The Slytherins played rougher, almost at the edge of a foul, and that broke Ravenclaw's clever tactics. I imagine the Ravenclaws found it pretty insulting, such a clear demonstration of how audacity and force can trump tactics and intellect. Still, it's a school game. If you believe what our team says, in the higher league it's the other way around, and tactics and talent decide. The Slytherins won, but the score gap wasn't phenomenal, forty points. It looks like the Ravenclaws tried to use our tactic against the Slytherins, who, in general, play almost in the same style as the Gryffindors. The Ravenclaws wanted to win on goal differential. Only they don't have "pilots" at my level, and without total dominance from the Chasers, the goal-differential tactic is impossible.
After the match, the whole crowd of students from different years hurried to the Great Hall, we needed to discuss everything and eat properly, because winter is winter, and active cheering takes energy.
After lunch, the others and I went to the common room to do every bit of homework imaginable and just kill time, but as it turned out, time didn't get killed. Because of the match, club activities were canceled, and we ended up in our favorite abandoned classroom, practicing different charms and spells while working through pastries with tea, taken from the kitchens.
When it was almost time to go to dinner, we decided to wrap up our magical hangout and headed for the Great Hall. Passing one classroom, we couldn't help being drawn in by the voices of Professor Lupin and Potter coming from behind the slightly open door.
"...already not bad, Harry. Really not bad," Lupin was praising Potter.
"Yes, Professor. But that's only a boggart. I'm not sure that if Dementors showed up on the pitch, I could handle them."
"You will, Harry. I believe in you. And it seems we have guests. Come in..."
We exchanged looks and filed in as a group into a rather richly furnished office. There were all kinds of artifacts, spherical models of different planets with their moons, and on a slightly raised platform that was clearly meant for practical magic stood candles shaped like human spines. A pretty specific place.
"Professor," I was the first to step in, so I had to greet him for everyone. "We didn't mean to interrupt, we were just walking by."
"Mr. Granger... Finch-Fletchley, Abbott, Bones, Macmillan, Smith. Are you walking Hogwarts in full formation? Commendable," Lupin smiled warmly, adjusting his old brown sweater that sagged a bit.
I had noticed more than once that Professor Lupin always looked like he was saying, back then it was better. But I couldn't deny his Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons were informative and varied, with practice and demonstrations of aggressive magical fauna. Small and nasty examples, but potentially dangerous. Take will-o'-the-wisps, small ghostly creatures on one leg that hop between bog hummocks, luring travelers with the light of a lantern they carry that seems solid. They have a mild hypnotic effect, so they are dangerous, but only in bogs. Lupin loved showing all sorts of little nasty creatures like that, and at the same time explaining how to deal with them with minimal harm, or even without harming them at all.
"What are you doing?" curious Hannah asked at once, beating the embarrassed Susan to it.
"Oh, we, kids, Mr. Potter and I, are studying the Patronus Charm."
"Oh, really?" Susan cried happily. "We studied it too, and we even started to get it working, so..."
Potter looked surprised, flicking a glance at a huge locked trunk.
"Really?" Lupin looked over all of us with a light smile. "And how are you doing?"
Justin answered, stepping forward.
"Misty and shield forms. Close to corporeal, but I think we just need to push a bit more," Justin glanced at me with a question, and I only shrugged. "And Hector can cast the non-corporeal wave form, but he doesn't want to do the corporeal. I can do corporeal, but... it falls apart fast..."
"Mr. Granger?" Lupin's face held an obvious question, and Potter looked completely crushed, sitting down on the step in front of the platform where he and the professor had been standing.
"I don't really want to find out what shape my corporeal Patronus takes," I shrugged. "What if it's a cockroach?"
That made people snicker.
"If it's a cockroach, it would hit my sense of greatness pretty hard. I'm planning to become an excellent Healer and a strong wizard, if not a great one. It'll be hard to call myself 'great' if my Patronus is a cockroach. This way, the non-corporeal Patronus is powerful and drives Dementors off just fine, so that's that."
