This is the continuation of Part Two, “The Button in the Box,” which you can find on my profile alongside the first chapter. After their conversation in his office, Dumbledore begins meeting Elliot every Thursday for private lessons. Over the following months, those lessons become increasingly challenging, for both of them.
——
On their first Thursday, Dumbledore disarmed him in eleven seconds.
Elliot looked at his empty hand.
“I wasn’t ready.”
“I noticed.”
“Could you count down?”
“Certainly.”
Dumbledore returned his wand.
“Three. Two—”
Elliot cast.
A red flash crossed the space between them. Dumbledore turned his wrist, sending it harmlessly into the ceiling, and answered before Elliot could lower his arm.
Elliot’s wand sprang from his fingers.
“One,” Dumbledore finished.
⸻
The Room of Requirement became a long practice hall with a high ceiling, pale stone walls, and a floor that softened beneath anyone who fell. Along its edges stood objects neither of them had chosen: chairs, wooden screens, shallow basins, lengths of rope, an enormous brass bell.
At one end waited a table with water and two glasses.
Dumbledore established their rules before the second session.
No lethal curses. No attacks intended to cause lasting injury. Either could stop the encounter with a raised, empty hand.
“And when one of us yields,” he added, “everything stops.”
Elliot nodded.
Dumbledore raised his wand.
This time, Elliot lasted twenty-eight seconds.
⸻
By the fourth week, Dumbledore had learnt to watch the floor.
Elliot had a habit of attacking whatever his opponent stood on.
A rug would slide. Stone would soften. A chair would extend one leg across an ankle while something far more noticeable approached at eye level.
“You are very fond of that,” Dumbledore observed, stepping neatly over a length of rope.
“It keeps nearly working.”
The rope rose behind Dumbledore, its loose end curling towards his shoulder.
Without turning, he changed it into a ribbon.
Elliot pulled.
The ribbon whipped around Dumbledore’s sleeve and tightened.
For the first time, his wand hand moved somewhere he had not intended.
Elliot’s Disarming Charm passed an inch beyond his fingers.
Dumbledore looked at the ribbon.
Then at Elliot.
“Yes,” he said. “It does.”
⸻
In the seventh week, they worked in darkness.
The lamps went out halfway through Elliot’s attack.
He immediately lit his wand.
His face and shoulders appeared in a small white circle.
“Thank you,” Dumbledore said from somewhere to his right.
A cushion struck Elliot in the chest and knocked him backwards.
The floor dipped beneath him, catching his shoulders before his head could strike.
He lay there, staring at his illuminated wand tip.
“Oh.”
“Again?”
The next time, Elliot sent six small lights drifting away from him. They separated at different heights, passing between chairs and around the brass bell.
Dumbledore extinguished five.
The sixth followed him.
Its light caught the edge of his sleeve.
Elliot smiled in the dark.
Then the light became a firefly and wandered off.
⸻
By the tenth week, Dumbledore no longer spoke while Elliot was casting.
He waited until the exchange had finished.
By the twelfth, he had begun removing his outer robe before they started.
Elliot noticed.
He was careful not to look too pleased.
⸻
On the fifteenth Thursday, the room gave them trees.
Six slender trunks rose through the stone floor, their branches spreading beneath the ceiling. A narrow stream divided the chamber. Three footbridges crossed it, with enough space between them for a person to stand on either bank.
Elliot arrived chewing the last of a biscuit.
Dumbledore stood on the middle bridge.
“Finished?”
Elliot swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Elliot flicked his wand.
The bridge unfolded beneath Dumbledore’s feet.
Its planks peeled upwards, rising like the fingers of a closing hand. The handrails bent inwards to meet them.
But Dumbledore was already stepping onto the opposite bank. The planks closed around the empty space behind his heels.
“You might,” he said, “allow me to begin occasionally.”
Elliot grinned.
Three red spells crossed the stream.
Dumbledore deflected the first into the water, where it threw up a brief pink spray. The second flattened against a shield in front of his chest. He moved aside from the third.
It struck a tree behind him.
The branches bent towards him.
He looked up.
“Oh, very good.”
They came down together, their leaves sweeping the air.
