Somewhat to her own surprise, she managed to sit with the Beauxbatons students talking about sports and economics all the way until a staff member walked in to give them their five-minute warning — the quarterfinals were about to start. Liz quick traded a couple taunts with Évariste, teased Èlia about fighting Chelsea next — though, honestly, if Èlia could get her mad impressive skating thing off again, Chelsea was likely to have as much trouble with that as Oz had had — before heading off to the toilets quick. She had no idea how much time she'd have between matches, after all, might as well get that out of the way.
Chelsea was already gone by the time Liz got back, though she and Èlia hadn't quite shown up on the display yet. "Hey," Liz said to Katie, dropping back into her chair.
"Hey. Have fun with our Beauxbatons friends?"
"I wanted to ask Èlia about that spell she did, with the ice. Apparently she does figure skating on the muggle side."
"What is— Oh!" Katie cut herself off, a sharp flash in her head. "Is that that thing on the ice, with the funny sparkly dresses and shite? I think I saw some of that at Angie's house once." That'd be Angelina Johnson, one of the Gryffindor chasers — Liz was mostly certain she was muggleborn, so that would make sense, if it was just a muggle thing.
"Yeah, the outfits are kind of a lot, I guess." Liz remembered the skirts being really short, and their legs... Didn't they get cold? Èlia didn't have to worry about that, she guessed, with magic and all, but still.
...No, brain, she didn't need to imagine Èlia in one of those silly little dresses, stop that.
"Hey, is it weird that I want to go into professional duelling?"
Katie blinked at her for a second, a little taken aback. "No? I mean, I guess it's not the sort of thing you see Ladies of the Wizengamot do very often, but if you've got the money to travel around and do whatever, why the hell not? Why?"
Liz shrugged. "No reason, really, just wondering." Artèmi and Évariste and Èlia acting so surprised was just making her feel slightly self-conscious about it, maybe, it wasn't really a big deal.
"Weren't you going to get a Mastery too, in like enchanting or something?"
"Yeah, probably. I was also— I don't know, I'm not thinking about it super seriously or anything, but, I think culinary school might be cool. That's really only something they do on the muggle side, though." She noticed the bubbling of amusement from Katie's head, shaking her head to herself. "What?"
"Nothing, it's just, oh, I want to be a professional duellist, and an enchanter, and a chef. You know, there comes a time in a little girl's life when her parents sit her down and tell her to pick one." Katie thought, but didn't say aloud, that normally girls were very strongly encouraged to pick wife and mother, but that was kind of beside the point.
Rolling her eyes, Liz drawled, "Well, luckily for me, I don't have any of those." Most of her friends didn't really react very well to jokes about her dead parents, but Katie just let out a little ha! smirking to herself. "It's not like I need to make money doing them anyway, it'll just be to keep myself occupied. I don't like being bored."
"That's true." Right around then, Chelsea and Èlia started walking out onto the field again, casually sauntering out toward the (retouched) chalk circle in the middle. "So, what do you think?"
Liz hummed, frowning. "Depends, I guess. Èlia's spellwork didn't seem that strong, I don't think she can hold up against Chelsea straight on. But if she ices over the field again she'll have a better shot — Chelsea had a trick prepared for Alexis, but that isn't going to work on Èlia."
"Mm... Yeah, Chelsea probably won't be able to handle that very well. But— Èlia? Yeah, she's going to need a moment to set that up, and I don't think Chelsea's going to give her time for that."
...Good point. Chelsea and Èlia had reached the middle, done their proper bows, retreated to the circle — should be starting any second now. Liz watched the display, fingers tapping at her knee. After a couple seconds, she admitted, "Honestly, I hope she loses."
A flicker of surprise, she wasn't looking that way but she felt Katie's eyes on her, sharp and attentive. "Why?"
"Because then I won't have to fight her next. I don't like hexing my friends."
"Ah... You know, you come off like a cold scary bitch, but you're a real sweetheart under there, aren't you."
Liz scowled. "Shut up."
"Making biscuits for the poor werewolf kids and everything..."
"I said shut up, Bell."
Thankfully, the match started before Katie could tease her more. Chelsea jumped straight into a stream of hexes — the movements wild and frantic, the spellglows uneven and jittery, sloppily cast — Èlia leaned out of the way of the first, and then barely got a shield up in time for the second, and then she was pinned down, the spells coming in too quickly for her to move, her shield shivering with each hit. Then it violently shattered with a blasting curse — Liz wasn't sure how Chelsea had managed the power for that without letting up on the constant rain of hexes, maybe she'd leaned into an exaggerated somatic form? — and in a blink Èlia was hit with a binding hex and then a stunning hex, unconscious on the ground with her arms snapped tight against her sides.
...Well, shite.
A few seconds later, while Liz was processing that she'd have to fight Chelsea next, the Beauxbatons students still staring at the display in shock at the very short duel (it'd been maybe fifteen seconds), the door clicked open, one of the staff sticking in his head to call for Liz and Évariste. They'd been calling out the next contestants before the previous duel even started, before, but apparently they were letting them watch all the other matches from this point on. Which she guessed made sense, keeping an eye on the competition, but she didn't know why the sudden change...
