Fandom The Dirty Part of Physics『 Imo x Ryees 』

[Ryees]

Taptap, taptaptap, tap, taptaptaptaptap.

The Ministry building contained many rooms. Offices, libraries, archives, bathrooms—if one could think of a kind of room, it was likely to be found within. Of all these rooms, one kind numbered fewer than most of the others on the list, its count barely reaching double digits, disappointingly unable to be described as "a dozen or so." Classrooms were of little need to the majority of those within the Ministry, but a small number of lecture halls were still present within. One such hall was, this day, taken by a thin trickle of witches and wizards filtering into the room. The door would open and close on its own accord, opening to those who had a particular parchment presented and laughing animatedly at those who did not. Even through the cackling, frosted glass door to the classroom, the sound of chalk rapping on the blackboard was audible. Otherwise plain save for the occasional fit of laughter, this doorway was the only one in the hall that had a permanent placard riveted just under the window.

M. SHERLIN: ADVANCED DEFENSE

The door had complained profusely when that placard was installed, but the occupant in question had insisted. The two did not have a good relationship.

Upon entering the room, a small number of things would beset one's senses. The lecture hall-style room extended to the left, six raised steps containing dozens of desks, separated into thirds by two stairways. Each of those desks alternated facing towards the blackboard on the right wall of the room and facing backwards, in such a way that sitting in the chair would put one dangerously close to tumbling backwards into the row below. On the far end of the room, mirrored to where the door was, a grandfather clock stood dutifully ticking away right on time.

Three strides from the blackboard and aligned to the exact atomic center of the room sat a hardwood desk that seemed too wide for one person, ten feet in length and with two chairs in front of it; one a standard classroom chair, black plastic with black-anodized metal legs, and one a leather-seated office chair on rolling wheels. The desk itself was neatly organized, prominently bearing four stacks of paper in the center of the writing surface, each very obviously exactly ten sheets high. The right-most stack was topped with six blank pieces of white paper—there were only to be thirty-four students to this class, but there was clearly no reason for that stack to be left lower than the others. Around those papers sat a myriad of things: Two clocks, one digital and one analog, set eleven minutes and nineteen seconds apart, and neither showing the correct time; a Remembrall on a folding wooden stand, a myriad of volatile curse words scribbled over its glassy surface in long since dried out dry-erase marker; three plastic racks for folders and such, bearing manila folders that were completely empty; and a bronze armadillo with a constantly irritated expression that sullenly glowered at each student as they passed by the desk.

Chalk rapped against chalkboard in brisk strokes, a visible urgency in the neatly-manicured hand that held the chalk. Tall and thin, he was well-dressed in a proper business suit, complete with an eerily burgundy tie that cinched his collar up tight. His hair was curly and short enough that it was likely able to be tamed by a quick finger-combing every morning—and it certainly looked as though a proper comb had not touched it in days, though it did not shine of grease. A Probity Probe mounted on each side of the chalk board glowed suspiciously as he walked back and forth to write, clearly reacting to something on his person even though he wore no visible jewelry or trinkets. It was nearly the entire length of the board that he walked, as if he was intent on filling the whole thing with dusty scribbles of only-mostly-neat handwriting.

The professor did not pay any attention to the students as they came in, especially the ones that tried to introduce themselves. He somehow seemed to play even less attention to them, as if their introductions made him somehow more focused on his writing. To those students, the armadillo glowered extra sullenly.

Finally, his writing subsided. He turned to his class, putting palms together and somehow affixing the entire classroom at once with a gray-green stare that felt invasive and derisive in equal amounts. Many moments passed in silence. Someone coughed.

A gentle sequence of steps too quiet for his polished leather black brought him to the plastic chair at his desk, which he noisily scraped over to align with the stacks of papers. Fishing in a drawer, he pulled out a notebook that clearly had nothing to do with class material and produced a quill and ink from the same drawer. He set the lot of it on the desk and looked up again, casting his gaze around the room.

"I am Professor Sherlin, Auror combat trainer." His voice was clear and only mildly deep, with no real accent, indicative of his American roots. It did, however, hold a powerfully keen edge of flatness that left an oily feeling in the ears for its deadpan seriousness. "Please follow the directions on the blackboard. Thank you." The room descended into near-silence as he began to scratch away at the notebook, engrossed in his writing almost immediately. The students would not have seen his eyes flick to the only accurate clock in the room, and they could certainly not hear the mental timer ticking down to the point in time where he fired them all if no one spoke up.

