Ophelia's match against Fenella was an unexpectedly swift one. So, was Tom's match with Avery, for the exact same reason.
Ophelia took position in one corner of the room, facing Fenella, who had her back to Avery, who in turn faced Tom. The problem arose, evidently, because Tom severely overestimated Avery's ability. Instead of blocking Tom's first— and only— attack, like any normal wizard in their right mind, he leapt out of the way as it soared past, leaving Fenella wide open and completely unawares of her impending problem coming up from behind.
Ophelia, however, could see it coming and didn't waste a second reacting. Giving that deflecting the attack wouldn't help Fenella in the slightest, being in between Ophelia's wand and the curse, Ophelia aimed her wand straight at the other girl and fired.
Although Tom was certain Fenella would deny it later, her shriek as she was lifted off her feet and sharply jerked several feet to her left was something straight out of classic theatre, but even more comical was the shift in Ophelia's expression as she realized that Fenella was shooting straight for the wall at less than comfortable wall crashing speeds. At once, Tom could see everyone in the room having the exact same flashback of Ophelia sending Fenella into the wall months earlier with a mix of horrified dread and hopeful amusement. Luckily, Ophelia realized her mistake in time and recovered, stopping her within an inch of crashing distance, all the while leaping to avoid the curse now headed in her own direction.
All said and done, Ophelia seemed to age years in a matter of seconds, no doubt recalling how if she was in this mess for making the mistake of throwing Fenella around once, then she would probably be murdered in her sleep for doing it again.
"You are so lucky," Fenella said when her feet dropped back to solid ground, spearing a finger at Ophelia, then Avery, and finally Tom. "All three of you."
Ophelia eyed Fenella warily. "Er... let's give it a redo."
"Did I ask for a redo?" she snapped and Ophelia took a step back. Funny how someone could see a basilisk and essentially be a fugitive from birth but still get cowed by a single feisty witch. "I lost fair and square. We'd already started when you got me with that charm, and I dropped my wand, regardless of his bumbling."
She spared Avery a look of supreme resentment and marched over to grab him by the arm to cart him off the floor.
"I haven't even lost yet," he protested.
"Oh, shut up. You lost before you even began. Everyone knew it but you."
When Tom turned to face Ophelia, he wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it certainly was not what he got. Everything about her— even the very air surrounding— turned serious, though he couldn't imagine what prompted such a change.
She wasn't mad at him, surely? He racked his brain for anything he might have done recently to warrant being on the receiving end of such wrath and came up blank.
Okay, that was a lie. He'd done plenty, if he were entirely honest with himself, but nothing she might have discovered in the last ten minutes. Even interfering with her attempts to forfeit the contest had only earned him little more than an exasperated glance.
Had it been Rabastan? Fenella? Somehow he doubted it. Ophelia had an irritating soft spot for the Lestrange, and her relationship with Fenella had only been on the upswing. That, of course, left only him.
How much simpler it would be to just slip inside her mind and see for himself— but to try would be only to invite more trouble. If she was indeed irked with him, that would only prove to increase her ire a thousand fold. As someone with half a dozen good reasons to be mad at, it didn't make much sense to add another.
Somewhere in his periphery, Tom caught Rabastan taking bets and forced himself to block it out. Now was time to focus. At the call to begin, neither moved. Just when Tom began to consider that perhaps this was another ploy of hers to give up, to surrender by not bothering to fight back, she struck.
"Incendio!"
Flames burst forth from her wand in one blistering fireball that would have engulfed him and anyone behind him whole had he not conjured a shield at the last second.
Genuinely curious, he asked, "Are you insane?"
Several others shared his feelings on the matter of being burned alive in their own Common Room.
The question barely left his mouth before, through the dissipating haze of smoke and fire, another strike came. Tom deflected it with the same shield he'd used against the first.
She was either mad about something or absolutely insane, Tom decided.
"I told you dueling isn't a game," came a voice to his right, and he whipped his head around at the sound, swinging his arm to deflect yet again.
A hard blow just above his wrist cast his wand towards the floor and then another to his chest had him actually on the floor.
Ophelia stood over him, a satisfied grin on her face, and held her wand to his throat. Leaning forward, she mock whispered, "Beg."
She looked so pleased with herself, Tom almost reconsidered his next move. He granted her the moment to bask in victory, but only the moment, for in the next one he swept her legs out from underneath her. She landed flat on her back, a stunned expression painted across her face. Using his wand to tilt her chin up to meet his gaze, Tom bent forward on his knees, one hand holding his weight up beside her head, and spoke in her ear so just she could hear, "I never beg."
He kept the proximity for a second longer than strictly necessary before pushing back to his feet.
Ophelia relaxed out of wide eyed shock, accentuating the unparallel blue and black of her mismatched irises, and into narrrow eyed annoyance as she glared at the ceiling.
"Had that been a real duel I would have won," she defended, refusing to look his way on principle.
"Maybe," he conceded, the doubt in his voice palpable, "but you were overconfident."
She overcame her determination to not look at him in order to scoff to his face. "That's adorable, coming from you."
"I'm exactly as confident as I ought to be. I won, after all."
Imagining her required interval for pouting was over, Tom stretched out a hand to help her up.
"Well, I'm sorry to break it you, but you did forget one thing," she admitted somberly, placing her hand in his.
More amused than intrigued, he asked, "Oh? And what's that?"
A devilish grin fell across her lips as she tightened her grip on his hand into a vice. "I'm a notoriously sore loser," she said, and pulled on his arm with all her might until he was dragged with a sharp jerk to the ground beside her.
Without much thought and to prevent himself from falling directly on top of her, her brought down his free arm to swiftly catch his weight, therefor leaving both arms detained. Ophelia had no such inhibitions. One hand still firmly clasped with his above her head, with the other she held her wand to Tom's head, the tip slightly brushing the hair at his temple.
