Banished Into Magic: A Percy Jackson/Harry Potter Crossover

Of Snakes And Shrimp pt. II

"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

Percy growled at the bellowing voice of his tutor...and also the pain from being put on his back for the umpteenth time.

He'd started his summer lessons with Moody and Tonks immediately because according to Moody, "I have too much to teach you and not enough time to do it. I also don't teach assisted suicide."

Initially, Percy had been hoping for an emphasis in dueling, and surprisingly, Moody seemed amicable. So every lesson had begun with a dueling match between Tonks, Moody, and himself. As soon as he'd disarmed his pupils, Moody would offer a brief critique before moving on to less invigorating topics like how to recognize spell patterns and dueling spacing.

Moody also required a minimum of three feet of parchment between each lesson in which Percy had to outline every single spell cast during the previous duel and how to counteract or overcome it. Since Moody rarely used the same spell twice, the essays were becoming quite expansive.

Alastor Moody, true to his reputation, was a lot harder to duel than even Barty Crouch Jr had been as his doppelganger.

Since the lessons had started, his longest time to last against Moody had been around two minutes but he was usually disarmed, flat on his back, or both within thirty seconds.

Percy had never successfully disarmed Moody even once. Most of the spells Moody used, Percy had never seen before and were cast silently forcing him to deflect or overpower them. Worse yet, Moody regularly switched wand hands in the middle of the duel (which Percy didn't even know was possible until the first time Moody did it), and Percy was completely unable to recognize spell patterns cast left-handed rather than right-handed when under the time pressure of a duel.

Today's lesson had been particularly embarrassing. Percy had thought he was doing exceptionally well for a change, finally lasting for over two minutes and eventually hitting Moody with an Expelliarmus for the very first time. But to his surprise, the Moody he hit winked out of existence right as Percy was immediately struck from behind by the real Moody's Disarming Charm and knocked down.

"The Doppelganger Defense Charm!" Moody exclaimed as his true form shimmered into view. "It creates an illusory duplicate of yourself to distract your enemies. With enough concentration, you can make it talk and walk around however you want. Cast it along with the Disillusionment Charm, and you can just sit back and watch while your enemy wastes his time and energy boxing with shadows. It's almost relaxing."

Percy, who was still laying on the floor, considered that. Then, his eyebrows furrowed. "Wait a second! You must have had that spell active since before we even started! We had a whole conversation!"

"Yep." Moody said, his lip curling up on one side. "A four-minute-long conversation followed by a two-minute duel with a nonexistent person. And you noticed nothing out of the ordinary... Even though the doppelganger casts no shadow, doesn't generate the sounds of footsteps when moving. That alone should have been a dead giveaway what with my leg and all...and it was a helluva lot more agile in combat than me. You never once considered the possibility that you were fighting a mere distraction the whole time until I got bored and took you out from behind. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

Percy sighed and climbed to his feet.
"Isn't this a bit unfair? I mean, in addition to every other advantage that 'The Greatest Auror in History' has, you also have to set up some impossibly devious strategy for kicking my teeth in!"

Moody let loose with a strange gurgling sound that Percy had learned last week was how he laughed, and the corner of his mouth crinkled up in another malformed sneer. "I never thought I'd live to see someone as powerful as you whining about something being unfair. My job is to prepare you to deal with the unexpected. That's why you're skipping your last year at school and being paired with my best student."