Chapter 13.3- Doom Days

I nodded, silently signaling him to continue with his lesson.

“Different shields are useful for different purposes. For example, the protege shield is the most efficient way to block most spells and with enough power, one could use it to fly far above its broom class. The only issue there is that it becomes much less efficient when you do that. Also add the fact that it is useless at blocking physical objects or extremely dark spells like the unforgivables.”

“No shields can block the unforgivables” I instantly cut in, saying it almost by reflex. The words were almost burned into my mind. Both Tom Riddle and Harry Potter had researched that fact extensively. Tom as a way to counteract the spells that he was beginning to find so useful in his teens, and Harry Potter as a curious eleven-year-old trying to understand the source of his fame.

“No magical shield. A conjured shield could block a killing curse just as well as any other physical object. Of course, the magic inherent in conjurations mean they tend to fall apart after facing only a single unforgivable but those rarely tend too get sent en masse” He said with a wry smile that I returned with an awkward one of my own. It was in conversations like this one that I learned just the kind of trauma that the world had been exposed to in the first war. I had no idea the kind of role Flitwick had played during the war, but I did know that it had marked him just as surely as it had scarred Mad Eye Moody.

“But beyond that, shields like the aegis shield have their own uses. The golden barrier tends to be more magically intensive, but it can be maintained wandlessly and reshaped at will” he started the lecture. I nodded to show that I was paying attention as the Charms master dove into a subject that turned out to be a minor passion of his: shield charms.

XXXXX- THE HALF-GOBLIN

“And that is the last shield charm of the twelve” he said to his seemingly entranced student. If anyone had told him just six months ago that Lily’s boy would be seating through an hour’s lecture on specialized shield charms of all things with full attention, he would have laughed in their face. If they’d told him that he would be training Lily’s boy on duelling, he would have actually had them sent to Saint Mungos for a check up. Yet, somehow both of those things had turned out to be true.

“What about the protege diabolica?” His new protege asked, hands steepled in front of him and eyes glinting with undisguised interest. He felt his heart quiver at those emerald orbs and that look in them. He wouldn’t lie. In the boy’s earlier years, he’d paid special attention to him hoping to see this very look in them. He’d spent many a nightcap mourning the absence and the fact that that part of Lily had not lived on in her son. It just turned out that he’d been looking too early and the boy only needed time to come into his own.

“First of all, you’re highly unlikely to find much usage in the protego diabolica within a sanctioned duel. It is useful for screening between friend and foe, but none other than Gellert Grindelwald himself have ever managed to modify the spell to block offensive spells as well” he explained smoothly, enjoying the look that showed the boy was taking in the information given and assessing it before digestion. It was what he found lacking in so many from his own house: skepticism. Harry Potter was skeptical. That was the best way to put it. Just like Filius himself as a child, he did not find it easy to reconcile the words impossible and magic as working in the same sentence.