Chapter 418 - Train Hard, Lily

Chapter 418: Chapter 418 - Train Hard, Lily

Lily finally got Knox settled. His tail slipped off her wrist and swung lazily.

The little thing had puffed up half a dozen times tonight. Now he lay in the crook of her arm with a last string of grumbling purr rattling low in his throat, flattening out under the steady stroke of her hand down his back.

She bent over him, murmuring, one strand of red hair falling across the black fur. Red on black.

Regulus stayed against the sill, watching her, Magic Perception riding along his line of sight.

Nothing much had changed in her magic. If anything, a slow, steady climb.

Every young witch and wizard had that. Age arrived, magic added itself, and there was no hurrying it and no stopping it either.

On the whole, no different from a few weeks back.

Tonight it was lively, though, churning hard. She’d beaten Potter and then told the story with her whole body, and the feeling underneath had pushed her magic up until it bubbled.

Nothing to do with skill. She was happy, that was all.

He let his gaze drop away.

Her magic manipulation had run a good three quarters of a year now, counting from the first proper lesson. Watching the whole stretch of it, the training had held up well. She could rip a full suit of armor off a wall from several paces and drop it on someone’s head. The progress showed.

With the foundation laid this far, it was about time to move on.

Leaning there, watching the girl still fussing over her cat, his mouth twitched.

She’d finished her bragging. Time for something serious.

Lily raised her head, her hand loosening, and the kitten shot out of her arms at once.

A few strides carried him to the old desk farthest from the window, where he sat down with front paws together, hind legs folded beneath him, tail curled around to meet his toes. Perfectly composed.

Well clear of Regulus. The deep blue eyes swept over unhurriedly and settled on him.

Nothing showed on the small face, but the posture said everything. I am here, you are there, we shall remain that way, and neither of us needs to close the distance.

Lily looked at the cat, then at Regulus, her eyes going back and forth between the large one and the small.

One propped against the windowsill, one perched on a desk, most of a classroom between them, neither willing to come nearer.

But that air they both had, that refusal to be the first to give ground, made her want to laugh more the longer she looked.

She’d noticed it the day Knox arrived. The little creature’s manner lined up with Regulus’s a bit too neatly.

The same disinterest in people. The same reserve. The same I don’t dislike you, but don’t hold your breath waiting for me to come over.

Now the two of them sat out an entire classroom apart, minding their own business, like a mirror and its reflection.

She pressed her lips together to keep the laugh in, eyes crinkling, sneaking a look at him, then an unsubtle glance at the cat, then back to him again.

Knox tapped the desktop once with the tip of his tail, flicked those blue eyes toward Regulus, pulled them back, and lifted a front paw to lick it.

That only made it worse.

Regulus met her gaze, followed it to the cat sitting bolt upright on the desk, and raised an eyebrow.

He could guess what amused her. The cat and the human at odds again, and the girl had found some entertainment in it.

He let it go and steered his thoughts back to business.

Some people trained for duels by grinding. Every day, into the ground. One spell cast hundreds, thousands of times over, until thought dropped out of it, until the wand movement made itself and the magic came on its own, feeding motion and casting alike into instinct.

That road worked for anyone. It cost hours, it cost patience, and with enough of both most people got where they were going.

Lily wasn’t on that road, and didn’t need to be.

Her magic itself was unremarkable, standard for a witch her age. Her grasp and use of spells rated as excellent.

But excellent sat a long way below the top, and for now she still belonged in the ordinary bracket.

Between young wizards this age, winning came down to who cast faster and who aimed truer. Most couldn’t outpace an opponent, so most got hit.

Two things decided it: technique and speed. Fundamentals.

Lily held no advantage there. Put brains on the scale, though, and she stood out.

She fought by calculation. By reading ahead, by footwork, by chaining spells together, by tactics.

That style couldn’t be fed into someone through ten thousand repetitions. It took the spark she already had. She didn’t need to grind herself down daily; too much of that would be wasted on her.

She’d already taken her first step onto the road of the truly accomplished. Calling a Patronus out of longing was that step.

A first step, no more. It hadn’t come down yet.

He gathered his thoughts.

"Your magic manipulation first." His tone stayed mild. "Pulling a whole suit of armor off a wall from that distance is impressive work."

Her face lit at once, mouth curving, the tips of her ears going red.

"It wasn’t that impressive," she said, modest in words alone, eyes glinting sideways at him. "The idea happened to come to me."

Then she couldn’t stand her own humility. That move had turned the entire fight around. Her chin crept up, and the modesty sprang a leak within seconds.

"It did work rather well, though," she added under her breath. "Potter never saw it coming in a hundred years."

Regulus watched her, amusement in his eyes. "Which is why the next step can be something harder."

She perked up and leaned in. "Learn what?"

"Constant Protego."

