyun didn't act nervous at all, coming up to stand about ten paces from Megumin and striking a defensive pose.
"I shall demonstrate the Minor Explosion Spell, while Yunyun shall show the Lesser Protection Ward," Megumin declared.
"I don't remember those in our books," Hermione protested, but she watched anyway.
Megumin posed, and began, "Darkness blacker than-"
"Er, Megumin, you do remember what happened last time you did that, don't you?" Darkness asked.
Ron, being far more prudent, had dived for cover and was crawling towards the door.
"Fine. I shall simply demonstrate it. Stop being a coward, Ronald! Get back here!" Megumin ordered.
"As long as you promise not to try and kill us all again," Ron grumbled, but took his seat.
This time Megumin simply pointed her wand at Yunyun and cried, "Confringo!"
Naturally, this was incredibly stupid of them. Fortunately, Megumin only managed a somewhat weak explosion, this being her first time casting the spell. This was probably the only thing that saved her life. Yunyun managed a very excellent shield spell with an expert motion and a cry of "Protego!" Which reflected the blast right back at Megumin.
There was a deafening bang, and Megumin was knocked right off her feet and sent flying. She would have crashed right into a desk, but Darkness acted on instinct and caught her, sparing Megumin much more than a singeing.
When Megumin's ears stopped ringing and her vision cleared, she found her very worried friends and extremely panicked Yunyun hovering over her.
"Are you alright? We should go to the nurse!" Hermione babbled, having been saying much the same thing for over a minute.
"I am..." Megumin swallowed, then jumped up to her feet. "THAT WAS THE MOST INCREDIBLE AND AMAZING SPELL I HAVE EVER MANAGED TO CAST! TRULY THERE IS NO SUPERIOR SPELL IN THE ENTIRE WORLD! ONCE I HAVE MASTERED THIS SPELL, NO ONE CAN STOP ME!"
"'Cept Yunyun. Seems like that shield of hers stopped your spell cold," Ron said bluntly.
"I-I am sorry!" Yunyun wailed, clinging to Megumin and squeezing her tightly. "I didn't mean to hurt you!"
Megumin wiped the blood off of her nose and grinned. "A hero must suffer many trials and tribulations on their path to greatness! Besides, everyone knows the best spells have a chance of backfiring. Now, we should all practice the Minor Explosion Spell!"
"You're bloody mental," Ron groaned.
"If it's all the same to you...I think we'd better practice the shield spell first," Darkness said, looking very worried. "It would be prudent to improve our defenses before we attempted anything so dangerous."
Megumin did not have time to further explain why beautiful explosions were infinitely superior to dumb shields, as the door slammed open and Argus Filch made his first appearance.
"WHAT THE BLEEDIN' HELL IS GOING ON IN HERE!? YOU LOT TRYING TO BLOW UP THE WHOLE CASTLE!?" he roared, surveying the absolute carnage of splintered furniture and scorch marks left by Megumin's first cast of the spell.
Later, Filch would swear that he had received a vision of things to come and that it proved beyond a doubt that he wasn't a squib. The reality was that anyone with half a brain and a lick of sense could have figured out where this was going. Which ruled out Filch so he might have been on to something.
And so it was that one day after getting her wand back, Megumin found herself back in Minerva McGonagall's office with her prized possession sitting atop the Deputy Headmistress's desk, along with four companions. The hand of justice had been swift in this case.
"What, exactly, were you thinking?" McGonagall demanded, her nostrils flaring as she stood behind her desk and glared down at the five miscreants.
"Well," Megumin said, drawing herself up to her full height, which came up to about Darkness' shoulder and less than that on McGonagall, "As I have already faced one Death Eater that attempted to slay me and Yunyun, and Ronald and Darkness are from families that are historical enemies of the Death Eaters, and as Hermione is a muggleborn who are the sworn blood enemies of the Death Eaters, we decided to be proactive and band together to learn magics that will both allow us to destroy them when we come upon them and protect ourselves from their blandishments."
