The castle's attention — overbearing despite how unfocused it was, magic intense and too big, Liz so tense her hair was practically standing on end — softened after only a couple seconds, once again turning elsewhere. Liz let out a sigh, flopping back on her bed. That could have gone better.
With all the shite that was going on, Sirius being exonerated and the new house and the World Cup and politics being ridiculous and on and on, Liz had sort of forgotten about there being something wrong with the castle. It was obvious whenever she managed to make contact with...whatever the thing should properly be called — she instinctively thought of it as the castle's mind, but obviously castles didn't have those, she thought it was a part of the wards. Like, the decision-making part? Normally that was done automatically, with occasional input from the master of the house, but once upon a time it'd been common for people to ritually create a, sort of, guardian spirit over a location, which would be able to make a judgement independently. Which would be what the human sacrifices she'd seen had been for. That sort of thing had gradually gone out of fashion as ward-crafting techniques improved, Hogwarts actually rather late, if she had the timeline right. But then, the Hogwarts wards were stupid complicated, Slytherin and Ravenclaw had probably decided an independent consciousness was necessary to manage it all.
There was definitely something wrong with whatever that thing was, it was obvious whenever Liz made contact with it — like static on the radio, it made her teeth ache. Tamsyn had asked her, in a letter she got back on Wednesday, if the castle had noticed her coming back (it hadn't), which had reminded her that she'd been trying to communicate with the thing before summer. She could still reliably get its attention — it was pretty easy, actually, just had to push extra power into her mind, kind of mentally shouting at it — but it never paid her much mind, just noting she was here and going back to...whatever it spent its time doing. She'd tried to get it to stay, ask it all kinds of questions, but it didn't even seem to notice.
Since Liz had a little extra time before she needed to be at the first duelling team meeting of the year, she'd decided to try again. Once she got its attention once, it was much easier to pull its eyes back, but they never stayed on Liz for long. As overwhelming as its presence was — Liz had tried to read its mind, but it was very alien, even worse than elves, and just too much, incomprehensible gibberish rushing through her faster than she could even try to read — she could get enough of a vague impression to be certain that it recognised her. What it thought of her, that was impossible to tell, but it knew she was the same person from before, definitely. Of course, that didn't really seem to make a difference — Liz could get its attention, but she simply couldn't keep it.
Which did make sense, when she thought about it? As much as the thing on the wards definitely felt self-aware, its consciousness was still shaped by the glyphs Slytherin and Ravenclaw had carved — the same way a person's mind was shaped by the underlying neurons, had an influence on the way they worked. The castle had paid more attention to her the first time, Liz thought, because it'd thought she was in danger, once it'd confirmed she was fine going back to its business. If there wasn't a problem, well, Liz wasn't keyed into the wards — at least not as anything more than a guest — so why should the wards listen to her? Since it was self-aware, Liz was sure it could choose to pay attention to her when the enchantments didn't require it to, but that would take actually communicating — and its mind was so very alien that Liz really had no idea how the hell to do that.
So, yeah. Not making any progress on that project. She'd keep trying, but she didn't expect she'd get anywhere with it. Maybe Tamsyn would have a better idea.
A brief moment of concentration, and Liz cast a time charm with a flick of her wrist — ha, it worked! She'd been playing around ever since she'd seen Sirius cast this one with a snap of his fingers (he was such a showy shite sometimes), she still couldn't get it to work consistently. Which wasn't a surprise, for how basic of a spell it was it really was very fiddly. Basic physical charm effects, easy; more complicated shite like this, much harder. (Honestly, she suspected the only reason she could get it to work at all was because it was technically a charm-mediated divination, and her wandless version was cheating by sourcing her Seer...-ness instead of the fiddly bit of the proper charm, but it did work, so whatever.) Silently congratulating herself for actually getting the spell to work, she almost failed to note the time before the illusion faded away — right, it was time to leave.
Liz pulled her boots back on, tightened them with a quick sweep of her wand over each, double-checked that she still had her paperwork, before setting off. Even this far off into the tunnels, the dorm was louder than it used to be, voices bouncing off the walls carried down from the more public areas. The supervisors and prefects had been spending a lot of time with the first- and second-years, hanging out and...doing social group activities or whatever, Liz didn't know. But they normally did that in the library and common room, so, it got a little noisy, with all the little kids around.
"Little", some of them were taller than Liz, honestly...
She wasn't entirely surprised when she got up to the common room to find that the first-years were all gathered up here doing whatever. Or, the girls were, at least, over a dozen of them gathered on the sofas near one of the hearths with Deirdre, chattering and giggling. She couldn't tell from here what they were doing, and she didn't really care, but they were noisy enough they still drew her attention as she crossed the room. Belatedly, she noticed there were two women sitting with the little girls — not one of the prefects, tall and willowy, bright reddish-orange hair let free in random curls that—
Oh! That was Emily Scrimgeour — Liz hadn't seen her in person since first year, hadn't recognised her at first. Wasn't really sure what she was doing here. Just visiting Deirdre, maybe? She meant, they had been living together before Deirdre took the job here, if Emily wanted to see her girlfriend she probably had to come to Hogwarts now. Liz was a little surprised she was, just, hanging out with the first-years with her, but whatever, not a big deal.
She wondered if Emily was actually staying over here. If she remembered correctly, Emily was in an enchanting apprenticeship, or something, so she couldn't stay here all the time, but all the staff — including, presumably, the dorm supervisors — had floo connections in their rooms. Deirdre had to stay here, in case one of the little kids had an emergency or something, but there was no reason Emily couldn't floo in in the evening and floo out in the morning. At least, Liz didn't think there was any reason why she couldn't? If there was a rule that the dorm supervisors couldn't have boyfriends or girlfriends or whatever over, Liz hadn't heard about it — she was aware that professors sometimes had people over, though they normally never went out into the public areas of the castle. Hell, professors used to live in the castle with their families, though that hadn't been common in a long time. It would make sense for the dorm supervisors to need to ask permission before letting someone in — they were rather closer to the kids than some random professor, safety reasons, you know — but Emily was a former Head Girl and everything, she wasn't the kind of person the Headmaster or anyone else was likely to object to.
