The Golden Wand [Harry Potter/Percy Jackson]

Chapter 56: The Upmost Tower

"Astonishing scenes here today ladies and gentlemen!" Cedric continued. "Hermione Granger earns 12 points, bringing her to joint first at 175 points with Hazel Levesque. Coming in at second is Percy Jackson with 173 points, and concluding the winning four currently is Annabeth Chase with 161 points!"

Hermione was out of the room first - still covered from head to toe with water, she splashed out of the Great Hall, running passed the statues of Annabeth and Percy with a guilty look on her face. When she sprinted up the first set of stairs she could find, how was she to know that Hazel and snuck back into the castle and was waiting for a victim to come her way. Hazel had been having a rough trial; she had been attacked by Percy's waterfall, petrified by her own brother, fallen on by Krum and thrown through a window by Percy. She wasn't going to be hurt again. 

Hermione rounded the next corner and came face to face with Hazel's hazing jinx. Her vision blurred and her face began to swell, but she at least had the sense to hide behind the corner she had come from. The jinx began to worsen; Hermione was seeing less and less, her vision was narrowing due to her swelling cheeks and eyelids. She cursed and attempted the counter-spell, but it would take a while to settle in. She didn't have a while; Hazel was there again, a blurred figure that approached with purpose, wand raised. Hermione raised her own wand in defense but it was snatched from her hand and she heard it clatter to the floor, far away from the both of them. 

"What am I going to do with you, Hermione? I need to get you out of the game, otherwise you might still have a chance of winning... look, no hard feelings about this-"

Hermione didn't even get to hear what spell Hazel was about to use - which was good, because she wasn't sure she wanted to know. In Hermione's eyes, it looked as if a great grey blob hit against Hazel's blurry blob and the girl fell to the floor - in reality, a stone statue had come alive and had swung the flat of its blade against the side of Hazel's head, sending her to the floor with blood already oozing out of her side. 

Harry stood nearby, wand pointed at the statue as he controlled it. He made it advance on Hazel, who was silently complaining that she had already been through enough today and didn't need another challenge, and the girl crawled away in fear. She flicked her wand and the statue turned to dust. A second flick of her wand and her body began to duplicate; ten more Hazels, exact clones of herself, appeared around the room, surrounding Harry. They moved around quickly, distracting Harry, making it so that he couldn't tell who the real Hazel was. Hermione, slowly recovering from her jinx, silently sunk away from them all and slipped further into the castle. 

"Reducto! Stupefy! Levicorpus! Locomotor Mortis!" Harry yelled, one by one taking the Hazel's down, using any spell he could think of. They fell like flies, vanishing as soon as a spell hit them, until only the real Hazel remained. She sent a volley of spells at Harry, who blocked them all and returned a volley of spells of his own. They went back and fourth, running through the castle, making the stone archways explode, making paintings fall off the walls, making nearby windows shatter. Neither one looked stronger than the other, so they battled on, both as determined as each other. 

At last, in one final desperate movement, Harry apparated behind Hazel, called out a random spell and as she turned to block it he apparated again, appearing just a meter behind her. "OBLIVIATE!" he yelled, and Hazel dropped her wand at last. She stood straight, as if in a trance, and turned to face her opponent. Her face looked expressionless. 

"Oh, hey Harry, are you alright?" She smiled at him. "What's going on? Have I missed something?"

"Hazel... what are you doing here?" Harry responded. "You're missing your Ancient Runes lesson."