//------------------------------//
// Chapter 67 
// Story: The Gate 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

“Flashy.”
Harry lets out a snort of laughter.  Silver had just summed up the massive golden stage at the head of the Great Hall in a single word.  “I don’t think he’s capable of not showing off,” he chuckles.
“I wonder who he’ll have help him on stage,” Hermione mutters.  “I mean, I’m sure it’d look fantastic if he tried dueling with himself, but it wouldn’t work very well, now would it?”
Harry lets out another snort of laughter.  “Or I suppose it could be me, and I’ll just stand there doing nothing while all his spells just bounce off.”
“Oh please, that’s boring,” Ginny inserts.  “What if he called Silver up to help him, and she found a way to turn him upside-down every time he smiles for the next week?”
Silver snorts.
“Or maybe,” Hermione begins seriously, “He’s enlisted the help of Professor Snape, who looks like he’s plotting how best to humiliate him.”  She tilts her head.  “Or pulverize him, I’m not sure.”
The others look forward- and, true to Hermione’s word, Professor Lockhart is leading a malicious-looking Professor Snape up onto the stage.
“Oooh, if Snape was looking at me like that, I’d be running the other way as fast as I could,” Harry mutters.  “Who cares if I’m invulnerable.”
“Yeah,” Silver mutters.  “I guess Lockhart spent his entire survival instinct on the backlash from his fobbed spell?”
“Hey, he’s talking nonsense,” Ginny indicates, shushing both of them.
“...  in case you need to defend yourself as I myself have done on countless occasions; for full details…”
“Yeah, he’s so full of it,” Hermione mutters.  “We’ve been teaching good defensive spells all year, right Harry?”
He nods.  “Yeah.  What’s your bet?  Snape hits him with Lumos, and he backsteps off the stage in fright?”
Hermione snorts.  “Nah.  He’s much more likely to use Talentelegra on him, make him dance off the edge.”
“Maybe Wingardium Leviosa, even,” Ginny suggests.  “Make him float away.  Upside-down.”
Silver scowls.  “I think he’ll go for a repeat performance of what Lyra did.  Expelliarmus, at high power level.  Throw him wandless against the wall, as a demonstration of how quickly a duel can go wrong.”
“Really?” Ginny asks.
Silver nods.  “Yeah.  You’re forgetting I have Potions with him every week.”  She grins sideways at Harry and Hermione.  “And these two then have Potions with me two days later.”
Hermione gives her a little shove.  “Careful saying that, I might hex you.  This is a dueling club.”
Silver raises an eyebrow.  “Uh, you know those spells just bounce off, right?”
Hermione grins.  “Not if I back it with my own strength it won’t!”
“Ahh…”
“Cut it out,” Harry instructs them.  “They’re getting ready to duel it out, and Lockhart is looking overconfident.”
“Accepted combative position?” Ginny scowls, peering between the other two girls.  “That looks more like a ‘miss-your-opponent’ position to me.”  She glances sideways at Silver.  “Isn’t it easier to hit someone if you start with your wand pointed at them, rather than over their head?”
Silver blinks.  “Ah, yes, yes it is.  Oh, and here they go.  I think.”
“...  Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course,” Lockhart continues, up on the stage.
“Oh now that’s not true,” Hermione almost giggles.  “Professor Snape is almost certainly aiming to kill your reputation.”
Silence holds for a few seconds.
“Called it,” Silver chuckles, before cheering with most the rest of the room.  Snape had gone straight for Expelliarmus, and used it to throw Lockhart bodily against the wall.
“...  it was very obvious what you were about to do…”
Silver facepalms.  “I wonder if he would still have claimed that if he had his back turned?  Anticipatory magic sense is unique to Equestrians- he couldn’t possibly have sensed or identified the spell until Snape had at least started the incantation, by which point it was too late.”
“You think he’ll go for more than just a reputation this time?” Harry mutters.
Hermione glances at Snape.  “Ahh…  Yeah, I wouldn’t put it past him.  Looks like he wants to send him to the muggles of old for a public flogging.”
Ginny looks at her.  “What?”
Silver shakes her head.  “Nevermind that.  But yeah, he’s looking like he wants Lockhart back in the infirmary by tonight.”  She glances at Harry.  “Make sure he gets hit by a few funny spells, alright?”
Harry blinks.  “You’re asking me?  Hermione’s the hex-tress.”
Hermione raises one eyebrow at him, before scowling up at the platform.  “I’ll…  have to see what I can do.”
“Oh, he’s splitting us into pairs,” Ginny mutters.  “Aaand, Snape’s going to get to us first.”
