1st November 1994, Hogwarts Castle, the Room of Requirement, 12:01 PM
Ron struck whilst the iron was hot.
The instant Draco's three left his mouth, the redhead was moving—not in a straight line but already curving to Harry's right 'Don't stand still. Standing still is dying. Move.' Ron had absorbed that lesson with the practical conviction of a boy who had spent his entire life moving aside for older brothers and had a natural gift for not being where things landed. He cast as he moved.
"Stupefy!"
A blueish bolt crossed the duelling mat in a clean diagonal.
Harry was no longer where the bolt was going.
He had not, by any measurement Ron could see, moved. There had been a small fractional adjustment of his shoulders, a half-step's shift of weight, and the bolt passed through the air-shape Harry had been occupying a second earlier and struck the duelling mat behind him with a sharp blue-white discharge. The mat absorbed it. The Room hummed.
"Locomotor Mortis! Rictusempra! Reducto!"
Ron moved through his available repertoire with the speed of a boy who had been preparing this opening sequence in his head since breakfast. The Leg-Locker travelled high; the Tickling Charm low; the Reducto split between them at chest height. Three angles, three arcs, calculated to force Harry to commit to one defence and reveal his preferred footwork.
Harry lifted his holly wand—a small, almost lazy gesture and a transparent shield flickered into being a foot in front of his shoulder.
"Protego."
The word was barely a whisper. It was not the Protego anyone else in their year could have ever casted. It was cleaner. It did not flare. It did not waver. It had the precise bright stillness of a piece of glass that had been polished by someone who had been polishing glass for many years and had decided what glass was for.
The Leg-Locker, the Tickling Charm, and the Reducto met it at three points and dispersed like rain on a windowpane.
The shield winked out.
Harry had not moved.
Ron, on the far side of the mat, registered with a small precise flash of professional respect for that was what Protego was supposed to look like. Then he stopped registering things and started moving again, because Hermione had once told him that thinking too long about a problem was, in itself, a kind of standing still.
He circled.
He cast as he circled. Furnunculus, Densaugeo, Tarantallegra—the small disposable hexes he had drilled in the Common Room with Fred and George when they had been younger and had still, occasionally, agreed to spar with him. He did not expect any of them to land. He was probing. He was looking for the place where Harry's defence was less polished, the angle from which the shield was thinner, the small habitual adjustment Harry always made.
Draco watched from the side of the mat with his hands clasped behind his back and the precise focused attention of a Slytherin observing a model in motion.
'He'll exhaust himself,' Draco thought, at minute two. 'Ron's casting strength is good for his age, but this rate is unsustainable. Harry knows that. Harry is letting him. Harry is reading him.'
He flicked his eyes to Harry.
The change in Harry on the mat was something Draco had read about in the few wand-combat manuals he had access to but had never previously seen in a fourteen-year-old.
Harry's movement was almost nothing—a quarter-turn here, a small angled retreat there—but his posture contained the entire mat. His wand-hand was loose at his side between casts and rose only the precise distance required. His non-verbal casting was complete—Draco had watched for two solid minutes now and not heard a single incantation pass Harry's lips. The shield-charm whisper had been the first and only word. Even his eyes moved less than Ron's did. Where Ron tracked a target, Harry tracked the whole space.
It was, Draco realised with a private interior recalibration, what Ethan did when he duelled. The same minimum-disturbance economy. The same I see the entire room and I am simply selecting where in it to be.
Ron's confidence had been growing through the last forty seconds. Draco could see it in the small lift at the corner of his mouth. Ron had spotted, on Harry's right side, what looked like a precise small opening—the kind of opening that came from a duellist who had been blocking high-and-left for too long and had become predictable on his own right. Ron's expression said finally.
He gathered himself for the strike.
'It's bait,' Draco thought.
He did not call out.
Ron pivoted on his heel, and with a single fluid motion that contained the very best of three years' Quidditch reflexes, fired three hexes off the Room's far stone wall in a calculated ricochet that brought them back at Harry from his exposed right—and immediately followed them with the spell he was proudest of.
"STUPEFY!"
It was, Draco noted with genuine respect, an excellent Stupefy. Ron had been working on it. The bolt was straight and bright and clean, the wand movement crisp, the intent absolutely committed. It was the spell of a boy who had, over the course of the last year, become Ron Weasley properly.
