Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Experimenting with two chapters a week, we'll see how long I can keep this up for.
In the blink of an eye, everything changed. Her attempt to freeze the shield, and through that, her magic, failed in a heartbeat as things just stopped. His magic stopped yielding to hers, and then the shield was back again, exploding forth in golden radiance. The blizzard around them seemed to cease as his magic stepped into the very environment. She could see it now. Just as she was ice, he was fire.
"That's an interesting trick," she heard his voice say, and then she was forced on the defensive. The ice in her blood came to her aid. It always did. She breathed it into her surroundings. She stopped everything in its tracks. The blizzard around them intensified until it became a true ice storm. The spells that came her way froze in the very air, not able to continue further.
"Your ice trick is somehow letting you slow magic itself down," his voice cut through the storm.
"But what do you do when I turn the heat up a bit?" And then there was fire. It was everywhere. It was like one second there had been her ice storm, and the next second, she was in the middle of a volcano or something. She breathed in sharply, harshly. There was so much fire. How was there so much fire? He'd not just overcome her magic, but the enchantment itself. How? How was he so much more powerful than her? It didn't make any sense. He was younger than she was. He should have been weaker.
Her magic had never been beaten before.
She gasped as she felt a sharp pain in her backside. The world was ice again. She looked around her. Just ice again. What was going on? She reached for her wand. Where was her wand?
"Looking for this?" he asked, stepping through the storm, looking like a conquering god and brandishing her wand like it was a spoil of said conquest. Like she was the defeated one.
"What? What happened?" she asked, not sure what was going on. Where had all the fire gone?
"Winner: Potter," she heard the referee say. She had lost, her wand was in his possession, and she could not even tell what had happened. One second she was in a firestorm, and now she was here. What was going on?
"A simple illusion, my darling Kuznetsova," he sounded impossibly smug. Could that have been an illusion? How? It had all felt so real. No, she knew illusions. Grandma Natasha was adept with them. They didn't make you feel things like that. The heat against her skin had been real. The sensation of losing her breath had been real. It had been too real.
"You lie," she seethed, feeling her blood boil even as the arena began to transform around them.
"Fair enough. The illusion was far from simple. I used the cover of the blizzard to create something truly fascinating. Thank you for the chance to test it, though," he said, tossing something at her. She flinched at the sudden action, only for her wand to land on the floor in front of her. She could feel her cheeks burning as she reached down to grab it, stretching as it had begun to roll away.
XXXXXX-HARRY J POTTER
In truth, I had the Chinese kid and his sister to thank. Duelling the kid had brought the potential of the mind arts to mind. Verbally sparring with the sister had reinforced it. I knew that there was potential there, and the fact that I had managed to project the pain of the Cruciatus on him had got me thinking. The Cruciatus was based on a real memory, but one of the highest-level skills in Occlumency was the creation of false memories. If I created a false memory, could I project it as accurately? I had wondered.
The gap between that realization and focusing on illusions had been a short one. I remembered the illusion that magic-sucking creature had subjected me to during the second task. Anya Kuznetsova, with her complete lack of Occlumency shielding, had been a good test subject for what could happen when Legilimency was matched with a basic illusion spell and grounded by a combination of LAGUZ and ANSUZ. It'd worked even better than I could have hoped.
We were told, more or less in those exact words, to get off the pitch in short order, and we did so. I tried to shake hands with Kuznetsova, maybe strike up a conversation about how it felt to have been under the influence of my new type of illusion, but she gave me a wide berth, kept her eyes trained on the ground so I could get no eye contact for Legilimency, and walked out of the gate so quickly one might have assumed she had the hounds of hell at her feet. Disappointing.
I'd probably have to get Sirius to play test subject for me in the end, and I could already hear his moaning about it. He would agree, but it was not in his nature to give in without a fight. To capitulate without testing the patience of every other person involved. I could appreciate it when I was not one of the others involved—his negotiations around selling Grimmauld Place to Malfoy had been oh so amusing to hear about. The fact that he ended up getting even more money for it than his initial asking price was just genius, but I had the feeling that the extra gold had just been paid for Sirius to get out of the man's hair. Most people knew the Malfoys were rich, but it was not until Sirius had explained it to me that I understood how rich.
Needless to say, the man could have bought Grimmauld Place three times and not even noticed the difference in his wealth. Centuries of proper wealth management, ownership of the rights to most of the popular potions still in use today, and exemptions from most of the taxes levied in this world could compound massively to form wealth that was not just generational. Even if they just let it sit there, no Malfoy in centuries would ever have to work for gold.
