As Harry stood, a sharp, throbbing heat radiated from his left hand, the skin raw from the friction of the obsidian floor and the Mana Puppet's kinetic impact.
Instinctively, he hissed through his teeth and clutched his left wrist with his right hand, applying pressure to the dull ache that was quickly turning into a rhythmic pulse of pain.
Ginny and Hermione lunged forward simultaneously, their faces etched with alarm as they reached Harry before he could even find his balance. Hermione caught his right shoulder, her eyes darting across his dusty robes for hidden injuries, while Ginny gripped his bruised left arm with practiced care, supporting his weight and shielding him.
Before Hermione could launch into an indignant interrogation, Atlas smoothly drew his wand and pointed it directly at Harry's chest. "Episkey Maxima," he intoned, his voice steady and devoid of the usual frantic effort of a student caster.
A wave of cool, clinical energy washed over Harry, and in a single heartbeat, the swelling in his wrist subsided and the stinging heat of the bruises vanished entirely, leaving his skin as clear as if the duel had never happened.
Harry flexed his fingers, a look of genuine surprise crossing his face as the last traces of soreness evaporated into a strange, tingling warmth.
He felt an odd surge of vitality, as if the spell hadn't just mended his skin but had actually replenished the stamina he'd burned through during the frantic dodging.
The heavy, leaden feeling in his limbs was gone, replaced by a lightness that made the previous thirty seconds of total defeat feel like a distant, fading dream.
Hermione's eyes widened, her mouth snapping shut as she processed the sheer efficiency of the charm. She had seen Episkey used before to heal minor cuts, but this Maxima variant was orders of magnitude more powerful, operating with a surgical precision that seemed to skip the usual messy knitting of flesh.
Despite her lingering anger over his methods, she couldn't help but stare at the wand Atlas held, her mind already racing to figure out how he had modified the base structure of a common healing spell to achieve such an instantaneous cellular restoration.
Harry reached down and retrieved his holly wand from the obsidian floor, his fingers wrapping around the wood with a strength and precision that wasn't there minutes ago.
He gave it a quick experimental swish; the movement was fluid, devoid of the slight hitch in his wrist that usually came after a hard fall.
It was as if Atlas hadn't just healed the injury, but had recalibrated Harry's entire motor response system to be more efficient than it was before the duel began.
Atlas looked at Harry, his expression softening just enough to reveal a flicker of genuine regret behind the calculation. "I apologize, Harry," he said, his voice regaining its calm, melodic tone.
"It was never my intention to cause you lasting pain or to leave you bleeding on the floor, but words alone cannot describe the visceral reality of a high-tier engagement. I needed you to experience the crushing gap between a schoolyard duel and a life-or-death magical conflict so that your instincts would finally begin to reject the rules you've been taught."
Harry nodded slowly, his fingers tightening around his wand as the harsh reality of the encounter settled in.
He wasn't angry anymore; the sensation of being utterly dismantled in less time than it took to eat a piece of toast had stripped away his ego, leaving only a cold, sobering clarity.
He looked at the Mana Puppet, which stood once again in its silent, inert state, and realized that for all his titles and past victories, he had truly only tasted the soil today because he was playing a game he didn't even know the rules to yet.
Then Harry looked down at his hands, opening and closing them as he felt an unfamiliar, buzzing energy beneath his skin that hadn't been there before. "Atlas," he asked, his voice laced with a mix of confusion and awe, "why do I feel... like this? It's not just that the pain is gone. I feel fresher, faster, and even a bit stronger than I was before we started. That wasn't just a normal healing spell, was it?"
Atlas gave a rare, subtle smile, his eyes glinting with the satisfaction of a teacher seeing a student finally notice the unseen layers of the world. "The spell was merely the trigger for the repair, Harry," he said, before gesturing with a slow, sweeping motion toward the ground. "But the fuel for your recovery... that came from beneath your feet."
Following his gaze, Harry, Hermione, Ginny, and Ron all looked down, their breath catching as a pulse of violet light rippled through the floor, revealing a massive, intricate network of concentric runic circles that spanned nearly half the room.
The obsidian-like stone was etched with a staggering array of symbols; a linguist would have been paralyzed by the sight, as ancient Greek and Latin intertwined with the flowing curves of Sanskrit, all of them anchored by a jagged, geometric language that seemed to pulse with a cold, primordial power.
Atlas then explained that they were standing upon an ancient array, a complex runic structure inscribed into the very foundation of the room that functioned as a massive environmental catalyst. "I simply activated the sequence," Atlas stated, watching the light pulse beneath their feet.
He clarified that the array was designed to subtly augment anyone within its bounds physically making them stronger, sharpening their insight, and providing an unnatural level of concentration and focus during both practice and active combat.
Harry nodded, finally understanding that the surge of vitality and the sharp, crystalline clarity he felt weren't just the lingering effects of a healing spell, but the ambient power of the room itself.
He looked down at the obsidian floor, noticing how the light within the runes didn't just sit on the surface, but seemed to flow like liquid fire through the deep, precise engravings.
As he stood there, he could feel a faint, rhythmic thrumming against the soles of his boots, a steady vibration that matched the pulse of the ancient magic etched into the stone.
Ron stared at the glowing floor for a full three seconds.Then he very deliberately lifted one boot and stamped it back down.
The runes pulsed.
"…You're telling me," Ron said slowly, voice pitched somewhere between disbelief and accusation, "that I just spent the last ten minutes standing on a magic super-charging murder floor."
He stamped again, harder."and nobody thought to mention that before Harry got flattened like a Chocolate Frog?"
Hermione shot him a glare. "Ron..."
"No, no," Ron continued, running a hand through his hair, eyes darting between the glowing symbols and Atlas. "Because that would've been useful information. Really useful. Life-saving, even. Instead, I'm over here thinking we're all about to need Madam Pomfrey and maybe a stretcher."
He looked back at Harry, squinting.
"…You do look annoyingly fine," Ron admitted. "Better than fine, actually. Bit unfair, that."
Hermione stepped closer to Atlas, her brow furrowed in that familiar expression of intense, scholarly hunger that usually preceded a trip to the library. "Leaving the floor aside for a moment," she began, her voice dropping into a focused hum, "what about that spell? I've studied the foundations of minor healing charms,I know Episkey is a standard restorative for basic fractures and abrasions but Episkey Maxima? I've never seen that suffix applied to a healing spell in any Ministry-approved textbook.
Atlas looked at Hermione, his expression shifting into that of a researcher presenting a breakthrough. "You haven't heard of it because the standard curriculum treats spells as static incantations ," he explained calmly.
After studying the base Episkey charm and testing its effects on various animals, he had analyzed how the magic interacted specifically with biological tissue and individual cells.
By understanding the underlying logic of how the spell triggered cellular regeneration, he was able to modify the spell's output essentially rewriting the magical code to optimize the speed and depth of the healing process.
Atlas then shook his head, his gaze sharpening as he dismissed the academic detour with a sharp, decisive gesture. "Leave aside these things; we can talk about the nuances of spell-crafting later," he said, his voice dropping into a tone of absolute authority that commanded their immediate silence. "Let us talk about the real important things ,the variables that will actually determine whether you survive the coming months, or whether you remain nothing more than pawns in a game you cannot yet see."
Atlas stood at the center of the glowing concentric rings, his silhouette casting a long, sharp shadow against the obsidian floor. "I will now talk about things that you will never learn in any book, nor will any professor not even Dumbledore tell you," he announced, his voice carrying a resonant weight that seemed to vibrate the very air in the chamber.