"Let no witch nor wizard trust to swiftness alone; for the duel is won not by haste, but by the mind that bendeth the moment to its will."
— Master Aldus Thorne, The Art of Measured Sorcery (1594)
The board outside the Great Hall had Tuesday's pairings posted before any of us reached breakfast. I checked it on the pass, found my name, and read what I needed: Ring A, first flight, nine o'clock, third-year Ravenclaw named Hirst. Below that, if I won the first, Ring B at half past eleven, opponent to be filled once the morning flights resolved.
Thomas was not on the board. Neither were Margaret or Eleanor. I had known this from Monday's results, but reading the confirmation was its own kind of thing.
Breakfast was quieter than Monday's. The students who had been eliminated sat with finished expressions, still in their school robes but without the forward lean of preparation. Thomas came in and applied the warming charm twice to his coat before sitting, which meant his hands were still cold from wherever he had been since waking. He loaded his plate with bread and cold mutton and said, without preamble: "What dost thou know of Hirst?"
"Third year, Ravenclaw," I said.
"He won both Monday matches by holding distance and drawing his opponent into the first mistake," Thomas said. He had apparently spent Monday afternoon watching every ring he could reach after his own loss.
"Well, that isn't very worrying for me. I'm sure I'll do just fine, I beat the fourth year yesterday after all."
Eleanor sat down across from him, her wrist wrapped in fresh linen from the infirmary visit. "He doth read widely," she said. "I have seen him in the library on Tuesday evenings. He works through the dueling theory texts alongside the academic ones."
"As all Ravenclaws are want to do, but I'll be fine. If I can't silence him, there are more options available." After all, the transfiguration yesterday could easily solve my problems. Just raise a wall and push the guy out of the ring.
The field was colder on Tuesday than Monday. The overnight frost had not melted from the rope stakes by nine o'clock, and the chalk lines had been redrawn against the damp that had softened Monday's marks. The assistants moved between rings with brisk efficiency, not too happy having to be working this early.
I went to Ring A for the first flight. Thomas, Margaret, and Eleanor found places at the ropes.
Hirst was already at the far edge of the ring when I stepped in. He had arrived first and chosen his ground, which was itself a piece of information. He held his wand at his side, not raised, and looked at the professor rather than at me. He had the stillness Thomas had described, though it could just be posturing, whatever.
The professor at Ring A this time was Ashford. He sat with his score parchment flat, said the standard rules, and dropped the stone.
I shifted right and opened my mouth. Before the word had formed fully, a low blue charm came from Hirst's wand and struck the air at my jaw, a compression that tightened my throat and cut the syllable off at the second letter.
He had applied a silencing charm to me before I could apply one to him. The margin was smaller than a quarter second. He had known exactly what I was going to open with and had been ready for it.
Well, that's karma I guess. If I were Chinese, perhaps I'd be ranting about how dare he even strike me, he's courting death! Alas, all I can say is: 'tis but a scratch! To show my great appreciation of this wonderful senior, I of course gave him a great surprise. Using a silent levitation charm, I yank up his left shoe, flipping him sideways and off to the ground. Note to self, learn a silent finite incantatem.
Seeing as he was about to make contact with the hard packed dirt, in my infinite mercy, I transfigured a trampoline like web, sending him even higher beyond the ring, tumbling through the grass a few yards away.
"Match," Ashford said.
Thomas was at the ropes. "He had the silencer ready for thee before the stone landed," he said.
"He prepared for it. I'll just have to be able to use it with a flick of the wrist," I replied, absolutely not butt hurt of having my own strategy used on me. Maybe if I invented a magic cylinder spell? Hmm, potential this option has.
"Took thee not long to act after that."
Between the first and second flights, we ate bread and cold cheese at the boundary wall and watched a third-year exchange in Ring C. The Slytherin Thomas had mentioned from Monday was in that ring, and forty-five seconds had apparently not been luck. He won his Tuesday morning match in fifty, different opponent, same result. He moved with a very short stance and low center of weight, and he had a habit of letting the other student set the terms of an exchange and then changing those terms without warning. He did not so much attack as revise.
