The next day, before Luna's combat training began, Severus and Xeno did what they call a 'light' demonstration for us to see how magicals fight.
It was… pretty damn impressive, all things considered.
We were on a field some distance away from The Rook, the Lovegood home, and after casting some spells in the area to avoid notice, the men faced each other.
Both kept a steady rate of spells going toward the other, with minimal movements to avoid spells incoming or ruin setups.
As the duel progressed, their casting rate increased, and they started to deflect and reflect spells, while their movement became more fluid and spanned a larger area.
At the last leg of the duel, their wands were in constant movement, with every small flick one or more spells would come out. Their movement slowed, and every step was perfectly measured for either defense or offense, seeming as if it was a slow, leisurely walk.
The one thing that truly changed in the last part was the addition of apparition, their form of teleportation.
Instantly changing position without missing a beat in their casting, constantly moving to blind spots without missing a step, and all of that while predicting what the other would do.
But, to me, all of that elegance and skill meant little. Instead, what captured my attention was the mechanics of their teleportation.
Because I could feel it, the moment right before they teleported I sensed the pinprick portal, too small for me to describe, opening somewhere on then and their destination.
It definitely had something to do with my Authority, and it took me too many times seeing them use it for me to figure out how: the portals are just temporary Gateways.
It was while I was trying to memorize the feeling of the portal's opening that I was brought out of my reverie by the sounds of laughter and clapping.
I looked at the field where the duel was happening to see Xeno lying down, his laughter only halted by his gasps for breath while Severus was sitting down trying to regain his breathing.
Both men were red in the face and sweaty, their little 'light' duel obviously having gone much further than expected.
And Luna was clapping, a radiant smile on her face and a light in her eyes that hadn't been present ever since the World Cup.
But now, instead of lighthearted pranks, magizoology, or whatever her father was cooking up for the paper, what got that reaction out of her was magical combat.
I push down the regret of not making those men suffer before their deaths, reminding myself that part of the fault for Luna's state is my own actions that day.
Suppressing a sigh I look at her with a smile.
"So, how did you find their 'light' demonstration?" I asked.
"Amazing! Who would have thought that a cheering charm could win a duel like that?" She exclaimed. "And their use of apparition! Normally you're supposed to turn on the spot to do it, but they did it while walking! And the deflections and reflections! you have no idea how much skill is needed to do it even at a low level!"
As Luna kept gushing, I let her voice wash over me while I enjoyed the moment.
A few minutes later, after the men recovered their breath, they started lecturing on some of the basics of magical combat: footwork, dodging, and spell chaining.
I was only paying half a mind to it, instead thinking about their ease of casting.
No incantations and almost no movement beyond flicking their wand at their opponent, sometimes casting multiple spells with the same motion.
I should be better than that, and technically I was, but the truth of the matter was that, unless I was facing a Heretic God, my spells were at best a danger to everyone around me.
'So, my main goal is practicing control, but how? The wand is supposed to help with that, but does it help me with control or does it help me learn control?'
I didn't know the answer to that, but the best way to test it would be to cast a few spells wandlessly to see if anything changed.
As the lecture ended, they had Luna start practicing against Xeno while Severus sat down on the conjured chair next to me.
"Is the training up to your expectations?" He asked without taking his eyes off the field.
"It's honestly better," I answered with a shake of my head. "Pity that it's useless to me.
"So, you decided on a course of action for your training," He said with a nod. "What is it?"
"I need to see if my wand is helping me learn control or not, so the first order of business is to cast a few spells wandlessly," I started, noticing Severus' head whip towards me. "Second order will depend on your answer: how do silent casting without wand movements work?"
Because there was an obvious progression in place there, I didn't know which came first between both of them, but the obvious next step for Severus and Xeno was wandless magic. The only common factor that I could think of to achieve it all is control, which means progressing through the stages correctly could be a massive help to me.
"Magic can work like a muscle," Severus said after a few moments, pausing to gather his thoughts on the subject before continuing. "Constant training a spell will increase your efficiency, control, and strength when casting it. It will also help you do the same to other spells.
In your case, you have all the strength and power of a bodybuilder, but none of the skill to properly use it effectively."
"So I have to cast until I get there." I nod in agreement.
"Correct, but remember: casting random spells won't help you nearly as much as choosing one spell and casting it ten thousand times," He said.
I was nodding at his conclusion when I stopped, slowly turning my head to look at him in abject confusion.
He had a smug smirk on his face which, upon noticing my look, grew larger.
"I am a half-blood who grew up in an ostensibly muggle home in the 70s, did you believe that I wouldn't know who Bruce Lee was?" He asked in amusement.
"You're a magical, I'm honestly surprised when one of you knows about electricity," I replied in exasperation.
