The next week found Harry sitting at a table in Sirius' German Ministry suite just after sunrise, doodling in the margins of the latest Daily Prophet andsurrounded by the remnants of his breakfast. The ceramic plates still glistened with the remnants of fried potato, cheese and onion, and on another plate there remained a few stray slices of ham that Harry hadn't quite managed to squeeze in.
Sirius was still sleeping, and Remus kept to himself until the old dog woke up, so Harry had the room to himself. Furthermore, Crookshanks was still stretched out over Harry's pillow, in his compartment, Dobby was busy around the Ministry and Crow had gone out for a fly, so he rather revelled in the silence and lack of supervision, as well-meaning as it always was.
He'd pushed the plates themselves across the table, just far enough away to make space for the newspaper to be spread out in front of him. Pouring over the paper in front of him, Harry momentarily switched out his quill for his teacup to drain it with barely a slurp. Eyes still fixed on the page in front of him, he absently picked up the quill again, and twirled it slowly in his hand as he leaned, cheek on fist, and scowled darkly at the unfinished crossword in front of him.
What on earth was a four-letter word for a part of a ship? There were simply too many options, and what kind of ships did wizards use anyway?
Having stared at the cheap newsprint for long enough for his eyes to itch, Harry finally sat up and pushed the offending object away abruptly. The newsprint crinkled in the quiet.
Instead, as his eyes roved around the table, the now-empty teacup caught his eye, and Harry pulled it towards him with a quiet hum. It was still warm at the base, and with his left hand he swished the remaining millimetre of tea residue in a counter-clockwise direction. The familiar balance of it was somehow comforting, heavy enough in his hand to feel solid. The faint scent of a malty kind of sweetness still lingered in the air.
With a sudden movement, Harry flicked the teacup upside down and it clattered into the saucer with an arhythmic rattle. Frowning in focus, Harry waited for the liquid to drain and then turned it back upright to see into the residue tea leaves.
Then Harry carefully rotated the now-dry cup — slowly this time — so he could begin the reading from the handle.
He peered down the cup carefully.
Mere months ago the soggy dregs would have looked chaotic, but by now his better-practiced eyes could make familiar shapes out of the remnant leaves. Percy had explained once that the divination symbology was more iconographic than realistic, and that helped Harry to demarcate their limits, see which scattered splotches belonged to what shape.
Slowly, as he calmed his breathing and gazed into the base of his teacup, silhouettes grew identifiable.
From the rim down: An anchor. A bird on wing – not an owl, Harry had seen enough to know – Hedwig: a pang in his chest, but distant now. An old regret. He forced his mind to focus: A crow maybe? Crow himself? A journey? The letter 'C' nearby. Then scales, near the bottom of the cup, and a single long line.
Harry pursed his lips thoughtfully. Nothing specific then for the near future, generally positive, but he wondered about the 'C'.
Crow, again? It led credence to the theory, but he kept his mind open. Colin Creevey? Harry stretched his memory. Cho Chang? He was coming up to the Tournament, when she'd caught his attention last timeline, but she was really far too young for him now, still such a sheltered child...
The Cartwrights, he jerked upright, alert. He knew the old man Corbin had been memorable when he'd read the letter...But after another long gaze into the teacup, he decided against assuming. Instead, Harry reached into his mokeskin pouch and pulled out a tiny brown leather booklet, scrawling a quick record of his morning tea reading.
Things would come clear in time.
After the notebook had slid silently back into his mokeskin pouch, which was tucked safely away inside his robe collar, Harry's eyes drifted back to the Daily Prophet margins. He still held the quill in his hand.
Harry James Potter-Cartwright, Harry scratched out carefully, shaping each letter with fine precision. Harry James Cartwright Potter.
The scratching sped up. Harry James Cartwright Jenkins McAllister Potter. Harry James Potter-Cartwright-Jenkins-McAllister.
He thought of the 'C': Harry James Corbin Clarence Potter.
After one more evaluating look at the names scattered in front of him, Harry scrunched his face up and scribbled everything out. The tip of the quill cut through the paper. Ink splotched from his force, and between that and the damage and the many thick lines he drew, soon all the names were practically obliterated.
Too soon, Harry thought, and turned to other things.
