Chapter 4

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Shacklebolt's battered me twice before. Now, that might sound like a depressing detail to focus on, but trust me, me being the control freak I am, I learn more from my losses than I do from my wins. Especially the horrid ones. The ones against Shacklebolt were really bad, so I've replayed them a hundred times over. I know this man's style inside out— I can time his flicks and twirls, I can talk your head off about the minutiae regarding his body position and foot movement. I can pinpoint the exact combinations in which he uses the three dozen or so spell chains he knows. I can discuss the intricacies of his defensive technique. I can tell you, for example, that he faces you sideways, has a preference for side stepping curses, but will always shield or conjure when faced with transfiguration. I can go a step further and confidently assert that he sees transfiguration as the greatest threat in my arsenal, since he did not let me get off a single spell from that branch the last time we faced each other. He'd specifically fight for the initiative anytime he thought I was about to resort to conjuration, whilst simply letting the fight drift the second I went back to hexes or curses.

I've also figured out just where I went horribly wrong. I've already said before that a dueling arena is about a hundred yards, length wise. I have this bad habit— ingrained from three years of utterly annihilating the youth leagues— of getting into my opponent's face. When you respect your opponent you respect that distance. It takes most spells two seconds to cover a hundred yards, and that gives you ample time to either shield or get out of the way. But at thirty? Twenty? Ten? You're completely at the mercy of your reflexes and your opponent's aim.

This was not an issue at the lower levels. My reflexes are catlike, and most of the plodders I faced up to last year had hilariously shite aim. You could give them ten spells against a moving target at twenty yards, and they'd miss nine. It's why I sleepwalked through most duels.

I've tried the same tactic in the pro circuit with mixed results, but the good has always outweighed the bad, and I'm nothing if not obstinate, even when it's clearly obvious that a plan is not working.

So I tried it against Shacklebolt. After a passive bout last April, where I was disgusted with just how much of a coward I was and how I kept clinging to the edges of the arena, I got in his face this August— I went for the throat . . . and got hit with a bone breaker two minutes in.

There's only so much your healer can do to glue your ligaments back together when she has ninety seconds between rounds to pull it off. I fought four and a half rounds out of five on a broken leg, and any idea of movement went out of the window. All I could do was bunker down, grit my teeth against the radiating pain, and pray Shacklebolt would put me out of my misery so we could all go home.

There's a saying in most sports: the one who makes the second last mistake wins. This does not apply to dueling. In dueling, the one who makes the first mistake loses. So the plan this time is to not be that guy.

Obviously, that's it for the good news.

The bad news is that Shacklebolt's really bloody good at what he does. I hinted at my inability to use transfiguration against him the last time. I've run into this issue against Lacroix too. In fact, in all my duels against the current top ten— one notable exception aside— I've never once been able to use transfiguration, because they simply don't allow me the time. Transfiguration is an ancient branch, the one with the most hax and the least limits, since if you're a freak like me you're only limited by your imagination; but it is also the slowest. That extra second it takes to visualise something is an extra second that simply does not exist at the highest level. And much as I can read my opponents, much as I've studied them, they've studied me too. They know just when I'm about to conjure or transfigure something. They know because for a moment my wand goes still. For a moment it deviates from the relentless blur it is during all other spellcasting. And that moment is all they need to cut the distance, take the initiative, and fire off four or five spells so I never get to finish my conjuration. I am left having to shield, or I'm left animating malformed constructs that shatter at first contact. Both are subpar alternatives.

But every cloud has its silver lining. I've spent the entirety of the last three months working solely on casting speed. I have cut the time for transfiguration by at least half a second, if not more. I finally have enough faith in my ability to conjure rudimentary constructs in combat situations against elite opponents, as I did against Trace.

So if this fucking gremlin of a ref grinning up at me thinks he's just handed Shacklebolt a walkover in all but name, then he's in for a rude awakening.

As is Shacklebolt.

Bring it on, you bald ministerial stooge.

The first thing that greets me as I step into the arena is the sea of faces jam packed into the spiral structure that resembles a colosseum. This alone is highly unusual for a group stage match—most of these bring crowds of two or three hundred, not the two thousand plus I'm looking at.

There's a giant scorecard situated just outside the thrumming, crisscrossing, interlocked red and beige warding scheme. There's our little dugout on the left. Shack's is on the other side. The fluorescent lights overhead flash into life one by one, till the entire place is bathed in blazing white.

The crowd takes one look at me and roars. There's a sonorous charm applied to the triangular roof, so the sound arches off its sides and is magnified tenfold.