Except for the gay part, obviously, but supposedly mages cared less about that kind of thing.
...Liz was tempted to walk over and say hello — she'd liked Emily, she was really nice, taken her side with the bullying and everything, and there was all that drama going on around her and Deirdre, couldn't help being vaguely curious how she was doing. Also, she remembered thinking back in first year that Emily was really cool, which in retrospect might have been an early sign she was gay that she hadn't known to recognise at the time. But just walking up and saying hi would be very weird and awkward — especially since some of the first-years hadn't gotten over the whole oh my god, I'm in the same room as the Girl Who Lived, wow thing yet — and she had places to be. So yeah, let's, just, not do that...
(On her way across the common room, Liz might have been watching Emily and Deirdre more than she really needed to — she couldn't help it, she just found them weirdly fascinating.)
As soon as she stepped through the door out into the hallway, the eyes she'd drawn just walking around not bothering anybody falling away, Liz felt some of the tension drain out of her, sighing a little. People payed way more attention to her than she was comfortable with, just ordinarily, but how she was dressed at the moment didn't really help. Liz didn't like wearing trousers, generally, but she'd also rather not flash her shorts at people trying to duel in a skirt — she had no idea if they'd be duelling today, it might just be a talking meeting, but just in case. Part of it was just that she'd always worn skirts and dresses and the like. Originally because the Dursleys insisted trousers were for boys, and they could just throw an oversized tee shirt at her and have done with it, but it was just what she was accustomed to now — to the point that the fabric scratching at her legs made her feel self-conscious (which she knew was silly, but she couldn't help it). And also she just liked wearing dresses and whatever else more, for the look of it and also just in general, because she could be weirdly girly like that sometimes. As much as getting those leggings like Hermione had suggested had seemed like a good idea, she honestly didn't know if she'd feel like wearing them regularly, she had no idea if they'd bother her the same way wearing denims did.
And in addition to all that, there was an additional problem that'd been coming up lately: trousers were more form-fitting than skirts, which made her arse way more obvious. It couldn't be helped, if she wore trousers baggy enough to hide it they'd just get in the way. Now, theoretically, she didn't mind that her arse existed — as bloody tiny as she was, and with the scars on her chest, her hips were basically the only thing stopping her from looking like a fucking ten-year-old. She didn't like it when people looked at the bloody thing, though, because she could feel their eyes on her, as though an actual physical pressure warm and tingling, it was never not uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about that, short of wearing her invisibility cloak literally all the time...as tempting as that idea was on her bad days. Still, irritating.
They weren't meeting actually in the duelling hall today, instead in one of the little sitting rooms just across the corridor — which wasn't unusual, when talking about strategy or whatever, she'd still thought it was a good idea to be ready for practice. This one was made up in Hufflepuff colours, as most of them this close to Helga's Gallery were, cushy sofas and chairs in earthy browns and yellows. Liz was early, only a few people in here at the moment. Flitwick of course, bouncing on his toes in excitement, along with Gladwin and Alex Ingham — the captains of the junior and senior teams for this year — plus a couple hangers-on, including Adrian, who'd probably come up with Alex. She could have waited a little longer, but it was better than being late...
"Ah, and there's Miss Potter!" Flitwick called, waving her over. "Come, come. I assume you have your paperwork for me all ready?"
"Yeah, I have it. Just a second..."
For the most part, Hogwarts didn't require permission from parents for students to join clubs, or even participate in the little tournaments the duelling club threw at the end of every term, anything like that. That sort of thing was included as part of the ordinary business of the school, which their families had already consented to when they'd sent them here. The exception were when people would be leaving the school grounds, like visiting Hogsmeade or the rare excursion by one club or another, and the even more rare special events — apparently some of the tasks in the Triwizard Tournament would allow participants besides the Champions, and those you would need parental permission to take part in.
The student duelling tournament organised by the ICW was different, there was a bit of paperwork which all had to be redone every season. A relatively simple one was a legal thing, agreeing that the organisers couldn't be held liable for any damages incurred during the ordinary functioning of the tournament. As kind of bad as that sounded, the key word there was ordinary — they were responsible if there was a glitch in the safety wards or, say, the food they were provided was poisoned, or something. (Also, obviously they payed for the medical costs of injuries gotten in the tournament events, they just couldn't be sued over getting those injuries in the first place, was the thing.) That form was simple, Severus had just read through it (and had Liz read through it) and signed it, no big deal.
The second one was another legal thing: the IDL retained all rights to any media to do with their tournaments, including the images of the competitors (only associated with tournament events, not in general). This might look rather intrusive at first glance, but the point was actually to protect the competitors, who were mostly underage teenagers — in most countries, anyway, magical Britain's legal system continued to be fucked. Since they all had to sign this contract to compete, they legally weren't allowed to take sponsorships, or advertising deals, or sketchy apprenticeships, or anything like that, preventing gullible children from being manipulated into shitty, exploitative agreements by unscrupulous bastards. Shitty contracts did come up sometimes on the professional level, but, at least until they graduated up from the student tournaments, the IDL shielded them from that sort of thing. And the things they did do with those rights were minimal — there was some advertising leading up to the events, to draw in spectators, they sold memories for use in pensieves (in compilations, often with commentary edited in), and every season they put out a book summarising the highlights with lots of pictures and stuff, occasionally they'd sell some posters or whatever (with the cooperation of the team depicted) and that was really it — so it wasn't a big deal, Liz didn't have any problems signing that one.
Especially since, in her first tournament over the summer, Liz had noticed that she hadn't been in any of the promotional stuff. The summary book, just published a couple weeks ago, featured her trio's match with Cæciné's, but that hadn't even mentioned the stupid Girl Who Lived stuff — though, in her biography paragraph in the background at the beginning of the section, there had been a brief reference to the history of Dumbledore's guardianship of her, that was it — so, yeah. She hadn't seen the memories (they hadn't been released yet), but she didn't think it would be a problem.
