The Intelligent Potter

*** Present

The Minister's house was located well outside of muggle-inhabited areas, and it had muggle repelling wards for a mile around, there was a wizarding village not too far away but for his own safety and peace, the Minister was a fair distance away from the village.

The open terrain allowed Voldemort to truly release his magical power, unlike he could without risking buildings collapsing on himself in most other scenarios.

A wave of darkness lifted the Dark Lord up and he rode it, hurtling towards Babajide.

With a swish of his wand, he pierced the wave of darkness with a beam of light, forcing Voldemort to freefall towards the ground, catching himself in a net of darkness which released him onto the ground, almost on Babajide himself.

The two wizards raised their wands simultaneously, their wands at each other's noses at the same time, both their mouths opening to speak an incantation.

At that moment, just as they were both about to release a spell, Babajide change tactics and swiped out with his leg, tripping Voldemort who had not anticipated the physical assault.

Babajide's knee came up to meet Voldemort's chin but just as he was about to deal the knockout blow, the figure of the Dark Lord seemed to flicker out of existence and appear a fair distance behind where Babajide was.

The Death Eaters on the other hand were not staying still, choosing to attack Babajide from random directions, but being held off by Babajide's two companions.

With wide sweeping theatrical motions, the Greek Wizard blew away Death Eaters casually, as they attempted to sneak up on the Nigerian Wizard locked in combat with their master.

Anu looked at the fight between the two scarily strong wizards with concern.

"Should we be helping him?" she asked, absent-mindedly fl.i.c.k.i.n.g her wand to send a Death Eater flying into a tree.

Cyrus frowned, "We would likely be little more than a hindrance." He noted wryly, "If Pierre was here, only he could hope to match either of those two." At this he gestured at the ongoing fight.

Shards of darkness were flying in all directions, some of them impaled some of Voldemort's more careless Death Eaters, the rest being intelligent enough to be out of striking range, as they all turned around to take shots at the Nigerian Wizard, invariably missing or being dispelled by Babajide, but they were just a distraction.

Voldemort was managing the shards of darkness entirely unconsciously, while also maintaining a barrage of spells, all directed at Babajide, barely paying his companions any mind.

Despite his immense strength, Babajide was struggling against the casual might of Voldemort who wasn't even being overly serious but was just so overwhelmingly strong that the younger duelist was barely able to keep up with the Dark Lord.

Voldemort yawned.

With a start, Babajide realised that the Dark Lord was barely straining himself, sticking to casual duelling.

Gritting his teeth, Babajide, summoned a large wave of water and jumped, landing gracefully on the top of the wave, fl.i.c.k.i.n.g a single finger which sent a spark, turning the water to ice just below Babajide's feet, allowing him to ride the wave on a makeshift ice-surfboard of sorts.

On this mount, he hurtled towards Voldemort, who finally looked mildly interested in the battle.

Voldemort rose slowly on an even larger wave of shadows, which were similar to water in the way they flowed but were eerily sentient.

Atop their magical mounts, the two Wizards took potshots at each other, sending extravagant waves of their respective elements at their opponent.

Thanks to his massive magical might, Babajide was able to repel the strikes of darkness which were being sent at him by Voldemort, though struggling greatly in the process, but his own strikes seemed to be having little effect against his opponent.

Frustrated, Babajide threw his entire magical might at Voldemort, not bothering to channel it into a spell, bursting pure magic at his opponent.

"Baba!" Anu yelled, "You idiot!"

In all her time having known him, Babajide had been an unflappable being, she had never seen anything which could drive him to such levels of recklessness.

Pure magic was hard to control at the best of times, and it simply drained your magical core. To be sure, Babajide had enough mastery of magic not to drain himself dry, which could possibly have caused death, but if he drained himself even a little too much, he'd be too weakened to continue the fight against Voldemort, and if he wanted to deal any kind of significant damage to Voldemort, he would have to channel a significant amount of his magical core.

In the past, even when Babajide was younger and had been heavily outclassed by certain opponents, he had never lost his cool to this extent, he would much rather retreat or take a safe loss than be reckless like he was being now, especially not in a scenario where if he couldn't defend himself, he could easily lose his life to the Dark Lord.

'Maybe,' Anu thought, pensievely, 'It's an effect of The Darkness'.

Indeed The Darkness had been known to be able to control the thoughts and actions of people, though its lack of influence in recent time had for the most part limited its control to just those who willingly submitted themselves to The Darkness.

It was definitely worrying if The Darkness had enough power to influence somebody as strong-willed as Babajide to this extent.

Anu hoped fervently that she was entirely wrong, and her old friend was simply frustrated by the way the duel was so heavily stacked against him, but the more she thought of the Babajide she knew, the more certain she felt that this was not something he would do of his own free mind.

'The Darkness is willing Baba to do this, throw his all at it, and realise he's coming up short, it wants to envelop him in hopelessness.' Anu realised.

Pure energy continued to shoot out of Babajide's hands, in a large steady burst, it hit Voldemort straight-on, cutting through the wave of darkness which had come up to protect the Dark Lord.

A jet of darkness came to counter it but it was failing slowly, unfortunately, so was Babajide's strength, but he seemed to keep on pushing his magic into it.

The stream of Darkness failed and the pure magic crashed into Voldemort.

*** End of Chapter