The worst thing about being the Thief, Astoria decided, creeping as quietly as possible through the undergrowth, was that it was kind of boring.
She'd slipped off into the trees even before Hermione started raising the fort. There was no rule that said she needed to stay at their camp until they started — sneaking around wasn't an offensive spell, after all. She wasn't entirely certain which school was going to take which defensible hill, but it would just be silly if the other teams went anywhere other than the two spots of higher ground on the north side of the arena. She had to wait for Ash to start playing before she'd be able to figure out which hill belonged to which school. But she'd already decided, watching the other teams split up when they entered the arena, she was definitely heading for Beauxbatons first.
The Durmstrangers, as far as she could tell, had split into three groups of five — she lingered long enough to watch one group follow Lyra and her new best friend toward the big clearing on the west side of the arena. (It was a little funny, the idea of a Black and a Cæciné being friends, and yes, they hadn't actually realised it yet, but Tori had spent a bit of time the past couple of days befriending Gabbie Delacour and some of her friends, and the veela was convinced that they were actually very similar people — assuming Lyra was a person, which the veela wasn't entirely convinced about. Astoria was certain they'd realise this at some point in their fight.) And five kicked off into the air on brooms (including Krum, of course).
Beauxbatons, on the other hand, was going with a more offensive strategy. Lyra and Hermione hadn't bothered trying to tease information out of Gabrielle — it probably hadn't occurred to Lyra (or Harry, for that matter), and Hermione would consider it cheating, Astoria was fairly certain — but Tori had confirmed the mystery intelligence Lyra had gathered (spying on the Aquitanians from the Shadows, she assumed). Or at least, she'd confirmed that Gabbie (who thought the world of her older sister) was worried that the Hogwarts team might anticipate their opening moves. Fleur was going to have at least two or three others with her to watch her back, but Gabbie was still worried she might get hurt.
The bouncy veela girl (it was so hard to remember she was actually Daphne's age...) had at least managed not to say what exactly they were planning, but she'd given Tori the names of all the people on her school's team. It wasn't hard to find out what species they were and put together that if ten veela (and/or lilin) were planning to do something Gabbie was worried might be predictable, Lyra's guess that they'd try to flame straight to the Hogwarts Flag was probably right.
And since they were also going to have people in the air and in the big clearing, and they'd brought a healer too, it was almost guaranteed they'd have less people guarding their flag than Durmstrang, at least at the beginning. Three or four going straight for Hogwarts' flag; at least four or five in the air — three of the humans had brought brooms, and it would be stupid not to have a couple of veela up there too, especially if they were using an offensive strategy; three in the big clearing. That meant there would probably only be three or four to defend the flag at most, and one of them was a Healer. She'd probably be distracted pretty quickly.
(Granted, it was possible some of the fliers would be protecting their flag too, but they'd be too far away to notice any little environmental cues that would give Astoria away, so they didn't really count.)
Tori hadn't actually managed to get close to any of the Durmstrangers, either befriending them or just lurking and eavesdropping on them — they only ever discussed strategy on their stupid (awesome) boat, she couldn't get in. But she was basically thinking that when the ranks had been thinned out a little and the Durmstrangers had to start sending people away from their fort to help their offensive squad — which they would, no one would just let everyone in the field get knocked out and leave a full third of their people cooling their heels in reserve if they weren't actively under siege — Tori could head over there and it would be much easier to avoid notice.
Easy-peasy.
As soon as the gong rang and the music started, she found a quiet, well-covered spot to sit for a minute, actually get a picture of their starting positions. She'd never been a part of performative magic used for communication before. Some of her cousins used it telling stories and things at home, but that wasn't really the same thing. This was...looser. More open. Like instead of just projecting to everyone, it was kind of pulling from everyone, too. (The blood magic, she figured.) Yes, the Weasley twins were actually giving Ash words, but there was much more detail in the impressions forming in her mind's eye than they could possibly narrate in just a few seconds. It was probably more important what they were seeing on the projector-screens and what they focused on than what they were actually saying.
The part she was concerned with was the layout of the arena and the location of the different bases. It took a few minutes meditating, using occlumency to sort through all the jumbled details since Ash wasn't trying to make her specifically aware of any particular thing — the fighting and the flying were very intense, and Lyra's mad energy had been making her jittery even while he was just warming up — but a map-like impression eventually came into focus. Beauxbatons was, as best she could tell, at the northwest hill, and they'd only left one defender along with their healer, which was a little ridiculous, they had to have some kind of a plan, but it didn't really seem like a good one...
