It was a couple of weeks before the dueling club was announced, and another week before the first session was to begin. In the meantime, we'd made several more trips down to visit the snake, feeding it, and practicing my Parseltongue.
I was apparently still terrible; according to Potter my accent was thick and I was barely intelligible. My vocabulary was limited to a few words. It didn't roll off my tongue naturally the way it did Potter. It felt like I was talking with a mouth full of rocks.
Speaking snake wasn't easy. It was almost like my mouth struggled not to speak it.
Was there other languages for all animal species?
Were there people who could speak to rats, or even worse to insects? I spent a couple of sleepless nights worrying about the possibility. An insect speaker would be able to learn things about me that I didn't want them to know.
The only thing that comforted me was the fact that Parseltongues were supposed to be rare. Insect speakers would undoubtedly be even rarer. Only the insects near Hogwarts would know anything about me, and the odds that the one of the students was one seemed unlikely.
Still, I'd been looking up Acromantulas; apparently, they were sentient, even though they were perfectly willing to eat other sentients. I might be able to learn insect from them, which could be useful.
After all, once insects left my range I knew nothing about them. If I was able to speak their tongue, I'd be able to spy on anyone anywhere. Of course, it was possible that insects didn't have enough of a mind to have a language; it surprised me that snakes did.
It wasn't only magical snakes either; Potter said he'd spoken to regular snakes in the past. There had been one at a zoo, and he'd spoken to garden snakes in his own yard while he was gardening.
Was there something special about snakes, or did wizards somehow grant temporary sentience to snakes when they were around them?
The alternative was disturbing.
What if all animals were sentient? The billions and trillions of insects that I had callously sent to their deaths during my career as Skitter, had they had internal lives, a sense of self?
Eventually I had concluded that it was likely just a property of wizards, or maybe snakes. The alternative was unthinkable. Were we supposed to be like some Buddhists, avoiding walking anywhere for fear of accidentally killing an ant?
Insects, at least the non-magical ones were non-sentient. I'd felt the difference with the Acromantula, and I was betting that I'd feel the difference with other sentient insects too.
"I hope there's a good turnout," Hermione said. "If not many people show up, it's likely they'll shut it down before it really gets started."
"I've got a good feeling about it," I said.
I'd listened in on the discussions between Travers and Flitwick; they'd assumed that the club would be worth continuing with a minimum of ten participants.
I could sense at least fifty people waiting in the great hall now. More were filtering in. Undoubtedly, we'd lose at least a third of that number later on, as people realized that it was hard work, or less fun than they thought, or simply that they didn't have time along with their other activities.
Still, there were a lot of familiar faces.
The Weasley twins, Potter, Neville, the younger Weasley, even Percy Weasley.
The muggleborns were overrepresented; I'd had Hermione and the others putting quiet words in ears about the situation in the greater word. They'd talked about the need to learn to defend yourself in a world that hated you.
At first they'd been awkward, but eventually they'd gotten smoother.
The thing that surprised me was just how aware of the situation the muggleborns turned out to be. Strangely, some of the pureblood and even halfblood members of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff seemed much more ignorant.
It made sense; the muggleborns were the most affected and so they'd paid the most attention.
There seemed to be a good mix of the years, too. I saw everything from first years to seventh years. Some of it was undoubtedly Flitwick's reputation as a duelist; a lot of people were wanting to see him in action.
As we stepped into the Great Hall, Hermione gasped at the numbers who had shown up. I tried not to look smug. Part of the reason so many people had shown up was because of our efforts at promoting it. I'd been afraid that some of the purebloods would have organized a boycott, but that hadn't happened.
There were even a few Slytherins in the group; most of them were half-bloods. Had they come to spy on the proceedings for the others, or were they here for their own improvement?
I could see heads turning as I entered the room.
There were a lot of knowing looks on faces; at Winslow I would have been worried about another Locker, but here I figured it was something else. Everyone had to know that I would show up to something like this; it was almost inevitable.
I suspected that almost as many people were curious to see how I did as Flitwick.
"Welcome, everyone," Flitwick said. "To the first meeting of the Inter-House Dueling club. We are open to other names, but for the moment the IDC is here to promote house unity as well as to improve the skills that every wizard should have, especially in these, dark days."
I was surprised that he even mentioned the situation outside. A lot of the professors liked to pretend that Hogwarts was an isolated island, and that things which happened outside didn't affect the students who were there. The fact that he was willing to admit it, even tangentially was an indicator of how bad things had gotten.
All of the students were quiet.
"We are supposed to teach the basics here," Flitwick continued, "But there is a difference between having a basic mastery of spells and being able to use them in the heat of battle."
Travers spoke up for the first time.
"Participation in this club will be considered extra credit for Defense against the Dark Arts," he said. "I can think of no better way to prepare for danger than to actually face another wizard wand to wand."
He'd proven to be a competent teacher over the past few months. He seemed to care that the children learned what they were supposed to learn, and he was good at getting the ideas across.
There were a lot of hints that he was prejudiced against muggleborns and muggles in general, but it didn't seem to affect his grading and he seemed to be generally fair. As long as he was able to set his prejudices aside when it counted, I was willing to annoy the occasional digs that he made.
I wasn't even sure he was always aware he was making them. It was as though he had a basic set of assumptions that he didn't question.
Still, he was competent as a teacher, and that was important right now.
"We will organize this club by grade level. The best three in any particular grade level will be allowed to participate in the next grade up."
I raised my hand.
"Yes Miss Hebert?" he asked.
"How far can we take that?" I asked. "Is it limited to a single grade level?"
He stared at me, considering, then said, "If a student is able to fight above their weight class, they will be allowed to advance until they can no longer continue to advance."
I nodded.
I saw looks from the people around me, but I ignored them. Asking the question had been risky; I suspected given my performance against the Weasleys that I might be able to score in the low third year level in a fight. There were aspects of luck to the whole thing, though, and it would be embarrassing if I found myself stuck in second year.
"We will begin with some basic combats to see where people rank," Flitwick said. "This will help us determine each student's strengths and weaknesses."
Quickly, they separated us out by year. Notably, they didn't separate us by house, something that I was pleased to see. The simmering anger between houses had lessened somewhat, but only because the professors had tamped down on incidents in the hallways hard.
Things like this that forced people to interact with each other might help to reduce that tension. It might even create an outlet for people who wanted to blast their enemies; if they were both in the club it would be a socially acceptable pressure valve.
I suspected that this was why the Headmaster and the others had decided that the club was a good idea. Keeping order in the school was very important to them, and if a little time investment here made their jobs easier elsewhere, then they would be all for it.
I watched as the first of the students lined up.
One of the reasons I'd wanted to start this club was to get a better grip on what the difference in skill levels were between different groups of wizards. Once I was able to compare my skills to others, I'd know just how much work I had to do.
"Non-lethal spells only," Flitwick said. "These are not duels to the death. No one is to be permanently injured or maimed."
He glanced at me and I frowned.
I hadn't maimed anyone in months; why was he looking at me?
"Not much is expected of first years," he said. "But that's not a reason to slack off. Watch what the ones who go before you do, and learn from them. Wizarding combat is all about strategy. There is a muggle game called rock paper scissors; it is one that wizarding children play as well. Wizarding combat is much like that; some spells work better against some defenses than others."
Travers spoke up.
"Wizarding combat is an unending arms race. A wizard will discover a new defense, one that is superior from whatever came before. Eventually, someone always comes up with a new attack to counter it. Some people think that is what has happened with the unforgivable; there is no defense against avadakedavra, but that does not mean there will never be."
Technically he was wrong.
There were defenses against the killing spell; mostly they involved the same sort of defense that were used against guns; keeping something solid between you and it, and keeping cover. Talented wizards like Dumbledore would move the environment around him to use as a defense; the rest of us had to learn to dodge.
The performance of the first few First years was terrible. Most of them barely seemed to know what they were doing, even with the few vaguely useful combat spells we'd been taught.
I was pleased to see that Hermione was easily able to overcome her opponent. So was Neville.
Potter didn't do quite as well, but he still easily outmatched his opponent. It was impressive because he hadn't been training all semester like the rest of us.
Finally, it was my turn.
