Line holder; I like having the chapter head in the middle, so sue me.

Chapter 9

"That's five minutes. Obliviate." Harry calmly cast, looking at his stopwatch. He waited a few seconds then spoke again.

"How long have you been waiting Ron?"

"But you didn't-" Ron started with a strange look toward Harry.

"No." Harry interrupted, "When I started I told you I'd ask weird questions, please answer."

"Okay fine Harry… 'Bout ten seconds I recon? With all this talking it might be a little more now?"

"Wonderful!" Harry replied happily, "Right on the dot. I've finally got it honed down to a precision tool."

'Only took me two restarts to figure it out.' Harry thought, not letting the grim thought show on his smiling face. 'I had figured it required a ton of power, but it's a much more accessible spell than I thought.'

He didn't want to dwell on the scary implications of that.

"Thanks Ron, I'm finished now." Harry said honestly, helping Ron to his feet and directing him towards the castle. Even if he hated Ron and suspected his motives, he had agreed to let Harry practice an unknown spell on him. That was worth a few points in Harrys' book. Of course, it also might mean that he was too dumb to see the dangers, but Harry preferred to err on the side of caution and overestimate his intelligence… even if this was the kid who thought that 'sunshine daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow' was a spell.

Seriously, was he a wizard-raised kid or not? You'd think that after living in a house with a whole family of wizards for ten years he'd pick up a spell or two. At the very least, he should definitely have realized that a long chant wasn't a real spell incantation.

Harry glanced at his watch again, ignoring Ron's inane chatter.

'12:04, good.' Harry thought. He'd eat lunch and then make his way up to Flitwick's office for more dueling training.

Harry had noticed in his first, unsuccessful attempt at gaining veritaserum that, unfortunately, Snape had far better combat sense than him. That implied that Dumbledore also had far better combat sense than him, seeing as how Dumbledore was Snapes' boss. That was very, very bad for Harrys' chances at subduing the old man, since long (if passive) observation revealed that Dumbledore almost never let people go behind him, and he never let them out of his sight when he focused on them. Especially so considering that Snape, who was almost certainly a full level or two lower in skill than Dumbles, almost managed to get away despite a perfect plan and a near-perfect execution on Harry's part.

That led Harry to one, inescapable, conclusion: He'd simply have to get ready to confront the old man directly. He didn't have to actually dual the old man, but he'd probably have to try some sort of takedown that was much more likely to force a face-to-face confrontation than a stunner to the back. That being the case, he wanted to become capable of holding out against Dumbledore long enough to reset the loop if he was detected or failed.

So, in that first repeat after he had met Luna and again overpowered the spell, he didn't reset the loop immediately.

Harry had known that there, by the side of the lake, nobody had seen him destroy Ron's memory so he could safely spend the rest of the day doing other things before resetting at the Goblet feast. He had quickly carried Ron's drooling body a few hundred feet into the Forbidden Forest and dumped it there before going back to the castle. He had known that Flitwick was a three-time world champion dueler, so Harry had gone up and directly asked him to teach him to duel.

He had been shocked when Flitwick readily agreed.

The fact that he had never heard of Flitwick being so willing to train people before this was startling because he figured that some of the Slytherins would have taken advantage of such instruction if it was available, and yet none of them boasted about 'learning from a dueling world champion'… not even Malfoy.

That was explained a moment later when Flitwick (while ecstatic that someone had come to him for dueling instruction) flatly refused to train a sub-par successor. He had immediately informed Harry that he would need to sign a magical contract regarding his training to maintain the 'quality of duelists'.

The apprentice contract, which Flitwick actually had already waiting in a drawer in his desk, stated that Harry would be required to study under him for at least four years, with up to six being required if an acceptable level of skill was not reached in those four years. During the instruction, Harry would be required to dedicate two hours every weekday and ten per day on weekends to practice, with twelve-hour daily sessions during the summer and several tournament entries.

The mountainous size of the obligation would daunt even the most stout-hearted of Hufflepuffs and probably crushed lazy Slytherin hopes regularly, but as soon as Harry expressed a desire to continue in spite of that, Flitwick had whipped the contract out with a huge smile.

