[1990 Pt.15]

The Hufflepuffs in the Hufflepuff common room were utterly silent as they looked in bafflement and awe at what they had just witnessed Nathan Grey do.

Hestia heard Philip announce, "Grey wins this round!" but she wasn't paying much attention to him as she focused on Nathan Grey.

Already, she could hear the students discussing the duel amongst themselves.

"Did he apparate?! But I thought the enchantments prevented apparition."

"Did you see the wandless banishing charm?!!"

"I am telling you that wasn't an apparition! I know how to apparate, that isn't how it happens!"

"Did you see the transfiguration of the wood into marble?! That was definitely a fashioning. Merlin, how good is this bloke?! Why haven't I heard of him before?! Why isn't he in the transfiguration club with talent like that?!"

"What was his name again? Nathan Grey? Like the Greys of Beholder's eye?!"

Hestia looked at Tonks, who was maintaining one of the two shields along with herself and could see the curiosity of her friend radiating off her in waves. And she couldn't even blame her friend. Magic like that at twelve years old was a massive achievement.

She wanted to go up to him and ask but could see that the boy was moving towards his dormmates and decided to delay the grilling for later. She let the enchantment for the inner shield charm dematerialize as he got close to it and saw the outer shield also flicker out as Dora did the same.

[break]

Nathan felt both exhilarated and nervous as he approached his dormmates. They looked at him with awe and admiration, and Nathan felt that he might have been too overboard with his grandstanding.

He walked up to Jacob and the others before he grinned and asked, "Like the show I put up?"

Jacob grinned back and said, "You have been keeping things from us."

Orion added with an eager smile, "That last disappearing trick is going to make you popular."

Alan, also exclaimed loudly, "That was COOL!!"

'I was expecting a different reception but this is fine as well.'

"Thanks!" Nathan smiled in gratitude at his friends' praise before his smile turned feral and he said, "The lions are going to regret messing with my house."

His declaration was met with beaming expressions from his friends as well as the other second-years who had voted for him. They were acting as if they knew Nathan would win all along and Nathan did not call them out on it. He liked the support, no matter how fake or weak it was. This fragile support in the present was the beginning of a powerbase for the future after all. People did not like to be wrong, be they magical or non-magical.

Nathan turned around when he felt someone tap his shoulder, and found himself face to face with another participant in the impromptu duelling tournament who was looking at him with a grin.

"Yes?" Nathan asked even as he held back the frown that threatened to break free on his face.

The girl that had the most votes for the eighth spot was looking at Nathan with a smile and said, "That was an amazing fight. Especially for someone your age. There are only three wizards remaining for the final spot. Our duel will be next. Rest up. I am a better witch than Goodman."

Nathan was unsure whether the girl was being genuinely nice or trying to intimidate Nathan so he gave her a challenging smile and said, "That's good, it will take more than just a good arithmancer to take me down."

The girl nodded at Nathan's reply before she turned around and left. Nathan also gathered his friends along with the other second years and left the area close to the duelling arena.

The group of second-years sat together around Nathan in one of the emptier areas of the common room as they waited for Philip to call on Nathan for the next duel.

It took about twenty more minutes before Philip finally came and said, "Well, you are up."

He found himself listening to a quick repeat of the rules before he found himself in the right corner, his wand hanging at his side in eager anticipation waiting for the fight to begin. Nathan hoped that this girl was a better duellist than Goodman. The boy had been a good scholar but those skills did not transfer over to combat.

He nodded back after Philip asked, "Right corner, ready Grey?" before the prefect turned towards the girl and asked, "Ready Patricia?"

The girl nodded and Philip took a step back before raising his hand.

Nathan tensed even as Philip's hand fell and he announced, "BEGIN!"

Within the blink of an eye, a translucent green shield materialised in front of Nathan as he saw Patricia move with impossible speed and dexterity as she fired two battering charms at him, one after the other.