The direction on the blackboard seemed perfectly clear. Clear, in this case, denoting the fact that the chalk he was writing with for all those many minutes as the classroom filled must have been clear, because the chalk board was blank.

 

[imo56]

There were only so many nooks and crannies in the ministry an intern could discover, before someone would start suspecting they were a spy instead of an intern meant for holding coffee. Harriet was aware of this fact and had managed to stay ahead of the issue by making sure that she always had a coffee in stasis in her bag when she escaped to a hideaway.

It was from one of these corners (more of a doorless broom closet really) that she peered out of on the morning of her first Advanced Defense class. She had scouted out this spot the day before when she had heard from her (friend? manager?) colleague Auror Priscilla Brown that Auror Root had fallen ill enough to warrant staying home, and therefore vacated his seat in Professor Sherlin’s Advanced Defense Course. Harriet was next on the waiting list. After the urge to hyperventilate had passed, Harriet had calmly asked a concerned Priscilla for the time off necessary, and then went to her small metal desk at the front of the Auror department to begin preparations.

Such preparations had consisted of spending the rest of the afternoon rereading her old defense textbooks, imagining multiple ways in which she could embarrass herself in front of the smartest Auror in the whole department, and the aforementioned scouting of the classroom. Harriet had always found it prudent to find the location of a class the day before, and this logic had successfully granted her perfect attendance during her school days before and during Hogwarts.

It was with a sense of deja vu that she arrived to stand down the hall from the classroom, a sense of deja vu she did not at all appreciate. It had been eight years since she had been in a classroom. The loss of the last few years of her education was not a subject she enjoyed dwelling on, no matter the fact that she didn’t regret it. The apprehension blossoming in her chest was easily suppressed, but her emotional control did not negate its existence completely.

The dark wood of the three walls to her right, left and back at least soothed her, and she watched silently from the shadowed divot as several Aurors and ministry workers, as well as a few civilians walked past her. Some chatted happily with each other, while others strode quickly past, but in each of them she could sense a tension, the source of which was surely past the placarded doorway just down the corridor. Harriet waited until five til, gave a fond pat to the wall to her right, pushing her sense-awareness slightly through the old, warm wood, and strode out on short heels.

The door (which had quite rudely laughed at her the day before) opened on silent hinges for her as she waved her permission sheet before it, and she stepped through the door. The strangely situated room shocked her for a second, and she had to pause just inside the door to get her bearings.

It was strange, how the man standing at the front of the blackboard called all attention, while at the same time repelling said attention as soon as it was given. The rest of the classroom was eerily still and silent, and only a few of the people seated at the desks dared give her a glance.

Blinking a few times, Harriet walked past the desk, taking in the remembrall, strange clocks and folders, waggling her fingers in greeting to the scowling hedgehog. Tiptoeing as quietly as she could in heels, she scaled one of the stairs and sat at her desk, quickly taking out her parchment and quill before sitting back and observing.

It was only a bit awkward, how intensely everyone watched Professor Sherlin. Some looked admiring, others scared, a few of the auror’s gazes were even hostile, and Harriet couldn’t help but appreciate how nice it was to be able to stare at the other students without worrying they would notice.

Her attention joined the rest as the man writing at the blackboard turned and stared at the class, gaze sweeping over them. Nothing in particular seemed to catch his eye, and Harriet unrepentantly stared back as several of the students beside her shrunk back in their seats. Sherlin turned dismissively and walked back to the desk, footsteps unnaturally quiet, sitting to grab a notepad.

His instructions settled on the class with the weight of a death sentence, his voice empty of all emotion except bored derision. As one, all of the students turned to look at the blackboard, empty of all writing entirely.

Harriet loved this class already.