Trace looks stricken, and even Daph looks queasy. Me, though? I grin fiercely, I drink it in. I was born for this, I'm bloody loving it. I raise my fist and pump it thrice. The crowd blows the roof off the place. They're riotous, they're baying, and each pump is a promise: no matter the result, this today will be a bloodsport.

From the other side enters Kingsley Shacklebolt. He is at least a head taller than I am, and bedecked in malachite and sea foam. I am familiar with his healer, a dignified woman named Emmeline Vance, but his second is a fresh face. Dawlish is the one he uses; this time it's a girl with mousy hair who can't be more than twenty. The crowd's roar for him is far louder than it was for me: he's who they came to see, after all— the fourth best duelist in the world and Britain's best hope of winning this thing since Filius Flitwick last won it thirty-five years ago.

The ref hobbles past me and takes his place in the center. He beckons us both over. Shack and I meet— we exchange amicable greetings, we trade handshakes.

"Gentlemen, you know the rules. Adhere to them," the ref says. "Show me two digits if you wish to sub your Second in. I reserve the right to call the fight whenever I see fit. Fight clean, fight well, and keep in mind that unforgivables, fiendfyre, rotting curses and apparation are instant disqualifications, as are any other spells listed in section 22b of the duellists' manual. Finally, the association bears no responsibility for any deaths on the circuit. If you wish to forfeit, say so now."

Shack and I shake our heads with wry grins.

"All right, let's go then." The ghoul's voice is magnified. "Seconds and healers, to your corners; duelists, starting positions. Buzzer ends the round; I repeat, buzzer ends the round."

The first choice that faces me even as I trudge to my circle is whether or not to keep my dragonhide cloak on. Dragonhide is the perfect last line of defence, but it comes at the cost of mobility. After a brief hesitation, I unpin the cloak and toss it to Tracey. I've decided to be conservative, but I'd like to retain my reflexes. I can wear it next round if I change my mind.

Shack has no such reservations. His entire apparel is dragonhide. Except for the half-steps he takes to evade certain curses, I doubt he'll move at all throughout the entire fight.

Kingsley Shacklebolt (4) vs Harry Potter (14), the scorecard reads.

Round wise head-to-head record:

Shacklebolt 10 wins

Draws 0

Potter 0 wins

I slide my wand out. I take a deep breath. The board blurs. The crowd becomes white noise. There's nothing now except me and the wrist retreating into Kingsley's robes. His wand emerges. I fixate on it.

"Begin!"

The world explodes.

The first thing I do is sprint at him. I glide past the spell fire that opens gouges on either side. I flick a reducto aimed at my skull into the roof; I cut the distance to sixty yards. Then I halt. This is a better position— close enough to cause discomfort, but far enough to not compromise me immediately.

He gets off a volley of incarnadine streaks, each aimed at a different body part. I take half a step to the right, incline my head out of the way, tuck my body just so. Three of the four spells whistle past. The fourth I swat back at him with such force that it tears a trench into the ground. He sidesteps; I twist my wand and hijack the spell as it flashes past. It doubles back on him. He spins and slashes. The spell goes out in a fusillade of sparks.

He turns back to me. Both our wands are raised but neither casts a spell. We circle each other. We're probing for weaknesses.

This time I'm the first to strike. It is a nasty little combination of four esoteric cutting curses, one of which bypasses skin and bone and splits things at a cellular level. It is an instant fight-ender if it connects, not that I expect it to. They're all aimed at his left side; the idea is to get him to step right, into the little gouge that the stubbed-out spell created, so I can transfigure that chink into a chasm. Another tactic, another potential fight ender. I can almost hear his knee go out with a gunshot crack.

Instead of going right, however, he steps into the line of my spell fire and shields. It is an arcane shield, a pulsating magenta membrane with veins and ventricles. The veins elongate— they dart out and swallow my spells, a venus flytrap. The strength of my spells augments the organism. It leaps at me. I stab my wand downwards, and the floor wrenches free and rises up to meet it. There's a hissing, spattering sound. A spiderweb of cracks shivers up the marble. It smokes and blackens but holds firm. The membrane loses shape, turns viscid, streams down the front with a throbbing squelch. I vanish the residue, then step around the ruins and stare Kingsley down. Once again, neither of us casts a spell.

"Much better, Harry Potter," he says to me in that deep baritone of his. "You're unrecognisable from the boy I fought two months ago."

Instead of replying I tap the smoking marble next to me. It twists, gyrates and divides; turns into teeth and claws, into powerful fore and hindlegs, muscles and tendons. I have next to me a pair of snow leopards.

"Scurry to either end," I breathe.

