For the final quidditch match of the year, the math had seemed so simple: catch the snitch when Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were tied or Gryffindor was ahead. But then Ravenclaw's seeker, Cho Chang (Wizard, Level 3), had casually given Harry a wink and smile, told him she wasn't going to go easy on him, and made him feel some very strange butterflies in his stomach.
The combat log didn't even register that he'd been hit with any kind of distracting attack, but there it was.
By the time he'd stopped staring after the pretty girl, Ravenclaw had scored a goal already and he needed to wait for Gryffindor to catch up. It turned out that the eagle house had been on a winning streak for good reasons: their quidditch team took to the sport with the same single-minded determination the rest of the house used for academics. Especially with the upgraded brooms, they were proving a real challenge even for the highly-talented Gryffindor team.
[Party] Harry Potter: I can catch the snitch any time, guys, but you've got to help score.
Fred Weasley replies: Tell us something we don't know!
George Weasley replies: Tell us something we don't know!
Lee Jordan replies: Keep an eye on Chang!
Harry hadn't really taken his eyes off of her, other than to glance at the scoreboard, since she'd given him that smile, but he had missed that she was suddenly moving toward the targeting box for the snitch. And the score was sitting at 40:30 in Ravenclaw's favor. Pouring on the speed while Lee commented in the background, Harry managed to cross in front of Cho in a way that forced her to swerve and lose momentum, and with both of them near the snitch it dove down and crossed enough of the stands that she might have lost it. "Almost had ye, Potter!" she grinned, letting her speed bleed off as she started scanning in the wrong direction for where the tiny golden ball had gone.
"No hard feelings?" he asked, sighing in relief.
"Ye've had some bad beats," she shrugged, referring to the match he'd missed the previous year and the loss because of the dementors earlier in that one. "So we decided not t'be as cutthroat as we normally are."
"Doesn't hurt your study time, practicing to get this good?"
"Oor captain quizzes us while we do drills," she explained. They'd both drifted higher up and were chatting from a few yards away as they floated over the pitch. "What aboot ye? Hear ye're near the top o' yer year."
"In the library whenever I'm not practicing quidditch, usually," he admitted.
Fred Weasley replies: Harry! What are you doing?
George Weasley replies: Stop chatting up the bird and get the snitch!
Harry really had gotten totally distracted, and flicked his eyes over to see that the score had finally tied up 50:50. "Nice chat! Talk later!" he told her, and had the presence of mind to start accelerating in the wrong direction, toward the scoreboard where he'd just glanced.
"Not gonna make it that easy!" she shouted, jubilantly, kicking her own broom into motion moments behind him. When everyone had the same kind of magical rocket to ride on, it really did make the game a lot more about talent and skill.
Harry slightly sandbagged his speed, waited until Cho was pulling ahead of him and going nearly at the limit of what the broom could handle, and then peeled away and started heading for where the snitch actually was. It took her a vital couple of seconds to catch onto the trick, since she was peering ahead trying to spot the flash of gold she thought he'd been after, and that meant everything at the speeds they were flying. She still almost caught up to him as he had to turn left toward the fleeing snitch, but he slapped his palm against it and grabbed hold while she was three broomlengths behind.
"Potter catches the snitch! Gryffindor wins the match and the cup!" Lee announced, to the roar of the crowd.
"Alright," she told him with a rueful smile. "Ye played me fair. This time I didnae make it easy. Next time, I'm gonna make it hard."
"Looking forward to it," he told her, honestly, then waved and descended to the rest of his team and the impending massive celebration in the Gryffindor dorms.
The quidditch match was on the Saturday before term exams, and after that hard-fought-victory, the tests were barely a challenge. Harry was never going to get the raft of perfect scores Hermione could for memorizing obscure facts and going for extra credit, but he was years ahead on the practical and had his codex to fall back on if he forgot something on the information-regurgitation parts. And it was a little weird that he was really wanting to do well: unlike the year before, he had someone that cared that he got good grades.
Sirius didn't care much, since he wasn't one to put much stock in scores rather than results, but he was at least going to look at Harry's report card and make appreciative noises if the scores were high. And that mattered to the kid, it turned out.
"I don't know how well I did on history and astronomy," he admitted to his godfather, as the Marauders were hanging out in the Room of Requirement, "but I feel good about everything else. Even potions."
They'd finally experimented with the "beach" setting, and were well pleased by the room's simulation of the Mediterranean coast. Everyone was sitting around in swimwear enjoying the sand and lapping of the water. It wasn't bad in the actual outside, for near-summer in Scotland, but the best day in the highlands was still not a prime Riviera experience. If you moved quickly enough while watching the distance, you could tell that everything more than a few-dozen yards away was a two-dimensional illusion on the walls, rather than true endless horizon, but the sun, sand, and breeze all felt real enough. It even managed to recreate the sea smell.
