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// Chapter 25:  Duel 
// Story: The Accidental Invasion 
// by computerneek 
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“How about Malfoy and Potter?” Snape suggested.  They were at the dueling club, where Lockhart had opened it by getting blasted off the stage by Snape’s disarming charm, to scattered applause.
After his rather dramatic opener, Lockhart had then split the gathered crowd- roughly twenty thousand in all, Ginny thought- into pairs and unleashed them on each other.  Hailey had been paired with Malfoy, by Snape- and the two had traded jinxes.  Lockhart had instructed them to use disarming charms only, but neither of them had aimed to disarm.  As for Ginny, she’d been overlooked, and didn’t have a partner.  She was more than a little miffed about it.
Now, Lockhart was looking for a ‘volunteer pair’ to demonstrate how to block unfriendly spells.  His first selection- Neville Longbottom and Sweetie Belle, a pairing that Ginny found very amusing- had been rejected out of hand by Professor Snape, and for good reason; neither of the two had done anything when Lockhart had turned them loose, but an oak tree had still jumped out of the tip of Sweetie’s wand to tap-dance between the two.
“Excellent idea,” Lockhart agreed readily, prancing over and gesturing the pair into the middle of the hall.  Everyone backed away to give them room, and Ginny sidestepped a little to get a better view.  “Now Hailey, when Draco points his wand at you, you do this.”  He raised his wand, wiggled it a little, and dropped it.
Hailey let out a snort of loud, derisive laughter while Snape smirked.  For Ginny’s part, she let out a sigh of relief.  It was much better than any of Lockhart’s other encounters with Hailey; he usually liked to put his hand on her and try to do something, but neither of them had yet seen exactly what he wanted to do because she was too quick to blast him off with her wand.  Once, Ginny had hexed him away before Hailey had gotten her wand out!  She had yet to see Harry Potter at the school, but was…  she wasn’t exactly sure what the word was.  She liked Hailey, a lot- and had she been a boy, she would’ve called it ‘smitten’.
“Whoops,” Lockhart announced.  “My wand is a little overexcited.”
Snape bent down to whisper something in Draco’s ear.  Ginny watched, concerned.  She knew that neither Snape nor Draco liked Hailey one bit, but didn’t know to what extent they’d be willing to go to express that.
Hailey, on the other hand, didn’t seem bothered at all.  She raised an eyebrow at Snape and Draco, then turned to Professor Lockhart.  “Sir, were you trying to demonstrate the Multipurpose Reflective Shield Charm, ‘Protego’?”
“Ah- Yes,” Lockhart nodded, looking surprised.
“Then why did you move your wand?” Hailey continued, sounding almost exactly like Ginny’s Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors.  “That charm does not require any particular wand movement, nor indeed any at all; the only things it requires are for the wand to be in your hand, you to picture the proper effect in your mind, and for you to use the correct incantation, ‘Protego’.  Now, would you like to demonstrate it with me?”
“Ah-!” Lockhart muttered, apparently dumbfounded at her sudden explosion of instruction.
She rolled her eyes and turned her back on him.  “Professor Snape?” she asked.
Snape’s grin looked vicious as he nodded.  “Certainly,” he stated.
“Very well,” she nodded, and raised her wand.  “Expeliarmus,” she stated casually.
“Protego,” Snape muttered, almost lazily, at the same time.
A bolt of scarlet light shot from Hailey’s wand…  then bounced off of Snape, straight back at her.  For a fraction of a second, Ginny thought she was about to get hit by it- but with her customary speed, she dodged it, and Lockhart lost his wand.
Hailey looked back at him.  “Right, yes, I should probably mention that you should never stand behind someone that is dueling.  You’ll probably get hit by something they dodged.”  She watched, amusedly, as he retrieved his wand, from where it had landed on the floor behind him.  “Alright,” she said, once he had gotten back.  “Professor Lockhart, you’re leading this Dueling Club- as I’m sure you already know, no one shield charm can stop everything.  Would you care to do a quick demonstration of all the most common shield charms with me?”
“Ah-!”  Lockhart glanced around the room, almost as if looking for someone to help him, and turned back to her.  “Alright.”
She nodded.  “Okay.  Ready?  Tarantallegra.”
“Protego!” Lockhart pronounced- but his legs started dancing around anyways.
“Finite Incantatem,” Hailey said, almost tiredly.  “Nice try, and your shield was successful, but that spell happens to go straight through the Multipurpose Reflective Shield Charm.  In this case, you needed the General Motor Defense Charm- which is even easier, since you don’t even need to picture its effects, just have your wand in your hand and say ‘motus’.  So then, next spell.  Ready?”
Lockhart nodded.
“Wingardium Leviosa.”
“Motus!” Lockhart announced- and promptly panicked as he floated a foot in the air.
“Mm, nope, ‘Protego’ would have been the right choice there,” Hailey scowled at him, putting him back down.

This went on for some ten or fifteen more minutes, during which Hailey told Lockhart about some eight or nine more different shield charms, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and used charms that would penetrate each one.
Finally, she got to her last spell.  “Expecto Patronum!”
“Protego!” Lockhart half-pleaded, sounding panicked.  He hadn’t successfully blocked a single one of her spells- possibly because he kept casting the shield for the last charm, but she kept changing her spell so the last charm’s shield wouldn’t stop the next one.
Something silver shot out of Hailey’s wand and bowled Lockhart over, before galloping around in a circle to return to her.  It was…  It was a stag, gleaming ghostly and silver, but also somehow not ghostly.
