It was nearing Christmas and Hermione had finished collecting the list of students interested in the DA. Darius had already run the name by her and she was all for it. The club room was one of the abandoned halls on the first floor of the castle which had been loaned to them for the purposes of the castle.
Hogwarts castle was a gigantic castle and very little of it was used at any given time. There were roughly 40 students; 10 from each house; 5 each of boys and girls per year on an average. Considering the total of seven years' worth of students and the teaching and support staff there were barely above 300 people in the castle, which left a lot of empty rooms and halls.
The classes were set to start on the first weekend after the Christmas vacation ended and school restarted. Darius was not going back this vacation. He would be utilizing the time to further improve his duelling skills in the RoR and learning more magic from the Soul Grimoire. He also had to go through the list of students who had applied to the club to select his students.
The club had snowballed from his initial expectations and there were quite a few of them. The canon Harry Potter wasn’t clear regarding all the students, so he was only familiar with a few names and decided to take those in. It would be easier to teach students he had at least some information about. The list came to have the following names.
Gryffindors -
Hermione Granger
Harry Potter
Neville Longbottom
Ronald Weasley
Lavender Brown
Dean Thomas
Parvati Patil
Seamus Finnigan
Ginevra Weasley
Demelza Robins
Colin Creevey
Katie Bell
Cormac McLaggen
Alicia Spinnet
Angelina Johnson
Fred Weasley
George Weasley
Lee Jordan
Ravenclaws -
Padma Patil
Su Li
Michael Corner
Terry Boot
Anthony Goldstein
Lisa Turpin
Mandy Brocklehurst
Luna Lovegood
Morag MacDougal
Cho Chang
Marietta Edgecombe
Hufflepuffs -
Susan Bones
Hannah Abbot
Ernest Macmillan
Justin Finch-Fletchley
Megan Jones
Wayne Hopkins
Cedric Diggory
Slytherins -
Daphne Greengrass
Tracy Davies
Blaise Zabini
Tristan Harper
The number of applicants was astounding. It came close to the number of students admitted every year. In fact, he had got a hold of the Weasley twins and Lee to act as assistant instructors as they were the senior most as well as good at duelling.
Darius was very happy with the turnout, though Slytherin was a bit under-represented. In fact he was grateful any of them showed up at all. The Greengrasses were always more of a neutral family rather than the evil ones and the Zabinis had much more presence in the nation of Italy than here in Britain.
The vacations went by fairly quickly. After completing the assignments for the holidays in the first couple of days, Darius had spent nearly all his time in the RoR. His duelling skills were improving rapidly now that he had some sort of pathway ahead of him.
He had already moved on to the seventh dummy target; the extra time had helped him defeat the sixth in a much shorter time than he had envisaged. He was also able to parry at least half the time and was rapidly improving.
The books available in the RoR had become superfluous now that he had Riddle’s personal understanding of spells and their usage. He still referred to them to understand the underlying theory so that he may start practising them silently and thereafter endlessly.
He had been very lucky to embrace wandless magic at an early age. Once a witch or wizard embraces magic with a wand, they find it hard to give up that crutch. It would take several years to break the habit and build up a new foundation and even then it might have problems. Even Riddle at the same age as him was not close to as good at it as he already was. He somehow didn’t feel like putting all his stock on a flimsy piece of wood that could be easily broken. After all magicians had magic already; the wands merely served to focus the power.
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The Soul Grimoire was an absolute font of knowledge and he could finally start learning all the dark spells as well. He had kept the diary Grimoire aside and was using the Diadem Grimoire. The dark spells would be very useful if he ever had to fight Death Eaters and he di not balk at using them. Barely any spells were themselves equal to a dark spell; it was how they were used was what made spells dangerous.
The severing charm, diffindo, which is learnt in the 4th year, could be used to kill if used on strategic area like the neck or to the veins. Let's come down a year; 3rd year freezing charm, glacius, can be used to freeze the steps of the grand staircase and cause someone to plummet to their deaths.The 2nd year fire-making spell, incendio, could set someone on fire. The 1st year levitation charm, wingardium leviosa, had been used to great effect by him to clobber a troll unconscious.
Every spell is only as potent as the user makes it out to be. One of the few truly magics were horcruxes, magic that literally needed the cold-blooded murder of an untainted soul. The unforgivable curses were only paid so much attention due to them affecting the soul, a magic deemed evil due to its power and destructive tendencies.
The New Year rolled by and the students who had left for their homes started returning to the castle. Mione was almost bouncing on her feet in excitement over the first meeting of the club. The first week of classes went by quickly and he aced them as usual.
Charms went along swimmingly as he had already perfected performing the banishing charm, depulso, being able to do it even silently. He was not yet able to do it at full strength wandlessly.
He had found that as the level of spells increased it grew increasingly harder to perform wandless magic as proficiently as silent casting with the same amount of power. He could still do it but it required much greater amounts of time, time he couldn’t afford to spare with all the things he was focussing on. Therefore, he decided to keep wandless magic for emergency situations and only practice it to perfection for a few spells.
The summoning spell, accio, in case he lost his wand. The unlocking and releasing spells, alohomora and relashio, for any time he was captured or bound. The disarming, stunning and shield spells, expelliarmus, stupefy and protego for rudimentary wandless magic.
Transfiguration dealt with the switching spell, permuto. It was not a difficult spell, per se, but it required excellent focus and magical control. He was long done with this as well. He was so far ahead in most subjects that it wasn’t even funny. He had the added advantage of living in a well-warded home, that gave him the ability to practice magic without alerting the ministry even during his summer break, which gave him another advantage.
