cushion down (open)

Jovian was practising non-verbal spells in the common room. A lot of the spells he wanted to concentrate on needed a human subject to test, and that's where the duelling club came in handy. But since there was no duelling club until the following Friday and he wanted to ace at least one before then, he was practising on various couch cushions.

It would be a very different sort of deal for a man-sized subject. Obviously, it was bigger than a cushion. Secondly, the cushion didn't move around and put up much of a fight. Thirdly, its shape and matter was completely different. So, in a sense, if he succeeded with this, he wouldn't necessarily succeed.

So far he had managed to make the cushion twitch as though it had been tied down by ropes, but non-verbal magic was notoriously difficult. Perhaps he should study more into the theory again, so he consulted some text books.