187 Chapter 187: Bleeding Heart 

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14 February 1994, Hogwarts

Pandemonium would have been an apt way to describe Harry's surroundings. Everyone around him was either screaming or yelling at the horrifying scene on the stage. Harry could see a furious Dumbledore practically running towards Neville, who lay unconscious after his duel.

What a shame! It had started so well for the Longbottom scion. Seeing the boy who lived duel was one of the reasons many people actually bought tickets to what was essentially a glorified school tournament that students were forced to participate in. They were expecting a spectacle and by the gods did Neville deliver.

At the start, the duel was, by far, the most exciting one. Oh, it wasn't the most advanced in terms of magical ability, or who displayed the most power. No, it was the narrative, of the underdog, Neville, trying to defeat a more experienced opponent with sheer guts. Neville fought and showcased magic that Harry honestly didn't expect from the boy, with some duelling tactics mixed in. What had started as a sure thing for Warrington, ended up as a genuine competition. Harry could tell when the older boy started taking things seriously, and it was a short time after the duel began.

The most surprising thing, he had to admit, was seeing Neville get better as the duel progressed. The Gryffindor wasn't an idiot in the academics department by any means, in fact, he seemed to thrive when it came to practical application and learned very quickly while doing, as opposed to Harry preferring to learn by studying and experimenting. But Neville was objectively not a genius, especially not one capable of refining stances and spell chains in the middle of a duel.

It was unnatural. It felt more like a better wizard using Polyjuice to impersonate him for some reason, yet Harry knew that it was fundamentally still Neville with his Arcane Hearing. Sure, he was more focused, and more emotional, especially when it came to anger, but he was still Neville in his core.

This jump in ability just didn't make sense, especially in the span of seconds.

There was only one thing that could do anything like that was…

A family crest.

Daphne and Blaise jumped in ability and learning speed since their crests were officially unlocked. Tracy did not have that advantage and did need to spend extra time to catch up with them. It would be logical that most ancient wizards wanted their families to become powerful mages and would give them some kind of advantage. Was it some bleed-through, like relearning a spell in a way? No, it was subtler than that in Blaise and Daphne's cases.

Neville's crest had to be far more different than theirs. Crests were family things, and it was possible for someone to edit their crest so that they would be passed down differently. Harry could come up with hundreds of ways to achieve this result, but in the end, it was purely theoretical, not to mention that most of them presented a large chance of crippling, or even killing the inheritors of the crest.

It didn't explain the temperament changes though. Neville has become increasingly short-tempered and prone to anger since the previous summer.

Of course, that could be explained by Harry essentially gaslighting him, causing most of magical Britain to think that he was insane.

However, all theories about Neville's progress in magic were halted by the fact that the boy started throwing around spells that would be frowned upon in a duelling setting. Seriously, using an explosion charm to get rid of rats of all things, was just unreasonable, especially considering that the platform he was dueling on was made of wood.

Things were worrisome but not really critical until the boy used dark magic after Warrington cut his cheek. Of course, they were technically legal spells since they could be healed and countered easily enough, and the chances of even getting a scar afterwards would have been small at best, but it was a scandal in the making.

Seriously, Neville Longbottom, the boy who lived, the boy who assaulted Slytherins in his first year for being 'dark', the boy who Dumbledore liked to portray as his successor and the embodiment of the light, started casting dark spells to win a school duel.

The crowd was already murmuring at this point, and Warrington had a shocked expression on his face for the rest of the duel. Still, everything went relatively well, and the older boy did end up winning, except for the fact that Longbottom used a fucking wind-stabbing curse wandlessly moments before he passed out.

This was already a very illegal spell in duels due to the simple fact that it was invisible and there was a very real possibility that whoever it was used on would end up dead since it didn't slash like a cutting charm but impaled the target with an invisible wind blade. And to make it worse, it was also hard to heal since the areas impacted by the spell are deeper in the body than just the skin that might come with a Lacero.

And worse, it was cast wandlessly.

Dumbledore was probably going to claim it to be the result of accidental magic. He'd make it sound so reasonable, say that third-year students shouldn't really have the ability to do something as advanced as wandless casting and that it was probably just a moment of weakness mixed with accidental magic since the boy was obviously emotional and powerful. He would say that the dark magic was just remnants from the duel that mixed up with the wild and chaotic accidental magic.

It would be so easy for the masses to believe him. After all, they all thought he could do no wrong.

But that would be pure bullshit. Harry cast that spell before when he learned curse-breaking with Daphne. This was an exact replica of the spell down to every arithmetic variable. Neville Longbottom cast a spell wandlessly, and it was a fucking curse of all things.

People didn't really get wandless magic, or how it worked. Being able to do small things wandlessly was something that any wizard could learn. But it was completely restricted to fundamentally simple things, like moving small objects or summoning them. Anything complex was just beyond them; there was a reason why wands were so commonly used. Complicated magic required something to structure it, something like a wand, runes, or even Harry's magic circles.

