Forever Knight [Harmione]

Chapter 18: Spar

Harry ducked from his doppelganger’s swing and threw a punch that connected with the dummy’s side.  Harry followed it up by throwing an elbow to his face.  His elbow landed on the dummy’s nose with a crunch and if Harry had configured the simulation-spell to react to pain, the dummy would’ve been on its knees right now, clutching at its injury, but Harry figured he didn’t need a sparring partner that complained or got defeated by pain.  He had a lot of pent up frustrations to let out and the longer his opponent could keep going, the better. 

The dummy did a three hundred sixty degree turn in an attempt to catch Harry from behind, but Harry grabbed his wrist just in time, twisted his arm and subsequently snapped it, complete with the sickening sound of breaking bone.  There was no pain etched on the dummy’s face, but the rest of him reacted realistically enough for Harry to make his follow through.  He knocked the dummy’s feet from beneath it and sent it crashing to the floor.  Harry planted his knee on the dummy’s back and grabbed the other arm, forcing the dummy’s wrists together behind him while Harry cast a binding spell to incapacitate him. 

Harry moved back to the edge of the practice-mat as the life-like visage of the dummy faded into its true self: screwed together round and cylindrical pieces of wood. 

Panting from his last exertion, Harry took a few seconds to recover his breath as he unceremoniously wiped the sweat from his brow with the collar of his shirt.  He had already worked up a sweat from his rather intense warm up, but sparring was what really pushed him. 

He looked briefly at the leather punching bag hanging towards the back of the large room.  It hung still with no evidence of the beating Harry gave it only twenty minutes ago.  The names of the worse Death Eaters were scribbled by permanent “magic” marker on the bag’s surface: Antonin Dolohov, Lucius Malfoy, Agustus Rookwood, Rodolphus Lestrange, Fenrir Greyback, Rabastan Lestrange, Walden Macnair and even Bellatrix Lestrange.  Especially Bellatrix Lestrange. 

“Psycho spell-damaged bitch…” Ron had muttered as he scribbled: Bellatrix sucks You-Know-Who’s You-Know-What.

She was, by all accounts, Voldemort’s right-hand, surpassing even Lucius.  Lucius was useful, but Bellatrix was trustworthy, from Voldemort’s point of view, at least.  Harry just thought she was psychotic.

So the punching bag had suffered abuse from everyone who happened to use the home gym.  Even Tonks liked giving the bag a piece of her mind. 

But as satisfying as it was to “let the Old Bag have it” (a rather off-color joke that Remus told during the full-moon, after which Tonks blatantly ignored him for the better part of a whole week… full-moon or not, she didn’t have to stand for it), the split second decision-making practiced in a good spar was ultimately more life saving, and given that Harry’s dummy was patterned after himself, it couldn’t get any better. 

Harry reset the dummy and it was up again, trading punches, arm locks, and take downs, knees and elbows, and the occasional kick.  Harry had once set the dummy to employ every means necessary to incapacitate him.  He learned quickly enough that setting no parameters had the dummy aiming and landing kicks to his family jewels.  There was—Harry said—no need to go that far.  He limited the use of ball-busting kicks instead of disabling it completely because, after all, someone was bound to use it on him one of these days and he had to know how to deflect, dodge, and, if the kick connected, go on fighting in spite of the pain. 

Twice a week, Harry opted to spar with swords, turning up the speed.  He limited the fatality option, though.  He didn’t want his head sliced off in training, not to mention the headlines on the Daily Prophet: Harry Potter Slain: Dummy Decapitates Dummy! 

Exclamation point.  Because Lord knows they’d forget the exclamation point.

And so Harry lost himself to the dance, welcoming the distraction it gave him from his hurt (shattered, really) feelings of Hermione’s cold treatment of him.  He didn’t have to think of her now, and he didn’t have to think about what would or had become of them.  He could get to all the important Order concerns later, after he’d trained.