In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter CXXXIII: Training Dummies

LUCY:

The portrait hole swung open late Tuesday night to reveal Harry and Ron, back from Quidditch practice.

Harry grinned at me. "Ready?"

I nodded as bravely as I could and held up Cedric's journal. Harry offered a sympathetic look in response and joined me in the corner of the common room.

"I don't know where to start," I admitted. "Everything feels so important, but at the same time, nothing in here was enough to save him in the end."

"All we need right now is a place to start, right?"

I nodded. "R-Right. We can do that."

Harry leaned back against the wall and drummed his fingers against his knees. "Okay, brilliant. Well, if we only had this one meeting, what would you want everyone to know?"

"I don't know," I replied. I flipped through the pages, going from bookmark to bookmark with so much speed the words seemed to blur on the page. "There are so many good spells in here, ones that would be really useful in a pinch. I used stupefy and reducto, when I was in my pinch, but those are difficult to master and I would want everyone to leave with a useful spell that they've mastered and could use the very next day if need be. A couple of the spells in here are less challenging but less universally applicable, like the ebublio jinx that traps the target in a bubble that can't be popped with any physical force or the sea urchin jinx that makes painful spikes grow out of whatever body part the jinx hits. Oh, I don't know," I said again, burying my face in my hands.

"Um, Lucy." Harry reached forward and pulled my arms down. "It's alright. We can figure it out together. That's why I'm here, right?"

I nodded. "Right. Sorry. I didn't mean to try to sound like it was entirely my call-"

"Lu, relax, it's okay," he chuckled. "I asked you what you thought, remember? You're not stepping on anyone's toes, except maybe your own. Just take a breath."

I did so and released it with a shaky sigh. "Okay. So what do you think we should do?"

"Well, everything you said is great."

"But...?"

"Who said anything about a 'but?' I mean it, everything you said is great." I narrowed my eyes at him, and he grinned. "I never get anything past you, do I?"

I shook my head. "No. Spit it out, Potter, what is it? What are you thinking?"

"I was thinking expelliarmus might be a good place to start. It's gotten me out of a number of pinches before, even in the graveyard when-" His grin faded and he swore. "Sorry, I didn't mean-"

"It's alright, I know what you mean," I said, waving him off as I reached for a piece of parchment. "If we keep dancing around the truth of what happened, we'll never..." I shook my head. Where was I trying to go with that? "Anyway, you're brilliant, that's a perfect place to start. You're right, it helped us with Lockhart second year, and didn't you use it in the Shrieking Shack against Snape?"

"And I would do it again," he muttered. "Git."

"Git indeed," I agreed as I wrote Expelliarmus (for first meeting) across the top of the page.

"Hey, wait, Lucy."

I glanced up. "Mhm?"

"Speaking of Snape and the Shrieking Shack hat were you doing that night?"

"Oh. That." I set the parchment down and leaned back against the wall. I glanced around the room to see who else was around. The room was empty except Ron, the twins, and Ginny, who were too occupied by their Exploding Snap game to pay us any notice. I could talk freely. "Let's see. Well, after I got back to the castle, I headed down to Hagrid's to get wolfsbane, and-"