Chapter 18: Dueling
"Tell me who the two 'targets' are."
"That's need-to-know information, Morrigan," said Sirius, who was sprawled across the couch in the common room, amusing himself by transfiguring his notes into a paper cat that hissed at the live mouse they were working with, and then back into plain parchment.
"You're just being opaque on purpose to annoy me."
"The fewer people that know the details of the plan, the lower the risk of us getting ratted out."
"You don't think I'd actually tell anyone, do you?"
"Perhaps not intentionally. But Yaxley is already wary of you, after that stunt you pulled in the dungeons. If he thinks you have information, he could threaten you to get you to spill. Or, slip a little Veritaserum into your pumpkin juice."
"You're being dramatic. This isn't a top-secret mission from the Department of Mysteries. We're 17."
"Am I?" said Sirius, now idly folding the parchment into a fan with his wand. "This isn't some school project, Ariadne. We're not following a teacher's instructions, and they won't be there to rescue you like they usually are. We're taking on followers of You-Know-Who who are trying to take over Hogwarts."
If Ariadne was surprised by the use of her first name, she didn't let on. Sirius was right that this wasn't the usual prank to take the mickey out of someone the Marauders didn't like or make a scene for attention. He was taking this seriously.
"Regardless, you wanted me to be 'one-hundred percent committed' to this…thing. How can I be all in if you won't even tell me all the details of the plan?"
"Just trust me."
"I don't."
Sirius sat up from his slouched position across the couch. "It does seem like you trust very few people and very little."
"I don't trust many people because they usually can't get something done as well as I can."
"And yet, here we are," said Sirius, gesturing to the stacks of notes, piles of books and scattered diagrams that currently comprised their Transfiguration project.
"Don't labor under any delusions, Black. I was forced into working with you."
"It's a privilege many would covet, love."
Ariadne's patience was rapidly disappearing. She and Sirius had been working on the project (or in his case, "working") for over two hours and hadn't accomplished nearly as much as she expected. That added to his refusal to tell her the names of the two Yaxley followers they were planning to impersonate had her feeling more and more frustrated with the fact that she'd been saddled with him for not one, but two "projects."
"Oh really? What part do you think they'd like the most? The insufferably arrogant attitude? Failure to do even half the reading I asked you to do? Or maybe the last half-hour you've wasted fooling around with that piece of parchment?"
"Relax, Morrigan. We don't need to stress about all this theory and essays. I'll ace the practical portion of the project, and that'll give us a good enough grade on it overall."
"You mean, I'll do all the work on the theoretical essay, and you'll show up on the day of the exam and half-ass some spells."
"Morrigan, when have I ever half-assed anything?"
"The transmogrification spell you just tried."
"That was a perfectly adequate spell."
"You were supposed to make the mouse's ears bigger, not turn the whole thing pink."
"But I did succeed in changing something."
"If you had just read what I told you to read," Ariadne said, literally pressing a thick volume titled Human and Animal Transmogrification: An Advanced Guide into his chest, "you would know that transmogrifying mammals is significantly more complicated than transmogrifying reptiles and birds. You can't just do the same thing you did to make the tortoise shell change its patterns."
Sirius seemed far less interested in the book itself than in the proximity of Ariadne's hands to his body. She pushed the book into him harder before letting go. "You think you can just show up without any preparation and perform better than someone who has studied and practiced. That's not how it works," she said heatedly.
"I promise I can… perform up to your standards, Morrigan," he said, with the just the slightest hint of silky emphasis on "perform."
Ariadne just stared at him in disbelief. She was reprimanding him and he seemed to be getting turned on by it. Typical Marauder.
"Read chapters 12 and 13," said Ariadne firmly, picking up the book, which he had set aside, "and write up an essay that explains the properties and considerations of transmogrifying small mammals. By tomorrow. And then we'll see how well you perform the transmogrification."
"Alternatively, you could read me the parts you think are important, I'll practice a few times on Nibbles here," he held up the squirming field mouse by its tail, "and then I'll blow McGonagall away during the practical with my vastly improved skills."
Ariadne slapped the book into his lap with surprising force. "Read. Write. And save your bullshit for someone who's buying, because I'm not," she said icily.
She later couldn't figure out if Sirius simply didn't realize how dangerously close to snapping she was, or if he was deliberately seeing how far he could push her.
"Morrigan, you're not going to like this, but I swear it's for your own good," he said, and with a swish of his wand, he vanished the book into thin air.
And that's when Ariadne Morrigan lost her cool.
With a sweep of her wand, she sent another stack of books flying at his head. Sirius raised his wand to stop them and they fell to the floor with a clatter. She tried a bottle of ink and met with the same result.
"Ah, Morrigan, don't make me jinx you," said Sirius, eyes gleaming as he counteracted the spell.