Then again, they couldn't possibly know how awesome Fort Hogwarts was. Tori could hardly believe Fort Hogwarts was that awesome, and she'd been there the whole time they'd been designing it.
The Durmstrangers were still fortifying their position, casting palings and such, which might be a problem, but probably wouldn't become more of a problem the longer she left them. It wasn't likely she'd be able to get over there before they were done with their spells, anyway. And even if she could, they'd still be paying too much attention to their defences to slip around them.
Beauxbatons, on the other hand, had simply raised their flag on a conjured pole — one barely taller than Astoria — in the very corner of the arena. Their guard was...doing something, maybe a patronus? That would make sense if they thought Lyra was going to shadow-walk in (which actually meant it was very silly, because obviously Lyra only had eyes for Arte Cæciné today). Trying to get any more details out of the chaotic music humming through her was giving her a headache, which could be because there was just too much going on, or because the Weasleys weren't paying enough attention to the Beauxbatons Flag, and there was nothing more for her to get.
Right. Time to go, then, she thought, twisting magic around herself to make people's eyes slide away from her, make her boring and unremarkable. Of course, people tended to act like the very fact that she could do this was remarkable, when they eventually figured it out. She didn't think it was. It wasn't like she could make everyone in the Great Hall find everything except two people incredibly uninteresting, or something. (She still didn't know how Madam Black had done that. It had been really weird, being on the other side of what she kind of thought of as her spell.)
She rolled to her feet, feeling the sharp edges and hard lines of rocks and twigs through the soft soles of her leather booties. Technically, they were house-shoes, but they were charmed to be impenetrable to both water and anything sharp she might step on (she could still bruise herself through them, but she wouldn't impale a foot on a sharp stick or something, wandering around out here), as well as to resist dirt and wear, which was a fairly standard suite of enchantments for house-shoes. They were also charmed so that her footfalls would be silent, even if she were to break a stick stepping on it or something. That was a little less standard, but she'd told the judges, when they were inspecting the teams to ensure that they weren't bringing in extra enchanted weapons or armour or whatever, that her mother was prone to migraines. Which was absolutely true, and had absolutely nothing to do with the enchantment on her "sneakers". (She didn't wear shoes at home, but if she did it was plausible that her unsilenced footsteps could be loud enough to disturb Mum, if she were afflicted by a particularly bad one.)
The actual reason she'd altered her shoes was so she wouldn't startle Hubert snapping a twig as she approached him. She hadn't managed to convince the unicorn to let her ride him yet, but he had let her pat him last week. Obviously that also had nothing to do with the Task, but she hadn't wanted to get into an argument about the merits of attempting to ride unicorns today. Headmaster Dumbledore had obviously caught that she was being misleading, but he hadn't said anything about it, or about the fact that she looked about sixteen right now, instead of about twelve. He clearly didn't think they stood much of a chance, but he equally clearly didn't want to sabotage whatever plan they might have by drawing attention to it.
She'd been spending quite a lot of time out here, lately — not in this exact area, of course, Hubert tended to graze around the Senior Woods, but she'd still gotten pretty good at moving quickly and smoothly through the underbrush. She, like Ingrid and a handful of the other Durmstrangers, was wearing clothes that blended into the forest, different shades of brown, mostly. Her cloak was a very pretty taupe, with vertical, almost dappled striations in a slightly darker grey. (She called it the Oak Cloak because the pattern reminded her of the bark of that tree.) She was kind of disappointed that she was going to have to sacrifice it for the sake of The Plan.
What was that?!
She froze instinctively at some half-perceived sound, peering around a tree. The ground was slowly becoming more open as she moved uphill, the trees smaller and further between. There were more bushes and such, of course, and little pine saplings taking advantage of the sunlight, so there was still cover, but it was, generally speaking, a lower sort of cover, and one more prone to rustling. And she could see the misty white glow of a patronus through the trees.
She was close.
She fell into a crouch, inching forward now, her cloak gathered over one arm so it wouldn't drag, careful not to disturb the birds and wildlife which had been drawn to the light magic construct. Startling them into flight would be almost as much of a give-away of her presence as crashing openly through the brush. (Maybe that was really why they'd cast it. If so, that was really clever...)
She crept closer, circling around to get a better view of the flag and its defenders. They didn't seem to be paying it much attention, which was good. The human boy holding the patronus in place (a brilliant, glowing bear, lumbering slowly along its path, though it would presumably be as fast as any other guardian spirit if faced with an actual threat) looked kind of bored. The veela girl in white — her Category Five status marked by the scarlet healer's cross emblazoned on her loose dress — chattered away at him. Tori couldn't make out what she was saying, but that didn't really matter.
