Disclaimer: Did we ever see Harry revising spells or potions from previous years at any regular schedule, even the really useful ones? If not, Harry Potter does not belong to me. It belongs to JK Rowling, and this story is entirely non-profit.

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Fleur Delacour's victory in the Fourth Task spawned endless discussions and arguments the days that followed. Attacking another Champion being called 'controversial' and 'dishonest', her use of Veela allure earning titles such as 'sub-human', 'monstrous', and 'half-breed', many of the girls in Hogwarts writing letters of complaint or protest to Witch Weekly and the Daily Prophet, and most of Hufflepuff raging against the unfairness of it all in their own quiet, passive-aggressive way. Gryffindor took the opportunity to throw a party for their Champion, raiding the kitchens for food and Hogsmeade for illegal drinks. Not because Harry had come second, but because he'd been all heroic and noble and a paragon of the virtues his House valued in saving the most beautiful girl in the castle. That the Weasley Twins had finally had their hair regrown and wanted to celebrate only added to the night-long disturbance. And while most Slytherins were very vocal about deriding Harry's naivete and general idiocy - he'd only come second because chance and Fleur had taken out two Champions better than him, according to them - quite a few of the girls quietly discussed how romantic his rescue of the beautiful Beauxbatons Champion had been.

Valeria wished everyone would just shut up about the stupid Tournament, already. The contest only interested her inasmuch as it offered the opportunity to see or try new magic, and help Harry survive yet another plot against him. She cared not at all about the politics involved at schoolyard or national level - not that there was a great difference between the two from what she'd observed. Besides, she had bigger problems to deal with.

"The leash! Grab the leash!"

"Nah, I got this! Stupefy!"

"Watch out, it's firing back!"

BOOM!

"Protego! Protego! Protego!"

"It's not working. Run for it!"

As it turned out, there was someone other than Valeria that was rather annoyed at the whole Tournament debacle. After getting caught a few months back and losing his chance to meet even more dragons, Hagrid had been hoping that his newest project would be used as an obstacle or minor hazard in one of the tasks, and the challenge in the Forbidden Forest had seemed like the best possibility. Unfortunately for the gentle half-giant, what he considered minor hazards the tournament's organizers had seen as too much of an unknown threat to the Champions' lives; after his experience with both Fluffy and Norberta and with more than a bit of help from some students almost as creature-crazy as he was, Hagrid had managed to raise his Blast-Ended Skrewts into veritable monsters.

As Valeria dodged a stinger that pierced through her shield with little effort and deflected a blast of fire with a quick banishing charm, she wondered if the increased difficulty in today's Care of Magical Creatures lesson was indicative of Hagrid's sour mood, or the class had been doomed to devolve into a battlefield since Hagrid had first introduced his hybrids. Half a dozen Skrewts had survived to reach the violent teenage phase of their lives, and the fourth-year students were having a hard time dealing with them.

"I bet you regret locking the shack's door now, Campbell," Pansy spat acidly as the two girls found themselves dealing with the same six-foot, armored, magic-resistant, mutated lobster.

"What are you talking about, Parkinson?" the blonde girl asked while pushing the Skrewt back with a levitated boulder. "Hagrid must have locked it after the last time Malfoy pulled a runner. Talk about House pride; the self-proclaimed leader of Slytherin hiding from monsters." Valeria had locked the door as soon as she saw Malfoy and Lavender Brown trying to hide away in Hagrid's home, of course. If the rest of them had to struggle with pincers as thick as telephone poles, those two would as well.

"Yeah, sure, the half-giant knows enough magic to keep out Draco and-"

BOOM!

"You filthy overgrown maggot," the dark-haired young witch cursed out loud as a fireball from the Skrewt's backside scorched the hem of her robes. "You'll pay for ruining my new boots! Reducto! Bombarda! Caro Igneum!" The curses flew out of her wand as fast as she could cast and struck true. Unfortunately, Skrewts were the hybrids of fire-crabs and manticores; not only had they inherited the armor and fire resistance of the former, but also the near-immunity to spells of the latter. The Disintegration Curse only made an inch-wide black spot on the fiend's carapace, and the Explosion Hex was not so harmlessly deflected off its right pincer only to land thirty yards away, digging a small crater into the ground and sending Crabbe and Goyle flying. The Flesh-Fire Curse hit last, to absolutely no effect.