"He will be a problem in the main rounds," Margaret said, watching him come off the ring.
"For someone," I said.
"For thee," she said, without softening it. "He doth read the exchange and change the premise. Thou dost the same. If thou dost meet him, it will be slow." What does changing the premise mean? Anyone? I was never the best in English class, much less so the Shakespearean dramas.
The second flight pairing went up at ten: Ring B, half past eleven, myself against a fourth-year Gryffindor named Callum Ferris. I did not know the name. Thomas did.
"He chains," Thomas said.
"Chains what? Like manacles or something?"
"His spells. Two at once, nearly. He sends one before the first doth land to force thee to handle both at the same moment." Thomas was watching Ferris across the field, where the fourth-year was running a short exchange drill with another student. "He won Monday afternoon in three chains. Very fast hands."
"How fast?"
"Fast enough that the second year he beat Thursday saw the second charm before he had answered the first," Thomas said. "He had no answer for both. The match was over before he understood what had happened."
I watched Ferris for a few minutes. He moved with confidence, the slightly forward lean of someone who expected to press. He was a head taller than me, thick across the shoulders, with the arm span that made close work more complicated. His chains, from what I could see in the drill, were tight, the second cast released before the first had fully traveled, which produced an overlap that gave the target a shorter time window to respond to either.
What the heck were his parents feeding him? In fact, why in the world are they so much better than canon equivalents? I take back what I said, the schooling is much better if even third years can simplify curses into a flick of the wrist. Is this the famous: hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, and weak men create hard times? No way Voldemort was the greatest dark lord, he's probably at the level of a professor if the competency of these third years was anything to go by.
Sighing to myself and pitying my future self, I went to Ring B at half past eleven.
Ferris came in from the opposite side. He looked at me once, assessed something, and set his feet. The professor at Ring B was one I did not know well, an older woman from the staff table who had been assigned to tournament duty.
The stone dropped.
He opened with a chain immediately, two charms in close succession: "Depulso! Leviosa!" I got a shield up for the push, which reduced it to a nudge, and moved my wand arm back before the levitation caught it. The levitation grazed my sleeve and found the air behind me.
He pressed forward and launched a second chain. I put a ridge of transfigured ground between us, buying a second's interruption to the advance. He went around it fast, faster than Hirst had, and was inside my comfortable range before I had fully reset.
At close range his arm span was the problem I had anticipated. He could reach angles I had to move to match, and moving to match them gave him more opportunities.
I stepped into him rather than away, which was not what he expected. Closer than he had been aiming to get, which shortened his effective reach rather than extending it. He adjusted and tried a close-distance disarming charm. I turned my shoulder and let it pass, and in the moment his wand extended past me I pushed it upward with a depulso from below.
Yanking his arm down, he pressed on once more. Another chain, faster this time, three casts not two, the third one catching my wand arm at the forearm and producing a numbness that ran to the elbow.
One-handed again.
The field was not ideal. He had more reach, faster chains, and I had one working arm. The useful options narrowed.
I transfigured the ground at his feet, same depression approach as the Hirst match, but he saw it this time, having watched Monday's matches and presumably Tuesday morning's. He checked his step and took the weight on the back foot.
The back foot was not on transfigured ground. The back foot was on a section I had transfigured two seconds before the front, a shallow depression placed while he was reading the front. He had looked at the front. The back foot went into the depression and his balance shifted rearward hard.
He kept the wand. He did not fall. But his wand arm was back and his guard was open and I hit his wrist with the depulso before he brought it forward again.
The wand came clear and dropped inside the ring.
"Match," the professor said.
Ferris stood with his empty hand and looked at the ground behind his back foot. He crouched and looked at the depression in the turf. He looked at me.
He straightened up, rubbing the back of his wrist. "That were very mean," he said, and his tone was purely approving. "Well done."
He offered his hand and I took it, giving a good squeeze and shake, though my hand felt worse for the wear afterwards than it did before.