She was close enough to see the Beauxbatons Flag now. It was blue — not the sky-blue that was part of the Beauxbatons colours, but a dark, almost indigo blue — and, like the Hogwarts flag, decorated seemingly randomly with lines and curves of bright silver embroidery which, when properly aligned with the other flags, would form runes to create the doorway to a pocket dimension, inside which the Crown had been hidden. The ties on the inside corners had been lashed directly to the pole, which wasn't that tall, but then, she supposed it didn't have to be, since they didn't have any defensive fortifications it needed to be seen over. (Hermione had actually used a conjured rope and pulley to raise theirs to the top of its pole.) The light breeze wasn't quite enough to pull it out for her to see the whole pattern, but she doubted she'd be able to reproduce it exactly, anyway.
That also didn't matter, because she was pretty sure the bored guard wouldn't have memorised exactly what it looked like, either. As long as she got the colour close enough, it should be fine, she thought, edging away from the encampment (such as it was) so they wouldn't notice her casting.
The part of the plan she was really worried about was the Switching Spell to replace the original with her copy. She'd spent the past three days (when she wasn't befriending Gabrielle or exploring this area or actually attending classes to avoid raising suspicion — most people didn't realise she was on the Team yet) learning the fourth-year spell. It supposedly wasn't that difficult, the fourth-years had just learned it in September, but Transfiguration was not Tori's subject.
She'd managed to do it in practice a couple of times, but that was switching two objects that were only a few feet away from each other. This should be easier, theoretically, because the flag and the transfigured cloak were both cloth, but none of the objects she'd practised with had been transfigured — Lyra said that shouldn't matter, but Tori suspected it might, if only because it might unbalance her transfiguration on the cloak — and the real flag had real silver embroidered into it. Not a lot, no, but it was still more difficult to banish and recall metals than inert fibres (even animal fibres — the flag itself was silk), and hot metals like silver were even more difficult than cold ones!
Maybe she could get close enough to just switch them by hand...better safe than sorry, right? Especially because she still had to get Durmstrang's flag after this. Flubbing the Switching Spell would give away the game, so...
A couple of quick cutting charms made short work of the bottom half of her cloak. She folded one of the two 'Shadow' flags and tucked it into her shirt before returning her attention to the one she needed to transfigure. Obviously she couldn't actually transfigure silver — or a multi-part object out of a singular object, for that matter — but it should be good enough to charm the transfigured flag to have bits of silver here and there. It took her two tries to force the cloak into its new form, the mocking calling-card painted on the plain grey lining refusing, at first, to go with the rest of it.
She really hoped she'd gotten that glyph right. It had seemed like a good idea when she'd thought of it, just a little something extra to be silly and also a little ha! I'm just that good! But it wouldn't be nearly as funny if she was accidentally leaving a calling card for the relative absence of enlightenment, or something, rather than light. She'd asked Luna Lovegood (one of the few people she knew who actually spoke any High Elvish) and she thought it looked right, but she'd admitted she was much better at speaking the demonic language than reading it. Lyra probably could've told her for sure, but Tori kind of wanted it to be a surprise for the older girl, like hey, look, you're not the only one who can pull off a good prank.
The only person on the team she'd actually brought in on her little addition to The Plan was Harry, mostly because he seemed like the sort of person who would appreciate it, and it had occurred to her that he didn't know nearly enough about their world in, like, the fun aspects. Sure, Lyra was teaching him about the Wizengamot and House Potter and how to defend himself from blood magic and stuff, but somehow Tori suspected that legendary accomplishments of notorious vampire thieves weren't really very high on her list of stuff Harry should know to be successful in their world (or even just not get himself murdered by the Once and Future Lord Snake-Butt). Clearly, that was the purview of younger sisters-in-law.
Not really, obviously, but Daphne and Blaise would be announcing their betrothal at the Festa this year, and one's future brother-in-law's lovers also counted as that same sort of we have a connection because people we care about have a connection relationship, even if there were no actual laws involved. Especially if you liked them. And she did like Harry. He was kind of an awkward bean, but he was nice, in a way a lot of the British nobility really weren't. Of course, that was probably because prejudice against Mister clans wasn't on the list of things Harry needed to know at all (knowing Lyra, vampire thieves actually were on it somewhere) — Astoria wasn't entirely certain Harry realised that the Greengrasses weren't just another Noble House — but still. He was nice to Gabbie, too, and he definitely knew veela weren't well-accepted here either.
