The air was sucked dry the instant Moody raised his wand.
The sunlight was still blazing, but it carried no warmth.
Below the dueling platform, the students felt an invisible hand close around their hearts. Even their breathing turned careful.
"Don't think your smooth talk is going to buy you time, Holmes!"
Moody's roar hit like a boulder dropped into a still lake.
The echo hadn't even faded before a concentrated bolt of violet light shot from his wand , so fast it left only a scorching afterimage in the air. The beam carried something vicious in it, something with intent. It was aimed straight at Douglas's heart.
The students didn't even have time to gasp.
Douglas didn't so much as flinch.
No incantation. No raised wand. His body shifted left, barely , a small lean, the tip of one shoe touching down lightly on the wooden planks. His whole frame moved like a leaf caught in a faint breeze, drifting clear of the lethal violet beam at an angle that shouldn't have been physically possible. The sole of his leather shoe traced a clean, unhurried arc across the platform.
The violet light missed. It slammed into the vine railing at the platform's edge with a dull crack and blew apart a chunk of charred wood.
Moody's electric-blue Magical Eye spun in frantic circles, but it never looked at Douglas. His normal eye did all the work, locked on Douglas like it was recording the twitch of every individual muscle.
"Not bad on your feet — like a ballet dancer!"
His voice came out as a raspy sneer, thick with a veteran's contempt.
"But in a real fight, the next spell shatters your kneecap!"
Douglas came to rest without any particular urgency. He brushed a speck of nonexistent dust from his sleeve. The faint, unreadable smile never left his face.
"Deputy Headmaster Moody, even the greatest symphony needs a proper overture."
"Enough of your rubbish, Holmes!"
Moody's roar ripped through the brief silence, his battered wand already raised again.
"Let's see how much punishment you can take!"
A concentrated beam of red light erupted from his wand tip. Standard Stunning Spell , in form, at least. But the color of that beam ran so deep it edged toward black, and the force behind it, the sheer speed, was nothing any textbook had ever described. It tore through the air straight for Douglas's chest.
That was when the students finally reacted. A wave of strangled gasps rolled through the crowd. Hermione's hand flew up to cover her mouth.
Douglas still didn't raise his wand.
His hand moved to the inner pocket of his robes and pulled out a plain, ordinary-looking money pouch. His wrist flicked once. The pouch arced up into the air, turning end over end , and met the Stunning Spell with perfect, unhurried precision.
BANG!
The pouch exploded on contact. No gore, no magical collision. What followed instead was a glorious, golden rain. Hundreds of Galleons burst into the air, and under the afternoon sun, every single coin caught the light and flung it back, so bright it stabbed at every set of eyes on the grounds.
"What is he doing? Throwing money at him?"
From somewhere in the Slytherin crowd, Pansy Parkinson's voice cut sharp and scornful , but underneath the mockery, there was something she clearly hadn't meant to let slip. Uncertainty.
Then something changed.
Three of the coins, still spinning in the air among the dozens of scattered Galleons, blazed suddenly with light, blazed as though something had been poured into them.
Two syllables came from Douglas's mouth, quiet and indistinct. The pronunciation was wrong in a way that couldn't quite be placed , not Latin, not any ancient runic script anyone in the crowd recognized.
The moment the syllables landed, those three coins expanded and warped in mid-air. They stretched and reshaped at a speed that made it hard to follow, and by the time they touched down on the platform, the transformation was complete.
Three monks stood on the wood. Golden from head to toe, skin like poured metal catching the sun, bare-chested and powerfully built, each holding a staff of the same hammered gold. They planted themselves between Douglas and Moody without a sound.
Moody's second Stunning Spell arrived before the monks had fully settled.
The red light caught the central monk square in the chest.
The monk swayed once.
The spell disappeared into it like a stone dropped into deep water , gone, without a ripple.
"Merlin's beard..."
Hermione's breath came out in a sharp hiss. She kept her eyes on the three golden figures as she leaned toward Harry and spoke in a low, rapid voice.
"It's Transfiguration. On goblin-forged metal." A pause. "That's nearly impossible. Goblin-made objects carry their own ancient magic, a deep built-in resistance. Reshaping them from the outside shouldn't work."
She sounded like she wasn't entirely sure she believed what she was watching.
For the first time, Moody's expression shifted. Something heavy moved across his face.
Hermione's words had barely faded when the rest of the Galleons — the ones that gravity had finally begun to pull down , seemed to hear something. A command. A summons. A low, resonant hum rose from each of them at once, and in unison, every coin changed course, wheeling through the air like a flock of golden birds banking toward home, all converging on the wand Douglas had raised.
The light that followed was blinding.
The Galleons moved like liquid, flowing over the holly wand in Douglas's hand , adhering, wrapping, rebuilding. Layer after layer of interlocking gold, each piece fitting against the next with a precision no smith could have planned. When the light finally died away, a sword rested in his grip. Three feet of blade composed entirely of tightly meshed golden scales, faintly lit with the particular cold light of goblin metal, the kind that turned most spells aside like water off stone. The hilt was unchanged. It was still the original grip of his wand.
"MERLIN'S SAGGY Y-FRONTS!"
Half the Whirlwind Sword Club nearly left the ground.
"A sword! Professor Holmes is pulling out a sword again!"
"Oh, for the love of — Neville's stuck in his Potions exam!" another member wailed, pounding his own chest. "If he ever finds out he missed this, he's going to be so gutted he'll try to transfigure his cauldron into gold himself!"
On the platform:
"Interesting."
Moody let out a short, rasping laugh.
Then his wand slashed down.
"Reducto!"
The white light that followed was in a different category from everything before it , heavier, meaner, the kind of spell that didn't leave much behind. It drove into the central golden monk's chest without hesitation.
BOOM!
The monk detonated. A great cloud of golden powder hung where it had been, spinning slowly in the disturbed air.
Moody raised his wand for the follow-up.
The powder didn't fall.
It hung there, suspended for one strange, breathless moment , and then it pulled itself back together. Compressed. Reshaped.
Hundreds of golden wasps boiled out of the cloud with a sound like tearing silk, a dense, glittering swarm that swallowed the light as it surged forward, rolling toward Moody like a wave.
At the same time, the two remaining monks began to move. Their heavy footsteps rang against the wood. Their golden staffs swept up and out, left and right, cutting twin arcs through the air as they closed in from both sides.
➤ Next: An Elegant Counterattack, Returning Your Words to You!
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