Chapter 130

We sat on the sofa, watching text roll down the screen as the opening theme to my favorite space opera blared in our ears.

"Hey, um, Harry?" Lisa asked, her voice soft, almost unnoticeable over the din of music.

"Yes, Lisa?"

Lisa fidgeted in her seat. "I wanted to thank you... for coming over, I mean." Fidget. Her cheeks began burning red. "It really means a lot to me."

I turned to look at her. Upon being caught under my gaze, Lisa flushed and looked away. How odd. Normally she's determined and vibrant to the point of being pushy, yet now she's acting shy. Weird.

I felt a smile crawl on my face, unbidden.

"You're welcome," I said softly, then looked away and added, "thank you for inviting me over. This was... fun."

Lisa looked surprised for a moment, before a smile broke out on her face.

"You're welcome," she whispered, turning back to watch the movie.

XoX

As November hit the whether became incredibly cold. Frigid. Ice seemed to hang in the air and invade the lungs, causing not only mist to rise from each blown out breath, but a sharp, minty coldness to seep into ones chest with each intake of breath. Windows fogged over, not even the warming charms that kept most of the castle at a mild temperature could get rid of it. Harry wondered if perhaps they had been designed that way on purpose to give the school an authentic Scottish winter look, but disregarded the theory soon after. The ground had become covered in a thick sleet of frost. It wouldn't be long now before the snow started to fall.

The first Quidditch game was only a few days away, on a Saturday. After a little over a month of training, Harry would be playing in his first ever Quidditch match: Gryffindor vs. Slytherin. It was a much anticipated game, perhaps more so than any other due to the animosity between the two houses. It could also have something to due with him being the youngest Seeker in the past century and the Boy-Who-Lived, but that was practically a given.

There was only one problem, Harry's broom hadn't come in. He had sent the message to Andromeda the day after he had earned his place as the Gryffindor Seeker, and had received a reply that she would do as he asked. Yet a month had gone by with no word from Andromeda. He was beginning to get worried. Oliver was also getting antsy, which made everyone else on the team paranoid. It was almost like a vicious circle.

A frown crossed Harry's face as continued his training. Despite how Oliver had forced them to do extra training to prepare them for their first game, it did not mean he had slacked off in his own physical training regime. 200 push-ups with his feet planted against the wall so that he was working at a 45-degree angle, followed by 200 normal push-ups, then 200 more with his hands placed in a triangle directly in front of his face. After that he would do some core work outs, followed by stretches, then shadow sparring.

That was probably the one downfall to being at a boarding school for magic for nine months, Harry reflected ruefully. Much as he loved it here, none of the witches or wizards knew anything about hand-to-hand combat, thus he had no sparring partners to practice with. Shadow sparring only got you so far, and Harry had no doubt that when he got back home Master Wei was going to rip him apart the first chance he got.

By the time he finished, Harry had worked up a decent sweat despite no longer being able to do his daily run. Even though he knew the warming charm to keep him warm when outside, he knew no spell that cold get rid of the slippery sheet of ice that covered the ground. And he did not fancy falling on his rear end every time he tried to push himself to his limits during his runs.

Heading up to his common room, Harry took a nice, long shower, got himself dressed to start the day, then pulled out a book on dueling and began reading as he waited for his friends to wake up. He had actually advanced decently far in his spell work as far as offensive spells went. He didn't know many true, but those few spells he did know had become second nature to cast. He was currently working on silent casting, which for some reason was a lot harder for combat magic than it was for other spells.

Harry believed it had something to do with the spells effect and how you had to make non-verbal verbalized commands. Whenever Harry cast a spell for a charm or a transfiguration, he just had to picture the effect in his mind and his magic took care of the rest. Combat spells were executed much differently. Rather than picture the effect you had to make the verbal commands nonverbal and time your magic and wand motions with the command. This was because picturing the effect happening would just take too long, there was simply to much to detail; the spell as it was launched, hitting your enemy, and what effect it had on your opponent. Not even a computer capable of processing data at light speeds would be capable making that a viable means for combat.

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