Without any help from Severus, Gwenog had persuaded Minerva that the new Dueling Club, sure to grow quickly and thus needing plenty of space, deserved the use of the Great Hall. Severus arrived several minutes early to find the four house tables had gone, replaced by several large, round carpets that would serve both to define the dueling arenas and pad the stone floor. He nodded to Poppy who quietly occupied a corner just in case the whole thing went disastrously awry. Not that Severus planned on letting any students injure themselves anytime soon. He needed to know they could behave before they earned that privilege.
There were more students present than he had expected. Virtually all the Slytherins, and perhaps half the Gryffindors, including ones who hated him. He thought every single seventh year who hadn't been disciplined in the last month for cursing other students was here, probably for curiosity or nostalgia, wondering if he would live up to their memories when they were eleven of his battling the Marauders in the halls. At exactly three o'clock, Severus walked over to Gwenog. "Settle down." The murmur of voices faded rapidly. "Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the Hogwarts Dueling Club. The first rule of this club is that membership is a privilege that can be revoked at any time. You are not here to settle grudges, let off steam, or hurt each other. You are here to learn. Anyone caught dueling outside of the club will be suspended for a minimum of one month. Anyone intentionally causing disruption or violating safety instructions during club meetings will also face suspension for the first offense and permanent expulsion for repeated offenses. You may all thank Ms. Jones for organizing this. And you may all look to Ms. Jones and the other prefect teaching assistants as having special authority in this room. If I or one of my assistants tells you to stop what you are doing, then you stop. If one of us tells you to watch or to listen, then you do so without complaint."
"Suck up to the Slytherins, or else," a Gryffindor sixth year boy said in a stage whisper.
"Thank you, Professor Snape," Gwenog said sweetly, completely ignoring the interruption. "Thank you so much for agreeing to sponsor the club. As the Professor mentioned, I'll be one of his assistants. Gardner Tickes, Paula Lightfoot, Grace Vance, and Ian Shacklebolt are the other assistants. Wave, guys!" The Gryffindor head boy, sixth year Gryffindor and seventh year Hufflepuff female prefects, and the Ravenclaw sixth year male prefect all raised hands in acknowledgement
"Why is Snape in charge when we could have been learning from a real dueling champion?" the same Gryffindor sixth year asked, stubbornly digging in his heels at Gwenog's unsubtle rebuke. "I don't want to practice Dark Arts for the amusement of the dungeon bat. It should have been Flitwick."
Several Slytherins stiffened in offense. Severus just rolled his eyes. "Do you think the Dark Arts is all I am qualified to teach you, Mr. Hess?"
"I don't think you know how to duel honorably, without your crutch. I heard about the curses you used to invent as a student, Professor, and I bet they've only gotten Darker."
Severus grinned widely but did not take so much as a single point from the idiotic brat. "Ms. Selwyn, Jones, and Rath, Mr. Orwell, Burke, and Rosier," all the Slytherin prefects, "please join me in the largest circle."
Gwenog barely hesitated before following him over. Severus positioned himself in the center of the ring, his prefects arrayed in a semicircle with their backs towards the massed students. "When I tell you, I would like all six of you to attack me. You may use any charm, jinx, or hex that you wish in order to take me down. Nonlethal curses are also permitted; Dark curses are not. I will defend with only first- and second-year spells, and I will be fighting to disarm. I will win." The two seventh years scowled slightly at his confidence. "The rest of you will want to come a bit closer. I will erect a shield to keep you safe. Protego Verso!"
A huge, shimmering shield bloated outward from his wand, encompassing the whole circle. It faded to transparency when it stabilized at its new perimeter. Severus aimed a stinging hex at the apex. The shield flashed where it hit, the radiance visible perhaps a half-meter around the collision point. Good enough to maintain visibility for the audience. Students shuffled closer, hugging the edge of the shielded space. Most were looking excited now, and some were clearly taking bets. Severus pretended not to notice. This club would require a little showmanship to be successful, not just iron authority.
He turned back to his prefects. Only Gwenog looked enthusiastic. Felix looked nervous, and the seventh years had now schooled their features again to look bored. He smiled at them. "It is customary to bow to one's opponent at the beginning of a duel. We will not go over all the procedural formalities of competitive dueling until our second or third meeting I think, but that courtesy at least should be observed. He swept his own bow, flicking his robes backwards artfully before standing full upright again and raising his wand. The six students bowed a moment later; all showed perfect pureblood form, even halfblood Gwenog. She had probably studied up in preparation for the club. "You may begin."
Severus used no magic at all for the first sixty seconds. He merely dodged the uncoordinated barrage of spells, ducking under one, jumping over the next. He was out of practice and probably should have stretched first, not to mention changed into something other than his academic robes, but it still wasn't that hard. He rolled behind Peredur Burke, and George Orwell stunned the sixth year prefect instants later. "Whoops," Severus drawled. "You'd do well to avoid friendly fire, children." He casually disarmed Erika and Felix while he was speaking and placed them in full body binds. He then rapidly cast a dozen stinging hexes in a row at Gwenog. She dodged the first two, yelped when the third struck her arm, and finally erected a shield spell to hide behind. He dodged two technically disallowed blasting curses, one from each seventh year, and rolled between them to avoid George's finger-removing jinx. He threw a smokescreen not around himself but instead directly around them as he rolled. Both disappeared in the dense smoke, with Gwenog out of sight on the other side of the screen. He fired off several engorgement charms while he waited, aiming at the carpet itself. Bits of the rug swelled up unevenly, with large, stiff chunks of it rumpling and folding over themselves. The uneven surface would slow the students down should one try to circle behind him.
