Chapter 18.5- Doom Days

The confringo was followed by another and then another, forcing me to drop my shield in favour of deflecting the powerful spells but then Sirius switched back to using harmless jinxes and hexes to overwhelm my speed. So that was how it was. I allowed the next two spells to hit me, and tore up the ground with a heave, allowing the rest of his spells to wash away against my wall. A silent finite ended the hiccups that had been building and had my armpit hair reduced back to a manageable level. Did I even want to know why there was a jinx made solely for forcing armpit hair growth.

I pushed at the wall banishing it forwards in pieces as Sirius’ blasting curse tore it apart just as expected. He waved his wand, forcing the pieces of rocky shrapnel to slow almost to a halt as they approached him. A whispered incantation and a twirl of my wand turned all the rocks into scorpions of varying sizes. He tried to banish them to the side, but I pushed against it with my own banishing charm, sending the scorpions through his impediment jinx and right at his feet. Cool as ice, his wand lashed out and set the scorpions on fire.

Fire that coalesced around the tip of his wand until it had formed into a whip. The fire whip lashed out as he sent it at me. I lifted my own wand and froze the flames that were about to touch me right before they did and caught the fire whip with my right hand. Holding on to his whip, I sent several piercers heading right his way.

I felt my flame freezing charm break a second too late as my hand erupted in pain. I dropped the whip just as Sirius spun out of the way of the piercing curses I retaliated with. His next spell was a dark grey one I did not recognise and so I risked shielding it instead. The spell tore through my shield like it wasn’t even there and connected with me with no resistance. I felt my muscles spasm like I was in the middle of a tough workout and so could do nothing except eat a bludgeoner right to the skull.

X-

“Have you decided what to vote for?” Sirius asked as I sat cross legged before the fire poring over a tome.

“The magical duels. It wasn’t even a contest. If I’m going to be fighting Krum with staves, then it will be after I’ve got a ritual or two under my belt” I said.

“Have you decided which ones to do? I still don’t see why you’re refusing the Black Four. James and I did them and look at us.” He said.

“Well, I’d want something that would give me a bit more of an edge than what you two had going for you.”

“You can’t get benefits like that without some serious cost, Harry. I’ve told you. It’s impossible.”

“Well, Rowena Ravenclaw would disagree. She was on to something.” I said, as the tome’s words began to sink in.