Leon stood up, eager to start trying out the spell when he noticed that people were partnering up. Hmmm..

The older boy looked around, not sure if anyone wanted to partner with him or not, or if he even needed one? Maybe to toss things at his shield when he was done?

"Anyone want a Partner? " He supposed he would put it out there just in case, but if not.. he would try it on his own, yeah? He could always just accio things towards him and see what they did when they hit the shield.. Easy enough right?

Leon held his wand out and after making sure he had enough room around cast "Protego! " He wasn't worried about that one working, he could do that spell in his sleep really. Once his shield was up he then cast "Fianto Duri!"

Huh!

Well that looked about right.

Blueish white.. translucent? Check.. hmmm.. now to test it!

Ooookay, this didn’t sounded too difficult! She knew how to cast a shield charm, that had been something she had learned during her first year and, she had became good at it too! Not that that would be such a big accomplishment because it was a really easy spell to learn… So when it was time to practice she was pretty sure that she wouldn’t need much time for the first spell but… She didn’t knew about the second spell because, obviously, she didn’t had practiced it before and had no experience with it. Taking out her wand she grinned, a lesson in which she could practice was almost always a good one because that means that she didn’t needed to constantly write and make notes while listening to a endless story about something really boring during a lesson…

Making a quick but accurate movement with her want, what wasn’t difficult to do because it was only a swift tap, she spoke the spell; “pro-tay-goh!” A smile appeared on her lips when she, not at all surprised, saw that her spell had worked and a small but steady shield had appeared before her! “Now time for the next one” she muttered softly to herself while trying to keep the shield she had created strong and steady. Now pointing her wand toward the shield she had created she spoke the next spell with a clear voice, wanting it to work already during her first try; “fee-AHN-toe DYOU-ree” She spoke after looking one last time at the instructions to actually pronounce the spell correctly and… It worked! Ha! She knew it! Muggle born or not, she was good at practicing spells if she wanted to!

Janelle watched carefully and waited, as Natalia unwrapped her chocolate frog. Before she knew it, the frog jumped into her shield. The seventh year held her breath in anticipation and......poof. The chocolate frog was gone, just like that. Relieved, Janelle couldn't help the smile that formed on her lips. "Whew. One down one to go. Your turn now."

"Finite", Janelle said, ending the spell. Walking over to her partner, she extended her hand. "I'll take that chocolate frog now. You take a whack at it." Janelle knew that Natalia would have no problem with the spell. She had seen her do it when she first approached her about being partners. The Ravenclaw put her wand away and waited for the Head Girl to do her thing.

After practicing the pronunciation forever and ever he lost interest in the sound effects and he started doing lunges. He found lunges to be the most appropriate movement for this specific spell. Yes, he did.

"Protego! Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrotego!" Every time he uttered the spell he put his right foot forward into a lunge.

Carlton felt more than cool.

He was ready to move on to the want movement. He wipped out his wand, ignoring his distrust with it. "Protego!" He lunged forward with his wand in front of him. Nothing happened.

Well, then. "Proteeego!" Another lunge. Another time his wand didn't work for him. He let out a puff of air in annoyance and looked over to where the older students were. Most of them had their shields up and were testing its durability. Pouting he looked down at his own wand.

Why couldn't his wand be as good as theirs were? He also wanted to be able to perform magical things with literally just a flick of his wand. But he couldn't. So it was back to the lunges.

"Protego!" Nope, nothing. "GO, PROTEGO, GO!" Yeah, that didn't work either.

Carlton wasn't one to give up though. He got ready for another deep lunge. "Protego!"

Was that... Was that a light, teeny, tiny little blue shimmer at the end of his wand? It was. Carlton squealed in hapiness, bouncing a little.

" MR. H! It worked!" He cried excitedly and paniced a little when he realized he'd used a friendly nickname for Han-Solo a Professor. He quickly continued and hoped Professor Hirsch wouldn't take offense because no offense meant he was just really, really excited! "It worked! My wand isn't broken after all, look look!" He cleared his throat and did a maaajor lunge forward with his wand, "PROTEGO!" He put as much force as he could behind the words and a small shimmer of light erupted from his wand.

