Dantes looked him straight in the eye, "If you want this duel stopped, you are talking to the wrong person. You need to be talking with Mrs. Weasley. I don't know why you are in such a hurry to stop it. No one is going to get hurt. It is simply a paintball duel."
"But it may not stay that way." Dumbledore reminded him.
"It will on my part, unless Mrs. Weasley chooses to sacrifice her honour to win the duel." Dantes countered.
As Dumbledore made a firecall to the Weasley's home, Dantes walked over to the phoenix perch and whispered, "Hello Fawkes."
Fawkes stared into the hazel eyes for a moment and then took a quick look at his bonded before stretching out his head and rubbing it against the man's hand.
"You like me now," Dantes commented in a very low voice, "but will you like me at the end of the year when I give the old fool what he richly deserves?"
Fawkes gave him a reproachful look.
"Oh don't worry, he's not going to be dead, but he's not going to be too happy either." Dantes warned him. "He is going to pay for all the crimes he's committed in his quest for the so-called Greater Good."
Fawkes gave him a soulful look, but Dantes shook his head. "Not even you can change my mind, Fawkes. He has been meddling too long and destroyed too many lives. It ends now, before he can cause more harm. Now I have a question for you. Why do you stay with him, Fawkes? You know he is no longer Light, so why stay."
Fawkes whistled a mournful note.
"So you care about the meddling old coot," Dantes concluded, "and you think you can turn him back toward the Light?"
Fawkes nodded.
"Hate to tell you this, Fawkes, but I think it's too late for him." Dantes told the phoenix softly. "All you are doing with your presence at his side is fooling people into thinking he's still on the side of Light. They don't realise he is Grey and a Dark Grey at that. If he'd done half the things he's done to me to Neville or say even Malfoy someone would be screaming their bloody heads off, if not burning him at the stake, but because I have no one to speak up for me, he gets away with everything he's ever done to me, because you are still here. You may not want to believe me, but just think about it."
Dumbledore pulled his head out of the fire and looked around for Dantes only to seeing him standing near Fawkes petting the phoenix. Dumbledore was glad to see that, it meant that the man was a good person. He'd always found Fawkes to be an excellent judge of character.
"Molly is on her way." Dumbledore announced, getting to his feet.
"So you couldn't convince her to call off the duel either." Dantes concluded.
"Regrettably no," Dumbledore told him. "She has get hold of Arthur since he is her second, but they should be here in time. Since I am not able to change either of your minds there is another matter I would like to discuss with you that concerns Hogwarts itself."
...
Molly and Arthur Weasley stared around the Great Hall in surprise. The tables and benches were gone. Instead there were wooden barriers scattered around the room.
"You are a little late, Mrs. Weasley." Dantes observed. "I was beginning to wonder if you had changed your mind and decided to sacrifice your honour."
"Not on your life!" Molly hissed.
"Fortunately for me, my life is not on the line and neither is yours, since this is a paintball duel." Dantes pulled a shrunken case out of a pouch at his waist and enlarged it. Opening it, he pulled several items out and handed them to Molly. "You will need these."
Molly looked at the clear, over large things that looked like glasses, a half mask looking thing that looked like it was to be worn on the lower half of someone's face and something wooden that she couldn't figure out. "What are these?"
"These," Dantes tapped the clear large glasses, "are to protect your eyes. The have been treated with an Impervius charm so that the paint won't stick to them so that you will always be able to see. The mask is to be worn so you don't accidentally swallow or breathe in the paint. And last but not least," he slid his wand into the groove on the top of the wooden thing, "this is similar to the muggle pistols used in muggle paintball tournaments. It links to the core of your wand and allows you to aim and fire the orbis pigmento spell that produces the balls of coloured paint."
"You have got to be kidding!" Molly stared at the things in disgust. "We are supposed to be fighting a proper duel, not a children's game. I didn't come here to play some game with you. I came here for a duel to defend my family's honour."
"Actually madam, children in the muggle world and even in the parts of the magical world where this is paintball is used as a form of training and entertainment do not take part in the tournaments, because the paintballs themselves can cause bruising when they make contact. It is primarily adults and older teens that engage in this sport. And as I also told you, madam, unless you want to wind up severely injured or dead, you will stop disputing the original terms agreed to by your second. I have no problem fighting a real duel, but be warned, I will fight to win if that is the case and to me winning will be you dead or permanently incapacitated . I haven't lost a duel yet and you won't be my first." Dantes' expressionless face convinced Molly that he was deadly serious.
"How we know which of us won the duel if we simply use paintballs?" Molly wanted to know. "In a normal duel, the winner is clear because one of the duellists is down and unable to continue duelling."
"That is quite simple, madam," Dantes assured her. "In muggle paintball tournaments and some of the magical ones I have seen and participated in, they have a time limit usually of about thirty minutes to an hour. The ones covered with the most paint are the losers and that is the method we will use. If you are agreeable our duel will last thirty minutes and then we will see which of us is the loser."
"Very well," Molly huffed.
.....
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