Harry Evan Chapter 82: Winning, duh

After his adventures through Viennese museums, his meeting with Fleur and his strategy talk with Flitwick, Harry entered the duelling arena which was for lack of a better term, decimated in comparison to yesterday. After all, they had gone from 72 contestants to 18.

It was only the audience, which in contrast to the contestants, had actually grown. The seats were still nowhere near as full as it would likely be for the adult version of the tournament, but they were definitely more full than yesterday.

“Top 18”, Flitwick beamed. 

“You didn't think I could make it?” Harry asked curiously, almost causing his Professor to miss a step.

“You little rascal, of course, I believed in you, I trained you after all. But, you're still at the level where if you had gotten unlucky with the matchups you could have lost in the first round. Additionally, you never know how someone is going to react to duelling in public for the first time.”

“I just ignore the  crowds, they don't matter to me.”

“Maybe you shouldn't,” Flitwick started, looking at the crowd. In the direction in which a platinum-haired family was looking curiously at Harry and clapping. A 13-year-old girl had her arm crossed and was glaring at him.

It seems like Fleur had finally recognized the fact that Harry was not just a random English muggle boy hanging around, but actually one of the contestants.

“The crowds are cheering for you, they can serve as a good energy boost every once in a while,”  Flitwick continued.

“I'd rather they boo my opponents, put them on guard.”

“Talking about opponents,” Flitwick said as they sat down on their bench. He nodded towards an approaching boy, it was the Greek boy who was to be Harry's first opponent of the day. One of the favourites to win the whole thing.

“Harry Evans?” the boy asked as he finished approaching. He was tall and tan. 

Flitwick leaned back distrustfully, but Harry simply nodded. His magical sense was becoming developed enough that he was not afraid of sneaky tactics or surprise attacks. As long as nobody was probing his mind today, he liked his chances.

“That's me, Harry Evans, Evans Harry,”  Harry said.

The Greek boy nodded. 

“I just wanted to tell you that I was very impressed with your match yesterday, but that your journey likely ends now. Even if you beat me somehow, you will be too tired to win the next match. I look forward to matching you again next year once you've had more time to grow,” he said turned around and promptly left.

“Weird guy,” Harry commented.

“You do realise he just threw down the Gauntlet right?” Flitwick asked.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“He told you that you don't stand the chance, that even if you win you're not going to get anywhere and that you still need a year to mature before you're a good competition. I think he was trying to rile you up.”

“Well, if that was his intention, he failed. I don't really care. I'm already happy with the results I achieved, no matter what happens from here onwards. I think that I showed the world that the next few duelling tournaments belong solely to me. If this is as far as I can get when I'm 13, then the others don't stand the chance when I get any older,” Harry said calmly.

Of course, it wasn't that easy to let go of ambition, just because the minimal requirement for happiness had already been achieved. but he knew himself enough that while he would be frustrated at a loss, at any loss in fact, he was already content with what he achieved.

“I wouldn't sort them out that early yet,” Flitwick cautioned. “The level might have seemed low until now simply because no one has resorted to all their tricks yet. The higher you go, the more surprises you're going to find.”

“It'll be good preparation for next year then,” Harry decided as he was called up. No rest for the wicked. Although to be quite fair, he was a pretty good boy.

-/-

Breathe in, breathe out.

Harry stood facing the Apollo on the platform for all to see. They had reached the part of the tournament where two people took the attention of the whole stadium.

The crowd was silent once they’d clapped at the announcement of the fight.

The referee called for a start, but neither of the contestants moved.

They stared at each other, both in picture-perfect duelling poses and occasionally twitching their wands without magic to see if they could destabilise the other.

Well, if his opponent wasn't going to start, then Harry was happy to take the initiative. He wasn't the defensive duelist in the first place. Attacking was the easiest way to end things early.

An expelliarmus left his wand. It wasn't a full-powered one, he was hoping people would have forgotten his display from yesterday. Apollo deflected the spell with an idle twitch of his wand arm, but another one was already whizzing at him.

The testing of each other's defences commenced, just that neither of the two were going all out yet. However, just the simple back and forth of spell and deflection already exhibited a much higher level than had been present on the day before.

