HP :Pokemon In Horgwart

"Fire!"

"Duck and Slash!"

The two voices of the handlers roared above the screams of the crowd.

Charizard reared on its hind legs and let out a steam of fire towards the Gyarados.

But heeding the commands of its handler, who had apparently anticipated Charizard's move, Gyarados gracefully dodged the fire attack and at the same time, its flexible body twisted in a zigzag, slashing through the air.

Despite the noise, the ugly slash hissed through the arena, and its effect was quite evident.

Charizard, still rearing and likely preparing for a follow-through, was suddenly shoved backward along with its handler, who had been hovering just behind it.

The Fire-type stumbled for a couple of seconds but saved itself by using its broad wings to break the forceful gust of air.

The Manticores handler, however, wasn't as lucky.

He was hurled across half of the arena and slammed into the edge wall.

A thunderous cheer erupted from the Griffins' side, masking the painful "Uuuuh!" from the Manticores' fans.

The remaining Manticore defender, who had been quick enough to swerve away from the slashing gust, had abandoned his primary role and gone to check on his teammate.

The toll of his actions, however, was being shouldered by the Charizard.

"Slash! Slash! Slash!"

The Griffins handler was now screaming breathlessly, and the Gyarados responded with astonishing agility.

Its flexible and lengthy body twisted right and left, and with every twist, the slashing gust screamed.

Charizard found itself slapped left and right, thrown up and down with immense force.

The crowd's reaction was wild and chaotic. Almost everyone had left their seats.

Some were screaming, others yelling unfathomable words, and still more clasped their hands in anticipation.

"Hydro Pump! Hydro Pump it... Use Hydro Pump!"

Magnus yelled at the top of his lungs, but his voice only mingled with the rest of the crowd's chaos.

His heart was palpitating madly in fury. While the rest were applauding the Griffins' attack, he was wondering what the hell had gotten into them.

"That is a freaking Water-type, for heaven's sake! Use Hydro Pump!"

He cried more to himself than to the Gyarados handler.

"What the fuck was slashing supposed to do?"

The Griffins had disoriented the Manticores' defender and handler. They had a freakishly good chance of ending this before the Manticores recovered, but all they were doing was forcing a powerful Water-type to twist and slash like it was a baseball bat .

While keeping momentum was essential, Magnus knew Charizard could tank this until Gyarados was exhausted, and then the tides would turn against the Griffins.

"I mean, do they even know it can use Water at all?"

Nobody answered his question as all three friends, together with the rest of Manticore's fans, were screaming their encouragement to the two players, who were now zooming towards their charge.

The Gyarados handler was a step ahead.

"Coil, spin, and toss!"

Before Magnus had time to contemplate what the commands were supposed to do, the serpent's lithe body slithered with lightning speed, and before the roaring Charizard had time to retreat, Gyarados had coiled its humongous body around the fire type.

 In a show of power, it stretched and released its victim just as fast.

Charizard was tossed through the air, spinning like a yoyo. It would have crashed into its team, who had been en route to its aid.

The two, however, were quite fast in response this time and swooped to either side.

The Manticore defender's wand shot toward Charizard, but no words boomed as it should have.

Their Pokémon's imminent fall was, however, ended. It suddenly seemed to regain its stability mid-air, and its massive wings swished as it took back control of its flight.

"And the Manticores appear to have regathered their team! Rex, the handler, looks quite fine despite the heavy attack from Gyarados—the fight continues!"

Indeed, Magnus noticed that the handler looked quite fine despite having been on the receiving end of such a brute, fierce attack.

'Must be those vests,' he thought, recalling what he had read earlier. These vests had powerful spells to repel mortal danger.

"And here comes another attack."

The crowd's voice surged as the commentator's voice went on.

True enough, the two teams were streaking toward each other at terrific speed, both Pokémon at the front and their partners flying closely behind.

"Wing attack now!" the Charizard handler screamed at his charge.

"Slash, slash, and fast!" countered their opponent, but it was already a second too late.

The two teams had already been at the brink of crashing into each other, but Charizard and his team suddenly pulled up, narrowly evading the swooshing serpent body.

The lack of contact it had been expecting carried Gyarados forward in bursts of uncontrollable speed.

But the Charizard wasn't done. Together with its team, they spun around in a dazzling show of athleticism , and at the same time, a gust of wind—like the one from Gyarados's slashes but somehow more powerful—screamed across the ground, headed toward the serpent's team.

