Chapter 14.6- Doom Days

I could see him running along the Castle’s grounds as he tried to make his way to the wards. I silently wondered why he was escaping but then I spotted something white and bloody clutched in his hand. I felt a pinching in my right bicep and turned to find it bleeding. When had that even happened?, I silently wondered as I took a few steps backwards before preparing my run and taking off. I used a banishing charm on the castle itself to send me flying ass over teakettle as I flew at him. I’ve got to move around with my firebolt at all times, I decided as I struggled to stabilize myself.

I slashed my wand through the air to slow down my momentum and dropped to the ground in a roll. I was right behind him, I realised, and I wasted no time in making him aware of that fact. With a heave, I lifted a wall of earth in front of him. He turned and fired a dark grey spell that I sent back his way at double the speed but he just ducked and allowed the spell to hit the earthen wall and blow it to smithereens. There are four factors that matter in any duel, Flitwick had taught me: skill, power, knowledge, environment, and luck. It seemed the gods were on my side today as he suddenly lurched. The polyjuice was undoing itself, I realised as his body began to bubble up and shift. The fake eye came sailing at me like a rocket, and I snatched it out of the air without thoughts. I instantly dropped it, wary of curses, but nothing had happened.

I sent a trio of disarming charms at Crouch as his body lurched all over the place, but against all odds, the bastard managed to remain ahead of my attacks, shielding. I conjured several spears that blew through the magical shield but were stopped dead by a metal circular shield with a stylized snake on it. He banished the shield at me, and I twirled my wand to form a blue firewhip that cut through the shield. In the intervening time, the peg leg had popped out, replaced with Junior’s very real leg. I took advantage of the lopsided footing as the other leg was yet to transform and turned the ground he stood atop into mud.

He planted both feet, even with one taller than another and sent several blood boiling curses my way. I almost gaped at the speed with which he managed to chain the extremely dark spell but settled for breathing out and deflecting each spell off to the side as they came. Thoroughly focused on my surrounding, I didn’t even notice that I was sending the spells towards several Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students who had been loitering along the grounds and had been drawn towards the duel.

He switched tacks as his other leg transformed as tried to banish himself out of the mud. His maneuvre sent mud flying in all directions and I was forced to bear the indignity of sullied robes as I continued to chase my target. He flew over the destroyed wall and landed on his back. In an incredibly acrobatic feat that bellied his years in captivity, he landed on his back and rolled backwards to his feet.

In that time, I’d slashed my wand through the air and sent a bolt of lightning flying right at him. He formed a gleaming gold shield to take the attack, but the kinetic energy of the bolt still affected him beneath his aegis shield and sent him flying into the forest. I chased after him but was forced to stop at the edge of the trees as I noticed that the wards did not cover this part of the forest like they were supposed to.

Fuck. “Fucking hell” I cursed out loud.

A/N: And that’s the duel. Headcanon is that Crouch was one hell of a prodigy during his time in school so he’s a tough nut to fight. Powerscaling would put him a few notches below someone like Bellatrix.