Light
A few moments later, it became apparent that neither was going to cast, and by unspoken consensus, the both lowered their wands.
As the tension bleed out of the moment, Hermione rubbed her behind. It was aching, and—
“Why were you trying to set an Incarcerous on me?” she asked furiously.
He looked taken aback by her appearance.
“I saw your shadow and it looked very big-” He made a circling gesture towards his head, indicating her mane of frizzy hair, “-and I thought you were a griffin.”
“A griffin? A griffin?” she asked incredulously. “You decided to use an Incarcerous on a griffin? Knowing they are impervious to most magic?”
He looked abashed, “I didn't have much time to think about it. I saw the shadow just for a moment and, and- Incarcerous was the first thing that came to mind.”
Hermione scoffed and examined her skinned left palm which she had used, once again, to break her fall.
“You're lucky I decided not to return fire. I might accidentally have cursed your balls off.”
“I'd have liked to see you try,” he retorted loftily.
“Says the one who tried to bind a griffin. With an Incarcerous,” she scoffed. “I'd be happy to teach you some basic magic.”
She cast a wordless tripping jinx at him. He jumped, just barely getting out of the way, and glared at her.
“Seems Protego is first,” she taunted.
He slashed his wand sharply and she cast a hasty Protego.
The minor blasting spell smashed into her shield and Hermione had to tighten her grip on her wand and force her magic to hold against the onslaught.
“See, that's Protego,” she continued, “to shield yourself.”
He gritted his teeth, and cast a stronger blasting charm.
Hermione felt a bead of sweat form on her forehead as she willed her shield to continue holding. It held.
He immediately cast another blasting charm, this time followed with conjured lightning. The conjured lightning was fickle enough that it slipped right through the cracks as she held up a metamorphic brick wall to stop the blunt force of the blasting charm from reaching her.
It was a minor spell, but her already frizzy hair spread out even more. She could see the strands stand out at attention, from the periphery of her eye.
She glared.
He grinned, mockingly, making another gesture encompassing his head.
Hermione dissolved the shield at the same time his blasting spell ran out, and cast a Coloris at him, and giggled when his hair turned a neon pink and his nose bright red and round.
In turn, he conjured a mirror, glared at his reflection and cast a Finite to return his hair back to its inky state and his nose back to the straight lines.
Then waved his wand and the mirror went rocketing towards her.
Hermione cast, turning the mirror into a ball of glass, using the momentum to funnel it around her and like a boomerang back at him.
He used the same trick and cast an additional speeding charm at it. Then in the same wave, pointed the wand at her feet and cast something that made the ground at her feet liquify so she lost her balance. She barely had time to banish the glass ball before it hit her face.
She glared at the ground that tried to unbalance her like she was on a trampoline. She cast several undoing charms at it and succeeded with an esoteric, obscure one that took far too many wand movements.
He took the opportunity to cast a tripping jinx at her, so as soon as she made the ground under her feet stable again, she tripped over her own feet.
She looked up at him. He stood with his wand lowered, smug as a cat, looking down at her.
Hermione breathed in deeply, stood and waited for a moment.
Then, when he'd raised his wand as well, she struck lightning fast, the fastest incantations and movements that came to mind: a blasting charm to force defense, a subtle silent soft Confundus that could bypass his shield aimed at his feet to make him stagger slightly, a medium strength severing charm to weaken the shield still reeling from the blasting charm and then finally, an overpowered Excresco combined creatively with a Sentis and an Incareceous that made the grass grow, become thorny and prickly and trap his staggering feet.
It worked beautifully. He collapsed onto his knees, lower legs trapped and wincing as the thorns broke through his clothes and through skin.
Hermione smiled beatifically at him as she waited for him to get to his feet.
He wordlessly blasted the thorny grass to shreds, healed the puncture wounds on his skin and then removed all the thorns clinging to his pants, letting them fall to the ground carelessly.
He stood to his full height and looked down at her with a crease between his eyebrows, narrowed hard eyes, and lips twisted slightly down.
He waited for a moment, as she had, and then slashed his wand and cast several spells in fast succession, as Hermione had.
