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.
The round of sixteen ended with a duel for the ages. Fire versus transfiguration. The transfiguration master that had managed to beat his fellow in the previous round had been knocked out himself after being faced with one of those who I felt likely to meet me in the finals. The Chinese girl remained in the running as well, but considering how much difficulty she had had in her round of 32 match—she had easily had the closest match of those of us remaining—it was doubtful that she would be making it much farther. The duel against Mr. Charms and Walls had shown a few of her weaknesses—a prioritization of finesse over power to the point where she had lacked any true tools for punching through a stalwart defence, and a reliance on movement over shielding to another extreme.
Sure, she was quick. And her wand movement was almost impossibly precise, but what did it matter in the face of overwhelming power? I could already count about four of us still in the running who could bring that overwhelming power to bear. And then there was Angel Serrano. If the Chinese girl thought she could be precise, then he was something else. He cut with all the sharpness of a scalpel where his opponent fought with a cleaver. His last two duels… they had been beautiful in a way that was difficult to put into words, in truth. He wove through attacks like he could see them coming.
It wasn't even legilimency. He did most of it without maintaining eye contact. Instead, it was just sheer predictive intellect. When he returned to the box, he watched the next duels with a quiet intensity like he was committing every action to memory. Every choice, every spell, he catalogued for later. That was probably how he fought so well. I knew I would have to switch up my fighting style when I faced him. Thinking about that made me wonder what exactly I had left open to be deduced from my previous duels. That I had power in spades. Fulgur tempests to break through a shield straightaway probably left little doubt about that. Also that I was good at transfiguration.
I had used it exclusively in taking out Mr. Trick. He'd been knocked out in the round of 32 by Serrano himself. No handshake before the duel, no contact at all, and he'd still been able to take control of Serrano's hand with his spell. Serrano had switched hands, paralyzed his own hand with a spell, and then smashed him into the ground with his right hand instead of his left. So that meant he was ambidextrous in a way few were, and also that he'd thought through the trick and had countermeasures ready if he still somehow managed to fall into it. The only true loss was that I still hadn't been able to figure out how it worked.
Serrano hadn't either if he had still fallen for it.
"Potter vs Serrano" The screen flashed out, knocking me solidly out of my thoughts. It was almost like the second I thought I knew who I would be facing in the finals, the fates decided to see me fight them right then and there. It meant more entertaining duels both for me and the audience. It also meant that shit kept ramping up. I knew Serrano would give me a good duel. He was too good not to. I also knew that I could not afford more than a few seconds of sloppiness. Beating Serrano would probably require a level of skill higher than what I had shown so far. Good thing I still had lots of headroom when it came to that.
I walked out to the field, moving only a few seconds after he did so. We did not share any words during the walk. He did not even look in my direction a single time. I sent out a testing probe and was faced with rock-solid shields. Not as good as what the best masters of the mind arts would have, but more than enough to stand the test of a cursory examination. I would really have to try to break his shields, and that was saying something.
We reached the field and took our positions. The wheel flashed through the options before landing on red. Now, we had each duelled in a variety of environments, and more importantly, gotten a chance to watch others duel in each of the environments. It meant we had mental designs, plans, and strategies to take advantage of each of the elements. And then the ground shook and we were in the middle of a volcano.
I felt the heat travel through my body, almost making me break a sweat instantly. This environment was one of the more interesting. Someone had fallen to heatstroke, while we'd seen another get asphyxiated from his opponent taking a hold of the cooling charm he had carelessly layered upon himself. Neither of us made that particular lapse in judgement. Bog-standard environment adaptation charms weren't made to be used in combat, and that had been driven home on more than one occasion. Maybe after this I would turn my mind to that solution, I thought as I felt a drop of liquid fall from my face to the floor.
I bowed as my opponent did the same with a flourish, and then the referee kicked things off. If I expected a slow start, I was sorely disappointed.
Two bludgeoning curses rang like gongs against my conjured shield. I banished it at him while he twirled around it, a piercer on the tip of his wand. I danced to the side, avoiding the three spells that left his stick of acacia (?) in quick succession. I tore the platform up with an upwards slash, banishing a hundred pounds of stone and dust at him. In a blink, they were vanished, and I was deflecting even more spells.
A cutter to the left, a stunner to the right, a full-body bind right back at sender as I took a step back to give myself even more distance. He matched it with a step closer as I knew he would. Serrano was the type to watch for weakness like a hawk and he never failed to take advantage of it. He upped the ante, sending even more spells my way. Variety wasn't the goal here. He sent six Bludgeoning Curses in a row, sending them off in a good approximation of the gatling gun approach Alvarez had favoured. Yet, I managed to keep up the deflections.
