HP: The Duelist of Hogwarts - 462

Chapter 462: Facing Voldemort Again

The Death Eaters had assumed that capturing Harry Potter and his friends would be child’s play.

When the fighting actually began, they discovered to their shock that all eight of these children, who by rights ought still to have been sitting in Hogwarts classrooms, possessed formidable strength.

Harry in particular fought with a calm, efficient confidence that would not have looked out of place on a veteran Auror. Given his age, it was enough to make even hardened killers wary.

No wonder he was the “Saviour” who had once cost their master so dearly.

That thought surfaced, unbidden and unanimous, in every Death Eater’s mind.

Harry had never shown much talent for Transfiguration, but in Charms—especially in the darker branches of magic and in Defence Against the Dark Arts—his gift was astonishing.

Under Sean’s guidance, he had forged a brutal, direct fighting style built entirely around Dark magic and counters to it.

With Harry at the point of the spear, the eight of them punched straight through the Death Eater cordon and drove for the exit of the Department of Mysteries.

Only then did the Death Eaters realise that if they did not stop holding back, Harry Potter and his little band really might escape.

Wands rose as one.

Jets of green light began to streak through the air.

They were finally using the Unforgivable Curses.

The Death Eaters’ restraint vanished, and the pressure on Harry and the others spiked at once.

The doors of the Department were almost within reach when Harry suddenly skidded to a halt, spun around, and planted himself between his friends and the oncoming curses.

“Go!” he shouted. “All of you, go! I will hold them off!”

“Harry, we are not leaving you, we can—”

“Move!”

His snarl cut Ron off.

Harry stepped forward, wand blurring. Spell after spell poured out in a relentless stream—blasts, bindings, shields, jinxes and, threaded among them, more than one streak of Dark magic, even the jagged, vicious lash of the Cruciatus Curse itself.

His sudden eruption of power caught the Death Eaters completely off guard.

For several heartbeats, he alone held their entire line.

“Out of my way, you useless filth!”

The words were a shrill, delighted screech. A small, wiry figure strode out of a cloud of black smoke.

Bellatrix.

She threw back her head and laughed, high and wild, eyes shining as she fixed on Harry.

“Harry Potter! The fabled Saviour. Let us see whether you are truly fit to be the Dark Lord’s enemy.

“Avada Kedavra!”

A bolt of sickly emerald light exploded from her wand, roaring straight towards him.

Harry’s eyes widened.

He took one step back, raised his wand and hurled a streak of red lightning to meet it.

“Expelliarmus!”

Red met green with a crackle of power. The collision spat arcs of energy in every direction.

Harry dug his heels in and began to give ground inch by inch. Bellatrix advanced, step by step, amusement curling her lips. She flicked her wand in little pulses, sending fresh surges of green force slamming into the connection. Each one shoved Harry’s red beam further back. The death‑curse crept closer and closer to his chest, and black veins began to crawl from his clenched fingers up his wand arm.

“Harry, your training is still not quite enough.”

The familiar voice made him drop the spell at once.

If he was here, Harry knew, then he was safe.

Freed from the lock, Harry did not even flinch as the Killing Curse hurtled towards him.

A figure stepped out at his side.

Sean’s wand moved in a small, precise arc. The weakened curse glanced harmlessly away and smashed into a nearby Death Eater instead, sending the man scrambling to throw up a shield in blind panic.

Bellatrix’s eyes lit up.

“Harry Potter and Sean Bulstrode…” she breathed. “Today really is my lucky day. To snip away two such troublesome insects for the glory of Lord Voldemort—I am almost grateful you chose to stand before me together.”

She snapped her wand up and sent Diffindo slicing toward Sean's throat.

He raised his own wand with offhand grace. A wash of blue‑white mist swirled around the tip and batted the spell aside as if it were nothing more than smoke.

Then, with a single fluid motion, he lifted his arm again.

A rain of spells crashed towards Bellatrix like a breaking wave.

The sheer number of them would have overwhelmed almost anyone.

For all her mocking words, Bellatrix was not a fool.

Anyone who had once escaped Voldemort himself in a head‑on confrontation, surviving only because Barty Crouch Junior had severed his own arm to cover the retreat, was not someone to be taken lightly.

She might sneer aloud, but she took Sean very seriously indeed.

Like Barty Jr, she had been shaped by Voldemort’s personal tutelage. Her power was anything but ordinary.

Her wand flickered faster and faster, tracing different arcs through the air. Spells wove together in front of her into a mesh of light—one shield charm angled to deflect two or three incoming curses at once, the lattice shifting and reinforcing itself as new attacks crashed in.

Interesting.

So that was one of Voldemort’s tricks.

Sean watched her movements and recognised at once that this was a technique the Dark Lord had drilled into his inner circle.

In their last battle, Voldemort had been the one attacking and Sean the one defending. There had been no opportunity to see how the Dark Lord protected himself. Now, seeing the method echoed in Bellatrix’s movements, he gained a glimpse of it in advance.

Forewarned, he could be ready.

“Frost Domain.”

Sean drew his wand lightly through the air in front of him.

The temperature plunged.

Hoarfrost bloomed at his feet and raced outwards, a tide of ice surging straight for Bellatrix.

Flame erupted from her wand, billowing into a blazing shield as she tried to burn the ice away.

It was not Fiendfyre.

Ordinary conjured fire could not stand against Sean’s frost. It shattered under the advancing cold, forced back step by step until Bellatrix’s boots were almost on the ice.

She had no choice.

Her form dissolved into black smoke and whipped away down the corridor.

Sean’s body blurred into a streak of white mist and arrowed after her. Mid‑flight, both of them snapped back into solid form again and again, halting their Apparition to trade volleys of spells in mid‑air before vanishing and reappearing further on.

Spelllight flashed and skittered along the walls as the chase surged through the Ministry.

Under Sean’s subtle guidance, their running duel burst at last into the atrium.

As Bellatrix’s body solidified, Sean’s casting speed suddenly spiked. A scarlet jet slammed into her chest before she could raise a shield.

“Expelliarmus.”

The Disarming Charm hurled her backwards. She hit the wall with a sickening crack and slid down, stunned.

Sean landed lightly, walked over, and ground her fallen wand to splinters under his heel.

He raised his own wand, ready to end it.

Dark smoke boiled into being behind him, coalescing into a tall, thin figure.

“Ah…

“Sean Bulstrode…

“We meet again.”

(End of chapter)