Chapter 289 - 289
Daphne drew her wand and simply swept it through the air, manifesting and powering a rune circle suspended before her, glowing faintly red. From the centre of the circle burst a whole cluster of red blobs, flying forward fast, scattered, like the launch of a multitude of rockets. Memories even surfaced from my void-pilot shard, of massed missile salvos from battleships — a striking sight in its own way, hundreds of self-guided projectiles with white contrails.
All the blobs knocked chips of stone from the opposite wall in bursts of debris and raised a cloud of dust, which I had to clear away with magic, and the wall — I had to restore.
"I'm impressed. Looks like you've decided to interpret the possibility of visualising runes in your own way, have you?"
"That was the plan," she smiled. "To surprise you. You're not the only one who, if he sets to something with full diligence and enthusiasm, can conjure up absurdly unheard-of nonsense."
"What am I even doing here?" Malfoy spread his arms with theatrical indignation and a smirk. "If this cheeky sod really can do what he says, the two of you alone would be enough to grind half the students of this excuse for a school to dust in one go, and finish the rest off with a second volley."
"You'll be our defender," I shrugged. "I'm sure both Daphne and I could devote attention to that aspect too, but it's better if everyone has a role they're focused on. You're defence and support. I'm disarming and confusing opponents, with partial incapacitation. Daphne is the strike force."
"Never in my life did I think I'd become a strike force one day, and not with combat potions and rune traps either, but thanks to wand magic."
"Tell me, in your arsenal, on that same basis," I nodded at the spot where the rune circle had appeared and faded in the air after use, "do you have anything that won't punch holes in our classmates? I'm not sure they'll be thrilled to receive a few extra orifices not provided by nature."
"Of course," she even tilted her pretty little nose up impudently, smirking. "This circle works with all 'blob'-type spells. There's a different framework for beam-type. But I still haven't managed to work out anything with curses."
"Expelliarmus and Stupefy?" Malfoy immediately suggested the obvious combination.
"Malfoy," Daphne looked at him with barely readable bewilderment, her sharp shifts in the degree of emotion displayed giving off an air of mild madness. "You want me buried under a heap of wands? And what if they're holding their bags at that moment? I still remember a story from one of the family diaries — one of my ancestors got so angry at a certain knight that he put too much power into an Expelliarmus. Guess what happened, given the knight had a sword in his hands?"
"What an absurd way to go," I saw no reason to hold back an open, wide smile.
"Exactly."
"Got it, not an idiot, just leave off, you two lovebirds," Malfoy waved us off.
"By the way," I looked at each of my companions in turn. "The territory in the grove where the paddock is, is already outside the anti-Apparition wards. Who can do combat Apparition?"
Malfoy raised his hand, as if in class.
"What?" he retorted indignantly at our looks, which conveyed equally obvious surprise. "The first thing I was made to learn this summer — ordinary and combat Apparition. Movement is life."
"Daphne?"
"My parents made me at the end of summer. Basically, all my free time left over from August, instead of the usual training, went into Apparition and its combat variant."
"Hm…"
"Oh, would you look at that," Malfoy brightened. "Don't tell me you, the great and glorious Granger, can't Apparate?"
"Only ordinary Apparition. I only recently read up on the combat variant, after Professor Hunt made me use that trick — unknown to me at the time — during the assessment. But I realised I have a couple of my own equivalent tricks, and didn't bother looking further into it."
"What?" Malfoy blurted, most unaristocratically. "You? Her? Ah well, don't care either way. What colour, though? Given we're going for this look, we ought to match."
"That one? That thing there?" I nodded at the coat rack. "Black with purple or blue, depending on mood."
"Black's simplest," Daphne nodded. "The very essence of the spell makes it black, and changing the formulae to something clunkier, sacrificing efficiency for flashiness, would be foolish."
"Agreed," Malfoy nodded. "Right, we need coordination practice. At least an hour."
"To the paddock, then, though… hasn't the lesson started yet?" I drew my wand and conjured a fresh glove-spell with a note for Flitwick.
"It's actually already started."
"Oops," I smiled.
Within ten seconds, a note appeared before me out of white smoke and sparkles from Flitwick, in which he expressed delight at my extravagant skills and granted permission to use the Duelling Club's hall, and, of course, gave the password. Ah yes, he'd personally ask Severus to lift Hogwarts's anti-Apparition barrier in the hall for our practice.
"Done," I smiled, as the note vanished in the same smoke and sparkles. Flitwick being Flitwick — loves his special effects. "The duelling hall is ours for ten minutes and up until the start of the Battle Magic lesson. Let me have a look at whatever charms are on the masks, if any, and add Hunter's Mark recognition to them."
Five minutes later we were ready to set off. We took our things, dispelled the transfiguration, locked the classroom, and hurried down the castle's empty corridors to the duelling club's doors. Password, and we were inside.
The setting here was somewhat empty, without the usual crowds, students reading something, or those practising duels against each other or against dummies.
"Right then… Let's begin. Masks on."
We put them on.
"We look ridiculous in these," Malfoy complained.
The masks differed from the actual Death Eaters', being far more austere and not as round, not resembling the Count of Monte Cristo's. Eye slits, nearly invisible grille-filters for breathing at the cheeks, mouth and nose shown simply as strips.
"No, actually, it's interesting," I shrugged. "There's something to it. Let's test how the Marks work."
Drawing my wand, I cast a simple Marking charm on a dummy. Through the eye slit in the mask, the dummy immediately "lit up" with a red outline.
"Fumos," I created a stream of black smoke that engulfed the dummy, yet the outline remained just as it was, without losing any sense of distance to it. "Works."
Dispelling the Fumos, I looked at my fellow sufferers.