The results went up before the midday meal. Seven students advancing from the lower years, undefeated across both days, eighth and ninth place had a draw, running out of time, so neither was allowed forward. My name was on the list, of course, with mostly fourth years filling the rest of the list.
Well, at least I guaranteed my reward. You see, the top of each year receives a pass to the restricted section of the library at the end of the tournament, with the final five of the finals receiving various materials, monies, or what have you. If my last match was anything to go by, there ain't no way I'm making it that far, not without the meta strategies I've cooked up.
The afternoon was free for all seven of us who had advanced, which was a logistical choice of whoever had organized the schedule, probably to keep us from using the time to observe whoever we might face next. We were directed to the library for study period, which was a polite way of removing us from the field.
I went to the library. I sat at the table in the restricted section's anteroom, where Mistress Forrest had allowed me supervised access since first year, and read nothing in particular for an hour while thinking about Prentiss. Then I read through the ward construction text's chapter on counter-flow structures, which had a section on how a structured field could be redirected rather than blocked, which was tangentially connected to what I had been working on in the Room. The connection between reading theory and solving the Prentiss problem was not direct. It was useful to have the reading to do while the thinking sorted itself.
How do I make the most of the pass I'll get in a week? What to read? Let's see, there's the dark arts, curses, ancient runes that may be forbidden or too powerful for general access, and the histories of the top families in the world. What to choose, what to choose? If only I had some cheat that let me speed read and remember everything or copy the books without anyone knowing.
Wallowing at my lack of ways to scam the school and my own indecision, I didn't notice the time pass until Eleanor found me at half past two. She sat across the table with her Herbology notebook and said nothing for twenty minutes, which was sufficient company. After twenty minutes, she looked up and said: "Dost thou know how he changeth the premise?"
"Premise?"
"Yes, He seems to make his opponent follow his lead, controlling the fight according to his will."
Ah, that's what that means? Did the English language change so much that even the word premise lost its meaning? Deciding to ignore the incorrect use of the word I answered her, "It's simply his superior skill. Generally, if you can cast the first spell, you can set the rhythm of the duel. If you combine this with a strategy that forces the opponent to respond a certain way, you can plan the moves in advance. It's like how generals fight battles in a manner of speaking. What makes you ask this?"
Eleanor had a pink tinge to her cheeks I associated with the rosiness of youth, replied with her eyes looking towards the book in her hand, "I was concerned should thou be matched against him, thou may not advance."
"Thank you for thine concern, however I am bound to lose eventually. I don't think it is possible with how young and inexperienced I am compared to the upper years. Plus, I've made it this far," saying this, I turned back to my reading.
"If only there were a way to record the rounds, that we could watch them after the tournament ends," she mused aloud, and something was brought to mind, but I couldn't quite figure it out, as if on the tip of my tongue.
"Wait, say that one more time."
"What? 'Tis a shame there's no way to record-"
"That's it! Oh, Eleanor, you're amazing! I could hug you right now, that's exactly the answer I needed!" I speak so fast and excited I didn't realize her rosiness has increased.
"... -ell that would be nice," a quiet whisper reached my ears.
"Huh?" I dumbly asked, my mind filled with the windows spinning wheel of death, trying to process what I'd just heard. Mind you, with the culture of the times, contact between youth was not explicitly prohibited, but it definitely wasn't common. Even the courtships around the castle among the upper years had very little public displays of affection. The rules of etiquette, modesty, and honor were vastly different from modern times. Heck, if you weren't a virgin, you were a harlot. No other options existed, only this binary. "You'd like a hug? From me?"
Eleanor looked further down in her book and gave a slight nod, not daring to make eye contact.
"Well.. okay then" I walked around the table, sitting in the chair beside her, on the outside by the aisle. Going with the safest option so no FBI squad breaks down my door, I put my arm around her shoulders and give her a side hug. Leaning into it, Eleanor breathes a sigh of contentment (I hope that's what it is!) and closes her eyes. Leaning my head onto hers, I feel her long hair brushing against my cheek and can smell the faint herbal soap used to wash her hair. "Well, this is nice," I murmur, using my other arm to pull my notebook and pencil in front of us.
