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Harry Evans Chappter 93: Clown-Emoji
🕑 Added 2024-10-14 02:00:03 +0000 UTCNeville joining their little duelling adventure changed Harry's plans for the whole day.
Having known Penny and Cedric for two years he trusted them not to reveal the location of the Room of Requirement.
The boy who lived however was an unknown, and thus not yet privileged to Harry's secrets. That was why he led the Hufflepuff group towards a rather large abandoned old classroom that he knew, rather than bringing them to his secret space.
They’d left Harley behind as punishment for her blackmail. It wasn't that Harry particularly disliked the girl or thought that she didn't need the practice. After all, if she was the older sister figure of the prophesied one, then it would also be good for her to learn how to defend herself.
However, on a strategic level, Harry couldn't let himself be blackmailed without doling out the repercussions in front of those who’d witnessed the act. It was simply not a good look.
Additionally, Harley would have bumped the number of their group up to five. If they were four then Penny and Cedric could work together, leaving Harry with absolute control over Neville. This was important as it was Neville who needed the training the most out of all of them.
As they entered the large classroom with its dust and its spider web laden desks, Harry's considerations continued rather than slowed.
He instructed his pupils for the day to start clearing away the tables to the side along with the chair so they would open up a space. Meanwhile, he reordered his program for the day.
Neither Cedric, Penny, nor Neville were likely trying to become professional duellists. This meant that their practice would have to vary to fulfil different intentions.
What Harry wanted to do with this session was to raise the survivability rate of his friends in case of conflict. The fact that the original Cedric had died to an Avada Kedavra to the face by one of the most pathetic characters in the novels disturbed him.
Imagine dying to Pettigrew because you froze. Lame. Cedric needed to level up his build.
So rather than training his friends for duelling, he would try to train them for survival without them noticing it. The issue was naturally that he had to make it fun somehow or else they wouldn't want to continue it in the future. This meant that he was severely limited in his options.
But, trying a regime that wasn't perfect was better than not trying anything because he'd thought about the correct solution for too long. He closed his eyes and breathed out deeply, turning to his friends as the room was finally cleared with a last wobbly levitation charm.
“All right,” he said out loud as he gazed at his friends. Penny seemed lost in thought, Cedric was jittering in excitement and Neville looked awkward. Which seemed to be the permanent state the boy was stuck in for some reason. Shouldn't having James Potter as a father have instilled in him more of a swagger?
“Considering that we have three people here, I have to change my plans a bit. Penny, Cedric, you mostly just want to have a bit of fun and check out some techniques you can use if anyone tries to hex you in the corridors. That means that the exercise you should be doing, or the game you should be playing in fact, is much different than what Neville needs. Mostly because Neville is under a lot of time pressure. His duel is scheduled to happen in about 10 hours and we have just about that much time to make something happen. So I'll give the two of you the exercise first and then I'll give Neville something to do and come back when he needs a break and so on, get it?” he finished by asking.
Cedric nodded seriously. “Yes Professor Evans!” he exclaimed and added a cheeky salute to the gesture, right fist at the temple.
Penny raised her hand with a nerdy look on her face, on which a pair of glasses had randomly appeared. Were her front incisor teeth suddenly larger? They were sticking out over her lower lip.
Harry rolled his eyes and pointed at her. “Yes, Ms Haywood?
“I like to do well in this class, could you suggest something in the direction of extra credit so that I can improve faster and earn house points?” she asked.
“Well, Ms. Haywood, in terms of duelling I would suggest that you pick one offensive and one defensive spell and practise them a lot in your free time. It is not the variety of spells that determines the fight, but how well you can use the ones you have. That at least has been the case for me often enough,” Harry recommended seriously, before grinning.
“Alternatively you might also consider sucking up to the professor, considering that he is the one who determines the success of your practice. I heard that he likes compliments on how handsome he is.”
Harry then clapped his hands, turning more serious again. “Regardless, I would say you can play a pretty simple game to start with. You both know the colour-changing charm right? I mean, I was with you in class when you learned it.”
