Conall Wolf

38) More practising

Conall woke up and he immediately jumps out of his bed. It is a week before the Second Task and he is getting excited. He hears more and more people talking about the next task. Everyone is speculating what the task will be about, and how much they will be able to see. It is a general thing that the audience isn't always able to see the task.

Conall sees that the sun is rising and this makes his day only better. He quickly changes into some nice clothes, and when he leaves the cabin he whistles to Bella and she comes running towards him. Together they are going for a run again. Conall decides to make a run around the lake again and together with Bella he is enjoying the new morning. It has stopped snowing, and he last snow is now melting as well. He doesn't like it that much, but it is probably better for the task. The snow is making more noise than the grass, so that is an advantage. However, it doesn't matter for him because he will walk silent anyway, so maybe it is only a disadvantage because this will only make is easier for the others as well.

While thinking about the next task he makes his run around the lake. When he comes back to the carriage he waits for a while. He starts to play with Bella.

"I need to give you more attention." Conall says and he starts to cuddle Bella. He plays some fetch with her and they are just spending some time together.

Conall walks to the castle and he already starts his breakfast. The others are still sleeping because it is weekend, so they are using it to sleep for a bit longer. They have to work hard because most of the professors gave them a bunch of homework, which they have to finish the day before the Second Task. Conall has luck because he needs to practise a lot, so he managed that he doesn't have to make this homework. His friends however needs to help him with the next task and make the homework, so they are resting from all their hard working.

After a while everyone is joining him and they are in silent this time. Conall demanded to not talk about the tournament every single time that they are together. He was on his nerves when he snatched that to the others, so they are afraid now of saying something else. Conall doesn't bother. His excitement grows, because he finally knows what the task truly means, but his nerves grow as well. The more the people are talking about it, the more nervous he gets. He is done with training day in day out. He gets tired, and if he also needs to think about it after his practises.

Conall leaves after a moment and Katsumi walks after him, it is his time for practise.

They enter an empty classroom and Conall sits down. He didn't improve at all with the practises. He can't even move his wand an inch, how is he ever going to let it float towards him? Half way through they realises that the wand might be to much to begin with, so Katsumi took a feather and they are first practising it on the feathers.

"Conall you need to focus. Close your eyes, and clear your mind. Only have eyes for the feather, just like you did when you had to do a non-verbal spell. You got that under control as well, and this needs to be handled the same way." Katsumi tries to encourage him, but it doesn't really work. Conall usually does not have any improvement with a lot of practise. But Conall can't disappoint Katsumi so he closes his eyes.

He tries to shut down all his emotions, his nerves, his anger, his fear, his excitement, his love for Katsumi. He focusses on one single point, one small point in his mind. He raises his hand and targets it to the feather. He opens his eyes and says out loud 'wingardium leviosa!' and he keeps repeating that in his head. He clenches his teeth on each other and his hands is trembling because he is trying so hard. He almost yells the words inside his head. All the muscles in his arm and hand are strained. This needs to work.

However, it didn't work. The feather didn't move at all, and Conall falls back in the chair because his legs can't hold him anymore. His arm hurts because of the tension and he feels dizzy because of focussing so much. Katsumi hurries towards him and offers him some chocolate. They had this problem more often, and after some research they discovered that chocolate helped the most. Conall eats is carefully and smiles thankfully to Katsumi.

"We should just try it again okay?" Katsumi says clueless. It is clearly that Katsumi isn't a teacher. He doesn't really know what to do, because he was born with this ability and he didn't need to train to perform this kind of magic. Every time when Conall fails, Katsumi doesn't know how he will be able to do it the next time. He keeps repeating the plan he had before, in the hope that it will work the next time. Conall is almost giving up. Maybe it isn't even necessary, so all this is for nothing.

"One more time, then we will continue tomorrow. It drains the energy out of me." Conall lies. Well, it is not really a lie. It makes him really tired, but not that tired to quit. He just doesn't want to fail more times in front of Katsumi, while he is trying so hard.

The next time it wasn't any better than the time before. Nothing happened and Conall yells in frustration. He sits down and takes grumpily a bite of the chocolate.

"Con..." Katsumi asks carefully.

"No Kat! Not this time... I... I am sorry but I can't do it, and I don't want to disappoint you." Conall says truthfully. He doesn't want to lie towards Katsumi.

"Conall you never disappoint me. This is advantage magic, I bet that maybe even the greatest wizard alive can't do it. Don't feel ashamed that you can't do it in only two months time." Katsumi says. Conall stands up and he falls into Katsumi's arms. He is glad that Katsumi doesn't see him as a failure.

Conall left the classroom soon enough, he feels weak and he can't show that to others. He bumps into Dean and he shocks a bit. Dean quickly puts some things in his bag and he smile weak.

"Hey Conall, everything alright?" Dean says without any hesitation. Conall is glad that at least one thing went alright. Dean clearly has more confidence than ever, which almost worries Conall.

Before Conall could even answer Dean already says. "Well good luck with the next task!"

And Dean walked further in the corridor. Conall raises an eyebrow at this sight. He knew that he did something good, but he could never have given him so much confidence that he would act like this. Conall doesn't really want to know actually, he has his own problems now.

Later that week Conall refused any lesson or help. He made clear that he wants rest this week. He will try a few times a day to move a feather with his mind, but he doesn't want to know or do anything else. It frustrates him, and he can't have this tension. He needs to be calmed down for the task, and he really needs his mind to be ready for anything that will come. The others agreed because they saw as well that things were going backwards with him, so they were just relaxing that week. Conall helped a bit with the homework of them, because that gave good distraction. He played some games in their spare time and after a few days he was back to normal.

This was visible with his training. He wasn't able to really move the feather, let alone his wand, but on the day before the Second Task he really saw that his feather was trembling. That never happened before, and he saw this as a victory. This Task will be alright. He prepared so much, what can go wrong?