Hahaha, I've finally gotten it! That childhood friend of the other sex! In all seriousness, I don't really know how to deal with this development. Is it friendship or childhood sweetheart kind of intimacy? I'm not remotely ready for romance, especially given my current age. Plus, while my voice has been cracking for the last few months, I haven't had morning wood, so my testosterone hasn't given me the lust or amplified attraction to the opposite sex. But it's right around the corner, and I'm definitely not looking forward to it. It's one thing to be attracted to young teenagers when you were one, but having already lived past my teens once, this was definitely the danger zone. Seriously, manga and novels that had an adult become a child only to seduce and have intimate relations with children or young teens are the definition of demonic. So while my physical body may not be mature and given a general exemption, my mind and soul have already matured, leaving no excuse. But I'm getting ahead of myself, surely nothing will come of this for at least a few years, right?
Shifting a bit to get blood flowing back into my arm, I focus my straying thoughts on the matter at hand. Eleanor's reminder was that of recording. If I were to record the textbooks somehow, I could store them in some library like a kindle or phone. I need a runic scheme to store information, one to display the stored information, one to navigate each book and page, another to read the pages, and one to transfer this information for later iterative designs. It'd be terrible if I wanted to add other features only to realize I can't use what was already scanned, after all I only have the rest of the year in the restricted section.
Thus, I began writing out my thoughts, potential ways to circuits, runes that needed searching up, and the general shape. I'm thinking if I can get an endless notebook or something like the kindle made by amazon. The basics are scan, store, read, and transfer. These are the non-negotiables for the tool, anything else like a better user interface or add ons can come afterwards. Maybe if it can scan the book without having to open it, that way I can do it inconspicuously. It'd have to be a handheld, like a grocery store handheld scanner. Hmm….
It was in this manner I spent the afternoon, and let me tell you, there was something about having someone at your side that made the work more enjoyable and well, less like work. Eleanor had fallen asleep at some point, only waking when the dinner bell chimed through the castle. Having rubbed her eyes with a sleepy expression on her face, I rubbed her head (maybe the Chinese are onto something about this) to which she was a tad disgruntled. Putting our books away, I took both of our satchels onto my shoulders and we headed down to the Great Hall.
Dinner was pig roasted on a spit with an apple in its mouth, carved by the upper years, and even some pudding for dessert. We chatted about the day and the upper year prelims scheduled for tomorrow. 'Twas a delightful and gay evening, with laughs and games all around. Eventually, the bed called my name and I answered this call as every other child did, laying down on my soft mattress and a small thanks to the Lord for yet another day He had blessed, I fell into a dreamful sleep.
The field configuration had changed overnight. Ring A was wider, the rope boundary extended by one full length on all sides. The chalk lines were fresher and the professor's chairs were proper chairs, not stools, which meant longer sessions. A faint shimmer in the air indicated some enchantment or ward used to prevent the spells from escaping the rings and hitting bystanders. Three professors sat at Ring A: Crane, an older man I recognized from the staff table but had never had for a class, and a woman who moved with the practiced confidence of someone who had done this work for decades.
The upper years were a different population from the lower years, and the difference was visible before any of them threw a single charm. They came onto the field without the forward nervousness that marked most lower-year entrants. A fifth-year from Hufflepuff, a girl I had seen in the common room since first year, came to Ring B, stood at the edge, rolled her shoulders back, and waited. She looked like someone who had already decided exactly what she was going to do and was waiting for the signal to begin.
We sat on the benches allocated to the lower-year winners, at the south end of the field. Thomas had his arms folded and was leaning forward, the posture he held when he was genuinely concentrating on something. Margaret had her notebook out. Eleanor had no notebook, which meant she was filing things as she watched rather than writing them.
The stone dropped at the first ring.
The exchanges between upper years ran faster than anything from the lower rounds, and the spells were different in kind, not only in speed. Several of the cleanest moves I watched that morning produced no visible flash at all. A sixth-year Ravenclaw I found his name on the tournament board later, Denholm cast something I tracked by its effect rather than its motion: his opponent's wand wrist locked mid-cast, the cast incomplete, the opponent standing for a full second with a spell that could not be finished. Denholm followed with a straightforward disarming charm at that specific moment of interruption. Three seconds, total. The wrist lock was something I had no name for and had not found in any text I had read.
