Lyra hated waiting.

It had been bad enough, over the long course of the day, knowing what she would be doing later but having to wait, for hours and hours, for the moment to come. Throughout the night, time just being so bloody slow and stubborn — it would have been convenient to be able to sleep, just to make time go faster, but of course she was far too mad today to manage it. (She'd probably just power through a sleeping potion, at this point.) Listening to the rules for the Task and sitting through the Order of Merlin nonsense had been miserable, it'd been all she could do just to sit still (and she hadn't even managed that very well), jumping and jittery, her skin crawling almost painfully, holding back energy so intense she almost felt she would fly apart if her attention slipped. Not really, of course, the only thing that happened when her attention did slip was she saturated the area around her with dark magic, light and giddy and playful, like a spring breeze tugging at her hair, in the more intense moments electricity tingling against her skin, like lightning about to strike.

Harry kept poking her whenever her magic slipped, reminding her it really wasn't a good idea to flood people with it all the time — also, it gave him a headache sometimes, especially when veela or Cæciné or Cassie or Dumbledore were around, which meant he was sensitive enough to pick up on the interference of the clashing magical fields, which was interesting — but it was bloody impossible. Besides, as annoying as some more sensitive people found it, Maïa actually liked it, so Lyra had trouble caring enough to remember to contain herself.

Not that Maïa had actually said anything, but it was obvious enough even Lyra had picked up on it. Maïa was a very intense sort of person, all tense and focused all the time, and as oblivious as Lyra could be to feelings things a lot of the time she had learned to read body language at least somewhat — originally to evaluate the level of danger she was in with Cygnus, she thought, back when she'd been tiny — so the way she relaxed a little whenever Lyra was leaking magic all over the place was kind of a big hint. She also tended to be less irritable about confusing normal people things (it was funny how easily Maïa's pretensions of "morality" or whatever faded away when she wasn't paying attention to them), and would keep staring at Lyra, seemingly without realising she was doing it, smiling more. Maïa wasn't one of those people who went smiling all the time, so that was also a pretty big hint.

Also, how Maïa reacted when she slipped while they were snogging, that was obvious too.

It was...kind of adorable, honestly? She didn't even know why she thought that, it just was — not really the same kind of adorable as pouting Meda or baby thestral, but. She usually didn't hold it in when they were alone together (or in their room with Gin and Gabbie, who didn't count), because, clearly Maïa didn't mind, so why bother?

She'd completely lost all ability to hold her magic in by now, it simply wasn't possible, she wasn't even trying anymore. They were standing at the edge of the arena, the wards glimmering faintly silver-blue ahead of them, a large half-circle temporarily cut into the wall. The three teams were collected together, a pack of forty-five kids (though most old enough they weren't really kids anymore), segregated by school. They hadn't been told to separate out, they'd just done so naturally.

And they were still waiting, for something, she couldn't imagine what, and she hated waiting! It was all she could do to stand here, bouncing in place, her fingers tapping at her hips, her arms crossing and then uncrossing again, rubbing at her wrist — she'd taken an annoyingly light hex sparring with Sirius, it'd been stiff for days but it felt fine now — making nonsense hissing noises in the rhythm of a Sonic Youth song that randomly appeared in her head before catching herself, and then running a hand through her hair (fingers getting caught because she'd plaited it back for the Task), and agh! Could they get the fuck started already? What was taking so long?!

She honestly didn't even have the concentration right now to figure out what the hell was going on with Maïa — something to do with her parents? It didn't help that Harry was being annoying again, of course she understood the concept of marriage, just... They (Harry and Maïa) were the ones who thought of marriage solely in terms of love matches, which was bloody weird and completely missing the point! She still wasn't certain how that was supposed to work, like on a large-scale, society-wide level. Obviously, a few people doing it here and there, sure, but...

Also, if the Grangers' marriage was just a love match, she...didn't understand what the problem was? If Emma and Dan didn't love each other anymore — which, Lyra hadn't seen any evidence of that, they were sort of annoyingly sweet sometimes, honestly, Maïa was probably freaking out over nothing again — that would clearly be their personal...relationship...stuff. Would that really be Maïa's business? Lyra was under the impression people's romantic entanglements weren't supposed to be anybody else's concern. Sure, the household breaking apart would be disruptive to Maïa's life too, but...

(See, this was one of the reasons why using ephemeral normal people feelings as a basis for a marriage was so bloody weird, and also kind of stupid.)

The only way it was really Maïa's concern wasn't one. A concern, she meant. Since the House of Granger had been formed after Emma and Dan's marriage, neither of their memberships were attached to that marriage, so they would remain in the House if they divorced — and, by extension, under the protection of the House of Black. They'd all be taken care of. None of them had to worry about having somewhere else to go, all their needs would still be met, Maïa's education, her future wouldn't be put at risk. The consequences of Emma and Dan splitting up would be...well, Emma and Dan splitting up. All the serious negative effects that went with that sort of thing, none of them would be a problem. The Blacks guaranteeing them meant the Grangers were all set for life, Emma and Dan divorcing wouldn't change that.