Although four years was a big commitment, the agreement was perfect for Harry, even ignoring the time-loop. Going under Flitwick's authority as an apprentice and moving out of the Dursleys' and into a bunk at Flitwicks' house meant that he would be able to do magic over the summer legally. The ability to hone his skills over the summer instead of letting them atrophy was like a dream come true, even completely ignoring the other bonuses.

Twelve hours of magic training every day over the summer with plenty of food and a room of his own versus twelve hours of chores a day with little food and a tiny room he almost squatted in?

No contest.

If he had known that it was an option he would have taken it years ago.

Of course he wouldn't be bound by the contract every time he reset the loop, nor would the benefits he would gain during the summer mean much since he was currently stuck in a time loop that ended before the summer was over, however now that he had discovered that such an option was available he fully intended to make use of it even after escaping from the loop to get away from the Dursleys.

Yet even while in the loop, Flitwicks' knowledge and skill was there to be taken by one who was willing to sign the paper. Harry knew that he wouldn't be able to gain much from one-day loops since Flitwick would probably want to spend the first day or two testing his existing skills if he admitted he had some, but it was perfect for training up in the month before the first task.

So that's what he did in the afternoons, after leaving Ron wondering how the time vanished so quickly from breakfast to lunch- He trained.

By god, did he train.

"Focus!" Flitwick had shouted in a manner eerily similar to Moodys' 'Constant Vigilance!', "Focus and instincts are the keys to a good dualist! If you have strong instincts and keep your focus on your opponent, you'll never lose to someone even twice as skilled as you in a one-on-one fight! You may not win, but you won't lose except by attrition!"

Harry had good instincts already, having survived a rash of attempts on his life and health over the years, but they weren't quite good enough for Flitwick.

Protogo and (when Harry mentioned them) every other kind of shield were, according to Flitwick, only to be used for correcting for errors (or when dueling with a team). Dodging, and the instincts that required, were cheaper magically and didn't have problems like 'doesn't block spell X' or 'too weak to block spell Y', plus they allowed you to continue attacking back.

Flitwick judged that the best way to refine those instincts was to fight someone far better and lose again and again, learning from each painful defeat what NOT to do. Flitwick told Harry that unlike what most people thought, duelists needed to refine their instincts for danger and their focus before ever starting on actual tactics and high-end skills, since a competent teacher would be able to put much more pressure on a weak opponent than a strong one and that pressure was what would build a strong base of instincts.

So they fought, or rather, Flitwick attacked and beat Harry into the ground over and over while Harry dodged and did his best to counter-attack.

Harry wasn't complaining though, because it worked! He could almost feel himself improving after each session!

He had started off dodging only two spells, less than a single second of time, before being downed. After the twelve or thirteen hours of work he put in over the last two repeats, he was lasting about ten seconds against the half-goblin when he went full-out, and nearly twenty when Flitwick held his power back in the beginning like a duelist would when probing their opponent before going on the offensive. Besides the obvious increase in combat ability, the training had the side effect of impressing Harry immensely with Flitwick's knowledge and ability.

Quite simply, Flitwick was an amazing instructor and duelist. He was like a tiger, fast and strong and utterly savage.

He may have been the Charms instructor and less than four feet tall, but still waters run deep, and Flitwick was better at DADA than Remus and Moody put together. His only flaw was that his teaching method was good for one or two students at most, rather than one or two dozen.

Even more impressive than his teaching ability though was something that Harry hadn't ever questioned, but which had always been there.

Harry had never really noticed before, but Flitwick had a grace about him that seemed oddly out of place at first considering his clumsiness in the charms classroom. That was when Harry realized that the clumsiness was intentional. Flitwick took dramatic dives and planned silly happenings in his schedule to take the tension out of the classroom and help improve concentration. Not only that, but he'd been doing it for years!

Flitwick had deliberately taken that tumble from his stack of books on Harry's first day to take the attention off of him during role-call! Maybe he hadn't planned it, but he had sure executed it quickly when he realized that Harry didn't like the stares.

The little quarter-goblin was ridiculously talented at reading people, and when Harry had asked about it, he had merely noted that to be able to read your opponent's emotional state during a fight was a very useful dueling skill. Manipulating your enemies into making mistakes which could then be exploited apparently 'shouldn't be underestimated'.

Harry had been suitably impressed by that.

