Chapter 194. The Duel.
Yorkshire Dales National Park.
A ripple moved through the air above a flat stretch of high ground, surrounded by endless white hills and lit by a bright moon and stars. Two figures emerged from a small shimmer: a tall young man of about twenty, his dark hair pulled back, wearing a long grey coat, dark trousers, and tall boots; and a girl with loose black hair down to her shoulder blades, in a dark gown that fell to her feet, her black boots just visible as they landed.
The two were Severus and Bellatrix. By nine o'clock, as agreed, they had finished their evening together and moved somewhere better suited for the duel ahead: a place where they definitely wouldn't disturb anyone.
The moment Severus eased his hold on her waist, the aristocrat dissolved into dark smoke, drifted fifteen meters away, and solidified again, wand already in hand, looking directly at him with clear intent.
"You know, that's slightly hurtful. It rather suggests you didn't enjoy our time together." He adopted an aggrieved expression, a note of theatrical disappointment in his voice. She rolled her eyes.
"Enough." She swept her wand sharply upward, and a blue projectile burst out, crossed the distance between them in under a second, and was a heartbeat away from striking Severus in the chest.
He simply raised his palm and extended one finger, which glowed with pale blue light. He deflected the spell to the right without much effort, surprising her.
"That's one of the advantages of nonverbal Protego. Once you learn to use it without the incantation, you can reshape it however you like," he explained with a smile, and the light on his finger formed a small figure of a man, who tilted its head and beckoned to Bellatrix with one hand. Her eyes narrowed.
"I'll remember that." She thrust her wand downward, and another projectile flew at him, trailing a blue flash. Without waiting to see where it landed, she dissolved into smoke, drifted to his right, materialized, fired another blue flash, dissolved again, and reappeared somewhere else entirely.
Again and again, the witch shifted her position and attacked from different angles. Her speed increased with each pass, her attacks growing sharper and more aggressive, but the small Protego figure floated calmly around Severus, turning aside every single one. Bellatrix could not hide her astonishment. He hadn't moved from his spot. He was simply watching her with a smile.
Finally, after the fortieth projectile, she took human form again and stood fifteen meters away, back in her original position.
"Your speed is good." He said it as a genuine compliment, and she ground her teeth. "But my control is on a completely different level. I'm not saying that to diminish your skill. I'm stating a fact."
"How can that even be Protego, and how do you see attacks without looking?!"
"It's not particularly difficult." Severus gave a mild nod, and the small Protego figure climbed up and settled on his shoulder. "It's a question of control and magical sensitivity. When you prepare to cast and speak the incantation, a large volume of magic begins moving through your body. It gathers in the chest and then releases through the wand, where runic principles shape it into the correct form and properties. Because of that, I can locate you by the sudden appearance of a magical source roughly ten times denser than the ambient air."
"But that's impossible! You'd have to manipulate Protego wandlessly, sustain its shape continuously, identify the exact angle each spell is coming from, and redirect it there, all in under a second!"
"Nothing is impossible. Everything can be learned, including this. For me, it took about six months. And incidentally, what we were just doing is an ideal exercise for improving the control and reaction time of any wizard who can use nonverbal Protego." He raised one finger in a faintly pedagogical way, as though explaining something obvious to a slow student. Her eye twitched. "Though if you were moving five times faster, you might have managed to land something. But anyway, let's continue." His wand appeared in his hand.
"Tch. Ventus!" She swept her wand in a circle and a rush of wind surrounded them. The snow on the ground shot upward, blinding him completely.
"Clever, but..." Warmth radiated from his body, and the snowflakes drifting around them melted instantly. But the attack wasn't over. The small Protego figure shot forward and caught a black serpent-like shape, which was actually the tip of her wand shooting toward his throat. "We did agree to avoid that sort of spell. Your serpent was aimed at my neck."