Hermione had never managed to merge her mind and body as profoundly with her magic as she did during that duel. She waved her wand with brutal efficiency, delighting in her ability to keep up with him and watch that small crease between his eyebrows when she caught him. It was joyful, it was satisfying, it was exhilarating.
She felt like she was flying and he was flying and they were watching each other and egging each other on to go higher, to soar more, to dive more steeply and rise with unparalleled skill from every dive just before they smashed back into the earth.
They cast and cast until they were too tired and magically depleted. They'd hit each other with more and more creative jinxes, each showing off their collection of esoteric spells and the weird new ways they'd thought of to combine them. At some point, the anger had turned to playfulness in their spell crafting as they showed off unabashedly, shamelessly to each other.
By the end Hermione was merely excited to pick his brain. She held up her hand, panting and lowered her wand.
“What's that spell that you use to weaken the ground on which your opponent stands?” she asked.
He froze for a moment, then grinned, a fast, barely there expression, exposing his teeth, and then— slashed his wand. Her knees collapsed and she landed on her butt again.
Hermione glared at him from where she had landed.
“You’re asking me? Weren’t you going to teach me basic magic?” he goaded.
“I'll admit you're educated in magic but you have no manners. The duel is over!” she barked.
She lifted her wand and tried to reverse the spell he'd put on her knees. A Finite didn't do it. She tried several more complicated reversal spells but none of them yielded any results.
She glanced up at him and saw he was smirking at her. Her temper exploded all over her thirst for new knowledge and she cast an Avis oppugno specialis at him.
He tried to vanish the swifts as they flew at him, but they didn't disappear. Then he tried to set them on fire and bury them.
She remained where she was and avidly watched him struggle, as the swifts she had conjured pecked at his hair and face.
Ultimately, they called a truce. He undid the leg locking jinx he had placed on her and she called off the swifts. She didn’t banish them, in case he tried any other dirty trick. The swifts flitted around the two of them, chirping softly.He glared at her as he collapsed onto the ground in front of her, panting from having to dodge the swifts. She smiled sweetly at him, rubbing her knees.
“You're lucky I didn't command them to bring me your eyes,” she declared.
He looked at her in stunned shock for a moment. Hermione took in his messed hair and the small scratches on his hands, arms, neck and face and felt he had paid for his transgression. Her anger evaporated instantly and curiosity won over again.
“So how do you do that earth-modifying charm,” she asked eagerly.
He looked at her a moment longer and then threw his head back and laughed.
A few moments later he glanced at her, caught sight of her furious expression. He held up his hand and gasped out: “Unda solum.”
Hermione's anger evaporated again. “Ah, liquify soil, that makes sense,” she lifted her wand, cast it at the ground next to her, buried her hand in the loose soil with satisfaction.
“Hmm I wonder if-” she raised her wand again and cast Firmus solum and the earth under her hand hardened till she couldn't make it budge even if she pressed against it with all her shoulder force.
She looked up at him, “That's really neat! I wonder if I can use it to make Herbology practicals go more smoothly.”
“How did you know the wand movements?” he asked.
“I guessed,” she shrugged. “It had to have a twirl since it's an element related, and since there are 4 syllables, it has to have 4 other movements-”
“There are twelve total movements, how could you guess which four and the sequence of the four?”
“I borrowed some ideas from geometry,” she admitted sheepishly.
“What's geometry?”
“Like triangles and circles and angles? Taught in muggle school.”
He stiffened, “I didn't go to muggle school,” he said.
Hermione felt flustered. “I thought you were muggle born,” she said looking away from him and down at her hands.
There was a long pause, before he admitted, “I did. Grow up as a muggle. Before Hogwarts. But I did not go to muggle school.”
“Why not?” Hermione asked curiously, then continued before he could say anything, “Every child has the right to go to school. You seem the type with posh parents who thought sending you to school with other kids would 'spoil' you.”
She scrunched up face, before continuing severely, in her best impression of Minerva Mcgonagall, “But school is necessary. Kids who aren't socialized properly do not grow up to be well-adjusted adults. Because most social education from age four after occurs via peers. I swear, it makes me so mad when people disregard basic psychology and think they know better than experts whose job it is to study these things for a living and who are not allowed to bring much of their own experience and opinion into their work unless they can back it up with relevant strong evidence. I don't mean to disrespect your parents, but-”
He held up a hand to silence her rant, and without looking at her, said curtly, “I was born in an orphanage. There were chores to do and schooling beyond literacy was not encouraged.”