'I'm almost ready for another month-long loop.' Harry thought with satisfaction that afternoon as he staggered out of Flitwicks' classroom, exhausted. 'But before I do serious training with Flitwick over the first task month, I need to at least try to get Dumbledore under veritaserum.'

Two, maybe three attempts should be enough. Even if he couldn't get him in three attempts, the information he gained about Dumbledore's defenses during those suicide runs would increase his chances of planning a successful attempt later.

He'd have to change his suicide spell from 'more than an hour unconscious' to 'more than a second not aware' so that Dumbledore wouldn't get a chance to detect or work on the suicide spell if the plan failed to subdue the man, and he would drop the 'Oblivation attempt' part in favor of 'Restrained unwillingly'. That should take care of all of any loopholes that might let Dumbledore get near him.

He'd restart once more and use all of the next loop-say planning (and then the one after that executing) a takedown of Dumbledore.

"Reloop now."

"I'll have you know today is Saturday, my off-" Harry could hear Snape sigh through the door as he saw who was there through his peep-hole. The door lock clicked open.

"To what do I owe this dubious honor, Messrs Weasly and POTT-errr." Snape started to yell before groaning as he slumped to the floor under the force of the second silent stunner. Harry almost laughed at the odd, yet correct, completion of his name.

Snape really was something- three feet between him and the wand tops and he still successfully dodged the first spell, and almost got away from the second one a half-second later.

'I suppose a spy must need lightning fast reflexes and mental processes to survive, especially if their boss is a homicidal madman.' Harry mused to himself as he retrieved his wand smoothly from where he had been holding it surreptitiously behind Rons' back before casting from just below the redhead's ear.

"Blimy Harry!" Ron jumped and then gasped in disbelief. Harry ignored the outburst and stepped into the room, lifting Snape into a chair.

"You stunned a teacher mate! Not that I care much since it's Snape, but you're gonna be in a heap of trouble once-"

Harry promptly stunned Ron too.

After dragging the boys' body into Snapes' quarters, he lifted the key from Snape and bound both of them with a pair of Incarcerous before locking them in the room and moving towards the stockroom to get the veritaserum, whistling merrily.

Two idiots down and it wasn't even lunch yet!

Harry waited patiently in a classroom just down the hall from the gargoyle outside the Headmasters office, watching the Maraurders' Map.

If everything went according to plan, in the next five minutes Dumbledore would come down the hall after lunch and Harry would stun him in the back. Then, he would whisk the old man back into the classroom where his broom was waiting for a quick getaway to the roof of the Great Hall, there, he wasn't likely to be disturbed by anyone except the pigeons for a good ten minutes (or at least until one of the professors got the news and confirmed that the person who had been taken was indeed the real Dumbledore and that Harry was missing).

The plan hinged on the fact that Dumbledore typically ignored these classrooms since they were always locked. He hadn't noticed that Harry had broken into one of them in the last loop, so that aspect of the plan was solid, but Harry still worried about he would notice the attack and dodge swiftly enough to nullify the element of surprise Harry was banking on.

Fortunately, there were three things that would (hopefully) slow his reactions by a split second.

Firstly, the after-lunch drowsiness that accompanied a decent meal was a purely physiological reaction that would certainly make him less aware of his surroundings.

Secondly, being at the castle made him relax, since he probably figured that anybody who was willing or capable of killing him had to go through the wards… the wards which would warn him and give him plenty of time to prepare. Unfortunately this aspect wasn't nearly as pronounced as it could have been since there were foreign students on the premises who Dumbledore had more reason to be wary of than the Hogwarts students whom he had investigated and manipulated into near-worship.

Conveniently for Harry though was that he was inside the wards already.

Lastly, being in public also made the man relax a bit, since any attack launched against him would be immediately noticed by the people walking this hallway. Dumbledore probably figured that after the general public saw the attack, nobody (and especially not any of the foreign students) had enough clout to justify kidnapping him.

Nobody but Harry that is.

For once, Harry was glad of his fame, since it would (probably) give him enough credibility to rush in and kidnap Dumbles without people trying to actively stop him if he yelled a good enough explanation… preferably something like 'Dumbledore is an imposter!'.

As long as he cleared the scene fast enough people would probably be too stunned to react quickly or decisively and they wouldn't have time to ask inconvenient questions that would poke holes in his paper-thin lie.