Interpersonal normal person feelings stuff -wise... Well, she still didn't see how that was Maïa's business. It wasn't like it should affect her relationships with her parents — they would still be her parents. She didn't even spend that much time with them, honestly, Lyra talked to them more than Maïa did. She really didn't see what the problem was.

Not that it would be even a not-problem? She was pretty sure Maïa was just freaking out about the Task and wasn't thinking straight. So, there was really no point in talking about it, Lyra just dropped it.

Of course, once everyone else got past that, then they got in another confusing conversation, this one seemingly having to do with Maïa's evaluation of her own abilities being almost as out of sync with reality as Harry's. Seriously, she didn't think Maïa realised just how good their fortifications were and her wards, gods and Powers, that was good shite. Especially impressive that Maïa was even able to cast them at all, that was not simple magic...especially because she'd tied in a blood magic power-sharing trick at the same time, which was just ridiculous.

Lyra wouldn't have any difficulty casting the wards — though she wouldn't have written the same ones, Maïa had switched around a few elements and added in a dissolving filter circled back into the reservoir, which was clever — but she also had the channeling capacity to brute force it. Maïa didn't. She wasn't initialising Mallory's quick-and-dirty power-sharing trick, but she did still have to shape the energy she was drawing, which was more difficult when it wasn't all hers, while also casting the wards at the same time. And to keep the draw low enough she didn't hurt herself (or Mallory, Lyra guessed), and even enough to get the most out of both of the people in the circle, which was not an easy thing to do. Lyra had never done any power-sharing stuff (why would she have?), but she still knew enough to understand it added additional mental strain on top of a ward scheme that was hardly simple to begin with.

It was seriously fucking impressive, was the point. Assuming they could keep off veela fire-walking in, there was no fucking way anybody was getting their flag.

Honestly, Maïa and Harry's ridiculous underestimation of their own abilities was starting to get seriously irritating. Harry, that sort of made sense. Sort of. His childhood hadn't been that much better than hers, apparently, and he hadn't even known about magic or anything, supposedly he hadn't known much at all until Hagrid had picked him up from Lily Evans's sister's family. (And why the hell had Hagrid been given that job?) He both wouldn't have had a way to fight back against his shite relatives — so would have felt more hopeless, like six-year-old Bella, but without any expectation that he might be able to do anything about it sooner or later — and wouldn't have seen enough magic growing up to know what was normal and what wasn't.

The former, yeah, she'd read out of books by now about childhood development and stuff, snuck out of Emma and Dan's library, muggle understanding of that sort of thing was more developed than mages' — not that she'd really needed the books to kind of get it, Meda (current, adult Meda) suspected only part of the general instability common in the House of Black was a consequence of the Covenant, that they were all just seriously fucked up as children. Which, sure, made sense. If nothing else, Maïa's reaction when she told her about Cygnus and all was a big glaring hint that that sort of thing should leave psychological consequences. That Harry was fucked up a bit from his own less-than-pleasant childhood wasn't impossible, that could have something to do with his abysmal confidence. Sure.

In the one conversation with Meda about that shite they'd had, it'd occurred to Lyra that maybe they should consider just adopting adults to repopulate the House. Sirius didn't have a problem with it — in fact, he thought the idea of doing a Henry and adopting a couple dozen commoners and muggleborns into the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black was hilarious (and he wasn't wrong, it was pretty funny, the other Lords would panic) — though how insistently he avoided the conversation of finding him a wife might have something to do with that. Of course, Lyra didn't plan to do the marriage and children thing either...though, the spirit of Lily Evans had said she would eventually, which was both somewhat irritating but also somewhat interesting, because she and Maïa couldn't marry — either the law would have to change in the next decade or two (unlikely), or they'd go and do it in Aquitania or Sicily or something and tell everyone who didn't like it to fuck off, which, she had to admit, that did sound funny, almost as good as Sirius pulling a Henry.

(Evans hadn't said her future wife she knew about because time has no meaning in Death was Maïa, Lyra had just assumed it was because, honestly, who else could it be? Lyra didn't really tolerate the company of very many people for very long.)