"I don't recall agreeing to anything!" The witch tugged her wand back with an irritated snap of her wrist. The figure shrank, released its grip, slipped free, and returned to its owner, resuming its original shape. She lowered her gaze to the ground, specifically to the mud, her irritation evident. All the snow around them had melted, and her gown was trailing in it. "Tergeo." She pointed her wand at herself, muttering quietly as she dried and cleaned the dirt from the hem. "Expulso!" she snapped, sending it at Severus.
He still didn't move. Protego took the shape of a half-meter shield, and the spell struck it half a second later with a modest explosion.
Then he looked down and saw dry roots threaded with green shoots, quickly coiling around his legs. At the same time, he felt an invisible wave of force rushing toward him.
Instead of looking alarmed, he broke into a grin. Fire engulfed the roots, and with a sharp upward sweep of his wand, he redirected the spell that would have knocked him unconscious. It flew upward and detonated against the barrier he had placed earlier to avoid alerting the Ministry of Magic.
But Bellatrix wasn't finished. Seeing her attack fail only spurred her on, and her expression mirrored the grin on his face. A gray aura raced along her arm and erupted from her wand toward Severus the next instant.
In answer, he sent a stream of fire from his own wand. It met the dark spell head-on and swallowed it over the next few seconds. But
"Everte Statum!" A shield slipped in behind him and blocked Bella's follow-up. "Viari Virgis!" she cried out with a wide, fierce grin, and an invisible whip snapped toward him.
It moved like a snake, bending around Protego, and was a fraction of a second from catching him across the back of the head. At the last instant, he caught it. It dissolved in his hand. He turned to face her, and she was breathing harder now but looked genuinely surprised.
"That was well done. Though that last spell was definitely lethal, and we did agree to avoid those."
"Stop talking like you couldn't have blocked them," she muttered, slightly out of breath. "You weren't fighting anywhere near your full strength. You were playing with me." She paused. "And even if I had used Unforgivables, you would definitely have survived. Did you think I wouldn't notice that from the moment this started, whatever you want to call it, you never moved, only defended? Not once."
"Fair enough." He scratched his cheek, looking a little sheepish. "If I had fought you at full strength, your chances of winning would have been zero. Only Dumbledore can actually give me a real fight right now."
"And my Lord?"
"I doubt it. I work primarily with the element of fire." He put his wand away and simply snapped his fingers. A fireball the size of a football materialized above his left hand. "Light and fire are the natural counters to darkness. My fire is somewhat unusual, but I won't tell you anything more about it until you agree to be my wife." He looked up at her with a shameless grin and a wink. She gave an exasperated snort and turned away.
"You wish..." Before she could finish, two arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her back against a broad, solid chest. "...for that."
"And I know exactly what you want." He spoke beside her ear, low enough for his warm breath to reach her, and felt her cheeks heat.
She made no attempt to pull free. She'd understood long ago that it was a pointless exercise. Severus was also exceptionally strong physically, and she'd already had occasion to observe exactly how strong he was during their time at the beach. She would have been lying if she claimed that sight had been unwelcome.
"You want to become stronger. You want to make certain what happened that day at Grimmauld Place never happens again. You want to depend on no one." With each quiet observation, her shoulders shifted.
"Are you a devil by any chance?" She looked up at his face, asking with genuine exhaustion.
"Who can say."
"What do you want in return?"
"Nothing. I already have everything I need." With a grin, he caught her earlobe between his teeth. "I'll be happy to teach you for nothing at all."
"If I could, I'd knock those teeth out." Bellatrix fixed him with a lethal look and did her best to push her embarrassment back down.
"A worthy ambition. I'm sure you'll achieve it someday. But in the meantime..." He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers, brief, only a few seconds, then drew back. "You'll just have to be patient, my little squirrel." The moment he let her go, he tilted his head smoothly to the right, letting the wand she'd aimed at his eye sail past harmlessly.
"Tch. Missed again." She turned away sharply, muttering, as she tucked the wand back into its holster with a look of dignified irritation.
"I'm leaving on business the day after tomorrow. I'll expect you here tomorrow at eleven sharp. Don't be late." She didn't answer and simply Disapparated from the valley, leaving Severus standing there alone, a smile on his face. She was remarkably shy when it came down to it.
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