Ascension 46 (Patreon)

The corridors of Hogwarts had not changed.

Harry kept telling himself that as he and Persephone walked from Potions towards the lake, their bags slung over their shoulders. The stone and torches were as they had always been, the portraits the same gossiping busybodies who had watched generations of children walk these halls. Nothing had changed.

Except everything had.

Three days since they had returned from the hearing. Three days since Kitar's flat, potion-glazed voice had spoken the words that now hung over them like the Sword of Damocles.

Capture alive if possible. Kill.

And then the other word—the one that had turned the Wizengamot into a pit of fear and finger-pointing before Lucius Malfoy had smoothed it all over with that oily smile of his.

Nurmengard.

"What I don't understand," Harry said as they descended the slope towards the lake, where Daphne was already seated beneath the large elm, her back against the trunk with a book open in her lap, "is why Arcturus reacted the way he did. He has fought dark wizards, mad witches, and entire armies. But that word made him stand up in the middle of the Wizengamot and demand a legilimencer."

"Because he was scared," Persephone said simply, though even her voice shook at the word. Harry looked at her, and she met his gaze with that flat, serious expression she wore when she was not interested in softening the truth. "He didn’t lose composure when he blasted back Augusta Longbottom to save us, he didn’t hesitate before almost breaking the wards on the ministry memorial…but he jumped ot his feet when the Mark of Nurmengard was revealed. It represents something that was supposed to be dead and buried, and dangerous enough for both Arcturus and Dumbledore to be alarmed."

"He said they were all accounted for."

"He also said he and Dumbledore were on the battlefields in the final days." She paused, then added quietly, "I think it's easy to hide when people already assume you are dead."

“Hn,” Harry just hummed as they reached Daphne, who looked up from her book and closed it without marking the page. That, more than anything, told Harry how much she had been waiting for this conversation. Daphne Greengrass did not lose her place in a book unless something mattered more—he’d seen her brew a potion with one hand once, instead of putting down her book.

"Sit," she said. "I have been thinking about the ward key since the hearing, and you both need to understand what it means."

They settled on either side of her, and for a moment, the three of them just looked out at the lake. The Giant Squid's tentacle broke the surface lazily, scattering light, and a pair of fourth-years threw bread at it from the far bank. Normal things—things that felt like they belonged to a different world than the one they were living in, with petrified friends and mercenaries on a hunt.

"Blood purity," Daphne began after a moment, "is not about superiority. Not originally. What Malfoy and his ilk preach is a corruption of something far older and far more practical."

"This doesn't sound like the Daphne who told us she was neutral on the subject," Harry remarked, and she gave him a look sharp enough to cut glass.

"I was twelve and had known you for a week. I was not about to explain ancestral blood magic to two muggle-raised children who could barely hold a quill." She smoothed her robes over her knees, gathering her thoughts. "Blood, in the magical world, is not just a fluid. It is a conduit. Every magical family—pureblood, half-blood, muggleborn, it doesn't matter—carries a magical signature in their blood that is unique to their line. It develops over generations, deepening as magical children are born, raised, and bonded to the same lands and the same homes."

"The wards," Persephone said, catching on instantly, “We learnt some of that in Kástro Mávros.”

"The wards," Daphne confirmed. "When an ancient family like mine establishes an ancestral estate, the protections are not just cast—they are grown. The first Lord or Lady of the line pours their blood into the foundation stones, and the wards root themselves in that signature. Every generation after strengthens them, because every child born to the line carries the same resonance. It is why the oldest families have the strongest protections. Centuries of the same blood, feeding the same magic, layered into the same stone."

"So the wards recognise bloodline," Harry said slowly, like how, despite being two generations down from the main branch, we still are recognised as Black by Kástro Mávros.” 

"At their deepest level, yes. Surface wards use passwords, runes, intent-based barriers—those are the ones guests pass through when they visit. But the core protections, the ones that stop someone from apparating directly into the Lord's bedroom or collapsing the structure from a distance? Those are blood-bound. They answer only to the family's magical signature." She paused, and her voice dropped. "Which means the ward key that was used to breach our estate was crafted from Greengrass blood."

The words hung in the cold air, the same as they had in the courtroom.

"Someone has your family's blood," Persephone said, repeating the recognition from days ago.