She had heard of Sherlin before, anyone working in the auror’s department had. Ill-tempered, impossible to work with, an awe-inspiring genius, a reclusive scholar- Harriet excelled at listening, and after two years of work as an intern she still couldn’t quite piece together a full mental image of Sherlin. It was one of the reasons she had looked forward to the class, getting a chance to figure him out. The biggest reason she was here, however, was to learn from him. Harriet had heard he was unconventional, and unconventional was exactly what she was looking for. She had been unable to find a teacher at Hogwarts, or anyone in general, who was able to help her develop her ‘gift’. And what a gift it was, her ability to sense spells lodged in physical objects, wards in particular and untangle them, cast them, reshape them. But it was all based on instinct, experimentation leading to nothing but confusion. She knew Sherlin was known as a definitely logical man, so hopefully the form he taught here might help.

There would be no learning, however, with a blank board. And so, with a glance around the room to see if anyone else was brave enough, Harriet cautiously raised one hand up, drab green robe falling to her elbow. The student beside her nodded encouragingly, most likely grateful not to be the one to take the fall. When the man at the center desk didn’t even glance in her direction, Harriet chanced to speak, her quiet, mellow voice wavering above the scratch of his quill.

“Excuse me Sir, but there doesn’t appear to be any writing on the blackboard?” Her voice trailed upwards in question, and Harriet had to force herself not to fidget as she waited for an answer. While she dealt with anxiety, she was a straightforward person. There was no reason for him to get angry at her for asking a question, and even if he kicked her out, it wasn’t like she had far to fall. Things couldn’t get worse than they already had, and that was a constant comfort.

 

[Ryees]

Harriet's words hung in the air like lead, molten and unassuming. Sherlin, at his desk, flicked his eyes towards the door. "That is correct. It appears there is not. No doubt you now all know the solution to the conundrum."

The silence that followed was the sort of quiet that got schoolchildren in trouble. And sure enough, one of the other thirty-six people in the classroom stood up indignantly from his seat, a pale-skinned, red-haired man appearing in his late twenties. "Oi, what're you playing at? There's nothin' on the board, mate—"

"Incorrect."

In the middle of the room in the middle of the Ministry in the middle of London, a wind came to life. It was not a peaceful summer breeze, and in fact it would have been plastered with several different varieties of profane graffiti if it had any say in the matter. It roared to force and spun around the room, scooping the man up by the ankles. Theodoor sprang open and the redhead was unceremoniously tossed out, landing on his back in the hallway.

A young-looking girl with dark hair and dark eyes balked, leaning forward in her desk. "You can't, do—!"

"I assure you I can, incorrect."

The girl's hands on the edge of her desk did not save her as she was whisked upwards, her skirt flapping in a way that caught the armadillo's attention as she was deposited atop the man in the hall.

For the remaining thirty-four people in the room, a moment of chaos broke out. Panic met with disgust and fear and accusation as body after body, prospective students were ejected from the space. The trend caught quickly, though, with those who were not first to panic. The common thread between the ejected prospects was Sherlin dutifully answering their questions or claims and stating very clearly that they were all wrong, and wrong answers seemed to be low on the List of Tolerated Actions Within the Classroom.

Minutes later, the numbers were reduced by more than half.

Eleven pairs of eyes sat in silence as the wind died down, the kind of silence that you observed at a funeral parlor where the deceased rolled over in their casket.

From next to Harriet, a pretty girl in her middle years with chocolate eyes and long blonde hair scrabbled in a notebook, visibly trying to understand. She whispered to herself under her breath for a moment then blinked. She suddenly dug in her bag and produced her wand, pointing the pale maple shaft down range at the front of the classroom. "Revelio!"

Welcome to Advanced Defense. This is not Defense Against the Dark Arts, like you were taught in your primary schools. The Dark Arts are not as common as those headmasters seem to think. More often, you will be assailed by your neighbor's wife, or your bus driver, or the man who made your sandwich last Tuesday. I am not going to teach you a Patronus charm, or reteach you a Boggart defense. I am going to teach you how to defend yourself.



By reaching this point, you have demonstrated one of a few possible character traits:

1: You are daft, and seeing your would-be classmates get vacuumed out by Theodoor Roosevelt stunned you to silence.

2: You are patient, enough so that you were willing to simply sit and wait to see what would happen.

-2b: You are hesitant, and were simply unwilling to speak up, and I suspect this is more likely than the root option for most of you.

3: You solved this riddle. Only one of you may do that, so well done to that person for being either the smartest, or the most reckless.

On the desk at the front of the room, you will each find a paper with your name at the top. This page contains your syllabus, required materials for class, expectations, and how to manage the Armadillo of Honor. He is an important part of our classroom procedure, so do be sure to read and understand that section thoroughly.

