A Stronger Defense Prodigal Solo

Spell: Bat-Bogey Hex
Incantation: Vespertilifors
Wand Movement: A crescent-shaped curve upward, then a similar curve downward but with a ridge and ending curl, like a bat's wing

It was frustration driving Bridget's footsteps to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom today. Not frustration for any one thing in particular, more of a general sense of it. She'd stayed up later than she'd meant to last night poring over duelling strategies, which caused a cascading effect of nearly sleeping through her alarm, having to rush to get ready, and thus being irritable throughout the day. Add in an unbearable group project (reflecting later, it wasn't really horrible, just disliked as every group project was) and she needed time away from, well, possibly everyone.

Slinging spells into a dummy would have no doubt been an excellent release of steam, but she had a well-established rule: no casting when she was emotional. Why, then, was she going to practice a new spell? Because it would force her to calm down, to think through the steps. That kind of focus would force the frustration out; she could fire off Flipendos with barely a thought, at least until she backfired one. This would be safer. So far, she'd had the classroom entirely to herself when she went, so she could bet on the needed separation. And, perhaps, her ire at the day would fuel that needed 'malicious intent' for the hex she had in mind.

The Bat-Bogey Hex. She would have learned it sooner or later regardless, but this gave her a reason to opt for now. It was going to be difficult to tell how well it was working--much like the Confundus Charm and Conjunctivitis Curse had been--but she'd never ask a friend to aid her with anything harmful, rarely a duelling teammate either, and wasn't so done with everything she'd stalk the hallways for a stranger to test on. The poor wall would again be her target, it seemed. There was the disgusting possibility it might actually produce a few bats--she'd seen her sister not-so-discreetly wiping off her finger before on a variety of surfaces. But that probably wouldn't happen. And besides, the book had only mentioned it in relation to living targets.

This incantation was a little easier than the last one, thank goodness. Many more like Oculitumescere and she'd blow up the school since her brain jumbled them together. Even though she'd nailed them into memory by now, she forced herself to practice the incantation and wand movement separately to cool off. When she felt ready to cast, she went through the usual routine. Slow progress, the building up of power. She called back the annoyance in little pieces, just enough to melt into her magic instead of boiling it over. Indeed, the external held minimal clues of how each cast went, but she found herself able to really feel it. Like she had to get over her too-frequent miscasts, the sensation of the magic itself, how it built up and flowed through her wand, gave her a sense of how the spell was going. There was a sweet spot to it, and she even closed her eyes to better concentrate.

It was meditative. She'd probably look quite weird were anyone to walk in, facing a wall, eyes closed, muttering an incantation. It was just her, though. Not even any transfigured bats. Just her and her wand, her and her thoughts. After a while, in a succession of hitting that sweet spot, her mind started to wander and she made the connection to Jedi training. Using the Force required a clear mind, too, and lots of practice, which unfortunately knocked down the barriers keeping out all the mental clutter. Oh, and if Jedi were basically space wizards, what would happen if a wizard became an astronaut? That made her feel even more ridiculous, eyes opening and a short laugh escaping, ringing awkwardly through the empty room. No one else in the entire castle was likely to be thinking about Star Wars right now. If she walked up to the first person she saw, there was a good chance they wouldn't even know what Star Wars was. All terribly irrelevant to spell-casting, of course, but interesting thoughts. She'd call it a day.

Word Count: 687
@Orion Lécuyer

@Bridget Collins
Your RP for the 'Conjunctivitis Curse' and the 'Bat-Bogey Hex' for Prodigal DADA Learner have both been accepted and you may now apply to add it to your trunk. Please do not use the force to unleash bats on me.

Spell: Hex Deflection
Incantation: Salvio Hexia (SAL-vee-oh HEK-see-uh)
Wand Movement: Downward movement with the off-hand held palm-out

At the start of the year, Bridget had a plan. It was nothing complicated, just that she was going to master all of the fifth year DADA spells, and as quickly as possible. Doing so with the fourth year spells last year had saved her life, after all, the Bubblehead Charm coming to unexpected use in her moment of need. And she'd been doing well, already competent with three by mid-October. She could irritate eyes and turn bogeys into bats and muddle someone's thoughts. With each success, she grew confident that fifth year spells were perfectly within her capability, that though it would take a little extra work, she could get them down just as well as anything else she was learning.

Then the end of October had hit her like a truck. If it had been like any of the times before when something disastrous happened, she would have thrown herself into training with renewed fervor, desperate to make up for the weakness that had been highlighted. More spells, more practice, eventually that more had to mean more skilled, more powerful, more able to make any meaningful stand to protect what mattered to her. Instead all the motivation had drained. She did try, tried showing up in the DADA classroom and pulling up her chair with her wand and textbook, tried drilling the details and making those first unsuccessful steps toward making something happen. Where she used to be able to persist through the mild disappointments and frustrations, she found herself staring at her length of laurel wood, unwilling to raise it to try again.