Carlton was beyond ecstatic. He'd made his wand do something... Something! He wasn't aware that the little shimmer he'd been able to produce wasn't nearly enough to use as a shield but there was nothing that could put a downer on his mood right now.

This was monumental!

Well, this was bound to make his day less pleasant. Harvey never did well with new spells - at first. He was pretty sure he did worse than most people who attempted new spells, and especially most Ravenclaws. And he was bound to disappoint his head of house with this. Brilliant. If only he could be as good with practical things as with theory...

But there was no use wishing now. Brandishing his wand in what he hoped was a determined way, hoping the action would make him feel more confident, he cleared his throat (his voice had a nasty tendency of breaking these days at the most inappropriate moments) and cast the first spell.

"Protego!"

Blue sparks. Great. Well, at leas they were the right colour.

Harvey tried again, his frown increasing as he focused and focused. After what seemed like an age, finally - finally! - a translucent thing grew from the tip of his wand. This must be it!

"Fianto Duri!"

Nothing happened. That he could see, anyway. Though the shield seemed to shimmer. Was that a good thing... or a bad thing? There was no way to tell, really, without chucking something at it.

Picking up the piece of chalk he'd left prepared near him for just this purpose, his eyes never leaving the shield as if he could keep it there through sheer force of will and eye contact, Harvey prepared to throw it.

And then realised the futility of the exercise since he was inside the shield. This was not something he could do by himself, clearly.

Hattie was pretty confident that her shield charm had worked. She'd cast it a lot of the last few years, especially within duelling club. So she was pretty confident that it had worked. Now she needed to try the second half of the spell. This was something that she was a little more nervous about. She hadn't cast the spell before, so she didn't know if she could. But she made a mental note to try and not be too frustrated if she couldn't do it. School was for learning, and so if it took her time to learn it, then it really did not matter. She just hoped that she would be able to do it again

Hattie completed the wand incantation whilst saying "Fianto Duri" And hoping it had worked. She looked at where she thought her shield was, hoping to find the blue-white shield. Hmm. Nope. Not there. Maybe one of the charms hadn't worked. She frowned, but didn't letter it bother her. Instead she repeated, saying "Protego" and then casting "Fianto Duri" straight after wards. She had to resist the temptation to clap as the charms seemed to work, and she had a blue-white looking shield.

Now to test it. She pulled a parchment out of her pocket, one that was empty, and then she tossed it through her shield, so she could watch to see if it worked. And the parchment disintegrated. "Yaay" The third year beamed. Yep. She did good. Gold Star?

The shield charm? Ok, Kane was KIND of good at that...he was a bit rusty though. Hopefully he could conjure up something that would be strong enough to use the NEW spell with...did the strength of your shield charm affect it? Probably, right? That would make sense...

Lost in his thoughts, Kane blinked a few times and then remembered he needed to be PRACTICING. Yeah, practice was good.

"Protego!" he exclaimed, picturing a shield in front of him and doing the wand movement and hoping that that helped. He then pointed and said "Fianto Duri!" at the shield, hoping the blue glow would show up...

But nope, no dice. And then his shield shuddered away. It was probably all in his head...COME ON KANE...you got this...

Shield charms were among Kitty's favorite spells to cast. She didn't consider herself much of a fighter, (though she was much better than she used to be)but defending was something she was rather good at.

She balanced first on one foot and then on the other, then she gave her back a slight wriggle and twisted her arms around her neck. For a moment she considered taking off her school robes so as to be more agile, but decided against it.

"Protego!" she shouted, waving her wand in the correct fashion and imagining an impenetrable shield appearing in front of her. Then she pointed her wand at it and shouted, "Fianto Duri!"

A quick blue glow flashed in front of her.

"I did it!" she squealed joyfully.

Making stilted inquiries to some of the other students proved remarkably useful, as they informed Sinead that she needed not to focus on a single burst of power as in most spells, but instead think of it as a steady flow of concentration to create the shield. Which made sense, really- it was a continuous casting, that was the whole point of needing to use Fianto Duri. Sinead's shield still wasn't exactly remarkable in its size or quality, but it was respectable, and consistent enough that she thought she was ready to try Fianto Duri.