Thomas had positioned himself near Ring B where the footwork was most visible from the rope. He mouthed counts under his breath.
A Slytherin sixth-year in Ring C moved with a very short stance and so low a center of gravity that most force-displacement charms passed over him. He won his first match without being hit once, which looked from the outside like patience and was, on closer examination, precision positioning. He placed himself where each incoming charm was least effective before it was cast, which meant he was reading the casting intention early, earlier than the wand movement, from something that preceded the wand.
I watched him through two more exchanges and decided he was reading the feet.
The caster's weight shifted to the casting side a fraction before the wand moved. The shift was small, maybe an inch of pressure change in the front foot, but it preceded the cast consistently. The Slytherin read that shift and was already positioned before the charm arrived.
Margaret was writing in the margin shorthand she had developed over the year: a sequence of small numbered marks for spell order, timing estimates in the next column, a note about which student had pressed and which had held. She had filled four pages by the midday break.
At ten o'clock, a sixth-year Hufflepuff I recognized from the common room Aldric, seventh year, no, this was a different student, a girl named Priscilla from the year above us came to Ring A for the second flight. She moved with care, the kind of care that had grown over years of practice into something that looked effortless. She cast twice in her first match and won it. The two casts were: a misdirection that sent the opponent's guard to the wrong side, and a disarming charm that followed the misdirection before the guard could return.
The misdirection was not a light-show trick. She had produced it by beginning a casting motion with her left hand, a small circular movement that caught the opponent's attention for less than a second, and used that second to reset her wand hand to the correct angle. The opponent had not looked at her wand hand. He had looked at the motion.
Eleanor nudged my arm. "Did thou see her left hand?" she said.
"Aye," I said.
"That is what I saw Prentiss do," she said. "The same side. The same small motion before the change."
I looked at my notebook and then at Eleanor. She was watching the ring with the focused attention she brought to things she wanted to understand. The left-hand motion was a tell. Both Priscilla and Prentiss used it, and Eleanor had seen it in one match yesterday and identified the same pattern in an upper-year student today.
"Thou hast a very good eye," I said.
At midday break, the assistants set out trays near the boundary wall. I ate on my feet and walked to Ring D, which was running a sixth-year match between a Gryffindor and a Hufflepuff I did not know well. The Hufflepuff was losing on casting speed but managing the ring dimensions deliberately, keeping the Gryffindor in the portion of the ring where his fast casts had less distance before the boundary rope, which reduced their effective force without reducing their accuracy. From a distance it appeared that she was being driven backward. Looking at where she was moving relative to the ropes, she was directing the exchange to where she wanted it.
The Gryffindor ran her into the corner and landed a clean disarm. He had not seen what she was doing with the boundary.
Thomas had come up beside me during the last half of that match. "What was she trying?" he said.
"Using the rope boundary as a compression constraint," I said. "A charm loses force over distance. If thou canst manage the exchange so that the opponent's casts have less distance to travel, they arrive with less force even at the same power output."
"And she needed the Gryffindor to be in the right part of the ring for it."
"Aye. She almost had it. She ran out of room before the compression was sufficient."
Thomas nodded and went back to Ring B.
The afternoon brought the seventh-year matches, and the seventh-year matches were different from the morning's work in one specific way I could identify: there was no waste. A sixth-year who moved well moved well; a seventh-year who moved well moved exactly as much as needed and stopped there. Not a step past its purpose, not a wand motion that extended beyond the cast's completion. The efficiency was complete in a way that lower and middle years had not reached yet.
A Gryffindor seventh-year with red hair came to Ring A at two o'clock. I had seen her in the castle for two years, though we had never spoken. She was a head taller than most sixth-years and moved with the deliberateness of someone who did not place weight until she had chosen where it was going.