Penny twirled a strand of her hair between her fingers. "I don't know, professor, maybe I need someone to remind me. I'm just a ditzy blonde,” she demonstratively giggled.
Harry whipped out his wand and pointed it at the girl before her eyes had time to widen.
“Colovaria.”
Penny squawked in indignation as the multicoloured beam of colour-changing hit her in the face and turned her hair red.
“Well, now you're a redhead just like me, which means that you're not allowed to be ditzy anymore,” Harry said with a smirk.
“That's uncalled for. I don't want to be ugly!” Penny exclaimed as she looked at her hair with great distress. Long and red. It wasn't even a nice red, it was the kind of red that came out of a printer.
Harry shrugged. “You know the countercharm. Anyway, let’s be quick about it as Neville is under a time constraint. The reason I picked the colour-changing charm is obviously because it's harmless. As you can probably deduce you’ll be casting it at each other. As you well know changing the colour of someone else is much harder than changing your own colour. That is because one has to suppress one's opponent's will to affect change in their sphere of influence. In that sense, it's good practice for future more combat-focused spells which also require you to do the same thing. The disarming charm requires you to impose your will over your opponent’s wand, which in terms of items is one of the hardest things to accomplish, due to the connection shared between a wizard and their focus. The stunning charm tries to sever the connection between the victim and their consciousness. Similarly to these two, the colour-changing charm is a single-use spell that comes out in the form of a beam which makes it easy to dodge and is great for beginners.” He smiled.
“Also, it's fun,” he noted as a last bit as Penny petulantly tried to finite her hair only to find that it wasn't working.
It turned out that Harry's wish to embarrass his friend was much stronger than her current wish to reverse that embarrassment. Or perhaps their competency levels were simply too different. One of them excelled in Charms and the other in Potions, after all.
“Wait, does that mean that you can resist the disarming charm with willpower alone?” Neville suddenly interjected confusedly.
Harry nodded and gave the boy a thumbs up. “That's a good deduction and yes it's true. After all, think about it, wizards come in different classes, and I mean that in terms of magical skill and mental ability. If you were to cast a disarming charm at Dumbledore and he didn’t defend himself or dodge, would it make any sense if it actually did anything?”
Neville slowly blinked as he considered the words. “I guess not, I just never thought about it,” he mumbled.
“Regardless, Penny, Cedric,” Harry said, turning to his friends. “I think the exercise that I want you to do with the colour-changing charms is quite simple. Stand opposite each other at about a distance of ten metres,” he said, holding up his hands and separating them symbolically. His two friends exchanged looks with each other and took the appropriate amount of steps back.
“Then you go into a duelling stance like this,” Harry instructed and used himself as an example, putting his left leg behind the right, his right arm forward and his left arm behind his back. This minimised his profile and allowed him to quickly side-step if he wanted to. “This is a stance that can help you dodge and also makes you a smaller target. I want you two to take turns casting the colour-changing charm at each other. Even if it hits or misses, I want the other person to then take a turn, this is mostly about you learning how to dodge. It is after all the most important part of any confrontation. Similarly, being able to hit someone with a spell is also pretty important.”
Before he could tell either of his friends to start, Penny’s hand shot forward, the one holding the wand that she had previously been using to try and reverse her hair colour back to normal. The wand shot a multicoloured beam at Cedric who wasn't prepared and got hit right in the face. His hair also turned red. The boy gasped at the betrayal but got over it fast enough to send the spell right back.
All thoughts of stance were forgotten and soon the two of them were chasing each other around the room trying to see who could change each other's hair into a more ridiculous colour. At least they were still keeping to the one spell each limit. Harry slowly shook his head. Well, they were children. Unlike Neville and Harry, they weren't under any pressure to become good fighters to survive in the future.
He’d have to play the game with them later to show them the importance of the correct stance.
He turned to Neville who was looking at him curiously.
“I don't know the colour-changing charm yet, when is it taught?” the boy asked.
