Magical Marvel: The Rise of Arthur Hayes-Chapter 268: Round Two

The playful atmosphere of the first bout had evaporated. The air on the makeshift dueling pitch was heavy now, charged with static.

Harry Potter stood forty paces away. He wasn't smiling. His jaw was set, his stance low, his wand arm tucked close to his body. He looked like a man facing a fearsome Dark Wizard, not a friend at a family gathering.

On the other side of the field, Ariadne had changed too. At her back hung a scabbard. Simple black leather. Unassuming.

"Round two," Sirius announced, his voice lacking the earlier mirth. He raised a hand. "Begin!"

Harry didn't lead with Expelliarmus this time.

He stamped his foot and swept his wand in a wide horizontal arc.

"Herbivicus Maxima!"

The grass in a twenty-foot radius around him rippled and transformed. Blades of green became a carpet of thick, thorny vines that surged outward in every direction, racing across the ground toward Ariadne like a living tide.

"Now that's more like it," Arthur murmured approvingly from the sidelines.

But Harry wasn't done. He was not going to embarrass himself again by losing to a Muggle in front of his kids. Even if that Muggle was enhanced.

His wand moved in quick, precise slashes. Three chunks of earth ripped themselves from the ground and reshaped mid-air. Legs formed. Teeth. Muscle. In the space of two seconds, three stone wolves the size of Great Danes hit the ground running, snarling with voices made of grinding rock.

Harry Potter was holding nothing back.

"Three simultaneous constructs while maintaining a large area spell," Amelia observed quietly. "That's Hit Wizard level."

"Beyond that," Sirius corrected, genuine pride in his voice. "That is War Magic."

The wolves charged Ariadne from three angles, moving with the coordinated intelligence of a pack. The vines closed behind them, cutting off retreat.

Ariadne didn't retreat.

She reached for her back.

Shing.

A single sword appeared in her hand.

It was gorgeous. Deadly gorgeous. The blade was black as midnight, seeming to drink the dying sunlight, but the edge hummed with a faint, terrifying glow. Adamantium.

Then a faint white aura bloomed along the edges of the blade. Arthur smiled.

Chi.

Ariadne was serious too.

The first wolf lunged for her throat just as vines whipped up around her ankles, trying to snare her. She moved before they finished rising.

A blur of motion. Her blade cut through the vines and the wolf in one seamless sweep. The construct split cleanly, collapsing into gravel before it touched the earth.

The second wolf bolted from her left. Harry sent a cluster of vines snapping at her arms to throw off her aim, but Ariadne spun through them. A backhand slash, faster than the vines could tighten, bisected the wolf from jaw to tail. Stone fragments exploded outward like shrapnel.

The vines surged again, rising four, five at a time, striking like serpents. Harry was controlling them masterfully, coordinating the pressure points, forcing her to divide her attention. But Ariadne's footwork was too clean, her blade too sharp. She moved through the chaos with terrifying economy. Every step cutting. Every cut clearing a path.

The third wolf hesitated, circling, using the shifting vines as cover. Ariadne let it have the illusion of an opening. She turned her back, deliberately, even as the vines lunged upward to bind her torso.

The wolf pounced.

Ariadne dropped to one knee. Her sword flashed upward.

The wolf's weight drove it straight onto the chi-charged blade. It split apart with a grinding shriek, crumbling to dust above her. A sharp twist of her wrist and she sliced through the vines trying to coil around her waist.

Three wolves. Dozens of vine strikes. Four seconds.

Nothing left but rubble and severed tendrils twitching on the ground.

"Merlin's beard," Susan whispered.

The children were screaming. Elena was on her feet, fists pumping. Even James, loyal to his father, had gone quiet with wide eyes.

Ariadne didn't stop to admire her work. She was already moving, surging across the field at full speed, closing the distance. Dodging spells with the same enchanting grace as before, swaying and weaving through Harry's barrage like smoke through a fence.

Harry saw the repeat of the sequence that had ended him in round one.

Not this time.

Close range was death. So he'd keep her far away.

His wand traced a circle overhead. "Ventus Magnus!"

Wind erupted from the center of the field. Not a gust. A wall. A concentrated hurricane-force blast that expanded outward in every direction, flattening the grass, scattering the vine remnants, and hitting Ariadne like a freight train.

She couldn't dodge this. There was no gap. No angle. Just raw force across the entire pitch.