They part breadthwise and go in opposite directions. Kingsley feints firing at them, obliging me to bring my wand up to cover them, then snaps off three spells at me; the first two are stunners, the third's a disarming charm— I sidestep the first, bend slightly at the waist to avoid the second, then extend my palm and let the dragonhide glove eat the third. The spell fizzles out without doing anything. But in the half a second's respite his spell chain brings him, he blasts the left leopard into rubble.

I curse under my breath. There goes my flanking manouver. I commit to it anyway. Snarling, the right leopard goes at him while I throw jinxes, hexes, stunners and banishers at him, not because these do significant damage, but because they're the fastest spells a wizard can cast. He keeps the leopard in his line of sight, tilts his body toward it, then throws up an aegis to stop my bombardment. His wand's still pointed at me, though. It's coming up, it's about to stab at my leopard— he's about to blow this one into rubble too.

I grin and twist my wand.

My leopard atomises itself into stone shrapnel with a thunderclap.

His eyes widen; his wand dances desperately to conjure a physical shield.

He's too late.

It is a testament to Shacklebolt's abilities that he's able to block out or evade most of the chunks careening at him. Some are the size of a man's heart, and if they were to connect they'd most likely kill him. But they don't. It's the smaller ones that get through. One clips his forehead, another his shin, yet another his knee, and the last one — jackpot!— smashes flush into the wrist supporting his wand. I hear a satisfying snap. The wrist goes. The shield fades. Wincing, he holds onto his wand, but he no longer has the wrist mobility to cast anything stronger than a protego.

I blitz him. My wand's a furious blur. There's no time for anything else; none to think, none to look at the clock. I intend to end this here and now.

For someone whose style centers around a lack of movement, Shacklebolt is surprisingly agile when he wants to be. His legs are functional, so he leaps around the arena, throwing up protego when he can, but mostly just diving out of the way of my bone breakers, my blood freezers, my entrail expellers, and even the sharp stabby conjurations I throw at him. But there's no respite at this level, and there's only so long you can run against someone my quality— I bring down the wrath of the heavens on him. A bonebreaker catches him plumb in the sternum. It knocks the stuffing out of him, lifts him off his feet, and even as he flies backwards he's torpedoed by four more curses, each darker than the last. His dragonhide takes most of the impact, but this is over. He crashes headfirst into the wards, which repel him. He's disoriented, he's staggering, his wand's been lost in the melee, and even as he shambles back onto his feet, a zombie, I march toward him, wand tip glowing, a curse on my lips—

And the buzzer sounds.

I close my eyes and deflate.

Shacklebolt topples over backwards, the relief oozing from him a tangible thing. His robes are shredded, his wrist's twisted the wrong way, there's blood spurting from his broken nose. His entire frame is wracked with tremors. But he's survived, for now.

The way the girls stare at me when I take my seat in the dugout, you'd think I'm Magic itself made flesh and blood.

"You magnificent bastard," Trace whispers, sliding up against me. She's grinning ear to ear.

"That's the best I've seen you fight." There's reverence in Daph's tone. She's waving her wand like a baton to run diagnostics, but there's nothing to diagnose— I did not get hit a single time. There's some mental fatigue from focusing so hard, and there's a film of sweat from the few sprints I've broken into, but beyond that I'm fine.

"You killed him, Harry!" Trace says. She can't contain her joy anymore. "That was so dominant, beginning to end. You controlled every second—"

I stop her with a shake of my head.

"Nah, round was dead even," I say. "We negated each other for four minutes before I got in a cheap shot he really ought to have seen coming. I'd not read too much into it."

"Still, good fortune or not, it's over," Daph announces. She puts her wand away; she's done with her diagnostics. "We all saw what he was like at the end. I don't think he has more than a round left in him."

I push against the inside of my cheek with my tongue and stick my lip out contemplatively.

"Debatable," I decide. "That wrist is an episkey away from being fixed. And while the curses he took in the last fifteen seconds will have debilitating effects, the dragonhide saved him from the worst. A good healer—"

"— cannot fix most of the damage without potions," Daph interrupts. "Not in ninety seconds. And potions, as you well know, are illegal to consume between rounds. Vance will prioritize the wrist and get in a couple of counter curses, most likely for the entrail expeller, which is nasty if left unchecked. But there's just no way they can patch him up to a level where he isn't reeling under the side effects of at least half those spells, even if diminished due to dragonhide." She crosses her arms. "There's also no way you didn't destroy most of the protective padding in his robes."

"Yeah, maybe," I concede. "But hell, it's Shacklebolt. Man's grit personified. With that wrist fixed, he's still dangerous enough to cause me serious issues in the next couple o' rounds."

The buzzer sounds again. We all look to the ghoul, who is interacting with the panel of five judges who are placed just outside the wards. He looks like he's sucked on a lemon; he nods to them, then turns away.