Harry's wand flicked.
"Protego."
It was, as before, the smallest whisper.
The shield came up at the precise angle to intercept all four incoming spells in a single plane. The three ricocheted hexes met it first and dispersed; the Stupefy hit it last and produced, this time, a hairline fracture across the surface of the charm—a spider-web crack in the air, brief and bright, a real stress in Harry's defence.
The shield held.
It held, Draco registered with academic interest, because Harry had let it crack. Harry had not poured more magic into it. He had not reinforced. The crack was a deliberate concession—the minimum defence necessary, no more, with the surplus magic conserved.
And then, before Ron's wand could rise again, Harry's Stupefy came back.
It was the precise mirror of Ron's. Same bolt, same arc, same colour. It crossed the mat in the space between heartbeats. Ron had time, just, to begin the wand-movement of a counter-shield—
"Pro—"
The bolt struck him square in the chest before the t of Protego completed.
There was a short blue-white flash.
Ron was lifted off his feet, carried backwards by the spell's momentum across approximately fifteen feet of duelling mat, and deposited—gently, by the Room's evident charity—against a heaped pile of training mats that had appeared, with helpful timing, against the far wall a moment before he reached it.
He landed with a soft thump, eyes open, looking faintly dazed, but conscious.
Draco crossed to him with the brisk diagnostic efficiency of a boy whose Healer-training had reached a useful threshold. He crouched. He took Ron's wrist, registered the pulse, looked at the pupils.
"Conscious. Pulse normal. Pupils responsive. Ron, how many fingers."
"Four," Ron said, slightly fuzzy, "and your hair needs washing."
"I'll have you know I washed it this morning."
"Then it's the Room. The Room is making it look greasy."
"Ron, you are fine." Draco offered him a hand and pulled him upright. "Sit up. Have some water. Recover."
A small porcelain cup of ice water was summoned onto a low table beside the mats. Ron took it with the slightly awed expression of a boy who was rapidly reassessing his rank-ordering of magical phenomena, and drank.
Harry crossed the mat with the careful slightly-sheepish gait of a boy who had just won a duel against his best friend and was not entirely sure how his best friend wanted him to feel about it.
"You all right?"
"Mate." Ron looked up at him. His ears were very red and his eyes were bright. "Mate. That was unbelievable. You—the Protego—that was—do you know how much I've been working on my Protego? It's terrible, and you just whispered one and it was—" he gestured helplessly, "—that was not fair."
Harry rubbed the back of his neck with the small embarrassed motion that meant he did not know how to receive a compliment of this size. "You—you were really good. The ricochet was clever. I almost didn't see the angle in time."
"Almost."
"Almost."
"You deliberately baited me into that opening."
"A bit."
Ron grinned. He had the precise expression of a boy who had just discovered that his best friend was, in fact, twice as dangerous as he had previously suspected, and was finding this thrilling rather than upsetting.
"Right," he said, gulping the rest of the water. "Right. Draco. Your turn. Beat him."
Draco's mouth twitched. "Ronald, with respect, I do not think I am going to beat him."
"Try."
"I shall."
Draco rose. He shrugged out of his outer robe and folded it over the bench with the neat economy of a boy who had been folding his own clothes since he was a very small child. Beneath, he wore his Slytherin jumper over a crisp white shirt. He flexed his wrists once, briefly, and stepped onto the mat.
Harry registered, immediately, that this was going to be a different kind of fight.
Where Ron had moved with the exuberant kinetic energy of a Quidditch Seeker, Draco's stance settled into a small, contained, minimum configuration. He stood with his weight balanced over the balls of his feet, his wand-hand low and forward, his free hand precisely positioned at his hip. The posture was not Ethan's. It was Sam's.
'Oh,' Harry thought, with a small private flash of something between recognition and respect, 'Uncle Sam must have been giving him lessons.'
This explained, suddenly, several things from the past summer that had not previously made sense.
"Combatants ready?" Ron called from the side, with the precise diplomatic ceremony of a referee whose own duel had ended twenty seconds ago and who was determined to perform the role with the same dignity he had shown during it.
"Ready," Harry said.
"Ready," Draco said quietly.
"On three. One. Two. Three."