Harry waved him off. “You don't have to know it, it's all right. We don't have time for you to be practising spells that you are not going to use in a duel. We'll focus mostly on the knockback jinx.”
The boy furrowed his brows. “I thought you said that the disarming charm was much better.” He awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. “I've been trying to make it work, but it hasn't been going that well.”
Harry nodded in understanding. “It's definitely a more advanced spell. Which is why we don't necessarily have time to go over it now, but after tonight I think I could help you with it.” He offered.
Neville nodded happily at that suggestion.
“Regardless, the knockback Jinx isn't as useless as you might think from the fact that it's being taught in the first year. It's taught early because it's the precursor to more powerful magic. After all the effect of the knockback jinx is very simple, it just sends a ball of pressure at someone. Bombarda, the explosion charm, is actually just a level-up of the same spell. You send the bigger ball of pressure at someone and have it explode upon impact. That again is the precursor of bombarda maxima which is fittingly called the bombardment spell. It causes a large explosion which can even knock down walls.”
“So if I get good at the knockback jinx, then it will evolve into the explosion charm?” Neville asked.
“It won't evolve, it will just mean that when you do learn bombarda, which is a different spell, it'll be much easier. It's how if you're good at walking, then you'll get pretty good at running and then pretty good at sprinting and so onwards. It also helps that the knockback jinx isn't like the colour-changing charm in that it doesn’t try to impose your will on someone else. It is essentially just a ball of force so it's much easier to learn how to make it hit harder in comparison to other spells.”
“I practised it several times after Professor Quirrell showed it to us. He said that whoever can show the best one next week will get five points for their house,” Neville said. “I remember you told me that sometimes repetition is the thing you need to improve so I did it quite often.”
“Yes, repeating it is the best way to learn most often, how about you show it to me?” Harry asked. “I'll put up a shield and we can see how long you need to break through it, or at least how good your stamina is.”
Harry waved his wand in front of him theatrically to summon the shield charm. A blue dome of protection covered him. He noted that as he improved the skill with the charm the colour became thicker, and the weaker shield charms that he saw his classmates use often only lit up when the spell hit them.
Neville pulled out his wand, light brown with what was probably a phoenix feather inside.
The boy who lived hesitated for a second, but at Harry's encouraging nod completed the wand movement for the knockback jinx. “Flipendo!”
A small amalgamation of force shot at Harry, he could see it and feel it in the air. It wasn't close to what he or Professor Quirrell could do, obviously, but it was still relatively strong for a first year.
Harry quirked an eyebrow as the wave of force impacted his shield and shook it for a second or so.
Harry held up a hand to signal a pause when the reverberations in his shield stopped, Neville exited his very sloppy stance and looked at him questioningly.
“That's very good actually, much more powerful than I expected,” he praised, at which Neville gave him a small smile.
“Now can you tell me what exactly you’re thinking of as you cast it?” Harry asked. Considering that Neville was a first year it was completely possible that he wasn't yet using the optimum methods to get everything he could out of the spell.
If that was the case then a few small tips could get the boy a heap of improvement for relatively little cost. It was always in the beginning that one improved the most, whereas improvements later on were harder to force out than water out of stone.
“Well,” Neville started haltingly as his eyes seemed to drift behind Harry, where Penny and Cedric were supposed to be duelling. “I say the incantation, and do the one movement and I guess I imagine a ball of force coming out of my wand,” the boy finished.
Harry nodded approvingly. “Visualisation is good, if I could make one suggestion it would be that you try not to think about the incantation and the one movement and put the rest of that mental energy into supporting the visualisation. You know the spell by now that's for sure, there's no real need to think about the process of actually casting it,” Harry suggested. “All right, come on, do it again,” he then urged, putting his attention back on the shield he was upholding.
Neville slowly raised his wand with a slight hint of confusion on his face, it didn't seem like he perfectly understood what Harry wanted, but even an approximation would be good in this case. The essence of Harry’s suggestion was very simple at its core, Neville had to start thinking about incantation and the one movement less, this would naturally result in more mental energy being used for the effect of the spell.