Biting her lip in fierce concentration, Sinead cast Protego once more (really, she was quite proud of how that had come along- it just served to reinforce her conviction that she could master any spell with enough practice). Professor Hirsch had said that it wasn't a problem, that you didn't need too much focus for Fianto Duri, just to say the words- but she'd been taught that you always needed intention for any spell to work, so she closed her eyes and tried to hold a kind of dual focus as she spoke the next incantation. Something seemed to work- she could feel that little whoosh that she got every time she cast a spell successfully, and cautiously opened her eyes to find a faint shimmer in the air still present, just like when she cast a normal shield before. Experimentally, she lowered her wand, and it remained in place- but it didn't have the appearance of some of her classmates' shields, and when she threw a scrunched-up piece of paper at the shield, it bounced off instead of disintegrating, like it would from the standard Protego shield.

So. It looked like the spell's duration had been enhanced, but not its power and properties? In that case, she'd just have to try again. She cancelled the previous shield and prepared herself to cast again, aware this time that she needed to give the Fianto Duri a little extra boost. She still had five minutes or so before they moved on with the lesson; she should be able to make some good progress towards achieving the spell, even if mastering it was still a bit out of the reach of a first-year.

No way was Kat not missing a DADA lesson ever. She would have to be on her death bed to miss it. It was hands down one of her favorite lessons. She had still yet to narrow down what she wanted to do after Hogwarts, she had that stuff to really worry about next year. But she was still going down the path of waiting to be a auror or a healer, or herbologist or maybe a Magizoologist. You could tell what her favorite lessons were.

She greeted the Professor with a good morning and a smile, then she took a seat. She got ready for class as the others came in too. She had been thinking about going to the training room more this term, that the past terms. It was something that she really liked doing.

Once class started she listened to Hirsch's first question of the lesson..... mmmm what was most frustrating thing about casting spells? Well that was a easy question. She raised her hand. "What I find difficult is finding the right spell to use or what spell will work best, also being distracted having to guess what your opponent is planning to cast." She hoped that made sense. It made sense to her, right enough.

Fianto Duri. Well now this was a great idea for dueling, wasn't it? She raised her hand once again. "It lets you keep a charm going so you cast put your focus on other spells." Yeah that was basically it. Which was pretty awesome if you asked her.

So now they were going to practice the Fianto Duri charm. But first she caught up on her notes and added the ones from the board. Now she was ready for the fun stuff. She got to her feet. Luckily with her four years of dueling club Kat had gotten pretty good with protego. So she was very confident in this spell already. She got up and cast the shield charm "Pretego!" Now that that in place it was time to keep it going by casting the new spell. "Fianto Duri." Was it working? She looked to see a blueish white shield.

Cassie couldn’t help beaming as Hirsch responded so positively to her given answer. Excellent thinking, he had called it. She had to lightly bite the inside of her cheek as she looked down at her notes to drag her attention back to his words as he continued on with the next topic. When new information was added to the board, the Ravenclaw was busy scribbling it down in her notes before slipping her wand from her pocket to begin practicing once they were allowed to. Fianto duri and protego together.

“Fianto Duri…fee-AHN-toe DYOU-ree… Fianto Duri” she tried out first, trying to get that pronunciation down before adding the wand movement the mix. “Fianto Duri…”point “Fianto Duri…” point. Protego she was already secure with. Kinda had to be to be any good at dueling. Finally she tried it out all together.

“Fianto Duri Protego!”

Normal shield...not quite the right color. Bummer.

Having her answer praised by Prince Erik helped to soothe some of the annoyance from before, and not to allow said annoyance to resurface, she took to copying down everything that had suddenly appeared on the blackboard. This spell.... Ugh, if she could learn THIS bit of magic, it would be doubly helpful come time for tournament duels, but it would all depend on if she could manage to cast it. See, Liv wasn't infallible when it came to Charms. There were some that just didn't work out for her yet. She was only a Fourth Year. There was still so much to learn and accomplish.

Like the Patronus Charm.......!!!!.... Could this spell work with that?