Her opponent was a Slytherin seventh-year with reach that made most students uncomfortable at close range, arms long enough that his guard position extended past where a normal student's wand recovery would begin. He had won both his morning matches without appearing to work hard in either. His method was distance management, and at his preferred range he was very difficult to displace.
She walked in, set her feet at her usual position, and waited.
He tried to establish distance immediately, backing to the far edge of his half and holding. She held her position and cast at range.
Three exchanges at range, both students casting short charms that produced no result, reading lines and testing angles. He held his ground. She held hers.
On the fourth exchange she changed something. I watched carefully and could not identify what changed. Her wand hand was in the same position. Her feet were in the same position. Her guard had not shifted. And yet he took a half-step to his right that was not defensive, it was reflexive, and she cast to where he was going rather than where he had been. The charm landed.
His wand stayed in his hand, but he needed to reset, and she used the reset to come to middle range. At middle range his long reach was less of an advantage. She managed three more exchanges there before he pushed her back to long range, and then the sequence repeated: she held, cast at range, changed the same unidentifiable thing, drew him into the same half-step.
He won the match in the end. She had used the pattern twice, and on the third attempt he had the half-step ready for her: he had identified the pattern, found a counter, and executed it. The disarm was clean.
She came off the ring, shook hands, and showed no particular reaction.
Margaret was beside me. "What did she change?" she said.
"I do not know," I said. "I watched all three attempts and I cannot identify it."
"It were not her wand," Margaret said.
"It wasn't her feet or her guard either," I said. "Something else. Below the level I can read from here."
"Eyes," Eleanor said, on my other side.
We both looked at her.
"She changed where she looked," Eleanor said. "On each fourth exchange, she held her gaze on his guard for one full second instead of the usual half. It were longer than her normal reading look. I think he read the longer look as a casting tell, something thou dost before committing to a specific line, and he moved to cover the line he expected. But she was not committing to that line. She was producing the tell deliberately."
The Slytherin who won the match had identified the pattern in time to counter it, which was how he won. The Gryffindor had used a gaze-direction misdirection to produce a predictable half-step in her opponent, and the tactic had worked twice before he cracked it. That was not a simple technique. That was years of work producing something precise enough to operate below normal observation.
On Thursday, the upper year final preliminaries ran all day. The field held the same arrangement as Wednesday but fewer students in the benches, the eliminations from the previous day having reduced the advancing pool. The remaining matches ran with longer breaks between flights, which allowed more time to watch each exchange.
Thomas had been on the field before I arrived, running the pivot drill Pryce had given him at the south end. Margaret was already on the benches with her notebook open. Eleanor came in after me with a small wrapped parcel from the kitchens, bread and dried apple, and we ate while the first flight of fifth-year matches began.
The fifth-years who had advanced from Wednesday had, without exception, shown greater control rather than greater speed in their winning matches. One of the fastest casters in the Wednesday round had been eliminated by a fifth-year who cast half as frequently and chose each cast with more intention. The scoring rubric was safety, control, and creativity, in that order, and control was doing most of the work in determining who moved forward.
At the midday break, I walked the full perimeter of the field once, which was something I had found useful the previous year in the outer ward when I wanted to look at a thing from several angles before deciding what it was. The upper-year matches were producing information I had not expected on Wednesday and wanted to confirm on Thursday: the best students were not winning through single superior skills. They were winning through redundancy. A tactic that failed had a second tactic ready behind it, and a third behind that. The Gryffindor with the red hair had prepared a gaze misdirection as a primary tool and had a fallback when it was countered. Priscilla in Ring A had a misdirection and a timing-precision followup and a third element she had used once that I had not fully classified yet.
The Slytherin seventh-year who had won Wednesday's final flight was in Ring A again on Thursday. He faced a Ravenclaw sixth-year in the morning, a student who moved quickly and cast in tight, efficient sequences. The Slytherin let him work for twelve minutes of active exchange longer than any match I had seen in either day without the match resolving. The Ravenclaw pressed, the Slytherin gave ground, the Ravenclaw pressed again, and the Slytherin continued giving ground in very specific, controlled increments.
"He is tiring him," Thomas said, from beside me.
