"Bloody hell," Sirius muttered, as the fog around the Hogwarts students faded away, revealing what looked very much like an actual fort, transfigured, bramble-topped palisade glittering in the sun, sparks and glimmers of a shield dome growing ever-more-solid, arching over a waist-high earthen rampart behind it (fronted by a ditch, of course, the dirt had to come from somewhere), surrounded by a mirror-bright lake of... "Is that ice?"

Compared to the Beauxbatons team — who'd sent a single pair of students to plant their flag at the top of a rise in the northwest corner of the arena, and done nothing else to speak of to defend it — or even Durmstrang's efforts — the five defenders there kept working on palings and conjuring dogs right through the starting gong, though one of them screamed and sprinted off into the trees after only a second or two, must've been his familiar the Diggory kid had been taunting the Durmstrang fliers with — it was incredibly impressive. Almost seemed like overkill...until he remembered that the teams weren't exactly equally matched in terms of offensive abilities.

With almost a dozen veela on the Beauxbatons team (and a Cæciné who clearly knew better than Little Bella how to prepare her ground for battle, seriously, what the hell was she doing just standing there, talking, like a bloody idiot?! — they were going to have to have a talk after this about being an overconfident little shite...) and only NEWT-equivalent students on the Durmstrang side, the Hogwarts team, about half of whom were actually kids or clearly not fighters (one of them had a bloody violin with him, which, Sirius couldn't wait to see what that was about), did seem a bit outclassed.

Offensively. Their defences were, as one of his American conquests over the summer might have put it, the shit.

"Da," said totally not his baby cousin, before switching back to French. "With oil or something on top, I think. That's genius!"

"And it's an excellent example of charm-maintained elemental transfiguration, top marks for whoever cast it," said the secondary-school teacher from Miskatonic. She, Sirius had decided, wasn't nearly as terrifying as Miskatonites from the University — just a bit weird, a little too cheerfully single-minded about finding 'interesting people' to watch the Task with.

"But not nearly as impressive as the earthworks, or the Grindelwaldian mobile ward they threw over it!" Flitwick shouted over the rising din of the actual commentary and the exclamations from various groups around them.

They were in the same stands as earlier, but they'd been transported out to the woods while everyone was hanging about in the Great Hall and elevated to about the height of a quidditch stadium, which meant they could see down into the arena, though there were enough trees in the way they couldn't see shite on the ground very well. That was why screens had been erected, levitating slightly below the level of the stands and about halfway between them and the edge of the wards (so they wouldn't get in the way of what little the spectators could actually physically make out through the trees), angled upward for easier viewing. Each one of them — there were about two-dozen, altogether — had been enchanted to project the images (and sounds) captured by a set of omnioculars wielded by a Hogwarts House Elf somewhere out in the arena.

Most of them had focused on the offensive teams, meeting out there in the big clearing that they could actually kind of physically see from the stands, with a few hovering around the various flying squads (how they were doing that, Sirius had no idea, he certainly couldn't see any flying elves from where he was sitting, though he could see the students) and watching the different base-camps. One had followed the Diggory kid as he chased down and captured a suspicious bird, the image flashing to a different angle now and again as the elf popped to a new vantage point to keep him in sight, which was a neat trick.

Schmidt cast some spell that cut the ambient noise down to about half, felt like a glamour rather than a charm. Which was also a neat trick — he'd have to try to figure out how that worked later.

"Oh, that's much better! Cheers, Greta." 'David' grinned at her over his shoulder. Andromeda rolled her eyes at the metamorph while his back was turned, probably because that hadn't sounded very Russian, and also because Nymphadora couldn't really believe that her own mum wouldn't recognise her sitting three seats away, could she? Flitwick had recognised her for fuck's sake!

"Grindelwaldian ward?" Cissy's brat echoed, his presence not at all subdued by that Durmstrang bloke, Nyberg, because he'd had to go help translate the official commentary for the Durmstrangers who didn't speak French. (Pity, he'd been vaguely adorable, getting all flustered when Sirius flirted at him. Reminded him of someone, though he couldn't think who...)