While she made with the standing up and working out of her bones and joints, which were decidedly less achy these days given that her growth spurts seemed to have stopped completely (her mother had named stress as the culprit), Olivia raised her left hand; withdrawing her wand with the other. "Professor, could this enhance a Patronus Charm?" He'd mentioned that there were some spells it simply did not work with. Obviously, Olivia couldn't pretend to know everything about Patronuses, but they seemed to be ongoing... "Like in a dangerous situation, could you produce your patronus and have it kept nearby for protection...as you carried on with whatever else you needed to do?"

Eh, questions, questions....QUESTIONS. What was she doing?! There was work to do and a fascination new spell she desperately wanted to perfect. So, forgive her singular Ravenclaw moment. One didn't spend so much time with Mr. Ravenclaw himself (looking at you, Rooney) and not have it rub off in some way. Could Ravenclaw'ing be considered infectious? Merlin, she hoped not. She got enough headaches these days without a bunch of overthinking thrown into the mix. Thank you very much.

Now, as far as the Protego shield went, Olivia was at Jedi master level. It was one of the most important tools in her dueling arsenal. Among others. Of course, Liv couldn't know how her peers approached their duels, but she always had a particular set of spells she knew she could cast with confidence in a tight spot. So, casting it now, despite her trauma, came second nature. It was akin to being in the arena, fighting down a barrage of magical attacks. It got her blood pumping and her heart racing. Adrenaline. Pausing for a moment to shake off some trembling, because her mind was going to some pretty terrible places.....the Gryffindor narrowed her gaze and refocused on what she needed to do. This was what she was good at. Was she really about to allowed people who didn't even matter take that away? The answer was no.

With a few more deep breaths, the blonde gripped her wand, maneuvering it around herself like a whip. "Protego!"........Then followed by, "Fianto Duri!" Holding her breath as she watched her shield go up.....because if it STAYED up, then the additional spell had worked. If it faded away, she'd failed. And honestly, there was nothing to be ashamed about if it did. This was her first try, and Olivia didn't know how to give up...... And yeah, the shield disappeared. This additional spell was... Well, it wasn't going to be a cakewalk, apparently. It was one of those.

Taking a moment to collect herself...because Liv thought she understood why it wasn't working, she held her wand between her teeth, shaking out her hands. This was practice. It was all good. She could try again... So, retaking her wand in hand, the blonde whipped out a third Protego, the hued shield appearing at once. That was the easy part...Deep breath. Concentration. FOCUS....Man, she felt all over the place, but additionally, this was important to her. So, what was it going to be? She needed to get it together.

"Fianto Duri!!!" Point. Point. POINT! The blonde person was aggressively pointing her wand. Annnnd, her shield had disappeared. Again.

Argh!

Professor Hirsch was talking to her. Lots and lots. Something about her phrasing had been good ... or something like that. And then he was actually considering her answer which was good because she sort of had blurted that one out without thought. "Or if you were exploring! Or if you wanted to play Quidditch in the dark. She added to his words about attacking a creature.

Sure, it didn't have much to do with DADA but it was more fun.

JUST LIKE WIGGLING.

She happily stood up, discarding her quill and paper and instead taking only her wand. Professor Hirsch was right, sitting down like that was bad for your muscles so she wiggled her arms and jumped in place. Here we go, now we were getting practical! She listened closely to the professor's words and nodded slightly to herself. Right, she wasn't so good at the theoretical stuff but she was sort of alright in the practical side of things.

More often than not.

Shield Charm, then Fianto Duri.

"Protego." She said with confidence, after taking a deep breath and gripping her wand tighter. It didn't really seem to work and the fifteen year old tried not to huff in frustration. She reallyshould have this under control by now. It was just a Shield Charm. She squared her shoulders once more and repeated the wand movement. "Protego." This time a shield materialised itself around her and Slytherin girl allowed herself a little smile.

Alrighty, part two now.

"Fianto Duri." Daisy said, hoping to every entity there was that the pronunciation was correct. The shield seemed to falter for a tiny fraction of time before it started glowing with a blue hue. OKAY, now for the fun part. Reaching into the pocket of her uniform cloak, Daisy got an old chocolate frog wrapper and threw it across the shield.

POOF, IT WAS GONE! Gone into smithereens!