Anyway, what she was thinking, the Family was in a very delicate situation right now, with only two (non-fugitive) members of the House — both of them unmarried individuals who could do something stupid and get themselves killed at any time. They would need to do something, and preferably soon, just to cut back on the risk of the House dying completely in the near future. This was part of why Lyra had brought up arranging a marriage for Sirius so often over the summer — also, it was sort of scandalous to have an unmarried Lord Sirius's age (Lyra didn't normally mind scandalous, but why it was scandalous was the suggestion that the House was weak and isolated, which wasn't to their benefit) — it wasn't just to annoy him, though that was a nice bonus. Sirius could just get them a few bastards, she guessed, he didn't have to do the marriage part (though that was preferable, for political reasons)...but having a bastard by a man of the Family was far less legitimate than by a woman, due to the Family once having been matrilineal ages ago their internal law just worked like that, Sirius would probably have to adopt them anyway and that would be tedious.

Adoptions had some of the same weaknesses, but it had the benefit of not needing to wait for Sirius to knock up a few women and for the bastards to grow up, they could do an adoption a week if they really wanted to. And it would also have the benefit of Sirius and Lyra not needing to raise children, which, she had the distinct feeling that that would not end well. She doubted either of them would be nearly as harsh and head-fuck-up-ing as their own parents — if nothing else, Lyra was shite at the Imperius anyway, so — but that didn't mean they'd be good. They'd definitely fuck it up somehow.

If the elves hadn't been around, Lyra probably would have forgotten to feed Meda at some point. She'd been a little kid at the time too, but still.

But apparently, according to dead Evans, Lyra would be having kids eventually. That...seemed like a bad idea. Hopefully Maïa would know what she was doing better than— Except no, Maïa was even worse with kids than she was. She was even noticeably awkward around Rachel (enough Lyra had noticed), and Rachel was almost twelve, and reasonably self-sufficient at that. Faced with actual children, Maïa would probably end up doing to them whatever her parents had done to her to make her so awkward and anxious all the time, and also have absolutely no realistic picture of how brilliant she was, and that was still very irritating.

Well, there would still be the elves, they would make sure the kids didn't die, at least. And they clearly did good work at that keeping kids with shite parents alive thing — when she thought about it, it was honestly a little astounding that Lyra hadn't died at some point when she was five or six. Through Eris, she knew there'd been a lot of Dead Bellas around that age...though usually from intentionally killing herself or Cygnus pushing too far, not from neglect. Because elves were good at their jobs, that was just expected, wasn't it.

How long had it been since she'd checked in with Cherri? She'd been rather distracted, with the Tournament and the guests and all, she'd sort of lost track of time. Ancient House had mostly been made habitable again, but they'd still been going over the townhouse in Islington — which Sirius didn't even want to step foot in, but he'd have to suck it up, the place was convenient for meetings with outsiders — and they'd hardly even checked the Keep yet. Not like they really needed the Keep, at least not any time soon, but...

(Also, she did just like Cherri, she was surprisingly entertaining for an elf, didn't really need an excuse to check in. Though talking to Cherri just for the hell of it would probably make Lil all jealous and hover-y — she and Zinnie were both still around, she kind of made a point of avoiding them... Oh! She could tell her about the idea dead Evans had given her about the Family Magic! That was a thing her Chief Elf should be kept in the loop about...)

Ooh, and she should check out Castle White at some point — she'd used the place for that meeting with Dumbledore over the summer, but she'd only seen a handful of rooms, a few Cherri had cleaned up quick specifically for the purpose. It was literally the Family's first holding in western Europe (or the land it was on, anyway, the fort had been rebuilt multiple times), but they hadn't lived out of it for ages. Since before the founding of the Wizengamot even, she thought. A cadet branch of the Family had held it, obviously, but. At some point shortly after the Statute, one of the main halls and a couple side buildings and the courtyard between them had been signed over to the Ministry to use as an international floo hub, she should probably take a peek at that contract as long as she was at it, but the rest of the castle, still held by the Family, had been shut up for centuries now. Who knew what might be in there — the library was quite impressive, she'd been there, but supposedly there were catacombs and vaults and shite underground that the Family had been using since literally before they'd been called "Black", there could be all sorts of neat shite down there, some of it possibly sitting untouched for over a thousand years, she should see about maybe—

Lyra jumped as a sharp explosion rent the air, echoing off the stands. Her wand in her hand, she whirled around, searching for— Oh, that'd been the signal to get started. Oops.

Distracted, by the time Lyra figured out what was going on everyone else had started moving. The pack of forty-five people spilled through the hole in the wards, the people with brooms taking off as soon as they crossed the boundary. Pillars of fire flared into existence one after another, a couple black and purple but most white and gold, and several of the Beauxbatons people just vanished. Within seconds, their pack of forty-five people had been cut down by roughly half — Harry and Enyo and Diggory casting off, a full third of the Durmstrangers, two-thirds of the Beauxbatonnais, most disappearing in veela fire but a couple lifting off on brooms.

