Chương 58: ITW,H - Chapter 58 - After Action Review

(Word Count: 1, 959) That evening, Hermione didn't want to leave him alone to train by himself. She was still upset that he had gone off to fight Quirrell by himself and insisted on training with him in the RoR. She was already practicing her spellwork diligently, but this recent incident set a fire under her.

"You can't expect us all to stay behind all the time when you go off to fight some dark wizard!" She had said.

"So I'll be increasing my time spent training here and, well, do you think I can join you when you train with Professor Flitwick?" Harry shrugged.

"I don't know about that, Hermione, Flitwick wasn't exactly thrilled to start training me in the first place. I don't think he'd appreciate me bringing even more students along. I'll talk to him tomorrow about it, but I wouldn't get our hopes up about it." Hermione groaned in frustration.

"Fine, but you better be teaching me every tip he's been teaching you."

"I have been, Hermione. You've already come a long way, you know. You're a far better witch than anyone else our age," Harry said, trying to soothe her tirade.

"Not enough for you to take me with you!" Hermione mumbled bitterly under her breath, though Harry heard it anyway. He sighed, but said nothing. They were in the RoR right now, with the room set to just a large empty room, with some training dummies off to the side, inactive for now. He had come here in order to review his fight with Quirrell, and reflect on what went right, and what went wrong.

Hermione went off to the side and activated one of the dummies and started blasting it with one of the spellchains they had learned. Seeing that she didn't want to talk at the moment, he went to the other side of the room to ponder. What went right in the fight? Well, let's see… He had been winning for the most part before the twins showed up. He was able to get off a distraction with the snake summoning again, allowing for a pretty solid strike when the snake bit him.

He did manage to react in time to not get hit by any spells, and he did manage to block the killing curse aimed at the twins. But the fight was a lot harder than he was expecting. What went wrong? He used a lot of confringo. He did use other spells, but confringo had been his go to. It was one thing to diversify his spells here in training, but in the heat of battle, everything else kind of faded away. He just wanted to blow him up. So, he needed to get used to casting a more varied spell repertoire.

A wider range of spell effects means a harder time for the enemy to react to each one. Another failure was that he failed to properly make use of his Spellchainer perk. His spells got stronger the longer his spellchains got. So he should have been pushing to stay on the offensive far harder than he had to get the spellchains going, instead of casting just one spell at a time. Actually, he hadn't used even one spellchain the entire fight. That was a major failure on his part.

He also could have used his Mind Arts, but he didn't want Voldemort to know about that skill yet, so he couldn't really call that a failure on his part. So the solution was to simply fall back on some of the spellchains he had already been practicing and to not let his emotions get the better of him. Harry sighed. It really came back to the basics, didn't it? Still, overall he didn't feel like it went too badly given that it was his first actual fight.

He summoned one of the dummies and went about practicing some of his more lethal spellchains, filled with diffindos, confringos, and percutios. Sometime through his practice, he stopped when he had an idea. Could he create a "spellchain" that was filled with an easy quick spell to quickly supercharge one final spell? The quickest spellchain he knew was just a series of stupifies, but that wasn't as quick as he was wanting. He couldn't just machine gun out stupifies like one big red laser.

The quickest he could get with that one was only a half second apart. If he switched to a different spell, it took him about a full second to refocus his mind to get the required intent. It used to be far slower, but that was the perk of training spellchaining. Harry thought about it.' What if I don't use an attack spell?' There was no reason why he had to use an offensive spell.

"Lumos. Nox." He lit his wand and turned it off again idly in thought. How fast could he get between these two spells? They weren't all that different, so focusing his intent was simply switching between on and off again. He tried it, casting them both lumos and nox as fast as he could. His wand began blinking on and off, the light getting brighter and brighter despite him using the same power for each. That confirmed this non-combative spellchain counted.' And it's faster too!'

He was able to get a light every half second, meaning he casted two spells, lumos and nox, in the same timeframe as his stupefy spellchain.' And that was on the first try! I can go faster with some practice,' Harry grinned. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Still, it came with a downside. With the stupefy chain, he was at least casting something at his enemy. With this one, they would be free to cast anything at him as he was charging up.'

I could cast that emotion-empowered protego at the start and hold it as I charge up my final attack,' Harry thought. The solution came easily.

Still, it wouldn't be very wise to use this in any spars or duels. He didn't want to charge up a spell too much and run the risk of killing his opponent. Plus, it's not very sportsman-like. Harry glanced over towards Hermione. She was bracing herself with her hands on her knees, breathing hard. Her dummy was in pieces scattered across the ground.