Ariadne sent her quill flying toward Sirius like an arrow, and it whizzed past his ear before sticking in the back of the couch, quivering. Sirius dodged it and leapt up from the couch onto the table, blocking her hexes and sending blasts of his own in return. "SIRIUS BLACK AND ARIADNE MORRIGAN ARE DUELING," someone announced to the common room at large, which resulted in a stampede of everyone from tiny, excited first-years to a reluctant Lupin and slightly confused-looking James scrambling over armchairs and tables to get a good view.
Gryffindors loved a good fight.
"Give. Me. Back. The. Book," said Ariadne through gritted teeth in between casting and blocking disarming spells.
"But that would put an end to all the fun," said Sirius, lazily deflecting her curses with one arm behind his back.
Ariadne and Sirius were skilled enough at nonverbal spellcasting that they didn't need to utter any incantations out loud, which turned dueling into a dangerous game of split-second reactions and quick thinking. A spell like a bolt of lightning issued from her wand, only to dissolve into the shimmering translucent shield Sirius conjured in front of him. He levitated and flicked some poor first-year's pewter cauldron at her, which she vanished into a puff of smoke. They traded jabs, flicks and more complicated flourishes of their wands in silence, with only the crackles and bangs of their spells making any noise, and, of course, the Gryffindors jeering and heckling them from the sidelines.
"C'mon, Sirius!"
"Heyyyyy Morrigan, looking good!" (this was accompanied by a wolf-whistle.)
"SMASH HIS SMARMY HEAD IN!"
Sirius tried attacking her with fluffy gold-and-red cushion from one of the common room armchairs, and Ariadne halted it in midair, transfigured it into a brick and sent it crashing into the table he stood on, almost causing him to lose his footing.
"Don't patronize me, Black. I know you can do better." The beams of light shooting from her wand turned red.
"Morrigan, you don't really want to stun me, do you?" Sirius was still blocking her spells almost effortlessly, but he didn't seem to think that taking a more offensive stance was necessary.
"Oh, I really do," answered Ariadne. His overconfidence would be his undoing.
She conjured a rope that coiled around his wand arm like a whip, and while he tried to recover his balance, tied up the other arm behind his back—the one he should have been using for balance. He stumbled, and as he was falling from the table, an invisible force yanked him by the neck of his tie and dragged him up to the tip of Ariadne's pointed wand. They stood there eye-to-eye for a moment, both breathing heavily.
"Well, that was fun," said Sirius, eyes still alight and hair disheveled.
"I suppose I'm glad one of us enjoyed it," replied Ariadne sardonically. "Though it would seem that the loser had more fun that the winner. My book?"
Sirius indicated his bound hands and Ariadne released them, though not without a moment's regret that she couldn't keep him like this. Sirius noticed and smirked at her. "Prefer me tied up, Morrigan?" There were oooohs and whistles from the crowd.
"I can't deny that it has its benefits," she answered.
Sirius twirled his wand and Human and Animal Transmogrification appeared spinning in midair. Ariadne caught it. "At least your vanishing and conjuring aren't as deficient as your transmogrification," she muttered.
"Wait until you open the book before you declare yourself victorious, Morrigan. I went easy on you this time," said Sirius.
"Yes, and that was incredibly stupid. I wouldn't make that mistake again," warned Ariadne.
Sirius merely grinned and walked off to join Lupin, James, and the crowd of hecklers who were ready to give him a hard time. Ariadne opened the heavy volume. It fell open to chapters 12 and 13, marked with a page torn from a wizard's magazine featuring a pouting, curvy witch wearing nothing but lingerie under her robes. The pages of the chapters were covered in underlining and detailed annotations. A series of particularly urgent-looking arrows pointed to a passage titled "Color Change vs. Other Forms of Transmogrification in Small Mammals":
While other forms of animal transmogrification, such as modification of the size of body parts, transformation of individual features, and alteration of body size would seem to have more practical applications, transmogrification of small mammals' color is an unusually complicated magical task due to the fact that most small mammals are covered in fur. Unlike color-change in reptiles, whose outer layer of skin or protection tends to be a more uniform single layer, transmogrification of color in small fur-coated mammals requires the spellcaster to individually change the color of each hair and separately transform color in non-fur-coated areas. Essentially, the transmogrification spell must be approached as a composite of hundreds and thousands of smaller transmogrifications of the individual hairs that comprise the furry coat. For this reason, assessments designed to test advanced Transfiguration abilities (such as N.E.W.T.-level wizarding exams) will often ask the examinee to change the color of a small mammal rather than attempt some other kind of bodily modification like changing the length or size of its tail.
Next to this paragraph, in slim, looping handwriting, was written, "McGonagall's exam question. 5 Galleons."
Ariadne shut the book with somewhat more force than was strictly necessary.