The spells hit the shield with great force and made Nathan take a step back in fear of his simple protego shield breaking. Nathan dismissed the shield as soon as the spell dissipated and pointed with his wand towards Patricia who was already summoning two chairs from outside the dome.

Balls of ice the size of a basketball erupted from his wand like bullets from a machine gun and rushed towards Patricia who frowned and blocked them by placing her summoned chairs in their path.

Patricia, however, realized that the chairs were quickly breaking down under the barrage of solid, hard ice balls and banished the hovering breaking chairs towards Nathan who batted the chairs aside with a lazy swat of his wandless arm. As Nathan did this, Patricia grinned and swiped her wand in a large arc in front of her. Emerald flames leapt out of her wand in an arc and moved towards Nathan with a greedy pace.

Nathan smiled lazily as he waved his wand and sent out a water vortex from his wand and he could see that the water was quickly getting vaporised from the magical flames even as both surrounded him in a fluidly moving green circle of persistent fire, steam and water. Nathan put up his wandless hand's index finger and pointed his wand at him before the whole vortex started to get sucked into a ball in front of his finger at a rapid speed.

Nathan could see Patricia aiming towards his face and performing the wand movements of a stunning charm even as Nathan created a lightly steaming ball of compressed flames and water that were desperately trying to neutralise each other.

The stunning charm and compressed ball hit each other and the ball exploded in a shower of sparks and steam.

Nathan flicked his wand towards her before he summoned a chair from outside the arena and turned it into a thick spinning wooden wheel which rushed towards Patricia who chucked a blasting spell at it before she followed with three more spells.

Nathan sent a petrification hex of his own before he pointed his wand down and the ground morphed into a sinkhole.

The hole on the ground closed even as Patricia batted the petrification hex aside with a shield on the tip of her wand before she looked at Philip and asked, "No eliminations for being out of bounds?"

Philip shrugged before saying, "Never really thought about it."

She sighed before she transfigured the ground herself to elevate herself and give her a higher point to shoot down at Grey.

As she was doing this, Nathan watched with a little annoyance as he stood at the edge of the arena under a disillusionment charm. Even if she had seen him go underground, she should still have cast a detection or revealing charm to check where he was.

'This is the greatest problem with being too focused on 'combat spells.' People like her became too focused on what they thought could be used for fighting and never focused on learning the magic that their opponent could potentially weaponize as I have done. All it would take for her to find me is the use of a single detection charm to check where I am under the ground.'

Nathan looked at the base of her platform before a plan formed to take her out of the fight. Nathan gave his wand a small flourish and cast an illusion. It would make it so that she and the others did not see what Nathan was doing.

He cast one of the spells he had further refined from its original version in his recent spell crafting frenzy. There was no indication that magic had been cast around Nathan, even as he felt some kind of field come into existence around himself.

Nathan then cast a blasting hex aimed at the base of the pillar on which Patricia was standing, however, as the blue spell rushed out from the tip of his wand, it immediately froze in the air.

'Or as I like to phrase it, it is travelling an infinity divided finite distance.'

Nathan slightly admired how cool a spell frozen in space looked before he pointed his wand at it and cast a colour-changing charm to make it transparent. Spells often had reactions when they met each other. The colour-changing charm was one of the more useful reactions. He did not want to alert Patricia to his location, so he made his blasting hex transparent.

It wasn't a flashy application of the Limitless like Satoru Gojo would have gone for. But Nathan could say that he wasn't half as vain as the strongest jujutsu sorcerer so this way of using Limitless suited Nathan just fine.

Nathan dropped the Spatium Dichotomus and his invisible blasting hex hit Patricia's platform. It shuddered but for some reason, it did not immediately come tumbling down like Nathan had expected the stone pillar to do.

'Well, she definitely thought ahead.'

 - _ _ _-

A|N: Drop some powerstones if you like how he used the colour-changing charm and Spatium Dichotomus together to change the colour of the plasma so it made locating him difficult.

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