He'd made it back from the local Owl Office and had a nice conversation with a youngish Ministry clerk, who admired Harry an embarrassing amount, by the time he found his hand drifting towards the hip pocket in his new forest-green robe. Sirius' choice of tailor, Harry had learnt, had strong opinions about how to make attractive-looking clothes practical, and Harry found himself grudgingly appreciating the wizard. Pockets didn't come in ready-made, shop-bought wizarding robes, Harry knew. He found himself coming around to the idea of tailored clothes after all.
That aside, inside Harry's robe pocket, sitting snugly against his hip with a cool and familiar weight, was the little velvet pouch that Draco had gifted him all those months ago. Percy had once mentioned that some wizards believed that runes needed to be near your body for more accurate readings, and Harry had thought trying it worthwhile.
Now, he tugged the pouch neck open and steadied his breathing. He'd do a three-rune draw, for simplicity. None of this past-present-future nonsense for what he wanted to know today.
His warm fingers slipped inside the tiny bag and felt the cool, smooth stones against his fingertips. Harry licked his lips, brows furrowed. Then he closed his eyes.
In a manner distantly reminiscent of the coloured magical spots that he'd struggled so much against last year, in the darkness behind Harry's eyelids he now saw pale spots beginning to glow. They were blurry golden fuzz in his senses, entirely ambiguous, and they didn't come into focus despite his extra pause to wait.
Cautiously, curiously, as Harry fixed his mind on the events of his near-future, he felt the magic inside him surge and ripple like water. In that familiar way he was beginning to be accustomed to, the magic flowed. As it did so, some spots grew brighter in his mind's eye. Others faded. He reached his fingers deeper into the velvet pouch and tweaked, and the stones moved; some of the spots in his mind's eye simultaneously sparked and seemed to shuffle. He grasped a single stone, sight unseen within his pouch, and tweaked it so the associated spot twisted too: not that one, it was too dull. Half-blind, and yet somehow linking the stones at his fingertips to the gold spots in his mind, Harry searched for a bright glow. There. It was a bright, indistinct gold, somehow welcoming, and Harry pulled it from his pocket with alacrity.
The first little rock was carved precisely with two little triangles: Berkanan, ᛒ, for birth and birch and growth.
His second draw, when he decided on the next warmly welcoming rune, sparked strongly against his fingers and mind and seemed to leap into his hand. It pulled him oddly strongly. It was Mannaz: ᛗ. Mankind and its associated conflict and chaos and potential.
When Harry held his breath for the third and final rune draw, the runes seemed to go silent. There were no guides to help him draw a mark: no singing stones that drew his fingertips, nothing that glowed golden in his mind's eye. Just a void of black and the surging of his magic that was rippling and rushing, suddenly distracting instead of helpful. Harry bit his tongue gently, frowned, grasped out at random. He'd drawn Raidō: ᚱ, for journey.
Or, if you listened to Trelawny, instead of Professor Babbling and the trusty Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium, seventeenth edition, it meant a wheel. Which…Harry pursed his lips and gave the thought its due attention, wasn't actually as contradictory as it could have been.
Still. The three-rune draw sat on the table in front of him, silently and smugly withholding their secrets.
"What does it mean?" Harry asked the empty room. "I'm going to go on a journey today? Life is a journey? My fortune is turning? My life is chaos? I mean, obviously!"
The three little stones sat innocuously on the table in front of them, seemingly completely incompatible with Harry's momentary irritation with them.
"I mean…at least my plan has 'potential'?" Harry finally sighed. "I'll take it. Just…Merlin."
While his indistinct future remained hazy in his sight, Harry did his best to push the worry from his mind. He did have other things to focus on. The name thing, the inheritances, which popped back into thought every now and then, and which everybody in his life had a strong opinion on.
"The more, the better," Sirius argued.
Remus believed that "the masculine names would be a better fit, with a stronger connection between the families and you," which Harry couldn't quite disagree with.
Kreacher advised him not to take anything from the squib. Dobby wanted him to take everything, from everyone mentioned. Watching Dobby walk out of the room with his hot pink cravat, and waistcoat over his pillowcase, and knee-high socks knitted into rainbow stripes, held up by embroidered German suspenders – somehow, Harry couldn't explain the logic to it – Harry could at least admire how the advice was in keeping with Dobby's life philosophy.
Mr Lloyd-Elliot suggested that rather than last names, Harry should take the given names, but only of the letter-writers themselves. "Avoid all the given names that have been suggested by those who did not carry them personally," the wise old lawyer suggested. "Reject the names of wives and children, for example, as they are not given by the owner in question."
