Chapter. 52.3- Doom Days

Both of those were notable limitations but it wasn’t like I could just overwhelm a man who had the ability to mess up my aim at any time or force me to become unable to shield his spells. The only saving graces were that beyond the ability to seemingly puppet my wand arm whenever he wanted and however he wanted to control it, he was a bang average duelist. Okay, that was disingenuous and unfair. He was a great duelist for his age, but as far as I was concerned, he was nothing special. I had bought better. I had beaten better. I had killed better. And that would have to be enough.

I stepped backwards, slowly dragging my wand from left to right. The blasting curse tore a hole in the ground a few metres ahead of me. If I was being limited as to what I could do with my wand then I would use the one art I knew that did not require much in the way of wand movmeents or aiming. Of course this strategy had to be something he head come into contact with before so he wasted no time in trying to isolate me and keep me unable to concentrate with his barrage of spells.

I spun my wand in a tight circle, forming a protego maxima that bore the pressure of close to ten of his spells before it began to quiver and shake. I tore down my shield, diving to the side in a roll before I shot to the floor again. When I did, it was with three massive serpent in front of me that reared up for a second before crashing down towards m opponents. A flick of my wand turned their skins to stone even as I used the rest. Of he rubble from the blasting curse as best I could.

Multiple birds with steel tipped beaks took to the air next, and in their aftermath was a menagerie of animals. Barretto bore the pressure well, tearing one of the snakes in two with a cutting curse of some sort that produced jagged, raw, ripped cut across the beast’s body. That had to be serious dark magic, I thought to myself. Part of me wanted to say two could play at that game and show the boy what real mastery of the Dark Arts looked like and scar him for life. A more reasonable part of me kept my focus on directing the creatures I’d transfigured and creating more— occlumency made the balancing act required child’s play. It was only a matter of time before he fell, I thought to myself as one of my birds managed to stab a beak into his left arm.

Said bird disappeared in a conflagration a second later and he snapped his wand in my direction, using the flaming carcass of my own creature against me. I did not even move, keeping my wand pointed downwards as I vanished it with a tight circle and sent the rest of my bests in.