Whatever McGonagall had been expecting Megumin, something that resembled good sense and a logical argument was not it. "I get my jollies from trying to kill myself" would have run closer to McGongall's expectations, but not what was, on the surface, a rather reasonable argument.
"I see," McGonagall said, her tone somewhat less severe. "You are that afraid of another encounter like the one you had in the forest?"
"A CRIMSON DEMON FEARS NOTHING!" Megumin bellowed, returning to the track McGongall was coming to expect from her.
"B-but we are w-worried about our f-friends, ma'am," Yunyun stammered, trying to look brave but mostly managing to look half a step from a nervous breakdown.
"Yeah, I remember hearing stories about what happened to Uncle Gideon and Uncle Fabian," Ron said bluntly. "Not going to wait around and let myself get ripped limb from limb so the only thing in my grave is an empty box."
"Nor shall I allow those I care for to end up in Saint Mungos as my parents have," Darkness said firmly.
"I just wanted to learn some new spells," Hermione admitted in a moment of regrettable forthrightness.
McGonagall sighed, looking down at the wands on her desk. She took her seat, folding her hands on the surface in front of her. "That is...understandable. The scars of the last war are with us all still. But what you did was both extremely foolish and incredibly reckless. Simply trying out a spell you have heard once is a good way to either get yourself killed, ruin your wand, or cripple yourself for life."
"Why?" Megumin asked, looking genuinely perplexed. "Yunyun did it with the Shield Spell just fine."
"Because one wrong word, one wrong move, and your spell could backfire. The Shield Charm can protect you, or it can wrap you in an impermeable bubble. Even to air. More than one witch has found herself suffocating to death inside of her own conjuring."
"My Minor Explosion Spell worked perfectly," Megumin sniffed.
"Minor? Just what spell did you try, Miss Potter?" McGonagall demanded.
"Confregio," Megumin said proudly.
"Are you trying to murder your cousin?" McGonagall gasped, looking rather horrified. "The exploding curse is a spell meant to kill, Miss Potter! Never cast it upon anything or anyone you do not wish to destroy completely!"
This was, of course, exactly the wrong sort of thing to say to an individual whose life aspiration could best be described as reenacting the Destruction of Alderaan with herself in the role of the Death Star.
"As understandable as your motivations are, I shall be keeping your wands until next week. All five of you shall have detention with me, for the next three nights," McGonagall said firmly. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she added, "Where I shall teach you all how to properly cast a Shield Charm. That, at least, is a spell that could afford the five of you some protection. Do not expect much progress: The shield charm is very tricky, and most adult witches can manage only a weak shield. It takes a very specific frame of mind, as well as deft motion and exact enunciation. Now. Take up your wands and we shall begin."
Within five minutes, Minerva McGonagall was questioning her own abilities as a witch.
"I-Is this right?" Yunyun stammered after performing a textbook perfect shield charm.
McGonagall could only stare as the tennis balls she had transfigured for them to test shield charms ricocheted off of Yunyun's shield.
"That is...very good, Miss Dursley," McGonagall managed. "How...how many times have you cast the shield charm?"
"Um, four?" Yunyun admitted.
McGonagall did not admit that it had taken her several days of practice to manage a shield charm as good as Yunyun's, and that she had done so in her sixth year at Hogwarts under a far better Defense teacher than was typical now. The shield she had shown the students before they had begun to practice was better formed and stronger than what Yunyun had managed, but that was after decades of practice and frequent use.
"Very good. Four points to Hufflepuff," McGangall said, despairing. She was normally completely against awarding points during detentions, but this was an exception.
After that, it was Megumin's turn, and a bit of McGonagall's confidence returned, though not much. On her first attempt, Megumin failed to make a barrier at all and took a tennis ball from Ron right to the face. The second time she managed to make a barrier that deflected two balls, and improved from there. After ten or so attempts, she plateaued with the ability to conjure a weak shield that could deflect any number of balls, though its ability to stop more than basic spells was questionable.
