...SOME DUELLING AND SNAKE TALKS...

The appearance of the great hall was changed completely. The classes had been over for the day and now the duelling competition was going to take place. Lockhart was beaming with happiness. This was his move after all. The Potter boy had doubt about him and so conducting a duel would certainly clear the boy's doubts.

Flitwick erected the wards around the joint tables that would act as platforms for the contestants to duel. He had arranged everything Lockhart had asked for and now his work was complete.

The students had gathered around the table as contestants and as participants. Lockhart chose the moment to give his dramatic entrance on the table.

Suddenly there was darkness inside the great hall and nobody could see anything when a lumos spell spread light over the table. Everyone saw and Gohan, Ron and Harry heavily rolled their eyes.

Lockhart was standing in the middle of the table, his lumos spell making him stand in spotlight. The girls were swooning seeing his smile and his posture of standing. The boys were normally looking at him. Some of them were angry seeing their girlfriends swooning at the professor. Snape was watching him in disgust and his feelings could clearly be seen on his face.

"I can't believe he can do this!" Gohan muttered to Harry.

"At least it's entertaining to watch," Harry replied. "Imagine if something wrong happens to him right now. It really would be funny to watch."

Gohan and Ron grinned with their friend while Hermione glared at the three boys.

"Can everyone see me? Can everyone hear me?" Lockhart said loud enough for everyone to hear him clearly.

The girls cheered and this widened the fraud's twinkling smile. Dumbledore mused over this fraud's actions.

'I don't know what made Albus choose him as the DADA teacher,' Snape thought with anger and disgust towards this man. 'And he never lets me take the position. For how long have I pleaded him? But no.'

Harry, Gohan and Ron almost fall down when Lockhart threw his coat over to the crowd of the students and the girls standing leapt towards it.

"Well, not taking any more of your time, let's begin the first match!" Lockhart said. "Professor Snape, if you would be so kind to be my trusted opponent?"

Snape sneered but then a smirk came on his face. This would be a nice opportunity to show this fraud what a read DADA professor is supposed to do.

"I accept your invitation, Professor Lockhart," Snape said and climbed the platform. The two professors now stood facing each other with a few distance's gap between them. Both had their wands out. Lockhart did try to show=off and took out his wand with style – something which instead of making the students' surprise, confused them. They didn't understand the purpose of the way he had taken out his wand. It was time consuming and everyone knew time was a very essential thing in a magical duel as duels were fast. Snape thanked himself for his years of control over his expression or else it would really be a sight for the students seeing their potions teacher laugh at Lockhart's antics.

"Before we begin, I would like to state the rules for our students," Lockhart said and Snape curtly nodded. He was only waiting for the duel to start.

'Rules or not, I will humiliate him and that's a promise I make to myself,' Snape thought as he smirked again.

"Only disarming hexes will be used," Lockhart said. "There will be no use of other spells, especially dark spells. Now, I hope you all know, we first bow to our opponents to show them respect," he said as he bowed towards Snape. The said professor bowed as well, his smirk never leaving his face. "Now, steady yourselves," Lockhart said as he came in a position which confused some children who had seen how a duel was fought. Lockhart's position was hardly what people would call a duel friendly. He had his legs stretched a bit too much which would certainly prevent him to dodge the first coming spells from professor Snape. Then, he was holding his wand wrong. His grip looked like it would lose soon enough if the duel lasts long enough. There were many flaws on his position as many of the pureblood students could see but many were still singing praises for the professor and definitely Snape was getting more and more annoyed. "So if we are ready...?"

Lockhart didn't even have time to finish up his line when an overpowered disarming hex flew towards him at blinding speed. The red spell hit him straight on the chest and the next moment saw him flying in the air and falling hard at the end of the platform.

Snape's smirk was maintained on his face. He was satisfied but he thought he should rather have used a bit less power in his spell. But then he thought who cared.

"Is he alright?" Hermione asked, worried for Lockhart.

"Who cares?" Ron said as he tried hard not to laugh out loud. Hermione elbowed him.

Lockhart grunted as he tried to get up. It took him four tries to get completely on his feet. Snape frowned. Lockhart still looked as if this attack on him hadn't taught the fraud a lesson.

