Duelling for Dummies *Andrew Skulleech
Now here came the part where Brooke usually tripped over her own feet. Using a spell in a safe environment was one thing but the second the dummy started to move Brooke felt as nervous as usually about duels. Her aim wasn’t too great and the dummy was moving fast and suddenly this whole thing was about a million times more difficult than it had been when she was just trying it out on a harmless ball.
With knitted brows she tried to concentrate enough to get the spell right but it was a little too late, the panic of failing already starting to freeze her thoughts and paralyze her in place.
Now or never, she thought as she repeated the wand motion (surprisingly on spot for how far she was already into her nervous thought loop) and mumbled the words.
She even hit the mannequin square in the chest but the spell only slowed it down for a few seconds before the dummy went right back to it’s erratic movements.
“Sorry…”, Brooke whispered, looking at her feet, confidence lost.
Andrew observed the girl’s attitude completely shifting, he could understand that the exercise was harder but there was no reason to hinder oneself like that, now he got why she obviously had issues with duels. It was a real shame because she was pretty spot on when nothing seemed to bother her, she could’ve been a fantastic opponent.
“Don’t let the movements get to you. It’s better to try and launch your spell a few times before hitting than to just throw it blindly and hoping it will hit. No one will blame you for it and it will be a life saver, waiting without doing anything will get you hurt. Try again.”
He didn’t slow down the dummy, it would be stupid and of no use at all, if she had needed to learn it the hard way she would have known already, but they had the opportunity to work on that in a harmless way so he wasn’t going to spoon feed her.
“If anything, try to imagine the dummy’s next move, don’t focus on where it is now but on where it will be by the time you will throw your spell.”