From Beauxbatons, it looked like two groups had been left behind. One pair, a boy a few years older than Lyra in dueling kit and a veela who looked entirely unprepared for a fight (she was in a light, delicate-looking dress, and also barefoot, not even appropriate to be walking around in the woods), cut ahead of the Hogwarts people, the boy leading the veela into the trees toward the left. Probably their defenders, she thought, the veela might be a healer...or just planned to turn into a great bloody bird and throw fire around, didn't really need to be properly dressed for that.

The other group was also stalking into the woods ahead of the Hogwarts people — who had already stopped as Lyra started moving, sketching out the perimeter of their fort — a trio of people all made out in dueling leather and cotton. Almost professional-looking, she thought, definitely their offensive team. Skipping after them, Lyra could feel their magic flickering in the air, a tantalising mix of light and dark, moodily smouldering and playfully dancing. Assuming she was picking this shite out correctly, one of them was a veela boy, probably a sixth- or seventh-year. (Apparently, a lot of Lyra's classmates hadn't even realised the veela had men, which was ridiculous, how else did they expect veela were supposed to breed?) An older girl, her vibrant red hair a sharp contrast with the light blond of the other two, must be a lilin — not the demonic kind, she meant, like, dark veela basically, her magic had the same bouncy airy leaping feel but dark enough it wouldn't seem out of place among the Blacks, which was a little absurd when Lyra thought about it.

She felt sort of like Aunt Cassie in one of her more playful moods, actually. Which was weird, but okay.

The last of the three — the smallest of them, short and delicate, her magic more self-contained, rigidly controlled, but burning so bright and hot it almost hurt to look too closely — was the one Lyra was here for. Skipping after them, so light and excited her feet hardly even seemed to touch the ground, Lyra chirped, "Hey, Cæciné, where are you going?"

"Where else, Black?" The girl turned around, still walking backward. "To prepare the field of battle," said with a casual air, though there was a hint of a bloody smirk on her lips. (Lyra felt certain Cæciné was going to enjoy this almost as much as she was, though she really had no idea why she knew that.) Even while she spoke, Cæciné dipped around a tree in her way, without even looking, the movement smooth and graceful, Lyra failed to hold in a grin. "Unless you want us to fight right on top of your teammates' defences."

The veela boy snorted. "We'd probably take down Fort Hogwarts without even meaning to, trying to hit the little baby—" a word in the veela language Lyra didn't know, but definitely referring to her. Could be an insult, but something about the tone gave her the feeling he was actually calling her a black mage — becoming one wasn't anathema in Aquitania, so the foreigners wouldn't care nearly as much as Brits would — or possibly a literal demon or something, which was interesting.

"Oh, I don't know about that." If anyone on the field was likely to be able to bring down Maïa's wards, it was the Cæciné, but she certainly wasn't going to do it accidentally. "And what's this we stuff? You really think you're going to stay standing long enough to hit me with anything?"

"The little girl doesn't lack for confidence, I'll give her that much." Lyra was pretty sure the condescending tone was just playing around — she had just gotten into the Order of Merlin for her participation in a fight way more dangerous than this would be.

"So sure of your performance, little bird? You're just setting me up for disappointment now — I'm harder to satisfy than the human girls you're used to, you know."

The veela boy let out a guffaw; the lilin girl, chuckling, said something to him in their language; he stuck his tongue out at her. Distracted by laughing at her friend, the lilin's cloak got caught on one of the twigs of a scraggly, bare bush — cursing, she yanked it free, turned around to toss a handful of black and purple flame at the offending plant, incinerating it in a blink, a pulse of intensely dark magic shivering across the air.

Once the flames cleared up, Lyra spotted curling streaks of frost left behind on the dirt. Veela fire was pretty normal, all things considered — only really distinguishable from ordinary fire by the colour and being very, very light — but she knew lilin fire was...weird. Sort of like anti-fire, sucking in heat instead of producing it...but also still burning things up...somehow? She had no idea how that worked — she'd never even seen a lilin in person before Samhain, and the People were leery of telling humans much about themselves, the literature on how their magic worked was pretty sparse. Supposedly, veela and lilin fire interacted in unpredictable and often very explosive ways, probably why Cæciné had one of each with her.

Cæciné, done showing off and just walking the right way around like normal, sighed at the lilin girl, said something in a drawling, mocking sort of tone — in Occitan, and slangy Occitan at that, Lyra couldn't follow it. Pouting at her, the lilin whined out a short sentence. This was also in Occitan, but it was simple enough Lyra was pretty sure she understood: But it bit me! Cæciné rolled her eyes, muttered under her breath.

"Hey, Black, wait up!" That was Katie, coming up from behind her, hopping up on a bit of rock poking out of the ground to jump down nearby, her boots skidding on the hard dirt. "I thought you were behind us, I couldn't find you."