I returned to the competitor's box in high spirits and to confused looks. From the outside, it must have looked like my opponent just suddenly seized up and left herself wide open to my disarming spell. Most wouldn't assume an illusion on first instance. No one here would be unfamiliar with how illusions traditionally worked, and they would know well enough that a traditional illusion was unlikely to cause that outcome.
Instead, they would probably think I'd… and here I sent my mind out into theirs, plucking stray thoughts with ease from those who lacked barriers—close to half the room—while leaning against the edge of said barriers for those who did have them and trying to get a feel for their surface thoughts. Some thought I'd poisoned her during the conversation. Others felt I had bribed her at the stairs—or blackmailed her. There was even a suspicion going around that I had cursed her while her back was turned before the duel ever even began. They were all bullshit, of course, but they still infuriated me in some small way. To have my effort so easily disregarded was not a pleasant experience.
What would it matter in the end, though? I would win. I would rise above them all. By the end of the week, only one man would remain in this room—me. The next match was called, and the wheel landed on water again. I watched as one of the contestants took control of the water that surrounded them from the very beginning. The other—his opponent—was good with shields. Excellent, even. That was the only thing that prevented him from being washed off the platform in the first exchange of the battle. But the direction in which the fight was going was obvious to anyone with eyes to see. For one, the wizard on the defence was not even trying to counterattack. He focused all his energy on defence.
Using unique shields for every attack that faced him had to be taxing—not just magically, but physically and mentally as well. He met wide waves of water with large shields that covered his whole half of the arena. He met focused blasts intended to break said wide shield with smaller shields about the size of his midsection that looked nigh impenetrable. His opponent switched to direct curses, and those he met with perfect counter-curses in every case.
I amended my initial assessment as the duel wore on. For one, I had noticed more than a few instances where his opponent had seemingly flagged and delayed his next spell. Even accounting for the fact that it was easier to spot such things from the outside looking in, there was no chance that the duelist had missed every single opening. So that left only one possibility. He was being cautious. Desperate men are rarely cautious men, and that had me looking closer at things.
While the attacking wizard seemed to get more and more flustered as time ran on, his opponent was cool as a cucumber. Every shield was called with the same perfect, practiced set of wand motions. Even looking through my memories, it was difficult to see any degradation between his first shields and this one. He wasn't tiring. And he clearly wasn't overwhelmed. Defending meant he was still on the backfoot, of course, but instead of a backfoot borne from his opponent forcing his way into his space and forcing him to retreat, it was borne from ceding space and allowing his opponent to take the initiative. It was strategy, and his opponent had fallen for it.
Not even five minutes into the duel, it was clear he was flagging. He'd done very well in maintaining a steady flow of offense, trying to get around his opponent's complex web of shields and protections. But those were beginning to dry out as he understood his opponent. Still, his opponent remained on the defensive even as the rate of the attacks reduced, until they stopped entirely when the duel was ripe to reach the ten-minute mark. Both of the wizards stared at each other for a while, neither moving.
"Not gonna do anything, huh? Just gonna stand there and watch?" The American was clearly less patient than his opponent, and his opponent, the Spaniard, lit up with a smile.
"My turn," he said, and the arena lit up. The American had to jump to the side to avoid the first volley—three spells sent so quickly that they might as well have been cast at once, and everything sped up from there. His choice of spells was as varied as his choice of shields had been. Bludgeoners, cutters, piercers, blasters, stunners, disarmers, it didn't matter. If it could be used to incapacitate his opponent, he sent it. And the speed at which he cast the spells never wavered.
If most people were the equivalent of pistols, the average professional duelist was an assault rifle. This guy? He was a fucking gatling gun. The shields had been interesting as a strategic tool and made it so I noted his intellect as impressive, but they were nothing compared to what he did now. He sent spells—so many and so quickly that he had his opponent dancing about the arena trying to avoid them. The American tried hunkering behind a shield spell. In four hits—each aimed at the exact same spot in the shield—the shield fell, and the man behind it had to dive to the ground for the second time in as many minutes to avoid the next spell sent his way.
When the American rose, the ground beneath them did with him, rising into a strong wall that bore two spells before his opponent switched to a blasting curse that hit the wall with such force that it sent the American huddled behind it flying. It was just his luck that he managed to land on another platform. He rolled on the floor with the fall, rising winded rather than out of it. With the distance between them stretched, the speed at which the Spaniard's spells reached his opponent reduced, but their intensity and tenacity did not fade or waver.
