The Unfortunate Marauders

The best part after gaining an increase in soul power is the heightened perception. If you asked a wizard for most important thing about magic. Around ninety out of hundred wizards will tell you the same answer and that is imagination.

Magic flows like an invisible river inside everyone's body and to shape it you need imagination. The more vivid the imagination, the more powerful the effect. So as soul gets stronger, that imagination starts turning into intuition. And this heightens the sense of perception one has about the flow of magic. Intuition is also one of the prerequisites for a wizard to become a warlock.

While O'Shea was returning to his dorms after finishing his dinner on the day after the Slug Club meeting, he felt the flow of magic around him shifting. The attack was quite unreasonable as he was quite certain that he has not even talked more than necessary with anyone after returning to Hogwarts, forget being enemies enough to blindside him in hallway.

He was annoyed that someone was going to ruin his almost perfect week. Everything was going perfectly for a moment, he was happy, his plans were going well but someone has to just ruin it all.

For five years that he has spent in the castle, this was the first time that someone has targeted him. At the time of joining the school, apart from a few childish duels that he was part of in the Slytherin dungeons as a mark of passage in the house, it was the first time someone was attacking him in his whole student life at Hogwarts.

He was no stranger to duels or magical melee. Quite opposite actually, he believed himself to be most acquainted with magical fights among the Hogwarts students be it the newly minted junior death eaters or seventh year student's with internship experience. He has extensive experience in dueling as his training has always included such duels as mandatory learning material at home.

But it was his first time fighting after coming back to life. The sheer excitement he felt at that moment was going to form a corporeal patronus for everyone to see. Well, he has not been exercising enough these days and he has not tested his new soul capacity in a duel either. Time to set these records straight, he dropped his hand to the wand, pulled it half out of holster and focused.

The moment he focused it was almost as if he was standing still in water and someone was forcefully steering the water. The direction of steering water gave him a general sense of where the magic was going to come from.

As soon as he turned the corner, a stinging hex attacked him from the staircase on the top left side while an entangling hex was thrown diagonally from the right. O'Shea was a Wyllt, he has learnt from the best in the Wyllt family competed with his Wyllt cousins and forever disdained to be associated with the mediocrity of Hogwarts. But for the first time, he visually saw the reminder of how far the British magical community has fallen and why he initially disapproved of such trash. It was almost a crime to use such loud spells when you are trying to ambush an wizard and someone has to go and try it on him.

A semi-circular Protego charm took both the attacks without being damaged. Instead of attacking or anything even remotely related to attacking, O'Shea simply waved his wand backwards and pulled the wooden frame of ladder beneath the boy who attacked him from the staircase. The first attacker slipped the moment the staircase beneath his foot was ripped. As for the attacker on the right, the moment his wand came forward after dealing with idiot on the back he simply encased one of the legs of the attacker in the stone of Castle walls. At the same time, he waved his wand to produce a simple spell of air with a twist. Instead of summoning a single air flow, he superimposed more than two dozen air flows one above the other and with reinforced air slashes, went to work on the wand hand of the attacker. By the time his attackers registered the situation, the healthy wand hand of second attacker was broken in at least twelve places.

The first attacker has stabilized his footing by then and started dueling more seriously. A plethora of attacking spells ranging from a Reducto, to a stunner to even a vague electric arc was hurled at O'Shea's shield in rapid succession. None of the attacks were weak but they were not hard enough to crack the shield he was maintaining either. Sometimes he himself removed the shield and took the attacks on his wand, just for the heck of it. The last spell the first attacker tried was Bombarda, by that time O'Shea has grown bored. He decided that this much defense practice was enough. He has to stop himself by the moment he thought of going on offense as most of his arts was out of school curriculum and some even were classified as dark, rarer or ancient. So, instead of going all out he used a simple Bombarda with a twist to break the shield around the second attacker. His spell still maintained the basic function of bombarding the shield but he changed the attacks to a thin needle like weapons. Such an attack gave better penetrating effects, so it was used specifically to disintegrate shields. It was a spell not taught in British magical community, except to hit wizards and aurora as this spell was considered dangerous. Sometimes the needle bombardment not only broke the shield but also filled the wizard behind the shield like a sieve. So it was considered a dark art just like Sectumsempra well I have better control. The moment the shield cracked, I ended the bombardment spell. After that a well disguised Expelliarmus behind a flamboyant fire charm was enough to end the duel.

The wands were easily collected from both attacker as one was defeated and the other had a useless hand. The attacker was braying like a donkey after being relieved of bones in his hand, so I simply decided to stuff a transfigured cloth in both their throats.

After properly administering a generous dose of magical knowledge filled with common sense on my wannabe attackers so that their pain is intensified and treatment delayed, I decided to check for their identity by removing the invisible cloaks they were wearing. The moment I saw them clearly I got confused as I have not even talked to these people in the first place let alone having a rivalry with them.

Then I started running my brain on the issue of offending these two people. Before a second, I came to realize that I was suffering from a brain disorder. Why use my brain on two brainless fellows whose actions probably have no sense of brain to them.

I thought that instead of using my personal brain cells it was better to utilize the services of the best nincompoop head boy in the history of Hogwarts and simply asked him, "Looky here..who we have. How nice of the head boy himself to grace a junior with his presence. What a surprise!! And the lion of Gryffindor, the famous black, Sirius Black, himself in flesh. How far has the house of Black fallen that now their main heir is attacking his juniors from shadows? Ouf...what a pity. Sad, sad."