They'd expected Draco Malfoy to lose. He'd expected to win. The look on the older boy's face when the Shield Charm held — that was the part he'd actually paid for.
The duel came about the way most things came about in Slytherin, quietly, publicly, and with a crowd.
Rosier had been waiting for his chance since the night Draco had made him back down in front of the whole common room. For two months he had nursed the humiliation, and now he had found his moment. He issued the challenge in the common room, loud enough for everyone to hear, as you issued a challenge when you wanted witnesses.
"Let's see how far that name carries you when I'm the one who decides, Malfoy," Rosier had said.
Draco had looked at him for a long moment.
"Name the time," he'd said. "And the place."
The duel was set for Saturday, in a disused classroom on the fifth floor that Slytherin had been using for such things for a hundred years. The desks had been pushed back against the walls, and the crowd had arranged itself along them, and Rosier stood at one end with his wand out and his friends behind him.
Draco stood at the other end.
He knew what everyone in the room was thinking. They were thinking that Rosier was two years older, and bigger, and that Draco was a first-year who'd got above himself. They were thinking this would be quick. They were thinking they'd enjoy watching the upstart put in his place.
Draco let them think it.
The duel was not formal, but it had rules. There was a count, and a bow, and Rosier's friends were the witnesses, and they were not going to be fair witnesses, and Draco had known that before he'd agreed. He didn't need fair. He needed to win.
"On the count of three," Rosier said. "Ready, Malfoy?"
Draco inclined his head.
Rosier struck first.
He was fast, and he was not bad, and he threw a jinx that would have left Draco twitching on the floor if it had landed. It didn't land. Draco had spent a year buying timing, and the timing was in his head now, bought and paid for, and he moved out of the way of the jinx like a cat, and Rosier's face flickered.
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Draco didn't counter. Not yet. He let Rosier come again, and again, each jinx spending itself against the air where Draco had been, and he watched Rosier's confidence curdle into frustration, as he'd watched a hundred opponents do the same thing, and he waited.
And as he waited, a strange thing happened. He felt the bought reflexes rise in him, smooth and instant and perfect, and he knew they would carry him through this, and he knew also, with a small, cold flicker he had no time to examine, that there was no him in them. They were not the product of a year of his sweat and his fear and his failure. They were a thing he had purchased, like a coat, and they fitted him flawlessly, and they had never once been his.
Then he moved.
The Shield Charm came up, silver and perfect, and Rosier's best curse broke against it like a wave on a wall. And before Rosier could recover, before he could do anything but stare at the shield that should not have held, Draco's wand came up and he said the word.
"Expelliarmus!"
Rosier's wand flew out of his hand and clattered against the far wall.
The room went very quiet.
Draco stood there, and he did not gloat, because gloating was for people who hadn't known they were going to win. He lowered his wand, and he looked at Rosier, standing empty-handed and white-faced in the middle of the room, and he said, "I think that settles it."
And the room broke into noise.
Not cheers. Slytherin didn't cheer for a first-year who'd just humiliated a third-year. But there was a quality to the silence and the whispers that was better than cheers: respect, reluctant and appraising, and the sound of a dozen minds recalculating what Draco Malfoy was worth.
Rosier's friends collected his wand for him. Rosier himself did not look at Draco. He walked out of the room with his back straight and his hands in fists, and Draco watched him go, and he knew, with a cold certainty, that he had just made an enemy who would not forget.
He expected to feel triumph.
He had won. He had won cleanly, in front of the whole house, and the victory had been his, not bought in the moment but demonstrated with spells he'd paid for in advance. It should have felt like everything he'd wanted.
It felt like nothing.
He stood at the edge of the room, watching the crowd disperse, and he tried to find the satisfaction, and he couldn't. Because he knew, with a cold, quiet honesty he couldn't shake, that the spells had been flawless but the feeling behind them had not been his. He had bought the timing and the shield and the reflexes, and they had performed exactly as advertised, and there was a thinness to it, a hollowness, like a bell that had been rung and made no sound.
Snape was there.
Draco had not seen him come in, but the Potions master stood at the back of the room, black-robed and still, and he had seen the whole thing. He met Draco's eyes across the empty classroom, and he said, in a voice that carried precisely as far as it needed to:
"Very clean, Mr Malfoy."
A pause.
"For a performance."
And he was gone, before Draco could ask what he meant.
Draco stood in the empty room, with the dust settling and the silence ringing, and he would spend the rest of the term turning those three words over in his head, trying to work out what, exactly, the Potions master had seen.