Where Pansy's enraged attack did succeed was in providing a distraction. No longer having to dodge natural weapons as dangerous as anything short of a dragon's claws, Valeria dropped low and aimed among the Skrewt's many legs. If fire crabs had a weakness, it was that their armor left a small part of their underbelly uncovered. With any luck, the hybridization had infused a manticore's spell immunity into the Skrewts' hard outer shells rather than their flesh, so her next spell would amount to something more than wasted effort.

"Confundo!"

Experience and the memories of captured dark wizards had taught her that this particular spell had more in common with curses, for all it was categorized as a mental charm. The intent and viciousness of the caster - the emotion and will behind it - were far more important than the technical aspects for this bit of magic. What was more, the Confundus Charm had no upper limits; with enough effort, one could mentally affect even things that didn't have minds at all, warping reality to conceptually impose the caster's desires. It was how Barty Crouch Junior had managed to affect an ancient magical artifact of great power and something Lockhart, who had originally taught them the spell, could neither have managed on his own nor explained.

A split second from shredding Pansy's shield with its pincers and then doing the same on the girl's body, the Blast-Ended Skrewt stopped dead in its tracks. Then it lowered its pincers and stinger and, to the pureblood girl's shock, tried to rub itself against her; an image as silly as it was disgusting.

"What's wrong with it?" Pansy asked, then narrowed her eyes as she saw Valeria's outstretched wand. "Oh Merlin, what did you do this time?"

"I convinced it that it is a little dog," Valeria answered as she got closer and patted the insectoid monster's back. To Pansy's relief, it turned away from her and started rubbing itself against the muggleborn witch. "And that we are its beloved masters. Here, watch this." She transfigured a pebble into a stick and threw it. "Fetch!" To almost everyone's surprise, the Skrewt happily charged after the stick, catching it in its pincers and getting it back to the two of them Hagrid was so ecstatic that he gave the both of them ten points for Slytherin.

"That's cheating," Pansy grumbled. "We're supposed to learn how to take care of beautiful magical animals, not use mind magic on horrible beasts."

"Trust me Parkinson, you don't want Hagrid doing lessons on unicorns." Valeria sent the Skrewt to retrieve the stick again. "If we're very, very lucky, Hagrid will only have us mate unicorns with thestrals... it's kinda surprising that he hasn't already tried that. But if we are unlucky..." in lieu of explanation, she pointed at the returning Skrewt, a hybrid of a magical feline with a magical insect. Pansy shuddered.

"You suck, Campbell. You and Hagrid both. Now I can't think of unicorns without thinking about... that." There was such disgust and loathing in that last word, Valeria was surprised Pansy didn't accidentally power a wandless slug-vomiting curse.

"Yes, but there are compensations." The blonde witch smirked unpleasantly. "With all those suckers, I bet these things feed on liquids more than anything. Wanna see if I can convince the Skrewt Malfoy is its mummy?"

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The fourth year Herbology lessons were getting harder as well. Harry might not need to study due to the Champions' exemption from exams - something he was taking advantage of to practice more Tournament-appropriate things - but the rest of them had to deal with more dangerous magical plants. Actual flesh-eating, directly aggressive species they'd only study in their fifth year and beyond, but that didn't mean those magical plants posing purely environmental hazards were much easier to deal with.

Case in point, the Fire Seed Bush. It was closer to a thick-bodied fern than a bush, and it had spores instead of seeds, but most wizards weren't particularly proficient in scientific plant designations and nomenclature. Of course they didn't need to be since they could force biology and logic to bend to them than the other way around, and in any case only the first word of the Fire Seed Bush's name was important; the whole plant was perpetually covered in a thin sheet of flames. Its spores retained their fiery aura even after being removed from the plant, which made handling them even more difficult. Alas this particular species of arcane flora had many uses, both as a food for magical species with fire affinity, and as a component in many potions. Its value combined with the difficulty of its handling ensured it was part of the standard Herbology curriculum.

