A sirius matter

Chapter 12 - Life's No Picnic

The next morning, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny worked on increasing their magical potential. Harry didn't wear his useless glasses to Grimmauld Place. They spent about an hour reading the second chapter (alternating someone reading it out loud) The previous week, Harry and Hermione had read chapter one while Ginny was decorating, which was just an introduction to the concepts. (The day after that lesson, Harry had studied wordless-wandless while Hermione was charming two-way mirrors and Ginny was decorating, so they'd decided to start with chapter one the next day). They'd let Ginny read the first chapter of the subject they'd started before she joined them. They spent the next hour doing recommended exercises. The first exercise was to go into a completely dark room, cast a lumos charm normally, and then to spend ten minutes doing a type of meditation that required full concentration on bringing one's magic to the surface, and then cast it again. All three of them were surprised at how much brighter their second lumos spell was than the first.

"Wow!" exclaimed Ginny, "My first lumos barely let me see a few feet in front of me. That second one lit up the whole room!" She then looked at the others. "I mean, I know the same thing happened for you, too. It just surprised me. I kind of thought this subject might be a waste of time."

Harry smiled. "I was a bit skeptical myself, but I've learned to trust Hermione. If she thinks it's worth studying, it is."

Hermione blushed. "The book said that that particular exercise usually silences skeptics. I just felt that if we learned to do this, we would seem like more powerful wizards than we are, just because we're actually using all our magic."

"The trick is to learn how to cast spells that powerful one after another while in combat, when we don't have time to meditate," commented Harry.

The book said to meditate like that for at least ten minutes every day (in addition to the meditating they were already doing as part of animagus training) and concentrate as much as possible when casting spells, and eventually you'll be able to always cast spells with more magic behind them immediately, rather than only after meditating. The rest of the book was different methods for improving concentration. They tried the same experiment with other spells until it was time to duel, and achieved similar results.

For the first few minutes of the duel, the spells did seem more powerful, but then went down to normal power. After they'd dueled for an hour, it was over. Ginny stated, "I've got to get back to the Burrow now. Mum has chores for me to do."

"Before you go," said Harry, "There's something we want to ask you. Want to go on a picnic with us and Neville?"

Ginny looked at Harry, her ears turning pink. "Do you mean, double-date? Are you trying to set me up with him?"

Hermione's cheeks turned slightly pink. "Er, he, er, really likes you. He kind of asked us if we thought you'd go out with him."

Ginny's cheeks started to gain color. "What did you say?"

"That there's only one way to find out," answered Harry.

"But he's really shy," explained Hermione, "so we thought that this might be easier to give you a chance to spend time together without the pressure of a regular date so that you could, er, decide if you fancy him or not." Hermione said this as quickly as she could.

Ginny was now fully blushing. "Er, I suppose so. A picnic sounds like fun, but it can't be until Saturday. Mum agreed to let me hang out with you guys in the mornings instead of doing chores with Ron, but I have to spend the afternoons doing the chores he leaves for me."

"Then we'll have a picnic lunch together Saturday," said Hermione smiling.

"I'll bet my mum will want to pack it for us, so I'll take care of the food," added Ginny.