The boy moved his wand and uttered a halting. “Flipendo.” The spell misfired and a ball of force exploded shortly after leaving the boy’s wand. While Neville looked discouraged, Harry was happy to see what had happened.
“The bang means that you overcharged it in comparison to earlier. It's becoming more powerful. Do it again,” he urged, gesturing with his left hand which didn't have a job to do at the moment.
Neville waved his wand again. “Flipendo!” he exclaimed. A functioning knockback jinx of slightly higher power and velocity escaped his wand. Harry's shield vibrated at the impact and the boy tried to quantify the difference.
That knockback jinx had been about 10% stronger and faster than the previous one. A ridiculous improvement considering that it had only taken two attempts. Well, those gains would peter out soon.
“Don't stop now. You have the feeling now. Do what you just did now, but more of it, get used to it so it can become a habit,” Harry encouraged and Neville started to barrage his shield with knockback after knockback jinx.
Despite the continuous impacts, it was helpful for Harry's ability to keep up the shield that he was being exposed to the same spell again and again. It meant that he didn't have to change the frequencies or his focus.
In the end, as was to be expected, Neville tired out faster. The boy had gotten progressively more red in the face as the exercise continued into its 15th minute before he eventually sank to his knees, his wand clutched in his hands looking disappointed that he hadn't managed to break through Harry’s defences.
“Don't feel discouraged about it,” Harry suggested. “I am two years older than you and could take about ten Dracos if I had to. Also, upkeeping one single spell is easier than casting one spell 50 times, which is what you just did.”
Neville seemed a bit reassured at that piece of encouragement and his facial expression grew more resolute.
“Did you feel the improvement in the spell?” Harry asked. “I would say that in the end there it was getting about 25% more powerful than it was in the beginning. These are the initial gains that you make with any single spell after you've practised it enough to start ignoring the incantation and the wand movement. The entirety of your mental focus can just be on increasing its power.”
“I did notice that it was getting faster at the end there,” Neville said. Then he scratched his head in confusion, a bit like a monkey who'd found a banana peel with a stack of coins inside. “But it wasn't improving as fast when I was practising on my own, why is that?”
Harry shrugged. “I couldn't tell you the objective answer, magic is weird, but I can speculate. The first reason is perhaps that when you were practising on your own you were still in the stage where you had to work on pronunciation and wand movement. These do take quite a bit of practice to get done perfectly for any spell. The fact that you're now further along and I made you focus on it means that you could improve the quality of the spell, not just the quality of the way it's produced. Secondly, the knockback jinx, even if it can be used to manipulate different objects, is mostly a piece of combat magic. The intent that fuels it can thus be described as one’s intent to harm someone else.”
“I didn't want to hurt you,” Neville interjected in a surprised tone of voice but Harry waved him off.
“Of course, you didn't, but a combat spell will always grow faster when used in actual combat, even if it's more of a sparring match at the moment. I imagine that you were casting it at the wall or in the air before. There's no real enemy there for you to focus your mind on. Combat spells will always be stronger when you use them in an actual fight, you should remember that.”
“Will we duel for real later on then?” Neville asked enthusiastically for the first time. “If this is how much it helped just casting at you when you didn't move…" he trailed off, the implication clear.
“Yes, I would say so. We will do the same thing that Penny and Cedric are doing, just that we'll be throwing knockback jinxes at each other. You also have to learn how to dodge, since not being able to could still lose you the duel,” Harry said approvingly. Neville was turning out to be oddly charming. Hard-working and smart he was very much an outlier for most of the 11-year-olds that Harry had met since his rebirth.
Was this the effect of Voldemort's Horcrux? After all, if everything had gone according to the canon, the boy should still have one on his forehead. One could imagine having a piece of an adult soul in one's body would quicken the maturation process, even if it was only a sliver of a soul.
“I'd recommend you rest a bit, first though. I'll go check on the other two and then we'll start slow and ramp up. After we finish that I'll have another suggestion which should probably win you the duel if you can get it down.”