Whosoever cast the Revelio charm, please bring the Armadillo of Honor back to your desk with you when you retrieve your syllabus. You may get up from your seats when I raise my hand.

11

​

Professor Sherlin stood, walked one step to his left, and sat down in the leather rolling chair. He spun to face the board, then spun back, his eyes touching each of the students left in the room, eleven separate looks meeting each of them in the eye as he perused. His mouth split into a pleased grin, his fingers flattening to let his chin rest atop them. "Always pleased to see that I am not going to be disappointed by anyone."

With that, he leaned back in his chair. One hand took his notebook from the table, held open with a thumb as he idly scanned the pages, and the other perched on the armrest, hand raised in the air with one finger pointing upwards. That appeared to be as clear a signal as he was to give.

 

[imo56]

Harriet hurried to pin down her notebook and quill with her forearms when the wind started. However, though several people close to her got swept away, the gusts felt gentle to her. It was a fascinating spell, and Sherlin’s magical skill and power was obvious. She had not caught a wand or hand movement that would have hinted at his involvement, but who else could it be? Harriet stifled a laugh at the stunned and furious expressions on the expelled student’s faces, but after a few moments her humor turned grim.

This was obviously only the first round. It could easily have been her floating out the door. In fact, some students were being kicked out due to failing to answer correctly, and while the majority of their solutions were poorly thought out at best, Harriet wondered if she could do better. The thought brought a frown to her lips as she watched the last few students fly past, and she began rubbing her fingers repetitively over the woodgrains of her desk.

Sticking charm, non-permanent geomantic figure fortuna minor inscribed on skin, there had to be a spell to affect one’s balance against gale force winds… the problem-solving mantra calmed her and enabled her to look to the side and share an eyebrow-raise with the person to her right. The door slammed closed, cackling, on the large pile of ejected bodies. After a quick headcount, Harriet realized only eleven students remained.

All was still but for the ticking of the clocks, but soon a whisper and rustle of paper was heard. The rest of the class looked on as a student beside Harriet cast the revelio, and the instructions on the board were revealed. Harriet leaned forward eagerly in her seat, eyes flicking over the words.

It began with a fairly typical introduction, much like what many professors would give at the start of a class, but the following statements spoke to Sherlin’s high expectations and… incisive approach. Harriet was certain this was not the last time class numbers would be thinned.

A long-neglected competitive spirit spluttered to life in Harriet’s chest. She wondered if Sherlin’s grin was due to not being disappointed, or to enjoying the power trip of throwing out some of the ministry’s most respected Aurors. She would not begrudge him either reason.

At his raised hand the students arose, some more cautious than others, and Harriet motioned for the riddle-solving student next to her to go first.

“Nice going with the revelio, Ms…?” Harriet grinned at the older woman, speaking quietly as they made their way down to the center desk.

“Oh, thank you!” she said with a grateful smile, “And it’s Blackwell. Adaline Blackwell-!”. Harriet thought to ask more, but neither of them dared to speak as they stepped into the center of the room. Harriet waited for Adaline to grab her folder and the golden armadillo before stepping up to grab her own, Harriet Wilson typed clearly across the top.

As she walked closer, she began to notice a slight buzzing in the air to the left, increasing as she walked. Was it just her, or was the air getting warmer the closer she got to Sherlin? He must be wearing something warded, she thought. Very, very warded. He seemed entirely focused on the notebook in front of him, but Harriet sent his dark hair a small smile before ducking her head and returning to her seat.

Adaline, sitting next to her, looked perfectly content to wait for Sherlin to speak, but Harriet couldn’t stop herself from opening up the syllabus and scanning it, curiosity irrepressible.

 

[Ryees]

As the students funneled in front of his desk, he looked each one up and down thoughtfully, carefully taking in as much detail as he could before turning his eyes back to his notes between each visitor.

A tall blonde boy, clearly a fresh graduate of Hogwarts by his young-looking face and gold-and-crimson striped scarf. Hitchens, Alfred; pureblood, old family, Gryfiindor of Hogwarts; idiot. Alfred smiled at Sherlin as he passed, and Sherlin smiled back, friendly and welcoming and as fake as could be. Alfred did not seem to notice.