He hadn't realised that they were also an option.
Then Remus suggested that Harry should owl Dumbledore, who had been the last person to accept names in this manner, and Harry found himself shunning all the remaining external advice. These would be his names, Harry reiterated. It needed to be his decision, never mind that Dumbledore had apparently gained himself two extra middle names after the end of the war with Grindelwald and therefore was experienced with the process.
It wasn't too hard to avoid talking about the names further. Sirius, in particular, was accidentally supportive, considering how he had begun enthusiastically introducing Harry to all sorts of activities and adventures, some familiar while some were very new.
Harry's latest attempt to study, while he sat at his desk and poured over a muggle German Grammar book with the light scent of pot-plants keeping his mind clear, was broken by the loud and irregular thudding of feet stomping down the stairs into his luggage compartment.
"C'mon, Pup!" Sirius burst into Harry's study, early on a Tuesday morning. "You'll love this! I've got us tickets to see the Duellierrundgang!"
Harry took advantage of the moment to lose focus on modal particles and sat back to stretch out his shoulders.
"Mmhhh," he exhaled. "Oh, that feels good." Something popped in his neck, and then a series of cracks released all the way down his spine, causing Harry to catch his breath. "Ooh! That's the spot then. Blimey, but that's better." He sat up and rotated his shoulders rapidly.
Sirius eyed him strangely. "Have you had quite enough of that little moment to yourself? Or should I give you some room?"
"Git," Harry shot affectionately Sirius' way. "But you came down here for something. What was it again?"
"Oh, that's right!" Sirius perked up again. "Tickets to the German Duellierrundgang! The duelling circuit! It's part of the European Duelling Confederation and they're running heats in town this week. I thought you might like to go, Pup. With me and Remus?"
Harry spared a quick look at his study schedule, charmed stuck to the wall by his desk. It was rather sparse according to his usual habits. Dobby, Crookshanks and Crow were still tag-teaming him to make sure he didn't push his health too far.
"I can spare the time," Harry nodded. "When are the tickets for?"
"That lovely lady at the desk downstairs," Sirius grinned, "has given us week-long passes, courtesy of the German Ministry. We can rock up at any point that suits, as often as we want. I think she gave them to us in order to show the British Embassy up again, I think she said. Her accent," he explained to Harry. "But by Merlin, but if only I was forty years older, I'd marry that witch, I would."
Harry's mind went to the little old witch who manned the helpdesk in the Ministry foyer. She was eighty years old if she was a day, and regularly had a stream of visitors appear at her workplace from home: an uncountable stream of grandchildren, in fact, who brought her food every day, and rather contrasted with her stern and brisk, stone-faced appearance. Olinda Meier, her name was, and she ruled the Ministry entrance hall with an iron fist.
"I don't think she's single, sorry," Harry had to say. He laughed as Sirius placed a trembling hand over his 'wounded' heart.
"Just my luck," Sirius muttered. Then his head popped up again and he bounced on his toes, arms extending, because duels! Professional duels! To take Harry to! "Shall we go then, Pup? I mean, sometime this morning maybe? If you like it, we can go back tomorrow, and tomorrow and the days after that. But if you hate it then we only need to go for a bit and I'll find us something else to do tomorrow instead."
"What, you mean now?" Harry paused for a moment, but then realised that he really had nothing pressing to do in his library compartment and that Sirius was feeling guilty about their current dispossessed-in-Germany status. "I guess I can go now. Uh…should I bring Crow?"
"Prob'ly not."
Scooting back his chair, Harry rose and snuck out his wand to quietly water his wall of pot-plants one subtle aguamenti. He caught Sirius' raised eyebrows and smirked. Sirius winked back. They said nothing.
Then Harry popped his wand back into his mokeskin pouch and turned to follow his godfather up the stairs and into the Ministry suite where his Sirius and Remus spent their time.
"And, er, did you say Remus is coming, Sirius?" Harry asked as he hauled himself out of the luggage entrance and stepped over the trunk's edge.
As he turned back to look at Harry, a subtle look crept onto Sirius' face. "That I did, kiddo, that I did. Er…will that be a problem?"
"Surely not."
Harry and Remus were still avoiding each other, obviously enough that even Sirius had noticed. Their conversations were perfectly polite, respectful and stilted. They made sure to never find themselves alone in a room just the two of them.