"You're certainly receiving an Outstanding from me," Remus told him, from the blanket next to Sirius'. "I just got the lower-year grading out of the way. I'm not totally sure how much input I have on the OWL and NEWT exams, since they're administered by the Ministry, but I didn't want to risk still having a mountain of grading to do." The werewolf had opted to visit the beach in linen pants and shirt, rather than going topless and showing off his scars. Despite the attempt at covering up, they could see the outlines of a few of the more prominent clawmarks through the white fabric.
"Are you still done after this term?" Hermione asked, from Harry's other side. "Only, I learned rather a lot more from you than from our other instructors, and for continuity of our education it would be helpful if you were also going to teach next year."
"Albus finally destroyed the diadem," the defense professor shrugged, "because he has the cup to experiment with. So there's a good chance the curse on the position is now broken. I'm deciding whether I want to risk it. I did enjoy teaching you all."
"I hope you stay on, and that you keep doing dueling clubs," Ron said, from further down the line. "Looking forward to this week…"
The final dueling club of the year was set on the 13th, on a Sunday night that was after the normal exams but before the upper-years started taking NEWTs and OWLs the next day. The vibe in the great hall after dinner was somewhat electric: five-sevenths of the school was basically done for the year and as relieved as they could be when worried about their scores, while the fifth and seventh years were missing valuable last-second study time and wanted to make it count, somehow.
"You've all come a long way," Dawlish told everyone, from the exhibition dueling platform that had replaced the professors' table for the evening. "I don't know what my assignment will be for next year, but I hope you all keep this up. A number of seventh-years in particular that I didn't think would be ready to try out for the aurors when I started, I'll be pleased to see at the Ministry this summer."
"Assuming they have prepared for their potions exam," Snape commented, his voice powerful enough for even that snarky aside to carry across the room. Several of his seventh-year students visibly gulped, glancing at the man.
"I don't get why potions is required to be an auror," Ron grumbled, quietly.
"It all comes down to forensics…" Hermione started to explain, but then was cut off by Dawlish continuing.
"I think you've all gotten far enough that we're going to mix you up. No more safe partnerships," the auror explained. "Some of the better duelists, we may even put against a higher year. Remember, this is about practice, not settling scores with other houses."
"What about Potter?" a boy's voice asked from in the crowd. Harry had to check his chat log to find out that it was Fortinbras Tuft, a Slytherin seventh-year that was probably still angry with him about a dead relative in Azkaban.
"We're going to see if he can crack the sixth years tonight," Remus told everyone with a smile. "Why don't people that want to challenge the Boy-Who-Lived start queuing up? If enough lower-years challenge him, it may be a hour before the matches really start to get interesting…"
While his friends were getting matched up semi-randomly with people from other houses (most of them with kids in the next-higher year, because they were top of the their classes at dueling), Harry was starting his grind with the bravest of the third-years who, to a one, had all thought up one weird trick that they thought would let them beat him this time. Each of them was wrong.
But it turned out he'd finally reached a level or skill ranking such that he'd stopped getting XP from third-years.
It was awful. The deadly secret of gamification was that attaching rewards to something increased your motivation, but if you ever stopped getting those rewards, your motivation level would drop off a cliff. In theory, dueling should be fun in and of itself, but after that first challenger resulted in a 0 XP award (Level Too Low), Harry found the rest of the third-years a horrendous slog.
And then he only got half the normal XP for the fourth-years, as well.
Finally, he'd beaten all the challengers from that year, and started getting the normal 125 XP for each of the fifth-years that challenged him. And it was fair, because unlike the lower-years that had each come up with some kind of gimmick to try to get him, the OWL students had genuinely been getting better. And, from how they looked at Remus, they all seemed to have it in their heads that beating the Boy-Who-Lived might be worth extra credit on their defense exams.
Nowhere near a level up that would reset his magical stamina by the time he'd finally cleared them out, he desperately messaged:
Whisper to Remus Lupin: I'm almost tapped out. You have to give me a minute or something.
The elder Marauder clearly considered making him go immediately just as a prank, but Marcus Flint had managed to get in front of Gemma Farley for the sixth-year line this time, and nobody wanted to see the brutish Slytherin quidditch captain be the one to take out Harry. So Remus said, "I can't imagine most of you were paying much attention for the last little while, and won't while Harry is up against the next batch. So why don't we start clearing up and make some room. Your professors have an exhibition of their own to show you."
Flitwick bounced up and down a bit, excited. Snape narrowed his eyes as if detecting that Remus was helping Harry against the upper-year Slytherins. Dawlish flat-out asked, "Thought we were waiting until the end."
"Sadly, I think we're not as big a draw as Harry versus the sixth-years, and we want to end on a climax," the defense professor shrugged.
"Fair enough," Dawlish agreed. As Flitwick started casting some kind of spells that expanded the dueling pitch and Remus and Snape began to conjure chest-high walls and similar obstacles inside of it, the auror explained, "I've mentioned before that dueling isn't a real spell battle. What we're doing now is showing you more of what a real battle is like. Your charms professor and I will be the auror squad, who are trying to bring in a pair of dark wizards." Remus just sketched a bow while Snape scowled, though possibly simply more at the reminder that he was teaming up with the werewolf (which he, at least, preferred to having to be against him).