Hermione was mortified, “You don't know any geometry?”
He looked at her, amused, “No I've never heard of it.”
“What about angles and lines?”
“I read a book once before I went to Hogwarts, and I know there are different kinds of both.”
“Oh we have to fix this! I can't explain how you can guess wand movements unless you know quite a bit of geometry. It has to do with how some symmetries are preserved in different kinds of geometry. You have to read up on that,” she told him bossily.
He didn’t say anything in reply.
Hermione continued muttering to herself, “To think they did not teach you geometry, it's absolutely shameful. I have half a mind to write to mum and dad and ask them to look into this gross negligence so it can be fixed as soon as possible.”
She turned to him, saying desperately, “But you're bright, you'll pick it up very quickly if you apply yourself.” Unbeknownst to her, her hair was growing to ever larger proportions. The swifts around them began chirping louder.
“I will, I will,” he promised her.
Before she could being a rant again, he asked, “How did you modify the Avis oppungo?”
Hermione brightened up. “Well, I thought of all the usual ways people use to counter them and then made them resistant to all of them.”
She held up a finger, “The most common is vanishing. So I add an anti-vanishing movement.”
She demonstrated a swirl with her wand, “Then I tried to make them impervious to the elements, fire, earth, wind and water. Because those are common sinks for magic you want to get rid of.”
She paused until he nodded, then continued, “I had to find a balance for those four together and managed to make the Herpo's condensed elemental swirl work, Bagshot's elemental quadret would also have worked, but—”
“It was a little long for the incantation you're using and would have destabilized the spell,” he finished.
“Exactly!” Hermione cheered. “And then I thought of the common severing charms and blasting charms, and since those are based on physical force, I added a strong Impervious,” she stroked one of the swifts that flitted on to her knee preening its feathers as it basked under Hermione's attention. “So. They can withstand a lot of force. Probably enough to not dissolve if the Hogwarts express going at the speed of the fastest brooms hit them.”
“So how do you call them off then?” his asked, his eyes on the swift she was petting.
She shrugged, “A friend helped me with that. She says it is about intent overpowering magical force. I don't completely understand how it works,” she muttered agitatedly.
Then taking a deep breath, she continued more calmly, “I just will them to stop attacking and they stop, and then I will them to go home and spend time being happy little birds and they vanish.”
She looked up at him as she said this. All the swifts vanished suddenly, leaving them in a silence as the twittering and movement stopped.
“That reminds me of how we make potions- to imbue our magic into a material so it remains even after we actively stop supplying it your magic.”
“Yeah, but I don't imbue them, I just call them,” Hermione said.
“I think you do it unconsciously, they seem attached to you.”
He suddenly sat up straighter. “Call them again,” he asked.
“Just do it,” he continued when she opened her mouth to speak, “I thought of something.”
She frowned at him, but cast Avis oppugno specialis again. A scream of swifts burst from her wand and settled around her again, tittering softly since there was no enemy for them to rage at. One of them hopped onto her knee again and Hermione began to stroke its head absently as she looked questioningly at him.
He slid closer, and held out a hand for the swift she was stroking. The swift gazed at him with alert eyes, while Hermione thought and then suddenly stepped onto his palm.
He raised his wand and cast a Coloris on the swift and its feathers turned black. The swift squawked indignantly. Hermione drew closer, giving him a warning glare. He nodded reassuringly.
She ran her finger over the swift, calming it. “Shh, it's alright,” she cooed down at it.
He violently pulled out one of the swift's feathers.
The swift gave a shrill cry and flapped noisily into the air, just as Hermione cried, “Hey!” rose to her feet and pointed her wand at him.
He stood up slowly, holding his hands up in surrender. The swifts took to the air, agitated, and trilled at him. Hermione's hair began to grow and spark as her temper rose.
He began to speak, holding up the feather he had plucked from the black swift, “I think you've already imbued them unconsciously. Separating a feather from the bird should help me prove it after you banish them.”
