"Until now I was only capable of appearing in the astral realm, but now that you have this realm, I can appear here as well," the elf said, voice sharp with intensity. "Now you face Celebrimbor, Lord of Eregion and son of Feanor!"
He charged Julian without hesitation.
Julian snapped his focus inward and tried to shift the mindscape itself, to change the terrain and create distance, but the realm resisted him. His eyes went wide at the pushback.
Celebrimbor's fist slammed into his face again, hard.
...
What followed was a one-sided beating.
Julian tried to resist. He tried to react, to adapt, to do anything that might change the balance.
None of it mattered.
Celebrimbor was stronger, faster, and far more experienced, and Julian was completely overwhelmed.
Every strike felt real, as if bone and flesh were actually taking the impact. The pain flared, then faded moments later, only to be replaced immediately by more pain, hit after hit without mercy.
...
At some point, Celebrimbor's rage cooled, but he still refused to stop. He had a goal, and it hadn't been reached yet.
If anything, the beating became even more brutal, as if he was trying to compress as much suffering as possible into the shortest span of time.
Broken limbs.
Ruptured organs.
Eyes torn out.
Every kind of injury a person could imagine was inflicted on Julian's mind-made body, again and again.
The damage vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, but the pain kept coming in an endless cycle.
...
Three hours into the torment, Julian finally started to crack.
Desperation rose in him, sharp and raw, and he wanted to retaliate in any way he could, to make it stop, to force an opening, to end the pain.
Celebrimbor seemed to notice the change.
With a satisfied smile, he finally backed off.
The next attack Julian expected never came.
Instead, he heard, "Now that you know the fear of injury, go do something about it while I explore this fascinating realm."
Footsteps moved away, calm and unhurried.
Julian was left sprawled on the ground, not injured, but utterly exhausted from the beating he'd just endured.
...
So that just happened, he thought, oddly calm for someone who'd just taken the beating of a lifetime without landing a single meaningful counter.
"Fine then," Julian said aloud, voice rough. "I'll put this fear of yours to use, but don't expect this to be the end of this matter."
If Celebrimbor heard him, the elf didn't acknowledge it. He just continued walking into the distance.
...
Julian pulled himself out of the mindscape with the mother of all headaches waiting for him. His nose was bleeding heavily.
Helena's expression shifted instantly. "Are you alright?" she asked, genuinely worried, because that sort of thing rarely meant anything good.
"Yeah," Julian muttered. "I'll be fine in a bit."
He took a wiggenweld potion from Greed and drank it, stopping the bleeding. Then he transfigured the blood out of his robes before pushing himself to his feet.
Julian raised his wand.
"PROTEGO!"
He held onto the desperate memory, the frantic need for the pain to end.
A small, flickering light-blue barrier formed at the tip of his wand.
Julian smiled. Now that he'd cast it properly once, he no longer had to worry quite so much. Every cast after this would come easier, and stronger.
...
Helena looked surprised that he managed it at all, even if the barrier was unimpressive.
"Well done," she said, praise honest.
Julian shook his head, bitterness tugging at his mouth. "I wouldn't have been able to do it without someone else's help. So it looks like I owe them a favor. What a pain."
He wasn't ungrateful, and he wasn't stupid. He could tell what Celebrimbor had done, even if it had been delivered in the most violent way possible. The elf had antagonized him, beaten him, and forced the missing emotion into him as a kind of guidance.
In truth, Celebrimbor hadn't actually harmed him in any lasting way. In his own mind, Julian was effectively immortal, healing almost instantly from anything. Besides being temporarily unpleasant, the entire ordeal had been harmless.
...
Celebrimbor was probably right as well, at least in part. Julian had been neglecting his craftsmanship in favor of magic.
Julian couldn't entirely blame himself for that. Magic was useful for almost everything. It was often easier, too, because it didn't require the same depth of personal knowledge to work.
Still, the fact remained that unlike Dumbledore, the elf hadn't violated Julian's privacy or threatened his safety. The method had been brutal, but not treacherous.
...
Julian spent the rest of the day familiarizing himself with Protego, working to make it something sturdier than magical tissue paper.
Progress was slow. The spell was extremely demanding, and he burned through his magical energy quickly whenever he practiced it.
So that's why they only teach it in fourth year, Julian noted grimly. Any sooner and you probably wouldn't have enough energy to use it.
At the very least, it told him his current limit for learnable spells sat somewhere around that level, and that alone would save him time experimenting just to find out where the ceiling was.