Emilia

When Emilia walked up to the room of requirement for the second lesson she was almost as excited as for the first one. The room looked the same it had last time, but since she was pretty early not many students were there already. Sally sat on one of the couches in the corner and waved at her.

“I wonder what we will learn today, did Sam say something last time?”, she said as Emilia approached her.

“No because he wanted to think about how to structure the course and wasn't sure yet.”

“I'm sure YOU already know how it works whatever he came up with.”, Sally said and brushed back her ponytail. For a short time Emilia's eyes wandered down her neck.

“Maybe. I guess you will find out”, Emilia grinned. “What? Do you want me to hold back?”, she added when she saw Sally's stern look.

“No!”, Sally declared. “I do not want you to hold back… despite our last duel.”

Emilia's cheeks probably blushed just by the thought. The image of her tied up friend was immediately back in her head – this time together with the image of Sally in the bathroom.

“I guess I have to help you step up your defence”, she answered, trying to not show any of her emotions.

Sally moved daringly close to Emilia and put her left hand on her knee. She felt her fingers move a little. Emilia's leg started twitching, just like the corners of her mouth and the soft touch sent shivers down her spine.

“Are you sure you want that?”, Sally whispered with a grin.

“Alright, please come to the centre everyone to discuss the lesson.”, Sam shouted, and Emilia sighed, relieved to get away from Sally's teasing. Sally might have the upper hand in controlling Emilia's emotions (Emilia wondered if Sally knew), but duels was Emilia's strength.

“Many of our lessons were focused on attacks and defence, but that is only a small part of strength as a wizard. I think its wise to increase our focus on other areas. I also think about changing this room in the future, to see how we can integrate different environments in our duels. We have to think about spells that can help us avoid a duel as well – such as invisibility, or perception and illusion charms. And maybewe have to think about our defence against certain creatures that could be dangerous for us one day, there's lots of things we still have to do.”

“Should we learn the forbidden curses?”, Jadie asked.

The room was very silent all of a sudden. Sam didn't look surprised – he seemed to have thought about it too.

“I have to admit, I don't know. Imperio would be possible as long as everyone finds someone they really trust, but I don't see how Crucio and Avada Kedavra would be.”

“I heard Moody used a spider last year”, Robert said.

“We wont hurt any animals Robert??”, Angie, the girl Sally probably used to duel with, hissed.

“Oh come on Angie, as if you wouldn't step on them when they are in your bedroom. Just scream Avada Kedavra this time, not ‘SPIDER, SPIDER, pleeeease Robert, help me’”, he grinned.

Angie turned red as the group laughed.

“How would we bring them in?”, Steward asked. “The room can’t summon food or water, if it could provide spiders they would probably be here already.”

“We fill some jars with as many as we can find in the dungeon, release them all at once and bet if Angie is the first one who can kill or not”, said a guy who had been silent the entire time with a small grin. He was incredibly thin but also small, and Emilia hadn't really recognized his presence so far.

“If you do that, Thomas, I will make YOU my first victim!”

Angies head was deep red by now. Emilia suspected she wasn't a fan of spiders, and that she blushed easily – keeping in mind how many times she could have blushed for Sally already she could only thank any theistic identity imaginable that it wasn't so easy to make her blush.

“We will NOT fill the room with spiders, that's ridiculous. And we also wont torture any other animals with Crucio. We will train everything either on ourselves or on dummies!”, Sam intervened. He had to intervene quite a lot Emilia thought.

“Oh I think Robert wants to volunteer for Crucio – isn't that right?”, Jodie teased.

“I beg you to try it Jodie! I bet you can’t even make me squirm a tiny bit!”, he hissed back.

Based on Jodie’s grin she was actually down to give it a shot.

“ENOUGH!”, Sam said.

“I will think about Imperio, but everything else we will not touch unless someone has a brilliant idea how to. I also don't want to encourage learning spells that are meant to kill and torture for the sake of it. We defend!”

“Its more about enduring it which we should considertraining, rather than casting it”, Emilia said.

Everyone turned around. It was the first time she spoke in the group. The sudden silence in the room felt uncomfortable as everyone evaluated her input, and judging by some faces, Emilia thought that they had come to the same conclusion.

“Emilia is right”, Sam said finally. “We aren't the Dark Lord or a Death Eater – we train to fight these people, and we train to resist their power. If we are caught we aren't the ones who cast it, we are the ones who suffer it.”

Another silence followed Sam's words.

“That doesn't mean knowing HOW to isn't of any use.”, Emilia added.

As the room stayed silent she decided to continue speaking, although it felt really uncomfortable. It was like speaking up in class – her heart seemed to burst.

“Its easy to render someone defenceless through searing pain or agony, if you are hit and you don't know what it is, it makes it even harder to fight it.”

She waited a few seconds to see if someone would chime in, but nobody did. “All of you signed up for learning how to fight on a very VERY high level. This is what you need to anticipate if those lessons come to use one day.”

“Its easier to defend something if you know exactly how to cast it, too.”, she added. “If you know in which situations it might be a powerful move, you can avoid making that mistake. And if the Cruciatus hits you out of the blue from an enemy first time you are even more doomed than you are if it generally hits you.”

The air suddenly felt thick and sticky. Everyone knew, in case of a loss against death eaters, this was their fate. It had been an unspoken secret.

“Do you...”, Angie started “Can you cast one of the curses?”

“I trained Imperio on insects, just like Robert proposed, but I never wanted to use Crucio or Avada Kedavra. I casted Crucio on a Dummy once and it felt like something happened, but if it would have hurt I obviously don't know.”

“This discussion doesn't lead anywhere.”, Sam finally said. “We will think about it, but we wont focus on it. Can we discuss todays lesson?”

“We will focus on petrification.”, he started explaining after no one complained.

“Rendering your opponent immobile can give you valuable seconds to escape. There's many of them – a full body immobility, petrification in one certain position, restricting movement in only a few body parts… depending on how you cast it it can have different effects. Of course we also will practice how to avoid it or get out of it once we are stuck – given we still have our wand, so no disarming spells today during practices.”

“This will be the first part. After the duels we will spend another half an hour on a patronus – it is a very very hard spell and I think we should start practising it rather sooner than later. Does someone disagree or have a different wish?”

As the group stayed silent Sam started explaining various types of spells in more detail and explained how to modify them, until he sent everyone into their groups.

Sally and Emilia headed to the side of the room where they had practised the last time.
“Must be your dream lesson, right, since you were so fond of the last one?”, Sally grinned at her and Emilia blushed. Both of them stood at the very end of the room now.

Emilia decided to respond to her teasing for once.

“Do you remember our first chess game? What was it? ‘I wouldn't have let you win, I just waited for the last second to destroy you’, right?”, Emilia grinned, her face centimetres away from Sally's.

It was Sally's time to blush now and she moved back a little.

“You are playing with fire a little too much!”, she added with a very low and silent voice, and headed back to her spot.

Sally looked visibly worried. Emilia laughed, trying to calm her down again, and reminded herself to not be too harsh.

“Don’t worry, I wont hurt you.”, she smiled and raised her wand. “Ready? You start”