Pre-Chapter A/N: Welcome to September, guys! Let's smash whatever goals we've set ourselves this year. 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.
I hadn't paid attention to the duels during the qualification. There was nothing wrong with that; it was probably the wise thing to do, considering just how many duelists there had been and how bad most of them were. I'd dueled someone who struggled to cast a shield spell! While it had been the right choice to make, it did mean that I was taken by surprise when the Round of Sixty-Four began with an okay duel and only got better from there.
At this point, I was certain that my duel had been one of the least entertaining. We'd had elemental battles—someone had called forth a whole firestorm in the middle of the blizzard and melted all the ice around him to water (I could have done that, but the illusion had been more efficient). Another witch had used the sand in the sandstorm to form dozens of mannequins that she crowded the stage with, until her opponent, a fleet-footed Spaniard, was forced to give in. Two transfiguration masters in the making had had a chess match out of their duel, both of them conjuring, animating, and transfiguring creatures, structures, and figures to fight for them until one surrendered. The other's champion had defeated all of his. The Asian girl—the mind arts boy's sister—had used her legilimency to good effect, frustrating her opponent as she countered his curses before he could even cast them, dispelled his transfigurations before she could even finish his wand movements, and turned his charms against him. It was a convincing victory.
Those were just some of the duels that took place in the Round of Sixty-Four. Now that we were down to 32, I was expecting things to get even more intense, so when I heard my name called first, it brought a thrill to my soul. No illusions this time. Part of me was a natural showman. I enjoyed it when others quaked in fear at my genius, appreciated it, understood just what I was. And then the name that was called after mine, Mateo Álvarez, almost made me whine in disappointment. Not at facing one of the best here, but at the fact that I had to do it so early. I just had to hope that the rest of my matches would prove to be so entertaining.
I left the room and he did so as well, but he did not even bother speaking to me. Any signal I gave of being interested in a conversation was ignored as he watched his back while he left. Of fucking course, those silly theories. The idiot actually thought it was needed to curse him here to win the duel. Oh, what a fool. I would enjoy disabusing him of that notion—thoroughly.
We made it to the platform half a minute apart, and then the wheel began to spin. We had seen all the environments so far, so there was no chance of surprise. It was either going to be: blizzard, ocean, sandstorm, volcano, or tempest. Almost like it could read my mind, the wheel stopped at that beige color.
"And so the first environment for our Round of Thirty-Two is Tempest," I heard Russo's voice call as clouds began to gather above the stadium again.
"Let them sing songs of our duel," he said. I barely managed to catch it above the howling winds. It was wind first, and then rain next. In a matter of seconds, I was soaked to the bone. I didn't bother casting a weather-repelling charm. Neither did my opponent. Charms like that one were good for day-to-day living, but they tended to interfere with other uses of magic, and this was not a fight I wanted to be fighting with a handicap for. The referee dropped his hand. To begin the duel, a crack of thunder sounded over the arena. I expected to be the first one to strike in this duel, ready to overwhelm his shields and smite him, but instead found myself the recipient of a Gatling gun.
I stepped backward, increasing the distance between us as I deflected the first three spells—left, right, back at him—and then spun my wand in a tight circle to conjure a gleaming silver shield. It dented heavily in a matter of seconds, but that did not matter. I banished it at him with full force. He moved to dodge, but I transfigured it to a net with a last-second flick of my wand.
It caught part of his left arm—unfortunately not his wand arm. He moved to remove it, but I pummeled his position with four piercing curses, forcing out one of those shields. A flick of my wand turned the net around his arm into a snake. A snake large enough that its weight forced his arm to sag and made him miss whatever spell he had been about to cast. He was going to find those spell chains of his less than effective against me. He tried turning his wand on the snake.
My first bludgeoner kissed the edge of his head as he barely managed to move it back in time. I heard a gong. That was a warning for me. I noted it, so my next curses were aimed for center mass. Harder to dodge while he tried to destroy the snake. Around us, the wind hissed and screamed its rage.
He formed a gold shield that took both spells and then, in one of the most insane displays I have ever seen, he reached down to the snake's head climbing up his arm toward his neck and bit it. His mouth around its neck, the snake stopped moving. He turned the snake's head in my direction and managed to deflect my next volley even as he killed a snake with his bare teeth. It wasn't anything especially poisonous, but there was no way for him to have been able to tell for sure.