“What is it?” Neville asked curiously.
Harry waved him off. “I'll leave you hanging for a bit, anticipation should help you recover faster," he said and turned around to look at the horror scene that Penny and Cedric had inflicted on each other and on the room they were occupying while he'd been busy with Neville.
His two friends lay on the floor without moving in a bizarre parody of the aftermath of a pistol duel. Just that instead of blood making the scene red, the scene looked like someone had eaten a whole bag of Skittles and then thrown up on the two of them, on the floor, on the walls, and on the dusty tables they’d shoved in the corner previously.
Cedric had a red nose, a white face and green hair, he truly lived in a society, while Penny still had her red hair, but was now accompanying it with a blue face and a puke green cloak. The area around them was plastered in all colours of the rainbow, and the whole scene was so offensive to the eye that Harry nearly went blind when he beheld it.
He wondered how Neville had stayed focused so well during their exercise if this was what had been happening behind Harry, and wondered if the boy wouldn't have seen even bigger improvements if these two nimrods hadn't been sapping away his attention with their colour warfare.
He disgustedly waved his wand over the entire scene, putting a significant amount of intent and magical power into a wide area finite incancatum. It showcased just how wild his friends had gotten that the colour only drained away slowly instead of disappearing entirely in a magical poof. They really had infused a lot of themselves into their surroundings this time.
He walked forward to kneel next to Cedric whose chest was going up and down very rapidly.
“I thought your cardio would be better considering that you're supposedly an athlete,” he commented idly.
The exhausted boy opened his eyes and gave him a baleful stare. “Maybe that's on days when I didn't already have training in the morning.” His glare turned into a stupid grin immediately after. “Was fun though.”
“I'm sure you learned something despite all the fun, that's the great thing about not having to do this with professors right?” Harry joked trying to keep the mood up.
“Penny you alive?” he shouted and got a shaky thumbs up from the red-head laying face down on the floor on the other side of the room.
The only real redhead in the room playfully shook his head. “I leave you alone for what? Fifteen minutes and this is how it turns out? If nothing else we now know that you need to work on your magical stamina.”
Penny snorted. “Not all of us can be freaks of nature!” she shouted without standing up. It came out a bit muffled.
“How about this? I think I have a way of motivating the two of you,” Harry said with a lopsided grin. “Considering I'm a freak of nature, how about it's you too against me and let's see who ends up being the winner? Does that sound fair?”
Penny and Cedric both jumped up from their previous positions on the floor so fast one would have suspected that they’d faked the entire scene of exhaustion from the get-go.
“Sounds almost fair, maybe we can get Neville as well to really even the odds,” Cedric said suggestively.
“Neville is resting,” Harry said with a roll of his eyes, backing off from his two friends and entering a duelist sense. “You'll have to at least take 50% of the responsibility for your inevitable loss.”
“The only inevitable thing here is the poop-brown I'm going to turn your hair into,” Penny muttered and squared up into some approximation of a stance.
“I'd love to see you try. No really. Break a leg,” Harry taunted back with a smirk as he jumped playfully from his left to his right foot.
It was Cedric who initiated the hostilities and ended the cold war that had been brewing.
“Colovaria!” the boy shouted. A disgusting brown-looking jet of colour escaped his wand, which Harry easily sidestepped.
Oh, it was on.
-/-
AN: Cedric and Penny better keep up before the prophesied one over takes them, smh.
Longish chapter, didn't feel like cutting it anywhere. lots of duelling planned for this year, have to cut in something else so it doesn't get repetitive. Although, by now it should be quite obvious Harry is practicing with Flitwick so maybe I don't have to mention that that often
Comments
Jake
“he truly lived in a society” BOTTOM TEXT
Duy
Tftc!!!!
Green0Photon
It's so funny hearing about as he grows more powerful, the shield being visible the whole time. I just think of in Mother of Learning, where as you get more control over your spells, things becoming less visible. Though I suppose more power with equal control would mean things would be more visible. Anyways, fantastic chapter. I love this fic so much
