[1990 Pt.18]

Nathan flexed his abs to start ascending as he chased after the two wizards who were trying to merge with Weasley's group. He could see how frustrated they were getting with him.

Nathan rapidly ascended even as he blocked the spells they were throwing at him with a Protego Duo to scatter the spells to the side even as he fired fireballs at them which they evaded with aerial manoeuvring. Frankly, they were far better fliers than Nathan, who only spent time practising his broom flying very sparingly.

His broom was of excellent make but Nathan was aware that it would not catch up to the brooms without some assistance. So he maintained the shield and pointed his wand towards the lake before he grinned and intoned, "Ventus Magnitudo."

A massive blast of wind erupted from Nathan's wand. The resulting acceleration from the blast hurled him so fast that Nathan was sure that without the impervious charm that he had placed upon himself, he would have been knocked out by the G-force.

Nathan did not give that chilling possibility much time to take root and focused more on the thrill that he got from seeing the baffled looks of the two lions that had been running from him. He could see them trying to come to terms with his sudden position between each other in real-time and, that horror and confusion brought Nathan immense pleasure.

"GIVE ME YOUR FACE!" growled Nathan as he lunged to his left and grabbed the jaw of the wizard on his left side with his wand free arm before Nathan tossed the surprised boy at his teammate in a show of inhuman strength.

How did Nathan exhibit such strength? Wandless magic was a wondrous thing that was limited only by how long a wizard could use it and the wizard's personal understanding of the nature of the magic. It was not limited by the strength of the magic but by how long a wizard could use it. It happened only in short bursts, so Nathan used it for short impulses of almost inhuman abilities, like the Blink Step or bursts of inhuman strength.

Nathan's opponents did not disagree or they could not as they hit each other. Nathan focused on which of the two wizards seemed to be less dizzy and hit the other one with a stunning spell. The spell hit the dizzier of the pair, and he immediately slumped on his teammate who grunted from the additional baggage. Nathan followed his stunning charm with a finite. The warming and the sticking charms on the brooms unravelled and Nathan waved his non-wand arm as he focused his intent on what he wanted to do.

The effect of his wandless magic was immediate when the stunned wizard was dragged onto the broom of the still awake one and his broom and his wand were summoned into Nathan's arm.

Nathan smiled a little as the remaining wizard uttered profanities while desperately trying to keep himself from slipping as both he and his friend were still slightly wet from their tussle with Nathan's earlier water spell. The wizard was also trying to keep his friend from falling.

"You two are out of the fight," Nathan announced in a clear voice and the shuffling slowed as the wizard looked at him and his grip tightened on his wand as if suddenly realising that Nathan hadn't gone away after he and his friend found himself cuddling with each other unwillingly.

"Am I clear?" Nathan punctuated his question with a light tugging on the boy's broom wandlessly and the boy grimaced before nodding.

Nathan nodded in satisfaction and said, "You should land and dry yourself properly. We are a hardy bunch, but that doesn't need to be put to the test if unnecessary. Or you can try to fight and find out if we wizards will survive falling into water from long heights."

Saying this much, Nathan flew away, leaving behind two utterly disturbed and traumatised seventh years.

[December 1, 1990.]

The gauntlet had ended quickly after Nathan joined the rest of the Hufflepuffs. The consequences of the match, however, Nathan knew would last for quite some time.

Charlie Weasley had apologised to both Tonks and Alan after the match in front of the two houses. The tension between the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors was so high even a few days later that it felt like things would devolve into fights at any moment. This extended cold war slowly spread into Ravenclaw and Slytherin too. The Slytherins stayed out of the fights personally but still did everything to add oil to the fire. The Ravenclaw house's reaction to the matter was very individual. Some of them remained neutral while some actively took sides.

The professors had picked up on the problem but they had not done anything to intervene or mediate between the house. Nathan considered that to be a good thing. The professors often overshot their measures to the extremes and that would do nothing but breed resentment. Their medieval mindsets about teaching and punishment sometimes ruffled his modern feathers the wrong way.

Nathan thanked Albus Dumbledore in his mind for his strict no-hitting or no-magical punishment policy. A policy that was actually very unpopular among most of the parents, whether they be magical or non-magical. Nathan could hardly care about their backward opinions and he was positive that if Dumbledore had not put the policy in place, then a staff like Snape or Filch would have definitely tried to hit him eventually, especially in his later years at Hogwarts, and would come to regret their decision dearly.

In the days following the gauntlet, he found himself spending a lot of time in the large room that was contained within his school supplies trunk. What was Nathan trying to do? He was trying to create a Christmas gift for Harry Potter.

The conflict between the houses had served as a wake-up call for Nathan. His knowledge of canon was neither absolute nor was it all-encompassing. The overall consequences of the scuffle between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor had only benefited Nathan, but that had only been because Nathan himself seized the opportunity to finally show his fellow students that he was a gifted student and a terror with his wand.

He had not exposed anything other than a massive talent for duelling and spellwork which might raise some eyebrows but it still was not enough to set off any alarms.

No, what Nathan was more worried about was his own passiveness. He had grown lax due to his great leaps in magic and that was not something he wanted. Nathan knew that he was weaker than both Albus Dumbledore and Riddle in magical knowledge. He could probably duel them to a standstill in the future, but by no means would his magical knowledge ever match theirs. Not in the timeline he needed anyway.

Nathan had been focusing too much on magic, which, while a good thing was not how he could be better prepared for Riddle. Riddle would be like a force of nature. The best way for Nathan to fight the noseless bastard would be by damaging his powerbase and making it easier for Potter to finish him off and thus Nathan scratched away runes on the outer bands of the gold ring he was making with the help of melted galleons that he had recently alchemically bestowed with certain aspects of the Aether, Wind and Earth elements.

His magic couldn't let him bulldoze his way into the absolute victory he was aiming for so Nathan would use magic to manipulate everything to how he wanted it.

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Author Notes:

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