Chapter 44: Champion Against Champion, Part Two
A slow breath in.
I slipped under the water again and lay still with my eyes closed, letting the quiet close over me, trying to bring my thoughts back to a steady place.
I had known it would come to this.
I had known I would not win in the older age group. I simply hadn't trained enough as a duelist. What I had been taught was how to survive, how to kill, how to wage war with magic. I was fairly confident I could have won a fight to the death.
But.
But duels aren't to the death. Moreover, killing your opponent carries extremely serious consequences. Not death in return: no one would execute you for it. But the damage to your reputation is worse. No master worth their salt would take you on if you failed to control the force of your spells in a tournament and got someone killed.
The air began to run out, and I started releasing it slowly in small increments.
And yet I was still myself.
I could at least be honest with myself: I was deeply disappointed by the casual, almost contemptuous ease with which my opponent had taken me apart. The duel had not lasted five minutes, and even then only because Alexei Gorny had decided to use it as a lesson in humility. He had deliberately identified my weak spots, attacking to break through my shield, yet his spells never actually reached me.
He had shown genuine mastery, and if I managed to get back to the Championship next year, I would absolutely test myself against his age group again. But next time I would be ready.
I surfaced and gulped a deep, hungry breath.
The broken arm had been healed by my mother the moment we reached the café where we gathered to mark the end of the tournament for me. Though "mark the end" was perhaps too festive a description. The only person genuinely pleased that the tournament was over was Gabrielle, who had found the whole affair rather uninteresting. She had said she was sorry I had lost, and she meant it, but it was equally clear that competitions of this sort simply did not speak to her.
The gathering had been warm, all the same. Flitwick, my mother, the Delacours, everyone had words for how I had conducted myself throughout the tournament. That was genuinely pleasant. It would have been more pleasant if I had not made such a thorough hash of things against my final opponent.
I understood, somewhere in a calmer corner of myself, that I hadn't actually made a hash of it. He simply had vastly more experience and skill, but that understanding didn't make forgetting the loss and moving on any easier.
Several hours earlier.
I stood on the platform. We had both been checked, and we had shaken hands. Alexei Gorny had expressed his respect for my decision to face him, in English, with an accent thick enough to cut, and I had matched him by requesting in Russian, with an equally appalling accent, that he hold nothing back and show me the full extent between us so that I could come back and surprise everyone next year. That had made him laugh outright.
And now we stood facing each other. The circle I had to maneuver in was very small. Rolling dodges were entirely out of the question, and I understood clearly that my one real chance of winning lay in the very first spell.
"Three, two, one, begin!"
The last syllable was still hanging in the air when I sent a fairly powerful Disarming Charm at him. The slight smile and faint nod told me he had anticipated something of the sort, and his first spell was a shield that cracked under the impact but held.
And after that.
After that, he drove me into a completely defensive position.
Disarming Charms cracked my shields, and through the barely visible gaps flew an assortment of humiliating minor jinxes: Itching Charms, Tickling Charms, Dancing Feet, Jelly-Legs, Jelly-Arms, a collection of perfectly harmless spells with which my opponent was methodically and pleasantly showing me that I was nowhere near ready to compete at this level.
And I acknowledged it.
I could not have deployed such simple spells with the same precision, threading them through gaps in someone's defenses to show them exactly where those defenses needed strengthening.
I did not give up attacking.
But compared to my opponent's work, my attacks looked fumbling, primitive, and frankly... amateurish.
My internal count reached one minute, and I felt something close to horror. I had been convinced we had been fighting for ten minutes.
It was a nightmare. My magic was draining at a terrifying rate, and I made the decision to raise the same barrier I had used against the insufferable Cuban.
The barrier went up and I exhaled with some relief. It did not change the situation dramatically, but my opponent stopped attacking and, after examining the barrier carefully, gave a respectful nod. I responded by twirling my wand and switching to blunter methods.
Curses, not the worst sort, are easily lifted but unpleasant in the short term. Healing spells repurposed offensively. Household magic: trying to stitch his trouser legs together, or shrink his collar until it pressed against his throat.
I used everything I knew.
I pushed myself to my limits.
And my opponent wore a faint smile as he caught most of my charms on specialized shields, reserving his powerful general-purpose shields only for the things that were genuinely unusual.
A blow.
He had been conserving his strength this entire time, and now he delivered a single very heavy strike. A network of fine cracks spread across my barrier.
Another blow.
Through the hail of my spells, he struck again, and the cracks deepened. I made a rough calculation: at this rate, ten minutes at most. That was only because I wasn't using anything truly energy-intensive, aside from the barrier itself, and a second barrier today was simply beyond me.
Another blow.
The cracks spread further, and I tried to increase my speed. For the first time, a slight frown crossed my opponent's face. Apparently the pace I could produce genuinely surprised him, though precision had gone entirely out the window. Roughly a third of my spells were missing him. Even so, he was catching them on his shield.
