"Damn, did you get the license plate number of the truck that hit you?"

Those were the first words Tonks said to him when she entered the abandoned classroom that they'd decided to meet up in.

It was sort of a special location because you needed to go up a ladder to get there, which was the reason why it wasn't suited for Potions practice. Also, it was in a fairly deserted section of the castle. How incredible, that the population of magical Britain had once been large enough to fill out this whole school. But now, the whole institute was barely functioning at half capacity.

"Har, har, har," Harry said while rolling his eyes, from where he was leaning against the wall. Add a sword sticking out of his stomach and he would look like the perfect dead mob in a video game.

"No, really, I don't know if I have the motivation to even beat you up, with how pathetic you look," Tonks said sadly as she dramatically leaned against a window ledge and glanced out into the forbidden forest. "What's your deal anyway, mister grade-skipper, why pick a fight with me?"

Harry looked into her eyes, which were pink today, just like her hair. "I don't want to fight you, I want to duel you. Have a bout, get loud and sweaty. My academic prowess is unquestionable, what's left for me to do? Try to skip other subjects as well? No, I want to see how I fare, before I enter the U17 duelling tournament this summer."

"England has an U17 dueling circuit?" Tonks asked curiously, "Why didn't I know about this?"

Harry shook his head, "It doesn't, but Europe does."

The young woman looked at him a bit disbelievingly.

"You want to go up against the whole of the continent?" she asked, at which point it was Harry's turn to give her an odd look.

"Why not? It should be fun. It's not like I think I'll win, it'll just be a valuable experience. And even if, in a few years I might have a chance. Someone has to be the best, why not me?"

"Someone has to be the best, why not me," Tonks said and shook her head. "I guess that's the mindset you need to do what you did, you little nerd." She sighed before walking to the other end of the room and raising her wand. "What am I then, your stepping stone?" she asked as she adjusted her posture.

Harry stood up and bent his knees, wand out. "You're just the only student I know who'd probably be able to beat me. All my other friends are in their second year as well, so they wouldn't stand a chance," he said dismissively, causing Tonks to bristle slightly, for whatever reason.

"You know duelling is not allowed in Hogwarts, right? Not since they disbanded the duelling club."

"You scared?" Harry taunted.

"Scared of getting detention because I put you in the hospital wing," Tonks muttered as she narrowed her eyes.

"Let's just stick to spells that won't inflict serious damage. No fire, lighting or cutting, I'd say."

"Alright, on the count of three?" she asked and upon getting Harry's approval, she started the count-down.

"Three, two, one, go!" She counted down and then immediately cast a jellifying jinx at Harry's legs, who simply side-stepped. His disarming charm, which he'd sent out wordlessly, whizzed towards Tonks' torso. However, just as it was about to hit Tonks silently cast a protego, which Harry's spell slid off of. The fight entered a short break period, where Tonks turned to Harry incredulously.

"Silent casting?"

"If you're speaking, you're not trying." Was his reply, at which point Tonks' face grew red and she went on an actual offensive, rather than just a faux one. She sent what seemed to be a stunner, which Harry dodged, before retaliating with a silent flipendo. They exchanged a few spells like that, simply side-stepping each other's attacks before sending their own. Essentially, Harry noted, they were at an impasse. He frowned as he looked at the girl rhythmically keeping up with him. He needed to change stuff up. This was the type of shit he could do with the practice dummy.

The next time Tonks sent a stunner his way Harry dodged under it by ducking to the floor and holding his wand to the dust that they'd whirled up with their rapid footsteps. The dust turned into a pair of medium-sized snakes, which he sent at Tonks with a muttered animation charm, before desperately throwing himself out of the way of a purple spell he didn't recognize. It whizzed past his ear and ruffled his hair. He glared at his opponent, who was frowning at the two snakes that were slowly moving towards her. She turned to him to raise an eyebrow, at which point he simply shrugged.