Except for a few spells. To cast a spell wandlessly, and an actual spell at that not just pushing a little intent and hoping for the best, a person had to be extremely familiar to them. It was something that experts in their fields learned, and it was mostly by reflex. It wasn't impossible to see a healer casting a diagnostics charm, or a potion master taking out their kit, or using a specific spell to alter a potion in some way. It had to be a spell that they had used so much that it became mindless, something that was so ingrained in their daily life that they didn't even think about using it.

It wasn't something that a crest could do. The spells inside a family crest still had to obey the rules of magic. Blaise and Daphne still needed wands to cast their family spells. Wandless magic wasn't something that could be stored in a crest. It was not something that someone could inherit.

And yet, Neville Longbottom somehow cast a dark curse wandlessly, as if he had done so a thousand times before, and Cassius Warrington paid the price for it.

No one truly realized what had happened until the boy himself started to sway on his feet. A red stain grew on his chest, and people started to scream. The shields around the duel were shattered in the blink of an eye by Dumbledore and Flitwick, followed by a frantic Medi-witch that kept channelling one healing charm after another in very quick succession.

At that moment, Harry's respect for Madam Pomfrey grew considerably. Listening to what she was doing with his Arcane Hearing was amazing. It took her less than a second the realize that Warrington was hit with a dark spell, two seconds to isolate the dark magic and stop it from spreading, and five seconds to tell what the spell was before countering it. She healed his internal organs, and the young Slytherin could hear Warrington's song start to stabilize slightly.

It literally took her ten seconds to take a dying boy and stabilize him enough that a potion regimen would likely heal him in a couple of days.

She conjured a few bandages, probably designed to deal with dark magic, and levitated the unconscious boy outside the arena. Even Dumbledore hadn't even tried to get in her way. Not that he would care, since he was checking on his precious boy who lived, who was simply stunned, and maybe a little bruised.

People did not mess with healers, and there was a good reason for that. The healing guild was, by far, the most ancient guild in the wizarding world. And while healers took vows before and after learning healing magic, no one could unearth their secrets. Yet should someone attack or even kill a healer, they were banned from any sort of magical healing in the world. Not a single healer would touch them. A simple curse could kill a mage if they couldn't counter it in time, and healing potions could only go so far.

And considering how many people just happened to befall seemingly harmless accidents right after killing a healer, the guild probably arranged for them to happen as warnings.

There was a reason why no one was insane enough to attack magical hospitals. Grindelwald hadn't done it, and even Voldemort didn't touch Saint Mungo's during his civil war. People just stopped pressuring them to join sides since they were bound by their oaths to not take sides in conflicts, to simply heal the sick no matter which side they came from. And in turn, people respected their neutrality.

"Is he going to be alright?" someone on his right muttered.

It was Daphne, who looked pale and horrified by what she had witnessed. For all their adventure together, this was probably the first time she had seen someone with such a wound. With the Basilisk, the whole thing was instant, and the Peruvian Instant Darkness Fog did obscure most of the violence in Hogsmeade.

Harry had the urge to reassure her, "Warrington will be fine. He wasn't hit anywhere really important, and Madam Pomfrey was able to handle things before it got too out of hand. He's lucky, though. If he was hit just an inch up, things would have ended a lot worse, and if Madam Pomfrey hadn't been there, he would have bled out before anyone could take him to the hospital wing."

The blonde shook her head, "I recognized the curse… He was very lucky."

Harry nodded in understanding, but before he could say anything, Dumbledore came back to the stands and spoke up with an enchanted voice that spread all around the room, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I understand your concerns regarding the recent events in today's duelling tournament. Rest assured, both Mr Warrington and Mr Longbottom are receiving the best care and will make a full recovery. This incident, however, serves as a poignant reminder of the unpredictable nature of magic, especially when not fully controlled. The tournament shall proceed, but I implore everyone to exercise the utmost caution and restraint. Remember, the spirit of this event is in skill and sportsmanship, not in power alone."

Well, he fucking called it, didn't he? Honestly, Dumbledore was getting predictable in his old age. The rest of the spectators didn't seem to see it; the crowd murmured in response, some still visibly shaken by the intensity of the duel. Dumbledore's words seemed to bring a sense of calm over the audience, who listened to him like sheep and Bagman announced the following duel.

Harry watched the rest of the duels with a lot of thoughts and theories in his head about Longbottom's behaviour. When Tracy won against Dean Thomas, and Blaise defeated Carl Hopkins, a student a year above him in Gryffindor, he clapped and congratulated them absentmindedly.

He had purposefully ignored Neville's recent behaviour out of guilt. Something was wrong with the boy and Warrington had almost died because of it. This behaviour was not normal, this temper definitely was not natural for a teenager to have. People didn't switch from irritation to murderous rage during the duel.

He had seen it before during the first task, but Harry thought it would have been a one-time event. He had to talk to Neville as soon as possible. Yes, with his mindset, Harry decided to visit him in the infirmary once the duels were over. They had a lot to talk about.

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The confrontation with Neville should be in the next chapter. I tried to keep things interesting from Harry's perspective and Dumbledore's expected reaction to Neville's mess. As, usual, please let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions.

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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.