Lyra frowned — the older girl sounded almost...annoyed? "No, I missed the starting signal, shadow-walked to catch up with these three." She'd hardly even noticed, really, she'd just done it. "Does it matter? We'll all meet up to start the fight anyway..."

"Yes, it matters. You left me with Rowle." Katie snarled the name, her lip curling with distaste — the older Gryffindor hadn't liked the idea of ritually screwing Rowle at first, but her guilt had gradually faded having to actually deal with him the last few days. "He's back there trying to make nice with the Durmstrangers, all talking about dark magic and being a smarmy git."

"Well, he's going to be disappointed. I doubt they study the same kind of Dark Arts he does." This was the same bloke who'd melted half of her face with physical alchemy, after all, and had learned to fight in a similar environment to the one Theo had. When Rowle thought of the Dark Arts he meant the Maleficia — Durmstrang did teach Dark Arts, meaning shite that was illegal in Britain, but not that kind. The reputation Durmstrang had in this timeline's Britain was kind of ridiculous, the subjects they taught were really not that unusual internationally, the regulations on magic in this country were just unreasonably restrictive.

At least, assuming the Durmstrang curriculum was the same in this timeline as the one she'd come from, she hadn't actually checked. The House had been larger in her time, and it was usually only the main line who were sent to Hogwarts — Lyra had had several more distant Black cousins attending the Academy in Ireland, and also Beauxbatons and, yes, Durmstrang. They taught blood magic as standard (only the very basic stuff, the rest was in their healing programme), a required dueling class, had a bit of more esoteric witchcraft, like nature and weather magic and the like, had electives in alchemy and low ritual, but that was really it. Not the same kind of thing someone like Rowle would be into.

If he tried to go talking to them about the Maleficia, they'd probably just be annoyed with yet another idiot Briton assuming they're all evil or something, which was funny, she guessed.

They were coming into a sizeable clearing now — the hard rock under the Valley too close to the surface for trees to take root properly, what brush that must have been here before cleared for the event, only brown grass and dirt and the occasional patch of stone. It was the largest open space in the field, nearly reaching the glimmering wall of the wards on one side, the quick-running mountain stream threaded through the centre of the arena visible through the trees on the other.

The Durmstrangers (and Rowle) still hadn't caught up yet, but the French trio were all up to something. Lyra watched as the lilin conjured a handful of dark fire, the flames twisting and stretching, and then seeming to...condense, forming a solid-looking crystal, black and purple and moody red glimmering like oil in sunlight, shaped like a spear as long as her arm. This wasn't entirely foreign magic, she'd known it was a thing that could be done with elemental fire magics by people who had enough of a talent for it (Harry could pull it off if he had time to focus on it), but she hadn't realised it was something lilin and veela did.

The lilin girl stabbed the spear of hardened fire into the ground, the point piercing the stone enough to stand upright unsupported. While she'd been doing that, the veela boy had conjured a cloud of white and gold flames, which condensed into a dozen little needles, driving down to nearly disappear in the grass. They both moved on, leaving spears and knives and needles of frozen fire here and there throughout the clearing.

Lyra winced — that was going to be a problem. She didn't know if she could disrupt that shite without it blowing up in her face — and they could probably imbed curses in them too, so that would be a bad idea — with it all over the place they were practically turning the clearing into a minefield only they were safe in. Fucking cheaters. "Try not to touch any of that shite," she said to Katie, casting a few runes quick to enchant both their boots with fire-resistant charms. That should stop the needles from stabbing them in the feet...probably.

She realised she had absolutely no right to say this sort of thing, but having an inborn talent for wandless fire magic was just unfair.

Watching the other two litter the field with weapons and traps, Lyra had temporarily lost track of Caeciné. She was standing in the middle of the field, as Lyra turned back toward her vanishing a conjured knife with a flick of her fingers. She couldn't see what was going on from here, but she was definitely doing something, oddly scattered, unfocused-feeling sparks of magic shooting across the clearing. Moving to get a better angle, Cæciné was crumbling a clump of dirt in one hand, blood slowly dripping off her wrist, her eyes closed, lips moving with a whispered litany too quiet for Lyra to make out. After some seconds, her hand snapped out, scattering the bloody dirt over the ground. It obviously did something, Lyra could feel some kind of spell sinking into the earth under her feet, but she had no bloody clue what.

I need to study more witchcraft. Also, I hate the British Ministry.

A vague feeling of amusement lifted up from Eris, but she didn't respond.

"What the hell was that, Cæciné? You know ritual magic is against the rules."

Cæciné turned to give her a sweet, innocent sort of smile — almost Luna-esque, actually, as if she were a harmless little girl who couldn't possibly have done anything of any threat to anyone, and was also too spacey and weird to even be capable of such a thing. Only a complete idiot would fall for that, of course. "It's high ritual that's against the rules, Black."