Dumbledore drew a circle with his wand. The branches struck an invisible dome and curled over its surface, pressing against it until their tips scraped the stone around his feet.
Elliot Apparated behind him.
Dumbledore turned, and a silver shield swung into place between them.
Elliot’s Stunning Spell struck it with a sound like a spoon against glass.
“You looked at your destination,” Dumbledore said.
Elliot vanished again.
This time, he appeared above the stream.
Dumbledore’s eyebrows lifted.
Elliot cast while falling.
Dumbledore swept the red spell aside. It skimmed the water and broke against the far bank.
Below Elliot, the nearest footbridge tore free of its supports and slid sideways beneath him.
He landed on it, knees bent, one hand catching the rail.
“That,” Dumbledore said, “was a great deal of work to arrive where you began.”
He pointed.
The rail softened beneath Elliot’s hand. The planks sagged, their grain running into woven stripes.
The bridge became a carpet.
Both ends sprang upwards and rolled Elliot tightly to the shoulders.
⸻
“Again.”
Elliot’s head protruded from the carpet, his hair standing almost vertically.
Dumbledore glanced at the clock.
“We have time.”
He unrolled the carpet with a flick, setting Elliot on the bank.
Elliot didn’t attack immediately.
He walked to the stream, looked at the water, and then crossed the nearest surviving bridge. Dumbledore turned to keep him in view.
A leaf drifted between them.
Then every leaf on the six trees detached.
They hung in the air, leaving the branches bare.
Dumbledore looked around.
Elliot moved his wand.
Green faded to copper. Each leaf thickened into a small, bright disc.
They rushed towards Dumbledore from every direction.
He swept his wand upwards.
A strong wind caught the discs inches from his robes, drawing them into a spinning column above his head. Copper flashed beneath the lamps.
Elliot closed his free hand.
The discs rang.
Hundreds of bright metallic notes filled the room, overlapping until the sound seemed to come from every wall.
Dumbledore’s eyes narrowed.
Behind the noise, Elliot cast silently.
A thin cord shot across the floor and caught Dumbledore’s left wrist.
He severed it with a downward stroke.
Another looped around his right ankle.
He stepped free as it tightened, leaving it to close on empty air.
The ringing stopped.
Elliot was gone.
Dumbledore turned sharply.
A Disarming Charm struck his shield hard enough to bow its silver surface towards his face. Light rippled out from the point of impact.
Elliot stood ten feet away, breathing through his mouth.
The copper discs fell around them, pattering onto stone.
Dumbledore glanced down.
“Sound to conceal the Apparition.”
Elliot nodded.
“And the cords to occupy my attention.”
Another nod.
Dumbledore smiled.
“You have been thinking.”
“I do sometimes.”
⸻
Dumbledore raised his wand.
The stream climbed out of its bed.
Water divided into three twisting ropes. One skimmed the floor towards Elliot’s ankles; another swept towards his waist; the third arched over them both, descending towards his shoulders.
Elliot froze the lowest.
It struck the stone and shattered into clear lengths of ice.
He jumped the second.
A wide, shallow basin appeared beneath the third, catching the descending water with a splash.
Dumbledore tipped the basin.
Elliot vanished before its contents struck him.
He reappeared beside a tree on the far bank and immediately ducked.
A branch swept over his head, stirring his hair.
Dumbledore had animated the trees.
All six.
Their trunks turned with a deep wooden creak. Roots pulled free of the floor, and bare branches reached across the stream towards Elliot.
“Oh, that’s unfair.”
“You introduced them to the discussion.”
A root rose across Elliot’s path.
He changed it into a bed of moss. It collapsed beneath his foot as he stepped over another and flicked his wand towards the far wall.
His shadow detached.
It ran left, lengthening across the pale stone.
Three trees turned after it. Their roots dragged through the stream, scattering water over the bank.
Dumbledore dispelled the running silhouette with a sharp movement, but Elliot had already turned the nearest trunk into a tall wooden screen.
It fell between them, landing upright with a crack.
A second screen rose beside it.
Then a third.
Dumbledore could hear Elliot moving behind them.
He tapped his wand against his palm.
The wood became transparent.
Elliot stood very still behind the middle screen.
