The Cutting Charm swept past and nearly took Douglas's feet off.
The shockwave caught the hem of his robes and sent it snapping upward.
Douglas, still airborne, bent his body at an angle that had no business existing and twisted clear of the blast. Light as a feather. Weightless.
The golden-scaled longsword blazed in his grip. The radiance flowing along the blade pulled inward, condensing at the tip into something dense and volatile, something that looked very much like it was about to become a thunderbolt aimed straight at Moody's chest.
Every student in the stands stopped breathing.
The sword light reflected in Moody's good eye. He wrenched his body around, deep blue magic surging up his wand, and braced himself to meet the strike.
The sword didn't fall.
Douglas's lips moved. No sound.
All that blazing momentum, that promise of a killing blow, was a feint.
Two threads of magic, thin as spider silk and nearly invisible, split from the raised sword tip and arrowed down into the quicksand below, straight toward the two golden monks still fighting to pull free.
"SCREEE,—!"
Two metallic shrieks tore through the arena.
The monks in the mire stretched, blurred, and changed. In an instant, they were cranes. Two of them, cast entirely from living gold, elegant and terrible, spreading wings broad as barn doors. Each beat sent a golden gale roaring outward. They ripped free of the quicksand like it was nothing.
They didn't pause. Long necks snapped forward. Their beaks, sharp as blades, drove left and right at Moody in a lightning-fast double strike.
Anger flashed across Moody's face. He'd been played.
He didn't hesitate. He let himself fall, following the tilt of his body, and simply dropped flat against the quicksand. Undignified as hell. Also exactly right. The cranes' beaks sliced through empty air above him.
"BOOM!"
His wand was nearly touching the ground when he fired. The Blasting Curse detonated between the two cranes. Golden powder erupted in every direction.
For one suspended moment, the entire arena vanished behind a curtain of glittering gold dust.
That was when the sword moved.
Not down. Douglas's wrist turned, and the blade came apart in his hand. Scales scattered and whirled, spinning faster and faster, pulling together into a new shape: a golden disc with serrated edges, rotating at a pitch that made the air scream.
He threw it.
The disc punched through the gold dust cloud with a shriek and slammed into Moody's Ironclad Charm. Blue light flared. Moody fed power into it hard, and the shield held.
That was what Douglas had wanted.
The disc bounced. It used the impact, caught the rebound, and curved away in a long, strange arc that looped around Moody's body entirely.
It went low.
Straight at the soft quicksand below.
Straight at the wooden leg driven deep into the mire, the leg holding up every ounce of Moody's weight.
"CRACK."
The sound cut across the silence like a blade. Sharp. Final. The kind of sound that makes teeth ache.
Moody's weathered wooden leg snapped in two.
The last thing holding him up was gone. The legendary Auror toppled into the quicksand, graceless and sprawling.
"Expelliarmus."
Douglas's voice was flat and quiet.
The spell arrived before anyone heard it leave his wand. It caught Moody's wand hand dead-on. The wand spun out of his grip, arced through the air, and planted itself in the sand a dozen feet away.
Silence swallowed the stadium whole.
Douglas gave his wand a small flick. The disc, still humming somewhere in the dust, came apart. Over a hundred Galleons materialized from the pieces, ringing and flashing as they fell, and flew back to his coin purse in a neat stream, like trained birds coming home.
He hefted the purse. His brow creased, just slightly.
Three Galleons. For a demonstration match.
Could be worse.
He let the spells drop. The quicksand sighed and hardened, reverting to solid stone in seconds. The arena looked exactly as it always had. As if the whole thing had been a shared dream. The only evidence that it wasn't: Moody's broken leg lying in two pieces, and Moody himself, still down in the dirt.
Douglas walked over without hurrying. He bent down, picked up Moody's wand, and brought it with him.
He crouched in front of the man.
He held the wand out.
"Impressive showing." His voice was low enough that only Moody could hear. "But your leg." He let a beat pass. "Looks like you've been neglecting the upkeep."
His gaze sharpened. It crossed the distance between them like a blade and didn't stop at Moody's skin, didn't stop at that spinning, restless Magical Eye. It went deeper.
"A real Auror doesn't let their equipment fail on a battlefield."
A pause.
"Especially a prosthetic leg."
Moody's good eye went wide. He stared into Douglas's calm face, and the ground shifted under him in a way that had nothing to do with quicksand.
What exactly was this man saying?
Moody snatched the wand without a word. His hand found the flask at his hip. He took a long, hard pull.
Light gathered in Douglas's palm. Something materialized: a prosthetic leg, silver-white, sleek with a kind of precision that didn't belong to this century. The joints were articulated and exact. A faint magical glow pulsed along the surface. It looked less like a medical device and more like something that belonged in a museum.
"Personal project." Douglas offered it over with an easy smile. "Probably an upgrade from that chunk of wood. Better than the one I gave Professor Kettleburn, actually."
Moody's gaze settled on the mechanical leg. Stayed there a moment. Then he made a low sound in his throat, turned his head, and pointed his wand at his own broken stump.
"Reparo!"
Nothing.
The broken wood sat there. Not a flicker of light. Not a spark.
Douglas tilted his head. "Oh, right. Should've mentioned that." He sounded entirely unbothered. "My magic is a bit particular. Things it damages, standard repair charms tend not to... work on them."
The color that rose in Moody's face had nothing to do with embarrassment.
He fixed Douglas with a glare that could have peeled paint, then shoved his hand into the other pocket of his robe and produced a small box. A snuffbox, by the look of it. He tapped his wand against it.
"Transfigure!"
The box stretched and shifted. It settled into the rough shape of a wooden leg. Crude work. He jammed it against the broken stump and moved on.
Douglas watched him refuse the gift and felt nothing about it. He stowed the mechanical leg and conjured a roll of parchment instead.
"Since the Deputy Headmaster prefers to handle things himself, fair enough." He set the parchment down where Moody could reach it. "Manufacturing blueprint. Every component, every enchantment, all the details you need. Make it yourself, if you'd rather."
Moody looked at the parchment for a long moment.
He still didn't know what this man was after.
But the knowledge packed into that blueprint was another matter entirely. That, he recognized. That, he couldn't pretend he didn't want.
His hand reached out. He took it.
➤ Next: Sirius Black Protects His Boss: Mess with My Boss? Ask Your Leg First!
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