20 Deathmatch

With the farting-frogs-problem solved, everything slowly returned to the usual normality at Hogwarts. It was also Friday, which means that I had another date with my hot red-haired professor Lily Potter. Paulina came along, still huffing and puffing with slight annoyance because I told her that I would claim my kiss when she least expected it.

Lily Potter was also curious about how I managed to get rid of the farting frogs so effortlessly, but I simply replied that a true magician reveals tell his tricks.

"Fair enough," Lily replied with a small huff before hopping on her table, crossing her long slender legs that ended in black heels, while wearing a tight red blouse tucked in a black high-waisted pencil skirt.

Her outfit, along with her long, wavy, and fiery-red hair, full red lips, and light-tanned and flawless skin made her look quite seductive right now - even more so because I was sitting in a chair that was right in front of her. I couldn't help but fantasize about Lily stepping down to plant her shapely arse on my lap.

"But I still wonder who might be behind the prank," Lily continued, giving me a small smile after Paulina turned away to inspect the door of her office.

"Yeah, these pranksters must be pretty smart and talented to pull something like this off. Don't you agree, Paulina?" I chuckled, watching the girl in question redden. She stayed silent but nodded fiercely while avoiding Lily's eyes.

Lily flashed me a smirk. "Not so smart as they believe themselves. But the charm-work on the frogs impressed Headmaster Dumbledore, so he decided to reward the culprits for their masterfully executed prank."

"Ehm, well…" I started but ended up at a loss for words. Paulina turned to give me a nervous look, and I just shrugged my shoulders in response, silently telling her that there is no need to fear any punishment.

"Since you two are so proficient with animation charms..." Lily began before hopping from the table. She walked around it and used her wand to levitate a large cardboard box stuffed with various toys on her table, everything from stuffed animals and robots to superhero figurines and dinosaurs.

"We are going to duel today with the help of these toys," Lily explained before she fished a Captain America figure out of the box. "I want each of you to pick a toy and enchant it to your best ability. Everything that you think will improve the combat ability of your toys. And when everyone is ready, we are going to apply the animation charm on our champions and let them fight for us."

"To the death?" I asked with a fierce grin, taking delight in the idea.

Lily nodded slowly, giving me a devilish smile. "Why, yes?"

Paulina looked horrified, but she still rushed to the box to claim the T-Rex toy for herself, sticking her tongue out at me when she noticed my expression dropping.

In the end, I found myself a blonde barbie puppet that I equipped with the broadsword of a barbarian action figure.

After each of us got their champion, we started getting to work but still discussed what charms we wanted to use and why. Lily gave us a few tips and told us about a bunch of charms that even I didn't know about. It was a competition, but we still helped each other improve and find the best charms for our champion.

In the end, what mattered most was the quality and efficiency of your charms and spells, not the quantity or the rarity.

Esoteric, exotic, or simply put 'rare' spells weren't always the best. Rare pieces of magic were usually rare because they were too complicated and time-consuming for the masses to learn, or sometimes simply too impractical.

The same goes for books, I realized. Thick and ancient tomes, rare books, were often filled with stuff that only made sense for the author or those that wrote it. I actually had the problem with some of the books I found in the Room of Hidden Things.

For example, one book offered a curse that would turn the kidney of your opponent into a piece of hot coal. It was an okay spell but extremely restricted since it required you to hit the area where the kidney was located, and fucking it up would simply do nothing and allow your opponent to cut you down with something like the basic but effective severing charm, Diffindo.

Having said that, I stopped pondering on random things and concentrated back on my little barbie girl, slowly turning her into a proud warrior princess.

"Johnny, what are you doing?!" Paulina exclaimed in outrage when she saw me painting fierce tattoos on the body of my barbie puppet.

"Barbie is about to fight Captain America and a T-Rex. She needs the proper outfit and makeup for that," I explained in a serious tone while drawing a pentagram on the forehead of the blonde puppet.

"She looks like possessed by a demon!" Paulina argued, pointing at the gaping maw full of spiky teeth that split Barbie's toned tummy.

Aside from that, Barbies eyes were burning with a glaring red glow, her mouth had two fangs like an orc, and she sported two bat-like wings on her back. Her body was also packed with bulging muscles, and the gaping maw in her stomach was able to breathe a cone of fire at her opponent. The broadsword she was holding was twice the size of her body, pitch-black as if made out of onyx and charmed to burn with an ominous, blue flame.