"Someone has blood that carries enough of the Greengrass signature to trick the wards into recognising it as kin," Daphne corrected, though the distinction did little to soften the reality. "It does not need to be my blood, or my father's, or even someone currently alive. Old blood, preserved correctly, can retain its magical resonance for decades—and it's not just entrance. Blood, if utilised properly, can do a lot more volatile, destructive things to those that share it."

"How many people have access to that?" Harry asked.

Daphne's jaw tightened. "That is the question my father has been losing sleep over. The Greengrass line has been in Britain for over eleven centuries as a major clan—and that was after we had spent decades here already. Marriages, births, deaths—all produce opportunities for blood to be taken, stored, or stolen. But the ward key didn't just need any blood from the line. It needed blood with a strong enough resonance to create a blind pocket in wards that have been layered for generations." She looked at them both. "That narrows it considerably. You would need blood from someone closely bonded to the estate. A Lord, a Lady, or an heir who had undergone the binding ritual."

"Your mother or father."

"Or me," she said quietly. "Or Astoria, once she comes of age. Or any previous Lord who died and whose remains were not properly warded." Her fingers pressed into her knees. "My father has begun auditing every burial site, every lock of hair kept as heirloom, every portrait that used blood-mixed pigments. The Greengrass archives go back six hundred years, and he is combing through every entry."

"Fucking hell," Harry muttered, and Daphne almost smiled at that, though it did not reach her eyes.

"Now you understand why the Wizengamot panicked. If the Greengrass wards can be bypassed this way, then every family with blood-bound protections is at risk. The Malfoys, the Longbottoms, the Bones, the Blacks, the Selwyns—all of them use variations of the same principle. The ward key is not a Greengrass problem. It is a crack in the foundation of how every ancient house protects itself."

"Which is why Lucius wanted the hearing shut down," Persephone said, and Daphne nodded.

"He cannot afford to have a public discussion about blood-ward vulnerabilities. Not when the Malfoy estate has been under the same protections since the Norman Conquest. If someone can breach Greengrass, they can breach Malfoy, and Lucius knows it. Draco, while talented for his age, is still a child, and he can be targeted easily by those who have a grudge with Lucius," She exhaled. "The question is whether he buried the Nurmengard reference to protect himself, or to protect whoever hired those mercenaries."

Silence settled between them. The wind picked up across the lake, carrying the scent of thyme and wet earth. Harry pulled his cloak tighter and looked at Daphne's profile—the sharp line of her jaw, the faint shadows beneath her eyes, the way she held herself like a wall that was perfectly aware of the cracks running through it.

"We found something at Kástro Mávros," he said, and Daphne's eyes sharpened instantly, the exhaustion pushed aside by the alertness that lived beneath it. "In the library. Persephone found it in a bestiary dated to three centuries after Slytherin's death."

Persephone took over, her voice dropping low enough that even Harry would have struggled to hear if not sitting right besides her. "The text describes Salazar Slytherin breeding a Basilisk. That is the creature that the story of the Chamber talks of."

Daphne's brow furrowed. "A basilisk. You're certain?"

"The text is," Harry said. "And with how grandiose the tales about the founders, especially Slytherin and Gryffindor, turn out to be, we are not. A basilisk kills with its gaze, and nobody at Hogwarts has died. And there is no research, no evidence that even remotely says that a Basilisk could live upto a thousand years—the longest lifespan in captivity was one hundred and two years, and even then it was killed off as it had become too big and too lethal to contain. It would be impossible to live that long around Hogwarts and not get killed while taking a sunbath, forget a thousand years"

"Could the petrification be a lesser effect?" Daphne asked, and then looked at the lake, “also, does the King of Serpents really need a sunbath?”

"Nothing in the Black Library describes basilisks as capable of petrification. It is death or nothing. There is no middle ground in any text we found, and Cassiopeia confirmed it—she has encountered basilisks in the Mediterranean. Small ones, recently hatched, but the gaze was lethal even then." He paused. "And as for sunbaths…yes, magical serpents do need them."

“Then it is we have thought, it is a curse from the wizard causing all of this. This Heir of Slytherin,” Daphne was quiet for a long moment, her mind clearly working behind those sharp blue eyes. "Or," she said carefully, looking at them with a frown, "there is some creature in this after all. I heard something about dozens of acromantulas dying in the forbidden forest, and how the silk and carapaces were sold off recently. Could it be that the Heir is using a gorgon after all? They are known to live around spiders, especially from where we Greengrasses came.”