And then there was also medical stuff, basically just to make sure nobody had any health issues they had to be especially cautious of. Like, Dorea's condition interacted badly with certain healing spells and potions, they kind of needed to know about any of that. The paperwork included basic medical history stuff — the most interesting part on Liz's was an explanation for why there were runes literally carved into her spine (they were inert now, but the marks would still be there for a few years at least) — but they also had to have a relatively thorough medical exam, signed off on by a healer. Annoyingly, they had to do one just to get on the list of competitors (which was what these forms were for), and then a second one in the couple weeks before the event, to confirm it was up to date, which was a pain — getting medical exams wasn't Liz's favourite experience, to put it mildly. But thankfully she could just have Severus do them, since he was a licensed healer and all — and, for some reason, also knew her family medical history far better than she did (which was basically not at all) — and he was aware she was a neurotic bloody mess, so it was relatively painless. She'd still prefer not to have to do them at all, but, could be worse.
Especially since Severus could put notes in her file for the healers at the event, like, if she did have to be immobilised or partially paralysed for a time during recovery — which was something that happened sometimes, for some kinds of injuries that took a little longer to heal — that she should be kept unconscious through it if reasonably possible, or thoroughly sedated with potions with anti-anxiety effects if it wasn't. Which, yeah, Liz did not like feeling trapped, she would not react at all well to being magically restrained on healers' orders, so thanks for that one, Severus.
(He'd actually let her read over his notes for the first tournament, asked for her approval on the exact language he'd used before finalising it — it was highly technical, of course, she hadn't understood all of it, still nice of him. He'd just copied the notes from last time word for word, since it wasn't like anything had changed health-wise in the last couple months.)
Liz's stack of papers was visibly thicker than everyone else's, since she had a couple complicated medical things Severus needed to explain to prevent possible interactions — in particular, certain kinds of light healing magic would irritate her curse scars, which they'd then have to deal with. (They had to be careful about light healing magic in general, actually, because apparently light magic toxicity was a thing.) And the other people in the room definitely noticed, a few flickers of surprise and raised eyebrows. But Flitwick didn't react at all, just sorted through the papers quick to make sure they were all there, then added them to the stack. "Very good. I didn't think to ask him earlier myself, do you know if Severus plans to travel with us again this winter? I understand the Yule Ball might make that somewhat more difficult for him, with all the extra students in the castle." So he'd have to keep an eye on the Slytherins, and make sure nobody went nosing around the potions storerooms, Flitwick meant.
At the mention of the Yule Ball, Liz felt herself grimace. It was a big formal dance...thing, held on Christmas Day — an old Triwizard Tournament tradition, supposedly. A big formal party for Christmas (or Yule, whatever) was actually a normal thing for the magical nobility — she'd be expected to start going once she was fifteen, which she was not looking forward to, and would probably try to find a way to get out of — but this was a separate thing, would be held at Hogwarts for the students. (The nobles' party had been rescheduled for the 21st to compensate.) It was why their supply list for this year had included formal robes, students thirteen or older (as of Hallowe'en) would be permitted to attend. Permitted, but not required, so Liz fully intended to skip it — she hadn't even bothered buying a new set of robes, which she would have needed to do, because apparently wearing her white ones would have been gauche, because the nobles made far too many stupid rules. She might have been roped into getting some anyway, but Hermione was putting off dress shopping until a Hogsmeade weekend closer to the date, so.
Though, Liz hadn't planned on going, but it'd belatedly occurred to her that Daphne might want to — especially if it was common knowledge that they were dating by then (and assuming they still were dating by then), which was almost certainly going to be the case. She was certain she would hate it, but she was also certain that if Daphne asked her she would agree to go. Hence the grimace.
(Hopefully the wine would be good — she tended to be far less self-conscious about stupid shite if she got a little alcohol in her first.)
But anyway, Flitwick's question. "Ah, I assume he's coming again — I don't think he'll want me going off to wherever it is this year without him, because he's a paranoid bastard like that." There were a couple chuckles at Liz so flatly talking about the infamous Severus Snape like that. "I didn't ask him either, but with the extra staff I think it'll be fine. Pencil him in, I guess?"
"I'll do that. Kaunas."
"What?"
"The tournament this winter will be held in Kaunas, Lithuania."
"Oh, right." So, they'd gone from a conservative country one tournament, straight to a communalist one the next? If Liz remembered correctly, Lithuania was even one of the more militant Revolutionary states these days, their politics sounded kind of...intense. But that wasn't really important just now, whatever. "Neat?"
"More like bloody cold," Oz grumbled. "Kaunas isn't any further north than us, but they are further inland — it's going to be freezing."
Flitwick let out a little huff. "It isn't that bad. It will be a little colder in Kaunas than it is here at the same time of year, but only by a few degrees. There will be snow on the ground, however — I expect the students will have at least one big snowball fight, so I would pack mittens, were I you."
...Liz didn't think she'd ever been in a snowball fight before. She'd gone past one now and then, when there was snow in the Valley — which wasn't often, even this deep into the Highlands it normally melted pretty quick (though it clung around in patches higher up in the hills around the Valley through the winter) — but she'd never participated. If there was one going on, and she had nothing better to do, well, she'd think about it.
After a bit more chatter about Kaunas, Adrian saying hello, how was the rest of your summer, blah blah (no quidditch this year, so they hadn't bumped into each other yet), Liz retreated from the group, sat down on one of the sofas to wait. Thankfully, after last term in the club, people were familiar enough with her by now not to try to forcibly include her in the conversation, and mostly left her alone. (Though people had gotten better, if not great, about not bothering her lately just in general, since she'd been at Hogwarts long enough for her being an antisocial mess to become common knowledge.) She did eavesdrop on the chatter, not because it was really interesting, she just had nothing better to do. A lot of catching up after break, restarting whenever another person trickled in, a little bit of talk about the tournament this year, both duelling and Triwizard.
