Characters, settings, and story relating to the Harry Potter series of novels are copyright J. K. Rowling, along with Bloomsbury Publishing, et al. “Spirit of Fear” is not an officially published work, nor is it in any cooperation with J. K. Rowling or Bloomsbury Publishing. “Spirit of Fear” is entirely (excluding the aforementioned characters, settings, and story) a work by Thomas Holman.

Chapter 3

How Cold

Viktor shot over the crowd, with Chey following just inches behind him. In disbelief, Viktor took his time returning, while Chey quickly circled back to the throng of people and declared Viktor had won. When Viktor finally landed, the students praised their champion, as though his place in the ranks had been in any real jeopardy.

“What was that?!” Viktor had rounded on Chey after the crowd had dispersed.

“What was what?”

“You pulled back!”

“You’re complaining? Isn’t that what the loser is supposed to do?” Chey asked in a knowing tone.

“I might as well have lost thanks to what you did! Why did you do that?!”

“I don’t want to be the new guy everyone hates because he beat the big boss on campus at his own game. It’s not like me to tarnish the reputation of someone with real talent. But don’t worry, somewhere down the line, I’ll play more fair.”

Viktor stood in place with a stunned expression as Chey walked away. However, Chey soon returned.

“Does anyone have a map to this place?!”

“So what do you guys do for fun around here?” Chey asked Viktor and his two friends during lunch one day.

“Besides flying?” Viktor asked in response.

“Yeah. I mean flying is great and all, but it gets kind of repetitive. It’s too early to ride the slopes, and tormenting the little kids is unethical. So whadda ya got?”

“Well, we do have something,” said Sergey, one of Viktor’s friends from past years. “But it’s not quite cold enough.”

“Heck, if it’s cold you want I can probably help you out there! What is it?”

“Awesome! What do we do and how cold does it have to be?”

They were on the deck of the ship, standing near the railing, looking down at the water. Chey had a pretty good idea what they were going to say, but there was an aesthetic in hearing the words out loud.

“We throw each other into near freezing water.” Nikolay had indulged Chey’s desire to hear those words.

“Well, if it’s cold water you want, it’s cold water you’ll get!” Chey pulled his wand from his left sleeve and cast a wide freezing charm on the water. He used a strap on his arm that he made himself. It allowed for a quicker draw, and the wand was less likely to break when it was strapped to his arm. The only downside was that Chey’s wand was longer than his forearm, but a simple shortening charm on the strap solved that problem. “Okay! That should do it guys. Guys?”

Viktor, Sergey, and Nikolay were all standing behind him with a look of mischief among them.

“Aw, damn...” Chey said as he was hurled over the railing of the ship and plummeted towards the water’s surface. He was falling backwards, so he saw them lean over the side to watch him fall into the water. Chey seized his chance for payback.

He cast a spell of his own he had developed. The spell was like an invisible elastic rope that latched onto Nikolay and pulled him and Chey towards each other. As a result, Nikolay began his own descent towards the water, and Chey’s fall was slowed significantly. After Nikolay fell past Chey, he cast the same spell on Sergey, a similar result followed, and Chey was now closer to the deck he had unwillingly departed seconds before. The only target for Chey’s spell left was Viktor, and over the rail he went, into the lake.

Now that Chey had enacted his revenge, it was time to panic, because there was no longer anything on the deck for the spell to latch onto, so Chey resorted to flailing all the way down.

“Okay, maybe I made it too cold.” Chey remarked after they had all pulled themselves out. They were all huddling around a blue flame they had collectively conjured. “But I’m not totally to blame. You’re the ones who told me ‘near freezing.’”

“We didn’t think you would pull us in!” Viktor exclaimed.

“Well, what goes around-” Chey didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence, for his companions’ expressions stopped his words in his throat.

“How did you pull us in?” Sergey asked a moment later.

“Little trick of my own. It’s part of a series of spells that are more fitting to save your life than to attain revenge.”

“You invented your own spells?” Viktor inquired, no longer ready to bite Chey’s head off. All three of were now intrigued. “How?”

“It’s easy as long as you understand magic.” This perplexed all three of them. How could simply “understanding magic” unlock such a powerful tool?

“We all know how to use magic!” Viktor voiced their collective thoughts. “Why can’t we create our own spells?”

“I said ‘understand.’” Like that made any more sense to them. “You can’t just pick up a book and start inventing at your heart’s content! You have to actually use your head. Having an expert teach you also helps.”

“So teach us. You say you ‘understand’ magic, so you can teach us to know it as you do.” Nikolay had stopped shivering just long enough to get out an intelligent sentence.