"Well, since she is about to fight Captain America, it means that my Barbie will be the villain of the story," I explained as if it was obvious. "But look at your own champion. Lily helped you to turn to the tail of your T-Rex into a chainsaw. How unfair is that?!"

"It's us girls against you," Lily huffed in amusement.

The only adjustment she made was to equip her Captain America figurine with two whips. But her champion would ride Paulina's T-Rex anyway, and the two would fight against my own. It was a fun challenge, and I invested all my creativity and available magic into my barbie puppet, turning her into the Lady of Pain.

When the actual duel was about to start, the three of us cast an animation charm on our champions. It was a fairly simple spell, and one would only require to fuel it with the right command. The more skilled the practitioner, the 'smarter' the animated object would turn out.

"For the first duel of the evening, it will be the terrifying Barbie, the Lady of Pain, against the heroic Captain America and his trusted companion, Mr. Rexxy," Lily announced with a fierce smile. "The duel begins the moment countdown reaches zero."

She cast a spell that made a sparkling '3' appear midair above the area were our puppets would fight to the death. The arena was the center of Lily's office. We simply pushed some of her furniture away before she casually painted a large, white ring on the floor.

And when the countdown eventually displayed the number '0,' we all lifted the Freezing Charm placed on our champions, causing the three puppets to rush forward and clash in the middle of the makeshift arena.

However, before reaching the center, Barbie flapped her wings and jumped up to fly above Captain America and Mr. Rexxy. The gaping maw in her tummy exhaled a jet of blue fire at the hero and his mount, causing them to melt a little.

Paulina stomped her feed, growling angrily. "Jump and bite her, Mr. Rexxy. Show her your teeth!"

In reply, the animated T-Rex leaped up and snapped after Barbie's legs. Captain America assaulted my champion with his two whips. But they both failed miserably to land an attack because my champion started to spin around with her large, burning broadsword creating a blazing hot ring of fire around her.

Before Captain America and Mr. Rexxy could prepare their next attack, the black sword my demonic barbie champion was holding suddenly was flying towards them, viciously impaling the carnivorous dinosaur into the ground. That attack was followed by another jet of blue flames, showering Steve in intense hotness that causes his head to melt and fall off.

With that, the duel was over, and Barbie won her first deathmatch!

"Johnny, did you engrave your Barbie with runes that were infused with the essence of your Flammarys spell?" Lily inquired in wonder, visibly impressed.

I nodded with a grin. "There are no rules when it comes to a fight to the death."

Paulina fumed, moving over to kneel before her dead champion. "Mr. Rexxy…"

"He died an honorable death," I muttered to Paulina, giving her a pat on the back. "But nobody can go against Barbie anyway. Acting against her is seeking death!"

"Very well," Lily said before snatching the barbie puppet for herself. "We are going to take Barbie as our champion for the next duel."

Casting a Reparo on her Mr. Rexxy, Paulina looked up with a smirk. She joined Lily's tyrannic rule along with her champion. Both girls flashed me challenging smiles that I could simply not ignore, so I decided to play along and grabbed myself a bunch of toys before shaping the ultimate harbinger of destruction.

Lily and Paulina's faces morphed to a look of horror when they saw me using my fire-magic to melt several toys to create a molten abomination.

As the evening continued, I ended up winning two more duels before losing my last one. Lily stole each victorious champion of mine and then made me create a new one that would fight the old ones all at once – inclusive Paulina's Mr. Rexxy.

It was a totally awesome practice and a fun way to learn new magics, and use them in creative ways. The ambition to win the duels made me and Paulina put more effort into our charms and improve with each new turn.

Lily seemed to enjoy her time just as much. She introduced us to a bunch of new charms, pointed out flaws in our spellwork, and offered ideas and suggestions on how to improve the performance of our champions.

…

...

...

While I enjoyed my time at Hogwarts, Jessica and Felicia began to adjust their lives to their new powers.

Jessica became bolder and was hunting down thugs and shady individuals with her new 'Power Girl' persona en masse. My presence in this world caused an entirely new hero to be born, a more powerful Jessica Jones that was like a weaker version of Superman in some way.

She wasn't the classical hero either. Power Girl would brutalize every villain she came across, thrashing them so hard that they required a few months of hospitalization to recover from her no so gentle care.

That behavior made her extremely popular with the population of New York. The police didn't like that at all, but I already warded off Jessica's place with basic muggle-repelling charms to keep annoying individuals away – and it wouldn't influence her since she was immune to mind tricks of a telepathic or magical nature. Jessica paid her rent in cash and wasn't registered anywhere. She stayed under the radar and lived on her own ever since her family died in the accident that turned her superhuman.