Silver speaks up as soon as Snape arrives.  “Ahh, Professor Snape?  I know it’s pretty intimidating, but, ah, is there a magical reason for the wand-whirling thing?”
Snape raises one eyebrow at her, scowl twitching in what might have been a smile.  “Ah, yes.  It amplifies the available power.  You won’t need it, for practice.”
Silver tilts her head.  “So I could probably achieve the same result if I just funneled my innate magic through my wand, right?”
He blinks.  “I understand Miss Heartstrings is working on just that.  If you think you can do that, by all means- just don’t boost it too high.  We don’t want to accidentally kill anyone.”  He turns to look at Harry and Hermione.  “Time to break up the dream team, shall we?”
Minutes later, while Silver grins cheerfully at her partner, Vincent Crabbe, Hermione is paired with Milicent Bulstrode, and Harry has the honors with what he considers to be Draco’s stupider bodyguard, Gregory Goyle.  Snape hadn’t been able to find Draco himself, something that had made Silver snicker.  Ginny ended up facing Pansy Parkinson.
Finally, Lockhart continues.  “Face your partners, and…  Bow.”
Crabbe, Bulstrode, and Parkinson barely incline their heads.  Ginny bows lightly; Harry and Hermione make a more serious bow, but never take their eyes off their opponent.  Silver bows ruthlessly, driving Vincent to all manner of confusion by imitating Lockhart’s twirlings out of order.
The moment Lockhart turns them loose, the Great Hall explodes.  He’d told them all to ‘only disarm’, a spell all the Defense Against the Dark Arts student teachers had covered during the second week of the first year, but by the shouting echoing through the room, it’s evident that’s a minority of what’s actually happening.  Harry’s ears pick out the calls of most of his and Rarity’s students using shield charms as their first spell, even the ones paired with each other.  Safety first, he’d taught them well.
Being as how he’s indestructible, Harry doesn’t bother starting with self-protecting.  Instead, he points his wand at Goyle, yells some nonsense words, and spends the extra time while Goyle is getting himself together a meager attempt at a shield charm to decide exactly what to do.
Hermione, easily reading Bulstrode’s expression, decides it’s more worth her while to deflect the wand’s aim upwards than to actually block the spell.  So, leaving the deflection up to her unicorn magic, she deftly waits for Bulstrode to miss before pointing her wand and using the disarming charm, all the while idly wondering if a stunner would bounce off of her or not.
Silver, completely devoid of worry, waits for Crabbe to mess up the incantation before blocking it with a unicorn magic shield- probably would have bounced anyways, then gone on to hurt someone- and disarming him almost casually.  Then, she almost doubles over with laughter while Crabe looks left and right for his wand, but not above his head, where she’s holding it.
Parkinson moves quickly, shooting not Expelliarmus but Stupify at Ginny, but Ginny and Ariel move as one, and even faster.  While Ginny casts a suitable shield charm, selected by her talent, Ariel channels her own magic through her wand as well- and simultaneously fires the disarming charm at Parkinson.
While Goyle makes six successive failed attempts at a shield charm, Bulstrode stumbles backwards, before whirling around to look for her wand.  Crabe spins in circles, searching for his, and Parkinson flies halfway across the room, straight into Lockhart, where she bowls him over like a bowling ball.  Lockhart’s yelp of surprised pain makes Snape smile amusedly, before looking back at Ginny with a calculating expression.
Ginny lets out a low whistle.  “Ahh, I think that might have been a bit much power, Ariel.”
Ariel gives herself a mental shake.  “Uh…  yeah, I noticed.  I didn’t put that much into it, though!  Only a tiny…  fraction…  Oh.  Um, I think I figured out what I did wrong.  I thought of it in terms of absolute power levels, rather than power relative to the ambient fields.”  She chuckles nervously.  “I probably used around six times as much power as any wizard could possibly achieve with a wand alone, even with that twirling action.”
“I think I’d better teach you how to block unfriendly spells,” Lockhart announces.
Professor Snape looks at Lockhart with an unreadable expression.  Rita Skeeter, in the corner, lets out a snort of laughter.  Just under fifty percent had gone for defensive charms before attempting to disarm their opponent.  Mind, a good ninety percent of those had done so because their partner had been faster on the disarming charm than they- but as a result, some forty-eight percent of the entire room had successfully cast shield charms.  And that’s not even counting how funny Lockhart looks, limping around the room.
“Let’s…  have a volunteer pair,” Lockhart continues, after glancing at Snape.