Then, when Augusta stepped out of the smoke cloud, coughing and sneezing, he levitated her six feet in the air, only to drop her on George when he emerged moments later. George dropped his wand, and Severus bound him. Augusta still had hers and managed to regain her feet, even fired another finger-removing jinx that went wide. He cast a Knockback jinx at her. Still squinting against the smoke, she cast a shield rather than try to dodge. She hadn't moved far enough from George, though. Her shield held, but she took one step back to regain her balance and promptly fell over her classmate. Severus disarmed and bound her as well, before turning his full attention back to Gwenog.
Gwenog had quietly dropped her shield and moved left around the smoke and also further back, probably to give herself more time to dodge. That tactic worked both ways, however. Severus easily stepped out of the way of her sponge-knee curse. He advanced leisurely, dodging each of Gwenog's various curses. She did know a lot of them, he had to give her that. He started casting silent severing charms as he walked, hiding the simple wand movement in the shadow of his robe, not raising his arm enough for her to tell where he was aiming. He put very little power into them, and so the tracks of the spells were nigh-invisible. Gwenog did not see what he was doing until her trailing left sleeve started to fall away in one-inch rings. Her eyes widened when she noticed, by which point he had shortened her sleeve ten times, all the way up to her elbow. "Holy mother of... Protego!"
"Wingardium Leviosa." The rug beneath her feet lifted up several feet and tipped her forwards. Not for nothing was she a quidditch captain, and she managed to keep her feet and jump back to flatter ground. Severus cast a softening charm right at the patch of rug where she landed, however. It was a part that Severus had already thickened and rumpled earlier, and Gwenog sank into the fibers up to her knees with the force of her landing. He switched back to stinging hexes. Unable now to dodge with her feet so tangled, she was forced to shield. Severus walked right up to the edge of her shield. "Incendio." It was a harmless little fire he conjured, barely enough to light a taper, but touching it to her shield caused a continuous luminescence as the spells reacted to each other. The effect was as if he were casting ten minor spells at her every second, and the opaque reaction soon spread to encompass her whole shield. It was inevitable that her shield would collapse eventually.
Gwenog must have realized it, because she suddenly kicked at him blindly. Her foot met his knee, but he had kept most of his weight on the back leg for that very reason. "Oh, very good, Ms. Jones. Two points to Slytherin for that." She growled at him. The moment her shield failed, they both shouted, "Expelliarmus!" Severus was faster, though, and Gwenog's wand slipped from her hand even as her lips formed the last syllable of the incantation. He grinned at her affronted expression. "I said I would win." He swept his wand in a wide circle, dismissing his own spells on the other five prefects, as well as the shield encompassing the ring. All the students were silent as he passed his prefects' wands back to them.
He regarded them for a moment, then said, "Why did you lose, when all of you had access to more and objectively better dueling spells than I?"
"You're wicked fast, sir," Gwenog said immediately.
He inclined his head to her.
"And you use the first- and second-year repertoire really creatively," George said. He seemed honestly impressed for a change.
"You're better at dividing your attention between your current opponent, the others on the field, and the environment," Augusta said, a little sourly.
"The wisdom of experience," Severus drawled. "Shields have their uses, but they allow you to be pinned down while hampering your ability to cast offensive spells. I can both hold a shield and cast jinxes and hexes at the same time, but that is a difficult skill that takes most wizards years of practice. Since you cannot as of yet, your shield became a trap. While physically taxing, dodging unfriendly spells is often a better strategy, particularly if you are in the sort of fight that could involve spells that will go right through a standard shield charm. It is not extensive knowledge of curses that will win most duels but rather outstanding technique and application of your spells, and, as Ms. Selwyn observed, an awareness of your surroundings. I cannot tell you how many wizards and witches have lost life and limb due to tripping at the worst possible moment." A few watching students sniggered at that.
"Questions?"
There were none, but first Chiara Lobosca and then the Slytherin first years started cheering for him. This extended to light applause from the rest of the Slytherins, the teaching assistants, the head girl, and Melody Perkins of Hufflepuff. Severus gestured sharply for silence again.
"Yes, thank you. There being no questions, we will now split into groups. Mr. Tickes, please take charge of the fourth- through seventh-years in practicing speed and accuracy of the disarming charm. Sixth- and Seventh-years should practice casting nonverbally. Ms. Jones, you will assist me in teaching the first- through third-years how to most efficiently dodge an attack. We switch in fifteen minutes, and if we have time at the end of the hour, we might have another demonstration duel."
Author's note: I enjoyed writing a BAMF Severus at the dueling club. It's like in a martial arts movie when the master challenges the arrogant young apprentice to a sword duel, but he's using a stick. I also find it amusing to reuse chapter titles from the original books. Look for the next update on Friday. And, as always, thanks for the reviews.