The Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons were given by a man named Professor Greaves.
Professor Greaves was perfect, terrible, exactly what he had to be: neither bad enough to be mentioned, nor good enough to be memorable.
He gave lectures twice a week.
He read from his notes, which Cael suspected were not written by him but were passed through inheritance.
He demonstrated the movements of the wand — once, at wrong wrist angles.
He made a proper, pleasant attempt to be nice.
By the third week Cael put Greaves in a file marked *the teachers who are not going to be useful to me when casting the magic*, and never expected differently from that time on.
This was the day when the filing became definite.
The lesson was on Stupefy.
It was the year-three unit on disabling offensive magic, and the practice of this unit, according to the long-established Hogwarts tradition, consisted of using practice dummies that looked vaguely like people, were made of wood, and had charms to make them dodging, leaning and acting like they were getting hits.
These dummies were quite old.
Some of them had names.
One of the dummies in particular, that was named Reginald, was particularly liked by the whole cohort.
Greaves described Stupefy.
He described its movements — again, at wrong angles — and then the safety rules: “Moderate intensity”, he explained, “two or three times during the lecture, just like a flight attendant explains an oxygen mask.
Always moderate intensity.
Your dummy isn’t built to withstand the full-scale casts.” Then he paired students together.
Murray was lucky enough to share the surname with Cael, and they were given the back left dummy to work with.
Meanwhile Reginald was given to Hermione who treated this dummy as seriously as any other of her assignments.
In fact, she was giving it a lecture regarding its posture at that moment.
Greaves was watching the class, going along the pairs and checking how the magic worked — correcting wand movement approximately of the third student at once.
The lesson wasn’t only about their classmates.
There was also an unofficial audience for Cael.
This was a result of several weeks’ practice: some students, those not belonging to this class, appeared every Charms lesson to see what happens next.
Today’s DADA was less crowded in terms of spectators than the usual Charms — they concluded that nothing spectacular would come out of Stupefy — but the number of extras was still more or less half a dozen of third years that found their way into the back row and were trying to look as if they’ve only come across this place accidentally.
First, Murray made his magic.
The dummy slumped, just like other dummies did when other students performed this magic.
The Reginald, two pairs further, slumped; the dummy down the line did the same.
Satisfied, Greaves moved on to another student’s turn.
Cael’s turn.
By this point he had already drawn his conclusions, and sketched his prediction: *Stupefy is a disabling spell that puts somebody to sleep.
Then it should logically work vice versa, if used inverted.
At double power, it probably means… Hyperactivity, definitely.
He put it in the notebook with a question sign, which he was ready to delete.* He performed.
Instead of slumping, the dummy in the back left row started moving.
It literally came to life, doubling, tripling, and quadrupling its speed due to the animation charm and thus overloading the wooden mechanism of its body in terms of strength.
It trembled, jerked, tried to walk two steps in the completely unnatural direction.
Murray backed off.
The spectators on the back row abandoned the pretense of their accidental presence.
Then the dummy moved.
It wasn’t, Cael could notice in real time, attacking him.
It also wasn’t attacking anybody.
But it tried to act *like it was supposed to act* — *simultaneously*, *in an accelerated way*.
It twirled, struck an invisible enemy, struck the walls — the head of this dummy, which could be tilted because it was supposed to get knocked off from its shoulders — failed to perform that trick.
Greaves reached the back left row.
“Mr.
— Mr.
Mourne — ” he started saying.
The dummy slumped to the floor with a bang loud enough to resonate in the completely silent class.
The animation stopped and was followed by jerking.
Lying on the floor, it rotated a little bit before stopping.
Class held a breath.
Students on radiators were smiling openly.
Hermione was talking to Reginald who, two pairs away, was slumped in an absolutely correct manner — apparently, she had noticed nothing extraordinary and continued her lecture.
“Mr.
— Mr.
Mourne.” Greaves managed to return to normal state at the price of losing all of his color.
He was pale, just like the dummy on the floor.
“Mr.
Mourne, *don’t do that* ever again.” “All right.” “Do — ” “What should I do differently, sir.” Greaves was speechless now.
The syllabus included a unit on Stupefy, but this kind of behavior was far out of it.
Also, the teaching notes didn’t contain the description of the case when a student’s disabling magic turns into hyperactivating one.
Moreover, there was no such a unit in the entire school’s curriculum.
And there was also no supplementary material: worksheet, textbook, and homework on this issue, too.
Greaves had received a task that exceeded his competence in front of the class, and this was visible for everybody at the moment.
“We will — ” he began, “we will — Mr.
Mourne, please abstain from offensive magic practice till we finish with this unit.
We will — offer you some other kind of coursework.
I’ll talk with — with your Head of House.” “All right.” Cael stood up and walked to Hermione, who pretended to lecture her dummy, and took a seat near Reginald.
“Are you alright?” she asked, whispering.
“Yes.” “That was —” “I know.” “He won’t have anything for you.” “I know.” “He won’t.” “I know.” Meanwhile, Murray had taken the broken dummy, and was looking at it with the expression of somebody attending a funeral.
Greaves, at the front of the class, started making notes in some hurry.
Those notes, Cael was sure, wouldn’t survive till the morning and would definitely disappear soon after.
Sitting next to Hermione and observing the slumping Reginald, Cael looked at the wall above Greaves’s head for a few moments.
“I will need another teacher,” “I know.” “Maybe I’ll have to learn it myself.” “I can help.” “I know.” She didn’t look at him.
Made a note in her parchment — much fuller than those everybody else had.
The note *Curriculum gap — DADA — empirical.* She circled it twice.