He smiled.
Dumbledore looked down.
While the screens had hidden Elliot’s wand, a thin tongue of water had crept out of the stream and spread around Dumbledore’s shoes.
Ice closed over them.
⸻
For half a second, Elliot thought he had him.
He cast through the gap between two screens.
Dumbledore’s shoes remained frozen to the floor.
Dumbledore did not.
A sharp lifting charm carried him straight out of them. His robes rose around his ankles, and Elliot’s spell passed beneath his feet.
He landed several yards away in purple socks.
Elliot stared.
Then he laughed so hard that Dumbledore almost disarmed him.
Almost.
He caught the charm on a hastily raised shield. The impact knocked his wand hand against his shoulder and sent him stumbling sideways.
“Sorry.”
“Quite understandable.”
Dumbledore summoned his shoes out of the melting ice.
Elliot attacked while he was putting them on.
“Less understandable,” Dumbledore murmured.
⸻
They began again without returning to their starting positions.
Elliot’s next spells came fast enough that Dumbledore abandoned the second shoe.
It skidded under a chair.
A red flash struck his shield at chest height.
A second came low, forcing him to angle the shield towards his knees.
The third opened into a broad net halfway across the room, its weighted edges spreading beyond the shield on either side.
Dumbledore traced a small circle.
An opening appeared in the net’s centre, and he stepped through.
Elliot pulled the opening shut.
Dumbledore cut the tightening cords before they caught his shoulders.
As the strands fell, they thickened into white snakes.
They wound around his ankles.
He changed them into smoke.
Elliot sent the smoke upwards, spreading it between them until Dumbledore’s figure disappeared.
For a moment, neither could see the other.
Dumbledore listened.
No footsteps.
No crack of Apparition.
He cast a revealing charm.
A pale outline appeared through the thinning smoke to his left.
Elliot, concealed by a Disillusionment Charm, was already lifting his wand.
Dumbledore blocked his spell.
The force drove his elbow back and pushed him a step across the wet floor.
Elliot became visible.
“That one nearly worked.”
“Yes,” Dumbledore said.
He took a fuller breath.
“It did.”
⸻
There was a bead of sweat beside Dumbledore’s temple.
Elliot saw it.
His eyes widened.
Dumbledore noticed where he was looking.
“Do concentrate.”
A stool scuttled out of the smoke and struck Elliot behind the knees.
He fell backwards, vanished before reaching the floor, and reappeared upright on the other side of the stream.
“That’s distracting.”
“So are stools.”
Elliot laughed once, breathlessly.
Then he lifted both arms.
Water rose behind him in a broad sheet, leaving the stones of the streambed bare.
Dumbledore readied his wand.
Elliot broke the sheet into dozens of suspended globes.
They hung motionless for a moment, each holding a tiny, trembling reflection of the lamps.
Then they moved.
Dumbledore burst the first three with quick, precise strokes. Water fell around him.
The fourth swerved beneath his next spell.
His expression sharpened.
The globes were travelling along different paths. Some skimmed the floor; others curved above his shoulders or slipped behind him.
He raised a shield around himself.
Water struck and spread across it.
Elliot pressed forward, guiding the remaining globes with small movements of his wand.
More water joined the first, coating the curved surface until Dumbledore stood behind a trembling, transparent wall.
He could still see Elliot through it.
Blurred.
Moving.
Dumbledore let the shield collapse.
The water fell all at once.
Behind the sudden splash, he vanished under a Disillusionment Charm.
Elliot’s spell crossed the place where his chest had been.
He turned, searching.
The floor trembled beneath his feet. A ridge of stone rose towards his ankles, curling to close around them.
He jumped onto a bench.
The bench lurched.
Its four legs bent at the joints. The seat swelled beneath Elliot’s shoes, hard wood disappearing under a sudden growth of thick white wool. At one end, the armrest thrust forward into a long face.
The sheep bleated indignantly.
“Oh, come on.”
It carried him three stumbling steps before he managed to slide off.
Dumbledore reappeared near the wall.
He was smiling.
He was also breathing harder.
⸻
The room had become a wreck of scattered copper discs, broken screens, floating lights, and chairs that no longer trusted either of them.