"Yes, indeed," Lupin tilted his head and leaned on the table behind him, "that would be a problem. But I have to praise you, a non-corporeal Patronus is not given to many. Now then, students..."
Lupin straightened away from the table.
"Dinner time is close. It would be a shame if we were late, or worse, missed it."
We hurried to the Great Hall, which was already full. Potter, first thing, went to the staff table, and judging by everything, asked McGonagall about the broom again. After getting a negative answer, he trudged to his house table.
After dinner I planned, as always, to either take a walk, or self-study, or sit in the common room with the others, but I accidentally overheard a conversation between some careless second-years from Slytherin, just around the corner from the Great Hall doors. They were talking about a dueling club for the "chosen," and the club was run by both Snape and Flitwick. The latter, by the way, if you believe what people say in the common room, had tried more than once to create a schoolwide dueling club, but every time something went wrong, and so badly that the whole plan collapsed like a house of cards. So he had apparently settled for a small "underground" club. Why do I put "underground" in quotes even in my own thoughts? I strongly doubt any organized activity inside the school is outside the Headmaster's awareness, which means all that "underground" is inflated.
Catching the main point, namely, "you need to talk to Flint," I naturally decided to find Flint. That turned out to be easy, all I had to do was return to the Great Hall. The bulky seventh-year, and a Beater for his house team, was known by everyone. He stood near the Slytherin table, talking to two boys and a girl. I headed straight for them.
"Mr. Flint, if I'm not mistaken."
"That's right," the big guy looked at me, adding a touch of mockery and arrogance. So did his friends. "Hector Granger?"
"That's right. I'll get straight to the point. I want in the dueling club. Requirements and conditions?"
"Straight into it, yeah?" he smirked. "I respect directness."
"Marcus..." one of his friends started to say something.
"Tsk," Flint hissed at him, and he shut up. "All right, then I'll answer directly. Just anyone doesn't get into our club. But..."
He even took a dramatic pause.
"I can recommend you after a check, first. And second..." Flint stepped almost right up to me, and what's funny, I guess I'd grown a bit taller over the last half year. "You'll explain to me, Granger, what in Mordred's name you fly like on a broom. And what broom that is."
"Oh, no problem. Sleipnir, no limits at all, no brakes or anything. With the ability to dump all power sharply into a single vector, not a cone or half-sphere."
As I gave the brief explanation, their eyes widened with surprise, which I found pretty funny.
"And I fly like that because I'm completely out of my mind, and I feel the space around me well."
None of that was a secret, almost everyone in my house knew it. If he'd wanted to learn it, he could have. So I ended up selling something free for money.
"You... how did you not end up in Gryffindor with that attitude?" Flint smirked, and the others shook their heads. "Fine. A deal's a deal. Tomorrow after dinner, Classroom 302."
"They have numbers?"
"Tsk... Muggle-borns... Students traditionally number classrooms themselves, and the scheme is simple. The three is the floor number. The rest is the door count from the entrance, clockwise."
"Logical. Got it. I'll be there. What should I know?"
"Anything defensive and offensive. I'll see what you know and how you cast in general. But keep in mind, if you cast like crap, don't even think about the club. We have enough of our own, as the Head of House would say, with hands growing from the wrong place."
"Hey, Marcus, don't go after your own like that..." the same boy cut in, the one who had tried to reproach Flint earlier.
"Truth isn't an insult," Flint waved it off. "That all?"
"Yes. Have a good evening."
I turned and walked out of the Great Hall. If this worked out, I'd even find myself a club, which would be very nice. I wonder what local magical dueling looks like. Of course I'm one hundred percent sure that first and foremost dueling is a tradition of the "privileged" part of magical society, but that doesn't make it any less interesting. And if everything goes well, I can annoy some especially radical kids too. If only they would remove the Dementors from the castle, then it wouldn't be life, it would be a song.