"Round to Potter," he announces curtly. "Potter 1 Shacklebolt 0. Duellists, please return to your positions. If you are unable to continue, or wish to sub your second in, then please say so now."

Kingsley shakes his head, argues with his healer, who looks apoplectic, and gets back onto his feet unsteadily. That in itself is a huge tell. He doesn't trust his new second; he hasn't opted to be treated for an extra five minutes whilst giving her the round. Daph's right— he's reeling. If he still had Dawlish, I'd most likely be fighting Dawlish, who is respectable and could hold for five minutes.

"Don't do anything stupid," Trace tells me as I stand.

I decide to take her words to heart. This time I pull on my dragonhide cloak. I could go for the kill, but I'd rather not. Kingsley and I both know he doesn't have more than a couple of rounds left before the spell damage he took puts him out of commission. He'll come out this round all guns blazing, and desperate men who do desperate things are one lucky hit away from pulling off a miracle.

So it's time to dig deep and demonstrate my defensive technique.

Contrary to prehistoric belief, there's no such thing as a magical core. The idea that there exists such a thing peaked in the Elizabethan era, when the then Lord Black ingested sulphuric acid in an attempt to expand his magical core, which he insisted was an organ that would only grow under extreme pressure and hardship. It'd shine like a diamond, he swore. It did not. When they cut open his reeking, swollen, disfigured corpse, there was much in the way of melting organs and decaying esophageal matter and other smoking ephemera, but of a magical core they found no hint.

All this is to say, despite being dead on his feet, Kingsley can cast as much magic as he wants. Magic isn't a well or a drainpipe or a fucking garden hose—there's nothing limiting its supply. The worst you can end up with after hours upon hours of practice are wrist cramps and a skull splitting headache. No, the actual limiters are by way of physical mobility and strategic thought, both of which decline as the rounds progress and the wear and tear from spell damage intensifies.

But magically speaking, Kingsley Shacklebolt's fit as a fiddle.

All this runs through my mind as I take up my position. I've decided to sacrifice this round if need be, especially after seeing his pronounced limp and the blood drizzling down his robes. Of course, I'm not going to set out to lose, but the judges always score attack higher than defence, so if I were to move around a little then bunker down, all whilst forcing him to constantly change his angles of attack— with the intent of softening him up and letting the spell damage take hold— then more likely than not, they'll give him the round anyway.

It's insignificant as long as I win the match.

"Begin!" The ref cries.

I stay stock still and start a mental countdown. This time it is Shacklebolt who cuts the distance. He's not moving well— he sways and staggers after the first ten steps, then grits his teeth and sluggishly creeps forward. He lifts his wand— a spume of translucent gold issues from it. Gubraithian fire. Eternal flames that are a clever workaround to the fiendfyre rule. Not as potent but just as much of a bitch to deal with.

He rotates his wand overhead like a lasso, and the flames surround him, burning everbright. They gain in intensity: from the spume they transition into a gout, from the gout into a column, from the column into a crouching figure of chimeric proportions, claws upturned. Through all this I can see blood gush down Shacklebolt's sleeve, spout from his nose, issue from his foaming mouth. The whites around his eyes darken. This spell is his trump card— the strain of controlling it is causing the dark magic pulsing through his veins to circulate faster. For a second I'm concerned about his well being.

I've not been idle. For each clockwise twist of his, I've twisted my wand counterclockwise, till there's a skein of snow feathering the wards, and till we're both cinched by a circle of howling whirlwinds. The temperatures within the arena are subzero. With a snarl and a great heave I slash my wand, and there ascends from the rumbling ground a hulking frozen skeletal construct, the gash around its mouth mirroring a mocking leer. Tiles are torn off the floor— they twist and wrench and armour my abomination.

The fifteen-foot chimera paws the ground, singes the arena, turns its surroundings into lava and ash. It lowers its head. It charges.

The behemoth rises to full height, interlocks armoured fingers, brings its arms up then plunges them down in a bashing motion.

I'm blown off my feet by the resultant shockwave, but even airborne I twirl my wand to protect myself from the broken tiles and flaming debris that rush my way. They dent my physical shield with resounding thuds.

I let my left glove absorb the weight of my fall, then flip over backwards. I raise my wand. The arena is cratered and hollowed out, the thrumming wards have fogged over. It is raining cement and hellfire. At the centre lies the crackling residue of my abomination, slowly supped on by the gubraithian fire which has lost its shape.

I look beyond that. I look at Kingsley. There's a sharpish chunk of rock sticking out from between his ribs. With a subdued gasp he sinks to his knees and vomits blood. He trotters back onto his feet unsteadily, then relaxes and pitches face first into the crimson puddle in front of him.

It is over.