"Glacius!"

Valeria's Freezing Spell created a thin layer of frost over its target, allowing her to pluck one of the spores from the temporarily neutralized plant. Unfortunately, as she went to grab a second spore, the ice melted away and flames burst forth from the plant once more. She'd have to reapply the spell for every single spore she wanted to retrieve, which would make the next half-hour very tedious.

"Glacius!"

Daphne's efforts on the other hand coated the plant in a thicker, much more solid layer of ice, allowing the other Slytherin girl to quickly pluck near a dozen seeds before the flames could return. A quick and near-silent reapplication of the Freezing Charm and Daphne started working again, for once ahead of everyone in Herbology - even Neville. The so-called Ice Princess of Slytherin had always favoured ice out of the various thematic elemental magics, which served her well in this particular Herbology lesson. Valeria on the other hand had always preferred fire, which wasn't going to matter here. Not unless she called forth a strong enough cursed fire to reduce the annoying not-bush into ashes, which she had to increasingly struggle to avoid.

In fact, the last time she remembered using the Freezing Spell was back in the third year Charms exam. She had learned the spell all the way back in her first year, and included it in her daily spell practice of course... except she hadn't had a general practice session in... Merlin and Morgana, had it been five months already? That couldn't be right. She'd decided all the way back in her first year that the only way to learn and master all the spells in both the Hogwarts curriculum and her extra studies would be to cast all the spells she knew in sequence, for at least an hour per day. In a very real way spells were like words, and learning magic was like mastering another language. Most people speak over ten thousand words per day, and learning a language would need even more effort... and not using a language would lead to forgetting it as well. What had happened to her daily practices?

"Hey Val, you OK?"

The question jolted Valeria out of her train of thought, but the alarm and trepidation remained. She mumbled a half-formed response to Daphne, something about being fine, then tried the Freezing Spell again. This time it didn't work at all, for her mind wasn't in it. Failing in a simple task Daphne had passed with flying colours was a shocking wake-up call. She'd always seen the other girl as a competent witch, better than her in Duelling even, but not as powerful... and certainly with a more limited knowledge of spells. But all the knowledge and talent in the world would amount to nothing if she didn't put in the required work... and she'd neglected her daily practices for half a year.

It wasn't as if she didn't have the time; time was one thing she had in abundance. But between the various plots against Harry, the Triwizard Tournament, the dark wizard infiltrations of Hogwarts, various detentions, potion-brewing, secret projects, research into new and exciting magics, and dealing with teenage drama, politics, and inter-House rivalries, she had simply... forgotten. Such a simple thing to say... but with dire consequences.

"Oh come on, it's just Herbology!" Daphne tried to cheer her up half an hour later. "It's not as if it's an important class, like Charms, Transfiguration, or Potions. Besides, this is Sprout we're talking about. She'll give you another chance to catch up like she does with everyone."

"It's magic, Daphne. All magic is important." Then why have you been neglecting the basic spells? a little voice whispered in her mind.

"You're just annoyed that for the first time ever, you didn't do something perfectly," Daphne told her evenly. "Well news flash, princess; nobody's perfect. Not even the great Valeria Campbell."

"Very fully, Daph." She looked up at the taller, expensively-dressed, platinum blonde pureblood heiress. "I thought you were the princess."

"Yes, but it's you that's whining like a spoiled child." The other girl shrugged. "If you think something's wrong, fix it. But as your friend, I have to warn you when I feel you're being conceited."

Valeria did not agree with Daphne, except on the being conceited part. Her brother Claude had certainly made sure to point out her faults as they grew up, and pride had been mentioned more often than the others. But that didn't change the fact that she had forgotten to practice. She really needed to review her schedule, begin revisions to catch up with where she should have been by now.

And then she needed to see what else she had neglected or forgotten...