“It can be,” Persephone nodded, looking at the forest, “I think Neville and Weasley were involved in that matter. They both have been looking at the Chamber and the petrification too.”

“Ah, Granger,” Daphne made a noise of understanding, following her gaze, “Did Kástro Mávros not hold anything on petrifications that could help Tracey?”

“Nothing we could have accessed during the breaks,” Harry shook his head, “however, Cassiepeia said that she is also looking into it, and we have some time until the next full moon.”

“And after that?”

Harry had no answer to that.

It was Hogsmeade day for the third years and up, and as the carriages departed one after another, Persephone raised an eyebrow as she caught Lockhart and Vector walk out into the grounds together.

“Is that allowed?” she asked, and Daphne just shook her head.

The two professors descended the front steps side by side, Lockhart talking animatedly while Vector listened with that faintly amused expression she seemed to reserve exclusively for him. They climbed into one of the carriages bound for Hogsmeade, and Harry watched the thestrals pull them away down the path until they disappeared beyond the gates.

“Well, at least someone is having their fun with the Mr. bachelor,” Harry rolled his eyes, and Persephone nodded as she looked at the gaggle of girls to their left, who were all busy cursing out Vector for stealing away their Gilderoy.

“Vector is far more beautiful and intelligent than these hags,” Daphne echoed her thoughts, and the redheaded witch smiled at her friend, laughing at the words.

The morning passed. Herbology in Greenhouse Three, where Sprout had them tending the mandragoras with the reverence and care normally reserved for religious artefacts—which, given that the plants were the only thing standing between Tracey and others and permanent magical death, was not far from appropriate. Harry repotted his mandragora with steady hands while it screamed and thrashed, its cries muffled by the earmuffs clamped over his skull. The ugly little thing looked months away from maturity, its features still blurred and juvenile, warts covering its quiggling form.

Faster, he thought, pressing the soil down around its base. Grow faster.

The plant, predictably, would not obey, as it had been ignoring him for months.

Then it was Charms after lunch, where Flitwick had them practising the silencing charm on ravens that croaked and flapped around the classroom like feathered nightmares. Harry had silenced with a mutter of silencio; Persephone managed it wordlessly on the first, drawing a delighted squeak from the diminutive professor and a sullen glare from Parkinson, whose raven had bitten her twice and shown no signs of shutting up.

Defence was last, and Lockhart was back by then, standing at the front of the classroom with his robes freshly pressed and that smile firmly in place. The lesson was on shield-piercing hexes—practical, well-structured, Lockhart demonstrating with the ease of someone who had done this a thousand times.

Soon, they were ferried off to their common rooms under his aegis, and there Harry silently played a game of chess against Nott, while Daphne and Persephone retired to their dorms.

That night, sleep did not come easily.

Harry lay in the green-dark of the Slytherin dormitory, staring at the ceiling while his mind turned over the day's pieces like a puzzle with too many edges and no picture on the box. The ward key, the blood magic, and then Nurmengard along with the Heir and his creature, whatever it was. Each piece connected to something, but the shape of the whole remained stubbornly out of focus.

Someone wanted Persephone dead. Someone had breached the Greengrass wards with blood that should not exist outside the family's control. Someone had marked an accomplice with a symbol from a war that ended before their parents were born.

He turned on his side. Across the dormitory, Nott's breathing was steady and deep. Zabini muttered in Italian, and Malfoy's bed was empty again.

Never again.

The words were becoming less of a thought and more of a heartbeat. A rhythm that underscored everything he did, every spell he practised, every moment he spent studying the way Cassiopeia moved, the way Arcturus spoke, the way power was shaped and wielded by people who had survived things that should have killed them.

He would not be weak when it mattered. He would not be disarmed. He would not kneel.

Whatever the cost.

Across the common room, in the female dormitory, Persephone lay awake too, though her thoughts had drifted from the day's revelations to something less definable and harder to set aside.

She flexed her fingers in the dark, slowly, one by one. They looked the same as they always had—thin, calloused from quill and wand, nails colored a light pink from one of Daphne’s vials. Nothing about them suggested what they had done to that man's arm.

She could still somewhat remember it. Not the magic itself, but the absence that followed—the way her body had hollowed out the moment Fish's flesh had started to grey beneath her touch. The drain had been instantaneous and total, like someone had pulled a plug at the bottom of her magic and let it all rush out at once.

