I am Happy to Publish Another Chapter of The Wandless Archmage
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Harry woke before dawn with his heart already racing. The tournament. Today. He lay in the dark for a moment, staring at the blue silk canopy above his bed, then sat up and reached for his glasses.
Terry was already awake in the next bed, reading something by wandlight. He looked up when Harry moved. "Couldn't sleep either?"
"Not really."
Michael groaned from across the room and pulled his pillow over his head. "You're both mental. It's not even light yet."
"It's tournament day," Terry said, as if this explained everything. To Harry, it did.
They dressed in silence. Harry pulled on his robes and checked his reflection in the small mirror by his bed. Same boy. Same scar. Same empty pocket where a wand should be. He flexed his right hand, remembering the warmth of the Lumos, the force that had thrown Dudley backward. Today he would find out if it was enough.
The common room was empty except for Cho, who sat curled in an armchair by the fire with a book she wasn't reading. She looked up when they came down the stairs and smiled. "Ready?"
"No," Harry said.
"Good. You'd be lying if you said yes."
They walked down to breakfast together. The castle was quieter than usual, as if it were holding its breath. Their footsteps echoed in the empty corridors.
The Great Hall was nearly empty. A few early-rising Ravenclaws sat scattered at their table, and a cluster of nervous-looking first-years huddled at the Hufflepuff benches. Harry sat down and reached for the toast he didn't want.
Cho poured herself tea and looked at each of them in turn. "Listen. You've all trained. You know what you can do. The only thing that matters now is keeping your head when it starts."
"Easy for you to say," Michael muttered. "You're not the one dueling."
"No. I'm the one who got knocked into a wall by a troll because I was too slow. So trust me when I say this: slow down. Think. Don't just react."
Harry bit into his toast. It tasted like sawdust, but he chewed anyway. His stomach felt hollow and tight at the same time.
"Harry." Cho's voice was quieter now. "You'll be fine. You've done harder things than this."
He looked at her and remembered the hospital wing, the flowers in her hands. "Thanks."
Terry was spreading marmalade with intense focus, as if getting the coverage exactly right would determine the outcome of his match. "I've been thinking about the bracket. If Harry and Hermione both keep winning, they meet in the semifinal. Someone's going to have to knock out a friend."
"Don't think about the semifinal yet," Cho said. "Think about round one."
At half past eight, Professor McGonagall rose at the staff table and clapped her hands.
"The Great Hall is now closed," she said. "Everyone out, please. The doors reopen at nine."
"An hour," Michael muttered as they stood. "We're going to stand around for an hour."
He wasn't wrong. The entrance hall was loud before they were halfway across it, and louder every time the marble staircase delivered another dozen students. Somebody was taking bets in the sort of low voice that carries anyway. A sixth-year cast his Shield Charm over and over for anyone who would look, until Flitwick squeaked at him to put his wand away. Harry found a stretch of wall and put his back to it. Cho stood beside him and said nothing.
At nine the doors opened, and the crowd carried them in.
The house tables were gone. In their place a raised wooden platform ran the length of the hall, benches down both sides of it, and students were already climbing over each other for the front bench. House banners hung from the rafters. The enchanted ceiling was a flat, cloudless blue.
Flitwick stood at the far end on a stool, beside a chalk bracket drawn on a board taller than he was. He caught Harry's eye and beckoned.
Harry followed his friends to a spot near the front of the Ravenclaw section, close enough to see the staff table. Dumbledore sat in the centre, McGonagall to his right, Flitwick to his left. Snape sat further along in black robes. Quirrell was at the far end.
The hall went quiet in stages as Dumbledore stood, back rows first. He did not raise his voice, but every word carried.
"Welcome to the Hogwarts Dueling Exhibition. You are here to test yourselves and to represent your houses. Sportsmanship is remembering that the person across from you is also a person. Anyone who forgets it will be disqualified in front of everyone in this hall."
He sat down. Flitwick took his place at the edge of the platform, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
"Thirty-two competitors. Sixteen first-round matches. You win by forcing your opponent off the platform or by taking their wand in hand. Disarming is not enough. You must hold the wand." He looked at Harry. "Mr. Potter's opponents may also win by touching their wandtip to his neck. Mr. Potter may only win by the standard methods."
