It had been an exhilarating night. Darius had done a feat few could ever hope to boast of in their entire lives. He spent a full moon night with a werewolf. He had had a good time and was looking forward to doing it again next month. He and Sirius had even planned to try and convince Lupin to roam in the forest before then. Lupin had managed to keep his full mental faculties today with the help of the Wolfsbane potion and there was no reason they could not freely roam the forest next time.

The next main event coming up was the season’s first quidditch match and spirits were running high at Hogwarts. With Draco not injured due to the Buckbeak incident, the first match was set to be Gryffindor vs Slytherin. The rivalry between the two houses was at an all-time high and small fights and scuffles broke out between them every other day. The only place the two houses ever met with even a modicum of civility was in the DA club. Darius had been very strict about the rules. Every member left the identity of their houses behind when they stepped into the DA hall. Any member bringing house squabbles into play would be immediately banned for an appropriate amount of time and repeat offenders directly kicked out of the club. And only a moron would risk getting kicked from a club where they learned so much yet had a lot of fun as well.

Malfoy’s reputation in Slytherin house had taken a severe beating after the Buckbeak incident. Most of the members of the house had known he was planning something against Hagrid though not exactly what it was. But being the first student to be given detention by the gentle giant was certainly not it. Slytherins valued cunning and this was anything but. It had set Malfoy’s plans to take control of Slytherin house back by a lot and he had to do something to redeem himself. Winning the match against Gryffindor would go a long way towards restoring his reputation and taking Potter down would just be the icing on the cake.

Darius was continuing to use the RoR regularly to train himself. While he could use the rooms inside his trunk to practice his Rune overlaying and crafting, the RoR was singularly suited to practice actual combat. And now that Mione actually knew some of his secrets, she often joined him for his training in the room. He tried not to get his hopes up and imagine she actually liked him but it was really beginning to seem as if she did. They were both very comfortable around each other and he noticed her giving him some long glances when she thought he wasn’t looking. Maybe the best way forward would be to simply stop dithering and ask her out for the next Hogsmeade weekend.

Hermione herself enjoyed training in the RoR. Darius being there alongside her was just an extra cherry on top. Since he had taught her Fortis Memoriae, she diligently went through at least a book every week. Her memory had been excellent before but this spell was on a whole another level. It had never occurred to her to get a eidetic memory, however temporarily through the use of a spell and she was awed by the sheer ingenuity involved in Darius coming up with it and then actually creating the spell.

She had been proud of her talents when she first arrived at Hogwarts but that went out of the window soon enough. Leaving aside the fact that it had alienated her from nearly all her classmates, she soon came across Darius Icarus, a veritable genius whose accomplishments far outstripped hers own. Yet he never held that over the rest of the students. He went about his business on his own and continued to excel wherever it mattered. Studying with him in the first-year had been a god-sent. She didn’t have any friends then and it was nice to have someone intelligent to talk to. Plus, the explanations he gave her and the magical theories he taught her set a firm foundation for her future studies. She was having a much easier time grasping the principles of new magic. She was so pleased she had decided to follow him that day. It had led to finding out his secret and her screaming at him but he didn’t hold it against her. In fact, they seemed to have grown much closer since then.

Girls usually matured faster than boys, they even entered puberty earlier. It was all the more applicable in the magical world, where all children matured faster, period. Maybe magic itself had something to do with that or maybe not but most people went through at least a few relationships while still at school and an early marriage soon after leaving the castle was relatively common. Hermione’s feelings towards Darius weren’t strange by any means. Both of them were 14 years old and even ordinary muggles got into relationships by then. And Darius’ case was even simpler. He may have been nearly twenty when he died but he had had minimal social interactions before that, especially with the fairer sex. It was literally his first chance at a relationship and he had falen for Hermione hard.

The two of them trained together in perfect tandem. Both used the practice ranges liberally and read the various books whenever they were tired. Darius was training multiple aspects of magic in turns. He would practice casting down the long range, then duelling against the dummies, practice occlumency against the room itself and so on. Training his occlumency against the room helped a lot. The pure mental pressure helped him improve and hone his defences and it felt like he was fighting off a different opponent each time he practiced, quickly building up his experience in mind arts.

Mione had been stunned when he had first told her about occlumency and why it was useful. She was incensed that such an important subject was just being glossed over and not taught at Hogwarts. Since then she had started practising with a vengeance and improved rapidly at the initial stages. She was a middling level Occlumens now and still slowly improving.

