Chapter 14.5- Doom Days

My thoughts flew through my mind at rapid speed as I processed the effects of spotty teaching on the future of the Wizarding World itself and the effects that would have on my plans. ‘What plans?’ You might ask cluelessly. Doom had never met a world he would not conquer, and Tom Riddle had been much the same. Even Harry Potter had ever particularly been lacking of ambition. The Wizarding world would be mine to rule. It was a given. All that mattered was. Whether they submitted themselves to my power of if I had to drag them kicking and screaming. The class came to an end in no time, and I remained where I stood as the others filed out of the classroom in groups of two and three.

“What do you want Potter?” He asked with a sneer on his face when he looked back and found me still in the classroom.

“Just wondering which Bartemius Crouch you are- Junior or Senior” I said with a smirk. A smirk that died very quickly. If my wand had not been in my hand, I would have failed to deflect the stunner that followed my words.

“Where did you learn that, boy?” He asked with a snarl. A snarl that I matched with one of my own. My magic rose within me as I fired two piercing curses at him. His shield absorbed them with ease but I took the chance to slip in a shield breaker in my next salvo of stunners. I watched with bated breath as he blocked the first two stunners, dropped his shield and moved his shoulder to avoid the shield breaker before putting the shield up again to take the rest of the spells.

He was quick, he was fast, and he was ruthless, I realised as the duel went on. As I rolled underneath an organ rupturing curse and countered with a flock of steel beaked birds, I realised that the main thing keeping me in this duel was the fact that he was fighting in an unfamiliar body. He had basically been forced to remain rooted to the spot because of the disadvantage that came with having a wooden peg for a leg. Well, it was only a disadvantage when you weren’t named Mad-eye Moody, I figured.

He turned the birds to ash with an incredibly dark immolation curse that made me wonder how Dumbledore hadn’t been alerted by the wards at this point. Still, I reached out and grabbed the ash with my magic and forced it to envelop the room in a smoky fog.

“Foolish boy, you can’t blind this eye” he said smugly, and I grimaced before activating a flashbang hex with a twist of my wand. I’d been able to close my eyes in time, but I was still blinking spots out of my vision when the spell had run its course. As for my hearing, there was naught to be done about that. Hopefully, I was in a much better state than he was, considering he hadn’t been ready for the spell. I rolled forwards to avoid two spells that seemed to have been blindly sent into the ash. I could just barely spot his form moving through the ashy cloud and retaliated with a conjured spear that tore through his shield and impaled him against the wall for a few seconds before his form dissolved into mist. I pushed all the ash away with a silent ventus maxima and found that the classroom’s windows had been blown out. He’d escaped, I thought with a scowl as I ran towards the window.