Under the Hunters Moon

Crescent Moon: Part VI

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Harry Potter, Hogwarts, October 31st:

The last two months have been, for the lack of a better term, hell for me.

Other than the normal craziness of classes like Malfoy getting himself attacked by Buckbeak and the Boggart lesson in Defense that I wasn't allowed to take part in because, I admit, was a good reason by Professor Lupin when he explained himself.

Everyone on the Quidditch team threaten to revolt if Wood woke any of us up before six am for practice, we know he wants to the win the cup, but it's not worth it if we lose sleep over it, so that ended the five-day five am training with Wood.

It did not help with Atalanta however.

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday for the first two weeks back I was down at the Quidditch pitch with her, no matter how tired I was or what I had done that day.

Most of the time she would work me into the ground, stretches that increase flexibility, running laps till my legs felt like lead weights, footwork exercises that I did forward, backward and side to side.

When I had brought the swiss army knife the next time, we got it to turn into a bow and hunting spear, other then its sword form.

The sword, a short-length Xiphos, is beautiful.

It's about a foot and a half of silver that gleams and glows like the moonlight.

It honestly reminds me of Sting from The Hobbit.

The phases of the moon are etched from guard to sword tip.

Waxing from the bottom, to Waning at the tip, the handle I had thought to be made from some type of wood is not.

Atalanta told me it was Ivory, the bone of the animal polished and set into the silver.

When I had asked what animal it was, she had just looked at me with a smile, and had asked me what I had hunted to get it.

The bow and spear were in the same style of silver and moon etchings but the haft of the spear and arms of the bow was made with cypress wood.

I could feel my magic try and attach itself to the wood, but without a magic focus in the wood, all it does is hover over the top.

We learned I am pants using a sword, sure hacking and slashing isn't that hard but when Atalanta had brought two wooden Xiphos we had went a round of what she called Combat Practice.

I like to call it paint Harry purple with a stick; we did a lot of that.

Atalanta has some training to use a sword, but not enough to justify how bad she beat me.

She just shrugged and said, " Maybe you're just not a sword guy."

I had thought it was just like everything else, just me being useless and stupid.

But then, I picked up the bow and spear, and everything changed.

When we started with target practice, Atalanta walked me through the process of how to draw from the quiver, notching the arrow, pulling it back, and releasing it.