“He must’ve regained some of his self-preservation instinct,” Silver muses.
“Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, how about you?”
“Strike that,” Silver sighs, shaking her head disappointedly.
“No!” both girls scream simultaneously.  Sweetie is unharmed, having successfully cast her shield charm- but Scootaloo’s hair is green and, next to them, Applebloom seems to have managed to hit herself with her spell- she has extra arms sprouting out the top of her head.
Lyra, Applebloom’s completely unharmed partner, pats the girl’s shoulder.  “Don’t worry, it’ll go away tonight.  Yeah, I checked, it’s not permanent.”
“Why not?” Lockhart asks.
Sweetie looks pointedly at the sizable lava puddle squarely between her and Scootaloo.
Snape comes to the rescue.  “A bad idea, Professor Lockhart.  The Crusaders cause mayhem with the simplest of spells- we’ll be sending what’s left of the Great Hall to the Hospital Wing in a matchbox.”
Lockhart looks at him.  “The hospital wing…?”
He nods.  “Because it will be sentient.”
“...  Oh.”
“How about Weasley and Potter?”  He gestures towards Ginny and Harry…  and grins as Lockhart starts looking around the room, apparently looking for the two.  As it happens, Harry is busy helping Goyle cast the shield charm successfully, correcting his technique and everything.
Right as Snape looks over, Goyle manages the shield charm, concentrating hard on his wand; the shield forms, though only barely.  He watches Harry nod and smile.  “Good, good.  Now, see this?”  He steps back, points his own wand.  “Expelliarmus!”  The red bolt of light vanishes harmlessly against the simple shield he’d helped the Slytherin build.
Snape runs through his mind once again, verifying for himself that Crabbe and Goyle are not representative of the rest of his house.  He has to do that every time he sees them, with how stupid they are.  For a moment, he glances past Potter and Weasley, at Silver- funny, that hair looks familiar- before making a show of attracting Lockhart’s attention to the two.  He can hear Rita snickering in the corner, even as Ginny taps Harry’s shoulder to get his attention, before the two make as if they’d already been a team.
“Oh, yeah, excellent idea,” Lockhart announces, limping over.  Ginny raises her eyebrow at him; his robes are lightly bloodstained.  “Alright then, Harry.  When she points her wand at you, you do this.”  He raises his wand, does a funny little wiggling action, and drops it.
Ginny facepalms, and Snape smirks.
“Woops!” Lockhart calls, picking it back up quickly.  “My wand is a little overexcited there.”
Snape bends down to whisper something in Ginny’s ear.
Ginny tilts her head, then looks questioningly at Harry, who shrugs, and looks up at Lockhart.  “Sir, could you show me that blocking thing again?”
Lockhart claps him on the shoulder.  “Just do what I did, Harry.”
“What, drop my wand?”
Several students around them laugh; Ginny joins in.  Snape’s eyebrows rise.
Lockhart does his countdown.
At one, Harry grins at Ginny.  Ginny grins in return.
“Go!”
Harry raises his wand…  and drops it, to gales of laughter.
Grinning like a loon, Ginny raises her wand.  “Serpensortia!”
A huge, black snake appears out of her wand, falling to the floor and rising, ready to strike.
Ginny blinks.  “Ohh…”  she mutters.
“Don’t move, Potter,” Snape begins.
“Good evening to you too,” Harry greets the snake.  “How’re you?”
The snake flinches back from him in surprise.  Snape blinks.
Ginny steps forwards.  “Why so angry?” she asks the snake, also in parseltongue.  “What’s your name?”  She starts scratching the snake’s head at what could only be a calculated position.
The snake leans into her attention, eyes closed, clearly enjoying itself.  Snape’s jaw drops.
Harry looks up at Ginny.  “You too?”
She shakes her head.  “Ariel.”
“Allow me,” Lockhart says suddenly, and brandishes his wand.  There’s a bang, and the snake flies ten feet up, before falling back to the ground, hissing furiously.
“Calmly,” Ginny informs it, patting its coils.  “See the man with the bloodied robes and shiny teeth?  Yeah, he’s the one that did that.”
Harry looks up at Lockhart.  “Careful, if you do that too much, he might just attack you instead.”
“Ahh…”  Lockhart begins.
Snape waves his wand, and the snake vanishes in a puff of black smoke.
“Well, that was surreal,” Lyra mutters, having come closer.  “Good thing you two actually remembered the wand-magic incantation for the Parseltongue translation spell, isn’t it?  I guess I’m just too used to using my Equestrian magic for that.”  She sends a quick glare at Lockhart.