Harry Evans Chapter 80: Riposte (Patreon)

30 minutes of not much happening passed after Harry's first match. He was to have two that day. One for getting out of the 72 bracket, and one for getting out of the 36 bracket. 

Reaching the top 18 would be a nice feather in his cap. After all, winning one fight could have been a fluke, but two was just enough to prove that he wasn't joking around with his presence here. Quite frankly, wasn't 72 a bit of a low number for the competition of the whole continent?

It didn't matter, Harry was focused on his next match. He felt the gaze of Pierre and his Austrian student on the side of his face as he waited for his bout.

If they were trying to unnerve him, they failed. When he stood up after he was called to the podium again after the numbers had been whittled down to 36, he felt as calm as ever. And if they thought that the fact that the matches would now be happening two at a time instead of four at a time would destabilise him, they would be proven wrong.

Harry didn't care for crowds, even if the louder applause that greeted him when he went on stage indicated that the crowds were perhaps starting to care for him.

“I'm going to wipe the floor with you, brat,” Harry's opponent said. He flicked his long brown hair over his shoulder to give him a good glare.

The boy seemed to be endowed with all the arrogance that his last name would imply.

Harry signed as he stared at the boy dully. He didn't know if he felt like retorting with a little quip of his own. What would be the point?

Although, perhaps trying to destabilise the seemingly petty kid would work. Those who insulted hardly ever took it well if they were insulted themselves. It would perhaps be helpful because the boy had still beaten his last enemy through some skill. The disarming jinx, some ice on the floor, and the shielding spell, all executed very well.

Anyway, if the Habsburg was trying to get into a game of insults with anyone, he had picked very much the wrong opponent.

“Rather than wiping the floor with me, you should go and wipe your potential brothers and sisters off the floor back at your mom's house. She should just about be waking up  from the crazy night I gave her yesterday.” Harry said disparagingly, getting an absolutely furious expression from his opponent and an absolutely baffled one from the referee who was the same one who had seen his rather cordial interaction with Nyssen earlier.

“Please remain respectful,” the referee warned. 

Harry simply rolled his eyes wondering why his opponent hadn't gotten the same warning. He turned back to his opponent who was clenching his fists and trembling with Rage.

“I'm sorry, friend, let's have a good match,” he said honestly, which seemed to enrage the boy even more. Harry suddenly felt a little stab at his mind shields. He froze and frowned. The probe had hardly been enough to breach anything considering all his practice with the hat, but its presence was nonetheless troubling...

Just to test a theory, he rolled his eyes at his opponent who for some reason paled. Had it come from him?

After years of being exposed to the hat, the harsh taskmaster that it was, no child would manage to get past this defence. If it had been Habsburg trying, then it wouldn't be an issue.

If he had done so, then technically he had committed a foul, attacking before the match had officially started. Harry could have maybe tried getting the boy disqualified, by snitching on him. It would have saved him the energy for future matches. However, Harry wasn't here to win the tournament. He was here for two specific reasons and both of these would also be fulfilled if he fought more than he needed to. Additionally, how was he supposed to prove the accusation, and the boy hadn't pointed his wand at him.

In the end, he was here to further his duelling, and for that, it was better to fight as many opponents as possible, and he was also here to prop up his reputation in the international circle. While showing on an abstract level that he had mind shields of sufficient quality to deter a novice and the intelligence to snitch rather than fight, it was hardly as impressive as just wiping the floor with this moron.

The two of them were forced to bow against each other. Then the duel started.

As Habsburg shot his first spell, Harry suddenly felt another strike against his mental shields, even more powerful than the previous one. He batted it away, and narrowed his eyes, dodging a disarming jinx while he did so.

Was the boy good enough to target him even if they weren't locking eyes, even if he was casting another spell at the time?

Harry sincerely doubted it, but it was a magical world, anything was possible.

Nevertheless, he used a little trick that the hat had taught him to slow down his perception of time, and looked at the crowd, extending his magic senses.

There wasn't really anyone looking at him too maliciously, he noted as he sidestepped another jinx. If anything people were interested, perhaps they had felt like laughing during his first match, but winning once was enough for people to forget about his age. 

Another stab, he felt it now, the tendril extending not from his opponent but from the audience.

He glanced at the referee, who refused to meet his eyes.

So that's how it was going to be. Harry smiled. Well, it wasn't like him to refuse a challenge.

-/-

Two disarming jinxes clashed in the middle of the platform, creating a small wave of wind and an explosion of red sparks. Both of the wizards were knocked back slightly, however just as Harry was about to recover, more quickly than his enemy, another mental probe assailed his defences.

He grimaced but batted it away.

It nevertheless took him a second

The Habsburg used the time to cast a silent field of ice onto the floor underneath Harry.

Harry could feel how the ground he stood on became slippery. But instead of being worried, he simply grinned.

