Chapter Six: Look Out for Insane Redheads, Falling Aidons, and a Gorgeous Prettyboy

(Three Chapters in, like, four days… What am I thinking? I'm thinking I need longer chapters. Or not. No one's reading this stuff anyway, so why not? I don't know. Well, you should LEARN why not, then. Hey, who do you think you're talking to? Myself, of course! Oh, crap, there I go again…)

Karen separated from Kayla and Draco as they made their way out onto the Grounds, beginning the journey to the large amphitheatre sitting across the expanse of grass before them.

"Has that always been there?" asked Kayla dazedly, letting him guide her into the shadow of its huge bulk. The sun's gleam cast a thousand rays onto its metallic sides, setting it alight like a fantastic jewel. Draco just led her into the archways and up along the numerous rows of wooden seats, placing her beside him once he had sat down.

"It's set up like this the night before the Tournament," Aidon sighed as he exhaustedly sat down on Kayla's other side. "I volunteer every year for helping with it… but it never gets any easier to set up!"

"Haynes?" Kayla punched the Prefect's shoulder. "Why've you shown up for something so grisly and improper?"

"There is a huge amount of honour involved in this event!" Aidon self-dignified after a whimper at the punch to a sore limb. "Besides, that… friend of yours is in it. Have to make sure she doesn't hurt herself too badly."

"You have no idea how much she'd make fun of you for saying that," Kayla answered as she sat back and relaxed a bit.

With the blare of a foghorn, all the contestants emerged from five doors that opened up around the stadium. They made their way each to a square of terrain along the expansive ground.

"You see, it's all enchanted," Aidon huffed while he caught his breath, waving a hand half-heartedly down at the stretch of rock and ground that seemed to be the playing field. "Each square matches up with another, then another, then another… Eventually, only two chunks of ground are left. Then one."

"So where do the pieces of the, well, ground go? Do they fall away into a black hole or something?" Kayla made a face, trying to decipher the winded Ravenclaw's logic.

"You lose a match when you fall off your platform of ground or go unconscious," Aidon breathed. "Whichever comes first."

"I'm sorry? D-did you just say 'Fall off'?"

With another foghorn's blare, the ground began to split itself up along the black lines marking each square's boundaries. As each contestant-holding slab separated from the rest around it, it began to raise itself into the air on the wings of enchantment.

Lylia gasped in shock as the floor beneath her feet jerked up and lifted her alarmingly quickly, dropping her to her knees as she gripped the dirt to try and remain still, safe. Her platform stopped a good ways up, turning and almost clicking together with her designated opponent's platform.

"No sitting down on the job, Lylia!" a familiar voice piped up.

"Hey, look up there," Aidon pointed through a myriad of levels the different platforms had created like a 3-D scatterplot graph across the giant dome, his green eyes focused steadily on Lylia's opponent as the two faced each other, yards and yards above the black pit on which the platforms were once a unified 'ground.' "It's-"

"Karen?" asked Lylia disbelievingly as she stood, shaking and refusing to look down.

"Moi!" trilled the Gryffindor cheerfully as a random curse from a nearby duel flew by over her head. She continued to smile across the few meters of platform dividing them, waving a finger. "I just knew I'd be the first to face you if I joined this Tournament!"

"H-how could you know something like that…?" Lylia looked down at her wand in her hand, unsure whether she should raise it or not.

"I just know these things," shrugged Karen with a knowing glint in her eyes. "Just like I know you're going to win this Tournament."

"I say, Fred."

"Yes, George?"

"Is it legal with these bets for a betting person to fight the person on whom they made a bet?"

"… What?"

"Isn't that Karen Goldberg up there, against Lylia Letum?"

"My word, that's correct! Well… I don't see why it's not allowed. Even if she lets the girl win, it doesn't secure her victory, so no foul!"

"What the devil is she doing?" Kayla was not asking so nicely. "Karen's a duelist?"

"Sweet! Cat fight!" This and many similar calls were heard from Malfoy's other side, where his five cronies filed in and sat down, bearing popcorn and soda. Kayla turned to look at them, then at Malfoy.

"… Draco."

"I know."

"… Draco."

"I'm sorry."

"Block me!" Karen spun and sent a bolt of orange light flying for Lylia. She giggled as the latter successfully absorbed the attack with a shield charm. "Good! Keep that wand steady!"

After a few seconds of no motion, Lylia glanced around.

"What happens now?"

"Well, one of us has to lose, of course." Karen gave a wink before turning her back to Lylia, running straight to the edge of her platform, and leaping over the edge of it.

