Hogwarts' first week of Dueling Club came to a lively close. Since it was the first week of club gatherings and league matches, nearly every professor attended the Dueling Club's first gathering as a guest on Sunday night.
At the same time, the general format for the new term's weekly dueling activities was established. First came the teaching portion: after dinner, all the students would gather in the Great Hall to listen to the professors explain one or two dueling lessons, covering things like the Disarming Charm and defensive spells, before a few students were chosen to give a simple demonstration.
Then came the main event: the dueling league. It was divided into upper-year and lower-year groups, with each House sending three to four students from different years per group, corresponding to the first through fourth positions in the dueling arena. They would fight in order, and every two Houses had to face off once. If the student in the first position was strong enough, taking down eight or even ten opponents in a row was not much of a problem.
Just like Cedric that night. On his own, he utterly crushed the lower-year teams from the other three Houses. Even the third- and fourth-years from those Houses were no match for him. He led his team to three straight victories and won nearly fifteen points for Hufflepuff by himself.
The upper-year group did not go nearly as smoothly. Gryffindor won the first week's upper-year division, which was not particularly surprising. Slytherin was clearly still concealing its tactics. Under Aisling's arrangements, the entire House directly adopted the strategy of matching weak horses against strong ones, allowing Slytherin to earn quite a few points in the first week despite rotating its lineup.
As the saying went, those before planted the trees,