She planted her feet and crossed her arms in front of her face, but it was nowhere near enough. The wind caught her full-on and hurled her backward.

She flew twenty feet, hit the ground, and rolled. But even mid-tumble, her body moved with trained precision. She converted the crash into a controlled landing and came up on her feet without a scratch.

Back to her original distance. Forty paces.

Harry, meanwhile, had not stopped.

He didn't cast at Ariadne. He cast at the world around her.

His wand swept in a wide, flowing motion. "Aguamenti Maxima!"

A massive wave of water erupted from his wand, flooding the arena in seconds. The ground turned into a swamp.

Ariadne's boots splashed as the water reached her. She looked down, then up at Harry, trying to read his next move.

She didn't read it fast enough.

"Glacius Totalus!"

The water flash-froze. The entire dueling pitch turned into a sheet of ice. Ariadne's boots were instantly encased, stuck to the ground.

Harry didn't blink. He raised his wand again.

"Incendio!"

He stabbed forward. A stream of white-hot fire roared across the pitch.

Harry wasn't worried about hurting Ariadne. Arthur was right there. If things went wrong, Arthur would handle it. Harry knew he could not pull punches against her if he wanted to win.

The fire closed the distance in less than a second.

Ariadne, however, was not going to be a standing target.

Her feet lit up with the white glow of Chi. She flexed her legs and jumped, shattering the ice encasing her boots and launching herself into the air to avoid the firestream.

But landing on ice was tricky. When she touched down, her footing slipped. She went down to one knee.

Harry saw the opening.

"Stupefy! Stupefy! Incarcerous!"

He sent a rapid-fire chain of stunning spells to catch her while she was down.

Ariadne rolled. She slid across the ice, her body moving with unnatural fluidity, dodging red bolts of magic by inches. It wasn't graceful, it was a scramble for survival, but with the last spell missing her shoulder, she was back on her feet.

Harry pressed the attack.

He was firing in rhythm now, each spell timed to land as Ariadne found her balance, keeping her on the back foot. Ropes erupted from the frozen ground at her feet. Jagged spikes of ice, repurposed from his own frozen terrain, rose in her path. Vines, still alive beneath the surface, punched through the ice to grab at her ankles.

Ariadne stumbled. Caught herself. Slipped again. Blocked a vine with her blade. Jumped a spike. Dodged a Stupefy that she really should have been too off-balance to dodge.

And then something clicked.

Her feet stopped fighting the ice. Her weight shifted. Her centre of gravity dropped. And she started to move.

She was skating.

Not the awkward shuffle of someone trying not to fall. Real skating. Smooth, low, fast. Her boots slid across the frozen surface with the fluid confidence of someone who'd adapted to the terrain in real time.

She was faster on ice than she'd been on grass.

"You're kidding me," Sirius said.

She rushed forward. Harry sent vines surging up through cracks in the ice. She skated around them without slowing, weaving between the grasping tendrils like a skier through gates. Ropes shot at her from the sides. She cut them mid-stride, her blade carving through the magical bindings without breaking rhythm. Jagged rocks erupted in her path. She jumped, cleared them, landed on the ice, and kept sliding.

Closer. Thirty yards. Twenty.

Harry was sweating now. Nothing slowed her. Every obstacle she adapted to. Every terrain change she turned to her advantage. Every spell she dodged or cut or simply outran.

Ten yards.

Harry gathered his breath and his magic. One more reset. One more chance to create distance.

"Ventus Magnus!"

The hurricane blast erupted outward. A wall of pure concussive force that had sent her flying the first time.

Ariadne looked at the wind coming at her.

She didn't stop. She didn't retreat. She didn't brace.

Still skating forward, she raised her blade in front of her. Chi surged along the edge, brighter than before.

She swung.

Slash.

She cut the wind.

The blade split the air itself. The gale parted around her like a river striking a boulder, the two halves howling past on either side while she glided through the calm center of her own making.

The crowd went silent.

She was five yards from Harry now. Too close. Far too close.

Harry's wand snapped up. One final spell. Everything he had left.

"EXPELLIARMUS!"

Close range. Full power. Unavoidable.

The red bolt leapt from his wand and crossed five yards in the blink of an eye.

It was too close. Ariadne couldn't dodge.

But she trusted her knife and slashed.

The red bolt of magic hit the Adamantium edge.

ZZZ-CRACK.