It was the same magic she and Harry had used in Little Whinging, in that building with the three men. She had been eight years old, terrified, pinned down with her clothes being torn off, and something inside her had simply decided that the man touching her would stop being alive. His flesh had greyed and collapsed the same way. The skeleton had been the same clean, gleaming white as Fish’s ulna had been.

Four years later, against a trained mercenary twice her size, and the magic had answered the same call. Fear, rage, desperation—and then the flesh remembered how to die.

Cassiopeia had called it dangerous, and she knew Arcturus had recognised it. Only, neither of them had told her what it was, but that she should not use it without understanding it first. Sound advice, except that both times it had surfaced, understanding had been the furthest thing from her mind. It was not a spell she cast. It was not magic she shaped. It was something that tore itself free when she ran out of options, and Persephone could not find a single thing to help her understand it. Either in Kástro Mávros or inside herself.

She turned on her side and stared at the wall. The dormitory was quiet—Parkinson's breathing slow and even, Bulstrode a motionless lump beneath her covers. Daphne was also asleep, silent, perhaps more than Tracey’s empty bed.

But she did not feel calm.

Three adults had come for her at a ball, in a manor full of the most powerful families in Britain, behind wards that had stood for centuries. They had inverted the corridor, cut her off, and taken her down. She had fought—and even used the unknown magic to maim one forever—and it had not been enough. Without Harry's arrival, she would have been taken. Or killed. Whichever they decided was more convenient by the time they reached the portkey.

And even then, Harry too had lost against the witch, and it was only Arcturus’ arrival which had stopped the enemy’s plan.

She was twelve years old, and people she had never met wanted her captured or dead for reasons nobody could fully explain.

The thoughts circled like they did every night now. The Heir and whatever creature or curse stalked the castle. The mercenaries and whoever had paid for them—Nurmengard and the mark that should not exist. Tracey, frozen and fading, while Harry hardened into something sharp and quiet that she recognised in the mirror.

And Daphne, cracking slowly beneath a composure that cost her more each day.

All of it pressing down, and none of it something she could fix from a dormitory bed in the dark.

Persephone closed her eyes and breathed until the tightness in her chest loosened enough to let sleep in.

It took a long time.

The Great Hall had been transformed.

All the tables were gone, and the benches were pushed flush against the walls. The enchanted ceiling showed a cloudless winter sky, pale and sharp, and the raised duelling platform at the centre of the Hall gleamed under the light of a hundred floating candles. Every seat in the Hall was taken—every bench, every windowsill, every spare inch of standing room along the walls. First-years sat cross-legged on the floor; seventh-years leaned against pillars with crossed arms and appraising eyes, trying to appear non-chalant despite the NEWTS looming on their heads. Even the teachers were present, not at the staff table but scattered amongst the students, Flitwick perched on a transfigured stool near the front, McGonagall standing ramrod-straight by the Gryffindor section, Sprout beside her Hufflepuffs with dirt still under her nails from the greenhouses.

This was not a lesson. This was not a demonstration for children.

This was an exhibition, and everyone in Hogwarts knew it.

Lockhart ascended the platform first, robes exchanged for a fitted duelling coat of deep blue, wand holstered at his hip. He rolled his shoulders once as he took his position, his usual smile dimmed to something quieter—focused, sharp, the showman stepping aside for whatever lived beneath the gallivanting author. The hall buzzed with chatter, but Harry noticed the shift in the man's bearing immediately. This was the Lockhart who had taught them shield-piercing hexes with casual precision—the one who had shut down Malfoy's blood-purity sneering without raising his voice.

The one who bore no scars despite multitudes of monsters killed.

Snape emerged from the antechamber like a shadow given breath to walk. For once, his black robes did not billow—they cut the air, precise as the man himself, and in Harry’s opinion, it was far more intimidating. He took his position opposite Lockhart, a complete contrast to the smiling man—and in a way, Snape was everything Lockhart was not, and vice versa. 

Snape was a no-name wizard who had been a Death Eater. While there were no public records of his fights, everyone knew the man was a lethal fighter. He was silent, he was rude when he wanted, and the man hated colours more than he hated Gryffindors.

Lockhart, on the other end, hailed from a prestigious family with a history, and no one knew of his duelling capabilities, though his memoirs detailed each of his fights in detail. Loud, brash, and welcoming to students, the man could not be subtle with his fashion if he tried.