Sirius creased his brows like a cloud was passing over his face. "Are the two of you alright, Pup? I'm not quite sure what's going on with you, and Remus won't say a word."
"Nothing's wrong," Harry assured him, and followed Sirius into the sitting room where the tired werewolf was waiting. "Professor Lupin. Good morning. How are you today?"
"I am well, Mr Potter," Remus replied with a nod. "In good health, thank you for asking. And yourself?"
"Not too bad," Harry smiled politely. "Not too bad at all."
Sirius stood in the middle of the wool rug and flung his arms roughly into the air. "Why have the gods cursed me to be surrounded by such proper, polite buggers as the two of you!?" he wailed at the ceiling.
Harry and Remus met gazes from one embarrassed moment, before quickly breaking looking away. Harry found himself suddenly fascinated by the lace…crochet?… that was decorating a slender, wooden console table and looked very delicate and complicated in pristine white.
Sirius harrumphed a little at their silence.
But Harry didn't really feel too guilty despite his godfather's clear displeasure. Whatever guilt Remus felt about refusing to help Harry back in the day – it was blindingly obvious Harry had been trying to support Sirius now; Harry had the moral high ground here – and whatever regret or resentment Harry still held about that, it simply hadn't quite worked itself through.
Harry looked at his shoes, wriggled his toes for a moment, and let himself think. He really didn't reckon that he resented Remus at all, actually. Remus would always be his father's best mate, father of Harry's godson – a twinge; he repressed it– but Remus wasn't able to believe in good things anymore. Every good thing that he'd ever had had been taken away. He was run down by life. Harry couldn't blame the man for that, could he?
So he'd just, maintain his distance for a little, instead. Until Remus came around. He could wait.
Meanwhile, Harry's dog-like godfather had found boundless energy from goodness-knows-where and was practically bouncing off the sitting room walls.
"Can we go yet? Can we go yet? Moony, my man, are you ready to leave? Pup, good to go? Can we leave now? It is time?"
"Yes, yes, Padfoot," Remus smiled with a sigh. "We're waiting on you to walk out the door."
Even before they got there, Harry was surprised to discover that the duelling arena had been set up outside, the circular stands for the audience inclined at a rather steep angle.
In the marvellous weather, the skies once again that intensely sharp blue, Harry stopped in his steps to take it in.
First, of course, he saw the kites flying up in the sky. Some seemed to just look pretty; others clearly advertisements: wandmakers, leather workers, wizarding robes, of all things. Then there were the flags that snapped smartly at the entrance he could see. 6 meters up in the air, and they flew the German flag and something that Harry assumed would be the symbol of the European Dueling Confederation: a white flag with a red bottom half, overlaid by two crossed wands in dark brown.
Then Harry took in the site itself.
It was larger than he thought it would be. Visible from hundreds of meters down the street – or up the street, as the embassies were all located further uphill from the venue, the stands for seating could easily sit a thousand. Two thousand, maybe, Harry realised, and closed his mouth with a snap.
It looked nothing like the only other wizarding grandstand he'd seen.
For one thing, it was very green.
Well-manicured grass grew up the sides of a small hill. It was very smooth-looking, with no scraggly shrubs or wind-bent trees to distort its silhouette, and no weeds to ruin its attractively sleek surface. Aside from that, it had quite possibly been a perfectly natural hill before wizards got to it.
But now it was transformed.
With no other wizarding arena to compare it to, Harry could only imagine the tall, wooden Quidditch stands of the Quidditch Cup, and try to find similarities in design.
There weren't many, aside from the obvious, actually. The audience would sit in high, tiered seats and look down on the competitors.
Even as Sirius spun around from where he had walked ahead of Harry, and promptly barked a laugh, Harry's mind made connections.
"Can't take you anywhere, Pup," his godfather teased as Harry noticed how the cobbled street snaked up to the arena like a stream.
He jogged to catch up.
"I guess you can't help but look like some backwards yokel," Sirius added, as the trio made it passed the ticket gate and entered into what was surely a hollowed-out hill.
"This way, kiddo. You can gawk once we find us good seats."
Harry stumbled after his companions.
Beneath his rushing feet, Harry saw some very tight stone cutting and realised that the grandstand had taken inspiration from Roman amphitheatres: the seating was dug out of the hill itself and made of steeply tiered stonework.