Whispering started up along the benches. Harry kept his face still.
"First match. Hermione Granger versus Theodore Nott."
Hermione climbed onto the platform from the Gryffindor side. Nott, a thin Slytherin boy with pale eyes, took the place opposite her. Wands up.
Flitwick's hand dropped. "Begin."
It took less than a minute. Hermione's Shield Charm caught Nott's Stupefy cleanly, and her Expelliarmus came before he had reset his stance. His wand flew. She caught it left-handed and held it up.
"Winner: Hermione Granger."
Gryffindor came up off the benches shouting her name. Hermione walked off with her chin up and her face red, and did not look back.
"Second match. Draco Malfoy versus Wayne Hopkins."
Harry leaned forward. Draco came up onto the platform without hurrying. Wayne Hopkins looked small beside him.
"Malfoy's going to destroy him," Michael said quietly.
Terry nodded. "Hopkins couldn't hold a Shield Charm in practice for more than three seconds."
Harry watched Draco's face, the cold smile he had seen in Potions and in the dungeon corridor.
Someone touched his shoulder. Hermione stood behind them, still breathing hard.
"Professor Quirrell," she said without preamble. "He's gone. Was he here during my duel?"
Harry looked at the staff table. The chair at the far end was empty. He could not remember seeing Quirrell in it since Dumbledore sat down.
"He was there before the first match," Cho said slowly. "I saw him. I don't know when he left."
"So he left while everyone was watching the platform," Hermione said.
Green and silver noise went up behind them. Harry's head came round. On the platform, Hopkins was flat on his back. Draco stood over him with his wand still up and Hopkins's wand hanging from two fingers of his other hand.
"Winner: Draco Malfoy."
Draco dropped the wand on the boards beside Hopkins and stepped down without offering a hand. The Slytherin benches opened to let him through.
"Next match," Flitwick called. His eyes found Harry in the crowd. "Harry Potter versus Roger Bletchley."
The hall went quiet. Every face turned.
Harry stood. His legs got him to the platform without consulting him about it. The wood was smooth under his feet, worn shallow down the middle where a thousand years of students had stood.
Roger Bletchley waited ten feet away with his wand held loose. He was half a head taller than Harry, sandy-haired, robes cut to fit him properly. He had not bothered to take up a stance yet.
Harry raised his right hand, palm open, fingers spread. His wand hand, with no wand in it. Wandtip to the neck. For Bletchley that was the whole game, and both of them knew it.
The noise dropped away. At the staff table Dumbledore watched with his fingers steepled under his chin. McGonagall's lips had gone thin. Flitwick stood at the edge of the platform with one hand raised.
Harry's heart hammered. He thought about the cupboard, and the dark, and the word that meant light. He thought about Charms, thirty students watching him make something out of nothing, Cho on her feet applauding.
He could do this.
Flitwick's hand dropped. "Begin."
Bletchley moved first. "Expelliarmus!"
The red bolt crossed the platform and hit nothing, because there was nothing to hit. It came apart in the air where a wand should have been. Bletchley's smirk came apart with it, for about a second.
Harry raised his palm and said the word. "Lumos."
White-gold light went off in his hand. Not the glow from the cupboard, not the steady sphere from Charms class. It threw Harry's shadow fifteen feet down the platform and put it on the far wall, and the front rows got their hands up in front of their faces.
Bletchley squinted and brought his left arm across his eyes. His wand arm did not move. "Clever, Potter. Light won't win you this."
The Stinging Hex came low and fast. Harry threw himself sideways and felt the heat of it go past his shoulder. He hit the boards, rolled, came up on one knee.
Bletchley was walking him down now, wand tracking. Harry watched his feet instead of his wand. He thought about the spider crawling the path he had chosen for it, about how much of that had been patience and how much had been wanting it.
He thought: up.
Bletchley rose a few inches and lost his balance. His eyes went wide. His arms went out. Harry let go of the levitation and Bletchley came down hard, stumbling back three steps before he caught himself. His face went dark red.
"You little..."
The next spell came faster and worse aimed. Harry dodged left. Another one went for his legs and he jumped it. The hall was getting loud again, a roar building under each exchange.