"Diffindo!"

The Griffins' defender had cast a defensive spell, but that too must have come a second too late.

The forceful turbulence knocked the wand out of his grip and slapped at their backs, sending all three hurtling to the same wall the Manticores had crashed into.

Magnus had thought the roars of the crowd could never get any louder, but he was quite wrong.

At this rate, he wondered whether the noise wasn't strong enough to break through the barriers cast here and reach some Muggles in the surrounding areas.

The crash they had all been expecting never came, though—at least not for the players.

The serpent, seeing its team's dangerous destination, had done something quite noble, which cost it to become the sole victim.

 Its flexible rear body had coiled protectively around its two partners, securing them before its front body crashed into the wall with shuddering force.

The three fell to the ground.

"Fucking idiots," Magnus cried furiously. "Those were my last Galleons.

"What the fuck? I mean, these gits should have won easy... They easily had the upper hand, seeing they had a water type against a fire-flying type... But even if they didn't know that, did they not have any more endgame moves?

'Slash, slash... the fuck was 'slash' supposed to do?' The Manticores had been caught off guard the first time; they would be idiots to let it happen a second time.

"Told you, mate... told you. You were nuts to stake your Galleons on these losers." Fred had bent his head to Magnus's ears purposefully to taunt him.

 Magnus felt like slapping the shit out of him as he looked at the burial place of his last hope.

The referee had swooped down where the Griffins were, checking their Pokémon.

"That's a knockout," George was screaming. "No way it's coming up after that."

The next second, however, Magnus was the one screaming—and not just him. The entire stand where Gyarados fans had been sitting, looking crestfallen, erupted in hopeful cheers.

It seemed George's doubts were what Gyarados had been waiting to prove wrong.

The serpent let out a blood-curdling roar as its body rose and towered upward.

"It's up... it's up..." Magnus said, slapping the ribs of his friends in turn.

"No way... I'll be damned," Lee was screaming.

Only now did Magnus truly understand just how gigantic the serpent was. I mean, half its body was still coiled on the ground, but it was still towering almost halfway to the high end of the stands.

'how the hell did they transport such humongous beasts across the country without pojeballs?', Magnus wondered

"Gyarados is fit. The battle continues," the referee's voice rang above the noise.

Magnus's hopes, however, seemed like they had just briefly been revived only to be killed properly.

The referee had barely finished giving his verdict when the Manticores, who had clearly been waiting for this decision, streaked through the air, coming to finish what little was left.

Charizard's head was outstretched, and somehow Magnus knew, even before seeing it, that the fire that was coming would be the final nail.

The world seemed to narrow down into a tunnel, shutting out all the noise around him. In his mind, he suddenly saw himself standing next to the serpent, overlooking the oncoming attack.

He was, however, surprised by the calm inside him... and it wasn't just him...

 No!

Gyarados too felt the same thing.

 He didn't know how, but he could sense it, he could see it.

This situation, it seemed, was not entirely foreign. There was a world where Charizard being in the air and Gyarados on the ground was the final ingredient to the water type's victory.

Any moment now, the fire would come.

Even as he thought about it, the fire type opened its maw, and he saw the oncoming flames.

"Gyarados, use water... I mean, use Ice Beam... freeze him!"

He did not know why the fuck he was saying this. There wasn't a freaking chance of being heard above the chaotic noise, and even if the Pokémon heard him, it didn't look possible that it would understand a thing he said.

I mean, its own handler did not know it could use water, let alone freeze anything, and probably the Pokémon itself had never tried it.

Suddenly, however, the serpent's red eyes rolled, and he... he could swear they had narrowed on him. They had looked at him.

The next second, however, it had rolled away and was fixated on the oncoming fire.

Gyarados let out another chilling cry but never made a move to duck. The two Griffin players, seeing the oncoming fire, had taken to their brooms.

Nobody, however, had anticipated what transpired next.

The fire was almost three meters away when a stream of blue shimmering energy came gushing out of the serpent's maw toward the speeding flames.

The instant they made contact, there was a sharp hiss, and the ground was momentarily filled with steam as ice met fire.

But Gyarados wasn't done yet—it shifted the ice attack upward, catching its opponent mid-flight.

The icy blast engulfed Charizard, freezing its wings and tail flame in shimmering ice. Charizard plummeted to the ground, unable to move, its wings and entire body encased in frost.

"oh my.... its ice beam.... he did it... he heard me"