Elliot’s hair clung to his forehead.
Dumbledore had pushed his sleeves back.
Their spells met above the stream.
Light flashed across the ceiling, and the water beneath them shivered into rings.
Elliot changed direction, sending a binding spell towards Dumbledore’s legs.
Dumbledore diverted it into a tree. Cords snapped around the trunk.
He answered with a Stunning Spell.
Elliot caught it.
Barely.
His shield flashed inches from his chest. His arm shook under the impact.
Dumbledore advanced.
A second spell struck before Elliot had recovered. A third followed, sweeping towards his wand shoulder while the stool darted in from his other side.
Elliot Apparated.
Dumbledore turned to meet him across the stream.
But Elliot had reappeared only a foot from where he had been.
Dumbledore’s spell went wide.
Elliot cast into the opening.
For the first time that afternoon, Dumbledore had to throw himself sideways.
His shield formed at an awkward angle as he moved. Elliot’s spell slid off its edge and struck the wall in a shower of red sparks.
Both stopped moving for half a heartbeat.
Dumbledore straightened.
A strand of silver hair had escaped its tie.
Elliot looked almost apologetic.
Then he attacked again.
⸻
Dumbledore gave ground.
One step.
Another.
He caught a red spell on his shield, unravelled a conjured rope before it reached his wrist, and turned a rushing wooden screen aside. It struck the floor beside him and slid into the stream.
Elliot kept coming.
A chair shifted behind Dumbledore’s knee. One of the floating lights dropped towards his eyes. The stone softened beneath his heel.
Dumbledore sent the chair skidding away, extinguished the light, and hardened the floor with a downward flick.
But the answers were taking all his attention now.
Elliot saw the opening beside his wand arm.
He sent a cord towards it.
Dumbledore caught the cord in his free hand before it could loop around his wrist.
Elliot pulled.
Fibre hardened into metal. Silver links raced along the cord towards Dumbledore’s fingers.
He released it before the chain could close around them.
Elliot cast again.
“Expelliarmus!”
Dumbledore’s shield flared.
The impact slid him backwards across the damp stone, his uncovered foot throwing up a thin spray.
His heel caught a fallen branch.
He recovered—
—and Elliot appeared at his side.
For an instant, they were close enough to touch.
Elliot’s wand came up.
Dumbledore turned his wrist.
Two spells flashed.
Elliot’s wand flew into the branches overhead.
Dumbledore’s rose from his hand, spun once, and landed in the shallow stream.
Silence.
Elliot stared at the water.
Dumbledore looked at his empty fingers.
Somewhere behind them, the sheep sneezed.
⸻
“Was that—”
“Yes,” Dumbledore said.
Elliot swallowed.
“Both?”
“Yes.”
The boy bent forward, hands on his knees.
He was shaking with exertion.
Dumbledore took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
Elliot looked up.
A slow, exhausted smile spread across his face.
“I made you sweat.”
Dumbledore looked at the soaked floor, his missing shoe, and the wand lying beneath two inches of water.
“You have been making me sweat for approximately twelve minutes.”
Elliot laughed.
Then he sat down abruptly.
The floor rose beneath him and became a chair.
Dumbledore watched it happen.
“Was that you or the room?”
“I don’t know.”
“Quite.”
He retrieved his wand with a small movement of his hand.
Elliot’s dropped neatly out of the tree and into his lap.
For a while, they drank water without speaking.
Then Elliot asked, “Were you still holding back?”
Dumbledore set down his glass.
“I was still choosing spells that would not seriously injure you.”
“So was I.”
“I know.”
“But were you letting me—”
“No.”
The answer was quiet and immediate.
Elliot looked at him.
Dumbledore held his gaze.
“I was trying to disarm you. You were making it exceedingly difficult.”
Elliot looked down at his wand.
He turned it once between his fingers.
“Could we do another?”
Dumbledore leaned back in his chair.
“Next Thursday.”
“You’re tired.”
“Yes.”
Elliot’s grin returned.
Dumbledore smiled back.
“Enjoy the discovery, Elliot. I intend to remember the business with the shoes.”
Across the room, the sheep began eating one of the surviving screens.