The second meeting of the Dueling Club filled the Great Hall with a roar of voices; the air thrummed with an odd mixture of eager expectation and nervous impatience. Gilderoy Lockhart remained the center of attention, his rose-colored robes flashing gaudily in the light of the floating candles, his grin permanently varnished with the sort of dazzle only he could manage. Standing in stark contrast at his side was Severus Snape. Swathed in black, every fold of Snape's robes seemed to swallow light; his very presence radiated a low, repressive pressure that made the students instinctively give him space.
The demonstrative duet had just finished. True to Lockhart's style, it had been theatrical: a grand arc of a wand followed by Snape's dry, efficient counter that sent Lockhart's wand spinning from his hand and produced a ripple of suppressed tittering from the crowd. Lockhart recovered his wand in a flustered scramble, masking embarrassment with an exaggerated cough and a desperate return to self-possession.
"Excellent display!" he announced in a voice as bright and theatrical as any of his novels, as if he had never been the one unceremoniously disarmed. "Now, let's have some volunteers for a real test of skill, shall we?"
His gaze swept over the dense crowd like a searchlight. Every student's heart leapt: to be chosen was to have one's moment in the spotlight, and to fall flat before Lockhart's glittering audience was an equal risk.
"Oh! Here we are!" Lockhart cried, a meaningful smile splitting his face. He plucked two names from the throng, names that everyone in the hall recognized instantly.
"Fred Weasley!" he called. A ripple of excitement ran through the Gryffindor section.
"And… Marcus Flint, Captain of Slytherin! You two, come up!"
When Flint's name left Lockhart's lips, the temperature of the room seemed to drop several degrees. Conversation stopped. All eyes turned to the tall, burly Slytherin whose face carried an ugly, truculent look. Everyone knew the score: Flint still nursed the grievances of last year's Quidditch scraps and held a fast-burning anger toward Alan Scott. With Alan unavailable, the next best target was one of his friends.
Flint strode forward, parting the crowd with heavy steps that thudded on the floor. His small, hard eyes glittered with undisguised malice as they settled on Fred.
Fred, for his part, did not flinch. If anything, a dangerous excitement kindled in his expression, his knuckles white as he prepared. The two boys climbed the raised dueling platform and, at Lockhart's prompt, performed an exaggerated, perfunctory bow. Then, as they took up their positions, something slipped unnoticed from the audience and into Fred's hand: a small folded scrap of parchment.
Alan had stepped forward in his capacity as the club's "tactical adviser" and, with a calm, economical motion, pressed the paper into Fred's palm.
"Do exactly as it says," Alan murmured. His voice was low but perfectly clear in Fred's ear. Then he turned and drifted back into the crowd as if he had done no more than hand a friend a piece of chewing gum.
Fred clenched the note. He gave Alan a firm, grateful nod.
"Duel begin!" Lockhart's theatrical bellow echoed through the Hall.
No sooner had the last syllable fallen than Flint sprang into action like an enraged beast. He swung his wand in a violent arc and sent a dark, crimson beam tearing through the air, an Obstructing charm of terrible force, meant to blow Fred off his feet and hurl him across the platform.
What happened next was unnervingly mechanical.
Fred did not watch Flint's movement or attempt to track the curse. His mind emptied. He became an automaton whose actions were dictated by the tiny scroll in his hand.
Instruction One: advance three paces straight ahead, then cast a Depulso at the opponent's knees.
One step. Two steps. Three steps. Fred lunged forward. The crimson curse ripped overhead, missing his head by inches and detonating into empty air behind him with a dull crack. At the same instant Fred's wand flicked with lethal precision; a Disarming charm struck for Flint's knee. The angle was cruelly awkward, entirely unexpected. Flint's tall frame twisted to evade; he broke his intended sequence and lurched sideways, nearly falling.
One exchange was enough. The duel's rhythm slipped as though a new script had been dropped into Lockhart's hands and the actors dutifully followed it.
Flint reddened with fury and prepared a second spell, but Fred was already ahead.
Instruction Two: roll half a turn to the left; at the end of your roll, release a concentrated cloud-smoke charm toward your landing point.
Fred rolled without hesitation. The second a curst line hissed where his shoulder had been and struck the platform in a spray of splinters. He finished his roll on one hand, not even bothering to rise, and with a single flick of his wand:
"Thick, choking smoke!"
A black, viscous cloud erupted from the tip of his wand and swelled like a living thing. In moments it swallowed half the platform, blotting out sight.
"Coward! Get out here!" Flint roared from within the smoke, flailing and flinging curses blindly that vanished as if cast into wool.
Beneath the cloak of smoke, Fred obeyed the third instruction.
Instruction Three: within the smoke, at three o'clock relative to your front and half a foot above the ground, cast a Trip Jinx.
Without sight, relying solely on Flint's remembered position and Alan's precise coordinates, Fred launched the charm. The spell flew soundlessly into the black haze.
A strangled howl of anger, then a heavy, humiliating thud. The platform itself seemed to shudder.
As the smoke dissipated and clarity returned, the Hall fell into a stunned silence. Marcus Flint lay face-down in the most undignified of positions, utterly flattened. The curse he had launched, meant to strike Fred upon his reappearance, had rebounded when he stumbled; in hitting himself it scorched his robe, leaving a smoking, ugly hole, while he sprawled in mortal embarrassment.
From start to finish the duel had taken no more than a handful of heartbeats. Fred had not once performed an original thought; he had been the executor of a program written by someone else. Yet every movement was flawless. Every reaction anticipated and neutralized Flint's aggression. Every counterstrike landed where it hurt most and least expected.
When Flint lay defeated, not having even grazed his opponent, the Great Hall was utterly silent. No cheers broke the air. No mockery followed. Faces turned away from the dazed victor and the humiliated vanquished, and focused on the boy who had never left the crowd.
Alan Scott. The boy who had, from the sidelines, guided the combat like a director calling cues. He stood serene and composed, as if watching a play whose denouement he had known from the first line.
The look the students now gave Alan had shifted. This was no longer the regard in which one holds a prodigious pupil. It was something stranger, a gaze that carried the chill of encountering something beyond the bounds of understanding, an intelligence and a degree of control that transcended their category of "clever student." They were looking, collectively and without quite knowing it, at something they could not label: a kind of monster formed of detachment, calculation, and terrifying foresight.
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