The twins were already doing a brisk business taking bets toward the back of the room as the four professors squared up. Harry was mostly oblivious to all of it as he had found a safe corner to hunker down in and surreptitiously have a snack from his inventory, trying to regenerate as much endurance and magical stamina as he could.
His friends told him afterwards that the exhibition was very exciting.
The professors were still limiting themselves to spells that weren't likely to cause any kind of lasting harm, but the addition of static defenses and multiple angles of attack really livened up the fight (at least for the kids that hadn't seen that kind of thing before). Harry, already horribly blasé at not-quite-thirteen, assumed it wasn't as chaotic as fighting a horde of inferi or Bellatrix Lestrange. Ultimately, Flitwick and Dawlish had won, owing to Snape having to check himself and figure out something nonlethal to cast and not really working as a team with Remus.
Remus admitted later that he was just happy the defense position curse didn't kick in and see him get hit by a stray spell in a surprisingly-deadly way.
It had gone on long enough that Harry had recovered most of his endurance and about half his magical stamina, and that would have to be good enough. Because the professors opted to leave the expanded, obstacle-filled course for him to take on the sixth years.
With an evil grin, Marcus Flint led off with an object-attracting jinx to try to fling shattered detritus at Harry, already working to conjure aggressive animals to try to pen him in. But the obstacles were a big help for someone with Effortless Dodge, and the much-bigger boy very quickly flat out lost sight of Harry (who hadn't even had to put on his cloak, just make use of his Basic Sneak skill). Flint didn't realize he was directing his conjurations at the wrong hiding place until Harry's disarming charm nailed him in the flank from two obstructions over.
180 Combat XP Awarded
Hermione seemed to be correct that combat XP was progressing based on the square of the opponent's level times ten (and that in a real combat situation, level sixes would be worth 360). There was a visible bump on Harry's XP bar with each one that he defeated, though he expected he'd need to defeat all the sixth-years and maybe some of the seventh to grind out a level-up that evening. As he tried to conserve magical stamina fighting the Slytherins one-by-one, he at least eked out another point of NEWT Charms, Combat Magic, and Transfiguration, as well as two more in Basic Dodging. He was also very pleased to have figured out a counter to the spell that Gemma Farley had gotten him with at March's tournament.
[Marauders: Active] Harry Potter: I don't know how much longer I'm going to make it. Implement plan: Eternal Glory.
He hated to admit it, but with his magical stamina already bottoming out after the big spells he'd had to use to best all the Slytherins (shielding alone was expensive against powerful attacks), Harry didn't think that he was going to actually manage to roll all the sixth-years. Almost certainly in a real duel he'd have been able to beat any of them, but in an endurance slog, there was no chance of beating all of them. So it was time to make sure he didn't give away any free points to another house.
Fred and George had somehow managed to distract the rest of the waiting sixth-years so they didn't notice that the next block of challengers were all Gryffindor.
It wasn't like Harry didn't make a legitimate attempt to beat his own housemates, but he also went a little bigger and used the last of his power to make it good. He managed to take out Joanna King and Alexis Marie, to everyone's great surprise. But then Percy Weasley was up. Despite angling for a desk job at the Ministry, he'd gotten twelve OWLs for a reason. His spell-layering was effective, his repertoire was deep, and his attention to detail was second-to-none. Unlike anyone before, Percy managed to use Harry's dodging against him: there was nowhere to dodge to that wasn't some kind of trap spell. Harry had just enough stamina to shield against Percy's stunner, but the shimmering shell of magic broke with it and he had nothing left in the tank against whatever was coming next…
Which was why he was very surprised that the disarming charm the prefect had followed up with skittered off a renewed shield, cast from the wand that Harry was suddenly holding in his left hand… a wand that he shouldn't have even had in his inventory. As he looked down in surprise at the dark, nodule-covered length of the Elder Wand, he felt oddly warm and noticed that his magical stamina bar had reconfigured itself from the normal rectangle to an undulating meter with sides that resembled the Deathstick itself, and that it was refilling faster than he'd ever seen it regenerate before.
"Halt!" Dumbledore's voice announced. Had he been in the room the whole time, just waiting, perhaps invisibly, or had he just slipped in during the fight? The old man affected a chuckle, his posture showing the students that no one was in trouble, "It seems that, as usual, something interesting has happened around Harry Potter. Ten points to Gryffindor for Percy Weasley fighting him to a standstill and forcing him to rely on his backup wand. But I think that's probably enough for tonight."
Harry absently returned Percy's bow, glancing around as the students started gossiping about the new bit of nonsense the Boy-Who-Lived had pulled off. None of them had a backup wand.
Albus Dumbledore replies: Perhaps I should have warned you this might happen. Please see me in my office…