"Aye," I said. "He gives exactly enough to keep the other student pressing without getting close enough to finish the match."
"And when the other student tires"
"He stops giving ground," I said.
At minute thirteen, the Ravenclaw's casts began losing their tight form, the sequences slightly less precise. The Slytherin stopped retreating, held his position, and countered two exchanges that he had been deflecting for twelve minutes. The Ravenclaw's response time was half a second slower. The Slytherin used the half-second and the match was over.
Thomas said nothing for a moment. Then: "That were very patient."
"It was," I said.
"Can thou do that?"
"Against most opponents," I said. "Against Prentiss, giving ground is not the problem. The problem is that he changes the terms of the exchange before the ground situation resolves. Waiting him out would require surviving a premise-shift I have not finished working out how to answer."
Thomas considered this. "What if thou didst change the terms first?" he said. "Before he doth."
I looked at him. That was, in fact, a reasonable thought. If the misdirection was a gaze-direction change that preceded each of Prentiss's premise-shifts, and if I could identify that signal early enough, I could alter the exchange before his shift completed. I would not be answering his change. I would be changing something he had not changed yet.
"That is a useful angle," I said.
He looked pleased in the way Thomas looked pleased when he had contributed something that landed, a short straightening of the back, a brief shift of expression that he generally did not comment on. He went back to watching Ring B.
The seventh-year matches ran from midafternoon into the failing light. The assistants set torches at the ring corners for the last flight, and the chalk lines brightened in the torchlight, the field taking on a different character under the orange flame than it had under the flat gray daylight.
The Gryffindor seventh-year with the red hair was in the last flight. Her opponent in the semifinal was a Slytherin sixth-year I had not watched closely on Wednesday, a compact student who held himself very still in exchanges and had a gaze I had noticed once was never directly at the wand.
He watched the casting shoulder.
I had noticed that on a brief Wednesday glance and set it aside. Now, watching the full match, I confirmed it: when the Gryffindor prepared to cast, his eyes went to her right shoulder rather than her wand hand. The shoulder dropped a fraction before the wand moved. He was reading a motion before the wand motion, the same way I had identified the Slytherin sixth-year on Wednesday reading the front-foot weight shift.
She did not know he was watching her shoulder. She used the gaze misdirection on the fourth exchange, looked at his guard for the full second, and he did not take the half-step. He held his ground, because the signal he was tracking her shoulder had not changed. He was reading a different layer than the one she was producing the tell on.
Her disarm attempt came from the angle the gaze had suggested, and he was not in that angle.
She adjusted quickly. The match lasted eight more exchanges before she landed a clean disarm on his wrist when he overreached on a press. She won.
But she had lost an exchange she should have won, and she had lost it because someone had found a different layer to read.
I wrote in the notebook: the tell works at the level the opponent is reading. Prentiss reads at a specific level, Eleanor identified the left hand. If he reads at the gaze level, the left-hand tell is redundant. Identify what level Prentiss reads at before using any misdirection against him.
That was a question I could not answer from the benches.
The final results went up before supper. The board showed seven students advancing from the upper years: the Slytherin seventh-year, two Ravenclaws, a Gryffindor, the Hufflepuff Priscilla, and the red-haired Gryffindor seventh-year, whose name I finally found on the board, Meredith Ashby.
Thomas read the list, said "Hm," and went to supper.
We walked back across the outer ward in the end of the light. The field behind us was being cleared by the assistants, stakes pulled and ropes coiled, the chalk left to wash out with the next rain. Thomas walked with his hands in his coat, probably running footwork in his head for lack of ground to run it on. Margaret had the notebook under her arm and was already reading back through what she had written, her lips moving slightly on the denser parts.
The main rounds started on Friday. I had two days.
I ate, said my evening prayer in the dormitory with the candle still lit rather than putting it out first, and thanked God specifically for Eleanor's eyes and Thomas's question at Ring A and Margaret's four pages of margin shorthand, and for the fact that whatever came on Friday, I was going to understand the exchange better than I had on Monday.
Then I put the candle out and went to sleep.