Even if he didn't manage to spirit Dumbledore away in time or subdue the old man in one shot, the experience would certainly provide information to help plan the next try.

'Showtime.' Harry thought as he watched Dumbledore make the turn into the hallway on the map. It looked as though there were only three students in the hallway at the moment, and none of them were upper-years, just like the previous loop.

"Mischief Managed." Harry said, rolling up the parchment and sticking it into his pocket.

'Ten seconds.' Harry shook his arms to loosen them up and drew his wand. He drew a couple of deep, purging, breaths.

'Three.' He put his hand on the doorknob.

'Two.' He turned it.

'One.'

In one smooth motion, Harry pulled the door open, took one turning step out, and fired a silent stunner directly at Dumbledore's back.

Harry started to celebrate mentally for an instant before Dumbledore turned smoothly at the last moment, diverting the stunner up into the ceiling with a flick-twist of his wand and firing back a blue sphere. Harry sank into a crouch and let the spell pass over his head as he launched an assault on the old man.

The mission was botched, so it was time to get operational info for the future.

"Reducto, Ossis Praemium," Harry cast, aiming for Dumbledore's knees. The old codger wheeled gracefully to the side and fired back a pair of silent stunners which Harry avoided by bending like a snake.

"Who are you?" Dumbledore asked calmly, speaking even as he continued to cast spells silently.

Silent stunner, silent Incarcerous, "Evito." Harry cast in answer, making a roll away from the door to avoid a slow moving greenish-purple curse that melted a chunk out of the stone floor like acid, producing a green cloud.

"Harry wouldn't attack me like this. Nor would he know those spells," Dumbledore said in an almost conversational tone, stepping around the ancient killing curse and continuing to talk as though the intense spell exchange wasn't even happening. He raised a shield and blocked several of Harry's weaker spells before sending back a green energy crescent that ripped a twenty foot long slash up the wall and on the ceiling. "Ergo, you are not Harry. Polyjuice perhaps? It doesn't matter, I ask again: Who are you?"

"Fulminis." Harry responded, twisting back towards the open door before stopping in confusion as the rain of spells suddenly stopped.

He was panting with exertion as he looked up to see a strange look crossing Dumbledore's face, halfway between consternation and triumph. Dumbledore lowered his wand from where he had raised a shield of some sort to tank the lightning bolt.

"It's rude to ignore people when they're talking to you." Dumbledore chided, "And especially rude to ignore my questions. But as it appears to be my win, I'll get answers soOnr ratHAR thAN lATERrrr."

Harry blinked at the weird distortion in Dumbledore's voice. Then he blinked a few more times as he realized just how heavy his eyelids felt. Maybe he should just close them for a few momen-

Harry opened his eyes and blinked several times as his drowsiness vanished. He stared up uncomprehendingly at the ceiling of his four-poster canopy for a moment, then he sat up and pondered what had happened.

It had been going great, right up until that first spell.

'How did he react so fast?' Harry wondered curiously.

Dumbledore didn't hear it since it was cast silently, he didn't see it since he was facing the other direction, he didn't smell, taste, or feel it. Could the old man detect raw magic or something?

Mage-sight was one of a very few methods of doing that, but it required you to actually look at the magic to detect it; and the only other possible method of doing that (except for inborn abilities) was Mage-sense, which gave a sort of sixth sense, but that had fallen out of style since being inside wards of any kind blinded it. It was still used for treasure hunting though, usually in conjunction with Mage-sight for finding and then dismantling wards.

The Supersensory Charm maybe? That would warn him when the spell was cast from the sound of the wand swishing through the air or from the tiny amount of light produced by the spell, but that spell drives the user insane if kept up for long periods of time.

That was probably the most likely explanation, but if Dumbledore couldn't have it up all the time, what had notified him that he needed to put it up in this case?

Harry groaned as he relaxed down into the bed.

Regardless of how it happened, every time he seemed to get closer to capturing Dumbledore the man seemed to get further away.