"Karen?" Lylia stammered as she ran to the brink and looked down for her fallen friend.

The redheaded Gryffindor just smiled and waved up at Lylia, drifting lazily downward and then to one of the same five entryways the contestants had used to enter. "Stay sharp up there, kiddo!"

"So why'd she get involved at all?" asked Aidon as he watched Karen float down as if it was an everyday act.

"She was probably just calming Lylia down so she could fight seriously," Draco voiced his idea.

"How- how'd she just…?" Kayla was more lost than either of them. They both turned to look at her.

"You see, the amphitheatre's enchanted so that a duelist who falls off will just fly down and be taken through an exit," Aidon nodded at Karen as she strolled through the air and off the playing field through an archway.

"That way there are a lot fewer messes and casualties," added Draco.

"Give us a skirt!" cried out Draco's friends beside him. Out of all the people involved with the Tournament, they seemed to be the most excited about this "floating" mechanism.

All in unison once that batch of duels had ended, the platforms shifted to pair up the next duelists. Lylia shivered but remained standing upright as Kayla's abandoned platform was added to hers, bringing her next to face a short but lean Slytherin boy with a sour face and a bowlcut. He wasted no time in flinging a spell.

"Sectumsempra!" he shouted with a burst of magic.

"JESUS!" Lylia shouted in answer and fell to her stomach to avoid the beam.

"Is using such a serious spell even allowed?" Kayla was insulted and worried at the same time.

"It's frowned upon," Aidon gripped his robe nervously. "But yes, it's allowed… Get up and fight him, Letum…!"

Snape sank a bit lower in his seat across the stadium, grimacing at the use of one of his very own spells being used for such a deed.

Lylia rose to her feet with a wary, hesitant stare at the opponent. Before he could shoot another attack, she stepped to the side and shouted, "Tarantella!"

In the flurry of footsteps accompanying the Slytherin's spastic burst into manic dance, several spectators turned their gaze to them. Kayla tried and failed not to laugh, giving a facepalm.

"Classic…!"

Lylia looked around at the dozens of faces watching her before shrugging, stepping forward, and giving her opponent a small nudge right off the platform. Hoots and applause rang out among the crowd.

"This is bad," mumbled Aidon with a grimace, having already figured out the platforms' pattern of movement. "She has a boggart next."

A collective 'oooh' came from the crowd, their attention focused instead on Elden as he fluidly disposed of an opponent. Lylia turned her head to catch his eyes on her, straightening her back calmly as the platforms moved yet again. Tossing a few blonde tresses out of his countenance, he folded his arms coolly in response to her nonverbal challenge; a faint grin tugged at his lips.

The space between the sets of platforms was gradually decreasing, leaving fewer and larger platform groups on which to fight. Lylia's platform linked with her next foe's, her mind reeling when she saw the shapeless swirl of dozens of objects at once. Others in the crowd seemed to wait almost as nervously as she did, curious and wary to see her biggest fear. As quickly as it had stirred, the excitement dissipated: a black-cloaked man stood in the boggart's place, his hood drawn over his head and hiding his face. Lylia drew her wand shakily as he started forward for her, her mind recognizing him twice: both as the mysterious examiner for her Defense Against the Dark Arts task and as one of the silent figures in the fire of the Three Broomsticks.

"R…Riddikulus!"

With a puff of air from the blonde's wandtip, the man's cloak flew away to reveal… Professor Lestoat. On his head was a frilly custard-coloured bonnet, and he wore a matching, lace-trimmed sundress.

The roar that went up at this turn from fear to comedy was almost deafening to Kayla as she herself almost fell over with laughter in her seat. Even a few of the other participants looked on with amusement after their own duels. Draco's friends, on the other hand, all screamed in terror at seeing the man in a dress and clung to each other like terrified toddlers.

Lylia gave a bow to the crowd this time, surprised at finding herself so charismatic, and smiled as the platforms –now doubled again in size- slid again. Her waiting opponent was another Slytherin, but certainly a female. The cronies decided to speak up.

"Lift up your skirt!"

"Give us a swing of your hips!"

"Cat fight!"

"Hey, is that a Ravenclaw? Why isn't she superpretty like the others?"

"BOO!"

Draco finally snapped. "IF YOU FIVE DON'T SHUT UP THIS VERY INSTANT, WE'RE GOING TO FIND OUT WHETHER OR NOT THE FLOATING ENCHANTMENT WORKS ON OBSERVERS AS WELL AS CONTESTANTS."
They shut up.

The Slytherin facing Lylia pointed her wand and barked out quickly, "Langlock!"

