Chapter 28.3- Doom Days

“Oh they said you were good, Harry. But I didn’t know how good” Jones said with a chuckle as she froze in place, about to send another spell at me.

“Thank you” I said with a hesitant smile, taken aback. She was good. Very good. Not as good as Flitwick, but definitely better than Sirius had been when we’d first started duelling. He was more familiar with my tricks though, so he could have found ways around what I’d done here.

“Of course, not good enough to hold a candle to a Hiwitch going all out” She lifted her hand to flash a bracelet that lit with runes.

“Some kind of dampener?” I wondered.

“Yup” She popped the p and smiled easily.

“Makes me about half as fast and my magic more sluggish. Think of it like fighting after ten beers. Like sure, you could do but, but your sober self would kick your ass six ways to Sunday, and seven ways back again” I nodded.

“I’ll take note of that then” I said, taking the warning she wasn’t saying to heart. ‘You’re good, but not great. Not yet’ her eyes seemed to say.

“I heard you want to go to Broekzelle”

“Michelle” Her partner coughed.

“Oh. I have to finish these. Stick around so we can talk Potter. I have something we should talk about. Don’t worry, this lot isn’t going to take any time.” She said. I nodded, curious. Her smiling partner had lost his smile, but he said nothing else.

I stepped off the stage and took a seat on a conjured armchair. Nothing as ostentatious as what Dumbledore could do, but still impressive. Michelle Jones had been right, it seemed. Only one of the others managed to last longer than a minute. The longest was an Italian witch with a talent for shield spells and counter curses. Still, Jones found her way through the stalwart defenses in the end, seeming inevitable. As each person was defeated with little to no difficulty the others that remained turned to give me assessing looks.

“So, what did you think?” She asked as she jumped down from the platform as the last man, an Argentinian fellow with a charming smile limped away.

“About you or about them?” I smirked at her from my seat.

“Both, of course. I’ll hear your thoughts about them first though”

“Saving the best for last?”

“Undoubtedly” She winked.

“They weren’t impressive. Most of them would probably get wiped out by the others in the Tri-Wizard tournament.” I said. Even Cedric, the last impressive duelist of the lot had shown better skill than these lot.

“Well, I understand the Tri-Wizard tournament is for the best schools in Europe to show off their best students. Not really a fair comparison” I shrugged, taking the point.

“There’s nothing special about them”

“What?”

“You heard me. They aren’t specially good, but they aren’t specially bad either. They’ll pass because of that. Not with an S like you of course, but they’ll get solid Cs and move on to jobs in the Confederation pushing papers or whatever they do”

“You make that sound like a bad thing”

“Is it not? The people are weaker than they’ve ever been. No one bothers learning to fight anymore. Everyone who does so is looked as odd. The average witch sees nothing wrong with not being able to hold a shield charm for more than a few seconds— if they even manage to cast one”

“That sounds like something that really isn’t my problem to consider. What do you want?”

“I’ll get to that. Tell me what you thought of me first.”

“You’re good.” I surmised.

“More” She urged with a snap of her fingers. “I’ll hear your thoughts in full, Harry”

“You know its odd to do that where I come from”

“Do what? Snap my fingers?” She snapped her fingers again.

“No. Using my first name. It’s something reserved for friends.”

“Then consider us friends and tell me what you think about me”

“All your movements. Every wand motion, every dodge, everything you did was technically perfect. Like you’ve drilled it over and over again until everything becomes second nature. And if you’re telling the truth about the bracelet and what it does then you’re even more impressive” I said.

“I’d never lie to you, Harry” She said, and to my immense shame part of me even believed her. Damn teenage hormones and American knockers the size of melons.