Nothing particularly interesting happened for the rest of the week until Saturday, aside from Luna using "Perversa Mundi" on a few people in her house who had decided she looked like an easy target. Flitwick was quite pleased with how she dealt with them and was not at all surprised when he learned from her where she had picked up the spell. The professor had long since become accustomed to Julian pulling out obscure or nearly unheard-of magic. In this case, though, the spell was not quite that unusual, as it came from a book on illusions in the library that Flitwick himself had read back when he was a student.
That said, illusions were both oddly popular and unpopular at the same time. More specifically, the disillusionment charm, which was part of that branch of magic, was extremely common, but very few people ever bothered to look beyond that. 'It seems Julian shares my opinion on just how underused illusions really are,' the small professor thought with a broad smile. The professors were not supposed to have favorites, but in truth most of them privately did, and Julian was the preferred student of the majority of them, even Severus of all people. Snape might dislike people in general, but he still knew how to appreciate truly gifted individuals, especially when their talent happened to overlap with his own area of expertise.
Even so, Luna was warned not to use that illusion spell carelessly or with cruel intent, which she agreed to without any difficulty. Saturday was the day Julian's group of friends had planned to go visit Hagrid, but Harry got an unpleasant surprise from Oliver Wood, who wanted to begin training nearly an hour before Julian even woke up. That left Harry thoroughly exhausted by the time he caught up with the rest of the group and they all headed over to Hagrid's from the field after the Slytherin team arrived at the pitch.
...
(Earlier)
"As you can see, Mr. Malfoy has made a very generous contribution to the Slytherin Quidditch team in the form of an entire set of Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones. You may as well start preparing yourselves to lose to us in every future match," Marcus Flint taunted the Gryffindor team, who were still stuck using old broom models. The argument dragged on back and forth, and Malfoy, being unable to stop himself, began trading insults with Harry until Hermione answered him with a particularly biting remark and he said something he never should have.
"You should learn to keep your mouth shut, you filthy mudblood!" Malfoy spat at Hermione, and everyone nearby froze as a crushing atmosphere suddenly settled over the area. Julian's face was completely blank as he pulled out his wand and lightly tapped the ground at his feet. At once, the earth beneath Malfoy and the others warped into the gigantic snarling face of a lion that swallowed them whole. The lion's head then plunged back into the ground and vanished, leaving behind nothing but a hole about the size of a fist. The oppressive feeling disappeared, and everyone immediately turned toward Julian, who calmly stood up and returned his wand to its holster as though none of it had been a big deal.
"They are neither dead nor dying, merely trapped in a pocket beneath that hole around fifty feet down. That should teach them to watch what comes out of their mouths," he said before walking off toward Hagrid's hut with perfect calm, as though nothing unusual had happened at all. "Blimey, Julian, I didn't think you'd react like that. You're usually so calm," Ron said in surprise. The rest of them silently agreed, since Julian had only ever seemed that frightening once before, and that had been when Dumbledore pulled his stunt. This time, though, the pressure he had released had felt absolutely suffocating.
"Malfoy crossed a line and needed to be reminded that he is not untouchable. I can tolerate being insulted, and I can tolerate the rest of you being insulted if you are capable of standing up for yourselves, but there are limits to what I will allow," Julian said sternly. "I don't get what was so bad about what he said," Harry admitted honestly as they reached the hut. "Basically, it has to do with blood purity. In the eyes of pureblood supremacists, it means dirty blood, or less than human."
"It's complete rubbish, really, because bloodline plays almost no role in magic anymore most of the time," Julian said with a scoff. As far as he was concerned, the entire blood purist side of wizarding society was made up of idiots. Bloodline had stopped meaning anything in terms of talent the moment they stopped striving to push their own potential and instead just coasted through life on inherited status. Julian and a handful of others such as Dumbledore, Grindelwald, Snape, McGonagall, and even Voldemort were different, because all of them had worked hard to fully develop the talent they possessed. And it showed, because every last one of them was powerful in their own right.
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