Cutting through the crowd with an innate elegance, Albus Dumbledore finally made his entrance into the Atrium. He appeared serene, though a clinical eye would have detected the subtle glamour charms with which he attempted to conceal the aftermath of his recent combat: a few bruises beneath his robes, a fine cut lightly bloodying his brow, and the hem of his clothing frayed and coated in dust. No one among the public noticed the slightest detail; the Headmaster was an absolute master of discretion, maintaining a faint, magnanimous smile on his face while undetectably healing himself. However, upon confirming that the event had already begun and the duel was irreversible, an imperceptible click of frustration escaped his lips.
The barrier already rose in a dome. At one end, Narcissa Malfoy watched the arena with profound unease; at the opposite end, Molly Weasley cradled the limp body of Arthur, who was receiving emergency attention from Kingsley Shacklebolt.
"—Rennervate!"
Arthur emerged from his lethargy with a gasp of air, dazed and his mind clouded. However, the chromatic detonations and blinding flashes bursting within the translucent dome brought him back to full lucidity all at once. He leapt to his feet, alarmed.
"Red!" Arthur roared, screaming himself hoarse at the sight of his youngest son trapped in the middle of a vortex of lethal magic.
Molly threw herself into his arms with restrained desperation, and it was in that precise moment of chaos that they spotted Dumbledore's tall silhouette approaching their position.
"Albus... please, do something, I beg of you..." Molly sobbed, her eyes blurred with panic.
Dumbledore could only offer them a look weighted with bitter helplessness. The old wizard stepped forward, placing his hands on the couple's shoulders in an attempt to instill calm in the midst of that nightmare.
Before Arthur's eyes, the contention inside the dome escalated in violence, adopting the rhythm of a duel to the death between seasoned wizards—something astonishing considering Red's age. Lucius, spurred by frustration and the desire to wrench a lightning victory, chained hexes that, while not inherently mortal, possessed more than enough power to dismember or cause a fatal accident.
For a father like Arthur, watching this was unbearable. His code of honor and protective instinct dictated that the danger belonged to him, not his son. He snatched his wand from Molly's hands and, without weighing the devastating political implications of violating a Duel of Honor, lunged ferociously against the surface of the barrier, intending to force his way through.
The backlash was immediate and brutal. A whip-crack of runic energy repelled Arthur, projecting him several meters backward. He crashed onto the Atrium tiles, completely unconscious for the second time.
The impact sowed panic in Molly and the nearest spectators; even Dumbledore's brows drew together in a rigid line of worry. Kingsley knelt immediately, executing the revival counter-charm once more... but the magic did not respond. Arthur remained plunged in an artificial sleep. Astonishment began to turn into terror among those present as they witnessed the elite Auror's inefficacy. Realizing the blockage, Dumbledore himself stepped forward, gently brushing Kingsley aside to channel his own magical flow over Arthur's body.
Then, the Headmaster frowned.
That simple gesture—the loss of imperturbability from the greatest white wizard of the age—was enough to shock the surrounding journalists and officials. Dumbledore was employing a considerable amount of time, and his expression, increasingly severe and grim, was truly disturbing. This was no ordinary fainting spell.
Finally, resorting to a variant of restrictive magic—similar to the suppressor knots used against his son—Dumbledore managed to stabilize Arthur and force his eyes open. The curse was contained, but Arthur's magic was sealed. If the Weasley patriarch wished to remain conscious, he would have to stay in this state of magical nullity. He was bound, temporarily turned into a Squib, at least until the dome dissipated and took the afflicting curse with it.
Dumbledore slowly drew himself up, fixing his eyes on the arena.
To the ignorant masses crowding around the arena, Arthur's blockage and the power of the dome were caused by a sophisticated security system that the Ministry had supposedly deployed. But the Headmaster was no neophyte; he sensed a far more anomalous and dangerous vibration. Capitalizing on the general clamor, Dumbledore discretely flicked the tip of his wand and cast a subtle pulse of energy directly against the translucent surface. Anyone with an ounce of arcane perception would have been flabbergasted by the dense amount of power the old man was applying in this breach attempt—a destructive force perfectly camouflaged while most spectators diverted their attention to the platform, where Lucius Malfoy was now openly unleashing the first threads of his dark magic.
The Headmaster frowned once more, and this time, a genuine chill ran down his spine.
That barrier... was not something he could shatter. He understood, with a pang of bitter certainty, that even if he abandoned all caution and unleashed one hundred percent of his legendary strength, the chances of success were doubtful. The fabric of the dome did not respond to the laws of known magical theory; it felt as though it were imbued with an infinitely superior essence, a purity against which ordinary magic was simply not worthy to compete. And his instincts did not fail him. Albus could not know that the arena's shielding stood thanks to the divine power of Elise.