Not because he wanted to rub my face in it. It was simply because a shield covers a larger area than a human body, and a spell that passes close enough will always hit it.
A blow.
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, straining every resource I had, pulling up everything that might conceivably be of use: Butchering Charms directed at his limbs, small Misfortune Jinxes hidden in the shadow of other spells.
A blow.
The cracks in the barrier were fully visible now, and I made the rather odd decision to try rotating it, turning the most damaged face to the rear so that the relatively intact portion faced him.
Relatively, even the "fresh" face had large cracks by this point, while what was now behind me was probably a fine network of hairline fractures, since the spell damage had not been distributed evenly across the surface.
A blow.
The barrier shattered. Through the breach flew a Fireworks Jinx that began bouncing off the inside of the remaining walls, leaving trails of colored smoke.
Bubble-Head Charm!
I threw it over myself in time, because removing the barrier now would have been the same as conceding.
But even the act of trying to rotate the barrier had cost me. I had been forced to ease the pressure on my opponent slightly.
That slight easing was immediately exploited. The blows against the barrier came faster and harder.
It cracked faster.
A blow. A blow. A blow.
The barrier was covered in cracks from top to bottom.
A blow.
The barrier collapsed, and the next spell caught me cleanly, throwing me off the platform, carrying me clear of its edge and sending me tumbling across the sand.
"Urgh."
"Victory, Alexei Gorny, Russia!"
The crowd broke into applause at once. I got up very slowly from the sand, sparing a brief glance at my left arm, which I had broken in the fall. It was a clean fracture, fortunately, so it could be endured for the moment.
I endured, after applying a Pain-Relieving Charm to it, at any rate. Then I climbed back up onto the platform, bowed respectfully to my opponent, who, as far as I could tell, was barely winded, then to the referee, and then to the spectators. Only after that did I leave the platform.
End.
My lungs began to burn as I surfaced. I exhaled, then drew in a long, grateful breath of air.
With a sigh, I climbed out of the bath, wincing as I leaned against the side; pressure on my left arm was still mildly unpleasant. Phantom pain, nothing more. It would pass within a couple of days.
I dressed, packed my things, left the room, and headed down to the hotel lobby.
"Draco."
Fleur came over and looked carefully into my eyes.
"Fleur."
I gave her a nod and a slight smile, trying to show her that I was genuinely glad for her company.
"I'm glad to have met you."
"Hmm."
I was mildly caught off guard.
"...Why are you saying that as though we'll never see each other again? I was actually planning to spend part of the summer vacation in France. Unless you intend to turn down a visit from me?"
"No..."
A slightly abashed smile appeared on her lips.
"Well, then. And we'll be able to talk more often than you think."
"Oh?"
She blinked, a little thrown.
"...But let's say our goodbyes for now."
Paying absolutely no attention to propriety, I took two steps toward Fleur, wrapped my arms around her, lifted her off her feet, and spun her around.
"Hey! Put me back where you found me, you monster! I said put me down! My hair is going to be a disaster!"
It doesn't matter. You look lovely even with your hair like this.
Despite my words, I set her down and released her. She brushed her lips against my cheek and immediately stepped back.
"Don't you dare forget me."
It came out in a tone that managed to be simultaneously embarrassed and threatening.
"You? Never."
After that, I turned to Gabrielle, who was shifting uncertainly from foot to foot.
"Hugs?"
She glanced at Fleur, then at her parents, then hurried over, and I bent down slightly, wrapped my arms around her, and swung her up just as I had swung her sister barely a minute ago. While Fleur had tried to stop me, her little sister only laughed.
"Bye, big brother."
She said it with a perfectly happy smile.
"Hey! He is not your big brother. At least, not yet..."
Fleur finished, her face flushing deeply, which made all of us smile.
"Gabrielle..."
I looked at her with mock sternness, and she straightened up at once, looking mildly alarmed.
"...as the most responsible of the Delacour sisters, I have an important assignment for you."
"Yes?"
She said it with a mixture of anticipation and wariness.
"Look after Fleur. Make sure she eats properly, does not miss her training, keeps up with her schoolwork, and..."
"That is quite enough!"
Fleur was suddenly beside me, pulling her sister close.
"Stop putting ideas into her head!"
"Oh, those are not ideas."
I shook my head.
"The ideas are the ones you will come up with yourself, because girls your age tend to do exactly that, convinced they are being entirely sensible. That is precisely why I need this sensible young lady beside you, to keep you out of trouble."
Gabrielle's chin went up with great dignity at those words, and both girls' parents made no real effort to hide their amusement.
"In any case..."
I gathered both girls into a hug.
"...hold on to each other, and do not let anyone push you around."
"Hmph!"
That came from Fleur, loud and demonstrative.
"All right."
However, she said that very quietly, right against my ear, and afterward we were finally forced to part.
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