Alex was amusingly irritated that Cæciné was moving up to the senior division this year. It was her last year, she'd like to finish off with some big wins, but even with the age advantage they'd likely have over Cæciné's team, she was still sceptical of their ability to win against whatever Beauxbatons team she ended up in — whether they placed well would be down to random chance. It was kind of funny that, after moving up into the senior division, and therefore now competing against people significantly older than her, Cæciné was still the scariest bitch around.
(Listening to the conversation, Liz tried not to look too obviously smug that she'd actually managed to down one of Cæciné's hand-picked trio partners one on one. She'd still lost against Cæciné herself, of course, and badly, but still.)
They were getting pretty close to the supposed start time when Katie waltzed in. After handing off her papers to Flitwick, and a brief talk with Gladwin, Oz, and Brendan, Katie headed over toward Liz, bonelessly flopped into the empty spot on the sofa. "Hey."
"Hey."
"I heard you were close to the attack on the World Cup." Liz grimaced — of course she had, that Liz had been in the shelter put up by the Gaels had ended up in the papers... "You get through that okay?"
"We were fine. Well, not fine — it turns out being a mind mage surrounded by hundreds of panicking people sucks, I was basically useless. But me and the people I was with were fine, nobody got hurt."
"Right, good. I was there, with the Dunbars and Peakeses and Smethwycks, but we weren't anywhere near the fighting. I saw the flames in the distance, but I didn't think anything of it — thought they were fireworks or something."
"Yeah, I did too at first. Until the panic hit me and I nearly passed out."
Katie let out a snort, a faint tickle of black humour running through her head. "The match was great, though — Merlin, that quaffle game."
"Oh, definitely. Too bloody fast, I could barely tell what was happening, had to watch some of the plays multiple times in my pensieve to put them together."
"Ugh, jealous. The Smethwycks have a pensieve, but they'd never let me use it for something so frivolous..."
Liz and Katie managed to talk about quidditch for the couple minutes until the meeting started. As big as the sitting room was, even with both teams in here it wasn't particularly crowded — though Flitwick still had to hop up onto a table to be easily seen by everybody. "Good evening, everyone!" he called, the chatter in the room immediately cutting off, eyes turning toward the diminutive professor. (Honestly, at least Liz wasn't quite the smallest person in the room...even if the only exception was literally half-goblin.) "I know you'd all like to get your initial strategy talks out of the way as quickly as possible, so I won't take too much of your time. I just have a few quick announcements to make.
"Firstly, I know my involvement in this club has been very hands-off, and I haven't been able to come to meetings very often. With how packed full my schedule has been ever since taking over Ravenclaw, I simply haven't had the time. However, thanks to the staffing changes this year, I'll have much more freedom to do as I like from now on — so I'll be able to manage a lot more active coaching this year. I will try to make it to every meeting — I may need to skip some, especially closer to exam season, but I'll try — and I'll be on hand much more frequently to give advice, help refine your spellcasting, teach new spells, work on tactics, whatever comes to mind. Not to say I plan to stick my overlong nose into the management of your teams, no! All that is still up to you and your captains, I will remain an advisor and nothing further. Do feel free to approach me if you'd like help with anything, consider me at your disposal," he finished with a bouncy, amused tone to his voice, dipping in a sarcastic little bow.
There was a lot of shifting in people's heads at that news, a few glancing at each other and muttering. The duelling teams had mostly been getting by teaching each other, with occasional pointers from Flitwick (or guest visits from Severus or Vector or whoever), because yeah, he'd been way too busy to commit much time to the club. That they'd actually have proper instruction this time was kind of a big deal — and doubly so because Flitwick was literally a multiple-time world champion duellist. His last title had been, what, in the early 70s or something like that, he was probably rusty after decades of 'retirement', but still.
"Speaking of captains, as I'm sure you all remember, our new captains for this year are Alex Ingham for the senior team, and Gladwin Bletchley for the junior team." He pointed at each of them as he said their names — which was slightly silly, obviously everyone in the room already knew who they were. "I trust there won't be any issues, but if anything does come up, well, do bring it up with me as soon as possible. You don't want conflict bubbling over in the middle of a competition, there was one incident when I was in the senior division team myself that— Well, that's not important just now."
By the texture of the flickering in his head, Liz would guess someone in the team had been a racist bastard about Flitwick being part-goblin, and Flitwick had hexed the shite out of him. Rumour had it that Flitwick used to do that kind of thing a lot, back when he'd been in school and the first decade or so afterward — during his professional duelling career, he'd even gotten a brief prison sentence (like six months or something) in some Asian country over a particularly bad scrap he'd been in. Supposedly he'd once had a serious anger problem, which was just impossible to imagine, looking at him now...
"The winter tournament this year is being held in Kaunas, Lithuania. You needn't worry about arranging travel or documentation or anything of the like, we'll take care of all that on our end. Out of respect for the Triwizard Tournament, the organisers at the League have pushed the timing back a few days — we'll be leaving on the Twenty-Ninth of December, and returning a week later. Given the timing, it would be most convenient for us to come straight back to Hogwarts upon our return to the country, so, bring all your school things with you if at all possible. We should be back in time for the first day of classes, but it might be tight. You should have all been sent the necessary paperwork over the summer, but I'm still missing forms from some of you. The registration deadline is the Fifteenth of October, and I will need a couple days at least to send them out — if the I.C.W. does not receive your paperwork in time, you will not be able to compete, and you'll need to be replaced. Nobody wants that to happen, so please, get them back to me as soon as possible."
A vaguely familiar-looking blonde girl raised a hand. "Professor?"
"Yes, Miss Andrews?" Oh, that was Chelsea Andrews, one of Liz's new teammates. There'd been a very brief meeting with the new members back in June, but they hadn't spoken, Liz mostly knew Chelsea from the end-of-term tournaments last year — she'd done surprisingly well in the winter one, even better in the spring one, and had actually made it to the quarterfinal in the summer one, eliminated by fifth-year Prewett. Which was good just in general (Liz had also been eliminated in the quarterfinals), but very good for a muggleborn, who couldn't be expected to have gotten any training outside of Defence class.