"Pretty sure you're not supposed to do low ritual, either."

"Is that what Madame Zabini said? I recall her specifying only dark low ritual is forbidden." Shite, she's not wrong... "Besides, I'm just doing blood and elemental magics — those are both Category Four."

...Also not wrong about that. "You're such a bloody cheat, Cæciné."

Her grin split wider. "I'm not even done yet, Black." Light magic flaring on the air, her wand moved in a lazy circle, after a couple turns a swirl of soft yellow-white light began to collect around the trip, quickly growing to the size of her head. Like the lilin and veela still scattering frozen fire around the field, the light — was that elemental sunlight? who the hell just casts elemental sunlight? — condensed into a blade about the length of her forearm, glowing so bright it hurt to look at. Cæciné ran the flat of the blade over the still-bleeding palm of her hand, smearing blood on both sides, while muttering a lengthy incantation — Lyra was close enough to hear it this time, it sounded Etruscan, which meant this was old shite — then chucked it down toward the ground, the point of the blade stabbing into the dirt.

It didn't stay there, though, vanishing in a blink, as it did white-hot light magic rushing out in a wave. Lyra winced when it crawled over her, her skin tingling, warm and deeply uncomfortable...almost like standing out in the sun too long. Once it was past her, her sense of magic around her no longer overwhelmed with irritating light magic, the...

The Shadows were gone.

It reminded her of whatever Angel had done to prevent Lyra just popping right up to the Goblet, though it clearly wasn't the exact same thing. (If for no other reason, Lyra doubted Angel could do anything at all with elemental sunlight.) Whereas there it'd felt like that bit of space had just ceased existing in Shadows, like the room had somehow been tucked into a pocket dimension they didn't reach, the Shadows were still there, just...further away. So far away she could barely feel them, a depth to her surroundings she hadn't been entirely aware of suddenly flattened — it was disorienting, badly enough Lyra felt faintly dizzy for a second.

Lyra tried to reach into a shadow-pocket, and her hand was bounced at the boundary. Grimacing, putting rather more effort into it than was ever necessary, she tried to step into Shadows...and staggered, her magical momentum somehow translated into physical and nearly knocking her on her arse. "Hey! What the fuck is that?!"

Cæciné grinned. "Just thought I'd level the playing field. It would hardly be fair to have you shadow-walking all over the place."

...Okay, she might actually be in trouble. She'd thought it was possible she might be — fighting whoever from the other teams Bell couldn't bring down before being knocked out and a god-touched Cæciné battlemage-in-training was a bit much even for her — but she'd been assuming shadow-walking would be on the table. Her instinct was to evade, sitting still and tanking an incoming curse with a shield charm just...grated, she couldn't explain it, really. Ciardha had tried to help her overcome that impulse, but he'd only been partially successful, it was still her first instinct to dodge, she had to consciously stop and think to shield. Shadow-walking meant she could pop pretty much wherever she wanted to avoid incoming fire and reorient herself, it was extremely useful, especially if she was drastically outnumbered — useful enough that, practically speaking, there would never be a situation where she needed to shield anything, she could just step around it instead. She'd stepped right through unblockable curses at the World Cup Riot, it was a neat trick.

Having it suddenly removed as a possibility, when she'd already become so reliant on it...

That Cæciné clearly knew her shite well enough that she could even do this to begin with...

"I hate you, Cæciné." She tried to keep her voice level, serious, but she could feel the glee bubbling at her chest, an involuntary giggle itching at the back of her throat, her lips twitching with a badly-concealed grin. She'd been right, this was going to be so much fun.

Hey, Eris, do you know how to break this?

She felt her Patron reach through her (an oddly ticklish sensation, but one she was mostly used to by now), poking at the faint glimmer of light magic surrounding her. I could, but we probably shouldn't perform black arts in public.

Lyra snorted. Yes, Eris briefly possessing her to do over-the-top black magic would be very obvious, maybe don't do that while literally everybody was watching.

Prudes. But yes, you could do it on your own, but playing around with nature magic can go very badly if you don't know what you're doing. Practise with something smaller first, ducky, before you try the big stuff.

Right, right, fine. I was just asking. "You're lucky I'm not actually a demon like half of your team seems to think. That might have actually burned a little, and you'd be disqualified for using offensive magic before the signal."

The lilin girl, passing nearby, scoffed. "Burned a little? Try knocked out for a week — demons do not react well to being severed from the Shadows with elemental sunlight. You're lucky she didn't burst into flames," she said, turning to Cæciné, "I still think risking it was a bad idea."

"She's not a demon, Aura, or even part-demon."

"She has to be something — no human can use shadow magic like that."

Still choking back ecstatic giggles, Lyra grinned at Aura the Lilin. "Clearly, no human is as awesome as me."