I was facing Seamus Finnegan. He was a Gryffindor and a halfblood. I didn't know much about him except that he was always talking about quidditch.
There was a subtle look of apprehension on his face, one that he obviously tried to quell as he faced me. What did he think, that I was going to cut off his leg?
"Begin!" Flitwick shouted.
"Expelliarmus," I said, almost casually.
The boy's wand flew out of his hand before he could react. He scowled, but he didn't look too disappointed. In fact, he looked relieved.
I could hear the whispers around me about how fast I had reacted. I hadn't even cheated using bugs. Expelliarmus wasn't taught in our year either.
I'd had years of experience in fighting Capes. In those kinds of fights, being slow often meant being dead, unless you were lucky enough to be a brute. Even then, depending on your toughness would eventually get you in trouble. Eventually you would fight someone who was a lot stronger, or whose special attack sidestepped your defenses. If that didn't happen, then you'd end up fighting Leviathan, and shortly after that you were dead.
The first lesson you learned as a cape was that you dodged or you were dead. It was as much a game of rock paper scissors as wizarding combat, unless you were facing a known combatant, and even then, every Cape tended to hold something back.
Sometimes it was a little used power. Sometimes it was a strategy, or a technique. Some would pretend to have limitations they didn't actually have, all to lure an opponent into being off guard in an important moment.
So me being fast wasn't unexpected, even without cheating. I'd been working on my speed with the Weasleys too.
Stepping aside quickly, I carefully kept my features impassive.
While I was hoping to get an accurate gauge of my classmate's skills, I didn't want them to be accurate in fighting me.
We quickly went through the first rounds; that was followed by a second round in which the winners fought, and then a third.
I easily defeated my opponents.
Everyone in our group, Hermione, Millie, Tracey and Neville as well as Potter were the only ones who were left.
Potter beat Millie. Hermione beat Neville. I easily beat Tracey.
That meant that the three of us were all moving on to fight the second years.
These fights were more interesting. The first year students hadn't really had many spells that could be used for fighting, and so some of them had almost stood around like they didn't know what to do.
Second year students, though, had access to two spells that were useful; expelliarmus and flipendo.
This had the virtue of being more visually interesting. Seeing wands fly through the air was fun, and occasionally seeing an entire student fly was even more fun.
Despite this, they were slow, painfully slow. I had a feeling that most of them had never faced another student in combat their entire lives, other than occasional scuffs in the hallways. Maybe even not then; most of these students were probably the ones who would have been bullied and probably had never lifted their wands in anger.
I and the other members of the study group on the other hand had been practicing for months. Even the Weasleys had gotten noticeably faster.
While the first round had been randomly assigned, likely because the professors didn't have an accurate gauge of people's skill levels, the second round students seemed to be more evenly matched.
Potter lost the second round, even though he gave it a good try. Unlike most of the others he at least managed to dodge, but he didn't have the offensive spells yet to make a good show of it. He had the speed and natural reflexes though, and I guessed that he'd be very good as a duelist once he had the basic training.
Hermione won her first round.
I barely moved when I faced my opponent, stepping aside as they tried to use flipendo on me. My opponent was a pureblood, and I had assumed they would try the more humiliating option against me. It was a mistake, because that was a spell that they'd learned more recently, which meant he was slower with it.
Losing her wand in the second round, Hermione looked frustrated.
Travers had put her against a particularly strong opponent, though, one of the few second years who was known for fighting in the school halls. Even so, the fight wasn't ended immediately, and I thought she had done rather well. It was just bad luck that the other fellow was a little faster.
My second round was against the strongest second year.
Against him, I actually had to dodge.
Still, I'd been habitually fighting against third years; I'd graduated from fighting against one of them to trying to fight against two. I hadn't been doing well at that at all, not unless I cheated with my bugs, and I wasn't willing to do that for multiple reasons.
Still, learning to fight multiple opponents was going to be necessary. Death Eaters weren't going to fight you like opponents in martial arts movies where they lined up to fight one at a time.
I planned to teach my people to gang up on enemies too; basic tactics for groups in battles were something I planned to pound into their heads, at least once I could get them to respect my opinions.
Still, I was moving onto third year, and I suspected that moving past that was going to be difficult. Fourth years had access to spells that the Weasleys were only now trying to master. Still, I'd proven that I was able to fight well above my weight class.
The fights from now on would be much more interesting. It was only a matter of time before I lost, but I intended to do the best that I could.
Hopefully the fighting would help us all get better, which was going to be important in the days to come.
Although the fight against Voldemort was going fairly well, the reports of cells being found and destroyed were getting fewer and fewer. They were learning and adapting.
In a way, the battle between the Ministry and the Death Eaters was just as much of a game of rock paper scissors as individual battles were.
I was moving to the third round and I could hold my head high.1559ShayneTJul 7, 2019View discussionThreadmarks Interlude: RonView contentShayneTJul 9, 2019#14,044Ron was worried.
He and Harry had been inseperable from the moment they'd met on the train. It had been a relationship that almost seemed destined to be.
It wasn't that Harry was famous, although that was what had made Ron introduce himself in the first place. Harry hated being famous, which was something Ron couldn't really understand. He'd lived his entire life in the shadow of his brothers, and the opportunity to stand out, to be known seemed like a gift far more than it was a burden.
It was true that a lot of people watched Harry like he was a dead man walking. Voldemort was on the rise, and the general consensus was that sooner or later he'd be coming for the Boy-Who-Lived.
That fear caused a lot of people to avoid Harry; they assumed that when Voldemort came for him he wasn't likely to be too disciminating about who he killed in the meantime.
All of that meant that Harry really didn't have anyone other than Ron. It was petty, but Ron really appreciated having someone, anyone all to himself. If that meant that eventually he'd have to face danger, well, he was a Gryffindor for a reason, wasn't he?
However, since returning from winter break, things had been different between them. Harry had been distant, and he'd been secretive. He kept sneaking off so that no one knew where to find him.
He had shown Ron his invisibility cloak, and so it was possible that he was simply sneaking around in it, but there had been a time where he would have done that with Ron too.
Ron found himself wondering if he'd done something to offend the other boy. When he was around Ron, Harry acted perfectly natural, but there was something about his expression that almost seemed haunted.
It couldn't have been the war, because for once, things seemed to actually be going right. Death Eater enclaves were falling right and left, and Ron's dad seemed to think that the war itself might be over by the end of summer.
The possibility that Harry might be seeing a girl worried Ron. He'd seen how some of his older brothers got when they were infatuated, and it was like their brains fell out of their head.
He'd never be that stupid. Girls were disgusting, and the only reason to bother with them at all was because you had to.
Everything had become clear though one day when Ron had managed to follow Harry. He'd seen him talking to the Hebert girl, and they'd been standing close together.
Was Harry an idiot?
Of all the girls in school, he had to fall for the one girl who was known to be completely mental. The fact that she was a Slytherin was enough not to date her; Slytherins were untrustworthy, and they lied a lot. They were cowardly, too, most of them. They'd attack from behind instead of head to head like any reasonable person.
Not this one, though.
She was as vicious as a Nundu, and by all reputes would happily maim someone just for looking at her wrong.
Even worse, people were saying that Voldemort wanted her dead almost as much as Harry. That doubled the size of the target on his back.
When Harry declared that he was joining the new Dueling club, Ron had understood. Harry was going to have to fight Death Eaters sooner or later, and getting better sooner might mean that he lived just a little longer.
So Ron, being Ron, had joined up too.
He hadn't lasted past the first round. It wasn't surprising, really. He'd been more concerned with playing Gobstones than paying attention to his homework. That didn't make him that much different than most of his classmates, except that the ones who joined the dueling club tended to be a little better than everyone else.
What was surprising was just how much better Harry had done even though he knew barely any spells that would help him.
The scary thing though was Hebert.
She was utterly relaxed, showing none of the tension any of the others showed, and she was fast. Harry was fast too, but his speed was undirected.
Hebert moved like she knew what she was doing. She made beating her opponents look easy, almost as though she was bored.
"She's fantastic," Harry said, moving beside him.
"You said she was barmy before Christmas Break," Ron said, staring at him.
Harry looked at him. "I spent some time talking to her over the break. She helped me with a few things. She's not nearly as bad as people say."
