The Intelligent Potter

*** Present

Arcturus looked slightly impressed, "Elemental magic already, it seems you've been learning something on your own."

Dumbledore too seemed slightly impressed but the most surprising was the slow clapping coming from a different corner of the room.

"Well done, Harry!" the voice of Nicolas Flamel called out.

Harry whipped around to see an amused Flamel standing in the corner.

"You always did love the surprise entrances." Dumbledore said amused.

"It seems that you already know some duelling spell-chains and the beginnings of elemental magic which is much further than I thought you'd be, however Granger quite a bit behind you so, for today, Granger can work with Albus on spell-chains and you can work with me on elemental magic." Arcturus said.

Hermione seemed a bit disappointed to be behind Harry but went with Dumbledore eagerly.

"As Harry demonstrated quite well, spell-chains are extremely useful in a fight, they allow your casting speed to be much quicker. The biggest mistake you made in your fight with me was going for particularly high level spells that you know could be easily blocked by me. What you should have done is, like Harry, tried to overwhelm me with casting speed and get one spell through my shields. Even a single depulso can completely change the course of a battle if it distracts your opponent for long enough. Therefore, I will now demonstrate to you one of the easiest chains, it consists of only 3 spells repeated over and over, Stupefy-Depulso-Incarcerous."

Dumbledore quickly demonstrated, casting all three in less than half a second.

Hermione, out of reflex dodged the stunner but was hit by the depulso, getting thrown back and being tied up in chains from the incarcerous that she was in no place to avoid.

"See, casting all those spells together allowed me to completely overwhelm you, your biggest fault in battle is definitely your slow casting speed, so try it on me." Dumbledore said before holding out his wand like he was in a duel.

"Stupefy." Hermione shouted before moving her wand back and casting the next two spells, taking her almost 5 seconds to get out the spells.

Dumbledore swayed out of the way like he had earlier, "You have to cast them together, where the first ends, the second begins."

After several tries, Hermione had the chain down to about a second.

"That's pretty quick, now you need to keep casting the chain, over and over to try and overwhelm me." Dumbledore said.

Hermione nodded before casting the chain over and over, furiously throwing the next spell forward, falling into a bit of a pattern and being pleased at the fact that Dumbledore had to pull up a shield to defend against her barrage before suddenly lashing out with a stupefy which hit Hermione square in the c.h.e.s.t.

When Hermione came back to consciousness a few seconds later, Dumbledore admonished her.

"Your spell-chain was excellent but you can't fall into a pattern and ignore your opponent, otherwise you'll be vulnerable to return fire." Dumbledore explained.

Hermione nodded sheepishly, embarrassed that she had gotten so caught up in her spell-casting.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the room, Arcturus was working with Harry.

"Elemental magic is possibly some of the most important magic that you'll have in a fight. It is definitely the most powerful tool you have aside from battle alchemy which takes a large amount of time and a constructed plan. Elemental magic should become a reflex to you, and instead of the stream of fire that you can conjure now, you should be able to create any figure out of fire, similar to fiendfyre in a way, however fiendfyre is Darkness and should never be summoned because it is basically an open gateway through which Darkness floods back into this world, until the opening is closed, something that is very hard to do. Today, we shall be working on turning your little stream of fire into a fire serpent, a popular move among most elementals." Arcturus lectured as Harry listened attentively.

Arcturus flicked his wand and a stream of fire similar to Harry's burst out of his wand.

"First, we need to make this bigger, the best way to do that without losing energy is to simply push more magic through your wand." Arcturus said, before throwing a spurt of magic into the fire stream making it as thick as a tree-trunk.

"Then you have to manipulate your will to will it into taking a serpentine form, then command it to do your bidding." Arcturus commanded, making the necessary edits to his own fire stream and for demonstration, shooting it at the wall, creating a huge scorch-mark on the wall.

Harry took a deep breath and created his fire stream, pushing magic into it as fast as he could, making it even thicker than Arcturus' had been then concentrated on trying to turn it into a serpent but had little success.

"You must see it as a serpent, you don't TELL it to be a serpent, you MAKE it a serpent." Arcturus said.

Keeping the Black Lord's advice in mind, Harry went for his best attempt, succeeding in having a gargantuan fire-snake pointing out of his wand and commanded it to smash into the wall like Arcturus' had.

"Very good! That is the first step to mastery, next, you need to learn to create the shape that fits your situation best in the heat of a battle. For example…" Arcturus conjured a serpent of water and hurtled it at Harry, who reflexively turned his fire into a shield of sorts, managing to stop most of the water as it turned to smoke, on contact with the fire.

"Never let go of the smoke." Arcturus said, as he pushed the entire weight of the created smoke at Harry, making the boy stumble backwards and cough as Arcturus used the distraction to throw a stunner at Harry.

"Now, we will mock-duel with only elemental magic." Arcturus commanded.

Harry nodded and Arcturus started the duel with another fire-serpent, which Harry countered with a fire wall of his own which absorbed most of Arcturus' fire, and Harry turned the entire mass into the shape of a large fireball, throwing the entire thing at Arcturus, who merely conjured a shield of water, which converted the fire into smoke, and threw the resultant into Harry's eyes, but Harry managed to use the air to clear the space around him and throw back arrows made of fire, which were all blown out by the massive gust of wind summoned by Arcturus which blew Harry of his feet, letting him be hit by another tidal wave of water, created by Arcturus, knocking the boy unconscious once more.

*** End of Chapter.