A torrent of blinding, lethal emerald-green light erupted from his wand with the force of a lightning bolt. I executed a perfect sidestep, letting the curse pass scant centimeters from my robes.
The flash of death impacted the inner surface of the translucent barrier dead center. However, there was no explosion or physical ricochet; just like the lesser charms, the green light dissolved into an electric hiss, completely absorbed by Elise's divinity until it vanished entirely.
A sepulchral, thick, and terrifying silence fell over the Atrium. The spectators froze at the dual shock of what they had just witnessed: first, Lucius's sheer audacity in unleashing an Unforgivable Curse in full view of the court; and second, the scientifically impossible fact that the barrier had neutralized the most lethal hex in the wizarding world—a curse historically celebrated for its absolute property of only being able to be intercepted by solid physical obstacles.
Almost magnetically, hundreds of gazes heavy with reverent astonishment turned toward Cornelius Fudge. A single, incredible certainty began to nest in the minds of the officials and the press: The Ministry has developed an absolute countermeasure against the Killing Curse!
Finding himself the epicenter of such a historic misunderstanding, the Minister for Magic felt a bead of cold sweat slide down the back of his neck. He summoned every ounce of his political willpower to maintain a mask of serene, mysterious calm, even though on the inside he was just as flabbergasted and terrified as the rest. Fudge knew perfectly well that the Department of Mysteries had never come close to such a milestone; there were magics capable of interfering with the killing curse, but none that could be applied in such a casual, portable, and flawless manner as in this dueling arena.
Murmurs threatened to spark chaos, but the guarding Aurors firmly contained the crowd's shifting movements. Within a few seconds, the masses diverted their attention back to the duel, where the atmosphere had just taken on a definitive tone.
The first Avada Kedavra shattered Lucius's final psychological barrier. From that microsecond onward, the green flash became the near-exclusive axis of his repertoire. In a desperate, chaotic, and insolent attempt to rip my existence from the face of the earth, the aristocrat abandoned any pretense of strategy. His magic simplified into a brutal violence with the same ruthless, raw, and bloodthirsty cadence he used to employ during his years as a Death Eater.
An entrenched phase then broke loose—an absolute frenzy where magical lights crossed the diameter of the arena in a desperate bid to "annihilate the opponent." Killing Curses whistled continuously in my direction, emerald-green blasts that forced me to execute millimetric feints or improvise defenses on the fly. Fortunately, my mastery of hematomancy allowed me to erect plasma barriers that intercepted the secondary impacts; the blood shields exploded with grotesque detonations, splattering the pavement of the walkway before amalgamating once more and rising again under my orders. Yes, it was a colossal advantage. But, to be completely honest, all of it was pure theater. It wasn't as if my life were in actual danger, but I couldn't allow a single one of those green beams to graze my clothes, as the slightest miscalculation would unveil the farce.
The contention turned claustrophobic, plagued by violent twists. Desperate, Lucius began to channel forbidden magics so severe that the price of their activation began to consume his own flesh, draining his vitality. I, for my part, molded my blood appendages into various attack variants, alternating between ranged magical impacts and heavy physical strikes, while ensuring I didn't imbue them with too much power. My goal was not to crush him immediately.
The crowd in the stands was plunged into a state of collective catharsis, intoxicated by the magnitude of the duel. Well, almost the entire crowd. Albus Dumbledore remained motionless, his steel eyes fixed on my every move. The Headmaster had already decoded the deception. Having measured his strength against Tonks barely an hour ago, he refused to believe that I did not possess the same arsenal of technological ingenuity and runic contraptions as she did, or perhaps an even superior one. Noting that I had not employed a single one of my true weapons throughout the entire encounter, Dumbledore confirmed that this was nothing more than an elaborate staging, though the safeguards of the dome forced him to remain an impotent spectator. Meanwhile, my parents watched the pit on the verge of an emotional collapse; every time a green flash passed inches from my face, panic squeezed their chests, consumed by a dread that wouldn't let them breathe.
Thanks to my meticulous performance and the deplorable physical state I projected—simulating that the Jarjacha wands were draining me—public opinion began to mold a convenient truth about me. The myth of the cursed relics was unanimously accepted by the stands, granting the wood absolute credit for my endurance. It was the ideal scenario: it did not suit me for the wizarding world to perceive me as an immensely powerful being at such a young age; it was preferable for them to consider me an audacious boy who relied on dark artifacts. Naturally, this immediately ignited the spark of greed in the eyes of certain officials and nobles, who were already scheming how to lay their hands on my wands once the litigation concluded. However, even while classifying the wands as an external booster, many of those present looked at me with a nuance of deep respect, assuming that if I managed to survive, Great Britain's future would harbor another powerful wizard.
...
...
...
The fight continued, until we finally reached the decay of the combat.