"What things?" Ron demanded. "What could she have possibly helped you with that would change your mind this much?"
A cagey look came over Harry's face. "She's just a lot more open minded than I would have expected."
"I don't even know what that means!" Ron said. "She beats people up, like all the time."
"You can't tell me you wouldn't be beating people up if you had to live with the Slytherins," Harry said. "Especially Malfoy."
Malfoy surprisingly hadn't been as insufferable over the past few months as he had been in the past, but he was still a git. Ron had had to deal with him when he was younger and he'd been intolerable.
Now though he was just a constant irritant. He didn't brag as much about his father, but that didn't mean he didn't made snide comments whenever he thought he could get away with it.
"You know the best way not to have to live with the Slytherins?" Ron aaked. "Don't be a Slytherin!"
"The Hat didn't give her a choice," Harry said defensively. "She says she asked for Hufflepuff."
"Her?" Ron asked incredulously. "She'd have murdered them all in their sleep the first night. The Slytherins are the only thing keeping her from taking over the entire school!"
Harry shrugged. "Maybe... but she's fantastic at dueling."
Harry was talking about dueling the way he usually talked about Quidditch. Ron had a sinking feeling that meant this wasn't going to be a one time thing.
Harry was probably going to be good at it, like he was good at everything else. He'd been pushing Ron to work harder, but Ron had been resisting. Why work harder than you had to; unless you were in a few, select professions, graduating with good grades didn't get you a better job than graduating with poor ones.
They weren't ever going to have an opportunity to enjoy themselves like this again. Once they were adults, they'd work in a dreary government job, or work in a shop. If they were barmy, they'd get jobs as an auror; that seemed likely the path that Harry would take. He'd already saved Wizarding Britain once, why wouldn't he keep doing it?
It was probably more interesting than the other limited options available, but the danger wasn't wortth it. Ron had seen Mad Eyed Moody once, talking with his father, and he'd seen what happened to aurors.
People like Granger and the Ravenclaws were mental; they worked hard for something that didn't mean anything in the end. Nobody cared about grades once school was over.
If Harry loved doing this, Ron would follow, and that meant a lot of work was up ahead.
"Where'd she learn that?" Harry asked.
Spells were bouncing off of an area in front of the witch, and everyone in the room was stepping back as the spells were reflected in every direction.
Flitwick stepped up beside them.
"She's doing really well, isn't she, boys?"
Ron looked at him. "Are we supposed to be learning that this year?"
"No," Flitwick said. He sounded almost gleeful. "She's a little sloppy in her wandwork, but at this age, it's astounding. I'd almost think that she'd been doing this for months."
As her opponant, a rather competent Ravenclaw girl went flying through the air, they all winced.
"I suspect Madam Pomfrey is going to have her hands full tonight," Flitwick said. "Well, you can't have a duel without breaking a few eggs."
Ron wondered if by eggs he meant someone's head. The man had once had a reputation as a vicious duelist.
"Now you, Mr. Potter have a natural talent for this," Flitwick said. "And should you choose to pursue it, I suspect you may go far. You may be able to catch up with Miss Hebert sooner than later if you apply yourself."
He slapped Harry on the back, and Harry looked stunned.
"Thank you, sir," he said.
Ron felt something ugly deep within him. He'd never envied Harry his fame, not once he'd seen just what it had cost him. He had envied everything else.
School seemed to come easy for him; Ron had to work twice as hard for half the result. Girls liked him, although it mystified Ron as to why he would want them to.
Was this another thing that Ron would be overshadowed in?
No.
Ron had been in the shadow of other people all his life. He was sick and tired of it.
"I'm going to try too," Ron spoke up suddenly.
"That's very good," Flitwick said absently. He didn't appear to even be listening.
Anger burned in Ron's gut.
"The Winners of the third year combat are the Weasley Twins and Taylor Hebert," Travers called out.
Even the twins were good at this; they'd demolished their opponents without even trying. Was everybody Ron knew an expert at this kind of stuff?
"For the fourth round," Travers said. "I would like Taylor Hebert and George Weasley to stand up."
So one of them would be forced to lose. Ron felt conflicted.
Hebert was untrustworthy, a Slytherin, someone who was trying to take his best friend away. He suspected that she didn't even care that much about Harry.
She never even looked at him, although the truth was that she hardly ever looked at anyone. It was part of what made her so creepy. She always seemed to know where everyone was without looking.
Yet the twins had tormented them throughout his childhood. He wouldn't want something bad to happen to one of them, but seeing them taken down a peg or two wouldn't bother him one bit.
It was probably best to treat it as a win no matter who won.
At that decision, Ron felt himself cheering considerably. It didn't matter who won, not really. Someone was going to be humiliated that wasn't him, and that was a win in his book.
"Begin!" Travers called out.
Both combatants bowed very low toward each other.
Ron suspected that Harry didn't understand the meaning of the bow; he hadn't grown up in the Wizarding world. The depth of the bow was an indicator of a wizard's respect for his opponent. A deep bow, like both were giving now was indicative of a great deal of respect. Opponents who hated each other would barely nod.
The crowd around them burst into murmurs.
They were acknowledging each other as equals? Ron would have expected a mocking flourish from George, something to indicate that the little firstie wasn't realy on his level.
Even stranger, Hebert had barely bowed at all for any of her previous opponents. Most people would have attributed that to her being a muggleborn and not knowing any better, but this indicated that maybe she did.
Had she had training somewhere?
While dueling wasn't Ron's favorite sport, he'd watched as much of it as any other pureblood. He knew the basics, at least.
"What?" Harry was asking him, pulling on his shirt. "Why's everybody talking?"
"It's the bow, mate," Ron muttered.
Both of the combatants got into the accepted combat positions. Hebert was crouched low, lower than most duelists; presumably she thought that presented less of her to be a target. George was in a more classical pose.
Both combatants simply stared at each other for a long moment, and then they began throwing spells at each other. Both were using shields and spells were bouncing off right and left.
George was using stunners, which was a spell Ron thought wasn't supposed to be taught until fourth year. Hebert was responding, shouting out "Flipendo!" and "Expelliarmus!"
Both of them were running around, dodging despite having shields up. Ron supposed it was possible that having spells hit shields took energy of some kind; if not, why try to dodge spells? That would leave you out of breath and more vulnerable.
Everybody cursed as George threw a bunch of sand onto the floor and then used a spell to cause it to spray across the battlefield. Hebert ducked and rolled, and George followed up by throwing something onto the floor.
The floor began to melt and sink into some kind of swamp. Hebert immediately sank into the swamp and her movements slowed.
An angry expression appeared on her face, and she immediately dropped down into the swamp until only the top of her head was above the edge of the water. She continued to cast spells at George, but not her shield spell didn't have to cover much.
It was over eventually, although it took a lot longer than any six of the other duels. Hebert hit George with a tickling charm, and then used a summoning charm on his wand. As she strode out of the swamp, she kept hitting George with the tickling charm as he rolled on the floor laughing.
"Miss Hebert!" Flitwick called out sharply.
She turned toward him, her robes soaked and stinking. She looked angry.
"Mr. Weasley has forfeited his place by using an item in a duel. You have won. Perhaps you would like to return to your rooms and get cleaned up."
She frowned, then nodded.
The professors spent the next thirty minutes trying to dispel the portable swamp, but nothing they did worked. The Twins didn't know how to reverse it either, and for once Ron believed them.
"She just dropped down inside it," Harry said. "Used it as cover!"
"I thought girls were supposed to be all worried about how they looked," Ron muttered.
Harry shook his head. "I don't think she cares, realy. Isn't duelling great?"
Harry only thought that because he'd never been around it before. Ron had known about it al his life, and so it seemed like old hat to him. Presumably the shine would wear off for Harry too, but probably not before Ron had been dragged to all sorts of events.
Eventually Flitwick transfigured a section of stone floor over the portable swamp. Once it had settled in the duels resumed.
The next duels went by in a flash. Ron couldn't help but watch Harry instead of the duels.
Harry's eyes were shining.
It wasn't Hebert that had him so excited. It was the duels. Ron had a feeling that Harry was going to admire anyone who was good at them, much as Ron would admire a great Quidditch player. It didn't matter that most Wizards never got into a fight in their entire life once school was over; what mattered was being able to beat your opponent in as flashy a manner as possible.