At first it had been the very real threat of being captured and reprogrammed by Dumbledore again, so he had been forced to research a suicide spell to prevent another session of 'Let's destroy Harry's brain'. Then it had been the rude wake-up call in the form of Snape's dueling skills and the follow-up problem of a one week time limit on veritaserum availability before Snape discovered it and alerted Dumbledore. Now, it was the fact that surprise was seemingly much more difficult to attain against Dumbledore than he had thought… and that man had much more power than Harry had ever imagined.

After their furious twenty-five second battle, Harry had been sweating and panting like a hundred yard sprints after a record run from effort, and Dumbledore hadn't even been winded. What was worse was that the man hadn't even been trying to conserve power, yet he was still completely fine! Sure, Harry had been firing off vast amounts of rapid high-powered spells, some of which were even silently casted, so his energy consumption was through the roof, but his alpha-strike apparently didn't even faze the man.

Harry had always thought that he was at least in the same ballpark as Dumbledore and Voldemort in terms of power, but this duel killed that childish delusion with ease. At least for the moment, he wasn't in the same ballpark. Hell, he wasn't even in the same league. Voldy and Dumbles were international pro players and he was apparently playing for a highschool team. Sure they're playing same game in theory, but unless the pro player is deliberately cautious for some reason or something goes horribly and unexpectedly wrong they'll stomp the highschool player repeatedly.

Flitwick had crushed him in their practices over and over by having insane levels of dueling skill and magical finesse backed with a good amount of power. He would seem to predict what Harry were going to cast almost before he cast it by drawing on his vast dueling experience, and then he would then use that knowledge to strike exactly in the perfect place to cause the most trouble to Harry's ability to continue the battle for the least effort. Flitwick could scythe through a hundred average opponents and not even be sweating from the sheer efficiency of his attack and defense.

Dumbledore on the other hand, while only of slightly above average skill at dueling, was extremely good with his magic and added massive reserves of power on top of that. What that meant was that although Dumbles couldn't battle as quickly or efficiently as Flitwick, he didn't need to. He was able to cast a spells which, while perfect for a given situation, were not normally cast in a duel due to difficulty or power requirements. He wouldn't scythe through a hundred opponents like Flitwick, he would blast his way through with sheer power… or just cast an esoteric spell to take out all of them at once. His 'lack' (and that's generous) of dueling skills was easily overcome by these two aspects.

Dumbledore had tanked the vast majority of the verbal spells Harry had cast with various shields, only dodging when the silent casting sent some doubt into his spells or when his spells were shield ignoring, like Evito or the Ossis spells. Dumbledore was a good enough dueler to know that shields weren't a good option most of the time for the same reasons Flitwick had mentioned, but he had still spent the power for them easily and decisively. Maybe he was expecting that he could hold out long enough for help to arrive (which was a good assumption because he could in this case), but it was still a pretty dangerous move unless he was supremely confident in his superiority.

Dumbledores' dueling skills and natural talents for magic aside, Harry couldn't figure out what had happened to make the loop reset.

How exactly had the old man gotten him?

He hadn't gotten hit by a spell, nor had he collapsed from exhaustion. Sure he had poured out a huge amount of magic trying to tag the man with any spell he could, but he could have kept up that strain for another twenty seconds before he would have totally collapsed.

Harry thought back. It was almost as if he had suddenly felt extremely tired. Why would he have suddenly felt tired with all that adrenaline flowing through him?

A mental suggestion maybe, but he hadn't felt anything on his 'shields' and his suicide spell would have gone off if it considered a mental attack Legilimency.

It was almost as if he had been drugged somehow, but he hadn't eaten or drunk anything, nor did he breathe in anything odd-

That purple-green spell that had dissolved the rock had produced a cloud of green gas. Harry had mostly ignored the spell because it had traveled so slowly, and he had shifted back over where that spell had hit right before he had gone down.

'Well, live and learn. Or maybe learn and die.' Harry though sardonically, 'Though I suppose in my case it's the same thing.'

He'd try again in the morning, but this time he'd try at a different location to make sure that it wasn't some sort of ward he accidently tripped.

Maybe he'd try just off of the Great Hall? There were far more students there, so he'd have to use his Invisibility cloak (and there was an idea, why didn't he use that himself the first time?) to cover up Dumbledore's body before the getaway via broom, but he could manage it. Maybe he should get an area stunning spell of some kind for things like this… that was something to research in the next reset month, after trying one more short-loop try at Dumbledore.