Lylia blinked and looked around for a moment before shrugging. She wasn't bleeding anywhere, and she still had her wand. When she moved her lips to cast her spell, however, no sound escaped.

Snape sank a bit lower in his seat. That makes the second spell he invented being used against her.

"You don't learn your silent spells until your second year," the Slytherin girl gave a wide smile. "So sorry, firstie, but this is the end of the line."

Lylia moved a hand to her own throat, her eyes widened in fear. Her tongue wouldn't move to form the spell- it stuck to the top of her mouth out of a foreign force's will.

"Oh no," Aidon gave a moan and covered his eyes with Kayla's robe sleeve. "I can't watch."

Kayla jerked her arm away from Aidon, whirling on him. "How dare you! Aidon Haynes, how dare you give up on your friend when she needs your support the most!"

"Fine!" Aidon stood up in his seat, waving his arms wildly in the air as he yelled, "GO, LYLIA! GO!"

Malfoy gave him a look that quite obviously questioned his sanity, while Kayla just stood up and began to shout the same mantra. Draco's friends started up an impromptu version of The Wave while simultaneously trying to spell Lylia's name, all to much failure. Confident that his embarrassment would be shielded by theirs, Draco got up and shouted the same.

Lylia heard the cries, looking over at the cluster. The afternoon's dying sun still gave enough light with which to make them out; but upon seeing Aidon and hearing him use her first name for the first time, Lylia was seized by a series of twitches that the Ravenclaw Prefect had to strain his eyes to demystify.

"Is… Is she LAUGHING at me?"

"Most likely," smiled Kayla. "Keep yelling!"

The muted tournament participant wiped her eyes of the tears of mirth, turning to her gloating opponent again with uncanny cheer.

"What's so funny?" demanded the Slytherin.

Lylia just shrugged innocently again, now tapping her wandtip to her own throat and closing her eyes with a smile. As her eyes reopened, so did her mouth with a single word: "Langlibera."

The Slytherin girl's eyes narrowed. "How…?"

The stadium echoed similar sentiments of confusion and puzzlement. The volunteered commentators began to debate furiously before shouting out:

"It seems this first-year named Lylia Letum has… created a spell on the turn of a dime! How is this possible? For those of you just now tuning into this battle, Letum had been silenced with a jinx and has apparently just silently undone it!"

Lylia smiled softly, pointing her wand at her stunned foe. "Obscuro~."

As the girl's hands flew up to tug at the black blindfold suddenly covering her eyes, Lylia gave one more light push and the Slytherin soared just as her housemate did, over the edge of the platform and out of the tournament.

The applause that swarmed up this time didn't reach Lylia's ears; her senses were concentrated on one intent: asking Lesperance about Talem. No, not asking. Demanding. Less than a handful of platforms remained, but out of the four including herself Lylia was certain that Elden stood on one of them. She refused to look at him this time, but not out of pride or determination. Her eyes were glued to her newest opponent as the platforms linked.

A long, winding skyserpent loomed over her despite the wide expanse of platform that their fight could now cover. Its numerous coiled spanned easily half of their ground on which to duel, and its glistening teeth were easily the length of Lylia's now frail-seeming wand as the hulking beast loomed with a sickly grin.

"It's an Asian Lung," breathed Aidon just as he did when he first arrived at the event. "That's not good. Why is nothing good today?"

Lylia gasped for breath futilely as the creature swung around its tail and knocked her onto her back, her hand raising her wand just high enough to not let it be sandwiched to her body by the coils that began to wrap around her. Her mind raced for the right spell as the dragon lifted her up to its face, and she jabbed her wand down between two of the scales as best she could with a shout of, "Protego!"

Red sparks sputtered out from her wand and delved against the skin of the huge reptile, making it drop its sought prey. Lylia stood quickly, pointing her wand still at it.

"Incarcerous! Incarcerous! Incarcerous!" Each cry sent loops and loops of rope spinning out from her wand and wrapping around the behemoth of scales and death. As the huge lizard did all it could to twist free of its bindings, it rolled off the platform and brought Lylia to her final fight.

Kayla took a deep, calming breath as she sat in her seat once more, shaking slightly from her shot nerves. "This is it… This is it!"

"I honestly didn't think this'd happen," Draco shook his head. "It's truly a first for Hogwarts, I'd bet. And definitely a first for Elden- being challenged by a first-year, and a girl at that rate."

"Here we get to see all the hard work I put into it!" Aidon said about a seemingly-unrelated matter.

"Haynes, what're you talking about?" Kayla looked at him.

"Watch! The sun's down now!"

