Harry Potter: The Golden Viper

Hermione was already adept at manipulating the suits of armor. In response to her wordless wand waving, the previously clanking and disorderly suits of armor lining the stone walls of the castle corridor snapped to attention in perfect unison. The metal plates clinked and scraped against each other as the armored figures moved, and in a matter of seconds, the once disorganized display transformed into an intimidating row of figures frozen in a menacing throwing stance.

"Wait!" Ron shouted, his face instantly paling at the sudden and severe change in the suits of armor. Facing the suits of armor in throwing pose, his breathing grew rapid and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. "Do you...do you have any tips or tricks for dodging their attacks that you can share with me? Any advice at all?"

'Tips and tricks?' Harry and Hermione exchanged puzzled glances, unsure how to respond to Ron's question in the moment.

Harry furrowed his brow in concentration, wracking his brain to recall details from their own challenging training journey. He searched through his memories, trying to discern a pattern or method to their gradual improvement in the drills.

But even upon careful consideration, he couldn't pinpoint one specific trick or shortcut. All he could remember was the endless repetition - focusing with intensity on dodging, over and over, day after exhausting day, until the movements became deep-rooted as pure muscle memory and instinct.

"You have to--" Harry began slowly, struggling to scrape together some constructive training advice as Ron looked at him with hopeful expectation.

Under Ron's anticipatory gaze, he continued with difficulty, "Well, I reckon you can't just think about getting past the blockade, Ron. You have to maintain constant situational awareness of threats coming at you from every direction, because those nasty dungbombs thrown by the armor will attack you from multiple directions."

Ron continued to look at them hopefully, wishing for more valuable guidance.

Hermione jumped in to fill the somewhat awkward silence after a pensive moment.

"Really Ron, the key is that your dodging needs to be very accurate," Hermione explained, telling the key points she had deduced. "And to achieve that, you must remain completely calm and clearheaded at all times, even in the heat of the moment when those dungbombs are hurtling at you from all sides.

It goes against instinct, but you mustn't start dodging the very instant the armor begins its throwing motions. The wisest action is to wait patiently until the dungbomb is nearly upon you to take evasive action, in a careful and controlled manner. This approach will allow you to conserve your energy and handle the incoming barrages much more effectively in the long run."

Hermione's insightful advice delved a bit deeper into the underlying principles and tactics that she understood after many such dungbomb attacks. Ron's brow furrowed as he listened intently, clearly doing his level best to absorb and adopt her meaningful words.

"I still don't fully understand though," Ron admitted after turning it over in his head for a minute, frustration leaking into his tone. "Conserving energy and not getting worn down too quickly, sure, that part makes perfect sense. But what's the reason for waiting until the very last second when the dungbomb is right in my face before I start dodging? Wouldn't it be loads safer to just get the hell out of the way as early as possible?"

"Ah, but you're not taking into account the fact that these suits of armor were designed by Professor Watson to mimic the behaviors of our opponents in a duel to the greatest extent possible," Hermione quickly responded.

"Their visual tracking allows them to detect our location at any given time. Just think it through, Ron - in a real wizarding duel, if you always dodge in an overly predictable manner at the first sign of an incoming offensive spell, you're unintentionally giving your planned evasion route to your opponent.

And you can bet that a skilled opponent absolutely will not just stand there like a fool and let you get away with that mistake. They'll immediately capitalize on your error to further cut off your angles and limit your available space to maneuver, draining your energy, flustering you, and forcing you to blunder and lose your focus, until eventually you're bound to mistime a step and then, well, it's all over... So, the real trick to effective dodging is that it needs to have an element of clever misdirection and deception built in to truly get the job done..."

The information Hermione was sharing so matter-of-factly actually was kind of very advanced dueling knowledge, that were not covered anywhere in the standard Hogwarts curriculum or any other magic class available to students.

In fact, even Bryan himself had purposefully neglected to spoon-feed them these crucial specific details at the beginning, preferring for them to naturally collect such meaningful insights on their own through intensive hands-on practice and hard-earned experience.

"Dodging needs to be deceptive?" Ron repeated slowly, looking more lost than ever as his mind failed to wrap itself around the countless subtleties layered into this seemingly simple training exercise.

While he certainly didn't underestimate the immense difficulty of Professor Watson's notorious training class, he was struggling to truly grasp the numerous complex underlying concepts in this moment.

"It's just like executing the Wronski Feint out on the Quidditch pitch, Ron!" Harry chimed in suddenly with a perfect vivid sports analogy to make the elusive point and after hearing this Ron also understood some things.

The fundamental lesson was that in the fast-paced changing aspects of a one-on-one duel between competent wizards, simply dodging may become an entirely passive action on the surface. However, those surface appearances could be highly deceiving, as strategic dodging could - and should - actually be used proactively as an effective means to actively manipulate the flow of the duel.

By forcing one's opponent to give chase and commit their attacks towards predicted path that did not actually turned out the way they anticipated, the clever duelist trades the relatively minor cost of physical exertion dodging for the much more impactful and precious expenditure of their opponent's magical energy.

Moreover, if one's opponent grows increasingly frustrated with their recurrent failures to decisively land a single solid blow, the building pressure and growing self-doubt could eventually lead to spontaneous errors and potentially catastrophic mental mistakes at critical junctures.

