Harry Potter's sister ~~~ Fanfiction

preparing a party part 61

Defence Against the Dark Arts was rapidly becoming everyone's favourite subject. Professor Lupin clearly knew what he was doing in his classes, during the second week back, he covered another new magical creature with the Third Years: Red Caps, small dwarf-like creatures that sought out places where blood had been shed.

Emma's class was also interesting, Harry had ensured she and her friends knew plenty about using spells against magical creatures, but he had never managed to set up a scenario where they could personally test their spells against magical menaces.

"These are a simple pest to the average Wizarding Garden. They're called Gnomes." Said Lupin showing the class the strange little creatures with potato-like heads.

Professor Lupin taught the class about the Gnomes general habitats and nature. Then the class proceeded to learn, or in the case of Emma and her friends revise, the Flipendo Jinx. It was normally difficult to learn this in First Year, but Second Years had the advantage of considerably more experience casting magic so the class picked up the spell rather quickly.

Once that was done Lupin lead them to a disused classroom next door where he had set up a pen filled with gnomes.

"This is the Flipendo Spell Challenge, or at least my version of the Flipendo Spell Challenge. As you will notice the pen is completely filled with Gnomes and outside the pen there are five different coloured bins. I want you all to divide into five teams of four and for each team to fill their bucket with as many Gnomes as possible. Unlike garden Gnomes, this lot are quite feral creatures and they attack if you get too close, so you'll need to hit each one with a jinx in order to pick it up. This time next week I want you to hand in an essay on the Flipendo Jinx, as incentive the group who gets the most gnomes in their bin shall be exempt from this homework assignment." Said Professor.

Emma's Defence group looked around at each other, four of them were going to get no Defence Homework?

"Oh and Miss Potter, for the sake of fairness I'm going to have to ask that no more than two of your friends be in one group."

Emma pouted but Professor Lupin shook his head. So Miss Potter found herself with Demelza along with Ravenclaw Ruth Clearwater and Gryffindor Angus Matlock.

Angus was one of Colin and Geoffrey's dorm mates. Last year he teased Emma for protectively keeping Colin's seat free for him just after he was petrified. In response to that teasing, Geoffrey had punched him in the face. That was the only significant thing that had happened between Emma and the three boys in her House and Year that were not Geoffrey or Colin, so she had no idea how he'd perform in a duel or a Flipendo Challenge.

As it turns out, he did rather badly. While everyone in class had learnt the spell, Emma and her friends had spent countless hours with Harry perfecting their target practice. All of them except Colin had also been involved in a mass skirmish involving Acromantulae. Put simply there was a clear gap in skill levels.

Ruth actually performed pretty well all things considered. Her aim was not perfect but it was good enough to get considerably more Gnomes than most.

For Professor Lupin, it soon became clear that the winner would either be Emma and Demelza's team or Ginny's team; which consisted of her, the other two Gryffindor Boys (Sean Ogbourne and Carl Hopkins) and a Ravenclaw Boy called Eric Bradley. The three boys did not have very good aim and were not good at keeping an eye out for the Gnomes that were interested in attacking them.