"I had a muggleborn friend when I was younger," He said with a shrug. "She was obsessed with martial arts movies for a while."
While he tried to appear casual about it, I could see his mood distinctly sour after that, and from his use of past tense when talking about his friend, I could guess why.
With the mood effectively killed, we returned to watching the training in silence.
A few hours later, Luna was on the ground and completely spent while Xeno applauded from my side and Severus praised her progress.
The training had gone well, Severus and Xeno had rotated a couple of times, and between each rotation, they gave her a small lecture on the subject they'd train next.
Her improvement was clear to see, although the men cautioned that the rate would diminish soon enough.
In the meantime, I was focusing on which spells I wanted to try wandlessly.
There were a lot of options, but in the end, I decided to just avoid anything with fire or that could cover a large area.
It took a few minutes for Luna to be rested enough to get up, but when she did, I congratulated her for her progress, nodded at Severus, and moved about 30 meters away from them to finally do my tests.
As I got into position, making sure they were directly behind me in case something went wrong, I cast my first wandless spell of the day: the chair-conjuring spell.
It was, honestly, inevitable that conjuring would be first, pretty much all spells I wanted to try needed a target, and with empty grassland as far as the eye could see I would need to create my own.
I could have used my wand for this, but I also wanted to know how my unrestricted conjuring would come out.
The result was just as much unexpected as it was expected.
My goal was a simple wooden chair, with no details or cushioning, at a normal size.
What I got was… not that.
The armchair was highly detailed, with intricate carvings throughout it and what looked like extremely comfortable purple cushioning in all the right places. Instead of the dull, drab brown I pictured, it's a rich dark wood with hints of red.
And, of course, it's the size of a five-story building.
I ignored the exclamations from the others behind me to focus on my next spell, the shrinking charm, to see if I could make the armchair the correct size. One quick movement from my hand and it was done.
Where the huge armchair once was, now it looks like it'd fit in a dollhouse.
It was hard to say if I managed to actually hold back or not with this result, although the fact that it was closer to my goal than previously made me think of it as a success.
To make sure, I cast the engorgement charm on it, which left the armchair slightly bigger than when it started.
Upon seeing the results, I groaned in confusion and irritation, controlling my magic would be much more complicated than I'd thought.
The three behind me were now animately chattering, so I decided to finish up here and go back to The Rook, I had to think up which spells I was going to focus on for the next while.
As I went to cast counter-spell on it, I had the idea of another spell to try out, the severing charm, for no other reason than I was annoyed and wanted to take it out on this thing.
Not taking any chances, I got underneath the armchair and cast it upwards, the immediate sounds of destruction were music to my ears and I quickly made some distance to better appreciate it.
Seeing the annoying armchair collapse into millions of pieces was just the right amount of catharsis that I needed, pity that I couldn't use fire, that'd have been fun.
With a sigh, I cast counter-spell on the the pile of debris left behind and moved to join the others.
"Not nearly as easy as you'd thought it would be, huh?" Xeno of all people asked, although his teasing tone took the heat off of it.
"Yeah, I didn't expect to have made a lot of progress in the time I had, but I at least expected some progress," I sighed.
"You expected to start making progress in less than a month on something that takes normal magicals years of practice while actively being handicapped in a way that multiplies the difficulty of your task by severalfold," Severus said with a snort and a mocking tone.
Luna, now with much more energy than when I started, let out a giggle while approaching me.
"There, there, Alex." She said, getting on her tiptoes to pat my head. "Let's get back home so you can complain about having the power of a God with a full stomach."
"I'm not really hungry right now," I replied morosely.
"Let me rephrase that," She said, crossing her arms and glaring at me. "Let's get back home so I can avoid listening to you whine about having the power of a God on an empty stomach."
I gulped. It was pretty hard for Luna to be in a bad mood, but with the amount of physical and magical exercise she had today, coupled with the wait for me to do my test must have brought her over the edge.
"Sure, Luna," I replied with a nod at her.
And as we moved towards home, I pretended I didn't hear Xeno making a whipping noise and Severus' hastily covered guffaw.
A/N: Honestly, I expected this chapter to turn out shorter.
Hey y'all! I know I said this was going to be the end of the HP arc, but I've had around 5 total hours of power this week where I could write so I decided to move some things around so we could go more in-depth over combat magic.
Also, I never even thought about it, but Snape's age group are all British 70s kids, so I wanted to incorporate a little bit of that into their characters.
A huge thanks to all of you for supporting me! Now I'm going to see my neighbors to make sure they don't actually firebomb the power company or the mayor's house.
If you want to support me or read a full two chapters ahead, check out my P a treon . com (slash) NickKane.