“Whoa, guys. It’s more complicated than just a little extra tutoring. This is hard stuff!”

“You figured it out.” Sergey pointed out. “If you could do it, so can we.”

Chey looked at them with an expression of slight exasperation.

“If you guys go through with this,” he said with the first bit of seriousness he’d exhibited since arriving, “your mind may be so disrupted by the lessons that focusing on anything at all will be next to impossible for weeks.”

“Are you serious?” Nikolay said, the shiver returning to his voice.

“Well, I haven’t seen it happen firsthand, but I heard about it.” Chey’s audience acquired a look of disappointment. They would have loved an excuse to completely ignore their schoolwork. “It does take a lot of concentration, among a few other things.”

“Such as?” Nikolay’s intrigue had returned.

“Hard work, determination, good wizard to wand compatibility, proficiency in nonverbal spellcasting, and an inexplicable comprehension of fluid dynamics.” There was a pause while he admired the state of confusion he had created. “Seriously.”

Chey had never faced such a difficult task, and he had never failed so miserably. It was clear that Chey did not make a very good teacher.

“It makes no sense, Chey!” they would exclaim periodically. The best Chey could do was try to explain what he knew, and given his rather off-beat thought process, the problems compounded. Chey’s definition of magic didn’t help much either.

“Magic is fickle as a pigeon you’re trying to train to sit on your shoulder. At the same time, it’s as consistent as the sun rising in the morning.” It made perfect sense to Chey, so why not anyone else?

Soon, however, they gave up on inventing their own spells, and settled for learning the ones Chey had developed. While many of them were similar to the ones in their text books, the advantage was that Chey’s spells were quick and nearly instantaneous. Add that to their nonverbal nature, and they were perfect for dueling, granting the caster an element of surprise.

Chey was just reviewing a flash-freezing spell with them during dinner, when Sergey got distracted and froze Chey’s hand instead of the glass of water in front of him. Needless to say, it sparked quite a cry of agony from their end of the table.

“What’d you do that for, man!” Chey exclaimed as he warmed his hand back to room temperature. “You forget which way is forward or what?”

“Sergey got a look at Mariya and lost his head,” Nikolay explained. However, this explanation required yet another.

“Who’s Mariya?”

“Over in the corner.” Viktor ansered. “She just walked in. Sat down in the corner over there.”

“Yeah, Sergey’s had an eye on her for months,” Nikolay elaborated. “She said hello to him once and for some reason he thinks that means there’s something between them.”

Chey let out a long sigh of realization. “Sergey’s got the hots for Mariya, eh?”

“In a matter of speaking,” Sergey said while staring blankly at the table.

“So what’s wrong? Just muster up any dignity you may have left following your dismal performance in potions class and ask the girl out!”

“It’s not that simple,” he said as though he’d played this conversation out in his head several times late at night.

“Why not? Look at her. She’s beautiful, right? Now look at the space between her and you. What do you see?”

“The floor,” Sergey responded with an air of reluctance to answer anyone’s questions at the moment.

“Exactly!” Chey was on a roll. “There’s no ferocious tiger or alligator infested moat or pool of molten lava anywhere! Not even a baby Horntail! You’re unstoppable, man! Go for it!”

Viktor and Nikolay simultaneously agreed with Chey, leaving Sergey no recourse but to go along with their suggestion. With a reluctant groan, Sergey made his way to Mariya’s table. All was looking good. On the way over, his posture straightened up, his stride became more regular, and his face exhumed confidence.

“You see, gentlemen?” Chey addressed the other two. “Given the right motivation, any man can overcome even the greatest obstacles.” Those words should never have been said. It was at that moment that Sergey made a slight adjustment to his course. This adjustment led him right out the door. “I’ve got a lot of work to do. Let’s go get him before he tries to drown his self-pity in the lake.”

The following weeks consisted of learning Chey’s spells, keeping up with their regular assignments, and building Sergey’s confidence. Unfortunately, they were a little too late, because Mariya was seen in the arms of the (allegedly) popular Andrey. Needless to say, Sergey had mixed feelings: on the one hand, he’d missed his chance, on the other he didn’t have the guys breathing down his neck. Despite the upside, he was still moody.

Another entry in their already busy schedule of activities was helping Viktor hone his flying skills. The four of them would conduct practice sessions outside the team practices. Viktor’s specialty was seeker, while Nikolay and Sergey were proficient in picking up a bat and swatting bludgers. Chey was the only one who could match Viktor’s skills, so he played the opposing seeker.

“Come on, Viktor! You’ll never make it to a pro league before seventh year if you don’t take advantage of every ounce of speed you can get!”

“You’re faster than me, Chey!”