Cæciné rolled her eyes, trying to look all put-upon, but Lyra could see the smile twitching at her lips. "Humans can learn it, it's even relatively common in Egypt and Persia, just not so much around here. The only other human I can think of from western Europe who used it a lot is, you know, Black's mother — I'm not really surprised she picked it up."

"How do you even know that?" As far as Lyra was aware, Other Bella's abilities hadn't been widely publicised. Especially in foreign countries.

She shrugged. "I have cousins who attended the Festa Morgana in Seventy-Three."

Oh. That would do it — the Ministry had helped a bunch of human-supremacist mercenaries infiltrate the event, and apparently when shite had gone down Not-Professor Riddle pinned them down with spellfire while Other Bella slipped through shadows to knife them from behind. You know, pretending to be a vampire, because Other Bella thinks she's funny, the sadistic bitch.

(Honestly, that was pretty funny, but that didn't mean Lyra liked her.)

Rowle and the Durmstrangers were catching up now, snarking and bantering, but Lyra wasn't really paying attention. As the last few minutes dragged by, painfully slowly, Cæciné cast more spells with an almost casual air, protective charms cast over herself and her clothing. Which, ugh, why hadn't Lyra thought of that?! They weren't allowed to bring in items enchanted with certain spells, but that didn't mean they couldn't enchant them here! That's what the preparation time was for — preparing!

Fighting down a surge of self-directed anger, Lyra improvised a few defensive enchantments. If she'd thought of this beforehand, she could have thought of something really good, adapted the script from professionally-made armour or something, but since she hadn't, like a bloody idiot, she'd just have to settle for whatever she could come up with on the fly. Though, she did have the advantage of using rune-cast enchantments — they weren't perfect, but they'd hold longer than whatever Cæciné was casting over there, even something sloppily improvised should beat almost any charmwork. She covered not just herself, but Katie and even Rowle as well. She'd hesitated on including Rowle for a moment but, well, the longer he remained standing the more spells he could absorb, giving Katie more opportunity to do any good (plus it would look suspicious if she didn't include him, so).

Watching her paint runes in the air, Cæciné scowled. "And I'm the cheat, am I?"

"Just levelling the playing field, Cæciné." Lyra tried to mimic the mild Aquitanian accent on her French too, just to further rub in the point.

Her lips twitched with a smirk — because she was going to have almost as much fun as Lyra was, obviously.

A few minutes slid by, Lyra focused on her freeform enchanting, she sort of lost track of time a little. It didn't help that Katie and Rowle weren't making it easy for her. The offensive teams had split into two groups, Lyra and Cæciné on their own and then everybody else, and the others were sort of mixing around — Katie and Rowle forcing their way into the middle of the group so near misses might hit people behind them, the five Durmstrangers (including Ingrid) and the veela–lilin pair then maneuvering toward one side, taunts and insults flying back and forth, Katie and Rowle pushing into the middle to split their formation again, elbowing their way through if they had to, the others then countering...

It was a constantly-shifting mess was the point, swirling around as they maneuvered and counter-maneuvered, getting a good, uninterrupted angle to apply her enchantments was a bloody pain. She was forced to float scripts as she went, the runes hanging dormant in the air around her until a convenient window opened up, moving to trigger several all at once — which was a bit of a strain, setting multiple enchantments on multiple targets simultaneously, especially moving targets, but Lyra was Mad enough at the moment what might normally have been seriously difficult was just moderately irritating.

Also, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang were obviously working together. She had half expected that, it was still annoying.

Lyra was just starting another enchantment — she'd belatedly remembered Cæciné was a legilimens, shielding at least Katie against compulsions was probably a good idea — when she jumped as a loud noise suddenly crashed through the air, the...ringing of a gong? What?

She felt a tingling surge of magic rising through her blood, desperate energy egging her into motion, even as a light hex of some kind burned directly toward her heart — the starting signal, shite! Lyra barely managed to lean out of the way of an orangish spellglow (a stunning charm, she thought), the hex continuing on to nail one of the Durmstrangers in the back, even as the pack exploded into motion, hexes and curses flying as they scrambled to open up a comfortable dueling range, sparks crackling as spells struck shields. One was down already, from Cæciné's hex, but one of his fellows would probably revive him, it was just a stunning spell.

The ambient energy around Lyra shivered, clenched, the pair of runes she'd cast starting to decohere. She reached out toward the magic, like how she would if pinching it to localise some effect but instead sort of...plucking it, stretching it and letting it go, the magic around her pulsing in a wave, like a stone dropped into water, the force sending the runes whipping away from her toward Cæciné. Lyra barely got a shield charm up before they blew, the other girl vanishing behind green and purple flames, fingers of lightning clawing at the air, the explosion slammed into her shield, knocking her off her feet, she rolled back and over her shoulder, popped back up.