As the trio gained height, his view of the arena grew better, and soon Harry's searching eyes located two entrances for the audience, located equidistant to each other and mostly conforming to East and West of the arena.
The stands were half full, some people eating, setting up cushions and blankets, others waving little coloured flags in their hands. Others were lining up nearer to the arena bit, to buy food or drinks or whatever was in the little booths. There were more arguments that Harry might have expected in the stands too, and Harry wondered if they were arguing over spell theory or…duelling techniques or…strategy, or whatever it was that duelling fans argued about. Others just looked bored though, waiting for the second round of the morning to begin. Harry checked the position of the sun – mid-morning-ish – and continued his surveyance.
Hardwood finishings were dotted all around the grandstand: apparition points, apparently, stood near to the north and south ends at the highest point of the stone seats. Presumably they functioned to allow even more entrances to the event centre, and were fenced in securely. Ticket-collectors stood at their gated entry points.
In fact, Sirius was leading them directly below one, the sun almost directly in Harry's eyes as he climbed. They wouldn't go up much further though, Harry hoped. His thighs would be fine from all the stair-climbing at Hogwarts, but Sirius wasn't in great shape just yet and would hate to look sickly in public.
His eyes watered in the light, and Harry raised his left hand to shade them from the sun.
Handrails of wood, and fences in places, were up along the highest seats of the seating area. The kites were mostly tied to them with long, skinny strings and Harry had a sudden urge to enquire as to the charms that stopped them tangling each other's lines.
Then they were where they were supposed to be, it seemed. Remus led the way into seats in the centre of two isles, and Sirius followed blithely. It was good to see his godfather with Remus again, even if Harry himself could not have that relationship with the werewolf. Sirius was chatting a mile a minute, and Remus nodded along patiently every time.
Then Harry himself sat down, and they all spend a minute fussing about arranging robes and checking for wands, and coins, and Harry could once more explore the venue.
Far below him now, Harry could clearly see the entirety of the non-seating bit. The seating ended maybe 10 feet above the dirt floor, and within the stone wall he saw more wood: doors leading into the space inside the hill itself, apparently. Around that wall, temporary booths were set up along the edge of the ground level, sometimes near the doors, sometimes not.
Harry eyed the colourful booths with curiosity and wondered what they were selling. Flags and banners and ribbons were tied carefully all around the fixtures, and were flapping gently in the breeze, and he could hardly avoid having his eye drawn to them. They were gold and pink, bright blue and yellow, a deep, dark green that looked almost black, and all sorts of other colours. Were they…house colours? Not of school houses, but representing the competitors maybe? Or was it something else?
Sirius and Remus had decided against their seats, and shuffled a further five or six feet down their row. With a hoarse, "Oi! Pup!" from Sirius, Harry started slightly, then dragged his eyes away from the spectacle and hustled to catch up.
He shuffled far too slowly to be tripping over his own feet, but his attention was still caught by the shapes of grey stone in the dirt arena, that – now that he wasn't gaping at the booths – dominated the circular stage. There were three of them: long, skinny rectangles, that lay in the centre of the flat ground bit, and they looked a little like a triangle that hadn't had its corners joined together.
"Is that the…the stage? The performance bit? The…pit?" Harry dropped into a seat next to his godfather and asked. He didn't know what to call it and was mature enough not to flush when Sirius laughed in raucous amusement at the naïve question.
"The Romans traditionally named the 'pit' the 'orchestra'," Remus interrupted kindly. "It's generally thought of as something rather clever for the muggles to have come up with, although wizards do it better, now." From the other side of Sirius, he saw Harry's rising eye-brows and flushed. "I, er, I'm just repeating what a local told me earlier. I have no particular prejudices against muggles myself, of course."
"Of course."
"Right," Remus forged on. "So I'm sure you've heard all sorts of wonders about the original Roman theatres: acoustics, flexibility of performance…they were traditionally used for everything from armoured display fights to animal baiting to naval battles, if we speak of the bigger ones."
Harry shifted in his seat to find a softer bit of stone for his bottom to rest on, then leaned around Sirius to better catch the rest of Remus' story.
"Go on?" He remembered Hermione ranting about the Colosseum once. A terrible thing to do as entertainment, she'd said, even if it was a marvel of engineering.
