Harry leaned against the chair in the Merp room and tried to relax his wand arm. Modifying spells was honestly far more challenging than he had expected, and required a lot of experimentation. He had thought he could try combining the search spells he knew by now, but had spent most of his night working on the Stasis charm instead.
His eyes glared at the dominoes. He had stored many non-magical games and stuff in his hand before coming to school, but hadn't expected some of them to be useful in practicing magic. Casting the Stasis charm on the falling blocks was the first real confirmation that the spell worked AND that it affected time in an area. Waving a hand to reset the dominoes, Harry tipped the first one and then drew a small circle around the blocks with his wand, powering the younger core. As he watched, the blocks fell slower... slower... and stop. The original charm was instant, but that took more power and much more complicated wand movements, so Harry stripped that out. After all, a muffin or cookie could handle waiting a few seconds to be preserved, so why make things harder?
He reached out a hand and tried poking the falling domino... and all the other blocks shifted too. His eyebrows shot up.
Apparently the Stasis spell bound everything that was frozen together. That was VERY nice, as sandwiches and such wouldn't need to be wrapped... oh, well... maybe to keep them clean.
He reviewed the latest casting, and realized that a couple of the blocks had not been inside his wand movement. The encircling must automatically enrapture what he THOUGHT of as the targets, not simply what was in the middle of the circle.
He absently threw a Finite at the charm. Finite was one of the Game Breaker spells the group had found, it looked like a small ball of spikes that basically exploded magically on a target, messing up most spells and allowing them to collapse. So far only Harry was able to do it silently, wandless, and... well, yeah.
Hermione had been annoyed at that.
Harry pushed the thoughts away and focused on the now re-ordered, standing black blocks. Repeating the motions needed, he made a tiny circle while focusing on all the blocks instead of creating a large loop around them by hand. Gently he pushed a domino...
He grinned as the group moved. Apparently the circle gesture would allow targeting groups rather easily. Or was it more generic than that? Resetting the experiment, he mentally targeted only every second block, ignoring half of them.
As he lifted a block (Which lifted quite a few others, leaving half on the table), he felt a mental knock.
'Sir, Miss Hedwig has a delivery for you that she would like to deliver.'
Harry put the blocks down, confused. 'Wrath, when did you learn to communicate with her?'
'I can not sir, but you have a connection with her mentally after your bonding. Jim translated for me, and I passed it on.'
He shook his head, but began heading toward a corridor with a window. 'Well, thank you for the heads up. Thank Jim for me as well.'
'Of course, Master. Wisdom also wishes to report that Stasis has been recorded and formatted for print, if you wish to activate the copy spell.' Harry gave a small grin. 'I suppose that would be for the best, since everyone will want to play with it after class.'
His mental conversation paused as he reached a window. Turning smoothly, his arm was steady as Hedwig landed with grace and slapped the back of his head with a wing.
He laughed. "Sorry Hedwig, I lost track of... OW! Come on girl, I was just doing a tiny bit of research, I was going to... SORRY, I will pay you with bacon if you would just stop abusing my head!"
Half way through another head swat, Hedwig paused. Her human may work too hard, but bacon? Bacon. She stood straight with dignity and stretched her leg out so her human could take the message.
He gently untied the note with his left hand. "Thanks girl, I know I was wrapped up in stuff. Forgive a foolish boy?" Apparently an Owl can sigh. Hedwig gave a tender nibble on his ear as he read the note. "Oh, it is from the large fellow, Hagrid. He is inviting us to tea." He tapped the note on his chin. "I must admit, pumpkin juice gets old pretty quickly. I can't really feel English without a proper cup."
With a slight movement a pen moved into his hand and he scribbled an acceptance note, mentioning that he may bring a friend or two over. Harry tied the note with a green thread to Hedwig's leg. "Now girl, be careful out there alright? I know you are the most beautiful and strongest owl ever, but be safe."
Her snort caught Harry off guard before she launched back into the air through the window. He grinned toward his avian friend who seemed to be heading down to a strange wooden hut near the forest edge. At least it wasn't a long trip to visit the giant of a man. First impressions of the dungeons were... lacking.
Apparently someone had felt that a clean working environment was for weaklings. Strange stains covered the floor of the classroom, the tables had pits from cauldron failures and potion mishaps, the windows let in a strange yellow tinted light through the grungy glass.
The room didn't have proper ventilation, and the air was chilly and smelled of strange things, moldy and even slightly burnt. The walls didn't feel right, like they were not quite straight, and there was not enough light to see clearly.
To add to such issues, the Ravenclaws were sharing this lesson with Slytherins, and there was a cloud of smugness that oozed from their side of the pit.
Clearly they knew something the Claws didn't. At the desk in the shadows of the classroom was a bubbling cauldron, a chalkboard with fairly small text on it, and a greasy looking shadow that was reviewing a few sheets of parchment with a evil looking sneer. A soft bell clanked, and the man stood to an impressive height as the door slammed close, almost catching a Ravenclaw who had just entered.
"I know my time will be wasted trying to harvest brilliance from such... lacking sources. But as softer hearts wish that all of you could pretend to become something great, I will just have to take your money as you prove them wrong."
Snape waved a wand, a class list floating in front of him. "I will now see how many of you managed to walk in a straight line long enough to reach my class. If your name is too hard to remember, just grunt when I am forced to look at you."
.
.
.
👓☕️Consider supporting me and enhance your reading experience with the ready-to-read PDFs I have on my Ko-fi.☕️👓
🎯https://ko-fi.com/cmrowling🎯