It was perfect weather. Well, almost perfect. It could have been a bit less sunny, as Nigel was already feeling a bit moist, and all he had done was walk from the castle to the edge of the Forest. It was as dark and forbidding as ever, but they weren’t going in there today. This nice open stretch, only broken by a few scattered shade trees, was the best place for some target practice. It was open enough that there was plenty of room to shoot, but not in direct view of the castle. He had checked. Not that there was actually a rule about what he had planned—he didn’t think—but he doubted the teachers would be all that thrilled about it.
Plonking down all his gear, he peeled off his jumper and set about sorting things out and restoring them back to proper working size. He only had two sets of equipment, but he figured that would be okay, because he was supposedly going to be teaching, and he wasn’t sure what Nat was going to do, and Will was learning. And his targets were going to be targets. Well-paid targets, but they wouldn’t need bows. He had bought a new case of arrows, so they had plenty of shots, which would be important, because he fully expected Will to be shooting them all over the place. About twenty of them were super beginner arrows with blunt, cottony, cushioned tips. But, most of them had coloured pellets at the tips that exploded a chalky pigment on the target (it came off with soap and water—except for the bruise, of course).
He stuck ten of the beginner arrows into a quiver for Will, and ten of his coloured ones in his own quiver, slinging his own across his right shoulder and adjusting the strap so he could easily reach the arrows. He checked the strings and tension of each bow and found them satisfactory, which was good because repairing them or adjusting the tension was a bit beyond the realm of Nigel’s knowledge. He tended to overcompensate on the tension and snap the strings. He was just putting a glove on his left hand when a group of little girls wandered up to him.
Eying them, he saw that they each had a piece of his flyer in their hands and that they were all Hufflepuffs. Of course, they would be. The middle girl looked like the leader, and she seemed criminally cheerful. Nigel would definitely enjoy shooting her. Over the next couple minutes, the little Puff girls were joined by two boys and another girl, and Nigel quickly gave them the run down of what they would be required to do if they wanted to get the promised Galleon per hour payment. Using a sticking charm, he pasted paper targets to each of their backs. “Now, go sit over there until we’re ready for you,” he commanded them, pointing to a clump of trees.
Not a moment too soon, either, because right after he sent them off to wait, he saw Will coming towards him, looking quite eager. Waving her over, he indicated her pile of supplies. “Those are for you,” he said. “Did you bring your gauntlets? You should put those on. It’s for your own protection. Is Nat not with you? I invited him, but I don’t know if he’ll show… He might be hunting Caitlin, now that she’s ‘available’ again.” His face made it clear what he thought about that. Ridiculous, that’s what.
Nigel surveyed the landscape for a moment, trying to decide on the best placement of the targets. There was a nice tree about twenty yards away… “I’ll set up a target and demonstrate, and then you can try it yourself, okay? You’ll have to tell me if you need something explained, because my lessons were so long ago, I can barely remember them. Lowe!” he shouted to the cheerful Puff girl, pointing to the tree he had singled out. “Three paces from that tree and show us the target! Go on! Big paces… Lunge! There. Right there, stop!”
Once the little girl was in position, he drew one of his own coloured arrows and turned to Will. “Now, pay attention.”