"Wizards saw the flexibility of the thing – I must say: the flooding of a whole arena with water? Genius! – and decided they could do it even better. The layout we see today is only one of twelve different ways for this arena to be configured, and even the duelling platforms – you see those stone rectangles down there? – even they can be moved, expanded and reconfigured for individual or group duels."
"Is that true, Professor?"
"Please, Mr Potter. I'm not your teacher anymore."
Harry raised his eyebrows, surprised. Obviously this was unexpected, but Harry was willing to— Then Remus lost his nerve. "Mr Lupin will do."
Oh.
Remus spoke on.
It was nostalgic for Harry to lean back in his uncomfortable seat and listen to Remus teach him about the origin and history of an object, about its dissemination throughout the Roman Empire and the various wizardly tweaks they'd made along the way. It was tempting to look for a bit of parchment to take notes on, actually, but Harry contented himself by leaning interestedly towards whatever specific bit Remus was kindly pointing out to him.
The back of his neck became warm in the sun.
Harry let Remus' voice wash over him as he heard the brief history of Rome throughout Europe, while Sirius wriggled in the seat between them, hissed whispers of boredom towards Remus when he thought he'd gone on too long, and began poking Harry as he sat there in stillness.
"Alright, that's enough dry history for now!" Sirius finally announced. "I see a booth down there that sells bratwursts. I want one. Are you coming, Remus? Harry? Or must I brave the perils of my journey alone?"
That broke the introspection that Harry'd been doing while Remus spoke, and he agreed to save their seats while the adults jumped up and organised themselves until the next duel started at half past the hour.
"Now, Harry," Sirius said seriously, his stern expression being undermined only by the fact that a bit of tomato sauce was stuck to his lip. "This is some stuff that you really should know. I promised Prongs that I'd bring you to one of these, one day. Teach you how to be a man, and all."
The judges had walked out from where ever they had been waiting, and six duellists were doing their last checks below, so the audience was squeezing in their last chatter before settling to focus. Harry, meanwhile, shot his godfather a surprised look. "My dad? Wanted me to watch duelling growing up?"
"No, actually," Remus interrupted. "This was well back in Hogwarts, maybe fifth-year or so? Having been caught falling hard for your mother, as in, not just a crush, Sirius cottoned on to your father's interest and began planning their children's lives."
"All in a day's work for a good friend like me," Sirius grinned expansively. "I think there were supposed to be seven of you: a quidditch team, obviously. But I promised to be the fun uncle and sneak you out to see the finer things in life."
Remus raised a politely disbelieving eyebrow. "The finer things like Knockturn?" Then he blushed and shot a sideways glance Harry's way. "I mean, I was there at the time. Er, I mean…Mr Potter, if you don't mind my contributing to thi—"
"Yeah?" Sirius's voice was loud and cut right through Remus' awkward apology. "What's wrong with a little wenching and fighting and gambling? Not necessarily in that order, I don't think but…I mean…that was my duty as the fun uncle!"
"Wenching?" Harry squawked out.
"Er, yeah James didn't like that idea either, now that you mention it. Taking Lily Evan's kids wenching, my arse. It's not like she was an actual goddess, too pure to walk on mortal soil."
"Padfoot!" Remus hissed.
Sirius caught Harry's rather frozen-looking face, and seemed suddenly embarrassed by his accidental regression to fifth-year. "I mean, she was a very nice gir—lady, we all liked her, and she and I got to be great friends but still, Pup, I mean…she wasn't the goddess your dad thought she was either. Oooh boy, could she curse—"
Remus hushed them. "They're starting now, Padfoot, Mr Potter. Settle down and pay attention. I, er, if you are amenable, I mean." He shot an apologetic look Harry's way. "Not to, er, tell you what to do, Mr Potter. You have proven yourself quite capable of knowing when it is appropriate to, er, nevermind…Sirius! Calm down!" he hissed again.
And Sirius did.
To Harry's fascination, the six competing wizards all walked out at the same time and found their positions at the extreme ends of the three wooden rectangles in the middle of the 'orchestra'.
He couldn't tell much about them at this distance, even with his famed Seeker eyes, but they were each dressed thematically in colour: one all in reds, another browns, et cetera.
An announcer wandered out, into the space between the three platforms, and cast a sonorus to introduce each witch or wizard. He welcomed the crowd expansively.