Hailey tucked her wand under her arm and reached up to pet it as it approached, but it disappeared the moment she touched it.  She looked down at Lockhart, sighed, and looked around at the room.  “There is no way to block that one.  Even Dementors can’t do it.”  She looked down at Lockhart.  “It can, however, be dodged.  Well, so long as you’re not a dementor, at least.”  She chuckled softly.  “Anyways, something tells me that if I try a demo duel with you, Professor, it’s going to end quite abruptly.”
Behind her, Professor Snape let out a laugh.  It was so strange to see him laugh, but somehow, Hailey had made him do it.  Ginny watched interestedly, determinedly not thinking about how she would have asked the girl out if she’d been a boy.
Hailey turned to him.  “So Professor Snape, would you like to help me with that?”
Snape grinned, a manic gleam in his eyes.  “Absolutely,” he declared.
“Alright.”  She bowed to him, before glancing around at the room.  “Alright, everyone should know.  There are exactly two rules in a true duel.  Rule number one…  is that there are no rules.”  She smiled back at Professor Snape.  “Since we’re only demonstrating, we will both be using largely harmless spells- and our duel will end with the first to land a spell.”  She paused, watching Snape expectantly.
He nodded his agreement.
“The only exception being ‘Finite Incantatem’, since all it does in a duel is break down shields,” Hailey continued, with a nod.  “Ready?”
He nodded.
There was a moment of tense silence, then both of them struck like vipers.
“Expeliarmus!” They both cried.  The two spells bounced off of one another, both rebounding upon their casters- but Hailey dodged it, and Snape cried “Protego!” just in time.  Lockhart lost both his wand and his hat.
Ginny wasn’t able to follow their incantations after that.  Sometimes they bellowed them at each other, sometimes they barely muttered them.  Sometimes they conjured increasingly strange and powerful shields, sometimes they dodged the spells.  They were almost always saying incantations at the same time as one another, though.
Lockhart was a bit worse for the wear.  Unless Ginny missed her guess, Snape was favoring bouncing Hailey’s spells back at her, and she was favoring dodging them.  Lockhart’s hair turned green, then his legs clapped together, then he floated up in the air, then he turned upside-down with a bang, then he got dropped painfully on his head.
Eventually, though, they seemed to progress to more and more powerful spells as well.  It was a couple minutes- Ginny was astounded that they still hadn’t managed to hit each other- before she finally caught what was going on again.
“Serpensortia!” Snape cried, while dodging Hailey’s spell, whatever it was.
A thick, black snake burst from his wand, dropped to the floor, and raised itself to threaten Hailey.  Snape grinned.  For a moment, Ginny thought he’d beaten her- but then she saw that Hailey was smiling, like she knew something he didn’t.
She opened her mouth, and spoke.  It was a very low, soft tone, but it carried extremely well for some reason, and Ginny heard it as well as if she’d been muttering in her ear.  “Turn around.”
The snake turned around.
Snape, looking surprised, flicked his wand to make it disappear- then, without moving his lips at all, pointed his wand at Hailey.  A bolt of scarlet light came from it- and Hailey wasn’t fast enough.
It still didn’t hit her, though.  She vanished into thin air with a loud Crack!, and Lockhart lost his hat again.
“What the-?” Snape began- then Hailey reappeared with a second loud Crack! and her wand lashed forwards like a viper.
She also didn’t move her lips.  Snape froze.
Then he unfroze, three seconds later, and they both lowered their wands to bow to one another once again.
“That,” Hailey announced, “was a very deadly weapon in a duel.  Well…”  She smiled at Snape.  “Two of them, really.  Surprise…  and the silent incantation.”  She looked around the room.  “With a silent incantation, you neither know what is coming nor when it is coming, making it nearly impossible to block or dodge.  For that matter,” she turned to Snape again, “if I hadn’t been keeping that spell in reserve, you would have won, fair and square.  As it is, I think we can call it a draw.”
“But you beat him,” Ron observed bluntly, from the edge of the circle of onlookers.
She looked at him.  “By using a spell that a total of two people on the entire planet know about, yes.  I’d hardly call that fair.”
Hermione stepped forwards.  “Which one was it?”
“The Chronoskipper,” she answered immediately.  “A bit disorienting, and the muscle shock was enough to make a verbal incantation impossible immediately after emerging, but overall, it worked really well.”
She scowled.  “Hmm, I’ll have to work on that.”
“Did Miss Granger invent that spell?” Snape asked flatly.
Hermione nodded.  “Yes, I did,” she smiled.
“Celestia help us all,” someone pleaded, somewhere in the crowd.
The silence held for a fraction of a second, before-
“She’s the Heir of Slytherin!” someone shrieked.
Ginny jumped, looking around.  She didn’t know who had cried that- but why were they accusing Hailey of that?  It wasn’t as if-!
To her surprise, it was Draco Malfoy that came to Hailey’s defense.  “What, just because she’s a parselmouth?” he asked scathingly.
Ginny blinked.  Was that why the snake had turned around?  Then, what did that mean for herself?  She’d understood it too- but it’d sounded like English to her.  Was that what made parselmouths different?
“Come on,” Malfoy went on, after a series of ‘yeah’ and ‘well duh’s came back.  “She’s in Gryffindor, not Slytherin.  Besides, I know several parselmouths in this place already, and none of them can figure out who the Heir is either!”
Ginny shuddered- though it was only partly because of his words.  She’d convinced Hermione to use her Papa Tango spell on her earlier that same day, and it had just sent yet another inexplicable tingle down her spine.