The Tangled World!

Attitude Problems

The room was filled with silence, and the air was tense as all of its occupants waited for their signal. The silence was broken by a loud metal clattering, and the room's occupants sprang into action.

"Trin!" Harry shouted as three identical cries echoed through the room. Harry watched as the four pale-grey spell bolts collided with the target dummy over the course of a second.

"That's our best result so far." Daphne observed. "The closest we've come before that is over the course of three seconds. I think this is the first time we can actually claim to have hit it 'simultaneously'."

"That's because we're using the tripping jinx this time, as opposed to the sleeping charm that we were earlier." Hermione remarked. "The sleeping charm is three syllables and a twist of the wand, while the tripping charm is only one syllable and a simple flick. It's easier for us to stay in synch with the tripping jinx, since it's simpler to cast."

Harry considered Hermione's point for a moment. "Does it really matter that much, though? I mean, sure, we need to make sure we can coordinate with each spell, but obviously some are going to be easier than others. We should keep practicing regardless."

Hermione let out a small huff. "Obviously. I'm just saying that we shouldn't take this one success as an example of global improvement."

"Sounds like someone has an attitude problem." Tracey teased from where she was sipping a glass of water.

Harry sighed. "Tracey does have a point, Hermione. This is going to take practice. You didn't expect this to be effortless, did you?"

Hermione looked dismayed and didn't answer, which Harry took as a yes.

Harry bit back a second sigh. He supposed that Hermione was so used to learning things quickly that she was feeling discouraged by the amount of practise that went into being able to coordinate as a team. Then again, even he was starting to feel a bit discouraged by their lack of visible progress. The fact that this was the first reasonable success they'd had at coordinating their casts in all the time they'd been practising was... well, it was a bit depressing.

As they lined up for their next attempt, Harry kept an eye on his friends to see what was causing their desync.

"Let's try the sleeping charm again." He said as he levitated the metal basin into the air before cancelling the charm and waiting.

Once the noise echoed through the room, Harry lashed out with his sleeping spell as he watched the others. Harry's charm was completed first, and was thus the first to hit the dummy with the faint sizzle that signalled a collision with a nonliving target. Hermione was close behind him, focusing more on precision that Harry usually did when casting. Tracey was adding some extra flourish to her wand movements that slightly slowed down her casting. Daphne was the slowest, taking an additional second to aim her wand after completing the wand movement.

Harry wasn't keeping track, but he was pretty sure that this was among their better attempts. His attention was too divided to say for sure.

"Right, Tracey, you're adding unnecessary motions to your wand movement and it's slowing you down." He said. "And Daphne, you need to work on aiming faster."

"Easy for you to say." Daphne replied. "Wand movements aren't usually made with left-handers in mind."

Harry paused and looked at Daphne. Just as she had said, she held her wand in her left hand. How had he never noticed that before? He supposed it just wasn't something he was used to paying attention to. It did explain why she was always extra careful not to smudge her writing, though.

"Is there a way we could compensate for that?" Hermione asked. "I mean, surely you're not the first left-handed magical to exist."

"It's possible to invert the wand movements on spells that require swishes and such, but movements that require wand twists can't be inverted and require me to bend my arm at awkward angles." Daphne clarified. "It makes it hard to aim them. The sleeping spell takes an additional second for me to aim it because of that."