Two more students passed, both boring half-blood witches of no note or consequence that would never make a mark upon the world or achieve any relevance. His attention perked back up again, though, as a hand settled atop the Armadillo of Honor. The professor's eyes followed that pale-skinned hand up to meet dark eyes set into a small, rounded face atop a thin sprig of a body. "Your class is interesting," she offered, clearly pleased with herself and trying to make a good impression. "We've all been challenged before, but always by the learning itself, never by the obstacle to that learning. Already trying to get us to think differently, I see."

Lying, simpering thief, thought Sherlin with a gracious smile, nodding his head and leaning back in his chair. "You did well," he assured her, intensely annoyed by the way her smile widened at his praise, "a few more seconds and you'd all have been out the door." She blinked at that, and his smile vanished, an expectant look raising his brows as his head tilted. "Oh, my, yes. Should you all have taken any longer, you would have been ejected immediately." As if it were the most obvious thing in the world, his brow furrowed. "Do you think I would spend the time to teach a group of hopeless idiots?" He laughed from his belly, leaning forward on the desk and lacing his fingers. The laugh did not reach his eyes. "I am not so altruistic as that."

Sherlin's eyes flitted from Ms. Blackwell to the next in line, one Ms. Wilson if his memory checked out. She was silent as he approached his desk and retrieved her syllabus, but the expression on her face suggested that she was chewing on a pack of very upset bees. It differed from the way the other students looked as though they had been attacked by said bees; this woman, like the Blackwell girl before her, was not bothered by the assault the students had endured, but rather intrigued, puzzled, or aroused, by the prospect of finding a new puzzle to solve. The fact that that expression had not properly set in until she approached his desk, though, was puzzling.

The procession concluded and saw each student back at their chosen desks, separated by the backwards facing desks such that none of them properly shared a neighbor. The harried hum of quiet conversations dwindled as each student inevitably found themselves reading through their syllabus. They were clearly penned in Sherlin's own handwriting by a Copywriter Quill, identical to the stroke save for the name penned at the top.

Harriet Wilson

Class is to start on time. Students are to arrive before class starts. Any late students will replace any targets for spell practice for that day.

When you are in the classroom, you are to be armed. Wands out. Always. Part of your grade will be reactionary, so you can expect to have attacks directed at you at any point during class. You are encouraged to do this to your own classmates.

Homework is purposeless. Practice is not. Your wand will be checked via Prior Incantatol each day of class, and if the proper number of practice reps is not found of each spell, you will lose marks.

The Armadillo of Honor is to stay in the classroom at all times, as it is a Horcrux. The Student of Honor will retrieve it at the start of class and leave it at the end. Those who hold the Armadillo will always have first opportunity to answer any questions, to practice any drills in class, etc.

If the Student of Honor fails those first attempts, though, and another student succeeds where that student failed, they will be dethroned.

A passing grade in the class is 95% marks.
Shoes are not to be worn during combat drills.
No pencils. Pens or quills only.
No pigtails in the hair.
If you bring a mobile device to class, it is to be in the top right corner of your desk, powered on, but on silent, at all times.

As they read, Sherlin's eyes scanned over his prospective students, considering, judging, and analyzing, and his mind turned about. First it turned left, then left again, before making a non-Euclidean shift into the blackboard behind him and rubber-banding back to his head in a way that made his teeth ache. What are you, Miss Wilson? He put his hands together again in front of his face, thumbs under his chin, and leaned his elbows onto the desk, still watching Harriet. Are you a tiger? Are you an eel? Are you cattle?

Motion caught him, and Sherlin's eyes flicked to the right, to a student—Mathers, Ryan; Frat boy, athlete, douchebag; useless—drawing his wand, a length of glossy black wood set into an ornate silver hilt and pointing it at Adaline, who was still invested in her syllabus. The motion of his stunner was fluid, but amateur, sluggish to Sherlin's eyes but likely enough to get him by in classes back at school—Ilvermorny, if the gold heart of Pukwudgie on his shirt collar was any indication.

Head to her paper, Sherlin waited for Ms. Blackwell to be knocked out of her chair. Instead, she almost casually raised a hand, a fully-cast Protego shield manifesting in her hand. Sherlin's brows legitimately raised at that, an impressed smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Instinctual; fluid; practiced; well-practiced; Africa? Dumbledore?

