Defence, Pretence, Offence (Hecatemus Book #2)

Chapter 15 - A Revelation

Sitting in the corner watching a whole class of people learning to Apparate was not the most pleasant of experiences for Harry, in fact it was downright nasty. Each time one of the class disappeared and reappeared he felt the universe shudder, which sent shockwaves through him, and although no longer debilitating, they were very unpleasant.

It was the second week of the real classes after they had been sorted into their groups and so far the classes were turning out to be challenging, but kind of fun, mostly. This was the second time Harry had sat through an Apparating class. It wasn't the Advanced group, because Draco was in that one and they had both agreed it was better if Draco did not try anything complicated when it came to Apparating while Harry was under duress. He stayed well away from that class and did his very best to pretend he couldn't sense anything through Draco.

After being in the Great Hall only fifteen minutes he was not sure how much more he could take, and Draco, who was sitting in on Professor McGonagall's Animagus class, even though he did not really need to, had told him it was time to give up at least twice. He had made it longer than the previous try, at least. Last time his maximum stay at any one time had been seven minutes and twenty seconds, with very long breaks in between. He was determined to do better this time.

Moody, who was teaching the class, had been sending concerned glances his way for the last two minutes, and Moody was not a man who normally did concerned. If the headache and growing nausea were anything to go by then Harry suspected he was deathly pale and wincing at the slightest sound, let alone when someone actually Apparated; however, he was not about to give up yet.

This was after all about building his tolerance to the familiar form of travel and he had promised himself at least twenty minutes. Until then he was staying put, even if it meant heaving up his breakfast as soon as he left the room. With this in mind he gave Moody an encouraging smile as the man looked at him yet again, and settled back to reinforce his mental barriers for what seemed like the hundredth time.

His control was beginning to slip and the magic in the room was becoming more and more visible, but he was determined to tough it out. After reading up on the subject rather than just reading about how to do it, Harry had discovered that Apparating was in essence a matter of blasting a hole in the fabric of space-time, as the Muggles liked to call it, converting yourself into energy, projecting yourself through your hole before it closed and then reassembling yourself at the other end.

The reassembly was really the tricky part, requiring a firm sense of self for the spell to work with. Knowing how Apparating worked had left Harry surprised that more wizards and witches didn't splinch themselves. The whole spell was very complicated, which was why it was difficult to learn, and Harry was sure there had to be a better way of doing it.

For a start, as he watched a bright burst of magic surround yet another member of the class and felt the universe shudder as the explosion hit it, he decided that if nothing else the whole blasting a hole was messy, dangerous and could not possibly be the only way of going about the entire business.

It was the blasting part that made Hogwarts' wards and places like it impervious to Apparating; the knife point of magic required could easily be diverted and spread out making it useless. If someone tried to Apparate into Hogwarts without opening the wards, or from place to place inside the structure it would simply be a huge waste of magic as the school absorbed the power and defused the spell. The way Harry pictured it was like a jet of water hitting a sponge; the jet would become a spray and most would be absorbed and some redirected with much less force.

Blowing a hole in something was really rather an unsophisticated bit of magic to go with the complex and delicate spell for converting a person's atoms, and not only did it grate on Harry's magical senses, but it offended his sensibilities as well. Draco had laughed his arse off when Harry had let that piece of information slip the first time and called him a spell snob, but he couldn't help it if now he could appreciate the finer points of magic. It wasn't as if he was against using a good blast of power every now and then, but the combination of something so delicate and something so blatant set his teeth on edge even before he felt the repercussions.