Chapter 46: Passing Days

Chapter 46: Passing Days

Neville had a frustrating session with Pansy. No, the problem was not with Pansy but with the fucked-up wizarding world. Because Pansy was a girl, she can never be the heir of her house and hence her parents never made any effort in teaching her affinity-based skills or occlumency skills or any skill for that matter.

She only knew the basic skills and her knowledge was limited to the teaching of the Hogwarts syllabus. Neville tested her affinity by letting her use the basic spells and found she was really in tune with the wind element. He provided the spells he had in his library and gave her the notes that were used to understand her affinity and how to use it as a wizard.

Thankfully, she was ready to work hard and dedicated herself to learning this new knowledge. Neville and Pansy spent the whole day together, from the library to the practice room and finally had dinner in the Potions room.

A week passed like this with the two young wizards focused on learning new knowledge and getting along. Neville tried to act as a guide for her and helped her wholeheartedly. He knew Pansy would secretly cry at night, but she will still smile like her silly self the next morning.

Today they received the letters from the school informing them about next year's syllabus and there was a surprise for Neville in the list of books. nove(l)bi(n.)com

Magical Drafts and Potions

The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2

One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi

A History of Magic

A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration

The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection

"So, it is confirmed there is no Gilderoy Lockhart this year! Well, I will miss the clown. That's for sure. This year will be a serious pain in the ass!" Mumbling Neville kept the booklist inside his pocket.

He only wanted to know who the new professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts (abbreviated as DADA) was hired for this year. This was a new character, a person he might not be familiar with, and this was surely interesting.

A potion can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months before it finally shows some reaction and is ready for use.

Now all Neville had to do was to wait for this potion to be ready and do some practice tests.

Neville left the potion room after the inspection and came to the garden area to check his new spells. This was after taking some inspiration from Professor Snape's notes.

In his early years as Snape became aware of the conjuring spells like Aqua Eructo that throws jets of water from a wand or Avis that conjured a flock of birds, he wanted to create a spell that conjured strong winds. Strong enough to push his enemies away from him.

Later he modified his idea and instead of conjuring strong winds, he conjured wind blades that are razor sharp to hurt his enemies. Instead of pushing his enemies away, now he wanted to sever (Seco) or slash at his enemies continuously (Sempra) using his wand movement.

So, he created Sectumsempra.

For Neville, this was a great reference that gave him many ideas for his spell creation.

Conjuring vines strong enough to hold his immobilise his victims.

Conjuring leaves to create a whip to hurt his enemies.

And so on and so forth.

For the next few days, while Pansy tried to bring herself to discuss her money problems with Lady Augusta secretly avoiding Neville (because she didn't want Neville to pity her), Neville focused on his spell creation.

It resulted in some silly and funny accidents.

Locking his own hands in tight vines. Throwing leaves out of a wand that just flew randomly in the air after conjuring. Shooting beautiful flowers made no sense except it was visually appealing. (He noted it down to sell it to Lockhart.)

So, without any actual progress, the days passed before Wednesday came knocking on their doors.