An unexpected visit

// THIS IS AN OLD CHAPTER. THE NEW CHAPTERS ARE IN VOLUME 2. YOU CAN READ THESE CHAPTERS IF YOU WANT SOME INSIGHT ON WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN LATER BUT SOME EVENTS CAN BE DIFFERENT BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW CHAPTERS.

We arrive with Samael in the room of the Dueling Club. Several students are already fighting each other.

"Ha newcomers. Mister Dawn, you can join your comrades and start warming up with light spells. And you are?" The professor who supervises the dueling club is a very thin and not-so-tall man with a pointed nose and short messy blond hair.

"Sean Bones, professor."

"Ah yes, perfect. Stand against the wall with your comrades. We are expecting a latecomer and then we can start the introduction to dueling lesson." All the students along the wall are first years. I have the impression of not being in the right place with all these kids who are three heads shorter than me.

A few minutes passed before a first grader walked into the room without knocking and nearly knocked over the teacher who was walking past the door just then. Fortunately, he has very good reflexes and leaps out of the door path. The young boy who had just arrived had his hair soaked as he apologized to the professor. Once order and calm have returned, our teacher comes to us with the latecomer.

"Well, I'm Professor Auridias Katch and I teach the history of magic to seventh years, but I also run the dueling club with some of my colleagues. I'll start by reminding you of the rules of the game. It is strictly forbidden to duel inside the school grounds, and it is illegal to do so outside. Just because you are taught to fight does not mean that you have to shake your wand all over the place. I'll start by teaching you the two most basic dueling spells and then you can start to practice with your older comrades if there's still time." I take this opportunity to interrupt his monologue.

"Excuse me sir, but I already know the basics of dueling. Can I go with the others already please?"

"Mr. Bones, is that right? Well, if you think you're up to it already, why not give us a little demonstration? You and I, now, on the dueling area."

"With pleasure."

We position ourselves both along a platform.

"Well, young men, watch how a duel begins. The two duelists meet in the middle of the field and present their wands." I follow his movement and place myself in the center before placing my wand in front of me. "Then you bow slightly in respect for your opponent and return to your original spot."

When the professor is ready, I wait for his signal before casting a fairly simple spell.

"Expelliarmus." A bolt of red lightning escapes from my wand.

"Protego" My spell crash into the professor's shield which shatters under the power of the attack. He doesn't seem to have much magical power. "A break to explain to your classmates what just happened. So, you see, normally in a duel, it is the referee who gives the starting signal. But there, Mr. Bones took advantage of the fact that I was busy giving the signal to take the initiative. It is very important to control the rhythm in a duel, if you are the one leading the dance you can force an opponent to stay on the defensive. The spell Bones used is expelliarmus, the disarmament spell, the first spell I will teach you. And I countered it with protego, the shield spell. Be careful that this only protects you from spells, not physical attacks. "

"But professor, why is your shield missing?" A young boy asks the question and Katch looks uncomfortable.

"Well, that's because Bones used a lot more power in his spell than I put into mine. "He turns to me and we both bow. At the start signal, I start by sending stupefying spells in quick succession, but he rebuilds his defense each time.

"Bizzibuz" I decide to use a less conventional spell, the cloud of bees summoning spell. He took the opportunity to throw me a stupefy that I avoided with a jump. My bees are buzzing in his direction and the professor has to stop his attack to deal with the bees if he doesn't want to inflate like a balloon.

"Incendio" The bees catch fire, creating at the same time a cloud of smoke. I take this opportunity to cast a last unformulated spell, the stupefying spell. The professor does not see the spell hitting him through the cloud of smoke and flies out of the combat zone only to fall unconscious a little further down to the ground.

The students gather around him and a nurse who was in the room comes running. He takes out his wand and reanimates our teacher.

"Um, where am I?"

"Calm down professor and sit down. You got injured during your class. "Katch's gaze seems to come to his sense, and he painfully gets up.

"Well done, Mr. Bones, you won. You used a loathsome strategy you only see in street duels, but you won. You can join your older comrades, but we'll talk about your fighting style. That will be all for today, practice shield and disarmament spells against the training dummies. You will wait until next week for your first duel. " A hubbub of discontent accompanies the professor as he leaves the room supported by the nurse. I don't see what's wrong with my fighting style is. Well, yes, I learned my strategies in a book called [1001 Ways to Win Your Duel Without Honor] but that's no reason.

When I want to train with students my age. They all refuse. They overheard my conversation with the professor and none of them feel like fighting someone who uses spells that they categorize as disloyal. Too bad for them, they may be showing off with their kindness and their politeness, but in real life, you don't bother with politeness. I leave the room without even looking back.

About twenty days go by without my realizing it. I was forced to go back to the dueling club where I undergo remediation classes for 'my unorthodox fighting skills'. I also have to put up with the bad character of Angela who could not find anything funnier than having quaffles send to me by the whole replacement team during practice. None of them managed to score a single goal even when there were seven of them trying to get a ball through my defense.

This Friday, I give a hand to Samael who has to take care of the animals. The fact that I have given him permission to approach Styx also means that he is doing chore maintenance of Styx's pen instead of his usual tasks.

"There's some snake poo left there." Samael frowns.

"Is that what you call help? You nibble on a packet of potato chips while I scrub the floor of your animals' cage? At least you could give me some."

"Nah, I'm psychologically preparing for a shitty day tomorrow. Plus, I don't want you to put snake poop on my chips." A huge snake poop flies in my direction and narrowly misses it. "Do you know you're going to have to pick it up too?" Samael sighs deeply.

"At least if you come and watch me do my job, you could say something interesting."

"Um, if you want some gossip. I think my cousin is with a sixth-year guy, but I'm not sure. We often see them hanging out in the cafeteria together." I saw Susan, who was placed in the Puckwoodgenies house, with another boy from her house. They looked pretty close.

"Are you talking about Steve? I don't think they're dating. He slept with the couple you saw when you came to visit. It would be weird if he was a couple. By the way, talking about couples. What about you and Lana? "

"I don't really know, last Friday at the Fox's ..." I hear a noise in the foliage above Styx's enclosure and a shadow falls on Samael who is crushed to the ground. I don't even have time to get up when I feel a hit in my ribs propelling me against a rock. I get up the best I can as our attacker leans over Samael's unconscious body on the ground.

"Avada Kedavra" I point my fingertips at the man who crumbles to the ground in a flash of green light. My head is still spinning from the shock and I got several shattered ribs. "Enervatum" Samael blinks before getting up with difficulty.

"Who was that?" Samael looks at the corpse at our feet.

I lean over the corpse and I start picking his pockets. "I don't know yet, but we'll find it soon." I found on him his wallet containing his identity papers, a few dollars, a matchbox from a nightclub in Los Angeles, and his phone. "Here, look what I found. Try to dial the last number. Hopefully, we'll find where this freak came from. I keep searching him."

The guy lying on the ground suddenly gets up, taking a deep breath. He throws panic-stricken glances around him before disappearing, running at a speed my eyes can hardly keep up with. Samael is the first to recover from the shock.

"Was he a vampire?"

"Seems like it." I can't believe it, I was sure I killed him with the killing curse. Are vampires resistant to it? "Okay, well, we only have one lead left now." Samael nods and opens the phone.

He dials the last number and puts the phone on speaker. Several long seconds elapse before someone picks up the phone.

[Max, I told you not to call me on the way home. You're supposed to bring my boy back to me as quietly as possible.]

"Mom?" A long silence answers him before the communication is cut.