Potter was watching every duel with an intesity that Ron had never seen before, and he could almost see him learning from every one. Potter kept muttering to himself as one after the other students made mistakes.
"Watch your footing," he muttered to himself as one girl stumbled, only to be hit by a stunner.
As another boy was surprised by a flash of light that left al of them blinded, he muttered something that Ron couldn't understand.
Looking across the room, Ron saw that the Hebert girl was watching with almost the same intensity. For once, she was using her eyes; she watched every fight like a hawk, and it was like she was assessing everyone who fought, one after the other.
Hermione, beside her was taking copious notes. Ron wondered if she was doing it at the request of the Slytherin, or because she was simply that obsessed with learning.
"Taylor Hebert, and Cassius Warrington," Travers called out.
Warrington was one of the few pure blooded Slytherins who'd chosen to join; from the look in his eyes it was because he had a bone to pick with Hebert, and he was choosing to do it here, where he wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night with her standing over him with a bloody sock.
He'd been friends with Avery, from what Ron had heard, and he'd tried telling everyone in the school that Hebert should be expelled.
Ron felt himself leaning forward, even as Harry started pulling him back. The lackluster nature of a lot of the duels had been boring him; mostly they didn't last long, and then one person lost. A grudge match, though, that was likely to get nasty, and there was a high likelyhood that someone was going to try to cheat.
They were both Slytherins, after all.
"Bow," Travers said.
The nods they gave each other were almost imperceptible. It was obvious that Hebert knew who the boy was. Despite that, she was standing loosely, as though she wasn't worried about him attacking.
It was a deliberate insult, and Ron could see the realization of that on Warrington's face. The boy scowled, and his expression turned ugly.
Beside him, Harry seemed oblivious to the byplay. He was watching their wands and their feet and didn't seem to notice anything else.
"Begin," Travers said.
They did.1814ShayneTJul 9, 2019View discussionThreadmarks DuelView contentShayneTJul 11, 2019#14,201Warrington.
I had very little respect for him. At least the Slytherins who had attacked me earlier in the semester has done so directly. They'd had the courage to at least risk getting into trouble, even if they were only attacking a little girl.
Theirs was a casual kind of cruelty; still cowardly, but at least they'd done something about it.
Warrington had been Avery's friend, but he hadn't done anything about it other than run his mouth all semester. I'd ignored it, because the only people he'd been talking to had been the people who already hated me.
Letting him talk had actually been useful; I'd listened to the responses of the people he'd been talking to. Some had been enthusiastic about feeding into his delusions. Others had been more reticent, and some had rejected him altogether.
I'd considered those last to be the people to watch the most, because they were likely the smartest of the group. The fact that he'd approached them in the first place meant that he'd thought they'd be receptive to what he had to say. He wasn't brave enough to try to change the minds of people who would actually resist him.
He'd preach to the choir, but standing in front of the congregation was too much for him.
If he'd been smarter, he'd have actively been trying to undermine my reputation. He could have spread rumors, made accusations, caused all kinds of trouble for me. Instead he'd just been petty and whiny, saying enough to make people think he was loyal to Avery without actually doing anything.
So he was stepping up now?
He looked angry, and his face was red, which didn't bode well for a professional, dispassionate match. I hadn't done anything recently to make him more angry, so I wasn't sure what had set him off.
Travers called out, and the match was started.
Warringron stared at me, then smirked. He pointed his wand at the floor and mumbled something that I couldn't hear over the sounds of the students talking.
Blue light exploded all around us even as symbols appeared on the floor.
"I've spent the last couple of weeks every night on my knees creating this," he said. "It's based on the charms that protect Hogwarts in times of danger."
I couldn't hear anything from outside the blue force field, not with my ears anyway, although my connection with my bugs told me that Flitwick and Travers were trying to bring the field down, without success.
"Some friends of my father showed me how to do this," he continued. He smiled grimly. "All so that we could spend some quality time together."
I ducked as Warrington pointed his wand at me and a ball of fire exploded from his wand. I quickly put up a shield, and I attempted to grab his wand magically.
The fire bounced off my shield and struck the inside of the blue wall separating us from everyone else. It bounced off that wall, and it fizzled out.
"Expelliarmus!" I called out.
I didn't expect it to actually do anything; he seemed to have some experience in fighting unlike my other opponents other than George. I was right, he stepped aside and launched another ball of fire at me. My shield this time defected it up toward the ceiling, and despite the scene of the open sky above, we felt plaster raining down.
Warrington then tried to hit my legs with a jelly legs jinx; undoubtedly he was hoping to keep me from moving to set me up for something much nastier.
I easily stepped aside.
"I'm not trapped in here with you," I said. I stared at him. "You've trapped yourself in here with me."
"You can't bluff your way out of this one, mudblood," he said. "I don't know what trick you used to murder my father, but it won't work on me."
"What's the matter?" I called out, as another gout of flame shot past me. I stepped to the side as it struck where my back would have been. "Can't hit a mudblood?"
He cast stunners at me; several of them bounced off the wall behind me, and I had to be careful not to be hit in the back by one. I kept my eyes firmly focused on him, and used my bugs to keep an eye on what was happening behind me.
His face was growing increasingly red and sullen, his expression determined. There was something ugly in his expression. I hadn't seen that on the face of another student since the early days of my schooling here.
I had no idea what he was talking about. I hadn't done anything to him since I'd put Avery in the hospital, certainly not enough to warrant this kind of anger.
"My father is dead," he said. "And you are going to pay." There were tears in his eyes, as well as a look of undiluted hatred. He launched something dark at me, something that I didn't recognize. I stepped out of the way, and then I dropped to the ground as it whipped around behind me and tried to attack me from behind.
He meant to kill me. I'd known that from the moment he'd lifted the barrier, but I hadn't known why. Had his father been one of the Death Eaters who had attacked us in the forest? The Wizarding world was so deeply inbred that it was almost certain that those men had relatives who went to school here
I'd been stupid not to try to find out who they were; I'd need to be on guard against their children. While most people knew better than to try to fight against me, a grieving family member might not care about the consequences. They wouldn't care about being hurt or expelled, only that the person who had ruined their lives was eliminated.
If I let this continue, he was only going to escalate, and sooner or later he was going to hurt someone.
"Your father killed himself, you know," I said.
"He did not! My father's friends told me what happened."
"What, that he was out working for the Death Eaters, trying to murder a could of eleven year old children? That was brave."
"Shut up!" he screamed. He screamed and more fire exploded out of his wand in my direction.
I lashed out with a cutting spell; it flew past him and bounced off the blue wall. It hit him low in the back and he screamed and stumbled.
He died like a little bitch," I continued, "Crying and begging like the rest of you cowards."
I wouldn't have said something like that in front of the crowd if they could hear what I was saying.
He screamed and lunged toward me, throwing fireball after fireball. I ducked and dodged, and I returned fire, slashing out at him with diffindo spells. I caught him on the calf, and he began bleeding heavily. Blood loss would slow him down eventually, the only question was whether or not he would get lucky before that happened.
I grinned at him, although I didn't let it reach my eyes.
"Can't even hit a mudblood," I said. "Wouldn't daddy be proud?"
He cast several spells that left slices in the floor when I deflected them. It was only a matter of time before he tried a spell that I didn't know the counter for. I wouldn't put it past him to try the Killing Curse, and from what I'd heard those slid through shields like a knife through hot butter.
It was time to end this.
He was tiring and I took the opportunity to lash out. "Accio shoes."
I'd just learned this spell, and I was happy for a chance to use it. As Warrington's shoes jerked toward me, he lost his footing, and he fell on his rear end. He started to slide toward me.
He dismissed the spell, and his face red, he cast another spell from the ground.
Two snakes appeared and came slithering toward me. While I couldn't assume that they were poisonous, I had to assume they were.
He was staring up at me closely, presumably to see if I was terrified. I couldn't imagine how he would possibly think that; hadn't he lived in the same dorm as me for the past few months? Did he really think that a couple of snakes would be what made me quiver in terror?