According to his mother, he was nearing the level where he should start seeking to apprentice himself to a master to further his level. Though for him, his mother would be filling in the role. She was a long-time Master Potioneer and though she hadn’t broken into the ranks of a Sorcerer, she was still an amazing teacher and put him way ahead of his peers. He was ever so grateful to have made the fortis memoriae spell, as it allowed him to remember the many potion ingredients, recipes, processes and inter-relationships. Occlumency did give him a near perfect recall but this spell literally imprinted the knowledge in his head.
Saturday, the day of their first club meeting came quickly and he made his way to the practice hall early to set it up. The hall was easily big enough for the near 40 students, or 20 pairs to practice, he just had to touch it up a bit. He and Dobby had headed to the RoR that morning and collected all the stuff he may require for duelling. Things created by the room, like the training dummies he used, couldn’t be taken outside the room as they were sustained by the magic of the room itself. But all the stuff stored away over the centuries in the room of lost things were fair game.
They got themselves more than enough training targets, dummies, training mats and the like to have a good training session.
The students started trickling in 10 minutes before the start of the club meet and soon rapidly filled up. He could see the surprised looks at the well prepped hall and felt inordinately pleased.
The twins, Lee and he stood facing the rest of the students. He stepped forward and began speaking.
“Welcome, to each and every one who has joined our new club. As you all know, we will be learning DADA and duelling in this club. The five of us, whom you standing in front of you will be teaching you in groups and working together. So, without any further ado, let’s start grouping up.”
I took Mione, Harry, Neville, Ginny, Luna, Cho, Susan, Hannah, Daphne and Tracy in my group. We headed to one of the corners of the room and stood together. All the groups would take up one corner and train together. We had decided to occasionally pit people from different corners together to get them to train against new opponents and increase experience.
“Well, most of you may be knowing me but for the benefit of the others, my name is Darius Icarus, a 4th year. I was there for the original duelling club managed by Professors McGonagall and Flitwick and am proud to say, among the best in my year. I have since practised extensively to improve my duelling skills further. I am extremely well read as far as DADA goes but we will only be learning the practical portion of the subject here. Any questions? Feel free to ask if you do.”
Daphne spoke up, “What exactly will we be learning? To be frank, I already have some training and only came as you seem to have a good reputation as far as your skills go, even amongst some seniors.”
“I don’t believe that everybody needs to follow the same pace. Everyone will be taught according to their own skills and preferences. A person who took an entire hour to learn the basics of disarming may take only 5 minutes to grasp a shield spell.
I am proficient in a wide array of spells but to list out some of the ones I’ll be teaching – the disarming charm, stunning spell, impediment jinx, knockback jinx, the full body-bind curse, reductor curse, levicorpus jinx, summoning and banishing charms, blasting charm, blasting curse, disillusionment, Patronus charm and many more. I will also expect you to know all the minor hexes and cantrips like the tripping jinx, leg-locker curse, stinging hex and many more. They may not seem much at first glance but they can really help someone out in a duel in sticky situations.
I will teach new spells as you master the previous one to my standards.
As far as duelling is concerned, I am proficient in the more aggressive stances, chain-casting, deflecting or parrying and have a much higher than average level of aim and power.”
The entire collective of students went silent after that. I think this is the first time I have publicly exposed so much of my capabilities and they are rather stunned by it. Of course, I didn’t even make a mention of the higher-level spells and the several dark spells I know.
I started speaking again, “We have 10 students, so each of you will pair up. I will switch with a person in every pair every few minutes to keep you on your toes with a new partner and to judge your general level.”
They began with the disarming spell, expelliarmus. Always a good go to spell. A magician is completely dependant on their magic and unless capable of wandless magic, is completely helpless without a wand.
After about 15 minutes of practice, “Alright, I am very pleased with your level of proficiency in this spell. You have done good work and we can move on to the next spell. We will now begin with the impediment jinx, impedimenta. It will slow down your enemies and give you more time to counter or escape.”
This spell was raking slightly longer and the first people to become proficient enough took about 30 minutes. They were Mione, Daphne and Neville.
A bit of encouragement to Neville went a long way. Being constantly put down and having a sub-par wand led to his talent being stifled in the canon timeline. Born of two powerful aurors, he had power to spare and did extremely well with enough focus.
“So Daphne, you weren’t kidding when you said you had training. You are picking this up at an astounding pace. You are doing very well too, Mione. Neville and you to girls can start practising a particularly tricky spell while the rest of the class catches up to you. It is called the Patronus charm and is the only spell capable of warding off the Azkaban guards, dementors.”
Mione spoke up, “I read about that spell in one of the DADA books I read before coming to the club. It is said to be an extremely tricky spell but displays a silvery barrier when done right and a full corporeal patronus when performed perfectly.”
“As usual, you are right, Mione. And I can do a fully corporeal patronus already. Mine takes the form of an ocelot, a breed of wild cats.”
We started with the patronus training while the others worked on their impediment jinx. He told them about his own learning process and some tips but by the end of the meeting, they were barely able to send out some silver wisps.
I told them, “That is considerable progress for a period of less than an hour. I will tell you another tip. A mistake many people make, leading them to not being able to cast a patronus or atmost an incomplete one, is an misunderstanding of the memory required. Common knowledge says that it requires a happy memory but my own practice with the spell shows that thought of love are much more effective. A memory of my house winning a house cup wouldn’t even come close to a memory of hugging my mother after successfully completing all the potions in my 7th year syllabus under her guidance.”
They all pondered on that for a good while and I took the time to once again walk amongst the students to help them wherever I could.
The rest of the class were at different levels of skill with the impediment jinx but each and everyone of them were at least able to perform it.
Finally, it was time for the meet to finish. Time had flown past but I had fun in those two hours. I reminded the students to practice later whenever they had the time. All the students thanked me and the next club meet was set for the weekend two weeks hence.