Because it didn't matter, did it? That was the thought that would bubble up every time she tried. She could learn spells, practice until she was basically perfect, and still she would be staring in panic at a body far below in a well, still she would be swarmed, still she wouldn't be able to do anything more than worriedly wonder what was happening to her friends. She was only fourteen; she could not fight hags or shadows or curses.

So instead of spending the evenings she could trying to learn how to deflect hexes, which she should have been all over--hexes were spells cast with ill intent, it would be ever so useful to be able to block them--she just wanted to retreat to her favorite spot in the library with Sherlock for company. Or, more recently, to savor tea and silence with Flash, just happy to be near her friend. There was no impossible goal tied to reading a book.

That wasn't to say she'd abandoned all her responsibilities in favor of hiding away; she hadn't. Just as often as she read a book for fun while her pet rat roamed around the desk's surface, she was diligently completing her schoolwork. And her duty as a duelling captain seemed to be the only place where people counted on her and she could legitimately meet their needs. Santario had been fading from the picture--as she knew now, she'd been turning into a hag during those months--and Bridget picked up any slack. Looking back with her present understanding, she was glad she had at least been able to do that for her co-captain. It would have been better if she'd realized what was happening sooner, but perhaps that wasn't entirely fair; she hadn't even known how hags were born before.

She had finally made her way back. It was a nice evening in May, and for the first time in months, save for that meeting where they'd made their plan to cure Santario, she pushed open the door to her favorite subject for purposes unrelated to class. There wasn't exactly a clear cause to her finally working up the mental resolve to try this again. Part of it was the respect she'd gained for Professor Lécuyer after all his help in saving Santario. She generally liked her teachers, but this was different, fire-forged trust. How much attention he actually paid to things like learning advanced spells on one's own time, she didn't know, but some part of her wanted to make him proud. Finding someone to prove herself to was probably half the battle, if she didn't feel like she could meet her own aspirations for herself anymore.

Another part of it was just time. She'd gotten to a point where she could think of this as something other than an attempt to make up for her shortcomings. It was just an academic pursuit, nothing more. Practicing harder spells was good for her, because the effort and little details it took to manage them made her better at casting on-level magic. Besides, she couldn't convince herself she just didn't have time now that the last stage of duelling had passed.

And so she was here. She opened the door with a bit more tentativeness than when she'd come in to learn the Bat-Bogey Hex; it had been a while. It was weird, the room both familiar and not after-hours. It lacked the life brought by her classmates. To counter that lonely feeling, she had decided to bring Sherlock, her pet rat secured in his carrying case--she wasn't going to test if Professor Lécuyer appreciated a rat roaming his classroom. He was for company and accountability; before they'd left the dormitory she had told him that he couldn't let her leave until she got something solid out of her wand. Of course he hadn't understood, couldn't physically keep her in there if he tried, but the thought was it might help her brain to look at Sherlock and remember her resolve if she felt like giving up.

"Okay," she said, setting Sherlock's carrying case on that one desk near the wall she usually used, and opening her spellbook to the right page. He sniffed curiously at it. "So first, I need to review the incantation and wand movement." Because she always did that, and because it had been a while since she'd touched either. She drew her wand and squinted at the book's drawing and description, before holding out her off-hand's palm out and bringing her wand down in a steady motion. "Not too hard." The movement was repeated a couple more times for good measure.

Then the incantation. Her tongue felt the words silently before she gave them any sound. "Salvio Hexia. That's much nicer than Oculitumescere." Indeed, there was no tongue-tripping.

When she felt decent about both, double-checking the book's passage, she nodded to Sherlock, or perhaps just to herself. "I think we're ready." A thumbs-up was sent to the rat, like here goes, and she breathed out.

Needless to say, it was a slow process. Grasping the pronunciation and movement was only the base of it, there was still the hurdle of focusing, of building magical potential and understanding how to channel it to what you wanted to do. Perhaps she should have brought a friend, like she did with Protego, so she actually had a hex to deflect rather than dealing with this struggle to visualize, but she wouldn't have wanted to bother them, to potentially waste their evening if this took her an embarrassing amount of time.

The hands on her watch had made it a quarter of their steady march around when she dropped her arm with a huff. She'd produced only sporadic sparks, which was better than nothing, and yet still nothing to be proud of. Her eyes drifted to Sherlock, and she decided she would just take a break to give her mind a needed rest and then she'd be right back at it. She was going to get this, sooner or later; that was how it always worked.

And she did, after a while, the air in front of her going a little cloudy and her core humming with well-channeled magic. "Look at that," she commented to Sherlock, and her dry tone had taken on a bit of levity, some satisfaction with her handiwork starting to bloom. "Just a few more like that and I'll take you back to the dorm for dinner, alright?"

Word Count: 1353
@Orion Lécuyer

@Bridget Collins
Your RP for 'Salvio Hexia' for Prodigal DADA Learner have both been accepted and you may now apply to add it to your trunk. Also, Sherlock is always welcome in my classroom.