In truth, the sun had just set. As its last fingertips drifted down from the clouds and vanished past the twilight horizon, the entirety of the stadium began to glow. While a faint blue, neon light began to emanate from every outline of the seats, the dirt and ground of the platforms began to blow away like dust as they moved one last time, once again the size of its original terrain. As the ground began to fall away and vanish in a wind that sent Lylia's hair billowing in waves, the vanished earth left behind a pure, smooth marble on which the final pair of duelists now stood.

The marble ground itself seemed to catch the moonlight shining down from the clear sky above them, shining and illuminating the two from below their feet. Magical, transparent visual screens began to appear in circles around the seats, each showing a different angle of the two students now waiting for the last battle and giving its own light to illuminate the night in which the fight would take place.

"The final two contestants are the newcomer Lylia Letum and the title-holding champion, Elden Lesperance!" announced a commentator over the excited murmurs of the crowd. "Looks like Ravenclaw can rest easy at winning the contest for the fourth year in a row! But which of the genders shall walk away victorious? Which year? Which fighter?"

"Lesperance has entered again as a singular team," another student pundit continued. "It seems that Letum, however, has submitted herself as part of Hufflepuff's Dueling Club! Can that somehow be the secret to her success? Just what IS a Hufflepuff?"

"Hufflepuffs are widely believed to be a form of boar," added in another. "Maybe a species of one that mated with a hedgehog."

"That's a lie!" objected Aidon loudly. "They're HONEY BADGERS!"

"There seems to be a dissenter!" one of the commentators overheard him. "Hufflepuffs are apparently BADGERS."

"Regardless of what they are, LETUM is a RAVENCLAW!" finished the first announcer. "More than that- she's about to try taking down Elden Lesperance!"

Meanwhile, both remaining participants were completely ignoring the commentators; their opposing optics stared steadily into each other, cool violent meeting sky blue.

"Lesperance," Lylia spoke up without tremor. "Why did you attack him?"

"This is no place for kids to play," answered the flawless man.

"Was Hogsmeade? Is Hogwarts?"

"What happened that day was not my fault, you meddlesome child." The elder student's eyes pierced.

"Is it because of how we first met?" Lylia was shouting now, frustration and pain swelling inside her chest and finding release in her lips. "Is that why he had to die?"

"If you don't forfeit now, we must fight." His words were biting, acrid: "You're not going to get some happily-ever-after ending by facing me. The fact is that he's gone."

"I intend to do much worse than fight you, Lesperance."

Elden closed his eyes with a faint, condescending smirk. "Then this can't be helped… Such a pity." He drew his hands to his shoulders, disrobing himself in one swift, graceful motion and dropping aside the drape of cloth.

A collective scream of delight rose from his countless fans among those watching, only most of which were female.

Lylia said nothing in answer, not dignifying it with a response as they strode to the center of the field. The platform sections began to fall aside from the outer edges, narrowing their dueling ground to a long strip a few meters wide that suspended them over the inevitable defeat awaiting one of them below.

After a brief, curt bow given simply out of tradition and not the slightest out of respect, the two duelists turned and strode to the ends of the platform. Elden made the initial attack, flicking his wand almost casually. "Ignimenti!"

A rush of flame issued from his wantip and flowed at first like lava onto the marble, not melting it but instead coursing along it until it rose and began to rush toward Lylia like a living, breathing abomination of life encased in flying fire.

"Deprimo!" Lylia called as quickly as she could react, pushing the fire back from her with a strong gale that gushed out across the stands of watchers. Elden continued pushing the fire toward her; she, back at him. Through those means a huge vortex of fire was born between them, rushing outward but at the same time held just barely, but barely enough, at bay. Taking her chance, Lylia cast another spell after one particularly strong push of the fire. "Aguamenti!"

Waves of water flushed down from the air around her and twirled their elegant way all around the flames, dancing lethally with the fire before both ceased to exist in a deafening hiss.

"Defodio!" Elden slammed his wand with a beam of light into the marble at his feet. A few yards ahead, huge fragments of it sprung up as if shoved from below, dug out from the careful precision and unison in which the stone had held its own form. "Engorgio!" With this newest spell each piece grew tremendously in size, soon its smallest shard being the size of a fist. Lesperance gave a full swing of his weight into a push of his wand, sending every single piece sailing directly at Lylia.

Her gasp was cut off even by her next defense, which was accompanied with a giant sweep of her arm as if to cast away her barrage of assault. "Reducto!" The light from her wand lit each stone like a prism and filled them all, leaving only diamond dust that showered the starlit girl and glittered as it fell away in a holy chorus of glimmering.

Elden continued his attack without remorse or hesitation. "Diffindo!"