Draco struck first.
He did not move from his stance. He did not telegraph. His wand rose perhaps four inches and three precise jinxes left it in a sequence so tight that Harry registered them as a single layered attack rather than three separate ones—a Trip Jinx low, a Confundus mid, an Impedimenta high—each cast non-verbally, each calculated to force Harry to defend against three different categories of harm in the same fraction of a second.
Harry's Protego came up. The three jinxes met it, dispersed, and the shield held with no crack at all.
But Draco was already casting again before the shield had winked out.
This was the thing Sam had taught him. 'Speed of recovery is more important than speed of casting. Cast, recover, cast. The duellist who recovers fastest controls the rhythm.'
Three more jinxes. Same triple-layer formation. Different angles.
Harry's shield came up again, lower this time, redirected to absorb at the new angles. It held.
A fourth volley.
A fifth.
By the sixth, Harry's wand was working harder than it had against Ron. The Protego was still clean—still the polished thing it had been—but its frequency was now considerably higher, and Harry's free hand had begun, almost unconsciously, to make the small steadying gestures that Ethan made when concentrating on continuous defence.
Draco had not moved. The whole exchange had taken place inside an eight-foot circle of mat, with Draco at the centre and Harry adjusting his angles at the perimeter.
'He's good,' Harry registered, with a small surprised pleasure. 'He's really good but...'
He decided, mid-volley, to test it.
His next cast was not a shield. It was an Expelliarmus—the Disarming Charm, hard and clean, aimed precisely at Draco's wand-hand.
It was the Expelliarmus that had ended a duel against four Ravenclaw fifth-years. It was, by any reasonable measurement, his best spell.
Draco's wand flicked.
"Protego."
The shield was good.
It was not Harry's Protego. It was not Ethan's Protego. But it was, by any measurement, considerably better than Ron's, and it was significantly better than what Harry had expected Draco to produce. The Disarming Charm met it, struck a small bright red flare against its surface, and dispersed.
Draco's expression did not change, but a small flicker of satisfaction crossed his eyes.
Harry, who had been waiting to learn this exact piece of information, smiled fractionally.
Then he changed gears.
What followed was the two-minute sequence that Ron, watching from the bench with the cup of water now forgotten in his hand, would describe to Hermione that evening as the most frightening thing I have ever seen Harry do.
Harry did not, exactly, accelerate. He simply added.
He had been firing one spell in the time Draco fired three. He began firing two for Draco's three, then three for Draco's three, then four for Draco's three. The sequence shifted from Expelliarmus to Stupefy to Expelliarmus to Diffindo-from-the-rear-quarter as Harry circled and recast, his footwork compact but constantly moving, his wand-arc economical, his spell-timing the precise rhythm of a heartbeat that had decided its cadence and was not asking permission.
Draco's Protego held the first three exchanges. It cracked on the fourth. It held the fifth at the cost of the crack widening visibly. It collapsed on the sixth.
Draco, with the practical resignation of a boy who had just lost his shield-charm, did the only sensible thing, which was move.
His footwork, it turned out, was very good.
He danced backwards along the mat with the controlled compact retreat of a boxer—right, left, half-step, pivot—Harry's spells passing at his shoulders, his hip, the side of his neck. He was no longer attempting to counter-cast. He was, simply, surviving the offensive.
Ron had stood up at some point. He was watching with his mouth slightly open.
It went on for perhaps another forty seconds. Draco, weaving, found one good opening and used it: a Stupefy that he timed precisely to Harry's mid-recovery and that very nearly clipped Harry's left shoulder. Harry's wand came up just in time to redirect it past his ear.
"Good," Harry murmured—the second word he had spoken in five minutes—and Draco saw, in the small flick of acknowledgement at the corner of Harry's mouth, that the Stupefy had impressed him.
Then Harry's next spell came.
It was an Expelliarmus, but it was paired—the way Ethan paired things—with a precisely timed Stupefy in the wake of it, two beats apart, the second offered to the place where Draco would necessarily be a half-second after dodging the first.
Draco dodged the Expelliarmus perfectly. He pivoted into the dodge with an elegance that under any other circumstances Harry would have applauded. The motion took him into the path of the Stupefy.