Lucius Malfoy was in a state of absolute deterioration. Sweat soaked his face, causing strands of his platinum hair to stick to his skin; his robes bore small slits and bloody tears, and the grime of pulverized asphalt coated his features. His strength was abandoning him. The aristocratic elegance of his opening movements had vanished completely, to the point that his spells required several seconds of concentration and muscular spasms before they could be released into the air.
To maintain the symmetry of the show, I made sure to mirror that exact same agony. I panted with an intensity identical to his, perhaps simulating an even worse attrition. I let one of my arms drop, displaying it as so bruised and broken that I was forced to wield only a single Jarjacha wand. As a final touch for the stands, I deactivated my hematomancy entirely: the tentacles had dissolved a while ago, and all the blood that had previously danced around me now stained the tiles an inert, stagnant red.
The crowd in the Atrium ceased their ovations and cheers. The clamor of the masses died out, giving way to a reverent, expectant silence that only contemplated the twilight of the battle.
The rhythm of the fight became so weary, slow, and devoid of dynamism that it seemed like an entirely different confrontation from the one we had started. It remained a brutal demonstration, of course, but now, after each exchange, a prolonged pause ensued where both of us did nothing but hold each other's gaze, breathing with difficulty. We feigned analyzing the opponent's slightest tic, agonizingly reserving and squeezing out every last drop of energy before launching the next attack.
In any other context, critics would have decreed that the duel was ruined, that the loss of speed detracted from the value of the spectacle. But no one among those present harbored that thought. The intensity of the prior phases had ignited a passion so primal in the hearts of the spectators that they remained hypnotized. In fact, seeing the arena reduced to such a grounded and imperfect struggle caused the arrogance of some nobles and officials to flare up; seeing us so vulnerable, panting, and slow, they thought that even they could step into the arena at that moment and claim victory.
The duel was ending, at least in its essence; we were stranded in the final stretch of the contention. The exchange could very well drag on for long, agonizing minutes if we continued to ration our breath and take more and more time to study each other in silence, but the entire Atrium understood that its critical point had been reached: the next involuntary mistake could be the last.
Those spectators gifted with a sharper sense of observation believed they could clearly discern which way the scales were tipping. Despite the mutual exhaustion and the repertoire of scars, I projected the slowest reactions, the most erratic spasms, and the most hindering aftereffects. My magic erupted at a considerably lower frequency than Lucius's; harsh and heavy, but spaced far apart. It was the living image of imminent defeat.
My family, however, refused to accept that reading—or at least their wounded hearts clung to any inkling of hope. After witnessing the brutal prowess I had displayed and the apparent physical sacrifices the Jarjacha was demanding of me, they only allowed themselves to believe that I still held a chance to emerge victorious. On the opposite end, Narcissa Malfoy, who logically should have breathed a sigh of relief at my decline, felt her heart leap into her throat. Her worry intensified as she noted that her sister's smile had not faded even a millimeter. She knew that until a definitive verdict was rendered, she would not be able to relax.
Inside the dome, Lucius's mind operated on a radically different frequency. He wasn't registering my supposed decay; his nerves were shattered, raw, driven by a primal paranoia. His psyche held no space to calculate statistics or predict if I would fall in the next second; the aristocrat had been reduced to a cornered animal whose sole biological imperative was to batter me until I stopped breathing. He had no mental reserves left for analysis.
And then, one final, sepulchral pause. We locked eyes, panting at the top of our lungs, distilling the last residue of energy for the assault.
The arena lay undone, fractured by the impact of dozens of hexes, buried beneath a dense layer of dust, and saturated by puddles of inert blood.
The audience remained motionless, devouring every subtle muscular contraction; the flashes from the journalists' cameras snapped intermittently, and a few isolated shouts still echoed.
A final locking of eyes.
And... action.
Both of us moved in the exact same microsecond. Our wands rose, fully charged; his flashing an incipient emerald glow and mine vibrating with an imperceptible hum. Time seemed to dilate, passing in a dense slow-motion as we drifted laterally. The woods pointed instinctively toward the rival's movement trajectories: he aimed for the center of my chest; I, for the plane of his knees.
"—AVADA KADA...!"
"—BOMBAR...!"
We screamed the incantations at the top of our lungs, stripped now of the strength required to sustain non-verbal channeling.
It was at that precise instant, invisible to the eye, when a small tentacle of blood from the ground sparked to life and wrapped itself with silent force around Lucius's ankle. The grip caught him completely by surprise, fracturing his concentration. The sharp tug destabilized him, throwing his body forward in what, before the eyes of the world, looked like a pathetic and unfortunate stumble.
"—...BRA!"
"—...DA!"
The two spells left the tips of the wands in the very same breath. However, because of the fall, Lucius's beam of green light veered drastically toward the ceiling of the dome, dissolving harmlessly against the shielding. Mine, on the other hand, found its destination with geometric precision.
Lucius managed to look at me while the world froze before his eyes mid-descent, and then... his head exploded with the same ease as a watermelon under a mallet.