(Maybe she'd invite him to come to the Greenwood over hols...)
Focus, Tori! she reprimanded herself, attempting to visualise the lines and arcs on the Hogwarts flag. She'd gotten a better look at that one than Beauxbatons's — enough to sketch out something that was probably complete nonsense, and wouldn't work even if it were actually silver thread rather than charm-light following her wand, but at least looked plausibly similar to casual observation. The biggest difference was the Hogwarts flag was purple.
She paused, cringing slightly and swallowing the urge to vomit as she felt the age potion begin to wear off. It was always stomach-squirmingly uncomfortable, feeling herself grow or shrink. It didn't hurt, exactly, but it wasn't pleasant, muscles cramping and twisting themselves into knots as her bones shifted beneath them and fat redistributed itself above.
At least it hadn't happened when she was close enough to the Beauxbatonnais that they might've noticed her fidgeting discomfort, she thought, trying to look on the bright side.
When it finally stopped — maybe five minutes later, though it felt much longer — she went back to inspecting her work. The limited colour-changing charm had set while she was indisposed, leaving a tracery of sparkling lines on the dark fabric which would, she figured, probably pass.
She folded this flag up as well, beginning her slow creep back toward the Aquitanians.
It seemed much had happened while she was away. There were two injured veela lying on the ground, and the healer was nowhere to be seen. She reappeared after a few seconds, though, in a burst of golden-white fire, with another unconscious veela at her side.
The guard said something that was probably a swear, but Tori didn't catch it. (She did know some Aquitanian, but only like, I sat upon the hat of my aunt and sorry, I don't understand, do you speak French?) Healer said something back that sounded very annoyed — maybe about so many of their people being knocked out so quickly? She obviously asked him to help her rather than keep up the Patronus, pointing at the most obviously ill-looking one, because Guard did exactly that, starting in on a bunch of healers' analysis charms instead.
Then Healer swore (that was definitely a swearing tone), and abandoned her patients in another burst of flame, presumably to retrieve more wounded.
Astoria smirked quietly to herself — hopefully Durmstrang was doing just as badly. She wasn't paying much attention to the music, but she was pretty sure she would know if Hogwarts was in dire straits. She didn't think they were. They weren't doing spectacularly better than they'd expected, but they also weren't (play) dying out here, so...good. The other schools were both still focused on Hogwarts, which meant no one was focused on their flags, and she would have as much time as she needed.
Guard threw a couple of analysis charms at the other two patients, assuring himself that they weren't going to die, or get bad enough the elves would evacuate them before Healer came back, but then returned his attention to the veela boy who was starting to look awfully grey and corpse-like, aside from the little twitches he made every so often, obviously unsure what to do now that he had done all his charms and (presumably) knew what was wrong with him.
This was probably the best chance Tori was going to get to steal the flag — a single defender, comprehensively distracted? She edged around, getting as close as she dared to the edge of the arena before approaching the Flag. They'd set it on the peak of the rise, which was about two feet from the corner of the arena. There was just enough room for her to crawl in behind it and stay out of sight, behind the hill from Guard's perspective.
Not that he or anyone else was looking her way, she noted, poking her head up enough to see over it herself as she felt the hot, wild energy of another wave of veela fire disperse around her. Healer was working furiously on the first two patients, and Guard was...arguing with a house elf, now, about whether the twitching not-quite-corpse might still be able to be revived. The elf wasn't having any of it, lecturing the boy in broken French about risking his friend's life. He seemed awfully offended by the implication that he might be attempting to cheat on Lyra's behalf. (Not the Hogwarts Team's behalf, Lyra's. That was weird...)
Yes, she decided, peering up at the flag on its short pole. It would be better to just switch it by hand than risk the Switching Spell going wrong somehow.
She had just loosened the second tie and dragged the Beauxbatons flag down, balling it up and tucking it under her arm (she could fold it neatly later, when she was back in the trees) when Healer let out a shriek of fury, exploding into what was obviously a rant about...something. The girl she was working on and Guard seemed just as confused as Tori, but Guard quickly demanded an explanation. While Healer was giving it, the elf slipped past him and popped the veela (who was now twitching less often, which was probably not a good thing) right out from under him.
A shift in the music signaled that the battle had reached a major turning point. Tempted as she was to close her eyes and focus on it and figure out what the hell was going on, Tori pushed it away. She needed to get her forged flag in place before Healer and Guard realised there was nothing on the bloody flagpole...