Chapter 6.1- Doom Days

“Confringo” I cast silently, and then chained it into the less dark variant of the spell, ‘bombarda’, and then ‘diffindo’ and then a half dozen other spells in seconds. The right against the acrromantula had exposed quite a few of my weaknesses. It was why I now stood in the Room of Requirements, almost soakd to the bone with sweat but smiling as I cast spell after spell and makdesure to avoid the return elements being sent at me. I moved to the side to avoid a tennis ball sent at me faster than any human cold have served it, and speared the dummy behind it with a shard of ice.

Jumping up, I smoothly avoided the next trio of balls while nailing the one that flew at me with a sharp spike of ice that sent it flying backwards. Another set came and I avoided them with swift movemetnts. The goal othis training was to improve my body just as much as I improved my magic. Physical fitness was important for wizards, just as it was for muffles but the truth of the matter was that things like running and weightlifting were virtually useless for us because our magic would far outstrip whatever benefits we gained from that and exercising hour magic would be a far better use of time. That didn’t mean I didn’t do any exercise at all, however. Exercise had mental benefits as well as physical ones, and I would be remiss to fail to reap those benefits for myself.

I sent the last ball flying whence it came and ended the exercise. A quick glance at the clock told me I’d been able to keep it up for forty minutes this time. I nodded at the progresss and willed a pool to form before me. Nothing fancy, just a standard olympic length pool with the requisite filtration and subsidiary amenities. My tracksuit was quickly discarded in place of swimming trunks and I wasted no time in diving into the pool and beginning to swim.

As I always did, I allowed my body to move virtually on autopilot through the strainious swim while my mind travelled to other thoughts. The first task was only two days away at this point. I still remained a rare sight in the castle, but it was more or less by choice. The news articles from the weighing of the wands had not been nearly as negative as part of me had feared. It showed that I’d made the right choice by more or less embracing my inclusion into the tournament. I didn’t seem like a lying attention-seeking teenager who was lashing out against his mentor, but instead I seemed like a young wizard with the skill to fool a thousand year old magical artefact under the nose of the Greatest Wizard since Merlin who was keen to stick it to his competition. The patronus and the performance with Fawkes had appeared on more than one front page.

The most interesting article by far was the one on the Quibbler. I hadn’t even recognised Xenophilus Lovegood in the crowd of reporters at the time but his theory that my wand had once belonged to Voldemort was dangerously close to the truth of things.

A/N; PROGRESS