"How do you get an appointment with a healer? I'm pretty sure I shouldn't give that paperwork to a muggle doctor." And obviously that was going to be a problem, because muggleborn.
There were a couple scoffs from the more racist people in the room, but Flitwick just let out a good-natured chuckle. "No, I imagine not! Simply bring the papers with you up to the Hospital Wing, I'm sure Madam Pomfrey can take care of that for you. How to arrange an appointment with a healer outside of school is something you should ask Professor Sprout about — I understand she has a meeting with all her seventh-years where they discuss such topics as that, preparing you for life outside of school, but there's no reason you can't ask early if you like. The advantage of going to Madam Pomfrey, so long as you're still a student here, is that she will do it for free."
"Wait, what? The Ministry doesn't pay for doctor visits?"
"Not in Britain — many other I.C.W. countries have public healthcare, but we don't have anything of the like here, I'm afraid. If you're truly desperate for care you can't afford, you can try your luck with one of the priesthoods, but even a brief visit to Saint Mungo's can get quite expensive." Flitwick didn't come out and say that muggleborns might be better off moving to the Continent after graduation, especially since the economy here kind of sucked if you didn't have the right connections, but it was definitely implied. "Now, where was I? Ah, yes, of course.
"For the new faces among us, and as a reminder to returning members, the I.C.W. tournament has three events: singles, trios, and teams. Everybody must participate in the team and singles events, and each team must submit at least two trios. You might notice that two trios would leave at least one person out — each team member is not required to participate in trios. You may form more than two trios if you like, up to a maximum of five, which yes, will require some members be in multiple trios. For organisational purposes, make it easier on them setting up the brackets, each team member may be in a maximum of three trios. Personally, with how crowded competition days can be, I would not recommend it — for all seven members of a team to compete, at least two members will need to be in a second trio, and two is quite enough, believe me.
"All of the duellists, trios, and teams are put in multiple single-elimination brackets, which one you'll end up in determined by some complicated maths based on your personal career record and that of your team — I can get you a copy of the arithmancy if you're curious, but the details don't particularly matter. The victors of this first round then advance into the championship round, which is another set of single-elimination brackets; those who top these brackets have 'won' the tournament — yes, there will be multiple winners in each category, but that isn't unusual in large events such as this one, even on the professional level. We get into the championship rounds quite regularly, but it's been some time since we've had many winners — don't be too discouraged if you don't make it, these events are very competitive, that's simply the way life goes sometimes.
"So!" he chirped, clapping his hands. "I would recommend putting your trios together as soon as possible. I don't need our lists until First December, but the longer you know who will be working with who, the more time you'll have to practise. If you need a few weeks to become more familiar with each other's talents and weak points, very well, but that is my most pressing advice in the short term.
"That's all I had to say, I believe, I'll leave you to your captains now. After you've all gotten reacquainted, the duelling hall is open, if you'd like to poke around for a bit. I'm familiar with all of your skills, and I must say, you've put together an excellent pair of teams this year — I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it all comes together. Go on, then, don't let me keep you! I'll be here if you need anything." Bending down to plant his palm on the edge of the table, Flitwick hopped down, dropping out of Liz's line of sight behind Adrian and one of the other older boys.
There was a brief moment of excited chatter before Alex got everyone's attention with a shout, one hand raised over her head. She didn't have much to say, just that they'd talk about how they'd run the club meetings — the ones people not in the duelling teams attended, she meant — later in the month. Apparently, she expected that discussion to be very short, since it didn't really change year to year — Flitwick and the captains mostly handled the organisation, the other team members around to give tips or have the occasional duel. (Sometimes to demonstrate a particular thing, sometimes just to show off.) Liz hadn't participated much last spring, since she'd been new and also only thirteen, most of the club members well older than her, but now that she had one tournament under her belt she assumed she'd be expected to contribute more. Which was going to be a pain, but as long as everybody stayed focussed on duelling, and didn't start being weird about Liz being Liz as people so bloody often did, it shouldn't be that bad. Hopefully.
Anyway, after a very short talk, Alex told them to split up by teams, suggested they get to know each other a little before moving on to talking strategy. The same thing Flitwick had talked about, you know — what things each of them were especially good at, what did they have problems with, who did they have experience fighting with already, with an eye toward forming trios. And Liz's team was going to have to figure that out: Liz and Katie had been with Cynfelyn, and Gladwin and Brendan had been with Cass, so neither of their trios were continuing from last year...
"Hey, Liz!" someone called over the noise of people moving around and talking — too many minds in the room to pick people out easily, Liz didn't recognise that as Susan until she looked up and spotted her. "I didn't see you hidden away over here." Liz had noticed Susan's hair (it was very distinctive, hard to miss), but Liz was bloody tiny, so. "I don't know if you and Chelsea have ever spoken at all?"
They hadn't, really, though Liz had voted to invite her onto the team in the first place. During and shortly after the tournament at the end of the summer term, they'd talked about people's performance, discussing who might make good replacements for Cynfelyn and Cass. Susan had ended up topping the third-years, barely edging out Draco in an absolutely brutal duel — she'd been too exhausted to continue fighting the upper years, but Draco had been in the Hospital Wing for a day and a half afterward, her showing had been impressive enough there hadn't been much discussion about it. The other spot had been a longer debate. Cynfelyn suggested they bring in a fourth-year (fifth-year now), so they weren't weighted too much toward younger students — Brendan and Oz both planned to drop out after winter, to focus on their exams, and they'd bring in new fourth-years then, so at least they wouldn't have to replace all the now fifth-years all at once — but it'd taken a bit of arguing to agree on somebody. Especially since Eustace Scrimgeour, their first choice, had turned the invitation down.
Cass, Brendan, and Gladwin had all wanted to invite Rowle, but Liz and Katie had been very firmly against. Rowle was a racist bastard, he'd always been an arse to Liz...but not really any worse than Cass, honestly, and he'd never really done anything to her, mostly just thoughts she'd picked up, which she had to agree was hardly fair. Thankfully, he was also a bit of a creep to the girls in his year — maybe stretching the definition of "thankfully" there, but Liz would take what she could get — Katie had been very stubborn about it, basically threatened to leave the team if they invited him. After some minutes debating Sadhbh Monroe and Chelsea Andrews, they'd settled on Chelsea — Liz's preference had been for Chelsea, mostly because watching the purebloods squirm as a muggleborn girl kicked the arses of boys from old noble families tickled her. Though of course she'd kept that to herself.