That was why it took the better part of three minutes for me to notice. It was a spell chain. That was why the movements were perfect. That was why he could cast like a gatling gun, probably. Each spell's wand movement led to the next as he cast silently. Clearly, the only bottleneck on how many spells he could send so quickly was how quickly he could call upon the relevant intention. It was impressive for not just those reasons, as well. It was impressive because a standard spell-chain ranged between about five to seven spells. His had twenty-seven. Flitwick said it was stupid to try more than six.
Even more than that, almost everyone agreed there was little utility worth the tradeoffs. Down there was some fucking utility worth the tradeoffs. He was proof that it was not impossible to memorize and apply even in a fast-paced duel like this one. He was also proof that one could manifest the requisite intents to cast the spells quickly enough to make the spell chain worth its salt. And then the last counterargument I had read—the fact that a spell chain like that would be clunky and inadaptable—was being thoroughly disproved. Every attempt his opponent made to turn the tide of the fight was smacked aside with contemptuous ease. The American lifted a mighty wave that threatened to wash the Spaniard off. The larger duelist cut a path through the wave and allowed the rest of it to fall around him before continuing his spell chain once more from right where he had stopped, as if there had been no interruption.
It was only a matter of time, and time ran its course. The American twisted his ankle as he scrambled from another set of spells. A bludgeoner caught him in the foot, and then there was a piercer to the gut. The stunner to the head, the coup de grâce, could not have come any sooner.
"Winner: Álvarez," the referee announced, and then his name and picture were displayed on the screen. Mateo Álvarez. I would remember that name. Something told me he was going to be on my path to victory. Maybe I'd even meet him in the finals. He was definitely at the higher end of what I would expect a participant here to be capable of. Probably good enough to win the whole thing if I wasn't here.
Of course, the universe would not be the universe if it did not make me eat my words mere minutes later. The next pair were called: an Egyptian wizard and a South African witch. Every other fight had taken one of two veins. Theirs was determined to buck the trend. The duel was called, and before the referee had dropped his wand, three spells had flown across the space between both parties. The Egyptian began with a piercer, the South African with a gouger, and where the South African witch had twisted her shoulder to avoid his spell, the Egyptian wizard had deflected hers. She jumped over the spell, and they were at it again. In a similar vein to the first duel, it was a pure slugfest, but where the first two had fought with enthusiasm and middling skill, these two fought like master fencers—it was equivalent to comparing a fencing match at your local gym to one at the Olympics.
Every spell was crisp, sharp, and simple. Every parry was designed to buy time to cast another spell, and shields were barely used. In two minutes of duelling, I only counted a single shield charm that had been collapsed the second after it absorbed the offending bone-breaking curse. The chosen environment, a sandstorm, barely mattered. Neither was all that inclined to use it to their advantage, and since they'd both activated bubblehead charms relatively early, they were in no danger from swallowing sand or anything. The charm even covered their eyes, so there was no risk of the sand affecting them thus.
The South African danced to the left, out of the way of a trio of cutting curses, before countering with a conjured arrow. It cut through the air like a missile, only to smash into a conjured shield. A silver shield in the vein of a medieval knight's. The Egyptian twisted his wand, the shield turning on its side until it shot at his target like a frisbee. She jumped over the spinning shield that had been about waist-height in a display of athleticism. As she fell to the ground, she did so with three spells aimed at her opponent. They all missed as he twisted through them before tapping his wand on the platform. In a second, it shattered into a thousand pieces as dust rose from the ground and he vanished from view—a disillusionment charm. Those pieces rose and began to form a construct of some sort. The South African countered with several blasting curses that forced the construct back to square one. The Egyptian kept focusing on it for as long as he could, but all he was able to form was the lower body before his body lit up in a red outline.
Four gouging curses buried themselves into the ground he'd been on top of as he barely managed to roll away. The sudden movement dispelled his disillusionment. He rose to his feet, but unsteady. He'd been caught. With a twist of her wand, the witch forced him to hang from the air by his ankle. He dropped his wand during the abrupt movement. "Stupefy," she enunciated clearly, thinking the duel was over, only for him to wandlessly summon said wand and deflect the spell right at her. It hit her squarely in the forehead, and she dropped like a sack of stones.
"Winner: Mansour."
A/N: And so we get the chapter. Pardon me if I skip more and more of the duels as we go forward. I really wanted to explore a lot of this, but 32 duels is kind of unreasonable, and I honestly don't think I can come up with sixty-four unique fighting styles in the world Joanne was so kind to gift us with. Next four chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)(same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.