Then Bletchley stopped and steadied himself. His breathing had changed. He took a proper dueling grip and put his weight forward on the balls of his feet, and Harry understood that the easy part was finished.
They circled. Harry's lungs burned. His robes were stuck to his back. Bletchley's eyes did not leave his face.
Harry started to gather the heat. He had practiced it with Flitwick, directing warmth the way he directed light. Not fire. Just enough to make Bletchley flinch and open something up. He felt it build in his palm and felt his magic come up to meet him the way it had in the cupboard, and in the garden at Privet Drive.
Then his scar opened.
It was a brand held to his forehead and pushed through into the bone. His vision went white. He was on one knee with both hands over the scar and he did not remember getting there.
The platform tilted. The crowd went distant. Every breath came in wrong.
Through the white he could make out Bletchley's shape, stopped, wand half raised, thrown by it. Neither of them moved.
"What's wrong with you?" Bletchley's voice arrived from a long way off.
Harry tried to answer and could not. He reached for his magic and found the pain sitting in the place where his will was supposed to be.
Bletchley started forward again, slower now, taking his time about it.
Harry could feel his own pulse against his palms. He saw boots, the hem of a robe, a wandtip coming down toward his neck.
"Should've stayed with the Muggles," Bletchley said, almost kindly. "At least you'd have been safe."
Six inches from his throat. Four.
At the edge of the platform Harry saw Cho, both hands on the rail, her knuckles white.
And then he was in the hospital wing a week ago, looking at the bandage round her head and the blood dried at her temple and her hair fallen across her face while she failed to move. She had put her hands flat on his chest and shoved him clear, and the wall had done the rest.
He was not going to waste that.
The scar was still burning. Something came up underneath it anyway, the thing that had answered in the cupboard and answered in the garden and had never once waited for him to be ready for it.
He let go of all of it at once.
The air cracked. Lines of force went out from where he knelt, and the sound was ice breaking on a lake.
Bletchley did not have time to make a noise. The wave took him in the chest, lifted him, and put him on the stone floor ten feet past the edge of the platform. He rolled twice and stopped.
The Great Hall went silent.
Harry stayed on his knees with his hands on his forehead. The pain drained off slowly, like water through sand. When his vision cleared he could see Bletchley's chest going up and down.
"Winner: Harry Potter."
Ravenclaw came up off the benches. Terry's voice went over the top of all of it. Michael was shouting something Harry could not make out and did not try to.
He lowered his hands. His forehead was cold where the scar had burned. He tried to stand and his legs declined.
Madam Pomfrey was already crossing to Bletchley with her wand out. Flitwick arrived at Harry's elbow.
"Can you walk, Mr. Potter?"
Harry nodded. He did not trust his voice.
"Good. Come down slowly. You have done enough for one morning."
Harry let Flitwick steer him off the platform. Cho was waiting at the bottom of the steps. She did not say anything. She looked at him until his throat went tight.
He had won. The scar had never done that before, and he had no idea why.
He sat where Cho put him and got his breath back through four more matches. Then Flitwick called the last one.
"Michael Corner versus Susan Bones."
Michael stood up from the Ravenclaw benches, pale and set. Susan rose on the Hufflepuff side with her wand already in her hand.
Terry dropped onto the bench beside Harry, out of breath. "That was mental. Absolutely mental. Did you see how far Bletchley went?"
Cho sat on Harry's other side, close enough that her shoulder was against his, and left it there.
Hermione came over from the Gryffindor section without appearing to notice the people watching her do it. Her hair was coming out of the tie she had put it in.
"Your scar," she said. "What happened to it?"
Harry looked up at her. "I don't know."
"But it hurt. You went down clutching your forehead."
"It burned." The words came slowly. "Like someone put something hot against it."
"Has it happened before?" Cho said quietly.
"No. Never."
Hermione already had a notebook out and a self-inking quill. "What set it off? Were you casting? Were you angry?"
"I was preparing heat. Directed warmth. Then it just hit."
"In the middle of the spellwork." She wrote it down. "That might matter. Wandless casting strains your core differently. If the scar is connected to your core at all..."
"Hermione." Cho's voice was gentle enough and firm enough at once. "Maybe not now."
Hermione looked up, saw Harry's face, and shut the notebook. "Right. Sorry. Are you alright?"