"On my left," the announcer then grandly informed his audience, waving one generous hand that direction, "we have Frau Frieda Hoffman, coming back for her third year in the Duellierrundgang. She was a cutthroat competitor last year and we look forward to seeing her casting this time too. Will she make it through the heats and into the next stage? We'll soon find out!
"Her opponent is Herr Heinrich Heinrich, new to the German stage but an experienced competitor in Bulgaria. Will he be the dark horse of our next round or not? Time will soon tell.
"And on my right," the wizard gestured widely, "we have Herr Ernst Günther, who we saw had great success last year in his—"
Sirius interrupted Harry's carefully measured attention on the man by whinging Remus' way. "What's he saying, Moony? Did you ever learn German? I've lost all of mine."
Remus hadn't, in fact, somewhat to Harry's surprise. He spoke French and Spanish and a smattering of Albanian, but never had reason to learn German before.
"I'm keeping up with this," Harry offered cautiously. "I could translate for you…uh," he pointed back at the first witch. "Frau Hoffman has apparently put up a pretty good showing for only having been involved in the duels for three years so far; her opponent is much more experienced, but it was hinted that he came to Germany because perhaps he didn't get the success he wanted in Bulgaria? I think? Uh...Herr Günther made it through the heats last year and into the International Circuit proper, so he's — I think he's the crowd favourite for today; his opponent apparently surprised everyone with what he could do with transfiguration last year but — I think I'm getting the vibe — it was implied he'll shake things up a bit this time…"
He paused in his translation as the crowd roared in approvable because of something that the announcer has mentioned. "Er… the witch in the far platform is apparently really good at hexes, and I didn't quite catch what he said about the final guy, but I think he's just left Durmstrang and is new to the stage?"
Forgetting about their awkward distance for a moment, Remus sat up and shot Harry an impressed glance, raised eyebrows and all.
Sirius simply barked his laugh and bashed Harry cheerfully on the shoulder. Harry jerked a little under the impact.
"That's my godson, Moony. Great Godric, what a guy! How long did you say you've been learning German again, Pup? A month?"
Harry shrugged, his attention still trying to focus on what was happening in the arena. "A couple of months, really, although I could only start using the memory potion and whatnot once I arrived here.
"Prongs would be so proud!" Sirius boasted, and to Harry's embarrassment, Remus was nodding along.
"I…it's mostly the potions, really," Harry said.
"And the bloody long hours you spend in your study each day," Sirius protested. "You certainly didn't get that from your dad. Why, I could tell you—"
"It's starting, Padfoot," Remus muttered, and the three settled down to watch closely.
Three other wizards in official-looking robes appeared out of the orchestra doors, and then split up, each approaching a different duelling platform and Harry realised that they were the judges.
To Harry's fascination, the announcer also moved, retreating into a corner of the orchestra, and then raised his wand with a dramatic flourish.
"Stellung! Fertig!"
The competitors, looking quite tiny from where Harry was sitting, seemed to rock a little. After a moment of consternation, Harry realised that they were settling into battle-postures. Bent knees, straight backs, legs spread for stability, or so he assumed. Their wand arms were all…half-up, the better to cast or react with.
There was none of the awkward flourishing he remembered from Lockhart's failed duelling club. Each entrant looked streamlined, rather ruthless and efficient as they found their poses and then paused.
Harry felt the warmth of the sun on the back of his neck, and the wind ruffle his collar. His heart rate sped up at the sudden tension. He couldn't help but lean forward in his seat, the better to see with, the better to follow… Beside him, Sirius and Remus did the same.
"Los!" the announcer commanded, and brought his wand down in a sudden slash.
The contestants moved.
It was glorious.
As Harry watched, the three pairs of competitors seemed to cast simultaneously. There were two flashes of light – a blue and a silver – but Harry couldn't tell what they cast. The other spells were colourless and, to Harry's mild frustration, completely silent.
Indeed, it was the audience that was making all the noise. Roars grew like a wave. Some teens were shouting encouragement. Other witches were arguing, and there appeared to be an awful lot of analysis being done by the audience members as Harry sat in wonder.
The announcer commented on all three battles at once, and as such uttered a series of oddly disconnected comments that Harry struggled to follow.