The ritual that had seen my body enhanced by the creatures I had killed meant that I had speed aplenty, and for the first time in this tournament, I leant on that speed. This time, instead of taking a step back, I took a step forward. I watched the way his eyes narrowed. I sharpened a probe and lanced at his shield. He winced, showing some emotion for the first time as he doubled back to defend himself mentally. A mistake. The probe hadn't been strong enough to do anything.
I sent my own barrage of spells this time. Four blasting curses forced him to hunker behind a powerful mage shield. I swept my wand along the ground once more, turning loose stones into a nest of hornets. A silent Oppugno had them approaching aggressively from all directions. Two loose stones at my side turned into a pair of lions. I named them Simba and Mufasa before sending them off to their deaths.
Serrano slashed his wand at eye level, spinning in a circle and creating an amateur approximation of a firestorm. I admitted some disappointment with the approach as I flicked my wand and grabbed the fire he had created. I brought it to my side with superior elemental manipulation. His gambit only destroyed about a third of my hornets.
I watched his face twitch as he realised the position he was in. To his credit, he did not panic. He sent a blasting curse to either side of him, blowing apart some of the hornets, but not quite killing them all. Instead, he decided that was enough and focused his attention on the lions hunting him. Simba ran straight at him while Mufasa took a more circuitous route. The goal? Ambush. Lions were natural ambush predators, so it was perhaps not too surprising, even if I hadn't given them any directions more complex than hunt.
Serrano tracked both, and then when he raised his hand to dispatch them, he was forced to abandon that attempt to block a piercing curse from my end. I hammered him with my own barrage of spells. His lips quirked. This was a strategy I had used before, I knew, so I wondered how he would deal with it.
The answer was redirection. He waited for my next duo of spells and deflected them with uncanny aim. One smashed Simba straight through the head—the blasting curse taking out all of his upper body in one blow. The second missed Mufasa by a hair's breadth. Serrano had been stung by one of my hornets right as he had deflected it. There was no expression on his face as his hand lashed out to his neck with a sharp slap.
He deflected both my next spells in Mufasa's direction. The stunner missed him right as he jumped, and the gouging curse caught him mid-air. Creatures more or less dealt with, Serrano could turn his full attention to me once again. That wouldn't do. I slashed my wand upwards.
The stones that I had loosened with my first attack rose under my attention and began to spin and form a golem.
"No chance," I was pretty certain Serrano whispered to himself before five different blasting curses hit the stone creature before it could finish forming. That was the point though.
The stones scattered, each of them filled with my magic from the botched golem spell already. A twist of my wand was all it took to use that magic to catalyze a change. They turned into rats. Dozens of them. And then they were off.
Two gouging curses forced Serrano to keep his attention on me. He deflected both into the rat horde. That was the point, though. He thought this was the same strategy as before. No. The previous game had been about distracting and outmanoeuvring him with a combination of transfigured and direct attacks. This one was far less subtle.
So I kept my rain of attacks to piercing curses. Deflecting them never ended up with more than a single rat dead, and there were dozens. My constant barrage also happened to mean that there was nothing he could do to deal with them as they approached, other than retreat. I felt a bead of sweat run from my forehead down to my neck. It was not alone. Ignoring the heat seemed to get harder and harder as more time passed. Good thing it was almost over then. Just when the rats were almost there, I cast my final spell. Instead of a piercer or anything aimed at him, it was a banisher aimed at the rats, forcing them to cover the last few steps faster than Serrano had planned.
Undoubtedly, he had some strategy for dealing with them when they got close enough; I circumvented that entirely by ensuring that close turned to too close in a matter of seconds, never allowing "close enough" to materialize. The rats bit down on whatever they could once they reached him. To his credit, he managed to blast a few off, but his grunts of pain told me they were doing their job quite effectively. One latched on to his wand arm, and the duel was just about over.
"Incarcerous!" I incanted out loud, shifting the intent of the spell as I flicked my wand.
Perhaps it was cruel, altering the intent of the spell so that it wrapped him in with the rats that were presently biting down on his skin. It did mean that he yielded faster than I'd ever seen anyone do so in this tournament. He didn't even spend a second considering it. I vanished the ropes and rats once I heard the words I was quickly becoming accustomed to—"Winner: Potter". It felt good to win.
I walked towards my opponent, expecting to see some disenchantment on his face. Instead, his previously focused expression had given way to a wide smile.
