by Aspen in the Sunlight
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Chapter Thirty-Five: Reciprocal Magic
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"All right, that's enough of that, I think," Draco abruptly announced late the next morning, reaching out and closing the book Harry had been using. "You can only listen to theory for so long before your brain dries out, you know."
"You're just tired of hearing Hermione's dulcet tones," Harry mocked, waving the enchanted quill back and forth.
"Actually, I'd like to get a sense of what you've learned." Draco pulled the book towards him, but didn't open it. His fingers drifted back and forth over the cover as he quizzed Harry. "Explain why you don't need to delimit an area before you cast Alegrarus."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Because the act of choosing a person to charm will keep the spell from spilling past the boundary the wizard intends."
"Good," Draco crisply approved. "Now, name three charms that do require you to delineate boundaries first."
Harry thought back for a second. "Uh... Fulminare, Hummos pacta, and Tempestadus."
"You might also have said Loviosa or Helare, or really, treated the weather charms as a class of their own," Draco added. "So, why didn't they teach us to delimit way back in first year when we learned Incendio and Wingardium Leviosa and all that?"
"Because we were always focused on an object at that stage."
"Well, you certainly have decent listening comprehension," Draco commented. "I wouldn't have believed it."
"There, I knew your perfect manners wouldn't last for long!"
"My, my, you do take things personally," Draco drawled. "All I meant was, I couldn't listen to so much text at once and get as much from it. I can hardly stand lecture for the same reason. I learn better by reading."
Harry flushed slightly, but forgot about it when Draco went on, "Now, I'll want twelve inches on the drawbacks of using walls to delimit charm structures."
"You're my tutor, not my professor," Harry pointed out. "So don't think you can go assigning essays just for me."
"What did I just tell you about taking things personally? It's merely the assignment the rest of us had to do for Chapter Four. Don't you think Professor Flitwick would like you to do the same? Never mind, don't answer that. Severus collected last month's lesson plans for me to use with you, and the essay is clearly noted right here." Draco shoved a bit of parchment across the table at him.
"Very funny, when you know I can't read it," Harry scowled. "And how am I supposed to write an essay, anyway?"
"Well, you could at least try, P-- Harry," Draco smirked. "Here, take a blank sheet and a quill. I know you can't focus your eyes so well--and no, I'm not ridiculing that--but you can probably produce something at least legible."
Harry thought a moment, squished his eyes nearly closed in an effort to focus them, then wrote an opening sentence for his essay. "How's that look?"
Draco sighed. "All right, maybe legible is a stretch. It's worse than your usual scrawl. I suppose you'll have to borrow my spelled quill. We'll just have to explain to the professors why all your work is in my beautiful script."
He returned in a moment and handed Harry a long, tan feather along with a fresh length of parchment. "Just set it upright, and let go, then dictate what you want it to write. It's self-inking."
Harry did as Draco had said, only to see the quill flutter its way back down to the parchment the moment it was let go.
"Now what?"
Draco paused to think before he answered. "I suppose it's reacting to your... ah, condition..."
"You can say lack of magic, Draco," Harry retorted. "I do know about it, you know."
"Right. Well, let me try." He set the tip of the quill in place, and watched it stay upright as he let go, then said, "Now, you dictate."
The quill slowly moved across the surface of the parchment, scripting out the words Now, you dictate.
"Finite!" Draco exclaimed, snatching the quill up much as if he meant to strangle it. After a moment though, he picked up his wand from where he'd set it on the table, and tapped the feather a few times as he talked to it in soft, whispering Latin. Harry only caught a few words: you, he, not me, talk, and something that sounded suspiciously like a muttered English if you know what's good for you.
"All right," Draco finally announced. "You can't activate it, that does require magic, but once I set it to parchment, it should respond to your voice, now."
When the feather worked as predicted, Harry felt himself rather taken aback. Hermione's talking feather was certainly impressive, but it paled beside a quill that could write out the words it heard. He almost would have thought it was something Draco's father had bought him, just the thing for a spoiled-little-rich-boy away at school, except for the fact that Draco had just adjusted the spells on the fly. Clearly, the magic in the quill was Draco's own, and he could manipulate it to new forms with scarcely a moment's thought.
Draco has a great intuitive grasp of magic, Snape had said, and now, Harry thought he had a sense of what he had meant.
"Thanks," he murmured, and Draco laughed.
"You'd better say undo thanks now," he pointed out, motioning toward the moving quill. "Anything you want scratched out, you say 'undo.' If you actually need the word 'undo' in your essay, say 'undo naught,' assuming you haven't used that word recently. Oh, and stopping the quill requires a Finite, so you'd better just give me a wave. If you try to pick up the pen to stop it, it'll start writing all over your arm and such."
"Undo thanks," Harry said, nodding to show he understood, and after that, he restricted his comments to ruminations on walls and charm delimitations. Draco watched him for a while, raising his eyebrow as Harry hesitated over a few details, but eventually he opened his Potions manual and began studying the ingredients and procedures for some concoction, periodically closing the book and writing out the instructions from memory until he could produce them letter-perfect.
"I'm going to make this, now," he told Harry as he stood up.
Harry nodded again and went on talking about charms.
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That afternoon before dinner, Draco suddenly glanced up from his reading and said, "I think your fan club has arrived."
Harry didn't know what had alerted the Slytherin boy to that.
"It's Granger and Weasley," Draco muttered, slamming his book shut. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go open the door."
But Harry couldn't; it didn't have a handle. A lot of things in Snape's rooms were like that; the simplest task might require magic. Harry didn't much like asking Draco to do things for him all the time, but he supposed it could have been worse. At least the bathroom facilities were spelled so that they'd respond to touch. He didn't need incantations to turn on a tap, or flush the loo. The door, though...
"It won't open for me and you know it," Harry said. "And so?"
"Oh, very well," Draco acquiesced.
"Wait!" Harry stopped him as he lifted his wand. "How do you know who's there?"
Draco pointed to a decorative scroll hanging on the wall beside the door. Harry had noticed it, but had only been able to make out an intricate inked border on the parchment; he'd supposed the center was some artwork executed in lines so thin and fine he couldn't make them out no matter how he squinted. When he walked to it now, however, it was displaying names. In letters so big that even he could read them, the scroll announced Hermione Granger, Ronald Weasley.