Disclaimer: I don't own anything in the world of Harry Potter, that's J.K.Rowling's job. The plot is mine though.
Chapter 14 – Duelling Contest
Harry and Ron entered the Great Hall early to get good seats along with the rest of their year. The younger students had already completed their duels the day before, and today it was a mix between the 6th and 7th years, and the winner from yesterday. Luna happened to be the one who won from the younger years, which took almost everyone by surprise, and the vast majority believed it to be luck on her part. Harry wasn't so sure. He had taken note of all the spells that had seemed effective and practiced them with Ron afterwards. He was sure that most other people would have done the same though.
They took a pair of seats right in the middle of the front row and saw Hermione sitting at the top table with the Professors. She gave him a small wave, and he waved back. This year had been very strange to get to grips with. Hermione had been going down her own path and was spending less and less time with the two of them. Her magical power was nothing less than amazing, and Harry could only hope he managed to get stronger before he inevitably had to face Voldemort. More and more people entered the Great Hall, until practically the whole school was there, and the Professor stood up to announce the first matches.
"Welcome to the first Hogwarts duelling competition in a long long time. Hopefully soon we will have our first school duelling champion. Congratulations again to Luna who won yesterday, and good luck to everyone competing today. The first of the matches, drawn at random remember, will be Katie Bell against Padma Patil."
As they stood to take their places the crowd began shouting for which of them they wanted to win. With the match being a Ravenclaw against a Gryffindor it was fairly well split, with the Slytherins remaining quiet. Harry was going to take extra care to watch this, as he might end up facing one of them in future rounds.
"Ok, ready…" There was no turning your back to your opponent and taking a few paces away. It was far too likely that someone would curse the other in the back, so it was decided to just simply start when the Professor said to begin. "Begin!"
Padma was by far the quickest to let fly with a curse, which Katie quickly dodged. Padma was constantly throwing a fast stream of all different colour curses, forcing Katie to dodge or block for most of the time. When Katie would let of a curse though, it would seem a lot stronger, and Padma had great difficulty blocking. Eventually one of the curses managed to get through Katie's shield causing her to drop her wand. Thinking the match was over, Padma lowered her wand arm, but Katie quickly grabbed her wand back off the floor and stunned her before she knew what was happening. In the rules the student duels weren't over until someone was in possession of both the wands.
When Padma was revived she was somewhat annoyed at losing like that, but was silently relived she hadn't been hit with any of the nastier curses. Poor Dennis Creevey has both of his feet reversed by a particularly annoying Slytherin yesterday and would have been still in the hospital wing had it not been for his insistence that he be allowed to watch the matches today. He sat off to one side, safely out of the way of any more curses.
Harry noted to himself to remember that Katie was pretty strong with her shield and charms, but she was quite slow at using them.
"Next up, we have Draco Malfoy against Hannah Abbott!"
These Hannah stood up nervously as she watched Draco acting as bored as he could. With a yawn he drew his wand and pointed it lazily towards Hannah. Harry thought that Draco might be a little over confident, as Hannah had proved to be quite inventive with her use of unusual spells.
"Ready? Begin!"
As expected Hannah was the first to shoot, a leg locker curse, but Draco calmly stepped to one side and returned fire with a simple stunner. Not having chance to get out of the way, Hannah conjured a shield to block it, but the curse hit her shield she fell over backwards with a shriek.
"Is that the best you can do?" Draco mocked, watching her calmly as she staggered back to her feet again. "Oh well."
As Hannah was raising her wand again he fired another curse, hitting her on the shoulder this time causing part of her robes and skin to burn upon contact. It wasn't life threatening, so it was legal, but that was the first time anyone had seen someone use as painful a curse as that one. The younger years mostly kept to stunners and tickling charms.
Hannah dropped to the floor clutching her arm, wincing at the pain. Draco summoned her wand and then walked off the stage, leaving Madam Pomfrey to rush on and help her.
Harry quickly realised that despite how easily Hermione could push Malfoy around, he wasn't to be taken lightly.
"Erm, right. You alright there Hannah? Next we have yesterday's winner, Luna, against Harry Potter. Good luck!"
Harry winced slightly and took to the stage. He has been hoping for an easier first round than this. Luna had beaten everyone in the lower years, and could regularly hold her own against the older years in the DA meetings. He had seen her style before though, so was not at as big a disadvantage as some of the others.
"Ready? Begin!"
Straight away Luna started her strange movements. She would dart from side to side across the floor, seemingly at random, making her very difficult to hit. Harry fired a few stunners from far away, but they didn't get anywhere near to her. He needed to get closer. Raising a shield he cautiously stepped forwards watching Luna's wand carefully. He was vaguely aware that most of the audience was cheering for him. Luna wasn't all that popular with the other students. Slytherin were still laughing at Hannah.
All of a sudden, when Harry took one more step forwards, Luna began to shoot curses of her own. Harry was standing flat-footed, so had difficulty dodging the first, and the second nearly took out his shield. He managed to gain his footing, and fire a stunner back at Luna, but she had already conjured a shield and shot one back. They went on like this for a while, trading curses that hit each other's shield, before Luna suddenly stopped and looked to the side. She was almost straight away was hit with one of Harry's stunners, and fell to the ground unconscious.
Harry took her wand, and revived her.
"Hey, how come you stopped? I thought you had the upper hand there."
"I thought I saw a Snorkack…"
That was all she would say as they retook their seats.
Next were a few matches against people Harry had never talked to except in passing, until finally it was Ron's turn.
"Next we have Ronald Weasley against Gregory Goyle!"