"I think so. It's gone."
"It happened once. It can happen again." She bit her lip. "You should tell Professor Dumbledore."
Harry nodded. He would. When he could think properly, when the hollow feeling in his chest had filled back in.
On the platform Michael had his weight forward and his wand arm steady. Susan mirrored him, and she looked steadier than Harry had expected.
Flitwick raised his hand. "Ready? Begin."
Michael opened with a Shield Charm and Susan's first hex came off it. She followed with a Disarming Charm and the shield caught that too. They circled. After Harry's match the hall had gone quiet in an ordinary way, two first-years with wands doing what students had done in this room for a thousand years, and Michael was holding his own.
The main doors at the far end swung open.
Every head turned.
Hagrid came through first and filled the doorway. Behind him, smaller and dustier, came Professor Quirrell, robes covered in dirt and bits of leaf.
Michael's spell went wide. Susan's counter fizzled out halfway. They both stopped and stared like everyone else.
"Sorry fer the interruption." Hagrid's voice went the length of the hall. "Was on me way back from me business in the Forest. Dumbledore sent me ter check on the Acromantula colony, they've been actin' strange lately. Found Professor Quirrell here wanderin' near the edge of the trees."
McGonagall was watching Quirrell with the look she used on students who were lying about their homework. Snape's eyes had gone to him and stayed there.
Quirrell came forward, wringing his hands. The stutter was where it always was. "Q-quite right, Hagrid. Thank you for your c-concern. I was c-collecting ingredients for a p-potion. Valerian root grows near the F-forest border this time of year. Excellent for calming draughts. I'm afraid I l-lost track of time."
Harry went completely still. Cho's fingers closed on his sleeve.
Hermione leaned in. "Valerian root grows in marshland. Wet soil, standing water. Not near forests. One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, the chapter on aquatic plants."
Harry was watching Quirrell come down the centre aisle toward the staff table, head bowed, apologetic, small in his movements. The stutter never once slipped.
"Master, I am doing what I can. It is not so simple. The third floor is..."
The voice in the dark corridor had not stuttered.
Flitwick clapped his hands twice and the sound went round the quiet hall. "Everyone sit, please. The duel continues."
The crowd settled reluctantly and in low voices, and kept looking at the staff table. Hagrid was already going out through the side door.
Quirrell had been in the Forest while every professor in the castle sat in this room watching the platform. Harry could not get the two halves of that to sit together.
"Harry." Hermione, barely a breath. "He's lying."
"I know."
On the platform Michael's weight had gone back onto his heels and his wand movements had gone stiff. Susan saw it before Harry did. She feinted left with a Knockback Jinx, Michael's shield came up, and her Expelliarmus came in from the right.
Michael's wand left his hand in a clean arc. Susan caught it left-handed before it reached the top of the flight and held both wands up.
"Winner: Susan Bones."
Hufflepuff cheered. Susan looked surprised at herself. She handed Michael his wand back with a small nod and he took it and climbed down red-faced.
Flitwick waited for the noise to settle. "Excellent work today, all of you. Round two begins Monday morning." He looked along the thirty-two of them. "Those who won today, do not assume Monday will be easier. Those who lost, do not assume it is finished. This is round one of five."
He clapped once. "Dismissed."
The hall came apart into noise and movement. The first-years who had competed were surrounded inside ten seconds by older students with questions, advice, and criticism of their technique.
Harry stood. His legs held this time. Michael came over looking flattened.
"I was useless out there."
"You weren't," Terry said. "Your shield held through three spells. That's solid."
"I got distracted."
"Everyone got distracted," Cho said. "Half the hall stopped watching."
Michael shook his head, but he let it go.
Quirrell was sitting very still at the staff table with his hands folded in his lap, looking at nothing in particular. Snape sat three seats down, just as still, also looking at nothing. Or looking at Quirrell without doing it.
Dumbledore rose and the other professors followed him out through the door behind the table. Quirrell went last, turban crooked, robes still dusty. He did not look at anyone.
"Come on," Cho said. "Let's go up to the tower. You look exhausted."
She was right. Harry was exhausted, and the shakes had come back into his legs.
He followed them toward the doors, and looked back once at the staff table. Quirrell's chair was empty again, the same as it had been all morning.
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