The girl in question was following right behind Susan, looming over her shoulder. (Chelsea wasn't that tall, but purebloods trended toward the short side.) Liz didn't know if the two of them knew each other at all, but they were both Hufflepuffs, so they'd probably come here together. Chelsea nodded down at her, lips curling with a half-hidden eager grin, mind sizzling with excitement. She was very pleased to have made the duelling team, just barely containing herself. Her voice was still mostly flat when she said, "Hello, Potter."
"Hey. 'Liz' is fine."
"Right, wasn't sure. Mages can be funny about that sort of thing, you know."
"I've noticed."
While Susan introduced Chelsea to Katie next — Katie and Chelsea immediately turned to teasing Susan over it, honestly, they were in the same year, they'd known each other for ages now — Liz looked around, quickly spotted the boys making their way here. Right, good, their team was meeting here, Liz didn't have to get up.
Gladwin got them going as soon as he reached Liz's corner, everyone scrambling for seats — Susan ended up perched on the arm of the sofa, just next to Liz, which was slightly awkward, but okay. For some reason, Susan was dressed very muggle-ish, in denims and a tee shirt, unusual for her. (Distractingly, Susan's shirt was short enough to, with the way she was sitting, show a little patch of skin at the small of her back, Liz tried not to look.) Gladwin had them all go around, telling everyone their names (for Susan and Chelsea's benefit), whatever introductory stuff they thought was important, and then any special skills they might have that could be useful in a duel. Starting with himself, Gladwin was a solid all-around duellist — nothing he was exceptionally good at, but he didn't have any obvious weaknesses either (his occlumency was pretty decent too) — and also had magesight, the primary advantage of which being that he'd see invisible spells coming, and could more quickly judge whether an unknown spell would be caught by any particular shield charm. Might seem like a minor thing, but that was actually very helpful, especially in big chaotic seven-versus-seven fights.
Going around clockwise, next was Brendan, who included the added tidbit that his elder sister was Head Girl this year — he didn't mention that Professor Snape was his first cousin, they didn't talk about that for silly pureblood reasons — he was pretty solid with defensive magics, plus also had magesight, so had the same advantages as Gladwin. (Magesight was pretty common in professional duellists, turned out.) Next was Chelsea, who was quick and clever, judging by her performance in the club tournaments very good with using standard, basic charms in creative ways — her biggest weakness was that she didn't know many proper combat spells, but she'd learn, shouldn't be a problem. And then next was Susan, who was surprisingly powerful for her age, and very quick on her feet, prioritising dodging rather than blocking — pretty similar to Liz in that way, actually — and had the advantage of having been trained by actual Hit Wizards and Aurors in drips and drabs over the years. (Mostly bodyguards left with Susan as a favour to her mum while she was at the office, but still.) Liz was basically like Susan, but more (and without the lessons, so more haphazard), and on top of that was a mind mage and a Seer, which was basically cheating — the parseltongue was also exploitable, but she'd need someone else to conjure the snakes for her, she couldn't do it fast enough. Oh, and quickstep, of course, that was also basically cheating, hardly anyone else in the junior division could do that yet.
After Liz there was Katie — she mentioned she was angling for an apprenticeship with the Aurors, joked about Susan maybe putting a good word in for her now that they were teammates — who was a pretty solid duellist just in general, but the ace up her sleeve was conjuration, which was about as rare in the junior division as quickstep. And last was Oz — yes, those Bagshots, though he wasn't closely related to the famous historian (and therefore not Grindelwald either, presumably) — who was ace with elemental spells, especially water and wind. That didn't sound like much, but ice spells could be exploited to make physical barriers against the more difficult to block curses with relative ease, so was much more useful than you might think.
(It occurred to Liz, listening to everyone else, that she was probably the single most dangerous person on the team, in a one-on-one fight, despite being literally the youngest. She didn't know how she felt about that. Besides somewhat smug, of course.)
"Right then," Gladwin said as the circle came back around to him, clapping his hands. "We have a little bit of work to do, training up the new girls — and Oz, I want to get you quicker at switching tack, and Liz, we should work on your defensive spells." Liz just nodded since, if she did have any obvious weak point, that was it. To a degree, anyway: yes, her shields and the like weren't excellent, but quickstep meant that wasn't quite so important. Whatever, might as well still practise them. And as long as they were focussing on defence practice, she could work on her hex deflection... "For trios, I think it would be wisest for Brendan and I to stay together, and also Katie and Liz — we have experience working together already, I think adding one person would be quicker and easier than forming trios from scratch. For balance reasons, and also looking forward to putting the team in a better position for next year, I'm thinking we'll put Chelsea with me and Brendan, and Susan with Katie and Liz." So Liz and Susan, the only ones who'd still be around next year, would already have practice working together, he meant. "Unless you wanted to do trios this year?" he asked, turning to Oz on his right.
"Mm, I was thinking about it. But you're right about those teams, I wouldn't want to break them up. Maybe make a third trio, with Brendan and Liz?"
Before Gladwin could respond to the idea, Brendan said, "I'm up for it — we're not going to be in the summer tournament, so might as well go out hard, yeah? Liz?"
She shrugged. "Sure. You're both more defensive fighters, so it might get pretty intense for me at the front alone, but that's fine."
"You're allowed to say no if you don't like the idea."
"No no, sounds like fun, that's all I meant." Also, it would probably be kind of exhausting — she was already a pretty high-energy duellist to begin with, but add in all the matches for a second trio, and one she was the only offensive fighter in, yeah, it'd be a lot — but she was sure it'd be fine. She was hardly about to say no to an extra shot at it. If she got worn out enough she needed the sleep, she could always just skip the parties and stuff. Wasn't like she had much fun at those anyway...