He shook it with his mouth, getting its death spasms out as it released his arm, and then he dropped it. Well, someone for sure had been hitting the gym. How much neck strength would it have taken to hold something like that up by only his teeth? He smiled at me, a brutal, bloody thing, and for some reason, I found myself smiling back. He was going to lose, but he had given a good show at least.
This time, we struck as one. My tickling hex bounced his blasting curse to the side. I stepped to the side to worsen his aim and force him to move as he began another spell chain. With his first opponent, he had only shown off a single spell chain—beginning to end—about three to four different times. Minutes into our duel, and he was already showing off a fourth spell chain. Of course, I never allowed him to finish any of them. This would be no different. I sent my magic into the air, commanding the water around me to heat up into mist for a second. And then I lashed out with a fireball so large it blocked my view of him.
He shielded. Of course he did. But that was the point. For what I wanted to do, I needed him to bring out his strongest shield, and so I plied his shield with blasting curses even as my fireball strained against it.
The shield changed, becoming translucent and practically singing with power. This was the one. I moved my wand deliberately. Heating the air around me to dry myself had not been only for the fireball. Using this spell while wet would be a careless mistake.
"They will sing songs about this, Álvarez," I promised him. The fireball was gone now, and he could see my wand trained on him. My wand that cackled with the power I was holding back. The warning to strengthen his shield was unspoken, but he took it nonetheless.
"Fulgur Tempestas." I lashed out with the upgraded version of one of my favorite spells. The charge from the air, created by this artificial storm, flowed through me and then into my wand before shooting forward in a single bolt of lightning that branched out as it traveled. It was so fast; one second I had control, and the next the world was bright and nothing.
It took me a few seconds to blink the light out of my eyes. There was no chance his shield had taken that unscathed. I was right. On the other end of the arena, half-buried in the wall, sat Mateo Álvarez. Knocked out, but beyond that, seemingly unhurt. Good. I'd filled that with concussive force more than anything else. Fulgur Tempestas had an advantage over its lesser brother in that it allowed for that. It was not just lightning, after all; there was thunder there too.
"Winner: Potter," the referee announced, and I lifted my hand in the air, enjoying the way they cheered my victory, applauded the spectacle.
I walked back to the competitor's box and noted the two significant changes immediately. For one, it was much more sparsely occupied than the last time I had walked in after a duel. For another, the thoughts were not anywhere near as disrespectful. They saw me as a threat now. The wolf in their midst. Or Dragon. Dragon would be a better word. Because these were not sheep. Watching them fight over the day had disabused me of that notion. Instead, I was a dragon among wolves. These were still dangerous predators, but I was the apex one, no matter what.
The next duel was called, and I began to go over the previous one in my head. I could see other ways in which I could have ended it. Fulgur Tempestas had been an unnecessary escalation, to say the least. A little bit more patience, and I would have won handily without revealing that I could cast one of the most powerful elemental spells out there. Of course, that had been the point. I wanted the respect. Bad tactics, but good optics. Was that not the point of living? I did not exist to min-max my way through life, strategizing every second to grant myself the largest advantage. What was the fun in that? My last life had given me my fill of that. This one had magic. And magic meant I could do anything I wanted if I dared to conceive it in my mind, had the will to create the intent, and the power to see it all through.
The participants, a French wizard who had a thing for illusions and the witch who had turned the sandstorm into an army in her favor, began to fight it out in the midst of a raging blizzard.
XXXXXX
The wheel stopped on red. It was a new day. The clouds were puffy, the sky blue, and the crowd screamed their enthusiasm even more than they had yesterday. We had cut ourselves down to the last sixteen. Ostensibly the sixteen best duelists at or below the age of 17 the world over. If there were better, they were not here, so why did they matter?
The ground shook as it rearranged itself so it was like we were standing atop a volcano. I had doubts about just how hot the lava was in truth. I could feel the heat against my skin even from here, but considering it seemed like the organizers were trying to prevent deaths with this thing, they probably hadn't given us actual lava to play with. Either way, the arena formed itself as a series of rocky platforms that floated above the lava. The main dueling platform was one such. It was larger than the others by some margin, but not as large as a full-scale dueling stage should have been.
My opponent was an Egyptian witch. And instead of a wand, she wielded a staff. That was interesting. From my experiments with them and the duels back during the Triwizard, I knew they were blunt weapons. They had none of the finesse that one would expect from wands. They were better at channeling raw power, but she did not wield hers in such a manner. Contrary to what I had thought the first time I had seen her, she was a burgeoning Mistress of Transfiguration. And she did it all with a staff. A unique staff, far more beautiful than the lumps of wood I'd used in the tournament.