The instant she was upright again she was already moving, tossing a brace of bludgeoning charms in Cæciné's direction — Lyra had gotten through that alright, she assumed the older duelist must have as well. Even before her hexes slipped through the cloud of smoke and sparks left behind by the explosion, she felt a snap of magic, then the clanging of charms splashing against a shield. A diffuse wave of light magic, the smoke was scattered by a sudden gust, Lyra's skin stinging as the wind dragged over her, dark magic coursing through her body pushed it out, she reformed the flare into a wide-angle cutting curse, a pair of blasting curses, black lightning crawling over the ground—

Lyra ducked under a green spellglow she didn't recognise, Cæciné rolled under the cutting curse, putting herself out of position for one blasting curse and deflecting the other down into the ground with a casual swish of her wand, a torrent of blue-white flame coursing out toward Lyra, she couldn't make out what Cæciné was going to do about the lightning, she had to throw up a shield to catch the fire, interlocking segments black bordered with red.

She twitched, looking at the mass of fire on the other side of her shield, her face hot from just standing this close — it was burning into her dark shield charm, just— Son of a bitch, was that calōre vindicāns? Biting her lip, Lyra cast a single rune, the alteration taking with a snap, one of the elements of her shield charm inverting, dissolving into a puff of red and black sparks, the elemental magic swiftly evaporating in her improvised interference field.

Another cutting curse on her lips, Lyra hadn't gotten it out yet when something slammed into her chest, the force picking her off her feet and tossing her backward, her bones creaking, her neck and one knee wrenched. Reaching out with her wandless hand, she yanked at Cæciné with a brute-force summoning, pulling Cæciné into a stumble and nearly halting herself in mid-air, she managed to get her feet under her before she landed again, staggering a few steps. She recovered before Cæciné did, charging in her direction, piercing curses and blasting curses and lightning curses flying from her wand, drawing her knife from its sheath as she went — luckily she'd decided to actually wear it, she usually just kept it in a shadow-pocket...

Cæciné was keeping up easily, deflecting the point-spells and catching the lightning on shields, flickering in and out quick as blinking. As the last arrow of lightning shot in she plucked one of the spears of lilin fire out of the ground with her off hand, catching the curse like a lightning rod, the frozen flame shivering and sparking...what the hell? She threw it in Lyra's direction, then nailed it with a banishing, sending it streaking in her direction too quickly for the eye to follow, not actually at Lyra, but the ground at her feet.

...The ground at her feet that felt very light — there must be needles of frozen veela fire down there. Shite. Lyra dove forward, the flickering spear zipping by to her right, the shockwave from the odd, stuttering explosion pushing her further but also fucking up her balance, she tucked her arm in, rolling along sideways once before she yanked her legs around, her foot slamming down to the ground, stopping her abruptly in place. (And what was with Cæciné tossing her around today, girl liked explosions.) Dark magic crackling in her veins, she pushed far more power than she would normally use through her knife, a line drawn across the ground, a fissure cracking through the dirt, at its nearest approach only a foot from Cæciné's feet, dirt and bits of stone flung up as the spell tore the ground apart, blue-white lightning zapping all around as it went, Cæciné threw up an impressively powerful yellow shield charm, the light magic intense enough it stung from here.

Lyra focused for a second, cast a very particular piercing curse. Still dealing with the after-effects of her wide-angled elemental-lightning-based blasting curse (because Cassie was the best Defence Professor), and clearly assuming her shield charm would catch it, Cæciné did nothing — so was caught by surprise when the spell, after splashing against the shield, clenched and shifted colour, lancing straight through the shield to strike Cæciné in the shoulder.

The force of the impact knocked her back and spun her around, but when she steadied again Lyra could tell it hadn't penetrated — there was a tear in her shirt over her shoulder, but she wasn't even bleeding. Those spells she'd cast earlier must have done their job. Cæciné glared over at her, her shoulders tense with irritation, her clothes slightly disheveled and a few threads of pale blonde hair pulled out of their plait.

Languidly spinning her knife around into a reverse grip, Lyra smirked.

After a couple seconds, the tension went out of her posture, and Cæciné shifted into a different stance. Looser, slightly out of balance, her shoulders tilted out of alignment with her hips, cocked at an off angle — definitely not a standard European style, something Mesopotamian or Indian, maybe? A second wand appearing in her other hand, Cæciné smirked back at her.

Lyra giggled — this was gonna hurt...

So, as you may have guessed, Sandra wrote all of the really action-y scenes with Lyra and Harry, which means they're all fucking awesome xD —Leigha

They also tend to be longer, especially Lyra's, because I'm a wordy bitch.

Lyra is maybe outclassed, just a little bit. She'll have fun anyway, because this is Lyra we're talking about xD —Lysandra