"It was a good move, professor Snape," Lockhart said, flashing his twinkling smile again which made many of the girls swooning at his charm.

'I can't believe he's still trying to show that my spell did nothing to him,' Snape thought, bemused. He could clearly see Lockhart slightly limping on his left leg. A dislocation, Snape thought. He had seen Lockhart land on the table in a wrong way. But Lockhart was doing a marvellous job not showing his pain.

"I could've stopped it without even moving my wand. But I thought to let you win," Lockhart said.

"Perhaps you should try to teach the students how to really duel, professor, instead of showing off," Snape said.

Those words were like stings for Lockhart who frowned for a moment.

"Ahem! Err, well then. Let's give the students a chance, shall we?' Lockhart said, avoiding saying anything to Snape for his cruel comment. Snape's smirk only increased. This was a good day in a long time.

"Alright, Harry! Up you come," Lockhart said, flashing a smile at Harry.

For a moment, Harry thought he heard it wrong but seeing the eyes of other students at him made him rethink his thoughts. He let out a sigh of defeat. He was angry at Lockhart for choosing him to duel a student of Snape's choice. Whom would Snape choose? Please don't let it be Draco was what Harry kept thinking as he climbed the table and walked over to stand beside Lockhart, trying his best not to stand too close but Lockhart put an arm on his shoulder and pulled him closer, just like he had done at Flourish and Blotts. Harry could see an amused face of Ron and Gohan while...was Hermione feeling jealous? This was something Harry had never expected from Hermione. He sighed. Even Hermione wasn't left being a target of Lockhart's fake charm.

"Draco, come over here."

Harry closed his eyes when he heard Snape call the name. His nightmare had come true.

'In no way am I going to stand a chance against Draco. I am sure of that,' he thought. It was true that Draco had far more skills in duelling than Harry even though Harry had started to show how great he was at DADA subject. He was the top of his class in that subject practically and third in theory after Hermione and Draco. But in case of duelling, he was clearly not as good as Draco.

The said boy climbed on the table with a smirk which clearly told Harry something wrong was going to happen.

"Remember the rules!" Lockhart said loud enough for both boys to hear clearly. "There will only be the use of disarming hex. No dark curses, body bind or anything. Only disarming hex. Now, bow to your opponent." The two boys bowed to each other reluctantly. Neither of them wanted to show respect to the other one and it was worse doing it in public.

"BEGIN!"

And once Lockhart had said those words Harry barely dodged the shower of disarming hexes coming from Draco. The pale blond boy had a smirk of victory on his face and that was scaring Harry unlike anything.

"This looks bad," Hermione said as she saw Harry jumping around, doing his best to dodge Draco's blast. The Slytherin was hardly giving Harry any chance to cast back.

"He has no experience in duelling?" Gohan asked. Hermione shook her head. It had never come for Harry to duel someone in his life. Confronting Quirrell was a different matter. As per what Harry had told her and Ron, Quirrell had touched him and then his body had started to burn and it wasn't long when the possessed professor was nothing but ash.

"This will be hard for him. I can't imagine how Gryffindor will react if Harry loses to him," Ron said. "He's the only one who bluntly hates Draco."

"How can you think of something like that at this moment?" Hermione asked. "He's getting plundered in there by Draco's spells and all you care about is the reputation of your house?"

Suddenly there was silence. Confused, Hermione and Ron looked up at the ongoing duel. Gohan already had his attention at it. He was observing Harry's moves. The boy had good reflexes, probably because he was a seeker but it still wasn't enough for Harry to swiftly dodged Draco's spell.

"What happened?" Hermione asked.

"Harry hit Draco with a disarming hex," Gohan said calmly.

"Then how come he's still standing?" Hermione asked.

"I don't know," Gohan said. "Draco was too busy casting his own hexes that he didn't see Harry's sneak attack which took Draco off guard. But even though the spell hit him, Draco's wand didn't left his hand. It appeared as if the wand remained stuck in his hand."

"He'd be using a wand holster," Ron said.

"Won't that be against the rules?" Gohan asked.

"No," Hermione said. "In fact, it is encouraged to use one during duelling. It can only be Draco's father giving him one. Harry would need to cast more accurate at him with more power. Only then would he succeed disarming Draco."

Gohan nodded in understanding and turned his attention back at the duel.