Hermione glared at him a moment longer, then waved her wand threateningly, before lowering it, “Next time ask,” she warned him.
He nodded reassuringly again. Hermione held a finger out for the black swift, which perched immediately onto it, chattering agitatedly.
“I know, I know, he didn't mean to hurt you. He's gonna ask next time,” she shot him a warning look, and then addressed the bird softly again, “or I'll let you poke his eyes out, okay?”
She rubbed her finger down the swift's back again to calm it. She settled the swift onto her shoulder and crossed her arms.
“So, what are you going to prove?” she asked impatiently.
“You need to banish them,” he repeated.
She turned to the black swift with her wand raised, but he stopped her, “Don't change her color, it'll readjust after she leaves here.”
“How do you know?” she asked dubiously.
He shrugged, “I don't. I'm guessing.”
“Well, I can't let a swift go back with black feathers, what if her friends don't like her?”
He tilted his head, “That's why I took a feather. After you vanish them, we'll call her back using the feather. If the color has not changed, you can do it yourself.”
Hermione willed the swifts to go. And then case Avis again.
All the swifts were yellow. “She did not come this time,” Hermione complained, just as a swift alighted onto her shoulder.
Hermione glanced at the little yellow feathered body out the corner of her eye.
He cast Accio bird of black feather and the swift from her shoulder was summoned to his hand as he held onto a black feather.
Hermione stared. He glanced at the bird in his hand, “I’m sorry I hurt you. Can I keep the feather?” he asked the bird gently.
The bird trilled on his hand and then took off to return to Hermione again. She stroked her again and let all the swifts vanish.
“I thought I always got different birds when I summoned them,” she spoke slowly.
“Normally, that'd be true. But like I said, when you modified the spell you imbued them so they would not be harmed while doing your bidding. The magical bond was created and has lasted so far. So when you call, the same set of birds answers your call. That's why they're attached to you.”
There was a long silence as Hermione thought. He continued playing with the black feather.
Finally Hermione said, “You have to tell me how you modified the leg-locker jinx.”
“I read into the normal jinx. It turns your knees inside out. That's why you collapse. It's easy to reverse, because all you have to do is put the bones back in place. But I make the bone stay in its place but the nerves reverse. It's harder to do, but so far no one has been able to figure it out.”
He paused before saying, “Well, except the Madam at Hogwarts, but she had a lot of time to study it.”
“Ooh that's so brilliant!” Hermione gushed, “But doesn't it have the potential to go wrong if you mess up?”
He stared at her for a long moment, then said with absolute certainty, “I don't mess up where magic is involved.”
Another long silence fell over the two of them. He turned his head to look up at the stars while Hermione continued looking up at him.
Finally she asked, “So how did you end up here?”
“How did you end up here?” he asked in turn.
“Cagey, aren't you?” Hermione rolled her eyes. “I was reading Magnus Malificient's Magicks of the Model and wasn't careful enough.”
“Why are you reading about soul magic? It isn't very common.”
“Well, there's this boy in Arithmancy who mocked me and I cannot abide not knowing things.”
He didn’t say anything. She raised an eyebrow meaningfully.
Finally he relented, “I was also reading the same book and tried out the spell. I was curious to see what it'd do.”
“Do you do that often, try untested spells from obscure books?”
“So far I haven't come up against anything I could not face.”
There was another long silence.
Finally Hermione exclaimed, “Phew! I'm exhausted.” She stretched out on the grass and stared at the sky. He sat down beside her, rested his palms back and also looked up at the stars.
They were silent for a while.
Then, he murmured, “The stars are so unfamiliar, I don't recognize any of them.”
“I noticed,” Hermione murmured, “Do you think we're on a different planet?”
“It's possible. Or maybe it is all in our heads?”
“Yes, I suppose it is strange that the person I'd meet is like a male version of myself. With a more prominent mean streak and better hair. Maybe you're just a figment of my imagination.”
He laughed. Hermione turned her head to smile up at him.
“I'm pretty sure I've never thought about Avis so avidly. So I don't know why my imagination would bring that spell front and center.”
“And geometry,” Hermione reminded.
“Ah, yes geometry.”
“Which you need to learn.”
“Which I need to learn,” he agreed.
“You know-” Hermione started-