This one was covered in gold—covered because I doubted she would be lifting solid gold with such ease—and had a ruby at the crown where it widened like a snake's head.
"Do you know who I am, Harry Potter?" she asked, and her voice had a musical tilt to it. She was speaking English, but with an accent so thick that it made it sound like a different language. A beautiful one, somehow.
"Nadir El-Masri," I read out, no doubt butchering her name from the way she instantly scoffed.
"And do you know what the name El-Masri means? What legacy I carry?" I shrugged. How would I know that?
"Of course a European would be ignorant. I am the descendant of the longest unbroken line of pharaohs."
"There are no more pharaohs," I said, and I remembered that much, at least. The Romans had forced the magical leaders of Egypt into hiding and forced them to abdicate at wandpoint.
"For now," she said, her voice sounding intent.
"Is there a reason you're telling me this?" I asked, wanting to get things started. I'd barely managed a few hours of sleep last night between Sirius's enthusiastic celebrations of 'my victories'. The man-whore just needed an excuse to get laid.
"To let you know that you are not the only one burdened with glorious purpose here. When you are defeated, have no shame. My family has been defeating wizards such as you for millennia."
"Sweetheart," I said and then paused for effect before I said, "there are no wizards like me."
She scowled, tapping her staff against the ground. The ruby glowed. The platform flowed like water, forming a rhino that charged straight at me. A single piercing curse right between the eyes and the creature slumped and began to slide forward. I stood still, using a small application of magic to slow it down so it came to a stop right before my feet. I leaned forward, placing my foot atop its skull and looking down at it like a hunter appreciating their kill.
"Is that the best you can do, Sweetheart?" I asked, and then made certain to yawn in my hands. Her scowl was a thing of beauty. Still, it was with a delicate flick of her wrist that she tapped the butt of her staff on the ground again.
From it rose a pair of eagles that took to the sky. I brought them down with a slash of my wand, forcing flames into the skies and forcing them to fly lower than they should have to avoid them. Two piercing curses later, and they were dead meat. She hadn't stopped there. I stepped to the side to allow a rabbit to fly past me as my attention was held by the pair of gorillas she had created in the time I'd used to dispatch the eagles. And even as I focused on them, I could see her working on more and more creatures to continue putting pressure on me to force me to make a mistake of some sort that would grant her the advantage. Unfortunately for her, she was dueling me and not any regular wizard.
The first gorilla fell to a cutting curse that cleaved it in two at the waist. The second I blew apart with a savage blasting curse. I was leaning heavily on dark magic here. Contrary to what most would think, emotion-heavy spells like the dark arts or even the Patronus Charm had an interesting relationship with magical power. While someone as cracked in the head as Voldemort probably used a lot of magic in their curses, the truth was that you did not have to. The negative emotions used in their creation could fuel them just as well, if not better, than the magic you had on hand. So dark curses could actually end up being the more efficient choice in long dueling days like this one where I was expected to go through two rounds. It meant I could use a lot of spells while still keeping my reserves basically fresh. And even better, they were good for placing pressure on an opponent.
I watched as she created more and more creatures, tapping her staff against the ground for each of them, and I killed them as quickly as she created them. At some point, she had only half begun conjuring the tiger when I smashed it to pieces with a standard bombardment hex.
Now, she had clearly been pushed to her last legs. She was breathing heavily, leaning against the staff, and trying not to waver. She was probably laboring under some delusion that she could still somehow win this. I sighed. Some people just took forever to get the message.
I ignored the wolves she spawned next, striking directly at her with a trio of stunners. She dodged them, and I twisted my wand, bringing all three of her wolves to the air at once. With a snap and a lurch, I overpowered her transfiguration and control—a display of just how far the gap between us stretched—and turned them into lions. They jumped at her. She managed to smite one with her staff. Another pushed her to the ground from behind, and she fell, hair flipping past her shoulder to pool behind her, some of it falling to the lava.
The third lion pounced next, landing on her chest and roaring down at her. "I yield," her voice squeaked out next. And with a wave of my wand, the lions turned back to the rubble they had once been.
A/N: And we move on to the Round of 16. HarDOTom is arrogant as all hell, but he has reason to be. Even against the best, he stands out as a cut above. But worry not, the adult wizards of this world will be scaled up significantly. Let's just say that the best of the best have that title for a reason. At this point, Harry should be about the level of a standard Auror. More knowledgeable for sure and definitely better at the more complex stuff, but that doesn't always win fights. 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.