Lily blinked, and then her eyes went round.

"That..." Her hand gestured at him, then jabbed at her own chest. "The Protego that hangs on you all the time, without casting?"

He smiled and nodded.

Her mouth stayed open.

She knew it well enough. She’d seen it on him last term.

That was the time her Disarming Charm hit him head-on, solid, and burst apart on impact. A thin flash of silver ran across his skin, and then nothing, the spell scattered clean away as though it had never touched him.

She’d pestered him about it afterward and he’d said it was Protego, worn permanently, no need to cast it fresh each time.

She’d filed it away. And now he meant to teach it to her.

Beating Potter was her own doing. Regulus offering her this spell meant he’d judged her ready, that the last nine months of work had been seen and counted.

Something in her chest jumped and rose warm. That recognition alone left her happier than winning the duel had.

Her eyes shone brighter than when she’d been recounting the fight, but the rest of her settled. Shoulders squared, back straight, the giddiness folding down into concentration.

On the desk, Knox tilted his head at his owner and let out a soft rumble.

Far too far away to bother crossing. A noise would do.

Lily heard it. She freed one hand, kept it behind her where Regulus couldn’t see, and flashed the cat a small clenched fist of encouragement before snatching it back like a thief.

Regulus caught the whole thing and his mouth curved.

Someone about to take up high-level magic, exchanging secret signals with her cat first.

He put the expression away. His voice turned serious, though his posture stayed loose against the sill.

"Understand this before we start. The spell is difficult. Difficult enough that the overwhelming majority of grown wizards never manage it in a lifetime. I don’t expect you to learn it quickly. Three years, five years without results would be normal. It’s slow work." He held her eyes. "And if you get partway in, decide there’s no light at the end of it, and drop it, that’s normal too. Most wizards who attempt this do exactly that."

"Who said anything about dropping it?" Her neck stiffened, red hair swinging, green eyes glaring at him. "You haven’t taught me a thing yet and you’re already saying I can’t."

His brows lifted. "I said nothing of the kind."

"Hmph." Her whole face refused it. "So it’s hard. I’m not afraid of hard."

Watching the fire he’d struck in her, he didn’t quite manage to hide the laugh in his eyes.

Lily looked over, and her expression turned suspicious. He’d played her.

"It is hard," he said, clearing his throat, steering back. "But don’t fix on whether you’ll manage it. Practicing it is itself the next stage of magical manipulation. Even if a year or two goes by with nothing to show, your manipulation will sharpen the whole way through. Learning the spell is the result. The training is what you actually walk away with."

Her brow smoothed and she nodded.

"One more thing." He raised a finger. "Everything you’ve practiced so far, hauling objects, guiding spells, has been your magic interacting with the world outside you. This isn’t that. Constant Protego uses no incantation, no wand, and doesn’t touch anything external. You work directly on your own magic and shape it into what you want. It’s the rung above where your manipulation sits now."

The last of the play left her face.

She stood straight, wand in hand, chin lifted slightly, green eyes fixed on him. Bright. Serious.

"The principle isn’t complicated." He pushed off the sill and walked a couple of paces toward the center of the floor. "It sounds complicated because doing it is hard."

She followed, closer now, looking up. "How do I practice?"

"Start with what it is. You can cast Protego. Incantation, barrier goes up, a spell comes in and you block it, and then it’s gone and you cast it again before the next hit. Constant Protego doesn’t work that way. You compress the spell into a thin membrane, weave it out of magic, lay it flat and even against your body, and then feed it magic continuously so it sustains itself. No incantation before each hit. It’s simply there."

"Feed it continuously." Her brow knitted. "So it’s draining me the entire time?"

"The entire time," he confirmed. "And it drains your mind too. The membrane has to be thin, even, and stable, and all of that rests on concentration. Meanwhile the magic can’t break. One break and it collapses. That’s the first difficulty."

Her whole face scrunched, but she nodded.

"The second. Holding it while you stand still means nothing. In a real fight you run, you jump, you cast. Your body’s moving, your magic’s flying in all directions, and that membrane still has to sit tight without unraveling. Holding it at rest and holding it in motion are two different problems, and the second is far worse."

"It comes apart when I move?"

"Your attention goes to the casting, nothing’s left for the membrane, the magic breaks, and it’s gone. You’ve stabilized it when you can cast, move, and sustain all at once without any of the three costing you the others."

She listened hard, brows drawn, offering no interruption.

"So don’t expect it in one go." He held up a single finger. "Step by step. First step, this one finger. Gather magic at the fingertip and draw it out into a thread. Fine, even, steady. Smearing a blob of magic onto your finger is something anyone can do, and it’s useless. You have to spin a thread. That step alone will occupy you for a long while."

"And then?"