There was one issue however with the current state of affairs, Harry decided. As the younger of the two, he likely had less stamina available to him, and if his opponent thought that wasting time exchanging low-level disarming jinxes was worth it, then that might very well be true. Which meant that he was losing.

The only respite in such a situation was to use his offensive, as a foothold to continue his momentum in another matter. 

The boy could deflect, but how would he handle this? 

Harry shot three disarming jinxes in a brief burst after each other, all three as powerful as he could make them, not holding back

His opponent seemed to recognize the danger, somehow, which ruined the surprise effect. Apollo cast a shield on his arm instead of retaliating, which allowed Harry to do something as well. At the same time as a golden circle appeared on the boy’s left forearm, casually deflecting the three spells, a swarm of hornets escaped Harry's wand into the air.

Half of the swarm went at the boy to attack, while the other half remained at Harry's side.

It was a move which essentially demanded that the Apollo try to cast a wide area untransfiguration spell, but that was exactly what Harry was waiting for and the second that the boy raised his wand, he sent disarming jinxes through the middle of the swarm, killing one of his hornets, but causing the red beam to pass unperturbed through the untransfiguration effect which destroyed his hornets and continue onwards towards Apollo’s face. The shield-arm came up faster than Harry thought possible to deflect the spell once again, and another was sent at Harry in retaliation.

One animation charm later, one of the hornets surrounding Harry dive-bombed to intersect the spell. An impasse, both had a strong defence setup and had good reaction speeds to boot. However, Harry had the advantage that his defence mechanism was semi-autonomous.

An almost lazy way of Harry’s wand. The world became fire past the range of his hornets. 

Several spells rushed through the fire as it covered the entire platform, but the hornets managed to deflect each and every one of them. Harry heard the Greek boy shout out the explosion curse, trying perhaps to revert the direction of the flames back at their caster. 

Harry decided to fight the same battle. “Bombarda.”

Two explosion curses met in the middle of the platform, inside a storm of fire. A deafening explosion shook the platform to its core. Fire flew everywhere and visibility was zero. Shockwaves emerged and were muffled by the protective wards. 

When visibility was once again achieved, only one duelist was still standing on the platform. The younger of the two had disappeared into thin air. 

Invisible.

Harry sprinted towards his enemy, his steps muffled by muffliato, his hornets gone.

Apollo spun around in confusion, robes slightly singed. Harry only gained one second, however. It was logical after all, he couldn't have really disappeared, he still had to be there and if he wasn't in sight then he could only be invisible.

The Greek boy raised his wand in the air. A loud bang resounded through the air. Harry's eardrums nearly shattered, and the only reason they likely didn't was that the muffling was a sort of sound barrier between the two even if it was directed mostly in the other direction.

He nonetheless fell to the ground from the pain and realised one of the weaknesses of relying on his magical sense to protect himself from attacks. Sure he felt the magical buildup of the spell, but sound travelled faster than most attacks so he hadn't been able to prepare a defence. The invisibility slipped off him; it was only his magical sense which allowed him to roll out of the way of a disarming jinx as waves of disorientation shot through his body.

Two could play at that game, he decided and raised his wand.

“Lumos maxima,” he whispered and a disgustingly bright light erupted from his wand. He’d put in nearly all his magic, the audience was likely blind.

A scream from the Greek boy. Harry used his magical senses to pinpoint his location, like a magic radar. He was done messing around. Hornets emerged from his wand and were sent to attack, disarming jinxes flew like bullets.

His opponent dodged them all, still standing there with closed eyes. It seemed like he had a magical sense too. A short burst of fire incinerated the insects. A golden whip intercepted the jinxes, the shield on the arm gone, before extending and coming for Harry.

He couldn’t do anything but raise a shield, a horrible move considering this put him on the defensive. It was even worse when his opponent slashed his wand, the golden whip extending to crack against the shield and splitting it right down the middle.

That was not good.

Unable to defend himself properly from the whip, all his attacks not coming through, and his stamina quickly reaching its limits, Harry had no other choice but to bet on something that he hadn't wanted to bet on.

During his thousands of attempts of the disarming jinx, he had figured out that the spell could be overloaded interestingly. If one dumped seven times the requisite amount of power in the spell, it would shoot quite uncontrollably in the general direction that one was pointing at. Now this shot was quite fast so it might get through his opponent's quite decent whip usage defence, but it might just miss and leave him exhausted and useless.