There wasn't much left to talk about after that. There was the schedule of club meetings, which was thankfully rather easier to arrange this time — the additional professors meant their timetables were more regular, not jumping around at odd times anymore, and there weren't quidditch practices to work around this year either. It was very possible one of their senior division team members might be in the Triwizard Tournament — Adrian, Alex, and Cedric were all trying for it — but you had to be seventeen for that, so obviously that wouldn't affect the junior team. Except for the tasks themselves, and some of them allowed additional participants, but that shouldn't be too much of an interruption, they didn't think?
Gladwin complained a little bit about the Tournament's organisers not giving them any details about what the thing would actually entail, so they couldn't properly plan around it. Apparently, at least some of the tasks were supposed to be a surprise, so they didn't want anyone cheating by informing the Champions ahead of time. Gladwin knew there would be nine — two in November, one in January, two in February, two in April, one in May, and then the final in June — but he didn't know what any of them would be, or how much they could expect them to screw with the duelling club's schedule.
Liz didn't know why he was so surprised. Honestly, they should just be glad the ICW had adjusted the schedule around the Yule Ball, for you silly normal people who wanted to go to that.
After that there really wasn't anything else to do, he was calling the end of the meeting there. It was still pretty early in the evening, Liz didn't feel like going back to the dorms yet, so she went over to the duelling hall. She wasn't the only one, a few people from the senior team had come over here too, Susan and Oz with Chelsea — teaching her a few proper duelling spells, by the look of it. Katie was sticking around too, after talking to someone in the senior team coming up behind Liz, watching the Hufflepuffs at it. "Hey. Have anything in particular you want to work on?"
"Mm...yes, actually." Glancing around them, they had enough room here, and hopefully stray spells wouldn't hit anyone. She backed a few metres off from Katie, her wand falling into her hand. "Throw something at me. A stinging jinx."
One of Katie's eyebrows ticked up, confusion sparking in her head, but she just shrugged it off. Her wand came up, and in a blink a pale white spellglow was zipping over at Liz — much quicker than she'd expected, she wasn't ready. Liz pushed magic through her wand, coming up and down in a tight swirl, and—
She jumped at the flash of pain in her fingers, her hand reflexively snapping open, her wand falling to clatter against the floor. "Dammit!" Shaking her hand out — the pain didn't entirely go away, a warm sharp stinging, but it wasn't so bad — Liz summoned her wand back to her hand. This time, she prepared early, already pushing the spell out, ready to intercept the jinx. "Right, let's try that again."
"What the hell are you doing?"
"You'll see. Hit me." Katie's lips twitched, a hint of a smirk, but she shot off the spell without further arguing. Her aim was a little higher than Liz had expected, her wrist dipping and turning, she hesitated a blink before swiping upward — her timing was perfect, the jinx catching on the tip of her wand, the motion of the swipe pushing it up and over her left shoulder, continuing on toward the wall behind her. "Ha! Got it!"
"Hoh, shite," Katie hissed, grinning back at her. "You're working on hex deflection now?"
"Yeah, Sirius started teaching me a couple weeks before the end of break. We were just getting started, I didn't have much time to practise it, unfortunately. Hit me again."
Katie huffed. "You know, deflecting a spell is a lot more risky than blocking or dodging it." But she fired off another stinging jinx anyway.
Liz did manage to catch the jinx again, but her aim was off, hit it at too shallow of an angle, deflecting it right into her own hip — she staggered back a step, grimacing and rubbing at the spot with her free hand. "Yeah, I know. It looks really badass though."
"Ha, yeah, it does that." Another stinging jinx, and this one Liz managed to deflect properly, the spellglow splashing uselessly against the floor tile a few metres behind her. "You're shaping up to be a smooth damn bastard, you know."
...Liz had no idea what she meant by that, what Liz could see in her head too murky to pick it out. Not sure what to say, she settled with, "I'm sure Sirius will be very proud. Hit me again." She successfully deflected this one too, though she did lean a little to the side to make sure she didn't hit herself — once she got the hang of the timing, and as long as Katie's aim wasn't too far off of where she expected, it wasn't so difficult. The trick would be to get used to the speed of different spells, get good enough with her aim to whip it out on demand, in less controlled situations. But she'd have to get much more consistent with the trick before it was worth trying to do that.
"I'm kind of jealous, honestly — there aren't really any battlemages in the Dunbars I can learn this sort of thing from. The Peakses have some, I guess, but we're not close."
Liz wasn't surprised by that, since the Dunbars were one of those religious agricultural communes, like the Greengrasses. The religion wasn't the same, had different clothes and didn't do the thing with the piercings or the strict vegetarianism, but similar in the broad strokes — not exactly the military type, was the point. "I can teach it to you later, if you like." Another spell came in, and she swiped it away, perfect, that was three in a row now... "It's easier if you can do any wandless magic at all."
"I've been working on summoning my wand, but I can't do it consistently yet. Guess I'll tell you when I can."
Another successful deflection, and that was four, ha! "Um, Sirius said that's one thing the Aurors want you to be able to do — also a dispel and ideally a shield charm, but summoning your wand is the important one, they don't let you finish your apprenticeship if you can't do it."
"Yeah I know, that's why I started practising it. I figure if I can already do it when I apply for the summer internship I'll have a better shot of getting in."
"Probably." Another jinx from Katie, but her aim was higher than Liz thought, she completely missed, the jinx hitting her in the shoulder. "Dammit, blood thing..."
"I can aim for the same spot every time, if you want. I just figured, doing it more randomly might be better for practice — it's not like you're going to know where a spell is going in a real fight."
"No, you're right, keep doing that. It's just, I only have a split second, if I guess where the spell is going wrong it's pretty easy to miss." She did manage to catch the next one, so it wasn't impossible, just difficult. "Most people try to aim for the middle every time, but I'm going to be moving around, so."
"Yeah, that makes sense."
They fell into silence for a few exchanges, Liz successfully deflecting most of them — one she sent off at too shallow of an angle, was unlucky enough to hit herself in the shin, for fuck's sake. "So you're serious about going into the Aurors, then? You've said something about that before, but I wasn't sure how serious you were about it."