All in all, Jessica started to really enjoy her new heroine life.

Well, as for Felicia, she didn't attract much attention to herself since she was still in school and living with her mother. Also, the cognitive enhancement she got from the perfected Extremis Virus evoked the desire in her to visit the Empire State University. She would continue to train and all that, but we discussed it and found it a good idea since I still had to absolve some years of education myself.

And since Felicia's newly gained enhancement made her quite the eye-candy - even more so than before - her mother Anastasia wanted her to accompany her to the lavish parties of her clients. But my lover refused and told her mother that she wanted to practice martial arts and parkour instead. Felicia knew that I would sooner or later gain the ability to simply make people spew all their secrets to me, and so she didn't bother to waste her time with lusty old men and their awkward heirs.

It was strangely satisfying to see my two lovers being satisfied with their lives.

Of course, I was quite pleased as well. The link we got through the sinfully erotic sex-ritual allowed me to feel what they feel and vice versa. Because of this, we would experience orgasms of epic proportions. That alone made Felicia and Jessica literally addicted to my manhood.

We also discovered that my seed had beneficial effects on their bodies. I didn't know what was going on exactly, but it appeared that I was able to infuse them with some essence my fire harvested from me devouring dragon meat. Stuffing myself full with dragon meat before we had sex would cause my jizz to have drug-like effects on my two lovers.

It made them slightly magical, and I basically turned them into squibs. That discovery boggled my mind to no end. But I liked that very much, and my girls were now practicing Occlumency. The magic in their bodies reacted to the technique and was beginning to form the fundament of a mindscape inside their minds.

As interesting as the situation was, I couldn't split my mind that much and decided to investigate that new development later. My priority right now was to learn spells, master them, and then learn more spells.

I also wanted to develop a few more fancy fire-magic tricks!

Everything of the element of fire would have the potential to be cast fully wandlessly by me in the future. That was an enormous advantage.

Usually, the wand is superior because wandlessly cast spells required more magic to manifest, and not all spells could be cast through your fingertips. Stuff of a destructive nature, like the Blasting Curse - Confringo, would end up harming the caster too, if attempted to be cast wandlessly.

The wand didn't just min-max your magic-power output, which greatly improved your spellcasting efficiency, but also protected your body from the destructive energies of certain types of spells. I mean, only a fool would try to cast the Cruciatus Curse without a wand.

The truth behind wandless magic was that the vast majority, inexperienced individuals, are actually able to perform it, but they would always end up overpowering their spells and cause their subconscious mind to react and prevent the spell from manifesting. The body instinctively knows what will happen if the magic used for the spell goes rampant, and to prevent any damage, a biological security system would save the individual from committing self-mutilation.

That's why wandless magic demanded such a high focus and skill from everyone that attempted to perform it. If focus and skill weren't available in enough quantities, your body would simply refuse to let you harm yourself.

But the wand was a double-edged sword in that regard. It made casting magic easier and efficient but also caused the vast population to become negligent. It seemed that nobody bothered with wandless magic these days because the wand still remained superior regardless.

Yet, everyone seemed to have forgotten that magic was part of our biology. It was like a muscle. Constant training and practice would cause your muscle mass to increase, which would make you stronger, obviously. The same theory applies to magic – and your mind, of course.

Wandless magic was a sign for a powerful individual because such people usually practiced quite a lot. Dumbledore was basically a fitness freak. He was most likely so powerful due to the simple fact that he practiced all kinds of magic to the point that it passively enhanced his own magical potential.

There were no complicated rituals required or secret techniques. All you had to do was to train, practice, exercise, improve, and whatever. Hard work pays off!

It was just speculation at this point, but I think that learning how to cast all my fiery spells wandlessly would help me understand my own power better.

Furthermore, I could already safely tell that I wouldn't harm myself by trying to wandlessly cast spells of the element of fire. I already had the 'natural' ability to breathe fire and guessed that I only needed to learn how to successfully control and manipulate the fiery energies of my body in order to be able to wandlessly manifest all these juicy spells that I had in mind.

But before I would even attempt to do that, I had to master all these spells with the wand. It may be possible to directly try them out without a wand, but that path was most definitely an awfully time-consuming one.

That's what makes the wand superior. That tool allowed every Tom, Dick, and Harry to practice magic and more easily learn difficult spells that would otherwise require too much focus, skill, and discipline.

With my motivation pumped-up to enormous levels, I plunged into another session of intensive studies, drowning myself in dusty books and ambitious ideas.

…