"Not bad, Miss Potter," McGonagall said. "Your turn, Mr. Weasley."
As Ron was neither a magic prodigy, nor born of a questionably human race of super mages, or even a genius, it took him half an hour to manage a charm that could repel even a single tennis ball. That was still rather good, and McGonagall told him so, but the only male in the room looked rather despondent.
"No bloody fair, they managed it in one go," Ron complained, pointing to the grinning Megumin who had been gleefully repaying the ball she had taken earlier. Yunyun just looked very sorry, and had spectacularly failed to hit Ron with even a single ball.
"One point from Gryffindor for language, Mr. Weasley. That was a good show, and better than I would expect from most third year students," McGonagall said coldly.
At that point McGonagall wondered if reason had simply abandoned the world all together when Hermione, who had been paying VERY careful attention to each of Ron's failures as well as all of the successes, walked up and with a firm declaration of "Protego!" created a shield charm that repelled no less than three tennis balls on her first try. Within half a dozen more casts, her shield was better than Megumin's.
McGonagall probably would not have taken any comfort in knowing that Reason had been killed off and its body dumped in a cosmic back alley some time in 1969 when Lily Evans began having very odd visitors. So it's best we just skip over that for now.
"Good work, Miss Granger. Five points to Gryffindor," McGonagall said in strangled tones. "Miss Longbottom."
"Please just call me Darkness," the girl in question groaned, and took her own place. She nervously looked at her wand, which was when Megumin beaned her in the side of the head with a tennis ball.
"Potter! Hold!" McGonagall snapped.
"A-are you OK?" Yunyun gasped.
"I'm fine," Darkness said. She sighed, feeling rather certain her shield spell would be just as worthless as all the rest of the magic she had tried so far. It usually took her dozens of attempts to perform even the simplest of spells, and she was always dead last in mastering them, getting straight A's for Acceptable instead of the Os that Hermione got, and Megumin managed when she wasn't getting a T for Trying to Kill Us All.
Still, if there was one thing Darkness valued, it was protecting others, even at the cost of herself. Her parents had given their sanity to protect her and others, and it was her life goal to live up to their example. She closed her eyes, thinking of protecting not herself, but those she loved. And a magic stirred deep within her.
Holding up her wand, Darkness cried, "Protego!"
A glowing silver barrier inlaid with a seven pointed star inscribed with seven strange glyphs at each point fully ten meters across sprang into existence in a brilliant flash of light. Glowing shields of silver light formed a halo above Darkness's head. Angelic wings sprang from her back, wrapping themselves about Darkness's body as ethereal armor shimmered to life about her.
The sound of McGonagall's jaw hitting the floor would have been deafening, save for the faintly angelic chorus that filled the air as it emanated from Darkness's wand.
Then Megumin gleefully threw another tennis ball as hard as she could right at Darkness's head. The ball was deflected, but not back at the thrower. Instead, it ricocheted away with enough force to send it pinging about the room. Each time it hit the barrier, it zoomed straight back at the same point it had first impacted. This lasted about five seconds, then McGonagall reached out and snatched the ball out of the air.
"Is, ah, is this right?" Darkness asked nervously. "Mine doesn't look like everyone else's…"
"One hundred points to Gryffindor," McGonagall said absently, still staring in awe at Darkness's shield charm. "You are all dismissed."
Once the students were gone, McGonagall walked over to a cabinet, which she opened with a tap of her wand. She pulled out a glass tumbler and a bottle of whiskey. Then she sat down at her desk, poured a thumb into the tumbler, and lifted it up. She looked at the tumbler, then sat it back down and took a long pull straight from the bottle. After setting the bottle down, she looked dazedly at the point that Darkness's shield had sent the tennis ball flying.
If she'd been better at spatial reasoning, or the architecture of Hogwarts had been less eldritch, she might have known it was a direct path to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, where one Quirrenius Quirrel and passenger were then sitting.