I considered my options. I could try to speak to the snakes, but I only knew a few words, and these things were conjured. Were they actually snakes at all, or were they simple projections? If they were projections, all my speaking would do was waste time and let them get within striking range.
It was better not to take the chance. I flicked my wand, and I said "Aqua Eructo!"
I focused my will, and a jet of water exploded from my wand, striking the snakes and driving them back. I stepped forward. The snakes kept trying to move around the jet of water, but every time it hit them it sent them flying.
Finally, they collided with the boy, and then I hit him with the water jet directly between the legs. I could see the snakes lashing out and biting him repeatedly as he frantically tried to dismiss them.
"Scourgify," I said coldly.
I hit him in the face, and the spell began to scrub away at his skin. It had never been meant to be used on flesh, and it was painful to say the least. He screamed and tried to turn away, but this just left me scrubbing at the back of his head.
"Avis," I said, as he was hiding his face with his arm.
I'd been interested in this spell because it was the closest thing to my normal method of operating that Wizards had; summoning creatures to use against your enemies.
"Avis, Avis, Avis," I said.
He was trying to dispel the birds that were increasingly pecking at his body. As I cast the spell over and over again, a massive swarm of birds appeared. They pecked over and over at his body. Welts and blood began to appear on his body. He flailed around and screamed, and I easily pulled the wand from his hand with magic.
"Densaugeo," I said.
His teeth began to grow, and I leaned down toward him, watching as they grew larger and larger. They were already inhumanly large, and as I focused my will they grew even larger than that. By now he looked like a caricature of himself, almost like a cartoon character.
I was barely aware of the sounds of the crowd reappearing as the blue wall surrounding us went down. Apparently whatever Flitwick and Travers had come up with had worked, finally. I was too focused on the boy in front of me to even notice, other than peripherally.
"This can kill, you know," I said. "If I keep letting your teeth grow, eventually they will pierce the top of your skull and into your brain. You'll be aware of it every second, and it will be a painful way to die."
It was only then that I realized that my voice had carried across the room. The students were so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.
"Miss Hebert!" I heard Flitwick say, sounding shocked. The next thing I knew I was being pulled off my feet and levitated into the air, my wand flying out of my hand.
My hand darted toward my fanny pack until I realized that it was Flitwick who was holding me up in the air with magic, and then I stopped.
"Miss Hebert and Mr. Warrington have both been disqualified," he said firmly. "And both have forfeited their match."
He dismissed my swarm of birds after letting me down.
"Are you all right, Miss Hebert?" he asked in a low voice.
I looked up at him. "Why wouldn't I be? I hadn't had someone try to kill me in a couple of weeks, so it was about time."
"You lost control of yourself for a moment there.
"I didn't," I said. "I just needed to make a point. I knew that you or Professor Travers would stop me."
I was lying out of my ass, but I needed Flitwick's approval. He didn't seem like the type who would be all right with making a schoolboy's teeth grow until they exploded through the top of his head.
"You could have been more gentle with him," he said.
"No I couldn't," I said.
"You understand why I had to disqualify you," he said. "I did ask that you not maim anyone. I suspect that you could have stopped him without doing what you did."
I saw that the youngest Weasley was staring at me. He leaned close to Potter and said "I told you mate."
Fourth year was fine with me; they were or at least would be good enough that I'd have a workout, but not so good that they'd be regularly beating me. The kids in the higher grades were learning to cast spells non-verbally, which was going to be a nightmare for someone like me, who was just learning.
Finding a spot where I was at was a win as far as I was concerned.
"Do you think I should allow you to continue, Miss Hebert?" he asked, watching me closely. "If these matches arouse your bloodlust too much, perhaps it would be better if you watch from the sidelines."
"No, no," I said. "I don't mind an honest match. But if someone tries to kill me, I take a dim view of that."
"Do you know why he tried to kill you?"
I leaned forward and spoke quietly in his ear. "He seems to think that killed his father."
He frowned. "Why would he think that, Miss Hebert?"
I shrugged. "It might have something to do with the....incident over break."
He stared at me for a moment, and then his lips tightened. He'd been one of the few who'd gotten the full story of what had happened. Most of my teachers had been told, if only because they were trusted and because they needed to know what to watch out for.
After all, if the Death Eaters had attacked once, it was possible that they might attack again.
Some of the teachers hadn't been told. The Divination teacher didn't know; whether that was because they thought she couldn't be trusted or because they thought she wouldn't be competent enough to protect us I didn't know.
What mattered was that Flitwick knew.
There were people nearby who were trying to listen in while not being obvious about it. The only ones who were close enough to possibly hear my voice were Potter and Weasley. Hopefully Potter could keep Weasley in check.
Flitwick took a deep breath and looked at the destruction around the Great Hall.
"We're going to have to clarify the rules," he said. "And find better ways to protect those who are watching. We will take a thirty minute intermission while we deal with Mr. Warrington's injuries."
He quickly assigned three seventh years, including a prefect to take Warrington to the Hospital Ward. His legs were already swelling up and turning black from the snake venom. Apparently whatever snake he had chosen to conjure was highly venomous.
Furthermore, his breath was whistling in his lungs. He was sweating and he was convulsing.
From the look on Flitwick's face, this wasn't the normal response to a bite from one of these snakes. Apparently Warrington had changed the spell somehow, and had made it much more dangerous and possibly lethal.
Flitwick insisted on having Travers accompany the boys floating the body to the Hospital Wing. Likely he would have liked to have done it himself, but with his short legs he would have slowed them down.
"This isn't an auspicious beginning," he muttered.
"That's what he meant for me," I said quietly.
"I have no issues with your performance," he said. "You are brilliant at combat. I worry about the streak of cruelty. I only wish that it had not come to this."
For a moment he looked as though he was reconsidering the very idea of the dueling club. Having the club end before it had even started wasn't my plan, not at all.
"This is exactly why we're here," I said, and I realized that my voice was carrying further than I'd meant it to as the entire room had gone silent.
I looked around at everyone. I might as well continue.
"Sooner or later, all of us are going to be facing snakes coming at us in the night. It might not be this year, and it might not be in school, but it's coming. We aren't here because this is fun, although it is. We aren't here for the glory, although there is glory to be found. We're here because this is what is going to keep us alive."
Everyone was staring at me, including Flitwick.
His lips tightened, and he nodded.
"Quite right, Miss Hebert," he said. "We will move on to the final three years once Mr. Warrington is sorted out."
Flitwick had a discussion with Travers once he returned, and it was decided to finish up the matches, since the students still seemed interested despite the danger.
From the looks on some of their faces, I suspected that the danger only made them more interested. This was no longer a club where people did even more classwork. It was more like watching NASCAR; most of the fun was in waiting to see if someone crashed and burned.
Hopefully that wouldn't be me.1737ShayneTJul 11, 2019View discussionThreadmarks PlanView contentShayneTJul 14, 2019#14,408"Mr. Warrington is dead," Snape said.
It had been a week since the disastrous first dueling club session, and Warrington had been transferred to Saint Mungos. I was now in the Headmaster's office, facing Dumbledore, Snape and the Auror Moody.
"I had nothing to do with it," I said quickly. "He basically killed himself."
"That's what you say about everyone who dies around you, isn't it?" Moody said. He stared at me with his human eye, while his mechanical eye whirled wildly.
I shrugged.
"You aren't bothered by his death?" Dumbledore asked.
"Should I be?" I asked. "In America, when people try to kill you defending yourself is allowed. I didn't do anything that would kill him, so why should I feel guilt?"
I frowned.
"How did he die?"
"The snakes were summoned from elsewhere," Moody said. "They had curses inscribed on them that made their venom impervious to wizardly healing. The boy died in pain."
"He meant that for me," I said quietly. "The Death Eaters meant that for me."
"It was perhaps a message," Dumbledore said. "One intended to encourage you to become more circumspect in your dealings."
"I AM circumspect!" I said. "I hadn't hurt anybody in months before Christmas."
"I'm not sure you understand what circumspect means," Moody said. "You take more risks than a Gryffindor."
"Did the boy say anything to you?" Moody asked.
"He said his father's friends taught him to make the circle. I'm assuming they taught him some of the other spells as well. Considering that the Death Eaters are the only people I've killed recently, I'm assuming his father was a Death Eater."
