Chapter 14.2- Doom Days

“Yes. Correct. A handy bit of knowledge of the dark arts you’ve got there, Potter” he needled.

“One would assume that to be the point of this class” I replied airily. Whatever he was looking for, he would not get it here.

“Defence, Potter. Defence Against the Dark Arts. That’s the point of this class. Not their use.”

“Then one would wonder why you’ve shown us more dark arts than actual defensive spells against them so far, Professor.”

“10 points for the cheek, Potter. I do not appreciate it.” I nodded at the ‘punishment’, not caring one way or the other. A dead man could have his last gasps.

“Moving on, we will also cover the bloodfreezing curse. Another nasty bit of work. Another question, why can the bloodfreezing curse not counter the blood boiling curse? One would assume that the solution to having all the blood in one’s body taken to the boiling point would be cooling it down a bit.” He said, leading the class on.

I watched as the Hufflepuffs began to debate among themselves in whispers.

“It works, doesn’t it?” One finally said out loud almost making me face palm.

“Of course it doesn’t. That’s not how magic works. It’s only logical that the bloodfreezing point cools the blood down from boiling but there’s no guarantee it would stop at normal temperature. It’s far more likely that it would keep going till its frozen the blood itself” One Hilda Connerty from Ravenclaw spoke out.

“Well reasoned” Moody praised, making the girl blush. Her answer was wrong, I thought to myself with a raised eyebrows wondering if this was Crouch’s play. Teach us wrongly so we’d be less placed to fight the death eater’s when the time came?

“But ultimately wrong. Magic doesn’t care one whit for your muggle logic” he boomed.

“Now, Potter. Tell me what happens if you use a bloodfreezing curse on someone under a bloodboiling curse?” He demanded.

“The body bloats until it explodes. Both spells remain active until a counter curse is used. Considering a thing can not both boil and freeze at the same time, it settles for a spontaneous rapid dissasembly” I said with an internal chuckle at the reference that I knew no one would understand.

“Correct again, Potter. One would mistake you for a scholar of the Dark Arts at this point.”

“I don’t see why you’d ask questions you wouldn’t expect answered” I shot back, not allowing the underhanded comment slide.

“From a NEWT class with seven years of experience with magic, yes. But shouldn’t fourteen-year-olds be messing around with summoning spells and the like?” He asked with a sardonic smile.

“I’m better” I said instead.

“Yeah, I’ve heard many a dark wizard say the same. Just don’t go in their way and we won’t have a problem. Am I clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Good. Now we can move on to practicing the countercurse. The headmaster hasn’t greenlit using this on any of you so we’ll be practicing with this dummy here”