“Greetings, Professor Snape,” Lockhart nodded with a smile, “please, do not go easy on me like the last time.”

In response, there was no flourish, no bow deeper than the rules demanded. Just coal-black eyes fixed on the blond wizard, flat and measuring.

"This should be over in thirty seconds," Malfoy murmured from somewhere to Harry's left, and a few Slytherins snickered.

Harry said nothing, he was busy watching Lockhart's feet.

The man had shifted his weight to his back foot—a fencer's stance, not a duellist's. His wand arm hung loose, relaxed, the wand itself angled slightly downward. Everything about the posture invited attack. Cassiopeia used the same stance when she wanted an opponent to commit first—and this was not something Lockhart had done at the earlier exhibition.

Dumbledore rose from his seat at the edge of the platform, the genial smile gone, replaced by something that was simply present—the full attention of the most powerful wizard in world, turned upon two of his staff like sunlight focused through a lens.

"Professors Lockhart and Snape have graciously agreed to provide a full exhibition for the students of Hogwarts, in preparation for the selection of our representatives for the Wand of Ares," he announced, his voice reaching every corner without apparent effort. "Standard international rules apply. The duel ends at incapacitation, disarming, or at my discretion. Lethal force is permitted within the bounds of the platform wards and the rules that govern the adult segment of the competition."

A ripple went through the hall at lethal force, and Harry saw several younger students shift uncomfortably. Beside him, Persephone leaned forward in her seat, eyes bright. On his other side, Daphne's face was unreadable, but her fingers had stilled on her lap—the tell he had learned meant she was paying absolute attention.

Across the hall, Neville sat at the edge of the Gryffindor section, Ron beside him. Harry caught his eye, and Longbottom gave the smallest of nods—less greeting than acknowledgement. Watch this, the look said.

Dumbledore raised his wand.

"Begin."

Snape struck first.

There was no windup, no incantation, nothing that telegraphed the violence of what left his wand. A lance of violet light crossed the platform in the time it took Harry to blink, aimed not at Lockhart's chest but at the floor beneath his feet—a detonation curse designed to shatter the ground and drive the target off balance before the real assault began.

Only, Lockhart was not there.

He had moved the instant Dumbledore's wand fell, a lateral step so smooth it looked rehearsed, his wand coming up in the same motion. The detonation blew stone chips across the platform, and through the cloud of dust, a tight spiral of silver shot back toward Snape—fast, controlled, and aimed precisely at the Potion Master's wand arm.

Snape caught it on a shield so thin it barely shimmered, deflecting the spell into the wards with a hiss of dissipating magic. His eyes narrowed a fraction—the only reaction Harry would see from the man for the rest of the duel—and the next exchange began.

It was nothing like the student duels. Even their own previous bout had nothing on what they were doing now!

Students threw spells. Lockhart and Snape wove them. Each curse trailed into the next without pause, wands moving in continuous arcs that made the individual spells almost impossible to track. Snape favoured tight, economical movements—short slashes, precise jabs, his wand rarely moving more than six inches in any direction. Every spell was aimed at a specific target: knee, elbow, throat, the tendons of the wand hand. Clinical. Surgical. The magic of a man who had learned to kill efficiently and had never unlearned it.

No foolish wand waving.

Lockhart was different.

His movements were wider, more fluid—sweeping arcs and flowing transitions that turned the duel into something that looked almost choreographed. But Harry had trained under Cassiopeia long enough to know the difference between flourish and function, and every one of Lockhart's movements did something. The wide arc that looked theatrical was actually a redirect, catching Snape's curse and slinging it back along a different vector. The flowing step backwards was a feint that pulled Snape forward into range of a counterspell already forming at Lockhart's wrist.

He was matching Snape. Not overpowering—matching—meeting every escalation with a precisely calibrated response, never exceeding, never falling short. As if he knew exactly how hard Snape was going to push before Snape himself did.

"Merlin," Ron whispered from across the hall, loud enough to carry in one of the brief silences between exchanges, and Harry silently agreed.

A minute passed. Then two.

Snape created a ball of raging flames, blue and bright, which Lockhart countered by sending tornadoes whipping across the platform, moving the dust and flames both towards Snape. The Potions Master simply swept his hand to the side, capturing every bit of fire and wind in his palm, compressing it tightly. For a moment, absolute silence descended in the Great Hall as the light of the fires disappeared, and Lockhart stood still, his eyes wide.