Taken together, these considerations represented extremely practical and valuable dueling techniques and concepts that could potentially mean the difference between victory and defeat in a fierce magical battle where the margins for error were thin.

For immensely powerful wizards of the highest caliber such as Professor Watson or Headmaster Dumbledore, such "trivial" concerns won't even be noticed, as their sheer overwhelming magical allowed them to simply power through and decisively crush the vast majority of challengers in a head-on confrontation.

But for the vast majority of wizards who have yet to reach the apex of magic, learning to understand and properly apply these core dueling principles under pressure could very well represent the invaluable tools that would one day save their lives in a desperate life and death struggle.

"Any other pearls of wisdom for us poor amateurs, oh great Chosen One and the Brightest Witch of Her Age?"

Ron asked with mock sarcasm after processing the impromptu master class on dueling theory.

Apart from Quidditch tactics, it was indeed rare for Ron to display such a hunger for knowledge.

Unfortunately, Harry and Hermione had no more experience to share with Ron. Many things can only be truly mastered by fumbling through the pain step by step on one's own.

"Best take off your school robes before you head in, Ron," Hermione reminded him in a crisp tone as Ron stood at the starting line. "While a quick Scourgify is more than enough for cleaning away the foul-smelling liquid from dungbomb strike, it can't completely get rid of the foul odor."

"Brace yourself, mate, and try to keep your wits about you once you're in the thick of it," Harry added. He felt even more nervous watching Ron train than being up there himself. "I know you think you have an idea, but trust me - those dungbombs hit a hell of a lot harder than you imagine..."

Ron swallowed hard and nodded, mumbling his acknowledgment of their last-minute warnings as he shrugged his shoulders out of his robes and passed the bundled cloth off to Hermione for safekeeping.

Stepping up to the line, he focused all of his attention on the path ahead of him.

The suits of armor commonly seen throughout the castle suddenly seemed terrifying in Ron's eyes. He recalled how exhausted and dispirited his fellow Gryffindors appeared each night upon returning to the common room after their initial training sessions. How would he fare?

Ron had heard that Neville displayed a spectacular aptitude for this training. He and that crazy Ravenclaw girl were apparently the top performers in the class, even surpassing Harry. This astonishing result made many people's jaws drop, but it also proved Professor Watson's remarkable insight. He must have spotted their potential early on, otherwise he wouldn't have chosen them as teaching assistants for the course.

"Maybe I've got some hidden talent buried deep down too," Ron thought to himself with a touch of gallows humor, trying his level best to suppress the demoralized feeling rising in his gut. "After all, when you really think about it, this dodging game isn't so different from a Quidditch match in the end - just with a couple extra Bludgers flying around trying to knock me flat, right?"

"START!!"

Hermione's crisp voice rang out the starting command, instantly clearing Ron's jumbled thoughts.

Whoosh! The howling headwind from his rapid sprint was left behind as Ron zeroed in on the suit of armors maintaining throwing stances on either side. His highly focused mind and determination gave Ron an observational ability he normally did not have. He noticed that the instant he crossed the starting line, a suit of armor forty feet ahead on the right made the first move!

'Right then, I can handle this, no need to lose my head,' Ron reminded himself as he watched the armor begin to move through the air as if underwater, its arm was in a throwing motion as it prepared to launch the first dungbomb attack at him.

Hermione's words echoed in his ears, cautioning him to keep his composure and resist the urge to dodge prematurely, no matter how badly his brain was screaming at him to get the hell out of the way.

'I can dodge it!' Ron's heart soared upon seeing the armor's throwing motion. Although the swinging arm blurred with speed, leaving afterimages in the air, he could still barely make it out!

'Stay calm, no need to rush to evade!' Ron who was leaping in air reminded himself again, but a glint of eagerness shone in his eyes. He almost couldn't wait for the dungbomb to come flying at him.

Behind the starting line, Harry and Hermione pressed their lips tight in unison with flashes of pity in their eyes as they watched Ron, his attention captivated by the dungbomb on the right, and even the orientation of his body growing skewed.

Whoosh! The instant the dungbomb left the armor's hand, the eagerness on Ron's face froze, replaced by sheer horror!

'Too fast!' Being able to track the arc of the armor's swinging arm didn't mean he could track the flight path of the dungbomb. In the blink of an eye after leaving the armor's palm, the hurled dungbomb had already appeared ten feet ahead and to the right of Ron. As for how it crossed that prior thirty-foot gap - Ron didn't see it at all.

Hermione's instructions were completely forgotten in that moment. Pure instinct took over Ron's body and mind. The second his feet touched ground, Ron leaped forward and to the left with all his might!

Whoosh! Ron felt he had unleashed his full potential in that instant. However, the dungbomb flying in from the right still managed to graze past his cheek. But that didn't matter - he dodged it, right?

Bam!

Ron's mind had just started to congratulate himself when he noticed his field of vision undergoing an eerie shift - he seemed to have lost his balance.

Oof!

Only when he crashed hard onto the hard floor, blinding pain shooting up his lower leg, and the stench of dungbomb juice blossoming in his nostrils, did Ron realize he'd been hit.

'How did that happen? I clearly dodged it, didn't I!?' Ron's mind flashed this confused thought as he clutched his leg, howling in agony.

"I already told you, Ron--" Hermione raised her wand, stopping the armor's movements. Harry walked over, his face filled with sympathy, and leaned down to Ron. "You have to stay alert in all directions.

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