Confundus, the MC of Charms

I soon fell asleep as I thought about the trial and morning rolled around. It was currently the 28th of December and the new year was approaching. Hermione and I went for our daily run, and I decided to play around. I would lag behind sometimes and then ankle tap her which caused her foot to go in front of the other forcibly tripping her over.

She would get angry and start hurling spells at me but none of them hit me. After a good cardio session, we went to take a shower and met in the common room. Hermione's hair smelled fruity which was pleasant. I closed the book I was reading and together we walked to the great hall where we had our breakfast.

"I'll be right back I'll go order the ingredients for the potion," I said as I patted Hermione's shoulder as I got up. I walked straight towards the Weasley twins who were snickering about God knows what.

"Gentlemen, good morning," I greeted warmly.

"Ahh, Tom how may we be of service?" both twins said at the same time.

"Simple, I need you to get me these set of ingredients," I said calmly as I handed them a list. The left took the list and gave it a quick read before putting it away. The right then spoke up as if he was the one who read the list, it was truly magical.

"One galleon for the total, 7 sickles extra if you want it delivered by the next day," he said as he held up seven fingers. I nodded and handed them the money upfront before walking away.

"I will look for you tomorrow," I said without turning around. I headed back to the table where Hermione was happily eating her toast. "Did you manage to order everything?" she asked after swallowing the toast in her mouth.

"I did, it will arrive tomorrow, we need to go over the details of the recipe, there might be some things we missed or need to incorporate or prepare apart from the potion itself," I said while nodding.

"That won't be a problem, we have tons of time between today and tomorrow to find anything we might have missed or failed to pay attention to," she assured as she finished her food.

"You have a crumb there," I said pointing at where the crumb would be on my lip. She licked the other side which made me laugh, her face was funny and childish.

"The other side," I said as I laughed. She had an annoyed look as she licked the other side which finally got it. I nodded signalling that she got it and got up to leave.

She quickly got up again as the empty plates disappeared, "so, are we going to the library right now?" she asked enthusiastically. "Yes, that's the plan," I nodded.

We headed towards the library where we got the relevant books and read over them thoroughly to make sure that everything was in order. I did find something that would be a big issue if left unattended and I brought it up after training in our classroom.

Hermione was sweating profusely as she leaned against the wall before sliding down. I sat next to her before turning slightly to face her.

"I have found a problem with the potion that might be tricky to deal with," I said to her in between heavy breaths.

"Is that so? What's that issue?" she asked curiously.

"Well, the book I read mentioned that the potion has a better effect the more damaged the muscles are. It is a potion the enhances the effect of physical exercise and promotes increase regenerative properties after doing intense exercise," I explained.

"I got that too but what is the problem?" she asked not getting it.

"The problem is, we can only push ourselves so far before our bodies can't go on," I said.

"Yes, so that's when we take the potion right?" she asked getting more confused as to what the problem was. Seeing that face I could only shake my head.

"That's the problem Hermione, that's the brain's perceived limit to ensure that no excessive or irreparable damage occurs to the body, a sort of self-preservation program. That means that it is not the muscles limit, and since the potion has a greater effect the more damaged the musculoskeletal system is, then we aren't using the potion to its full potential if we do traditional exercise," I concluded.

Hermione's was surprised as she finally got the main point and issue in all of this. She had a pensive look as she did her signature hand on chin motion.

"If what you said is true then there must be a way to trick our body into pushing ourselves beyond what it would usually deem as excessive," she said as she thought out loud.

"I got it!" she said suddenly. I was intrigued as to what she had come up with.

"We can use the confudus spell, right? I read in a study that they used confundus to trick the brain into thinking something is real when it's not and it had massive success," she paused and repositioned herself to face me.

"They had a person hold ice and then used the confundus spell to trick their brain into thinking that it was a hot coal, what do you think happened to the person?" Hermione asked with a bright smile. I thought about it before understanding the point.

"The person was probably hurt, maybe swelling, blisters, something caused by intense heat on the skin, right?" I answered after a bit of thought.

Hermione smiled even brighter, "correct that is the point, if the study is actually accurate, wouldn't something like this work for our specific situation?" she asked rhetorically with confidence. I thought about it and nodded after little thought, if what the study depicted turned out to be true then it was highly feasible.

"Let's try it out," I said as I pulled out my wand. I turned a spare chair into an empty cup.

"Aguamenti," I said as I aimed my wand at the cup which was soon filled with water.

"Glacius" I voiced which caused the water to freeze, it was usually a spell for larger targets but if you have enough control it could freeze smaller things like water too. I turned the cup upside down and smacked the bottom hard which caused the ice to slip out.