They met every day for the next three weeks.
Sebastian was fast. He didn't learn the methodical, theoretical way Rowan did, breaking problems into components and working through them systematically. Sebastian learned by throwing himself at the difficulty until it gave. By the end of the first week, he could produce a flickering nonverbal Lumos. By the end of the second, the light held steady for several seconds at a time.
Ominis attended most evenings, sitting in his chair, and Rowan came to understand that his presence was more useful than it appeared. Ominis was attuned to qualities of magical resonance that sighted wizards missed entirely. When Sebastian's casting shifted in a way too subtle for Rowan to see, Ominis would note it. "That one felt different. Closer." Or: "You hesitated at the last moment." The specificity of his perception was remarkable, and Sebastian listened to him with the attention of someone who'd learned to trust a friend's instincts over years.
Anne came most evenings as well. She brought tea, asked questions about the theory behind what Rowan was teaching that showed a mind as sharp as her brother's even if her interests ran to Herbology rather than combat, and provided a grounding presence the practice sessions needed.
Sebastian's intensity could fill a room until there was no air left in it. Anne gave them all permission to breathe.
The Stunning Spell came in the third week. It was harder than the Lumos, requiring more focused intent, and Sebastian's instincts fought him at every step. He wanted to force the spell out with aggressive certainty and raw energy, the same way he forced verbal spells. The magic gathered and refused to release.
"You're trying to overpower it," Rowan told him after several failed attempts. "You already know the incantation handles the shaping when you speak. Without it, shaping requires clarity, not power. Stop thinking about the Stunning Spell. Think about the result. The dummy falling. What impact looks like."
Sebastian turned back to the dummy. His stance changed. The tension in his arm eased. His eyes focused on the center of the dummy's chest instead of his wand tip, and Rowan could see the moment the aggression gave way to precision.
A flash of red light left his wand without a sound. It struck the wall a foot and a half to the left of the dummy, leaving a scorch mark on the stone.
Sebastian stared at the mark. Then he looked at his wand, turning it over in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. "That was silent. That was a Stunner and I didn't say a word."
"The aim will come. The hard part was making it happen at all."
He cast nine more times. Three connected with the dummy, weak enough that they barely rocked it on its base, but each one arrived in silence. When the last one hit, Ominis said from his chair, "That was the cleanest of the three," and Sebastian sat down on the trunk looking exhausted and elated in equal measure.
It was then that Sebastian asked the question Rowan had known was coming since the corridor outside the dueling club.
"I need to ask you something, Ashcroft." Sebastian's voice was careful, choosing words because they mattered, the same deliberateness he'd had that first night in the library. "Two weeks. You learned nonverbal casting in two weeks, over Christmas break. Nine spells, reliable enough to duel Hecat. I've been at this for three weeks and I've got one spell that can't hit what I'm aiming at." He met Rowan's eyes. "You told me you had motivation and a lot of time alone with training dummies. That's true, but it's not the whole truth. There's an advantage you have that I don't. I could see it the night you dueled Hecat. The spells you were throwing had a weight behind them that doesn't match a second-year's core."
Rowan was quiet for a moment. Sebastian had laid the question out with the same tactical clarity he brought to a duel, cutting through the surface to the thing that actually mattered. He deserved the same clarity in return.
"My magical core expanded before Christmas break," Rowan said. "Significantly. I used a magical enhancer—a rare fungus I found in a sealed box from the Forbidden Forest, combined with a stabilizer potion to prevent the dark magical signature from corrupting the process. The expansion was permanent. Blainey's diagnostics showed readings far beyond normal for my age. It's why I was in the Hospital Wing at the start of term, and it's why I was able to learn nonverbal casting in two weeks. The expanded core meant that even imprecise, underpowered nonverbal spells hit with enough force to be functional. I had room to be bad at it and still produce results."
The chamber was quiet. Sebastian's expression had gone still, the elation from the Stunning Spell replaced by concentration. He was processing the implications with the same speed and thoroughness he brought to reading an opponent's tactics, following each thread to its conclusion.
"So the gap between us isn't just technique," Sebastian said. "It's fundamental. Your core is larger than mine, maybe larger than most adults, and that's permanent. When you duel, when you cast nonverbally, when you held off Hecat for two and a half minutes—that was raw magical capacity I can't match through practice."
"The technique still matters. The core made it possible, but it didn't make it easy."
"But it made it possible at a pace I can't replicate." Sebastian's voice was level, controlled. The muscles at the corners of his jaw worked once. "I'm not angry about it. You found it, you took a risk that could have killed you, and it paid off. That was your choice and your risk and you earned whatever came from it."
He paused, and when he continued, the control was still there but what lay underneath had shifted. Rawer, more honest.
"I just need a minute to sit with the fact that the gap between us is wider than I thought it was, and it's not going to close no matter how hard I work."
Anne, who had been listening from her chair, reached over and set her hand briefly on Sebastian's arm. She didn't say anything. The gesture was simple and familiar, the kind of comfort that existed between people who had spent their entire lives learning each other's pain.
Ominis spoke after a moment. "My family has vaults full of artifacts that claim to enhance magical ability. Dark objects, most of them, from generations of Gaunts who believed power could be taken rather than earned. Most of those artifacts killed the people who used them, or worse." He paused. "Whatever Ashcroft found, it was clearly built on genuine scholarship rather than dark magic and desperation. But the point stands that the thing is done and can't be undone. The question is what you do with where you are now, not where you wish you were."
Sebastian looked at Ominis for a long moment. Then he exhaled, long and slow, and when he spoke again, some of the tension had eased from his shoulders. "I know. I know that. It's just—" He stopped. Shook his head. "Three weeks of work. One spell. And you're telling me the bloke who did it in two weeks had an advantage I'll never have."
"You'll never have my core," Rowan said. "But you have things I don't. Your offensive instincts in a duel, the way you shift tactics in real-time, the speed of your decision-making under pressure. A bigger core doesn't give you any of that. When you nearly took the championship spot from me last year, that wasn't power. That was you."
Sebastian held his gaze, searching. Whatever he found there was apparently enough, because the worst of the tightness around his eyes eased.
"Nearly," he said quietly, and left it there.
The weeks continued, and the shape of things between them changed without anyone marking the moment it happened. The competitive edge that had defined Rowan and Sebastian's relationship since the first day of dueling club didn't vanish, but it found a different form. Less opposition, more shared direction. They pushed each other, argued about technique and tactics, challenged each other's assumptions, and the friction produced something constructive rather than divisive.