He's been wrestling with the decision for some time now; how much of his capabilities he truly wanted to reveal in this duel. He still had quite a few secrets left, but he was now starting to realise that he was here to improve himself and not to get as far as possible in the future.

Also, keeping his trump card for perhaps even next year would not give him any urgency to create new ones. 

In reality, he was trying to survive life-and-death situations. Not giving his most in these duels was just harming him in the long run.

He raised his left arm, deciding that he was going to show the Habsburg exactly what kind of mistake he'd made messing with him and slapped the incoming disarming jinx away with a contemptuous wave of his hand.

His other arm, the one holding his wand meanwhile drew the candle movement into the air and was thrust forward.  

There was a small period of silence from his enemy and from the audience as they stared at him and what he’d just done. The silence before the storm.

Harry was not significantly more talented with fire magic than everyone else was, however, he had practised fire sorcery for quite some time now, which meant that he just had more control over the spell. Similarly, because he was very much in tune with his magic he could also overcharge it more easily than others. A skill that was actually less common than one would think. Suffice it to say in his hands and with his willingness to use up 40% of his magical reserves on one skill… Habsburg would probably need a shield much stronger than the one he could actually manage.

“Incendio,” Harry incanted angrily. The mental probes simply allowed him to gather even more emotion to put into the spell. He could feel how the anger interacted with the formula, how the first spark appeared in front of his wand. His entire view was suddenly cut off by a great wave of fire. Combustion of unparalleled, for him, size.

The flames were darker than usual, the anger fueling them was changing their properties. He could feel that they were more corrosive than they really should have been. Perhaps this was dark magic. However, since he wasn't specifically training himself to feel these feelings and simply use the emotions already present anyway to feel the spell, then it should be fine, right?

Harry didn't sustain the flames for as long as he could, cutting them off with a theatrical raising of his wand. The flames seem to follow the gesture, before finally sputtering out, subjugated by his will. 

It was his magic, and no matter how much anger he'd stuck into a spell he would always, always control it.

Fire finished washing over the other side of the duelling platform and crashed against the shields, slowly starting to eat away at them.

The referee raised his wand and reinforced them with a frown. As the fires finally started dissipating, unravelling into the air like threats, a bright white protective ball was revealed to be taking up the other side of the dealing platform. Habsburg had truly barricaded himself behind a beast of a shield, although he looked a bit signed regardless. 

The mental attacks on Harry became quite insistent as if wanting to defeat him all on their own. Wasn't the person doing the attack afraid that if he just keeled over like that, people would realise that Habsburg hadn't actually done anything to win?

Regardless, Harry compartmentalised his mind into halves. One half defended, and the other attacked. It was here that the practice really came in handy. An almost subconscious barrage of disarming jinxes that he'd trained into his muscle memory through blood, sweat and tears in the last year.

Waves of his wand caused multiple shots of stunningly red disarming jinxes to fly towards his opponent at maximum speeds. The exhausted boy simply continued holding up his shield. The spells crashing against it, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, the eighth smashed the construct into pieces. Shards of magic falling to the ground and disappearing into thin air. The Habsburg elegantly threw himself to the floor to avoid the next spell, but Harry didn't let up.

Disarming jinx, after disarming jinx, after disarming jinx simply spewed forth as if he was wielding a machine gun. This was what his work had been all for. Fuck the deflection, fuck the great ball of fire, this was the basics and if someone mastered the basics through a high enough standard, then no one who hadn't done the same could even stand on the same platform as him.

Habsburg crawled around on the floor, some sort of force keeping him willing to endure the torture. Jumping, deflecting and shielding for his life as the mental probes on Harry’s mind weakened from seeming exhaustion.

The inevitable happened. 

Harry collapsed to his knees.

The strain of defending his mind and attacking with his wand became too much for him.

However, not before one disarming jinx hit his opponent and smashed the boy straight off the platform, his wand jumping high into the air and towards Harry who simply let it clatter to the ground.

The referee looked at the situation, seemingly constipated, as if he was wondering if Harry following to his knees was reason enough to call this thing a draw.

The mental probes stopped, and the crowd went absolutely wild.

All images of sophistication and whatnot that the people watching the tournaments had tried to put up, it was all gone. Harry had shown them something today that they hadn't seen in quite a while at this level. An absolutely brutal all-out offensive, fire, flame and the red jets of light travelling faster than any other spell having been seen on that day.

“Winner, Harry Evans,” the referee announced.

-/-

AN: I've been wanting to show what the level of Harry's occlumency is for a while now. Practicing for a long time. Also, this duel sort of has shown where he stands. Good enough to fight on two fronts in a rigged match. But, will he now be too exhausted for the next one tomorrow.

Doing some rolling updates of Harry Evans to get this duelling arc out in real time, so next chapter in 7 days