"Once one finger holds, go to two. Once two hold, five, and knit them into a small patch across your palm. When the palm holds, then we can talk about spreading it up the arm, over the body, and finally the whole of you, held constant." He laid the road out end to end, then reeled it back in. "But tonight is step one. One finger. Don’t think about the rest."

Lily nodded hard. "Right."

He extended the index finger of his right hand. The tip glowed faintly, and a thread of magic seeped out of the pad, silver-white shading toward blue, even and clean.

A slight turn of his wrist sent the thread looping half a circle around his fingertip, hanging steady, no drift, no tremor, the same thickness from one end to the other.

She stared.

"That’s the shape of it." He closed his hand, the thread dissolving, and looked at her. "Try."

Lily raised her index finger, fixed her eyes on the tip, and gathered herself.

Her foundation was solid and her magic obedient. It came to the fingertip with little effort, and a point of light collected on the pad.

Then the gathering kept gathering. It clumped into a small round bead sitting fat on her finger, without the faintest suggestion of a thread.

"It’s balling up," Regulus said, watching her magic. "You want to draw it all out in one breath. Too eager. The magic hasn’t had time to thin before it clenches together."

She scattered it and started over, slower this time, easing the magic outward. A thread did emerge, one fine strand, but it broke apart the instant it appeared, dispersing into a faint silver mist and vanishing.

"You drew it and lost it," he said. "Slower still. Finer."

"I know." She bit her lower lip and tried again.

The thread came out this time and hung at her fingertip. She held her breath, not daring to blink.

But it swelled and shrank along its length, one section fat, the next starved. Two shivers, and it was gone.

She tried steadying her output and went again.

The thread had barely formed when she let her attention slip to checking its evenness. The pressure in her hand eased, and the strand snapped in the middle and disappeared.

Her shoulders dropped as she let out a breath. This was nothing like what she’d trained before.

In Magical Manipulation, her magic was a hand reaching out. Dragging armor, holding a feather aloft, the force traveled outward and acted on something beyond her. Whether that something moved was visible at a glance, easy to correct.

Not here. Here she was working on her own magic itself.

Nothing sent out. Everything happening at her fingertip, pinching it thin and even.

There was no external object to push against, nothing giving anything back to her. She had only her own sense of whether that magic at her fingertip was thick or fine, holding or falling apart.

More direct, and far more unmoored. Much harder.

"Your output isn’t precise enough." His voice held no impatience. "This isn’t casting. Casting shoves magic outward, and the harder the better. This is the reverse. You have to hold it back, keep it level, move slow and steady, and only then does the thread come out fine. Right now you’re spinning with a caster’s force behind it, so of course it’s thick and of course it snaps."

She went still.

"And another thing," he continued. "You’re used to applying force the way you do through a wand. That habit runs deep. There’s no wand here. You touch it with your mind directly and steer it with will, and it takes a far lighter, far finer hand than reaching for something outside yourself. Press too hard and it breaks."

Lily shut her eyes, opened them, and began again. Holding back. Keeping it level. Lighter. Lighter still.

The thread spun out of her fingertip once more. Fine this time. Even. Hanging.

"Got it!" Her eyes flared, a smile starting, and the thread held for not quite two seconds before scattering.

She glared at her own finger, refused to accept it, and tried again. Nothing. Again. A ball.

"That’s enough," he said, cutting her off. "Spinning a thread on your first attempt and holding it two seconds is a good result."

"Two seconds," she muttered.

"Two seconds and zero are an entire step apart." His patience didn’t waver. "The rest is yours to grind out on your own, and it won’t be rushed. Practice daily, and this is the thing you practice. Two seconds today, three tomorrow, and in half a year perhaps ten minutes. That’s how the spell gets made."

She stared at her finger for a long moment, sighed, then pressed on with dogged precision. "How many times a day? Mornings or evenings?"

"Whenever you have a moment. It doesn’t need a slot. Practice it walking. Practice it sitting and daydreaming. Practice it while your mind wanders in class. Working it into ordinary hours beats forcing two hours in a chair."

Her eyes brightened. That she liked.

Then she lowered her voice, edged half a step closer, and asked with an air of conspiracy, "Can I practice it in the dormitory? Or does it have to be in secret?"

There was history behind the question. After the Patronus, Regulus had told her to keep it to herself.

He understood what she was asking, and smiled. "This one you can do in the open. The Patronus was different, there were other things tangled up in it. Nothing’s tangled here. If someone asks, tell them." He paused, watching her, the smile widening. "Or say you’re tinkering with Magical Manipulation. Nobody’s going to believe a third year is training Constant Protego. They’ll assume you’re messing about."

She relaxed, then choked on the second half and shot him a glare.

"Years and years, is it?" She swept her wand behind her back and tipped her chin up. "I’ll have it in one, and you can watch me do it."

He looked at that fire in her and said nothing, the laughter in his eyes running deeper.

One year. All right.