"That's plan A. Professional duelling is plan B., and quidditch is plan C." Another jinx, and another successful deflection. "I'm hoping if I make enough of a name for myself in any of them, the Dunbars will offer me an adoption. I would be interested in trying for an alchemy Mastery, but academia wouldn't work for that, at least not quickly enough."
Distracted enough thinking about that, Liz failed to react in time, completely missed the next stinging jinx, fuck. "An adoption? I thought you were already a Dunbar."
"No, the Dunbars are the lords of the lands were my family lives — my grandmother is a member of the main family, but I'm not, it's complicated." Her family were vassals of the Dunbars, she meant, because the magical world was absurdly backwards like that sometimes. Liz hadn't known that, she'd just thought it was like how Olivie Rivers in Ravenclaw was actually a Tugwood... Another successful deflection later, Katie added, "I wouldn't even be here if I hadn't shown talent when I was little. I nicked one of the wands at the mausoleum when I was eight, which I really shouldn't have done, but they found me actually casting magic with it, and were impressed enough to get me some proper lessons. The main family is pretty small these days, they had a spot at Hogwarts they weren't using, so here I am." Another hex, but, paying too much attention to the story and the flicker of Katie's memories just out of sight, Liz reacted too slowly, got hit again. "Hell, most of my cousins can't even read — not like farmers really need to, you know? My father taught me, when I was...shite, three or four, I think. He taught my brothers and sisters too, but they never, well, they wouldn't be able to manage the reading and writing here, let's leave it at that."
...Liz had had no idea Katie was from such a poor family. Not like they'd really talked about their personal lives much, but still. "You have brothers and sisters?" None of them were here, obviously, so...
"Yep, eight of 'em. I'm the oldest. And we found out just a couple weeks ago that my mum is pregnant again, so it'll be nine soon."
"Christ..."
Katie laughed. "Yeah, I know — that poor woman, you'd think she could take a break for a few years."
"Is that normal, where you're from?"
"It's not abnormal," she said, shrugging. Another jinx, Katie was slowed down enough coming off of the shrug that Liz managed to catch it in time. "It's more than most people, but not so many that anyone make a big deal about it or anything, you know. Everyone loves kids back home, they've all got a ton of 'em."
Right. Liz was just thinking, she heard all the time about how mages were having population issues, you know, not having enough kids, but after seeing the Greenwood, and now this, she was wondering if that was mostly a problem for the nobility, and everyone else was actually fine. Or, at least, the weird religious communes were mostly fine, she guessed. It was common knowledge that the magical census was bad, especially with insular communities like that, but she honestly had no idea how bad... "Plan on having a ton of them yourself one day?" Which was a bloody absurd thought, Liz couldn't imagine being a mother herself. And not just because she was super gay — women could have kids with each other just fine, thanks to blood alchemy. (The problem was Liz is broken stuff, obviously.) But, she and Katie were kind of similar, in some ways, so Katie being a mum was also fucking surreal to think about.
"Eh. Maybe. Definitely not that many, but. It depends, I guess."
Another successful deflection, ha, she was getting the hang of this... "On what?"
Katie gave her a look, probably thinking that really wasn't Liz's business. But after a second, she answered anyway. "Whether or not I manage to get that adoption, for one."
"...Why does that matter?"
"Since I'm going to Hogwarts and people know who I am, the Dunbars are going to want me to marry an outsider. Someone who's not from our little community, I mean." Yes, Liz got that much, thank you, the people at the Greenwood used the same word. Usually in Cambrian, but. "If I don't get the adoption, I'll probably end be joining his House, and other people do things differently. But if I do get the adoption, the main family is small enough I bet I'll be able to stay home." Another spell, this time Katie surprising her with a bludgeoning hex — Liz still managed to deflect it away, but it had a little bit more kick to it, she could feel the impact down her wrist, woah. "Also, the Dunbars might be okay with me marrying a woman instead, if I'm going to be staying home, and who knows, I might feel like doing that when the time comes. So."
She definitely couldn't do that legally, but the Dunbars were one of those weird radical religious families — Liz guessed it was possible they wouldn't give a damn what the other noble families thought about it. "You want to stay home. That's why you're trying to get into the Aurors."
"That's the idea."
Huh. Liz didn't give much though to how a lot of this feudal hierarchy, dynastic marriage shite could suck for other people, since she was in a position where she didn't really have to worry about it. Katie had done pretty well for herself so far, considering she'd made it to Hogwarts in the first place, but still, sounded like a pain. Especially since, Liz knew these weird agricultural cults were very attached to their land, you know, and they had their own cultural stuff, she could imagine how they'd hate having to leave. Liz really didn't want to give up her house either, and she'd just gotten that. "I can talk to Sirius, if you want to come over during breaks and learn a few things. Oh, and, um, my cousin Dora's in the Aurors right now — she did the summer internship thing a few years ago, I can write her and ask if she has any advice. If you want." She might be a pain about that, since Liz had never really played along with Dora trying to be cousins now or whatever, but... Well, Katie was a friend — probably one of her better friends, honestly, they got along pretty well — and it might help, so. Liz would put up with Dora being nosey, it wasn't that big of a deal.
Katie blinked at her for a few seconds, her mind shivering. "Well, yes, that'd be great. I mean it, really, thank you, Liz."
"Sure, no problem."
This whole friends thing could be confusing, Liz hardly ever knew what she was doing — she was a total social incompetent, after all. But sometimes it was really very simple.
"Hit me again."
D'aawww, Liz is learning how to human. How sweet.
There, a nice, short chapter...by my standards, anyway. Since I've decided I'm going to post by chapter, sometimes you're going to get short ones — but then, it's only been three days since the last update, so I'm pretty sure you'll live. I've been stupid tired lately — the kittens continue to be shits, keep me up — so I'm not 100% pleased with the quality of this chapter, but I suppose it's acceptable.
I'm gonna go play Elden Ring now. See you nerds later.