With visible effort, she smoothed her smug smile into something so serious it looked pained and threw his own words right back at him. "I'm exactly as confident as I ought to be."
Tom should have been mad. That was the oldest trick in the book, after all, but anger was the furthest thing from his mind. Instead, from some dark corner of his consciousness came a treacherous awareness of just how close they were. He felt like he could kiss her again, if only for those few inches separating them.
He felt like she was the mistake he didn't mind committing over and over again.
Before he could move, however, Ophelia's hand wrenched away from his with such force he nearly toppled over at the loss of equilibrium.
Blinking rapidly and darting glances behind her, she sat up, looking spooked.
Too close. Tom hissed out a breath. What had he been thinking? And in a room full of other witches and wizards, too. That had been far too close.
"Yeah, I'm not sure who won that," Rabastan said, crouching down beside them, still with an extra set of ears, Tom noted.
Normally, Rabastan's irreplicable talent for getting on peoples nerves didn't really bother him, as it was generally aimed at someone else. This was not one of those times. Tom was less than amused when Rabastan held an ear out and waved it tauntingly at Ophelia, although he shied away when she mimed a pincer with three fingers and directed a meaningful look at the offending ear.
"Tom won, of course," Knott said, coming up from behind and, for seemingly no reason, grabbing one of Rabastan's impressively long whiskers and plucking. "Ophelia cheated."
Rabastan let out an even more impressively foul mouthed string of words.
But then he turned back to Ophelia and collapsed back against her leg, using it as a pillow the same way a wounded soldier might a rock as they lay dying.
"Do you see how they treat me?" he moaned tragically.
She patted his head sympathetically. "There, there."
"Well," Fenella said with an air of finality, giving Rabastan's leg a light kick, "I think she won."
That response took everyone by surprise, until Rabastan said shrewdly, "You're only saying that because she beat you, too."
"And I beat you. What's your point?"
Knowing they could go on like that for hours, Tom stood up, silencing them. "It doesn't matter. Rabastan," he sighed, "your ears are ridiculous."
He muttered the countercurse under his breath and Rabastan reverted back to normal.
"I was actually quite fond of them," Rabastan sighed loudly, massaging the area where the ears had once been. "And it matters very much. I have money riding on who won, you know."
Tom, who did not possess the words to properly convey how little he cared about the money Rabastan had on the line, turned and walked back to one of the couches still pressed up against the wall. Not long after, Ophelia joined him.
"You... you're still wearing that ring," she observed in a way that could almost be considered casual. Almost.
That was the second time she'd asked about it, Tom noted, recalling the first instance at the start of term feast a month prior. The thing hardly seemed special, outside of what he'd done to make it special, of course. Without harboring the bit of his soul and being a token of his heritage, he'd think it near worthless. It was hardly something to gawk at.
Tom slid it easily from his finger, pinching it for examination. No, even then, blinking down at it, he couldn't understand it, couldn't understand her interest.
"Do you like it?" he asked.
"Like what?"
"The ring, of course."
She opened her mouth to say something, and then just held it there when nothing came out for the first few moments. Finally, she settled on, "It's really something special."
"It is," he agreed. "Give me your hand."
"Why?" she asked suspiciously.
"Why not?"
"You're impossible."
"You're paranoid."
"You bet I am," she said, and held it out between them at last.
He took it with his own, letting it rest there on his palm. A nearly invisible scar, faded from age, stretched from her first knuckle down to the base of her thumb. Why she never healed it away with magic he'd never know. He didn't like not knowing things.
"Where's this from?" He traced the line in a soft, grazing motion, feeling where the damaged skin puckered up beneath his finger.
"Oh, that?" She wrinkled her nose. "Who knows. I've had it since forever."
"Why not get it healed?"
She shrugged. "Why bother? I got it long before I began with magic. I was still with my mother back then. Besides, I think it adds character." Ophelia flipped their hands over so that his was on top, devoid of scars. "Not all of us can be completely flawless."
"The words themselves sound like a complement, but something tells me you don't mean it that way," Tom noted, looking up to share a wry half-smile.
"I will neither confirm nor deny that claim."
"Of course you won't."
"Wait— What are you doing?" She tried to pull away, mildly alarmed, but he held firm, slipping the Gaunt ring onto the her forefinger.
It slid on easily.
"It suits you," he said. "Far more than it does me."
"When I said the ring was neat I didn't mean— I mean, I wasn't trying to—"
"Guilt me?" he offered.
She nodded.
Tom couldn't help it. He smirked. "You couldn't guilt me if you tried."
Ophelia wasn't dissuaded. "Still, my point stands. You said it was your family's."
She made to take it off only for him to place his hands over hers to stop her.
"What do I care for them?" he asked her seriously. "What have they ever done for me? I don't even know them."
I killed them.
Tom didn't mean to sound spiteful, but it came off that way, and once it was out in the open it was hard to ignore.
Her expression softened, not into pity— something he'd never accept— but into understanding.
"You know," Ophelia began thoughtfully, "my uncle has given me several suspect pearls of wisdom over the years, but I do agree with him on one thing."
Doubting he'd like anything Grindelwald had to say, Tom nonetheless humored her. "What's that?"
"You have to choose your family." Her words only held the barest trace of sadness, overshadowed by a naive hopefullness. "If they happen to share your blood, then you're one of the lucky ones, but often times they won't. Oftentimes, they'll be who you'll least suspect."
"Was he talking about your mother?"
"Yeah..." She shrugged, rueful, as if to brush it off as unimportant. What she couldn't hide was the way her hand tightened beneath his. Then, she looked at Tom and visibly relaxed. "But I'm talking about you."