Before the spell had ever contacted her shield, Sherlin's own wand was in his hand. It was unclear exactly when or how that had happened. A red-brown wood of smooth grain and just over 13 inches long, it began rounded but flared into a gentle three-faceted helix until it hit the throat of the shaft where the simple rounded handle began. Red sparks hit Adaline's shield, and as the airy concussion rippled through the air, Sherlin voiced his own spell. "Vestimenta revelio." Focused, concise, expert, as if spoken by a robot; exactly scripted wand movement, as if it were held by a machine; deadly accuracy, as if aimed by a marksman.

The white-clear bolt tore from his wand with purpose, spreading as it traveled to take the shape of Ryan's body—specifically, the clothing on it. The boy barely had time to register that the spell had been cast before it hit him... with no visible effect. Not immediately, anyway. As if wet with paint, the color in his clothing started to drip away, the fabrics solid and strong as ever, but becoming ever more transparent as they dripped off. With a panicked shout, he jerked his coat off the back of his chair and quickly wrapped it around his waist just as the color started to leak out of the waistline of his finely-tailored jeans. "You said classroom combat was encouraged!" he shouted in an indignantly British accent, pointing his want at Sherlin accusingly. "Why am I being punished for it!?"

"This is not a punishment," Sherlin replied simply, spreading his hands amicably and leaning back in his chair. "You attacked a student. I attacked you. She defended properly. You..." He let a sardonic smirk pull his mouth as his eyes flicked down to the puddle of color dripping down the steps. "..did not." Defeat blossomed in Mathers's cheeks, and he plopped into his chair. He seemed to have accepted that his clothes were ruined, so it was with another surprised cry that he noticed something crawling up his leg as the pigment inched its way back; after a minute or so, he was able to remove his coat.

"Let this be a lesson to you all," he called out, his voice surprisingly strong and authoritative, demanding attention as he stood from the chair and strode to address them from the center of the blackboard. "You are in an environment of learning, not of beer pong. You are not using spells to prank your classmates, nor are you using them to dethrone your classmates. If you cast a spell on a classmate while they are answering a question, considering the answer to a question, or reading material specifically handed to them by me, you will not be punished for it; however, you will immediately have declared yourself"—he raised his fingers in quotation marks—"'fair game.' The first student to tag you with a successful spell, if you cause such an interruption, will earn themselves one Sherlin point—no, I will not tell you what they do, or how to earn them otherwise." His grin was self-satisfied. "If I am the first to tag you with a successful spell, you will lose one Sherlin point. We are not here to troll each other. Learning is one thing; this is not a battleground. You should be firing spells off to test your classmates, in a constructive way."

His wand tapped the board; the text changed. Each of their names was written, underlined, and an owl, drawn in chalk, flew from the edge of the board and perched at the bottom, similar in function to a living portrait it seemed. It watched them, its head twisting, apparently waiting for something. Sherlin waved his wand to one side, and his chairs slunk back against the blackboard. Deskster yawned, shuffling his legs to move him against the wall as well. Another flick of Sherlin's wand, and two white circles appeared on the ground, equidistant from the outside walls and about three feet in diameter. Spaced twenty feet from each other, their intention was clear.

"Step up, now, volunteers first. And if there are none, you'll be picked by me. Let's see what you all have." Sherlin walked to the desk and hopped his butt up onto it, hands folded in his lap and wand braced between his laced fingers.

 

[imo56]

Harriet suppressed a flinch as Adaline’s (very well-produced) shield charm erupted close to her. She had always held an instinctive distaste for other’s shields. They seemed so… one sided, Adalaline’s left flank left completely open. Harriet’s right hand twitched, and her red-brown wand slid into her hand.

Harriet rolled her wand, a slim and unassuming red pinewood, between her fingers as she watched, giving a slight grimace of distaste when Adaline conjured the shield charm, although she could appreciate her quick reflexes and wandless protego. However, shield charms always seemed so illogical in their typical form, a single wall, when a ward-charmed piece of clothing could automatically sense attacks and give 360 protection.