Ron almost smiled to himself, muttering something about finally getting to beat the stuffing out of Goyle, and took to the stage. Without the backup of his friends, Goyle definitely looked nervous.
"Ready? Begin!"
Ron began with a stunner, and Goyle shot a nasty purple hex. Ron dodged, Goyle didn't. After Ron had collected his wand, he left the stage, allowing someone else to revive him. It was the joint shortest match of the day. Similar in length was Neville against Crabbe.
The rest of the first round passed quickly. Most of the Slytherins were now out, apart from Malfoy and a few of the seventh years, and most of the Gryffindors were still in. About half of the others were out. The Ravenclaws seemed to know the most different spells, but couldn't stand up as well in a duel.
Harry just about won the second round against Katie, but Ron, much to his disgust, lost against a seventh year Hufflepuff. Harry had to go against Neville in the round after that, and again won. He had trained against Neville enough to know his weaknesses.
At the same time, Malfoy was continuing his brutal duels. He had broken the arms of a seventh year Ravenclaw, and the nose of his opponent in the third round. In the semi-final, he was so busy cursing his opponent he didn't realise they were already unconscious. The Professor had to step in to call a halt to the duel before someone was seriously injured. Nobody was surprised when Malfoy and Harry had to duel in the final.
Harry stepped up onto the stage, and Malfoy continued looking bored even thought this was the final. Harry noticed that most of the people were still cheering for him, even though had Fred and George still been here they would probably have been collecting most of the bets for Malfoy.
"This will be the final match for today before the exhibition match. The winner of this will be the duelling champion of Hogwarts. Good luck, and remember, no dangerous curses." He said this while looking mostly at Malfoy.
"Begin!"
Harry began with the stunners much the same way as he had against Luna. He managed to dodge most of what Malfoy threw back at him. The ones that did hit him felt a lot more powerful than anything he had been hit with earlier. He had to recast his shield after each one. After a while Malfoy stopped firing back, and just held up shield charms. Getting annoyed, Harry stopped cursing.
"What's the matter Malfoy, forgot how to hex?"
"Nope," he replied. He waved his wand, but Harry couldn't see anything, and didn't feel affected. Harry fired another stunner, but Malfoy blocked it again. Malfoy fired another stunner, but this time it was way wide, and Harry didn't even need to move to avoid it.
"What the hell was that Mal…"
Harry awoke to see the Professor's face smiling at him, and heard the noise of the Slytherin crowd still cheering for Malfoy.
"Hello Harry. Mr Malfoy there conjured a small mirror behind you, which reflected the stunner onto your back. Most ingenious really."
Harry trudged off the stage, annoyed at losing to Malfoy of all people.
Hermione watched the stunner hit Harry from behind, and vowed she would hex Malfoy the next time she saw him, just to stop him getting too big headed. She was quite surprised at how much better Malfoy had been at duelling compared to their previous encounters. Perhaps in a controlled and formal environment like duelling, the purebloods had more experience. She was worried for Harry. He was having difficulty against even people in his own year, so he certainly wouldn't stand a chance against Voldemort, and if her suspicion was right, she wouldn't be there to help him.
She was rather nervous about this duel against Dumbledore. He hadn't lost an official duel in over 100 years, and many people considered him to be the most powerful wizard alive. In theory she should win, but he had the most experience. Once Harry had walked off the stage, she stood up and made her way onto the platform.
"And now," announced the Professor, "we have the exhibition match. Professor Dumbledore against Hermione. Take note of some of the methods they use, at it may prove useful to you at some point."
"Ready?" Dumbledore formally bowed to Hermione, and she very slightly did the same. "Begin!"
It was quite obvious from the outset that this was going to be a very different type of duel to the others. Dumbledore began by conjuring a swarm of bees, which Hermione quickly countered with a wall of fire, which Dumbledore had to freeze before they reached him. Hermione then started conjuring random objects like chairs and tables, before banishing them at Dumbledore. He countered this by transfiguring them into eagles and vultures, which then turned around of their own accord and attacked Hermione. The fake birds were easily banished.
Hermione focused on herself and created illusions that looked exactly like her, and they began to edge around Dumbledore to confuse him. He quickly pointed his wand at himself and muttered a spell, before firing a paralysing curse straight at the real Hermione. She had no idea how he did that, se would have to ask him later. The curse was a simple one to block though, so she banished her illusions as well.
Hermione again attacked first, and summoned two massive stone golems between them, and instructed them to attack. Dumbledore was able to blast them apart with his strongest curses, but didn't notice that Hermione had secretly conjured a third behind him. This one grabbed hold of both of his arms, pinned them to his sides, and lifted him off the ground. Being quite old, he didn't have the physical strength to struggle much and escape, but managed to twist his wrist around and jab it into the golem, making it crumble and collapse. He landed back down on his feet, though now he was quite obviously tired. Hermione looked fine.
She waited for a second to see if Dumbledore was going to continue, and this nearly cost her as he sprung into action and fired an impressive array of curses, so fast that even she couldn't pick out what all of them were. Deciding it was dangerous to try and block them all, she dodged a few, spun on the spot and disappeared. Dumbledore paused for a few moments, trying to think of a spell that would allow someone to disappear like that, but that was the time it took for Hermione to reappear behind him, and yank the wand out of his hand. Preferring not to be stunned, he instantly yielded.
There were a few scattered people applauding, but mostly people were in shock that Dumbledore had lost against only a sixth year student. The day had left everyone with something to think about.
A/N – Yeh! I liked writing this chapter!