Tonks raised her wand, likely to dispel the transfiguration, when Harry got a devious idea. He thrust his wand forward, "Lumos!" A bright strobe light, as bright as search-light, but in all directions, emerged from the tip and filled up the room. He heard Tonks grunt in pain and shock; he dispelled the light and sent a silent disarming charm to her location as he remembered it, while he blinked spots out of his eyes. He heard the spell impact something but still sent another one. The same sound.

"You little cunt!" Tonks cursed from behind her shield, which he was able to see after a few seconds of rapidly blinking. The snakes were still rapidly approaching, but not for long as Tonks caught another one of Harry's spells on her shield and disparagingly waved her wand at the animals. They crumbled into dust, only to rise up again as a pair of angry-looking dogs. Harry frowned and sent a quick knock-back jinx at the dog on the right before it could jump him. The transfiguration was knocked to the ground with a whimper, where it remained. But considering that the other dog was now jumping at him with a wide-opened toothless mouth and Tonks had just sent a disarming charm his way. Well, Harry had to choose. And even if the dog didn't have teeth, he'd still rather prefer just getting disarmed, so, he blasted away the transfiguration with a silent flipendo and tried to dodge the spell, but failed. He watched sullenly as his wand flew from his hand into that of a panting Tonks.

The girl clutching two wands was red in the face, this time from exhaustion. Harry was suddenly aware of his own tiredness and sat down with a sigh. He realised that he could have blasted Tonks with an aguamenti and decided to keep that tactic in mind for next time.

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"Bloody hell, what are your parents feeding you?" Tonks cursed as she walked over to hand him his wand, before sitting down next to him and looking him up and down. "That was impressive," she eventually said, sounding frustrated.

Harry shook his head. "My transfiguration was pathetic. I need to work on that." He determined, "Your dogs were impressive, thanks for making them toothless."

"Your snakes weren't?"

Harry blushed and looked away, "I didn't think they'd actually get you, I was just panicking."

"That light spell sucked," Tonks complained, still blinking rapidly. Even her eyelashes were pink. Harry snorted. "What?" The girl asked.

"I can't believe you also pinked up your eyelashes, that's so cool," he said forlornly. "I wish I had a cool innate magical skill," he said with a sigh, he'd tested out if he had parseltongue when he was a child, but nothing had come of it. Just a scared garden snake.

"It's nice I guess, but I'm pretty sure you have some talent, I mean, you know, considering everything," Tonks reassured him.

"Hard work isn't a talent," Harry said as he rolled his eyes, before standing. "Come on, let's go again," he said, causing Tonks' eyes to widen.

"Again?"

"Well, yeah, doing it once isn't really training for anything. Unless you're already tired. I mean, I get it, at your age." Harry insinuated, which got Tonks to jump up quite quickly.

"You prat, I'll show you old," she muttered as she took up her stance again, at the other side of the room. Harry wondered if she could manifest a tick mark on her forehead, like in those Chinese cartoons.

Although, tick mark or no tick mark, the fact that the first thing Tonks did was conjure a flock of birds which she sent at Harry, could tip him off on her mental state well enough. She was a bit salty.

They ended up going at it an entire seven times before Harry fell down exhausted. Understandable considering what kind of day he'd had before even coming to this session. Out of the seven times, he didn't win once. He would rectify that the next time they met, which was going to be in a week, Tonks had agreed with a slight scowl, apparently not pleased with her own performance, before leaving him alone in the tower to brood on his...

-/-

"Why are the quidditch trials on a Monday afternoon? That's so weird. I thought weekends existed for exactly this reason." Harry complained to Penny, who was sitting next to him in the stands, watching Cedric along with the other Hufflepuff hopefuls warming up by jogging around the pitch.

"I think the captain of the team wants to start training the new members as early as possible, and all applicants coincidentally had time off today," Penny said as she nodded in the direction of a tall girl who was cheering on the players, some of which were already flagging. Harry snorted at the thought of anyone unable to run for five minutes trying to join a sports team of any kind, even if it was only a school one.

Cedric thankfully, was still keeping up with the group, which had by now dwindled from nine to six.

"What spots are open again?"

"You know, you're really going to have to start going to the matches if Cedric makes the team. You'd think you would be more interested considering that you won us the house cup last year." Penny chided.