"Recently?" Moody asked, leaning toward me.
I rolled my eyes. "It's an expression. I'm eleven. How many people do you possibly think I could have killed?"
"I don't know," Moody said. "Why don't you tell me?"
"Less than you," I lied. "The important question is whether this was an escalation, or just them trying to save face given what's been happening recently."
"I'd have thought the first question on your mind would be whether you are being charged or not." Moody said.
"For defending myself in front of fifty witnesses?" I asked. I shook my head. "And if you were going to arrest me, I think you'd have brought more aurors."
"You think I need help bringing in a pipsqueak like you?"
"I think you know I wouldn't go down without a fight," I said. "And that I'd fight back even if Dumbledore here was trying to take me in."
I likely wouldn't stand a chance, not with the three of them standing in front of me, but I might be able to escape if I revealed my only trump card, my insects. The weather was starting to warm up, and I'd been intentionally breeding as many of them as I could in the out of the way places in the castle.
The number of bugs I could control was growing toward my old levels, although my multitasking still wasn't what it had once been. Also, while there were a lot of bugs in Hogwarts, it wasn't nearly the number that could be found in a shithole like Brockton Bay.
He stared at me for a moment, then nodded.
"There's some people in the Ministry who want to press charges, but they're clearly biased toward the Pureblood faction. The liberals still have control of the Wizengamot, and so nothing is going to be done."
That was probably going to irritate more than a few people, but it didn't bother me.
"I'm assuming that I'm still not a big priority for the Death Eaters," I said. "Since they're still using these low cost low risk strategies against me."
"Oh?" Snape asked.
"Getting an idiot kid to do their work for them isn't a strategy that is likely to work. But what did it cost them? Spend an hour teaching a kid a few spells.... if he fails, then he wasn't a member of the team anyway. Maybe he gets lucky and succeeds. Maybe the girl kills him and she ends up in prison... these are cheap attacks that remind people that the Death Eaters are still relevant, even though they are currently on the run."
"You sound like you admire them," Moody said.
"I admire good strategy," I said.
"And what would you do, were you leading the Death Eaters?" Moody asked.
"I wouldn't attack anyone at all," I said. "I'd have my people start using the Imperius on everyone who was anyone in the government. Do the same to the people running the papers. The Wizarding world seems to be fairly credulous, so whoever controls the Ministry and the papers pretty much controls the country."
It was the nightmare the Protectorate had worried about incessantly. People who were under the control of Masters couldn't be trusted. There was a reason that Master-Stranger protocols had been invented.
"It wouldn't be as easy as that," Moody growled.
I shrugged.
"You have contingency plans for when people fail to control someone," I said. I almost said that there were ways to make people disappear, but I saw Moody watching me closely, and so I chose to stay quiet.
"Most aspiring dark lords end up in Azkaban or dead before they get very far," Moody said. "It's not a profession to be envied."
"Because your own minions are always jockeying for your position and you can't trust anyone not to stab you in the back?" I asked. "Or because you've set yourself against the entire Wizarding world?"
"Both," he said.
I frowned.
"Well, I'm not planning to become a Dark Lady, so there is no reason to worry," I said loftily.
For some reason not one of the three seemed convinced. I felt a moment of irritation.
It had been harder to keep my temper lately. I worried a little; was it my new brain and new hormones making it harder to regulate things, or was it simply a function of being eleven years old and having more trouble controlling myself.
Or was it something deeper?
I'd seen heroes who'd been in fights with the Slaughterhouse, and sometimes there were long term effects. Post traumatic stress wasn't a pretty thing, and sometimes it took effect as anger; soldiers felt fear as often as anyone else, but they learned to focus it as anger. However, sometimes that fear manifested long after the danger had passed.
Did I need some kind of psychological treatment? Possibly.
Unfortunately there was no way I could trust any counselor in this world, muggle or not. I had too many secrets, and in a world where every wizard could mind control people with a flick of their wand, no counselor would be safe.
Discovering what I was might well be enough to have be declared a non-human, and I wasn't sure what rights I might have at that point. I was fairly certain that I would no longer be allowed to carry a wand, which would be the end of me.
Worse, if my bug control was discovered, then any adult wizard, and half the students at Hogwarts would be able to work around my defenses. I'd be dead within a month.
I wouldn't be able to get psychological treatment until my enemies were dead.
"Are they likely to come after me again soon?" I asked. "Because the smart play would be to attack when nobody expects it."
"I doubt that he really cared if you died or not," Moody said. "This was just a way of keeping his people in the limelight. It's well known that the Death Eaters don't like you; you've put your head in the noose too many times for it not to be noticed. In the bigger scheme of things, though, he's got a lot more to worry about than you."
"We'll stay vigilant just in case we are wrong, Miss Hebert," Dumbledore said. "I will do everything in my power to keep you safe."
"Have you found people for me to stay with over the summer then?" I asked. "Because it's only a couple of months away now."
"I have," Dumbledore said. "But I will keep it to myself. I trust my own occlumency, but leaving something that important to others would be foolish at this point."
"You could tell me," I said.
Knowing who I was to stay with would give me a chance to research them, and that would give me a chance to figure out how to work around them. It was frustrating being a child. In some ways Hogwarts was wonderful; in other ways it was like a prison.
"You have natural talent as an occlumens," Dumbledore said. "But it is inconsistent. I'm sure you would prefer not to face death eaters the moment you step off the train."
I stared at him.
"Why don't we do that?" I asked.
"What?"
"I've pissed enough people off that there will likely be at least a few people waiting on the platform when we leave school. Avery is likely to be one of them, and he's probably mid-rank in the organization. With luck, they'll be more people there waiting to murder Potter."
"With Luck?" Moody asked.
"There are two ways to deal with an ambush," I said. "Well, three actually. You can avoid it entirely. You can ambush the ambusher, or you can power through it. The train station is a place you know Death Eaters will be waiting."
"Why are you so sure of that?" Dumbledore asked.
"Because Tom's organization is flailing right now," I said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't losing members.... not the core fanatics, but the people on the outside. No terrorist organization can survive without help from the population. That's probably somewhat less true in the Wizarding world, but I'll bet there's a lot of sympathizers among the regular wizard."
The three of them glanced at each other.
"He needs a win," I said. "Something big to convince his followers that he's still relevant. Where better to attack than the train station."
"The place will be crawling with aurors," Moody growled.
"What do you want to bet that half of them get mind controlled or mysteriously reassigned right before school lets out?" I asked. "If he manages to kill me or Potter, he doesn't even have to make a big scene. It'll send the message that even in one of the safest places in Wizarding Britain that the Death Eaters can reach anyone."
"And there are wizards who will join up like sheep just because they are afraid," Moody said.
"I won't allow it," Dumbledore said.
"What?"
"You are talking about using yourself as bait," he said. "I am not willing to take that risk, and for the moment I am your de facto guardian."
"There may never be another chance to make as big a strike on his organization," I said. "The raids on his safehouses are already tapering off, and he's only going to gain strength over the next year. He won't be nearly as desperate next year."
Moody stared at me with an unfriendly look.
"This isn't how a child your age should think," he said.
"I had a tough childhood," I said. "And it hasn't really changed all that much since I came here. It's actually calmer here than back at home."
"And America isn't a steaming pile of rubble," Moody asked.
"Well, I didn't know magic then," I said. "And there are limits to what a young girl can do."
I frowned.
"Are there citizenship limits to who can be Minister for Magic?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" Moody asked.
"Well, in the states you have to be a natural born citizen to become president. Is it the same here?"
"No," Dumbledore said. "That would be covered in third year History of Magic."
"Never happened though," Moody said. "Won't happen either. Nobody would elect a foreigner."
"Why do you ask?' Snape asked suddenly.
"No reason," I said. I smiled innocently.
I was needling them for my own amusement. I had no intention of becoming Minister for Magic, but the look on Snape's face made it all worth it.
"Perhaps it is time for you to go back to class," Dumbledore said.
I nodded.
"Be careful," Moody said. "No place is safe!"
"Constant vigilance!" I replied, grinning at him.
I'd heard him muttering that a time or two, and the look on his face was worth it too.
As I left, I heard him muttering to the others, "That girl isn't right."