Colt was now gonna practice his shield again, he got into his zone. He got his wand out and held it at the ready and said, "Protego!" and then he casted with "Fianto Duri!" and he saw the blueish white shield. He beamed with pride. He finally did it. He wondered why it didn't work the last time? Ah well, at least it works now. Now he was looking for someone to test it. He walked around and saw Leon had no partner. He walked over to him and said, "Hey mate..you need someone to test your shield on? I'm your man.." He figured this would be interesting.

So....Olivia Phillips clearly needed a timeout. Taking a seat on the classroom floor, off to the side of the action, she drew her knees up to her chest. Man, she did not like getting frustrated in lessons. It always brought out some ugliness, and right now that just wasn't good for her. Not for her own mental health. But then again, how else was she meant to work through it? .... Maybe she was overthinking. Trying too hard, but that was such a foreign concept to the Gryffindor, given that she'd always tried too hard. On purpose. No, the truth of the matter was that Olivia still felt invested in being here, despite bad experiences, but there was something just on the edge of her mind. It was always there, threatening to break loose and wreak havoc on her subconscious.

This was exhausting. Basically, all it took was getting her mind in the right place. No thinking about anything other than today and this lesson. Focus on the here and now. So, pushing herself up off her bum, the blonde made her way back into the fray. She'd try again, and keep trying until she got it. Giving up was lame, and this girl wasn't lame.

"Protego!" It was said with some fierceness. Her determination was still there, as well as her persistence. Olivia would never lack those things. "Fianto Duri!" POINT!

Practice, practice, practice!

Jonas watched as everyone got partnered up. He frowned as he was the only one with out a partner. He just shrugged though and took his wand out to practise by himself.
"Protago...pro-ta-go" he said to himself outloud. He frowned though as nothing happened.

Brent looked up at his shield and watched it for a bit before deciding whether or not it was strong enough. It looked pretty good to him. People were partnering up, which was cool by Brent, because he always preferred a group of friends over being bored by himself. "Anybody want to partner up?" he asked the crowd of students. Hopefully they did. He didn't want to achieve instant loser status by having nobody respond to him.

In the meantime, he decided to work with the spell a little. It was a new one to him. The Fianto Duri part, that is. Not the Shield Charm. That was pretty much basic spell work. He ended his shield and decided to practice the incantation and wand movement of the spell a bit before trying it for real. "Fianto Duri!" he called out. "Fianto Duri!" He decided not to practice the wand movement. He'd be a total dork to stand here and practice a simple point of the wand.

Noelle obviously didnt have it down yet. That's okay. Most people didnt get it on their first try.

"Do you take a deep breath before you do a spell?" Noelle asked Olly after watching him try again. The shield was weak though. He needed to breathe. Thats what helped Noelle. "When I started getting serious about my spellwork, I had Henric teach me. He said to take a deep breath and clear everything else." Maybe it would work for Olly to??

"Okay... here goes!" Noelle started the process over again. She cast the shield charm with a strong, "Protego!" Followed by a quick "Fianto Duri" She knew she could do the spell so this time, it was better. She grinned as the color came out strong. Maybe it had worked this time?

SO. MANY. WORDS.

Etta just stared at the professor for a moment, wondering momentarily if he liked to talk a lot. She looked down at her notes and sighed, pretty sure she had missed half of what he'd said... oh, well. She would have to ask someone for their notes later.

Practice time, though. This was a little exciting. Etta got up, took out her wand... but wait. People seemed to be pairing up? She frowned, suddenly feeling a bit awkward. Um. Most of them seemed to have partners already. Maybe she should just start practicing first.. she took out her wand and with the utmost concentration, said, "Protego!"

BLINK. It didn't work, did it? Annoyed with herself, she tried once again when she heard someone ask if they wanted to partner up. Yes! Finally. And it was the boy person. Brent, his name was? "I'd like to practice with someone. If you're interested.." Awkward. AWKWARD.

"Paper balls?" Why couldn't she try to defend herself with his harmless spells? Hmm...guess she wasn't confident to produce a shield. James looked around if they were provided any paper for them to practice with but didn't think the class had any of those lying around. Waving his wand towards his bag, he summoned a couple of parchment over and crushed them. He watched her produce the protego charm. Not bad, she could do better, though. James nodded,"Alright then. Ready?" He levitated a few and tossed the crushed paper balls over to her.

