Her friend gave her a slight smile, "Honestly, I'm here for the entertainment. I'm not planning on participating in anything, but you have to admit that seeing Malfoy duel Longbottom is going to be interesting. Plus, I have a feeling that something interesting is going to happen."
Harry's eyes twinkled with mischief a bit at the end. Damn, those green eyes were unfair.
However, the mood was ruined by Lovegood speaking up, "Yeah, there's a high possibility of Nargle infestations being there."
The Potter scion snorted in amusement, "Yeah, there's that too."
Stupid Lovegood and her stupid imaginary creatures, ruining everything…
She wanted to ask more about Harry's reason. Alas, Gilderoy Lockhart strolled onto the stage, resplendent in robes of deep plum. The absurd amount of light cast down upon him by the luminous candles seemed to reflect blindingly off of his teeth, creating a blur, somewhat marring the otherwise perfect image. In stark juxtaposition to Lockhart, Snape strode up wearing his usual black. Lockhart smiled brightly at all of the students as he waved merrily. Snape, in contrast, just looked bored.
"Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little duelling club to train you all in case you ever need to defend yourselves as I myself have done on countless occasions — for full details, see my published works." He winked and flashed all of them a charismatic smile. This was typical of him. Even in their classes, however competent he might be, the man certainly did have a flair for the dramatics. Daphne knew that Harry especially didn't like the classes and was still sure the man was a fraud of some sort.
"Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape." Snape gave a curt nod, but no more than that. "He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about duelling himself and has agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin."
Yeah, Daphne's head of house didn't like the way Lockhart introduced him and judging by the glare that threatened to burn the celebrity alive, he was not going to go light on him.
Lockhart's competence did surprise Harry slightly, he was still wary of the man for some reason. Nevertheless, a duel between professionals should be interesting. Honestly, after Harry's duel with Flitwick, her expectations were high.
Lockhart and Snape turned to face each other and bowed; at least, Lockhart did, with much twirling of his hands, whereas Snape jerked his head irritably. Finally, Lockhart triggered some sort of magic which caused the duelling wards around the stage to start a silent countdown. Seconds later, a resounding, ancient-sounding gong rang out through the hall.
Well, Lockhart did have a tendency to be dramatic but that was just insane. Anyway, the duel started at once. And if Daphne could explain it in a single word, it would be disappointing.
Sure, the students were applauding and cheering, but the art that could be seen in Harry's duel with Flitwick was just not there. Lockhart looked like he was fumbling slightly, had lost his footwork, and kept sending standard hexes and curses, and only used the Protego shield. He looked nervous and more than a little panicked, while Snape had a vicious smile on his face, like he was playing with his opponent, and hadn't moved an inch the entire duel. Of course, finally, Snape ended up surprising Lockhart with a shield breaker and an overpowered disarming charm that sent the ponce flying out.
Maybe Harry's suspicions about Lockhart were true because that was truly a subpar effort on his part. When she turned towards her friend, she realized that he had a vicious smile on his face, like he was being vindicated somehow. When their eyes met, he gave her a smug look, and she ended up elbowing him, "Fine, you might have a point. Don't let it get to your head. Tracy is going to be heartbroken when she hears about this."
The girl kept defending him all semester and lorded Harry's mistake over his head for weeks. Yet, Harry was sure that Lockhart wasn't who he said he was, that he didn't do the feats in his book and Daphne had to agree with him slightly. She and Blaise decided not to attend the meeting since they said that Flitwick was probably more experienced in duelling, and they already had enough work as it is.
The Professor stood up and gave them a startling smile, "That was a good showing, Professor Snape. Now, as you may have noticed, we both agreed beforehand to stick to OWL spells or less, since we didn't want to overwhelm you. Professor Snape did a good job with one of the most elementary yet underused pieces of magic, the Disarming charm. Of course, as your defence teacher, I know that I taught it to all of you, but what I hadn't taught you is how to chain that spell to a shield breaker. A truly vicious combination so let's start with that."
For the next hour, Lockhart made sure they mastered the disarming charm, the basic Contego shield, how to cast a shield breaker, and a small spell chain of spells they learnt the previous year.
Of course, by the end of the lesson, it was time for the sparring, which was strictly voluntary. The duels tended to end in less than a minute. Daphne herself fought against some third year Hufflepuff girl and won easily. Harry had given her a proud look afterwards.
Ron Weasley, who had gotten a new wand for the safety of the entire school, ended up getting easily defeated by Theo Nott. But Crabbe and Goyle both lost their duels with Goldstein and Boot. Anyway, while humorous, the duel between Granger and Millicent was a disaster, especially since it ended up as a physical fight, where the muggleborn ended up in a headlock and was whimpering in pain. The professors ended up disqualifying both of them since physical contact was illegal in duelling.
Neither Harry nor Lovegood decided to put their names forward, and it was noticed. Thankfully, Malfoy was too preoccupied with his coming duel with Longbottom to make a scene. When that particular duel was announced, he stood up straight and looked very focused for some reason. She didn't really understand why Harry was invested in this duel, but it felt like it was exactly what he came to the meeting for.
And if Harry is interested in something, the young Greengrass knew that it was worth keeping an eye on. So, as the duelling wards came down once more, and the boy who lived and the Malfoy scion prepared themselves, Daphne decided to see what got Harry to waste almost two hours of his precious time.
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