He saw it coming. He raised his wand. The Expelliarmus that Harry had thrown not at his body but at the wand-hand he was now lifting struck his right wrist in the precise split-second between his pivot and his shield-cast.
Draco's wand spun out of his grip in a small graceful arc and landed, neatly, in Harry's open palm.
The duel was over.
Draco stood for a second blinking at his now-empty hand. He flexed the wrist. It was sore but not damaged—Harry had pulled the spell, even mid-combat, to disarm rather than disable. Then he gathered himself, with the precise dignity of a Malfoy who had been taught from age four how to lose with poise, and inclined his head.
"Yield."
Harry crossed the mat and offered the wand back, hilt-first.
"That was very good."
"It was," Draco said, taking the wand and turning it in his fingers, "not good enough." His grey eyes met Harry's. "Sam will be cross with me. He warned me you would close on the wand-hand if I overcommitted to the dodge."
"You almost got me. The Stupefy into my left shoulder was—I had to redirect late."
"Almost."
"Almost."
There was a long quiet pause. Ron had walked across the mat and was looking between them with an expression Harry could not entirely read.
"Mate," Ron said eventually. "Mate."
"What?"
"That was—I don't know what that was."
"Duelling."
"That was not duelling. That was Ethan-with-a-haircut."
Draco snorted.
Harry rubbed the back of his neck again. "It—it just looks impressive because I've been at it longer. You'll both be there in—"
"Harry," Draco said, with the precise firm clarity of a boy interrupting a friend who was about to be unhelpfully modest, "you are fourteen. What you just did would, I think, place at the upper end of the Auror entry-trial. I have read the entry-trial parameters. I have an uncle who wrote them."
Harry's neck went the colour his ears went when he was complimented past his comfortable threshold.
"Right," Ron declared, recovering his theatrical voice with the practical instinct of a boy who had decided that the awkwardness was best dispelled with motion, "*that settles it. Next round: Draco and I together. Both of us. Two on one. You don't get to rest. That's a fair fight."
Harry, who had come down off the mat for water, looked up with the small wry interested flicker that meant Ron had managed to suggest something that genuinely appealed.
"Two on one."
"Two on one."
"All right."
"All right?" Ron repeated, with a sudden alarmed pleasure. "You'll do it?"
"I'll do it. After water."
"Mate."
"You said it was a fair fight. Let's see."
Draco, who was massaging his sore wrist, smiled with the small particular pleasure of a Slytherin who had been waiting all morning for precisely this assignment. "Yes. Let's see."
2nd November 1994, Hogwarts Castle, the Great Hall, 7:34 AM
The Hall was at its full breakfast volume. Owls had just descended with the morning post. The five tables held their five-school configurations. Hermione sat at the Gryffindor table with her notes spread before her, Inter-School Trials open at the appendix Viktor had identified, and the precise focused brightness of a girl who had stayed up rather late and was, against all reasonable expectation, completely energised.
Harry, Luna, Ron, and Draco arrived in their loose habitual configuration. Luna at Harry's elbow with her morning radish-earrings on. Ron's ears slightly red. Draco walking with what would not, quite, be called a limp but was definitely a fractional asymmetry.
Hermione looked up.
She looked at Ron, who lowered himself onto the bench beside her with a small careful exhalation. She looked at Draco, who took the seat opposite with the slow controlled motion of a boy whose right wrist remembered the duel even though he was determined not to favour it. She looked at Harry, who slid in next to Luna with the precisely innocent expression of a boy who would very much prefer to discuss other topics.
"Right," Hermione said. "Tournament history. The thing I have for you. First."
She paused.
Her gaze travelled, very deliberately, between Ron and Draco.
"Why are you both walking like that?"
"Walking like what?" Ron said, with great wounded innocence.
"Like that, Ronald. That."
Luna, beside Harry, lifted a piece of toast and said, with her usual serene unhurry, "Harry beat them both rather thoroughly yesterday afternoon. They have bruised ribs, and Draco has a sore wrist. Madam Pomfrey would dispose of all of it in approximately four seconds with a Wiggenweld potion, but neither of them has gone to her, because—" she took a delicate bite, "—they are too proud."
Ron's mouth opened. "Luna."
"It's true."
"It is factually accurate," Draco confirmed with dignity, "but you did not have to say it, Lovegood."
