Professor Flitwick had been taking a late-night stroll to clear his head when he noticed the familiar door appearing on the seventh floor. Expecting perhaps a student seeking a quiet place to read, he slipped inside, only to be met with a concussive blast that rattled his teeth.
In the center of the arena, Orion Blackheart was locked in a high-speed duel with an enchanted training dummy—a shadowy, humanoid figure that moved with the fluid lethality of a professional duelist. Orion was not dueling; he was hunting.
His silver eye was a frantic, spinning needle, and his wand movements weren't the precise, geometric arcs he was known for.
They were jagged, violent slashes.
"Expulso!" Orion roared.
A beam of sapphire light slammed into the dummy's shield, sending a shockwave through the room that cracked the obsidian floor. Orion didn't wait for the rebound. He stepped into the blast, his face contorted in a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
"Confringo! Reducto!"
He wasn't looking for an opening; he was trying to erase the target. The training dummy was barely keeping up, its wooden limbs splintering under the sheer pressure of Orion's magic. The boy was breathing in ragged, shallow gulps, his hair matted with sweat.
"Enough!" Flitwick's voice chirped, though it carried the unmistakable weight of a Master Duelist. He flicked his own wand, and the training dummy vanished into a puff of smoke.
Orion spun around, his wand still leveled, a curse trembling on his lips. When he saw the diminutive professor, the fire in his eyes didn't die; it just flickered.
"Professor," Orion gasped, his chest heaving. "I was… practicing."
"Practicing?" Flitwick walked forward, his boots clicking on the cracked stone. He looked around at the devastation—the gouged floor, the scorched walls, the absolute lack of finesse. "That was not practice, Mr. Blackheart. That was an execution. You weren't dueling that dummy; you were trying to murder the air it occupied."
Orion lowered his wand, his hands shaking. "I'm just… focused."
"No," Flitwick said, his sharp eyes looking up into Orion's silver one. "You are angry. And more importantly, you are annoyed. You are fighting like a man who is trying to subtract a problem from the world by force. Now, tell me. Why is a brilliant young man like yourself trying to blast the Room of Requirement into oblivion on a Saturday night?"
Orion stayed silent for a long moment, the only sound the distant ticking of a clock in the hallway. Then, the dam broke.
"I got into an argument...with Elliot," Orion whispered, his voice sounding cold and jagged. "When Buckbeak was injured, I didn't help that beast because it was the 'right' thing to do. I helped because there was something I wanted. Elliot looked at me like it was a sin and stopped talking to me entirely. He...he looked at me like trading made me a monster."
He looked at his shaking hands. "I pushed them away because of it. The balance doesn't anymore. They told me they were done. I said things to hurt them because I'm tired...of everything. Everything is just wrong. I don't see what's wrong."
Flitwick's expression shifted. The sternness of the duelist faded, replaced by a deep, genuine worry. He looked at Orion not as a prodigy, but as a boy whose soul was becoming a cold spreadsheet.
He remembered the Hippogriff Malfoy incident.
He remembered the rumors of how it was solved and the fracturing of a friendship.
"I see," Flitwick said quietly, his voice tinged with a rare sadness.
He stepped closer, standing right in front of Orion, his height barely reaching the boy's chest but his presence filling the room.
"You are fundamentally, mathematically wrong, Orion. You think life is a series of transactions. You think that for every ounce of 'love' or 'help' you give, there must be a receipt. But let me tell you something about the magic you claim to study. The most powerful charms in existence—the ones that shield us from the darkest curses—don't run on logic. They don't run on profit."
Flitwick gestured to the scorched walls. "Magic is an expression of intent. If your intent is always 'What do I get?', your magic will eventually become brittle. It will have no depth. You say you helped Buckbeak for a favor? That isn't kindness, Orion, that's a business deal. And business deals don't inspire loyalty; they inspire debt. And debt eventually leads to resentment."
He looked up at Orion with a piercing, watery gaze. "You are worried about the cost, but you haven't considered the cost of being alone. A single point has no dimensions, Orion. It occupies space, but it can build nothing. You are a brilliant boy, but you are becoming a very small one. Love and friendship are the only things in this world that increase when you give them away for free. They are the only variables that defy your math."
"If you wanted something," Flitwick added a moment later, "sometimes the only thing you need to do is ask." He breathed out. "Helping doesn't need to be a matter of give and take and you don't need to scheme to borrow things or favors."
Orion blinked, the admission of the Professor's worry and the blunt critique of his worldview catching him completely off guard. The image of his friends' hurt faces—the 'unprofitable variables' he had discarded—began to weigh more than his own ego.
Orion slumped. The 'annoyance'—the friction of his own transactional ego—was finally beginning to dissolve under the weight of Flitwick's disappointment.
"They'll never forgive me," Orion murmured.
"They will," Flitwick said.
Orion looked at him.
"Perhaps not immediately. But eventually. They'll forgive when you earn it."
He stepped back and raised his wand. "Now. Duel me. No ledgers, no profit. Just the magic of the moment."
Orion took a deep breath. He closed his eyes for a second, visualizing the frequencies of the room. When he opened them, the silver eye was no longer spinning frantically; it was steady.
The duel began.
It was a masterclass in precision. Flitwick moved with the grace of a dancer, his spells short, sharp, and perfectly timed. Orion didn't blast. He redirected. He used Flitwick's momentum against him, his wand moving in the elegant, calculated arcs of his true self. There was no more screaming air, only the soft thrum of high-level magic meeting magic.
After five minutes of intense, silent exchange, Flitwick lowered his wand. Orion did the same, his breathing steady, his mind finally clear.
Flitwick gave a short, decisive nod.
"Better," the Professor said. "Much better. Your head is back on your shoulders, Orion. Now, go find your friends. You have some explaining to do—and for once, don't worry about the cost. It's 8:00 PM; there's still time to make things right before the day is done."
Orion watched the Professor leave, the obsidian arena slowly shifting back into a quiet, comfortable room.
Flitwick turned around with a small smile.
"By the way...that was a marvelous duel. No student has ever kept up with me. Not even for five minutes."