"Uh…" Harry attempted desperately. "Someone's attempted to use a class…three…something? It was…returned, maybe? A witch has tried to, um…hex someone – that might be Frau Adriane? He's saying…oh, someone's shown some clever footwork – did you see anyone move just now? There was a switching spell just now…no idea what on, but it worked, someone's struggling…er, the school leaver maybe? I missed that comment, but the wizard in blue did it, whatever it was." He gave up. "Sirius, do you know what's going on?"
Sirius snorted a laugh and obligingly explained a few things. "See how they're all standing, Pup? That's a pretty standard European duelling stance – lets you lean away from some spells, gives you some chance of avoidance but the rules for this Circuit don't allow you to run away from spells…do you see the squares they're all standing on?"
Harry didn't, so he blinked and looked harder. It was true: at the far end of each stone duelling rectangle – or "corridor" as Sirius promptly point out – there seemed to be a squarish box painted, in which all six competitors stood.
"They're not allowed out of the square, Pup," Sirius explained. "Keeps the contest about spell-casting and less about fitness. Stupid rule if you ask me. A lot of wizards died in the war because of it – bad habits, don't you know – but I suppose it's alright for more formal duels. The clever footwork you mentioned...uh...probably...gods, it's been years."
He ran a rough hand over his brow. "Moony? Help me out?"
Jerking to alertness, Remus shot Sirius a worried look before leaning over to speak loudly in Harry's direction. "That comment just before must have been some fast box steps, probably: the idea is you take a couple of steps out from the centre and then get back to the middle of the square before you're forced to dodge out of the lines and then lose."
"Huh," Harry thought he could see how that would work, actually, and settled down to listen some more. "I think I get it. Go on, then?"
"Well, they're all casting silently, you see." Remus continued. "That young man in the green – you mentioned he was just out of school: you can see even from here that he's mouthing the spells. His head's too fixed, too. I'd say it's almost certain that he will lose…there, it see that? It looks like his opponent is going easy on him to give him some experience. Good sportsmanship. How nice."
"Good lass," Sirius muttered, but Harry's attention was arrested.
"Head too fixed?"
"He's forcing himself to match his opponent's pace," Remus explained. "You can see his neck kind of does a jerk forward every time something's cast at him, and his movements are stiff. He's not used to duelling at this speed, it seems. You see how everyone else is more fluid."
Harry looked, and they were. Particularly the two who'd been pointed out to be experienced: the hexing witch, and the wizard who'd done well last year.
The wizard, in particular, looked like he never stopped moving; there were no jerky movements or sudden changes of direction. His wand arm seemed to flow like water, from one spell shape switching smoothly into another, his whole body apparently rocking around without rhythm as far as Harry could see.
"Now that wizard's rather good," Remus pointed him out as he spoke. "See how he never stops swaying around? It gives him a chance to dodge his upper body out of the way of some spells without worrying about his footsteps, and also creates a kind of rhythm that he can follow in his spell casting."
"Ooh!" Sirius sat up. "I got this! You'd think it would give his rhythm away, actually, but it doesn't, because no other wizard outside of his head can hear the beat that he's moving to. He's going to win that one, easily."
Three minutes later, Sirius was proven right, and the duels were all called to a halt one by one. The teen wizard had lost his wand to his opponent, a witch was frozen in ice, and the final duel was halted last, as the wizard who lost abruptly collapsed to the floor.
The announcer called out the winners, who raised their wand hands in the air and bowed to their opponents and then to the crowd.
The crowd roared, and applauded, particularly impressed by the hexing witch who'd been so kind to the school-leaver.
Then to Harry's fascination, the winners all left their platforms and walked clockwise, to climb up to the neighbouring platform to do it all again.
"The European Duelling Circuit tends to use a round-robin format in the heats," Remus explained from the other side of Sirius. "It gives competitors a better chance to make it up the rankings, particularly if they're just fought the person who's going to win the day, and so on. We'll have two more matches in this round, and then six completely new duellers will come to the stage. They'll be five different sessions of new duellers before the intermission for lunch."
"I see," Harry muttered, and fixed his eye on the hexing witch. He'd try to follow her movements in the next duel, and see what good habits he could pick up. He needed a new practical focus for the upcoming year; survival seemed a particularly wise thing to focus on.
His mind shied away from a duel in a graveyard, and Harry leaned forward to learn as much as he could at this moment. Just in case, of course. Not that he was planning anything. Big, he meant. Not that he was planning anything big that Crookshanks or Kreacher or Sirius would disapprove of.