Draco was fuming. If it wasn't for his holster, he would definitely have lost the duel and losing one to a half blood, far less that half blood being Potter was something Draco could never accept. And blind in his rage, Draco started throwing a bit dark curses. One after another everyone saw how binding, mild cutting and overpowered disarming hexes flew towards Harry at even more speed.

He was already having a hard time dodging those spells from Draco and now the said boy was throwing more dangerous curses at him with even more speed. Using the best of his reflexes, Harry tried dodging the spells. Most of them hit the ward around the table but the last two spells caught him. The first one was body binds which made Harry immobile and made him fall on the table. The other was a mild cutting hex which grizzled barely over her left torso, resulting in a small yet nasty cut. All of this happened so quickly that none of the professors had time to intervene when one other spell left Draco's mouth as his wand glowed a pale yellow and a fifteen foot black cobra came out of it and fell few feet away from Harry. Fortunately by then, Snape had intervened and had caught Draco firmly to prevent him from doing any more harm.

Filius ran over as fast as he could and dropped the wards until he realised that the snake was still around.

Every single student backed up when the wards were removed and the snake started looking at them. It was very long and was as thick as a baby python. Its poisoned fangs glistened in the light of the great hall as it rose high and spread its hoods becoming more feral looking. Parvati fainted looking at the sight. It was common knowledge how much she feared snakes. Some senior Gryffindors helped her out while the rest still had their attention towards the large snake.

"{Where am I?}"

Harry heard the snake speak. For a moment he was surprised until he remembered the incident at the zoo almost a year ago where he had accidently let a python free on Dudley. And now he could sense that the snake was afraid.

The snake looked around frantically. The expressions of these humans were scaring him more.

"{It's okay. No one will hurt you}," Harry said, too engrossed in his talk that he failed to notice the hall had gone deathly silent.

"{Who are you?}," the snake asked.

"{I am Harry. Don't be scared of them. You are frightening them as well}," Harry said.

The snake looked around, seeing some students' faces more closely that it made a few students almost scream in fear. The snake understood that he was equally scaring them all as much as they were scaring him but before he could do or say anything a spell hit him and Harry heard the snake cry out in immense pain as it was incinerated.

Harry looked up at the caster to see it was Snape. The potions master, however, was looking at Harry with not a very pleasant expression and only then did Harry notice that the hall was too silent to be called comfortable as every set of eyes were locked on him. Many were wide with shock and surprise while many were from fear.

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"HYAAAAAA!"

Another blast was taken up by Gohan as his shadow self fired upon him. Splitting up his body reduced his power but it gave him a sparring and training partner. The clearing was large enough with the trees so far away that Gohan's blasts could not cause a forest fire if he was careful and this only made his training a bit more difficult.

There were things his mind was finding hard to understand. Since the day had ended. First was the weird language Harry had spoken who later claimed to have been talking to the conjured snake by Draco. It was a weird feeling that Gohan felt when he first heard the language. It was more like hissing with an unrecognisable set of words or voices. And then there was the reaction of the students. One student, Gohan remembered by the name Cormack, had screamed loudly that Harry was the Slytherin heir once they were all in the common room a few hours ago. He remembered Hermione and Ron telling Harry that he was speaking some pasrel...parseltongue. They said that it was considered to be evil in the magical world as this You Know Who guy was also a parseltongue and so was Slytherin. And then the bloodied message had flashed in Gohan's mind – The chamber of secrets has been opened. Enemies to the heir of Slytherin, beware!

Another blow hit Gohan as his shadow self fired a kamehameha upon him, seeing his distraction. With a cry of pain, Gohan fell hard on the forest floor. His clothes were torn but thankfully he could materialise them later on. Closing his eyes Gohan let his shadow self merge back in his body again as he took out a senzu bean from his pocket and ate it. He had found a packet full of it after he had completed his meditation yesterday. He knew it was Piccolo who had given these beans to him. He knew his first teacher wanted him to keep on training and he mentally promised to do it.

As the bean did its job, Gohan got up from the forest floor and materialised a new set of clothes before teleporting back to the Gryffindor common room and then walking up to his dorm to finally sleep, unknown to the fact that a pair of eyes was watching him enter the dorm and going too his bed.

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A/N: Thanks for reading...