"You feeling better?" Harry asked. Hermione glared at him, but nodded.

"Good. There's something I want to go over with you, Ron, and Neville. It's about the Philosopher's Stone." That perked her up, and she came over, casting some cleaning charms to get her fresh again. Harry did the same before she began pulling him out of the room.

"Come on, then!" They left the RoR and went to gather the other two friends. They found Neville easily enough, but Ron was nowhere to be found in the castle. They eventually found him down at Hagrid's, helping him take care of the dragon. When the door opened, black smoke poured out, and Hagrid was covered in soot and scratches. Despite that, he was grinning widely.

"Oh, hello there!" Hagrid said cheerily.

"Come in, come in! Ron's here already, been helping me all afternoon!"

"Actually, Hagrid, we came to fetch him. It's already getting pretty late," Hermione said. Hagrid looked out at the sky, "Blimey, look at the time! Yer right, you shouldn't be out so late." He turned back inside and called Ron out. Ron came into view holding the tiny dragon in a towel. It was hissing and trying to nip at Ron's fingers, but he was wearing oven mitts and couldn't break through. Ron was just as covered in soot as Hagrid was, and just as cheerful.

"Hey guys!" Ron greeted with a smile. He hoisted up the dragon to show her off.

"Look how big he's gotten already, can you believe it? Only a single day, and he's twice as big!" Hermione frowned, "and how long will it take before he's too big for the house? Really, Hagrid, you should send it away to a dragon reserve!" Both Ron and Hagrid shook their heads in denial. Hagrid took the dragon, towel and all, from Ron and held him lovingly, ignoring the dragon biting at his beard.

"What if the other dragons don't like him? He's only a baby afterall!" Hermione was about to say more, but Harry stepped in. He knew Hagrid wouldn't be convinced until the dragon started to prove too difficult to take care of.

"Anyway, Ron, come on. We've got to back up to the castle." Ron rubbed his stomach.

"Right, it's about time for dinner, isn't it? Let's go!" He turned to the dragon, and said goodbye in a playful voice, like he was speaking to a dog, "Goodbye, Norbert! I'll see you tomorrow! Yes I will!" They made their way back up to the castle.

"Norbert?" Neville asked.

"Like it?" Ron said proudly, "it's the name for the dragon!" Dinner hadn't quite started yet, so Harry pulled them aside into a private nook and cast muffliato.

"Right guys, I've got something to say about our would-be thief of the Philosopher's Stone," Harry started out.

"Blimey, I'd forgotten about that!" Ron exclaimed. Harry just looked at him.' Really? I've told you about my fight with Quirrell this morning! How'd you forget already?' He's really been too focused on that dragon.

"I know when Voldemort will attempt to go after the stone, it's the night of our final exam," Harry continued. Hermione furrowed her brows and bit her lip thoughtfully.

"Wait a minute, Harry. I thought you said you've already defeated Quirrell? Why do we still need to worry about the stone? Isn't it already over with?"

"Well, I've had a vision of us going down the trapdoor that night which ended with me confronting Voldemort. I've spoken with Dumbledore, and he said that we can't change the big things about my visions, only the small things. Remember my vision about the troll? I warned all of us about it, but you still ended up getting chased by it. But the little things changed. Chances are, Voldemort will attempt something and still end up there that night.

So Dumbledore said that we should still go down the trapdoor, but he'll follow close behind us, so there's no major change in the vision, but we'll be relatively safe." Harry couldn't exactly tell them that going down the trapdoor will be meaningless. It's just to appease Fate. Hermione, still biting her lip thoughtfully, nodded.

"I suppose that makes sense."

"Now here's what I saw as obstacles. First, we've already seen Fluffy, the three headed dog. We just need to play a bit of music and it falls fast asleep. I've been working on my animation charms, so that's no problem. Next is…" Harry went on to explain each of the rooms, assigning each of them to take charge in solving each one.

"Neville, you've got the devil's snare. Ron, you've got the chess room, Hermione, you've got the potion logic puzzle, and I'll take care of the keys and the troll."

"Devil's snare is easy," Neville said confidently.

"Even I can do that!" Ron thumped his chest proudly, "leave the chess to me! I'll go practice some more against some of the ravenclaws!" They broke up their meeting and went to dinner. That night, Harry couldn't get the stone out of his mind. Something about this whole quest felt off. It didn't click with him until he was lying in bed trying to sleep. When it did, he shot upright. Why would Death issue a quest to destroy the stone if Flamel and Dumbledore were already going to destroy it?

That's what he was missing. Flamel wasn't going to destroy it. He would have to do it himself.