And then, heat swallowed their world as Snape launched that amalgamation of fire and wind back at Lockhart, a funnel of pure destruction that rent the entire platform to shreds, digging a trench from one end to the other.

The crowd had gone silent. Not the anxious, whispering silence of the student duels, but the held-breath quiet of people watching something they did not fully understand and could not look away from. Not even a single gasp or word echoed between the hundreds of wizards in the hall. Flitwick's eyes were wide, his head tracking the exchanges with the focus of a man who had been a duelling champion in his youth. McGonagall's lips were pressed thin, her wand hand twitching at her side as if she were fighting the urge to cast alongside them.

The fire disappeared, revealing Lockhart standing in a dome of crimson power, shielded entirely from the furious assault Snape had thrown at him, and with a confident smirk, the exchange resumed.

At the three-minute mark, Snape changed.

It was subtle—a shift in his stance, a tightening of his shoulders, the angle of his wand dropping a degree—and were it not for Cassieopeia having the same tell, Harry would have missed it entirely.

In that instant, Harry realised that the teacher was gone, and now it was the Death Eater that Lockhart was facing.

The next curse was faster than anything before—a cutting hex that crossed the platform in a blur of grey-white light. Lockhart's shield caught it, but the impact drove him back a full step, his feet scraping stone. Before the shield had fully absorbed the blow, Snape was already casting again. And again. And again.

The rhythm broke. What had been an exchange became an assault, Snape's wand moving in sharp, vicious patterns that left no space for response. Each spell hit harder than the last, each block cost Lockhart more, and the shields that had been effortless a minute ago were now flaring brighter with each impact—a sign, Harry knew from painful experience, that they were approaching their limit.

Lockhart gave ground. One step, then two, then three, his wand arm a blur as he deflected, absorbed, redirected. A bone-breaker shattered his shield and he reformed it in the same motion, spinning the fragments into a counter that Snape batted aside without acknowledgement. Fire erupted from the Potion Master's wand—not the conjured kind but transmuted flames pulled from the candles above, curling downward in a whip that lashed across the platform with a crack that made the front rows flinch.

Lockhart cut through it with a water conjuration so precise it left steam hanging in the air between them, and for one instant, the steam hid them from each other. Harry saw Snape's lips move, saw the spell leave his wand before the mist had cleared—

The cutting curse tore through Lockhart's shield like it was not there.

Blood sprayed across the platform. Lockhart's wand dropped, bouncing twice before rolling to a stop at the edge. Two of his fingers followed it—index and middle, severed cleanly at the second knuckle, the wound already pulsing red across the stone.

Lockhart staggered, his remaining fingers clenching around nothing, his face going white. For a single, raw instant, the mask dropped entirely—pain, shock, and something else flickering through his expression before it was buried. Then his jaw set, his back straightened, and he raised his ruined hand.

"I yield."

The words carried clearly in the absolute silence that followed. Then, as if someone had unplugged a dam, the hall erupted.

Applause crashed through the Great Hall—not the polite, measured clapping that followed student duels but genuine, thundering ovation. Gryffindors pounded their tables. Ravenclaws stamped their feet. Even the Slytherins were clapping, Malfoy's sneer replaced by something that looked suspiciously like awe, though he would deny it until his dying day. From the staff seats, Flitwick was clapping with both hands raised above his head, and McGonagall—McGonagall was smiling, a rare, thin-lipped expression of approval that Harry had seen perhaps twice in his life.

Snape stood motionless at the centre of the platform, wand lowered, expression unchanged. If the applause registered, he gave no sign of it. His eyes were still on Lockhart, and in them Harry saw something he could not quite parse—not satisfaction, not triumph, but the quiet recognition of one professional assessing another.

Respect, perhaps. Or wariness.

Dumbledore was already moving. His wand traced a fluid pattern over Lockhart's hand, and Harry watched the severed digits float upward from the stone, guided back to the stumps with a precision that spoke of long practice. Golden light pulsed at the joints, flesh knitting seamlessly, tendons reattaching with wet, clicking sounds that made several students look away. Within thirty seconds, Lockhart was flexing his fingers experimentally, colour returning to his face as the pain faded.

"Excellent," he murmured, examining his restored hand with what appeared to be professional curiosity rather than relief. He looked up at Snape, and that smile returned—warm, genuine, utterly unbothered by the fact that the man had just removed his fingers. "I did wonder when you were going to stop playing, Professor."