A bit further away, Sirius could hear Emma's sister-in-law — she'd stayed at Ancient House overnight, apparently she was as surprised to learn Hermione was magical as vice versa, bloody stupid Statute — telling her that Hermione had done the rune-cast geomancy to raise the walls, which was just impressive as fuck, okay. Maybe Sirius could see the appeal in the awkward, bushy-haired bookworm after all. It hadn't been at all clear what Little Bella saw in her the first time they'd met, passing through Mira's flat to go visit one of the local magical enclaves in California. And when they'd briefly run into each other earlier, she'd hardly said anything to Sirius — or Emma, for that matter — just shoved Tienne at her mother and dragged Harry away by the elbow. (Though he still thought it was absurd that Little Bella was dating anyone. Well, anyone human — the nosey little wilderfolk girl, that one he could see, but that wouldn't really be dating, would it?)

Of course, Sirius would be shocked if anyone on the Hogwarts team wasn't impressive as fuck. Flitwick had been filling the rest of them in on the various members while they waited for the interminable speeches to wrap up, especially his Ravenclaws. Apparently the violinist was some kind of child prodigy, and the Prince girl who'd been with Maïa when she'd come to steal Harry was a genius at geomancy and weather magic — though of course she couldn't admit the latter. They also had an earthspeaker — Alice and Frank's kid had inherited his great-grandmother's talent, apparently — and their Healer was only a seventh-year, but already well into an unofficial apprenticeship with Poppy Pomfrey (who didn't let just anyone near her patients).

Sirius had spent enough time with the Weasley twins discussing their inventions to realise that they were leagues beyond OWL or even NEWT level in Runes and Potions. (He couldn't imagine what they were going to contribute to the strategy, here — and where was the other one? — but he was sure they'd been picked for a reason.) There were a handful of straight fighters out there, all of whom Flitwick had noted as being among the best duelists in the school, and Harry was flying with a fellow seeker — Captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch Team — and a girl on a competition-class stunt broom Cissy had immediately pegged as a proper aerialist (as opposed to an adrenaline-addicted idiot who was only flying that thing because it let her do a proper Suicide Dive — which was absolutely the reason Bella had purchased one of those overgrown arrows over the summer rather than a normal quidditch broom).

He actually wouldn't be surprised if the least qualified person on the Hogwarts team was Harry, and Harry, despite his Remus-like lack of confidence, had just pulled off what had to be an obscure tracking charm (Sirius had certainly never seen it before), silently, with no apparent appreciation of how fucking impressive that was. Much as he really wished Harry was more James's son, Sirius really couldn't deny that the kid took after Evans kind of a lot. Yeah, he clearly got his channelling threshold from James (and his talent for flying), but that weird light-dark ambivalence and his (kind of absurd) talent for charms (and apparently also the mind magic and the Parseltongue) was all Evans. He did, thankfully, take after Jamie in not being a heartless fucking sociopath, and his stubbornness — he was absolutely determined to better Sirius's accomplishment of becoming an animagus just a week before he turned sixteen, and might actually manage it, given he had the most fabulous of all possible godfathers to advise him in that endeavour — and bravery and loyalty to his friends, too, so it could be worse.

"Oh yes, certainly!" the half-goblin professor exclaimed, drawing Sirius's attention back to the conversation in front of him rather than musing about his godson. "The self-reinforcing geodesic polyhedron is characteristic of his most basic battlefield designs. Most of his contemporaries favoured true domes, which when shattered completely fail — whereas here, if any of the individual panels are shattered they are replaced automatically."

"But aren't most modern battleward schemes based on Grindelwald's? How can you tell this is actually one of his designs?" little Bill Weasley asked. He had grown up in the past thirteen years, obviously, but Sirius couldn't help but think of the kid he and Alice had taught shield charms and stunners every time he looked at him.

Their conversation spiralled off into incomprehensible, jargon-laden gibberish pretty much immediately after that, but who cared? They were starting, now (finally — Sirius wasn't nearly as keyed up for this as Little Bella, watching other people have all the fun wasn't nearly as exciting as being in the field himself, but he didn't like waiting, either), the heavy bong of the starting signal echoing through the stands.

Taking both Harry and Bella by surprise — they were definitely going to have to have a family meeting after this, about overconfidence and the importance of situational awareness...CONSTANT VIGILANCE, as Sirius's old SA would've put it...

Siri's being all disapproving here about the kids' lack of CONSTANT VIGILANCE, but I suspect he's actually going to enjoy picking apart the footage afterward and critiquing their performances. Especially Lyra's, since that's definitely the sort of thing he and Bella (and Narcissa) did a lot back when he was Lyra's age and still liked Bella. The student has become the teacher xD

—Leigha