...and lo and behold, he didn't have to wait long at all! "Yeah, sure," he said, and then he blushed as he added, "I'm surprised there's a girl anywhere in this castle that wants to partner with me after what happened in Herbology class." You know, the whole moment when the professor called him out for saying something to Skylar that was totally innocent. he kind of laughed that off before turning back to the lesson.

"So you need to put all your intent into that Shield Charm," he said. He reached into his bag, pulled out a piece of parchment, and wadded it up. "Okay, focus on this wadded parchment. It's going to hit you in the face if you don't block it." Not hard, of course. It would just be a little tap. He held it out as if he was going to do an underhanded throw. "Alright, now think about blocking it, ...because here it comes."

...and on that note, he tossed the parchment ball toward her.

With her shield charm still firmly in place, Katy was free to move on to the new spell. It wasn't even very hard, at least incantation-wise, but she still mouthed the charm a few times to familiarize herself with how it felt in her mouth. Drag on the eeee sound, percussive sounds to follow. Fianto Duri. Almost like poetry.

"Fianto Duri," she cast the spell on her shield charm and jumped up and down when it did that neat-o blue-white flash. That was cool. Hirsch... this was cool. Credit where it was due.

"Someone throw something at me!!"

Rooney had reached across and wiped the ink from Liv's nose with a soft smile before she got up to practice the spell in coalition with the shield charm. He was a little caught off guard when she started asking Professor Hirsch a few more questions, his confusion heightening as he looked between her and his Head of House. Why was she asking this in front of people? Had she forgotten that there were other students around? And why was...was she caught up in thinking that she could change what had happened just by knowing this stupid spell that kept your stupid shield up without you needing to look after it? Huh?

He left her to it, deciding to practice by himself for a bit because he was still a little annoyed after earlier things and needed to calm himself. By casting.

Wand out, Rooney shot up a shield charm without properly thinking about it too much -- it had surprisingly become second nature around the castle and especially in circumstances out on the grounds. However, he had very little time to swap out that spell for the next when he stopped in his tracks to watch his girlfriend try and try again and then just...sit down. Roo wanted to immediately go over and crouch at her feet and ask her all about how she was feeling and hold her hand and everything that he would do at any other time.

He moved to where she was once she had gotten up again and stood immediately beside her. "Tell me what I can do to help? Do you want to practice after class? Do you want me to ask Hirsch if we can leave? Areyougoingtocry?" He wasn't ready for the last one of that. "I haven't done it yet, either.." Only because he had been too confused by things going on with his girlfriend, but he couldn't TELL her that.

And for extra help for when she next tried, Rooney leant in close and whispered that he loved her. Because he did. Even if people thought he was silly and they were stupid. "Try again." He had even pocketed his wand to focus on helping her out first.

Etta rolled her eyes at him, smiling a little. "Well, I don't know what exactly happened in Herbology but I haven't seen you be mean so far. I don't have a problem with you. " .. nah. He didn't look mean, anyway. She was still a little curious as to why he got into trouble, though.

She nodded, focusing again, hoping not to mess it up this time. The girl took a deep breath quickly since Brent was getting ready to throw the parchment before she spoke, "Protego." Did it work? .. there it was! A shield had formed around her. She couldn't help but feel a little proud. Trying not to lose focus, her eyes still narrowed in concentration, she just about to cast a Fianto Duri when her shield started to waver. And it was gone. Oops. She rubbed her forehead, feeling a little disappointed before looking up at Brent.

"Guess I messed it up.. Your turn now." She said, picking up the wadded parchment.

Whoops…

As she heard other students practicing around her, Cassie realized what sort of mistake she had made in her practicing and putting the spells together. She had cast the wrong spell first. She had to cast the shield charm and then the new spell afterwards to actually extend it. The Ravenclaw nodded absently to herself as she came to understand it all, easy enough as it made sense given what they had talked about the nature of the companion spell. So now she just needed to try it all again.

“Protego!” she cast first, watching as her usual shield appeared before her. “Fianto duri!” Cass cast in follow up soon after, pointing at the established shield. This time it showed as the color mentioned on the board.

Success!