Hester entered the library. She was excited about learning a new spell, and Professor Nott had offered to help her with it. She found a table and sat down, putting down her bag and taking out her book and wand. Professor Nott entered shortly after, and Hester began to read the book. She scanned the contents page for the spell she wanted to learn, wingardium leviosa. When she found it she scanned through the text, trying to work out how to actually perform the spell.
"Swish and flick," she said. And then: "Wingardium leviosa"
Professor Nott nodded. It was time for Hester to attempt the spell, now that she knew what to do and say.
She stood up and placed the object she was going to try to levitate on the desk in front of her. It was a feather, because it was light and easy to move. She would move on to heavier objects later.
"Wingardium leviosa," she said, wiggling her wand. Nothing happened. She frowned, wondering what she had done, but Professor Nott just waved at her to continue. It was normal not to get a spell right on the first try. Hester swallowed, her usual fear of not being really magical threatening to rise up again.
"Wingardium leviosa," she said again, this time concentrating hard on getting the wrist action correct. Swish and flick, not wiggle. The feather jerked slightly, but aside from that nothing happened. It could have even been the wind. She glanced over to Professor Nott, who was watching her carefully. Probably making sure she didn't accidently explode anything.
"Wingardium leviosa," she repeated over and over again. The feather didn't so much as twitch.
Professor Nott handed her the book, and Hester read carefully through the paragraph that she had just skimmed before. She realised that she had to perform magic she had to really want it to happen.
She glared at the feather.
I want you to levitate, she thought.
"Wingardium leviosa," she said, applying the correct wand technique and pronouncing the words carefully. She tried to fill her head only with images of the feather levitating, and she tried to put feeling into her spell, but it was really difficult. The feather jerked on the table; this was definitely not the wind. But it didn't get more than a millimetre off the table top.
She waited a moment, letting herself calm down. It had moved, and that was something. She smiled at Professor Nott to show that she was ready to continue and then tried again.
And again.
Something about her technique wasn't working. She had known that learning a spell wouldn't be very easy, but she hadn't expected it to be this hard. She re-read the text book, hoping that it would give her some new clues as to how to perform the spell. She frowned. She couldn't see anything she thought she had missed so she guessed that she would just have to work on what she already had. She began with the incantation.
"Wingardium leviosa. Am I saying it right?" she asked Professor Nott, who shook her head and told her the correct way of saying it. It was very similar, she had been so close. She guessed that the Professor just wanted her to work out what she had been doing by herself.
After saying the incantation a few times over, she moved onto the wand movement. A swish followed by a flick. It sounded so easy. She flicked her wand experimentally. Not a wave, a flick.
She stood in front of the table with the feather on it. She filled her mind with the one thought that she wanted the feather to levitate. She hoped that getting in the mood and the mindset for spell casting would get easier with time. The she held out her wand.
"Wingardium leviosa," she said, swishing and flicking the thin wooden stick.
The feather jerked off the table into the air and then floated down again. Hester grinned. Now she just had to make it stay in the air.
She repeated the spell over and over, for ten more times, twenty more times. Each time it rose a little higher, stayed a little longer, except for the odd time when it refused to move at all. She was getting there.
After the umpteenth time, Professor Nott seemed happy with her spell, and Hester was happy as well. The feather floated in the air until she dropped her wand to her side. She felt accomplished.
"Thank you, Professor Nott," she said, and then glanced at her watch. So much time had passed by.