"You're better than I thought, Potter." His Spanish accent was barely audible. But the fact that it was there at all meant he was speaking English and not just trusting the translation enchantment to do the work for him.
"Thank you," I said with a smile.
"No, really. I thought you'd give me a hard fight, yeah, but that I had your measure. Do you know that you're between 30-35% faster now than you were during your previous duel?" he asked, and if he noticed that the question stumped me, it did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm as he launched into more questions.
"Do you know that you have the second-highest spell variety in the tournament? The same with your transfigurations. Is there a reason you use so many different spells and creatures?" he asked next, and then before I could answer that question, he was on the next one.
"Your spell deflection as well. You must be using a different technique than the standard aberto, yes? I can't see how you could have varied it to increase the speed of the deflected spells so consistently," he continued, and I smiled when I realised just what I was facing. Angel Serrano was a massive nerd. That was it. He was a nerd for duelling, and that made a shocking amount of sense. It explained why he was so focused on all the other duels—why he was so quiet all the time.
The referee coughed in my direction, and I nodded, reaching out and tapping the older boy on the shoulder.
"They've got to move on to the next duel," I said. He flushed an amusing shade of red.
"Oh."
"Don't worry. Let's step to the side and I'll answer all your questions. The first one was about my speed, yes?" The sheer joy that appeared on his face could not be mistaken for anything else. And for a second, I wondered if I'd made the right choice. Nah. It was good to talk to someone that was neither the serving staff nor Sirius.
XXXXXX- NYMPHADORA TONKS
"Another set of killings. Bones is on my arse, Moody, and that means the Minister is on hers, and that can only be because the Prime Minister is on his. Do you see how far this goes, Moody?" Scrimgeour did not scream. He was not the type. Instead, he spoke in a stern, hissed whisper that did an equally good job of communicating just how pissed off he was. And he was very pissed off.
"I see how far it goes, Scrimmy, but what can I do when you won't give me leave to investigate this properly?"
"Don't start that with me today, Mad-Eye. I know you're keen to believe any conspiracy theory that comes your way, but use some logic, man. The assertion that You-Know-Who is back has little logical basis. And you'd be calling it silly if it was anyone other than Dumbledore peddling this. We heard the animated corpse back in Surrey just as surely as you did, and it was clear enough that this is a new threat."
"Which is exactly what Voldemort would do if he wanted to avoid scrutiny." The Head Auror flinched at the name just as surely as Tonks did, and then he flushed, realising what had just happened. Tonks watched him squeeze his fists shut.
"No. Enough of that. Forget about that and investigate this properly."
"Okay, give me leave to bring in Malfoy and I'll get him talking in no time."
"No, Moody. No arresting respectable purebloods with no evidence other than your gut feeling. We can't have what happened in '84 happening again."
"Then don't blame me if the killings continue."
"Get out of my office, Moody. Do some damn proper investigation and get answers before I choose to assign this to someone else," Scrimgeour said.
And then they were off.
"Pah. As if Scrimmy could give this to anyone else," Mad-Eye scoffed as the door slammed shut behind them. Tonks said nothing, pretty certain that the Head Auror would in fact give the cases to someone else if they kept being unable to find answers. When Mad-Eye Moody of all people had returned to active duty and taken her on as his partner, she had expected many things.
A wild goose chase after a dead dark lord and his dismantled following was not one of them.
"Let's go back to forensics. Tonks, tell me what we know of the latest victims."
"The Polkiss family. Four members—James, Theresa, Piers, and William Polkiss. Same as with the other killings, one family member, Piers, went to the same muggle school as both Dudley Dursley, Victim 3, and Harry Potter, POI 1. They were found in the same position as Victims 1 through 7, the muggle crucifixion," she said, reciting all that they had been able to ascertain.
"Good. Now following procedure, what do you say we do next?" he asked, and if he expected to stump her, then he was going to be surprised.
"Bring in POI 1 and question him," she said.
"Good. Now why haven't we done that?"
"He's out of jurisdiction," she said, and wasn't that something. A Person of Interest being out of the country could fuck up their investigation in ways that training hadn't quite managed to drive home. The warrant procedure alone was a bitch and a half.
"Good," Mad-Eye said before stopping right in the middle of the bullpen and grabbing a flying paper airplane from the air. He opened it, nodding and humming to himself before he folded it and tossed it at her.
"Get ready, Tonks. We're off to Broekzele."
"What?"
"That's our warrant. Pay attention, girl."
A/N: And so we get an incoming collision between things in Britain and things in Broekzele. Harry also seems to have made a friend—how cute. 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.