I listened to their discussion as I headed toward class. I kept an eye on my surroundings too; no point in getting murdered because I wasn't watching where I was going.
I saw Hermione running up.
"What did they want?" she asked.
"Warrington is dead," I said. "The snake venom was cursed so it couldn't be healed."
Her eyes went wide.
"Dead?"
I nodded.
"That doesn't upset you?"
"Considering that he meant for me to get bitten, it does," I said. "His being dead bothers me less than you might think though. It was really the Death eaters who killed him."
She frowned.
I continued. "They sent him after me unprepared. I think they meant for me to kill him, so that I'd get sent to Azkaban."
Her eyes widened again.
"Are you?" she asked.
"I'd be moving a lot faster if I was," I said. "It was a clear case of self defense, and the Death eaters don't have the votes yet to overrule that."
"Yet?"
"They're using the Imperius Curse on the aurors," I said. "It's only a matter of time before they go after the members of the Wizengamot. Having their own people declared innocent will get them a lot of power."
Truthfully, the only way to stop the Death eaters was going to be to kill as many of them as possible, and then cut the head off the snake. Given their ability to control people, their organization now was a lot like a hydra; cut one head off and two heads appeared in their place.
Hermione still seemed dazed at the news that Warrington was dead.
It had probably all seemed like a game to her before now. She hadn't been around for most of the attacks on me. She'd heard about them, but not even all of those; nobody knew about Filch, and the only ones who knew about the Death Eater attacks were probably the Death Eater children.
She's watched the fight between me and Warrington though, and no a boy she'd known was dead.
"We're adding some new members to the study group," I said.
Now that the dueling club was a thing, the Weasleys were enjoying their new status as the crack duelers of their year. They wanted to work even harder to stay ahead of everyone else.
"Who?' she asked.
"Potter," I said. "And the youngest Weasley."
"Him?' she asked disdainfully.
I shrugged. "Potter, George and Fred think they can keep him under control."
"He's got a big mouth," she said.
"It's not quite as important that we keep it secret as it was before," I said. "That's not to say I want anybody blabbing. But if he does start bragging to people, we'll find ways to deal with it."
"He won't like how you deal with it, will he?" she asked. Hermione sounded almost gleeful.
She had a mean streak buried deep down; possibly it was the reason that we got along as well as we did. For all that she liked to pretend to be a good girl, she had a ruthless nature that I sometimes felt a little guilty for exploiting.
In a better world, Hermione would have been allowed to get through school unmolested. She would have sunk or swam with her own charm. In all likelihood, she'd have kept her head down, made good grades, and then become successful in the Wizarding World. She might have been Minister for Magic.
However, this wasn't a world where she could afford to be a normal schoolgirl. She was going to have to fight in one fashion or another, sooner or later. Whether it was when Death eaters showed up at her door, or when they assaulted Hogwarts as the last stronghold in a Wizarding Britain that had otherwise been conquered, it was going to happen.
Helping her, and others like her learn to stay alive, that I couldn't regret. And if that took a certain degree of ruthlessness, then I'd foster that too.
There was all the time in the world to foster her gentler nature once Voldemort and his servants were dead and in the ground.
I'd put the idea in Dumbledore's head. While he was holding out based on morality, I suspected that Moody was a lot more pragmatic.
There would be complications, of course. Operational security was paramount. If the enemy learned that you planned to ambush their ambushers, they'd likely ambush you in return. That meant that operations would be limited to Moody and his team, and I had no idea how large that group was.
Moody probably kept them separate from everyone else; otherwise he was risking someone suffering from the Imperius.
Sooner or later they'd follow my plan, and maybe we'd finally be able to cut the head off the snake once and for all.1647ShayneTJul 14, 2019View discussionThreadmarks OrganizationView contentShayneTJul 16, 2019#14,559"I think they were just being nice," Hermione said anxiously.
I was staring at the two cards in front of me with consternation. Neville and Potter had both sent me Valentine's day cards.
"Neville sent me one too," she said. She frowned. "Does that mean that he's fickle?"
"It means that he's a nice person," I said. "Who thought I wasn't going to get any cards and that would upset me."
"But... it doesn't?"
"I slipped these into Pansy Parkinson's stack and watched her open them," I said. "I've seen ghosts that had more color than she did."
She'd opened the first one without really looking at it, and only realized what she was holding with the second card. She'd screamed and thrown them away from her like she was holding a bomb.
"I think Neville sent one to Myrtle too," Hermione said. "And she's acting all.... weird."
She'd been fifteen at death, and Neville was still eleven. I'd have been creeped out myself; and I was a little creeped out now.
"He says she's been stalking him," she said. "All morning."
I frowned. "My guess is that she never received many of these when she was alive, and probably none in the last fifty or sixty years. Maybe she thinks he's in love with her?"
"When it's more of a friendly think?" Hermione asked. She looked relieved.
"We're too young to be worried about romance," I said. "Potter probably thought he was being nice."
"He got a huge stack," Hermione said. She glanced over at the Gryffindor table where a group of boys were still gathered around Potter's stack.
"If he was smart he'd have gotten a Pansy.... I mean patsy to check his mail."
Pansy gave me the finger from all the way across the table. She'd moved as far away from me as she could manage. She used the American gesture; apparently she'd gone to the trouble to learn that just for me. Apparently she'd been straining to listen in on our conversation as well.
Fortunately for her, the teachers had already left the room. We'd been given an hour to socialize.
"Tonight's the first study session," I said. That was code for our little group. "We'll see how Weasley fits in."
She made a face.
"He's been an ass every time I was around him."
"He grew up with Fred and George," I said. "You can't tell me that didn't warp him a little."
She nodded.
"And only one girl in a family of however many of them there are? He may not know how to talk to us," I continued.
"That's not an excuse," she said, but the tenseness of her posture had relaxed a little.
It was important for allies to get long. Strife in the ranks was something the enemy could use to get a foothold in your organization.
Not that I had an organization, of course.
Yet.
Fred and George had people clamoring after them to help them with the dueling club. Hermione had even had some offers. That was likely part of the reason that she had a half dozen cards herself. The blush on her face told me that she considered them more than just friendly acknowledgments of each other; at this age that was all they should be.
"Well, we should be getting to class," I said.
The day went quickly after that. It seemed like hardly any time at all before it was the evening, and time for our study group.
"George? Fred?" the Weasley boy almost shrieked. "What are you doing here?"
"We heard you were going to ask young Taylor here out for a date," George said. "And we wanted to see you get disemboweled."
The youngest Weasley's face turned a chalky white, almost as much as Pansy's had earlier.
George grinned.
Potter murmured something in the boy's ear, and he turned red.
"You've been teaching The Terror?" he squeaked. "She's a Slytherin!"
"She's not a real Slytherin," Fred said., "She's actually a Gryffindor spy. Why do you think she gets into so many scrapes with them? A real Slytherin would have just kept her head down and kept quiet."
The boy frowned. "That's not really a thing. You told me you had to wrestle a troll to pick your house too."
"And Taylor did," George said. "Or at least stabbed one in the googlies. That makes her an honorary Gryffindor."
He didn't mention the fact that the others had chosen to fight too, even Draco. It was just that my heroism made for a better story. People always got that part wrong.
"What about all of these others?" he asked, staring at everyone suspiciously.
Millicent and Tracey were here, as was Hermione and Neville. So far, our group had five Gryffindors, one Ravenclaw, and three Slytherins. We still needed a Hufflepuff.
"There's more of us than of them, mate," George said. "But we don't do houses here."
I stood up and walked toward them.
"You know the real reason we're here, Ron?" I asked.
He stared at me and shook his head.
"Because we want to survive. Me and Hermione are Muggleborn.... the Death eaters are trying to kill us all. Millicent, Tracey and Harry are Half bloods. They'll be next."
He frowned.
"But we're purebloods," he said. He stared at me for a long moment. I could almost see the gears grinding away in his brain. "But our Dad is on the side of the Ministry."
He wasn't as dumb as he sometimes liked to pretend then.
"And sooner or later they'll be coming for you, too," I said. "That's how evil wins, when good men look away because it does not yet affect them."
"We're first years," he protested weakly. "Why does it have to be us that fights?"