Snape's lip curled. "I wasn't playing for the first two minutes."

Lockhart laughed, and the sound cut through the lingering tension like a knife through silk. He turned toward the crowd with his arms spread, the showman reassembling himself piece by piece—the smile widening, the posture loosening, the charm reigniting like a lamp being turned up.

"And that, students," he announced, his voice carrying over the fading applause, "is why Professor Snape's classroom is in the dungeons. If he taught anywhere with windows, the property damage would bankrupt the school."

Laughter rippled through the hall, and even Snape's scowl twitched before settling back into its default setting.

Harry was not laughing.

He was replaying the duel behind his eyes, frame by frame, the way Arcturus had taught him to review any engagement. Lockhart had matched Snape for three minutes. Three minutes against a wizard who had survived the Death Eaters, who had fought alongside and against some of the most dangerous people alive, who cast with the ruthless efficiency of someone who had done this for real and not in controlled environments.

That was not travel-memoir competence. That was not a lucky-adventurer skill that came from battling werewolves and breaking open esoteric curses or raiding tombs. 

That was combat experience measured in years, not anecdotes.

So where had he gotten it?

The thought sat in Harry's mind without an answer. He filed it away with the question Cassiepeoia had asked, months ago, in the book shop as Lockhart and Snape descended the platform together. The hall's murmur swelled around them as Dumbledore retook the stage, restoring the entire platform with a snap of his fingers. 

"Now," Dumbledore began, hands clasped before him, "to the matter that brings us here. The Wand of Ares International Youth Championship shall be held this August in Vienna, and Hogwarts has been invited to send a delegation of competitors. Professor Lockhart and Professor Snape have evaluated our student body over the course of the year, and I am pleased to announce our selections."

He paused, letting the anticipation build with the ease of a man who had been commanding rooms for over a century.

"For the Junior Division—students in their second and third years," he continued, eyes sweeping the hall. "Mr. Neville Longbottom."

Applause thundered, immediate and expected—and Harry snorted as he remembered the same students whispering about parseltongue and Dark Lords. Neville stood and inclined his head, his expression composed, though Ron clapped hard enough beside him to shake the bench.

"Miss Persephone Potter."

The applause fractured—some genuine, most hesitant, a few conspicuously absent as eyes turned towards his sister. Persephone stood with her chin level and her back straight, acknowledging Dumbledore’s silent praise with a grateful nod, and Harry met the elder’s wizard’s eyes, seeing the sparkle in them, and he knew, what was coming next.

"And Mr. Harry Potter."

The reaction mirrored his sister's, and Harry rose beside Persephone, letting the murmur wash over him the way he always did. He caught Daphne's eye for a moment—her expression carefully neutral, but the faintest incline of her head told him everything her composure would not allow in public.

Dumbledore continued without pause. "For the Senior Division—students in their fifth through seventh years—Hogwarts shall be represented by Miss Eveline Rookwood, Mr. Cedric Diggory, and Mr. Percy Weasley."

The announcement rippled through the Hall in different ways—Rookwood acknowledged with a cool nod from the Slytherin side, Diggory stood with an easy confidence that reminded Harry vaguely of Lockhart's stage presence, and Percy Weasley straightened so sharply he nearly toppled the inkwell at his elbow, his face cycling through surprise and fierce pride before settling on rigid formality.

"These six shall represent our school with honour," Dumbledore concluded, "and shall be afforded additional training sessions with Professors Lockhart and Snape to prepare for the championship. I trust you will all extend them your support. Now—I believe dinner is overdue."

The tables reformed with a wave of his wand, and the hall gradually dissolved into its usual noise of plates and conversation and the scrape of benches being dragged into position. Harry sat down between Persephone and Daphne, the weight of the announcement still settling across his shoulders.

"Well," Persephone said, serving herself and glancing toward the staff table where Lockhart was chatting amiably with Flitwick, his restored fingers wrapped around a goblet as if they had never been separated from his hand, "at least now we get to train under the man who went three minutes with Snape without breaking a sweat."

"He was sweating," Harry said quietly. "He just hid it well."

Daphne glanced between them, her fork paused mid-motion. "You are worried."

It was not a question, but as Dumbledore caught his eyes and raised his goblet towards him, Harry’s thoughts flew wild and high.

"No," he said, raising back his glass of chocolate shake, "Just paying attention."