This strike Lylia did her best to sidestep, but she staggered nonetheless at feeling a sharp sting slice open her right cheek. She drew her shaking hand away to see shining crimson staining her pale fingertips. On a past day, perhaps Lylia Letum would have simply sat down and cried. Perhaps she wouldn't have tried conquering this enemy. Perhaps she would have simply given up. Perhaps she would have turned to Talem.

"Duro!" she pointed her wand at the blood that had seeped onto her hand, flinging her vermilion hand upwards after the blood droplets had hardened to cast a second spell on them: "Celerrime Mitto!" With a whisper of cutting the air, each pellet of her blood sped like a bullet at Elden.

Raising his arm to block the blow, Elden hissed in pain as the blood he shed dug into his own flesh and quickly yelled out, "Expelliarmus!"

Lylia paled further as her abdicant wand flew from her grasp and rolled off the platform. She dived to the marble floor and reached desperately over the rim, down into the darkness, but the abyss had already swallowed her only weapon.

Elden allowed himself a triumphant grin and walked forward slowly, unhurriedly in his victory. Stopping above his biggest nuisance and greatest threat despite all his denial of such, Elden Lesperance pointed his wand as black as midnight down at her and said with a great deal of self-enjoyment, "No spells to say, no dragons to dispel, no weapon to wield…"

She looked down over the edge where her hand was still outstretched in the dark, her sapphire eyes wide, then gazed one last time up at the man stretching out her beaten fate. Her surprise shifted and ebbed, turning instead to the same expression of completely contempt.

"Still such a defiant girl," Elden's grin twisted darkly.

"Actually… You're right. I don't have a dragon. But… as for a spell and a weapon… I did just use one to get the other. I know one nonverbal spell…" Keeping her eyes on the man, Lylia slowly rose, her once-hidden hand now revealed to be holding a familiar strip of white wood. "Accio… Wand."

Elden's mask of radiant confidence fractured as he took a step back. "No…"

"STUPEFY!"

"SILENCIO!"

Both spells were yelled respectively by Lylia and Elden, in complete unison. The strangling silence of all who saw the event reigned over everyone present, pounding their hearts into their ears and their souls into their throats as they waited to see which spell prevailed.

Elden Lesperance fell forward, unconscious.

Lylia Letum won the Dueling Tournament.

The crowd seemed to explode with its joy and shock, rows of the students standing and bursting into applause and whistles and cries. Snape himself clapped for some time before realizing what he was doing and quickly sitting down again in a sullen fashion. The applauding McGonagall made a mental note to never let him live it down. Aidon was so overtaken with emotion that he fainted quite dramatically, collapsing. Kayla almost seemed to be crying from her laughter and relief, and together with Draco's help she hoisted Aidon out of his seat and off to the side before giving her boyfriend a sound kiss on the lips. Malfoy's friends promptly began screaming like little girls as the collapsed Aidon fell on top of them. Lylia trembled in her knees from weariness as the platform returned to ground level and turned to let her walk through one of the five archways, her gaze going to her fallen adversary.

"Did I really win?" she whispered aloud and numbly walked out onto the Grounds of Hogwarts. "I've learned nothing… Did I really expect to learn anything?"

"Lylia!" Kayla glomped her in a delighted hug. "You did it! You really did it!"

"What happens next?" Lylia laughed exhaustedly.

"Next we party!" Draco exuberantly pointed at the lit castle ahead of them. "Midnight celebrations are the best kind!"

Amid the festivities, Kayla and Karen happened across a certain pair of twins giving out and collecting betting amounts. They sighed as the girls approached, both of them reluctantly handing over the owed galleons.

"I think we made an unwise turn at this junction of our career, Fred."

"I couldn't have said it prettier myself, George."

Lylia retired early for the evening despite the urgings from those around her to stay and relax. She sat yet again in her four-poster bed and looked out the window, her eyes raking unappreciatively over the serene beauty of the moonbeam-filled Black Lake.

"Lylia…" Helena said quietly by her side.

"I know." She just kept staring out the window, her heart aching just as much as it had before the tournament; but now it was encased in a thicker, more durable shell. It just made her empty heartbeats sound even louder.

Elden sat in a bed of the Hospital Wing motionlessly. His eyes were open, but he just stared outside past the gossamer curtains that waved in the midnight breeze. His bandaged arm's pulses of pain were distant and abstract to him. Madam Pompfrey had deemed him capable of leaving, but she took no action to have him removed. Instead, she left him be and went off to her quarters.

And so, in the silence that encased him, the dethroned ruler listened to his empty heartbeats.