The fact that he was asking the question told me that he was already halfway convinced. I just had to keep pushing.
"I've had the cruciatus curse cast on me twice this year," I said. Technically one of those times hadn't been me, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make. "I'm not the only one."
Ron's head snapped around.
"You?"
Potter shrugged, then nodded.
"We had a hard Christmas break," I said. "I've chosen to reveal this to you, because right now the only people who know about it are the kids of the Death Eaters involved."
"Warrington," Ron said.
"Yeah," I said. "His father died and he didn't like it that much."
"You killed his father?"
"He killed himself," I said. "When he came after me. The point is, he came after me and Harry here, at school. They didn't get in, but they could have."
I'd already told the twins; they'd heard vague rumors being spread by some of the Death Eater kids. I doubted that it could be kept secret for much longer, not after people were questioning Warrington's death and why he'd chosen to attack me in the way he did.
"No place is safe," I continued. "So we have to be ready."
"We can't fight adults!" he said. "I barely know any magic!"
"I'll teach you non-magical things you can do to survive," I said. "Which mostly means getting away."
Potter was surprisingly good at evasion. He'd mumbled something about Harry Hunting when I'd asked him, but he'd refused to say anything else about it.
"The best thing you can do is surprise them and then hide," I said. "And even that won't keep you alive if they know the human revealing spell. That means that you have to try to incapacitate them, and then you need to run until you are out of range of that spell. You have to keep running after that."
The boy stared at me, his eyes wide. He was listening, though, and not attempting to argue, which I considered a good sign. I doubted Crabbe or Goyle would have even understood what I was trying to say.
"Hogwarts is fractured," I said. "It's not enough to have the traits of one House. If you want to survive, you'll need to be as brave as a Gryffindor yes, but you'll also need to be as cunning as a Slytherin. You'll need to be as smart as a Ravenclaw."
"And the Hufflepuffs?" he asked.
"As hard working," I said. "And that's the kind of loyalty you'll need from your friends. People who have each other's backs have a greater chance of surviving. People who don't..."
He winced.
Good.
Potter had described him as bright in some ways but unfocused and undirected. He apparently had some social skills issues, but then so did most of the people in our group. I suspected that we'd self selected for that; the popular people were too busy being popular to even bother with a study group.
So we were a band of misfits. It was something I could work with.
"The fact that you are here means that you are a little smarter than the rest of them," I said. It was a lie, of course. He was here because he was Potter's friend, and it bothered Potter to have to keep secrets. Still, boosting egos was good for morale.
The military broke people down and then rebuilt them the way they wanted them. I couldn't do that to the boy yet; he hadn't agreed to the process, and at the moment he'd go running to his parents.
He had a deep seated sense of insecurity according to his brothers; likely that was in part their own fault. It was also likely where many of his less desirable traits came from.
Yet according to them he was loyal enough that they'd thought he might be a Hufflepuff, and we were going to need that. I just had to win his loyalty, and that would take time.
He frowned, but he straightened up.
Being told that you were special was Cult making 101. Finding disaffected people who believed that they'd been cheated out of what life owed them, and telling them that you had a way to get them what was due, that was what every revolutionary group did.
"This will be hard," I said. "But in the end we will survive."
Some of us, likely. The last thing I wanted to do was start giving them Legend's speech about how many of us were likely to die. I doubted that schoolchildren would accept that.
Even Hermione was just coming to grips with the concept of death. She'd known it academically for most of the semester, but Warrington's death had driven it home. I'd caught her giving me concerned looks.
"We fight because we have to," I said. "And when we don't have to anymore, we'll go back to playing exploding snap. Except me..."
Potter leaned over. "She figured out how to kill someone with ten decks of cards and some gum."
He only thought he was joking. Also, gum wasn't involved.
"So how are we going to get better?" George asked. "You don't have the same kinds of spells we do, but you're fast enough to fight both of us."
"One time out of three," I said. "I figure that fighting two gifted third years might give me a chance against a fifth or sixth year, at least until they start doing that thing with the silent spells."
That was going to be a bitch to work around. I'd seen it in some of the upper year duels. Although none of them had been particularly gifted, it was a huge advantage not to be shouting out the names of your attacks like one of Greg Vedar's anime heroines.
"Just fighting you has made us better," George said. "Practice and all. But we need new blood, or all we'll be doing is getting used to each other."
"That's why I've called someone else in," I said.
I nodded, and Terence Higgs stepped into the room.
George and Fred stiffened, and they stepped forward.
"What?" they asked, almost in unison. While they were more open than most, Quittich rivalry went a long way in their world.
"I want to be part of your group," Higgs said. He looked uncertain, even though he was the oldest student in the room by a year.
"Why?" Fred demanded suspiciously.
Higgs closed the door carefully behind him.
"My uncle was murdered by Death Eaters three days ago," he said. "My family swore allegiance to them yesterday."
I could hear almost everyone in the room freezing. Admitting that was a bombshell, one that could get every member of his family placed in Azkaban. The fact that he was admitting it to enemies was even more telling.
"They didn't want to," he said. "But it was the only way to keep the other kids safe. Sooner or later I'm going to have to fight."
"So we're going to teach you how to kill aurors?" George asked harshly. His tone wasn't as severe as it had been moments before.
Higgs shook his head. "I loved my uncle. He was the one person in my life who convinced me that it was all right to be a good person. If the Death Eaters killed him, then I'm going to fight them, with, or without your help."
His eyes were moist as he stared at us, but his mouth was firm.
"Taylor came to me, and she offered me this," he said. "And I'm ashamed that I didn't help more in the past."
I'd been spying, looking for Death eater kids who were communicating with their parents. Most of them did so through letter; I'd read a few of them, and the contents had been eye opening. Most of the letters had been burned shortly after reading, so I'd had to read them using bug vision, which wasn't the best.
"How she knew..." he shook his head.
I turned to the others. "Are we going to accept him?"
George frowned, then stepped forward and held out his hand. He was followed by Fred, and then surprisingly by Potter, then Millie and Tracey. Ron was the last, and he seemed somewhat reluctant.
However, eventually he agreed to do so.
It took a little while to get everybody focused on what we were going to do.
"I'm going to teach you the Reductor curse," Higgs said. "It blasts things into pieces."
He looked at me uncertainly, and I wondered if he thought that I planned on using that spell to blast people into a fine mist. His mouth firmed, though and he nodded.
"You've already got the stunning spell, and the shield spell," he said. "But I've been studying ahead. My parents got me a tutor over the summer break, and I'm a year ahead of where I should be. I'll teach you the Banishing charm, which is the opposite of the summoning charm, the fire making spell, the full body bind curse, and whatever else I think you'll need."
He looked around at us.
"All of you have talent," he said. "It was the lack of having the right spells that kept you from going farther. Except maybe for Taylor... in her case it was being meaner than the snakes that tried to bite her."
Everyone laughed uneasily at that. It was still a little early to be making jokes about the death of a student.
Professor Travers had already been pulled off the dueling club as a result of it, and Snape had replaced him. The Board of Directors had tried to shut the dueling club down, but there were enough traditionalists who believed that the club represented core Wizarding values, whatever those were, that dropping the club wasn't going to happen soon, unless there was another incident.
I suspected that Travers wasn't going to be back next school year, which was a shame. According to the older students, he was the best student they'd had in a while, even if he was something of a blood purist.
Speaking up, I said, "This is more than just a study group, you know."
Everyone turned to stare at me.
"We've got a purpose, we have each other's backs. I'd fight for any of you, and I hope you'd do the same for me. That makes us an organization."
It made us a gang, really, but I wasn't sure that Hermione would approve of framing it that way.
"Organizations need names," I said. "At least once other people know about them. Maybe we can think of some names that might represent what we aspire to be."
"The Mongooses!" Ron said suddenly. "Because they kill snakes!"
I cleared my throat, as did all of the other Slytherins in the room.
"Sorry?" Ron asked tentatively.
I'd listened in on his conversations with Potter sometimes, and it still amazed me how sometimes he sounded like an idiot, while other times he was incredibly astute. I suspected that when he actually focused on something he was good at it, but that most of the time he just didn't care enough to bother.
With luck, he'd live long enough for me to beat that tendency out of him. With luck, all of us would.