“There’s a bit of speed in that too! Don’t you know anything about drafting?!”

Viktor, Sergey, and Nikolay had learned a lot since Chey had arrived. He’d brought with him the science that Americans apply to just about everything. Knowledge of aerodynamics, trajectories, and even psychology of the other team to predict which way they’ll turn all proved useful to them, the latter one being less so than the former two.

“I’m beginning to wonder how you made it so far before I showed up,” Chey said during a rather slow-paced practice session. “Listen, I saw your performance in the last game and something made me think. This game is too honest.”

“What do you mean?” Viktor asked, his confusion justified.

“The rules say nothing about using deception. I’ve been cooking up a little tactic that might help take advantage of that omission. But you have to pull it off just right: you go wrong one way and it doesn’t work. On the flip side, going wrong the other way will put you in a heap of hurt. However, if you do this right, you may just win the game.”

“That’s worth the gamble. Go ahead.”

“Okay, react to my movements as though I were the other team’s seeker.” Chey took a sharp, steep dive, and Viktor instinctively followed; anytime the other team’s seeker made a move, you followed it. Chey kept moving downward, seemingly focused on something directly ahead of him, while Viktor frantically searched the air in front of Chey. Closer and closer they sped to the ground, never slowing or deviating from their track. Then, with feet to go, and before Viktor could realize it, Chey changed course.

Viktor’s momentum continued to propel him to the ground, but by shear luck he was able to slow to the point that his collision with the dirt wasn’t too hard, and the impression left in the earth was kept to a minimum, but the lesson was well learned: use of deception to inflict pain on the other team’s most integral player was an effective strategy.

“I’ve been doing some research on that strategy you ‘invented,’ Chey,” Nikolay said the following day as he entered the student lounge with more ice for Viktor’s shoulder. “I’d thought I’d seen it before. Turns out it’s called the Wronski Feint.”

“Huh. Would’ve figured it’d only take someone as diabolical as me to think that up,” Chey responded as he snapped Viktor’s shoulder back into place, a quick remedy to the dislocation resulting from a practice a mere half hour before. Understandably, Viktor cringed at the pain. “Bring that ice over here. Viktor, you have got to watch the deck!”

“The what?” Viktor asked with a wince.

“The ground,” Chey responded as though everyone knew the terminology. “I just don’t see how you can’t avoid it when it’s right in front of you.”

“I misjudged my own skills, Chey.”

“Well that’s why we’re doing the same run tomorrow. We’ll keep running it until you get it right.”

“Why are you doing all this, Chey?” Sergey chimed in.

“All what?”

“Teaching Viktor all this stuff. There doesn’t seem to be any logic behind your decision to help.”

“All great athletes need a coach, my friend. Besides, my sadistic side is pleased when I see Viktor slam into the ground. Come on, you know it’s funny.”

“True.”

“Yeah. Also, there’s the possibility that I might become famous when he gets famous. That’s always a bonus. While we’re talking about bonuses, I heard that Mariya and Andrey had a little tiff. What do you think about that, Nikolay?”

“I think things might be on the rocks for them, Chey,” Nikolay responded. Sergey’s expression lit up for a fraction of a second, but went blank soon after.

“I heard she wants to break it off,” Viktor added breathlessly, still doubled over in pain, the ice on his shoulder now soaking his shirt. “What do you, in your wisdom, think of this, Chey?”

“Sounds to me like-”

“I know what you’re trying to do, guys,” Sergey interrupted. The jig was up.

“Oh, come on, man! We can’t even drop a hint?!” exclaimed Chey. It was quite clear that he had concocted this little act.

“You can’t blame us for trying, Sergey,” Viktor gasped, still reeling from Chey’s application of “hard knocks” medicine.

“I can’t talk to her. Besides, she’s just coming out of a relationship. I can’t look like a jerk to her!”

“You got it all wrong, oh ye with little knowledge of the feminine mind. First, it’s not what she thinks that matters, it’s what her friends think. If she was getting dumped, and you suddenly appeared in her life like a knight in shining armor, her friends would think you’re some kind of scumbag. However, she’s the one breaking it off, not the other way around. Now only she’ll think you’re an opportunistic scumbag, and you can undo that easily.”

For the first time ever, some of Chey’s advise made sense, without requiring further explanation. It was like something was not right with the world. There was an awkward silence as they all realized this. Finally, “Does...does anyone need clarifying?”

Instantaneously, the room was filled with three voices quickly saying “No” and “We’re okay” and “that’s fine.”

“You know what, Sergey?” Chey said after that moment of awkwardness. “I got an idea that might just get Mariya in your arms before you can say hello to her.”