"You two make sure combat Apparition is fully under your command and run through your manoeuvres on the dummies. I'll work out rune traps and other surprises for the victims of Professor Hunt's pedagogical talent."
Malfoy simply nodded and instantly turned into a clump of black smoke in which his silhouette was barely recognisable. A moment, and he began darting back and forth around the hall, plainly testing manoeuvres only he understood, checking the freedom of their execution and control over the spell.
"Don't lag behind," Daphne smiled and repeated Malfoy's manoeuvre, taking a different section of the hall for herself.
I, meanwhile, sat down at one of the little tables, took out a notebook and began quickly sketching out rune circuits for traps with bare magic, meanwhile working out in my head how they'd combine with various spells. Fumos and the Mirror, Fumos and Somnus. Mirror and Somnus. All together. Sometimes adding some disorientation, sometimes removing something, adjusting the interaction. For instance, if you combined Fumos and Heimer's Mirror without adjustments, the mist turned transparent and yellow, and we didn't want that, so — adjust. Adding Somnus, meant to induce sleep or simple drowsiness spread across such an area, turned the mist pink and staining — well, that's just absurd.
While I stormed this uncharted field of knowledge, I didn't forget to glance over at Malfoy's and Daphne's progress now and then.
The lad, having flown about for ten minutes, took to "shielding" absolutely everything without dropping out of combat Apparition, his black smoke glinting now and then from invigorating charms and other support spells being triggered, and when he "shielded" himself, his outline within the black smoke seemed to draw a soapy film over itself.
Daphne, meanwhile, flew about her half of the hall in the same black smoke, flashing rune circles now and then and bombarding the unfortunate dummies with an unrelenting stream of various spells, producing a dreadful din, crash and crackle. Before long Malfoy started shielding Daphne's target-dummies too — this greatly boosted the effectiveness of the practice. Daphne had to try harder to punch through the defence, and Malfoy had to refresh the shields every second in layers just to keep up.
"Done!" I shouted, and two clumps of black smoke immediately flew over to me, turning back into ordinary people.
"Phew," Malfoy wiped the sweat from his brow with his school-robe sleeve. "And here I thought it was tough at home. You know how to set a challenge, Granger."
"Weakling," Daphne, apparently not tired in the least, only tucked back a stray strand of hair.
"Oh no-o, you two are the monsters. Phew."
"Right, masks on. I'm going to plant a trap under that group of dummies over there. There's Fumos, the Mirror, a modification of it for disorientation left-right too, not just up-down, and a few other bits and bobs, mostly simple mental effects."
"Come on then," Malfoy had finally recovered.
I walked up to the group of dummies, pointed my wand at the floor beneath them and created a rune circuit, charging it with magic. The chain came out cleanly, no interference, though it did glow. Returning to position, I mentally activated the chain. A cloud of black smoke burst outward, filling part of the duelling club, completely obscuring the group of dummies. Yet through the masks, the outlines were clearly visible.
"It works, would you look at that," Malfoy was surprised. "And the Mirror effect?"
"Go in and see."
"Oh, cheers ever so much."
"Daphne?"
I didn't need to explain the task to her. She simply held out her wand, created a rune circle and simultaneously released three red blobs at each dummy — perfect hits, dead centre in the chest, every time.
"Wonderful," I smiled. "And how have I never come across techniques like this? I do believe in our own genius, of course, but I very much doubt that in all these hundreds of years no one's come up with anything similar."
"I don't know," Daphne shrugged, as though copying my own gesture. "There could be many explanations. Maybe I haven't invented anything new. Something similar surely exists, but achieved only through charms, or only through spells. Combining several magical disciplines isn't especially popular. At least, I haven't heard of it in England."
"Nor have I. At least not on this scale," Malfoy nodded. "Either it's all small stuff, or the combining of disciplines happens at the stage of creating something new that ends up belonging to one specific discipline, or it's mastery-level potion-work."
"Other disciplines at mastery level probably require combining disciplines too," I suggested. "We were told as much even in Ancient Runes, after all."
"Ah, who knows?" Malfoy waved it off. "You can't learn anything of significance at this excuse for a school, and you can't get hold of foreign journals. There are old books and knowledge in the home library, still relevant, but honestly… no elegance or finesse to any of it. It's like wizards back then did nothing but wage war on the whole world and each other."
"Right, time to train," Daphne cut off our musings. "We could reason like this until the end of time."
And so we began training. I flew about in black smoke very much like theirs, working on joint coordination, setting and triggering traps, throwing area spells meant to strip opponents of mobility, clarity of thought, and other skills so essential to wizards. Daphne turned into a flying bomber, and Draco kept refreshing our defences the entire time, laying down various forms of it, and doing exactly the same for the dummies.
We trained like that for an hour, and even I grew a little worn out, so I had to drink restorative and fortifying potions from Daphne's personal stock. For some reason, of the two of us, only she'd thought to put together her own medical kit, while I've just been relying on my own magical skills. Yes, I can neutralise the effects of potions in my own body, lift curses and heal wounds myself, knit bones and so on, but I really ought to get myself some potions after all — my bag only has the very useful or rare ones. Smethwyck did mention the need to keep a kit of potions on hand for every occasion — one can't just wave a wand for everything. But then, he simply doesn't know the limits of my abilities.
Anyway, once the training was over, we went to change into everything warded and protected against Transfiguration. The only thing I have to boast of in that regard is my suit made of the marvel-fabric, so that's what I put on, adjusting the colour to black. Malfoy came as no surprise — a black business suit and polo-neck, though it clearly didn't restrict movement, and Draco himself is thin as a rail besides. Daphne appeared before us in a comfortable black dress with blue accents and tall black boots.
"Now that's a proper team," I smirked. "And now — reconnaissance of the terrain and setting the traps."
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