The spell split. Two halves of red light peeled apart like water striking the prow of a ship, spiraling harmlessly into the ground on either side of her. Ariadne ran straight through the gap.

The audience's eyes went wide.

"She just..." Susan started.

"Cut a spell in half," Arthur finished, grinning. "Chi-enhanced Adamantium. Interesting."

"Interesting?" Sirius turned to him, incredulous. "She just sliced magic in two. That's not interesting, that's insane."

On the field, Harry's shock lasted exactly one second. One second too long.

Ariadne closed the last three feet in a blink. Her free hand caught his wand wrist. Her blade came to rest against the side of his neck, the flat of the Adamantium cool against his skin.

"Dead," she said softly. "Again."

—

This time the silence lasted five full seconds.

Then the ground shook. Not from magic. From the children.

"AUNTIE ARI! AUNTIE ARI!"

Elena was leading the chant. Tristan was stomping. Eleanor and Lily had joined in, clapping in rhythm.

"THAT WAS WICKED!" James Sirius Potter screamed, forgetting entirely that his dad had lost. "SHE CUT THE WIND!"

Ariadne withdrew the blade and sheathed it behind her back. She offered Harry her hand.

Harry took it. He was breathing hard. Sweat soaked his shirt. His magical reserves were noticeably drained. He'd thrown everything he had at her in that second round and it still hadn't been enough.

But he was smiling.

"Full power. Full knowledge. Everything I had," he said, shaking his head slowly, but with genuine admiration. "And you still got me. Fair and square."

He looked down at the wand in his hand, then back at Ariadne. "But how? You cut my wind. You cut a spell. How is that even possible?"

Ariadne shrugged. "Practice. I have an impossible person to catch up to. That drives me."

They both glanced at Arthur, who raised his cup in a mock toast.

Arthur wasn't surprised. He'd known how this would end before Sirius had even called "Begin."

People would focus on the spectacle - the wind-cutting, the spell-splitting - and miss the real reason.

Ariadne hadn't won because she was enhanced. She'd won because she had trained with him, a powerful wizard, for years. She also fought in places that didn't appear on any map, against things that made Dark Wizards look like playground bullies.

Her combat experience exceeded everyone here combined, except Arthur himself. She was always going to win this fight.

But Harry had surprised him.

The second round had been genuinely impressive. Terrain manipulation, environmental chaining, water into ice into fire, vines coordinated with constructs, wind as a tactical reset. That wasn't dueling. That was war magic. The years of teaching DADA and occasionally working real operations with the DMLE had sharpened Harry into something formidable. Dark Wizards out there wouldn't stand a chance against the man Arthur had just watched fight.

And he'd done it all while holding back. Non-lethal spells only, even against an enhanced opponent. If Harry ever expanded his repertoire beyond the self-imposed limits of a teacher and protector, if he learned magic designed not to subdue but to end, the conversation about where he ranked among wizards would change entirely.

Give him the right push, Arthur thought, and he might surpass Dumbledore.

He kept that thought to himself.

—

The adults filtered down to the arena. Praise for Ariadne came from every direction. Sirius, who had just lost forty Galleons, was the loudest.

"That was incredible," Amelia said. "The way you moved through those spells—"

"The blade cutting the Expelliarmus," Sirius said. "I've never seen anything like it."

"If I could get the DMLE trained to move like that—" Susan started.

"The ice skating," Harry added, shaking his head. "You adapted to the terrain faster than I could change it. Every time I altered the battlefield, you turned it into an advantage. That's not just enhancement. That's something else."

"Combat intelligence," Arthur said from his chair. "The enhancement gives her the physical tools. What makes her dangerous is how fast she processes a fight. She doesn't just react. She adapts. In real time. To anything."

Harry looked at Ariadne with new eyes. Not the friendly respect of a colleague. The wary appraisal of a warrior who understood, finally, what he was looking at.

Ariadne accepted the praise with a small nod. Then she said, quietly but clearly:

"I appreciate it. But I'm nothing compared to what's out there."

The compliments stopped.

"Out there?" Harry repeated.

"What do you mean, 'out there'?" Sirius asked.

Ariadne looked at Arthur.

Arthur set down his cup. The easy smile faded. He looked around at his friends. His family. People he trusted with his life, who had trusted him with theirs for over a decade.

They deserved to know.

"I think," Arthur said, "it's time for a movie night."

He looked at Winky, who had been celebrating Ariadne's win.

"Winky. The Pensieve, please."