With the weight of that discovery crushing his shoulders, the old man shifted his gaze toward Cornelius Fudge. The Minister was floating in a limbo of self-complacency, torn between the improvised praise raining down from his retinue and the magnetic progression of the duel. Because that was the morning's other reality: no one in the Atrium, absolutely no one, expected a student of my age to not only survive the assault of a veteran Death Eater, but to offer such a dignified and polished resistance. The public's initial horror had transformed into the morbid fascination of a true mass spectacle.
Dumbledore glided over to position himself at his side. He spoke calmly, engaging in a seemingly casual conversation that blended diplomatic praise with the exchange of high-politics impressions. With extreme delicacy, the Headmaster slipped in an uncomfortable question regarding the origin and design of the barrier; after all, it was implausible for the Ministry to possess such an advanced countermeasure without months of prior planning, and this duel had been agreed upon less than twenty-four hours ago.
Fudge, however, was completely blinded by the venom of pride. Feeling like the center of the universe beneath the approving gazes of the aristocrats, arrogance buried any trace of his usual cowardice. In a normal situation, a moderately sensible ruler would have been alarmed to see unknown magic erupting in his own building and would have ordered an immediate investigation; but Cornelius preferred to ignore the origin of the dome just to swallow the credit without the slightest shred of shame. He didn't care where the hell that wall had come from; there would be time to question the technicians later. At this precise second, the barrier served him to project an image of absolute control, instill respect among his detractors, and consolidate the power he so desperately craved to retain.
Dumbledore merely shook his head in a silence heavy with disappointment. The caliber of the Minister was clear: the man was a complete illiterate to the situation.
Far from calming down, the Headmaster felt the alarms in his mind flare with a screeching intensity. The fact that Red had access to a magical technology capable of bending Dumbledore's own standards, added to the chilling ease with which the boy manipulated everything around him, was a new needle driven straight into his heart. Every move the boy made reminded him of the lines that had already been crossed and the real danger he represented to the status quo of the wizarding world.
...
Inside the shielded dome, Lucius Malfoy was beginning to break into a cold sweat. A deep, viscous worry clawed at his entrails; although I projected an increasingly suffocated and exhausted image from his onslaughts, the objective reality was that I hadn't yielded a single centimeter of ground. Several superficial wounds and scrapes accumulated on my body, coating my clothes in dust and blood, but my guard did not falter. I showed no signs of collapsing.
He noticed it with alarming clarity: victory was not near, and the mere possibility of defeat began to freeze his bones. What he originally conceived as a moderately straightforward formality had transformed into a suffocating war of attrition. Panicked at the thought of losing his status, Lucius definitively shattered the mask of chivalry he intended to sell in this duel and unleashed his first curse of pure black magic.
From his lips emerged a sibilant, unintelligible murmur. His wand traced a violent arc in front of his face, conjuring a dense, purulent cloud of darkness from which, the very next instant, three skulls enveloped in green flames emerged. The projectiles shot forth in distinct parabolas, curving through the air toward my position like heat-seeking missiles.
The crowd in the Atrium gasped in astonishment. A screeching, high-pitched shriek—a spectral wail designed to unbalance the opponent's mind—emanated from the flying skulls. Upon witnessing such a necrotic display, my parents turned livid; Molly choked back a sob and Arthur, helpless and devoid of magic, held his breath, horrified by such dark magic. It was an extremely dangerous and difficult hex to intercept, endowed with an intrinsic malice capable of corroding and piercing any ordinary protective charm.
Then I acted. Maintaining my performance as an exhausted but resolute youth, I slid the first Jarjacha wand from my sleeve. With a movement as abrupt as it was strangely beautiful, I executed a series of geometric slashes in the air, physically striking the flaming skulls with the tip of the wood. The impact fractured the apparitions one by one, dissolving them into a dense black miasma that threatened to suffocate me.
Lucius did not sit idly by waiting for the smoke to clear; he fired a blinding flash right into the middle of the mist. However, there was no impact on my flesh; the spell was cleanly deflected to the sides, colliding against the transparent barrier like all the ones before it.
When the miasma finally cleared, the scene froze the Atrium. There I remained, wielding the Jarjacha wand while channeling a counter-spell to repel the dark smoke that was already beginning to blacken and necrose the skin of my arm, selling the hero's martyrdom to absolute perfection.
"So you have finally been forced to draw it..." Lucius mocked with a twisted smile, trying to hide his nervousness before chaining together another volley of forbidden magic.
I did not grant him the honor of a response. I simply flicked the cursed wood. From the core of the wand erupted the echo of the Jarjacha's laughter—a macabre sound that seemed to devour and trap the dark hex looming over me, neutralizing it on the spot.
Curse against curse. That was what the spectators witnessed, caught in absolute stupor. Even my parents gazed at me with a mixture of pride and profound consternation, unable to comprehend how their youngest son possessed such skill and methods to stand against such a rival.
A brief, tense pause took over the battlefield. Lucius analyzed me, trying to decipher my endurance, while I adopted an absolute seriousness—an icy indifference that was genuinely terrifying to the witnesses. Everything was proceeding according to the script: the act of "using the power of a cursed relic to compensate for a lack of experience" was working like a charm.