But, it was the only thing you can think of right now. He was sure that the moment he got out of the fight he would come up with 15 other solutions, but for now this is what we had. He jumped back from the whip one last time and extended his wand. 

“Expelliarmus,” he cast out loud for once. A red beam faster and more violent than any of the others that have come before it shot forward at his opponent, missing a surprised Apollo by just a millimetre. Lady Luck was not with Harry today.

“I surrender,” Harry shouted, causing Apollo to drop the spell he had just been in the middle of casting at Harry, as the referee called the match to an end.

“Winner, Apollo Antrakosis,” the referee shouted, went up to the drained-looking winner and put his hand in the air.

Harry meanwhile slinked off the platform like a thief in the night. However, he was surprised to suddenly hear his name called from the crowd.

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” wild clapping ensued almost to a level where one could assume that the audience thought that he’d won.

He felt exhausted, physically, mentally, magically, all the way that one could be exhausted. Except perhaps financially? 

Nevertheless, as he walked towards a smiling Flitwick, he raised one arm, fist clenched, into the air.

He’d done all right for himself, hadn’t he?

“Very well fought Harry, some mistakes there but it was a valiant effort. Your opponent seems to have focused a lot on spells which are at the same time defensive and offensive. A good strategic decision for this level of duelling!” Flitwick said as Harry sat down next to the man. His mind was all obviously already considering the strategies they would use the next year.

Harry leaned back with a sigh and considered if you wanted to leave, this one duel had been more tiring than both his duels yesterday. He decided against leaving as the next match was called, Delafleur versus some nondescript Italian with a big nose.

It would be good to see how that went.

-/-

The pressure that had been present in still being an active participant in the duelling tournament disappeared after the loss and Harry felt more relieved than anything really.

He'd never participated in a competition like this, so a shorter first attempt was quite preferable for his mental state. 

Overall his experience had been overwhelmingly positive. It felt good to push himself as much as he could for this one goal and to still be found wanting. It seemed like he still had some peers left and duelling, unlike in many other subjects.

The Apollo, the boy who’d ejected him from the tournament lost two rounds later, beaten by the Veela, much to Fleur’s amusement.

The girl then went on to win the entire thing on the following day, which was impressive. She’d used a lot of fire and in a much more elegant manner than Harry used it. Perhaps there was something he could learn from that. 

He hung out with Fleur a few more times, exploring the city and had potentially gained a friend, someone to exchange letters with. Although the Hogwarts owls likely wouldn’t enjoy flying all the way to France that regularly.

He’d asked the girl to send him some spells that were perhaps unique to her institution as she left after the conclusion of the U17 duelling tournament.

Harry and Flitwick meanwhile used the fact that they were already there any way to stay for the adult tournament.

As expected, the matches for that were of a much higher level. The contestants there had had several lifetimes worth of experience and time to prep their technique. Harry could hardly follow the speed at which spells were exchanged and the tactics were a complete mystery to him. He sincerely doubted that he could even touch most of the contestants who had been kicked out in the first round.

It seemed that he had picked a good hobby/sport to pursue. The level of it was so high and so many people were participating in it, that he would likely have another 10 years of insane practice to go through before he really started scratching the top.

Having a former champion at his side would likely shorten that a bit.

Overall he left Vienna satisfied, and as agreed had refused all calls for interviews, already having promised the exposé to Skeeter in return for finding information about his mother.

A short trip, but one that felt like a short lifetime.

Considering how much work, preparation and mental energy had gone into this one event, he was sort of looking forward to the fact that until the rest of the summer, he was simply going to be teaching Draco Malfoy occlumency and preparing to do the same for Tonks.

Also, he'd been missing his aunt's homemade cooking. German-speaking countries had one thing in common, and that was that their food was trash. The same was true for England for sure, but at least homemade food was always better than one made by someone else.

-/-

AN: Harry lost imo, convincingly. Trying to show that he doesn't have that killer instinct yet, or all of the skills he needs. Im sure someone will disagree, but I think that in the middle of a fight its hard to think too much. This was all achieved in one year of training btw, so just wait to see how the situation looks in another year. I like my protagists rationally overpowered, so this was just step 1.

How'd you like this mini-arc? Will continue next year as you can probably guess with the next tournament