Journeyman Potter
Prologue
By Draco664
I should have known.
Really, I should have. I mean, every single time in my entire eighteen years of life that I've ever felt totally at peace, or perfectly safe, or, let's face it, even vaguely happy, the universe always decides to step in and kick me hard in the bludgers.
I really should have expected it.
Just look at the way the Ministry reacts to change. It either ignores it, or overreacts.
Ron's dad didn't lasted long as Minister, even though old What's-His-Name came to grief on Arthur's watch. But nooooo! Because the man has an unhealthy obsession with muggle artefacts, half the laws proposed in the second half of his term infuriated the pure-bloods out there.
The wizarding world as a whole had no sense of irony after keeping a failure in power for years because he doesn't offend the right people, opposed to removing the successful guy just because his most burning ambition is to discover how a muggle device stays in the air.
No, I have no excuse for not expecting it.
Serves me right for even daring to think about hoping that my rather unusual living arrangements would go unnoticed.
I managed to duck under a rather obscure, but vividly painful hex and half-rolled to my right, before grunting with effort at reversing my momentum and rolling the other way.
An Eveberus curse shattered the floorboards where I would have been had I completed my roll. Luckily, Dobby was lying a little further behind me, or he would have been splattered.
The poor elf had immediately tried to protect me the moment I had been attacked, only to discover that Lucius 'Unlucky' Malfoy was certainly not the most powerful wizard around.
Lucius, hah! After the battle of Hogsmeade, I put the memory of our meeting in my pensieve. We had exchanged a handful of curses before the tide of people had pushed us together. I was unable to avoid a hex aimed at my legs and went down, with Lucius jumping on top trying to strangle me. I managed to get an arm free and jabbed my thumb into his eye, clasped the side of his head with my fingers as though I was holding a bowling ball, and with a little push of my magic, I smashed his head into the ground beside me.
Over the next few weeks, I must have caught Dobby looking at that particular memory at least a dozen times.
"Stop!" I shouted desperately, jumping over a hex that would have shattered my hip, but only managed to graze my right knee. Even so, it felt as though it set the tendons in the joint on fire.
Being caught without your wand when someone is trying to severely hurt you is a real fucking inconvenience. But of course, since it was happening to me, it had to be worse.
Being caught without your wand when someone is trying to severely hurt you and you are stark naked with no lethal toys at hand is so far beyond inconvenience that I'm willing to believe that Fate hasn't finished with me just yet. I'm quite sure my biography could be used as a blueprint detailing exactly what not to do to live a long and happy life.
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I leaned backwards and twisted in a moderately successful effort to dodge a scintillating blue curse I'd never heard of flash past my ears, thinking that anti-apparition wards are truly a mixed blessing. All that practise dodging bludgers hit at my by the twins was coming in rather handy though.
I waved my arms in a wide circle in an ungainly effort to regain my balance, causing my bits to jiggle around everywhere making an enticing target. Too enticing apparently. I tried jumping to my left to avoid a groin-high cutting curse that would have left me unable to grow a beard, but without my right leg functioning at top efficiency, all I managed was to trip over the remains of an armchair and have my left buttock slashed open. The sharp stinging at the edges of the wound easily overwhelmed the aching numbness from the rest of my hindquarters.
As my assailant took a step forward to get a better angle of attack, I took my chance, despite my swimming vision. "Aha! Stupefy!" I shouted.
I wasn't trying to cast a spell remotely, I had no idea where my wand was, given the current mess of the room, but he didn't know that. The robed figure ducked, spun and raised a shield charm in the blink of an eye with such elan it nearly made me envious.
Without a wand, in pain and panicking as I was, my magic was desperate to be released. I kicked out with my left leg at the pile of kindling, the remains of which had been a rather comfortable chair less than a minute ago. I pushed out a little with the kick, sending the pile of timber, leather and padding skidding along the floor at around half the speed of sound. The heavy pile thundered through the shield and shattered the bones in both of my assailant's legs below the knee.
He went down with a shout, landing hard. I actually felt the vibrations through the floorboards. His wand bounced out of his hand.
I dived for it in a flash, ignoring both my protesting knee and the remains of my buttocks, and scooped it up cleanly. But since I knew who I was facing, I sure as hell didn't spend time gloating about it. I cast "Protego!" as quickly as I could.
A curse from the fellow's second wand hit my shield, nearly bringing it down.
Foregoing the usual techniques a wizard would employ in this situation, I leapt at my assailant, causing both our shields to collapse as they struck each other, and grabbed the wrist of his wand hand with my left hand. He howled in pain as his broken legs were twisted in a new direction.
As my wand hand wrist was in turn grabbed in a pain-fuelled vice-like grip, an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu swept over me. All it needed now to make this worse was...
"What the hell is going on?" screeched a familiar voice in the doorway, causing my opponent and I to freeze.
Yep. That's it. That's what could make it worse.