Order of the Sphinx... Why should HP get to have all the fun?

Chapter 23: Training

Disclaimer: Hello, My name is Draculas Sidekick and I'm a fan-fiction-aholic.

See, I write stories twisted off J.K Rowling's for fun.

I don't make any money from it, so it's a non-for profit sort of thing.

I'm afraid the only way to fix my problems is into indulge in it, so please, enjoy this chapter.

Chapter 23: Training

April the 20th was the day I had my first training lesson with Alexandru Varias.

It wasn’t much really; he just made me do sit ups and run around the perimeter of the property a couple of times claiming if I was going to work with dragons, I had to be fit and able to run long distances. On the 6th lap, he timed me, making me run flat chat for two full laps around the meadow to see how fast I could go. He never told me what I got, just frowned and said that he would make sure that the next time he timed me, It would be significantly faster.

On the 21st he pointed me towards a low hanging branch on one of the trees and made me hang upside down by my legs while he sat in a chair below me and lectured me on the differences between the different species of dragons and where the various different dragon reserves were located around the globe.

Exactly one week later on the 28th he gave me an in depth verbal quiz about the lecture and each time I got one of his questions wrong, I had to do five chin ups on the same branch.

On the 30th, he timed me again then smiled and told me I had shaved 3 seconds off my previous time.

On the 1st of May I was subjected to an obstacle course where I had to duck and weave around numerous obstacles like barrels and ladders and enchanted chairs whilst carrying a basket of chicken eggs. If I smashed any of them, I had to do ten push ups. By the time I had done the course 5 times, I had to do 20 push ups.

On the 2nd of May, Charlie Weasley, who had been undergoing separate training sessions to me joined me for a few hours of hell. For the first little bit of the time, we had to run laps again. On the sixth lap, I had to piggy back Charlie while I ran. Then, after that he made Charlie do push ups and watch as he shot bursts of flame at me from a muggle blow torch and made me jump over them and duck and weave while I ran on the spot. Then both of us had to recite by heart what we had learnt about dragons in the past couple of weeks. Charlie got a huge smile, a large bottle of Coca-cola and a pat on the back for his efforts. I got thwacked by AV with a baseball bat he transfigured out of nowhere as he yelled at me for not trying hard enough.

I knew then I had broken the one rule of warfare; I had underestimated my opponent. I glared at the smug and smiling Charlie as he waved cheekily at me from the shade of the Veranda while I did push ups with a 10 kilo weight on my back. I pulled him aside on our way back to the castle and told him my intentions. My plan was to have a little fun and Charlie was up to it. We shook hands and parted ways, both of us scheming how we would win the bet we currently had running.

It was on like Donkey Kong.

 All my focusing on dragons and training with AV was helping me in an odd way with Occulmency. While my inner mental walls were excellent, with me able to block other’s thoughts from coming in with startling accuracy, the other aspects had been faulty at best. It was common for me to have bursts of success, with some lessons Snape unable to use Legimency on me, and in other lessons it being a walk in the park. With all the distractions AV was throwing at me, I used them to help create a shaky wall of white noise which separated my thoughts from his probing spells. It was an odd branch of Occulmency, but it seemed to be working better than the other kind.