Certain Dark Things || Book Five

xii. training pains

Elara turned the rock over in her hand, feeling the weight tug at her glove. Over and over she let it revolve beneath her thumb—until her arm lashed forward, and she threw the stone

Harriet's Transfigured wooden sword whistled through the air and swatted the rock, sending it clattering to the ground. Elara succeeded in breaking the other witch's concentration, however, as her Shield Charm wavered and Hermione's Stinging Hex bounced on her thigh.

"Ow—hell!" Harriet cursed, hopping in place.

The trio had spent more than half an hour in the garden, insisting on getting Harriet to do something other than stare at the walls. They'd finally settled on supplementing her recent training. Though Harriet had managed to block half the spells and small stones flying her way, half of the projectiles had still found their mark, leaving Harriet a bit battered in appearance. "This is so much harder than Snape makes it look, the wanker!"

Hermione lowered her wand and nibbled on her lip. The light faded from the sky, but the garden remained warm, now littered with gray stones and scorch marks. Elara smelt burning leaves. "I don't understand why the sword. Why not a shield? A buckler, perhaps?"

Harriet shook her head as she dabbed at the mark left by one of the hexes, her nose wrinkling. "No, it's too big. There's too much—what would you call it? Drag? I asked Snape the same thing and he let me try it out. It pulls on the spell a lot more than the sword does and doesn't have the right momentum, so it's slow. That and it makes big ruddy blind spots if it drifts too close. Snape hit it with a Concussive Blast and almost brained me."

Through an open window, laughter grated against Elara's ear. Hermione could hear it too, because she turned toward the back of the house and frowned.

"Should we ask Longbottom to help?"

Harriet choked, then sputtered. "Are you having a laugh?"

"No. He's a better duelist than me or Elara and would give you better practice."

True or not, Harriet didn't look happy about it. Elara couldn't say it pleased her either, the thought of asking Longbottom for assistance. The thought of him being in her house rankled like claws dragging against her back, and Elara had already had to take a potion for the enamel on her teeth because she'd been grinding them so much in the last weeks. The constant, incessant noise in her home drove her spare.

Whether they liked it or not, it was decided Longbottom should come down to assist—and with him came the twins and the younger Weasleys, the practice session devolving into a spectacle before it even began. Hermione already wore a grimace, regretting having gone upstairs to retrieve them.

Longbottom had a smarmy grin, already holding his wand. From the moment he and the Weasleys learned Grimmauld had the proper wards around it to allow underage magic during the summer, they hadn't stopped whipping out their wands for the smallest of things, much to Elara's frustration. It meant enduring a plethora of odd noises at all hours of the night when she already struggled to find sleep. She almost wished Snape still lived there; he would have put the fear of God into the twins and their damn explosions.

"So, you want to duel me, Potter?" Longbottom asked, propping a fist on his hip. The Slytherins had been mocking his pose for years, but the Boy Wonder kept doing it. "What are the rules?"

"I don't want to duel you," Harriet replied, impatient. "I need to practice."

"All right—then, let's practice." Longbottom stepped forward, already leaning into a dueling stance when Harriet snapped at him.

"You don't even know what I'm practicing!" She went on to describe the exercise, gesturing at the little pile of stones they'd gathered, the stones being fairly small to avoid damage. Elara saw the mulish, impatient look in Neville's eyes and wondered if anything ever penetrated his fat skull.