The weather at Hogwarts has become milder, the snow blending into the earth and the tender sprouts poking out, and the young wizards have been extra fond of lying on the grass in front of the Black Lake, lazing in the sun lately.
On Saturday, Ron, Hermione, as well as Ginny and Luna, sat by the lake, watching Harry and Neville dueling back and forth.
Two more dueling class has passed, and they have learned two new spells. A defensive spell - Shield Charm; and to accommodate the young wizards, Snape's own invention of a minor mischief spell - Langlock jinx.
In addition, his work attracted some controversy, but these remarks were ignored by Snape.
"Even dark wizards will usually chant spells in the middle of the duel, relying on words to drive emotions and relying on emotions to strengthen the power of the spell." Snape said in a mocking tone, "Therefore, it is necessary to close the opponent's mouth."
In fact, Felix had privately suggested that Snape should teach Silencing Charm instead, but he refused.
"The Langlock jinx sticks a person's tongue to their upper jaw, it's not as gentle as the Silencing Charm, and that's exactly what I want." Snape said it was developed independently while he was in school, and he was very happy with the spell from the real-world results.
The Shield Charm, on the other hand, as explained by Professor Hap, is much more advanced, and many younger wizards are simply unable to master it.
Even Harry and Hermione have not succeeded once.
But it is a spell that can resist many kinds of magic spells, and more difficult is -
At the time, Professor Hap had said this: "The Shield Charm can defend against both magical spells and physical solid attacks, and it's perhaps the most practical defense spell you will ever be exposed to while you are in school."
Damocles Belby, the new professor of Defense Against Dark Arts, also explained a very useful spell in class - the Supersensory Charm, which has the effect of sharpening the senses of the students, as Flitwick had mentioned in his dueling lecture.
"You can use it to sense the impending danger in advance, especially if you are in a dangerous situation."
He used his magic to create a black fog, "Let's assume it's late-night - a favourite time for Red Caps and other magical creatures to launch attacks. If you are in the wild, what would you do, do you remember?"
The young wizards bickered and discussed.
Belby nodded and said.
"Suppression ... total protection ... sense of thieves ... better add a muggle shielding ward, of course, you can not do this now, but it does not prevent you from keeping this knowledge in mind."
He then had the young wizards walk into the black fog one by one to try to avoid the red caps.
"I've laid some leaves and branches on the ground, so stay focused, and you'll spot the danger ahead of time."
However, the truth is: only a few of them could spot the red cap in advance and make a counterattack, most of the little wizards were knocked and driven out of the black fog by small wooden sticks.
But the good thing was that, apart from some embarrassment, none of the young wizards were hurt.
Harry had been curious as to why the two red caps were so cooperative, and later Professor Belby explained that he had fed them many nutritional potions, "They like the taste of blood, especially the blood of magical creatures, and I happen to have no shortage of these ..." Now, The two red caps can be barely considered his assistants.
Unknowingly, the dueling class and the new Defense Against the Dark Arts class have been integrated into the lives of the young wizards, and are subtly changing their whole school life for the better. The most obvious reflection of this is that many young wizards like to play dueling games in the hallway after class.
But these students did not end up well, and Filch arrested many students.
One day, the Gryffindor House Cup gems fell with a clatter, and the look on Professor McGonagall's face nearly scared the young lions to death.
Not only Gryffindor, Even other three houses also caught a lot of young wizards of their own.
In this period of time, the number of students who were punished by mandatory work was extremely abundant. Snape directly asked a group to deal with potion materials, Professor Sprout asked a group to take care of flowers and plants, and Hagrid also applied to Professor McGonagall to find a few young witches of lower grades to take care of the unicorns that's about to give birth.
Professor McGonagall didn't spare the rest of the students, and she asked them to work together to test an improved version of the 'answer space'.
Having learned their lesson the hard way, the young wizards at Hogwarts finally realized that it's extremely foolish to cast spells in the corridors and chose abandoned classrooms, the black lake, yards, and hidden corners ...
Just like now, Harry guided Neville on the Disarming Charm.
Neville suffocated and struggled to cast a spell, and finally, after an unknown number of attempts, a very slim red light flew out of his wand.
"Great, you did it, Neville!" Harry said loudly.
Sitting on the grass, Hermione and others also clapped their hands, and a few Gryffindors in the distance whistled.
Neville blushed and tried to say something, but ended up simply scratching his head and grinning happily.
The two returned to the vacant field and the group began to make small talk.
Ron talked about the news he had received from the twins, "The new version of 'Answer Space' is nearly complete, with many of the features mentioned at the time."
Four of the six people present had worked on the first beta one except for Harry and Neville, all of them very interested in the topic because, supposedly, the new teaching aids would be available to all seven grades.
"What are the new features?" Harry asked with interest.
"The most important one is definitely the leaderboard." Ron said without thinking, "I'd like to see Gryffindor crush Slytherin on top, hopefully, number one, but it's not very realistic, the Ravenclaw nerds will definitely dominate ..."
"Ron!" Ginny glared at him and turned her head to look at Luna, who is a Ravenclaw.
"Uh ..." Ron whispered, "I'm sorry."
Luna expressionlessly pulled a very delicate looking wand out of her pocket and she pointed the tip towards Ron -
"Oh, Luna." Harry persuaded he thought Luna is going to give Ron a nasty spell.
But the next second, the wand in her hand let out an ear-splitting scream and turned into a giant rubber mouse.
Ron's expression became comical, one eyebrow knitted tightly and the other seeming to fly out of his head.
Luna pointed at his face and exaggeratedly laughed, Ginny also "snicker" and giggled softly, the two little girls hugged and fell on the grass.
Neville held back his laughter, but couldn't hold it in, and he let out a "puff, puff, puff" sound.
"Well, that was fun," Ron muttered as he watched Luna slam her fist on the ground.
Hermione held the rubber mouse's tail and watched in amazement as it transformed back into a wand. "What is this?"
Ginny got up from the ground and wiped the tears of laughter from the corners of her eyes: "It's a prank item Fred and George came up with, they call it fake wand. I think they developed it not long before, though ... How did you get this?" She looked at her friend.
"I ... haha! Bought it from them, ha ... ten Sickles." Luna said under her breath.
"How does this stuff work?" Harry asked with interest.
"Feed magic into ... it."
Harry took the fake wand and tried to inject magic into it, and with a shriek, it turned into a rubber mouse once again.
Ron poked it with his hand and said with some disgust, "It's worse than Scabbers."
Harry is watching the large black squid looming in the black lake, the breeze brushing his hair, his mood greatly relaxed.
The secret room confrontation with the Basilisk seems to have passed a long time ago.
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