Harry Potter And The Descent Into Darkness

Chapter 4

"Blimey, Harry! How did you do that!" Ron exclaimed as the three of them left the defense classroom and began to make their way towards the grand staircase. It was Tuesday and they were finally done with classes for the day and were not working their way to dinner.

"Do what?" Harry replied, slightly confused as to which 'that' Ron was referring to now. He had been under the impression that Ron had been oblivious to most of what he spent the last hour doing.

"That... that... thing you did! What was that?"

"Ron, I honestly have no idea what you're talking about," Harry barely managing to mask the air of annoyed exasperation in his voice.

"Harry, I think that Ron's referring to the non-verbal spell you used that caused your training dummy to disintegrate," Hermione said, while giving him a fairly wary look through narrowed eyes.

"Oh... that?" Harry responded. It had hardly been the highest level spell he had used in their Defense class that day, although he was pretty sure no one noticed the more interesting ones.

They had each been placed in front of a charmed dummy that was spelled to send random hexes at them. Moody told them to disable the dummy as quickly and efficiently as possible, and to do it without getting hexed. Harry took care of it in what he felt like was a rather efficient manner. His spell had hit it on his first shot, and had utterly disabled it. Definitely effective.

It was later that he started getting creative and began doing some more... subtle magics around the classroom.

Harry had gotten bored, since he had completed his task first. He was leaning against the wall to the back of the classroom, watching as the rest of his classmates were repeatedly hit with minor hexes by barely animate objects, and were unable to get their attacks past their dummies' weak little shield charms. It was pathetic, really. So he had started messing with people – just sending minor curses and lesser hexes here and there, to amuse himself. They had been complex and subtle, and the fact that he had pulled it all off without anyone the wiser sent an exuberant thrill up his spine.

But Ron wasn't excited about the results of Harry's subtlety. Ron wouldn't have noticed any of them, even if Harry had done it while holding his wand directly under the ginger's nose. No. Ron had never appreciated subtlety. He was getting all excited about the stupid spell he'd used at the start of class. Harry barely managed to refrain from rolling his eyes.

"Yes, that," Hermione said, with a fairly accusatory tone. "What was that, Harry? Where on earth did you learn something like that?"

"Erm... read it in a book, somewhere. Don't remember, where exactly," Harry said with a dismissive shrug. Truth was that his companion had whispered it in his ear a week earlier when he was trying to come up with different curses and hexes to practice in preparation for the tournament. He still didn't know what the next task would be, but he didn't see any harm with practicing curses. Seemed like a decent enough use of his free time to Harry.

"I didn't hear you say anything when you cast it," Ron said, his voice filled with a bit of awe. "Did you seriously cast it without saying anything!"

Hermione huffed in exasperation. "Merlin, Ron! Harry has been doing almost all of his classwork non-verbally for more than a month! How could you not have noticed!"

"Seriously!" Ron exclaimed and turned to gape at Harry.

"Uh... yeah, Ron. I have." Idiotic, unobservant, git. Harry thought as he rolled his eyes. His companion burst into cackles of laughter, making it very difficult for Harry to keep a straight face until it subsided.