The Intelligent Potter

*** Third round, duelling tournament

Harry noticed the very small amount of Europeans in the room, there was a French witch called Fleur Delacour, two Bulgarians, Harry and Cedric and one Swedish guy, who Harry thought was lucky to even be there.

Comparatively, the Chinese and Indians both had all 5 of their contestants making the two countries together have more representation than the entirety of Europe. A lot of Asian countries also had 2 or 3 of their competitors still in and the US had 4 in.

All in all, Harry concluded, he was probably the last chance for Europe.

His first match in the third round was against Delacour, who Harry noted was a half-veela, so water would be useful and fire harmless against the witch.

Harry started out with a couple spell-chains and was put on the back foot early on by the aggressive charm work that the veela was pushing at him, Harry had to block and wasn't able to get an attack in.

Harry decided to try and overcome the girl magically, by letting her use up her magic on the long and arduous attack but that turned out to be a fail as the girl seemed to have huge magical reserves, probably larger than Harry's were at the moment.

Harry burst out with a large burst of elemental magic, throwing a jet of water right at the veela, who screamed in terror and threw an equally large burst of veela fire right at the water, creating dark smoke, which Harry quickly manipulated to be thrown at Fleur as Arcturus had taught him, using the distraction to throw a wide variety of spells at the girl, not taking any chances.

Finally, when the smoke was dispelled, they found Fleur unconscious and tied up.

Harry sighed a sigh of relief, the first match of the third round was out of the way.

His second and third match were fairly easy, beating out the Swedish competitor and the last competitor from South Africa.

His fourth match pitted him against one of the favourites for the tournament and one of Japan's last two competitors.

The girl was slim and serious, dressed in the muggle-way, in a fashion similar to Harry's.

Harry had observed her and knew that she had been playing with her previous opponents, so he did not know all of her tricks, thankfully that went the other way too and Harry knew and few useful tricks as well.

Harry and his opponent engaged in a quick battle of magic both raising the bar with every spell they cast until they were both way above the u-15 level that they were fighting at, Harry found them equally placed in terms of magical knowledge, at least in terms of conventional hexes, jinxes and combat magic.

Then the girl took the battle to the next level by closing in on Harry slowly, something that many did not notice but Harry noticed immediately, not backing away from the challenge but increasing the speed of his attacks to try and push the girl back.

Unfortunately, his opponent, slashed away all of Harry's spells and leapt at him, a short knife shining in her hand.

Harry instinctively knew it was alchemically transmuted, the mirthful glint in her eye said it all.

So, instead of trying to transfigure the weapon like most would, Harry unsheathed his own sword which was hidden underneath his cloak and parried the knife hit, taking advantage of the opening to slam a few spells into the girl, sending her reeling backwards, with most likely a broken rib-cage, but the girl pressed her wand to her c.h.e.s.t and growled a few words in Japanese before leaping again, wand in one hand, knife in the other, Harry gripped his wand and sword in a similar fashion, parrying and shooting spells simultaneously, even going in for a swipe now and again.

Harry finally found and opening and sent a block of air hurtling at the girl, knocking her out against the wall.

"And the victor is Harry Potter!" screamed the commentator as Harry panted heavily, looking at all of the little hits and cuts that the girl had gotten in.

Harry walked back to the British box, where Cedric was waiting for him, completely awed by his performance.

"You were holding back all this time!" Cedric marvelled, "And you effortlessly beat all of us in training without even breaking out half of your skills."

Harry smiled abashedly, "Well, all of you were pretty amateurish, though you are pretty formidable yourself, Cedric."

Cedric smiled ruefully, "Though not quite as formidable as you, eh Harry."

Adrian Pucey, one of Britain's other candidates snorted, "The bastard obviously cheated, there's no way he's THAT strong."

Harry gave Pucey a dirty look , "I'll take you on any time, Pucey."

"Wanna go, Potter?" Pucey asked aggressively.

Harry was about to snort and refuse but Cedric got in his way.

"Harry doesn't even need to wipe his hands with the likes of you." The brave hufflepuff snapped at Pucey before turning around and heading in the direction of his room.

Pucey growled in anger and shot a yellow spell at Cedric's back.

"Cedric watch out!" Harry exclaimed and put up a quick shield which thankfully managed to stop whatever spell it was that Pucey had shot.

Cedric spun around just in time to see Harry block the spell.

"Out of the way Harry, this just got personal." Cedric growled and looked at Pucey with disdain, "If you want to fight me, at least be a man and fight me head on."

In response, Pucey sent back a spell-chain at Cedric, which the Hufflepuff laughed at.

"Is that really the best you can do?" Cedric spat at Pucey before completely destroying his opponent with a complex spell-chain that Pucey was completely unable to counter.

"I've wanted to do that for so long!" Cedric looked almost giddy.

Harry smiled, "Yea, he rubbed me the wrong way too,"

*** End of Chapter.