The latest training Darius was doing was the disillusionment charm. It was undoubtedly a handy charm and practising it to a high proficiency would only help him in the future. The counterpart of the training was learning to identify when there was someone disillusioned in the vicinity. You never know when someone might be able to overhear something sensitive or secretive and got to be able to catch the clues and verbal cues that give away disillusionments. He had been pleased as punch when he had found 8 disillusioned people when he had trained this in the RoR for the first time. That was until he got to know that there were 20 people disillusioned instead of the 10 he had supposed. He had knuckled down right after that and started training seriously.

Mione and Darius were also learning magic detection. It was a way to detect magic in the surroundings and very useful for fighting against a greater number of opponents or when someone sneak attacks you. Adept magic sensors could even identify the spells being cast on them merely by the magical signature, though that was still a very long way to go for Darius before he got anywhere near that level of skill. It was also an effective aide for learning how to cast wandless magic.

One of the reasons Darius managed to learn wandless casting easily was because he had done it so early in life, well before he grew dependant on wands. He had practised meditation since a young age, making it so that he in close touch with his inner magic. He also used each incident of accidental magic to further get in tune with his magic. After all, accidental magic was merely wandless magic with bare minimum control. The official way to learn wandless magic was meditation, and long periods of it.

There was also the fast track method used by combat specialists were the used the ambient magic of wards to hone their sensing capabilities. Ward barriers would create a field of magic and repeatedly passing through them could give one the sense for the magical fluctuations in the air. It was just a matter of how much time it took. This is what Darius and Mione were practising now. Darius had skipped right past this step and never learned the useful skill of magical detection and Mione needed it to begin learning wandless casting.

The day of the first match finally dawned. It was a cloudy day and heavy rains were in the offing. The entire quidditch team was in a grim mood at the breakfast table, as usual. As far as Darius could remember, the dementors had attacked during this match, which led to Harry falling from his broom and the team losing the match. It would not go that way this time though. There were a number of people in the crowd capable of casting the Patronus and they would be able to fight back. Darius would still have to be on the lookout though, he was causing bigger and bigger ripples in the timeline and soon, it would be altogether different from the original. It wouldn’t do to become complacent and get caught on the back-foot then.

The winds were really picking up by now and it was raining heavily by the time the match started. Darius had already charmed the player’s robes and Harry’s glasses to repel the rain and they had a much easier time of it in the match. He and Mione stood together in the stands and he had charmed the area around them to be clear of the rains as well. The match was going well but it soon became nearly impossible to follow the game, what with the heavy downpour.

That is when it happened, the eerie chill swept across the field and all the sound seemed sucked out of the surroundings as if it had been muted, announcing the impending arrival of the dementors. He saw them, coming across the field like a wave of darkness. Their combined numbers started affecting him far worse than the single one on the train, even at a distance.

…......He will never be able to leave a sterilized environment.........

….........He won’t live past twenty..........

…......I’m sorry, but no one can help him now........

…..His fate is in God’s hands.........

As the negative diagnoses rang through his ears, he remembered seeing all the doctors giving up one by one, turning away from him. The pain in his parents’ eyes as they watched him waste away. The scant few times he contemplated suicide. It seems the memories of his past life were not as gone as he would have liked. He had stopped himself from remembering those helpless days but these vile creatures had brought it all to the fore.

But, he managed to pull himself together with a monumental effort and force of will and refocused on the dementors. They were closer now and everyone in the stadium had noticed them by now. The situation was close to devolving into panic when a single bright light shone in the darkness and Darius fired off his Patronus. His Ocelot Patronus, which had grown in size further, split into three identical figures and charged the dementors head on. Next to him, Mione drew warmth from his Patronus and sent her own otter as well. Darius could see Neville sending his lion, Luna’s hare, Ginny’s horse, Daphne’s swan, Seamus’ terrier and so many more. The Patronuses swarmed the dementors instead and sent them packing.

Darius wasn’t looking their way though. He was looking at Harry who seemed to be slipping off his broom. They had been just a few seconds late in driving away the dementors and their effects had hit Harry hard. But he was beginning to pull himself together when Malfoy zipped past him at a high speed. Harry was not stable yet and the sudden turbulence sent him tumbling off the broom from 40ft up in the air, his broom floating away in the distance.

Darius leapt to action and cast a quick hover charm to slow Harry’s fall. A lot of people had screamed when they saw him slip off, including Mione and he could almost hear a collective sigh of relief when they saw him slow down and come to a halt just a few feet of the ground. Unfortunately, Malfoy seized the moment to catch the snitch and eked out a close Slytherin victory and there was nothing that could be done about it.

Darius, Mione and the rest of the team had rushed Harry to the medical wing. Madam Pomfrey declared he had just passed out and would be right as rain by the end of the day. Fred and George had gotten the remaining splinters of Harry’s Nimbus after its collision with the Whomping Willow. Guess somethings just weren’t meant to change though. Darius would keep trying his very best though.

There were some things he had to think through for the future though.