Harry stretched in his seat as he watched the yellow and black-clad players and player-wannabes start mounting their brooms and doing zoom-zoom manoeuvres in the sky. They were quite fast, but he could keep up somewhat. He imagined that his perception for fast-moving objects, and dangers, had improved ever since he'd started abusing the duelling puppet in the Room of Requirement. Or rather, since he'd started getting abused by said puppet. He winced as a bruise on his left butt cheek throbbed. He'd taken a nasty fall yesterday and no matter how magical the ointment at Hogwarts was, it wasn't magical enough to heal stuff in less than a day. Unless you went to Pomfrey and got some of the good shit, which he wasn't doing since he didn't feel like answering questions on how he managed to get hurt on a daily basis. Maybe he should look into healing? He idly thought before a hand was brought up to slap him in the face. His head whipped to the side and his cheek stung like a mother-fucker. He looked at the offending hand, his right one, as the people around him turned to stare at the kid hitting himself for no reason.

"Merlin, Harry, what's wrong with you." Penny groaned as she shot him a disquieted side-ways glance.

"Just had a stupid thought, needed to get it out of my head," Harry replied while thinking about his current schedule. He had a similar amount of things to do as last year, with his duelling and learning how to sense magic, but now both of those activities were linked with profound physical and mental suffering, which spell-creation hadn't been unless one counted Arithmancy as a torture method. He quite frankly barely had time for class work, let alone picking up a completely new subject like Healing, which wasn't even offered at Hogwarts. Sensing magic seemed like such an important skill to have if one was a wizard, that Harry could honestly imagine ditching some classwork in lieu of it, but he needed to keep his grades up if he wanted personalised instruction from Flitwick.

He focused his attention on the tryouts and frowned when he noticed that Cedric was involved in a competition with three other bees. They were all hovering high above the pitch and glancing around frantically. "He tried for seeker, then."

"He was never going to listen to us." Penny said, before rolling her eyes, "Boys."

"Tell me about it," Harry replied.

"You don't get to say that. What have you even been doing? You've just been disappearing on us the whole day, every day. Then you come back exhausted and Cedric says you sleep like a dead person." Penny complained, at which Harry could only helplessly shrug. He couldn't really tell his friends about the room of requirement, just in case they stumbled on the diadem Horcrux trying to explore it. All that he could say…

"I've been practising a lot of duelling spells. Did you know Flitwick was once the world champion in the international duelling circuit?" he asked, switching the topic slightly.

Penny's eyes widened and her jaw dropped, "Really? Professor Flitwick, so what, you've been practising with him?"

"Unfortunately, no. But what he did say was that if I stay consistent in class he'll consider showing me some stuff after the winter break. He wants to make sure that I'm not overburdened with the recent

developments."

"So what have you been doing exactly?"

"Well, he gave me a list of spells, I found some forms and exercises in the library. I'm working myself to the bone. If I can come to him after Christmas with good grades and show him that I've had time to get better at duelling, then he'll have to take me." Harry explained. Penny looked mildly hurt at his words.

Harry awkwardly scratched the back of his head, "Look, I didn't think you'd be interested, Cedric has been focused solely on flying, to the point where he's been doing badly in Transfiguration and I know you prefer Potions."

"Well, I would have liked to have been asked, so I could have said no on my own terms." Penny sniffed.

"Sorry about that, I mean I only started looking into it last week, you know. I can show you the spells this weekend if you want." He offered, at which he gained a small smile.

"Sure, after potion practice?" she asked. The red-head rolled his eyes.

"Yes, after potion practice, but anyway, I have to go now, I have detention with Professor Potter." He said and looked out into the field, just in time to see Cedric dive and come up with a golden snitch in his hand. The boy hollered. "Congratulate Cedric for me, for getting the position," he said and left the stands, noting that some Slytherins and Gryffindors were also present. Probably scouting out the competition.

He exchanged a brief glance with Montague, who turned around to see who was going down the stairs and leaving in the middle of the tryouts, but once he recognized Harry he quickly looked away, disinterested. At least something was working, Harry thought and made his way to the castle.