Harriet’s eyes slowly drew down Adaline’s unprotected left side, but her thoughts were interrupted by Sherlin’s retaliation, and the blond boy who had initiated the encounters cries about fairness. She took a second to write down the spell, Vestimento Revelio, on the back of the syllabus, although she would most likely never use it, Sherlin’s verbal delivery had been so clear and concise as to nearly spell it out in front of their eyes. Every move he made in the classroom seemed to have an educatory purpose, not a single step or word out of place. It made Harriet wonder what was going on inside his brain, if his thoughts were equally as orderly and detached.

Sherlin’s rules were fair but had an obvious effect on the mood of the classroom, Harriet noticed, as each one pulled out their wands. A blonde boy in Gryffindor-colors in front of Harriet even turned around in his seat to take in the classroom, looking far too cocky for his own good. Had he not seen what happened to Mr. See-through-pants just a few minutes before? A girl with straight brown hair sneered back at him, and Harriet’s wandless hand went instinctively to the inside of her shirt-cuff, fingering the algiz rune she had inscribed there, the protego wand movement sewn over it. With an exhale she thought a quiet protego, nothing but the warming of her wand and heating of the sigil activating to indicate anything had occurred.

This specific rune experiment had unclear results. It immediately lifted a reddish shield tightly around her whenever mild to moderate jinks' and charms came within five inches of her skin, and it increased the strength of any shield charms she verbally produced with her wand. But Harriet had no idea if its strength was enough to repel more intense curses or dueling spells. It was hard to find people willing to shoot darker curses at you, and if you did, harder to find those willing to heal you afterwards.

The silence was broken by Sherlin tapping the board. The class watched as a chalk-made owl took flight and two dueling circles appeared on the ground. Harriet carefully kept a frown from forming at the sight- she hadn’t dueled in circles such as those since Hogwarts, though she’d been keeping up with her defense skills. However, street fights and non-formal duels were not the same as their formal counterpart. In Harriet’s opinion, dueling in little circles hadn’t been half so educational as her real-life experiences in self-defense, but she knew the form must exist for a reason.

It was with these thoughts, as well as a half-cynical half-cheerful might as well get the first-time over with, that Harriet raised her hand to volunteer with a smile, as the brown-haired girl and blonde Gryffindor did the same.

 

[Ryees]

Sherlin cast his eyes around the room for a long few moments, taking in the hands that came up. His face was carefully neutral, but his gaze still gave the feeling of being put on a deli scale and weighed before you were sold off to a hungry househusband. Finally, after an agonizing four seconds, Sherlin nodded to himself. His hands jumped forward, one finger on each extended towards Harriet and towards Alfred. On the board, the owl shuffled about, picking up a piece of chalk in its beak and waiting expectantly.

Alfred hopped up out of his seat with gusto, doffing the scarf and leaving it coiled on the desk. He trotted down the wide steps and swept over to his left, stopping just short of stepping into the circle before his eyes slipped over to his professor. Wand in hand, he folded his hands at his waist and waited with a visible, but visibly failing, attempt at patience.

"The rules are simple," he announced as he watched them make their way to the floor. "You each get two spells. The circle will ensure you follow this rule." He did not seem to be intending to explain that. "The only forbidden spells are the Imperius and Killing curses. Anything else is fair game. If you leave the circle, you lose; if you fall unconscious; you lose; and if you are otherwise rendered incapable of casting spells, be it losing your wand or your hands or your tongue, you also lose. You may move anywhere inside the circle." That the circle was barely six feet across and that moving within it would be limiting even for the smallest of the students, he also did not seem to process.

"Each of you step inside the circle, and I will call your start." At that, Alfred nearly bounded inside his circle. It flashed, and a cylinder of white energy blinked upwards in a cylinder that stretched to the ceiling. As fast as it had appeared, it disappeared, giving the impression that the space was now active. Sherlin gestured to the other circle, bidding Harriet to enter in kind. As she did, Sherlin hopped forward off the desk, reaching a hand out to each combatant. "To your marks." Alfred raised his wand to his face and bowed, an excited grin spreading across his face. "Begin!"

Alfred's wand jumped forward. "Stupefy; Flipendo!" His spells came rapid fire, one swish and one swing for each spell. To Sherlin's eyes and expertise, they were sloppy and misaligned, but in his primary schools they would have likely gotten him far. They ripped across the room, unimpeded by whatever spell had enchanted his dueling circle, barreling down on Harriet barely a hand's-width apart from each other.