"You were both being silly. I am pointing it out."
Hermione's mouth had completed the small adjustments that would soon resolve into a smile she was making considerable effort to suppress. She glanced at Harry, who had developed an enormous interest in the milk-jug.
"Harry James Potter-Esther," Hermione said sweetly, "how was your afternoon?"
"It was fine, Hermione."
"Was it."
"Quite fine."
She let out a small laugh she had been holding for approximately twelve seconds. Ron and Draco both directed at Harry the precise look of two boys who had been bested in front of a referee and were now being publicly catalogued by the referee's best friend.
Harry hid behind Luna's shoulder. Luna tolerated this with the patient amusement of a girl who had been deployed as a human shield once before in the last fourteen hours.
"All right," Hermione said, recovering. "All right. Tournament history. Listen."
She straightened. The small notebook she had pulled out was filled with neat columns of her familiar handwriting.
"The Triwizard Tournament was first held in 1245, between Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. It ran roughly every five years for the next four hundred years. The Tasks were—" her voice took on the precise dryness she reserved for things she found morally objectionable, "—exuberantly lethal. The First Task, in any given year, has historically taken one of three categories. Beasts—the Champion is set against a magical creature in a contained arena. Confrontation—the Champion is set against a hostile environment, often water or fire or a labyrinth. Acquisition—the Champion must retrieve an object from a guarded location."
"Beasts," Ron repeated. "Like—what kind of beasts."
"The records are creative." Hermione's mouth thinned. "Sphinxes. Manticores. Chimaeras. In the 1530s, a single Champion was set against a pair of Erumpents. In 1612, a Hippogriff and a Nundu, together. In 1631, three Champions were—" she paused, and her voice took on a careful flatness, "—killed simultaneously by a Dragon released into the arena before any of them had reached their wands."
A small silence.
"The Tournament was abandoned in 1792 after a Cockatrice escaped the arena and injured the assembled judges. It was reinstated, formally, only this year, with the new safety protocols. None of the historical Tasks were considered survivable for a fifteen-year-old without a specific advantage, and the historical Champions were typically seventeen and older."
Harry's expression had gone very still, the way it went when he was registering something serious without permitting it to alter his face.
Luna's hand found his on the bench. She did not look at him. She simply pressed.
"So," Draco said, with the quiet practical clarity of a Malfoy, "we have three categories to prepare against. Beasts. Confrontation. Acquisition. For each of the three, we should compile a combat protocol. By the twenty-fourth."
"Yes."
"Twenty-three days."
"Twenty-three days."
"That is manageable," Draco said, "if we are organised."
Hermione closed her notebook with the brisk firmness of a girl who had now delivered the difficult portion of the morning. "Right. The Room of Requirement, this afternoon, after lunch. We will lay out all three categories, identify the most likely Task, and start protocols for each. I will bring my full notes—I have not finished going through the records, there are at least three more relevant volumes I want to consult—and I will join you all in the Room at three."
"You're still going to the library this morning?" Ron asked, with the precise mild surprise of a boy registering something slightly anomalous.
"Yes. Just for a few hours. There is more to find."
"Right."
"I'll see you at three."
She gathered her notes. She rose. There was, in her small precise gathering motions, something Luna registered first—an almost imperceptible brightness, a small uplift in the line of the shoulders, the particular composure of a girl whose morning had a thing in it that was making her happy.
Luna's silvery grey eyes, as Hermione walked away, drifted sidelong to Harry's.
She raised one fair eyebrow, very slightly. Just enough.
Harry's eyebrow rose in matching response. Just enough.
A small wordless agreement passed between them. Luna lifted her teacup with serene innocence. Harry looked back down at his porridge with similarly innocent attention.
"What?" Ron asked, who had registered that something had happened between Luna and Harry but had not identified what.
"Nothing, Ron," Luna said gently.
"You both did the eyebrow thing. You always do the eyebrow thing when something is up."
"Nothing is up, Ronald."
"Luna."
"Eat your toast."
Across the Hall, at the long Gryffindor table's far end, Hermione paused at the doors—and glanced, just once, in the precise direction of the Slytherin-table-where-the-Durmstrang-students-were-sitting—and then walked out into the corridor, her step very slightly lighter than it had been twenty-four hours previously.