Liz walked out of the room a few steps ahead of Évariste, trying to keep herself away from the bubbling, too-cold veela mind behind her, like a frigid winter wind at her back. Chelsea reached the door out into the arena a few seconds before Liz — as they passed each other, she felt Chelsea's attention on her, stiff and tense and hot... Grasping for words, not really sure what to say.
It was a little reassuring that Chelsea didn't want to fight her either. Because she suspected she would lose and probably get the piss kicked out of her in the process, yes, but also for soft Hufflepuff-ish reasons.
If only so they didn't pass each other by in total awkward silence, Liz said, "Good show in there."
"Oh, um, thanks..."
She ignored the flutter of hot-cold amusement from Évariste as well as she could — the bloody veela projecting the feeling at her, bubbling light and giddy in her chest and forcing a twitchy smile on her lips, did not make that easy. Once the door closed behind them, leaving them alone in the arena, Évariste said, "Well, that was a moment. Hook up at a party once?"
Liz rolled her eyes. "I know this can be hard for veela to remember, but not everyone goes around screwing their friends all the time." Also, she was pretty sure Chelsea was straight, so there was that.
"Yeah, yeah. But you do want her, though?"
"...Honestly, I've thought about shagging most of my girl friends at one point or another, but that's teenage hormones for you."
Évariste giggled, the feeling turning the air light and foaming (and cold) around her, Liz bit her lip to hold in the sympathetic laughter, thick and shivering in her chest (bloody veela). And then the humour started to slant, as she felt the boy's eyes on her sliding down her back and her legs, grasping and slippery, brushing over her skin, the feeling pulsing off of him quickly turning hot and tight, a sharp lurch dropping through her middle and—
"Hey!" Liz snapped, turning on her heel to glare at him — and also kind of hide her arse from his gaze, though it was too bloody late for that now. He'd started very intentionally pushing lust at her, and she still couldn't keep veela shite out at all, she could already feel the warmth starting to rise on her face and tension coiling— "Stop that!"
The bastard just grinned at her, completely unrepentant.
She kept walking backward to the middle of the circle — they were almost there anyway — trying to hold back the warm fuzzy curling tense desire pulsing off of Évariste, and completely failing. By the time they stopped in the middle of the circle, she could feel her face and her chest burning, her heart pounding in her fingertips and her teeth. Her curtsey was rather more tense and awkward this time, Liz gritting her teeth, hyperaware of her skirt brushing against her legs and the way the motion shifted how her knickers sat on her just slightly, fuuuck, fuck fuck fuck. Her breath hissing through her teeth, she turned on her heels, her fists tight shaking at her sides, her steps stiff and awkward. She couldn't feel their attention, but she was uncomfortably aware of the fact that that hundreds of people were watching her right now, her face on fucking fire and her knees unsteady, but the excitement and arousal pouring into her from Évariste didn't let up, Liz clenching her jaw against the sparks running up her spine, as each step shifted the pressure on suddenly very sensitive places, she couldn't stop— Aaaggghhh...
She knew he was trying to make her uncomfortable, to throw her off her game. It was fucking working.
(Liz hadn't had much of an opinion on Delacour before, but she abruptly hated him, kind of a lot.)
In the few seconds they had before the match started, Liz glared across the circle at him — fury building in her chest even against the lust still being pushed at her, hot and thick and almost suffocating, it hurt, clawing at her throat, her wand hand shaking at her hip. The tension forcing her voice low and grinding, she snarled, "That was a huge fucking mistake."
The sweltering pressure on her lifting a little bit, surprise and confusion breaking through lust, Delacour blinked, his head tilting.
Her breath like cold fire in her chest, she was barely holding it in at this point, the air around her feeling electric — she even felt a few sparks of magic escape from her wand, cold and sharp against her leg. Delacour's eyes widened a sliver, some kind of feeling hitting with a drop of her stomach and a cold prickle over her skin.
Liz started moving without thinking, her wand rising, spanging and hissing with rage-fueled magic, a twisting jab as she lunged forward, even as the bong signalling the match started Liz was already snapping, "Mutila!" The bright piercing white of the spellglow lanced right at Delacour's centre of mass, he flailed, leaning out of the way, the curse slipping between his side and his elbow, a shield barely coming up in time to catch a slicing curse, slipped out of the way of a blasting curse. He retaliated with a light hex of some kind, Liz cast a pain hex and then jumped into a quick-step before it could land, coming out to his right — the pain hex had actually hit him, Delacour staggering and clutching at his chest with one hand, but he recovered in time to block the piercing curse, the little disc of a shield he'd cast shattering with the force, lurched aside from a blasting curse, tossed off a complex blasting curse of some kind, but Liz just stepped out of the way, using the motion to extend the wand movement of an arc spell — arcum fragmentum, hit the target like a dense row of piercing curses, powerful enough her arm burned — and then a blasting curse, Delacour blocked the arc spell, but his shield shattered, he let himself fall backward, rolling over his shoulder, the blasting curse missed him, he fired off a hex, Liz slapped it to the side, light magic surged cold on the air as gold-white fire swept over Delacour—
Somehow, before the spell even properly resolved, Liz knew exactly where Delacour was going. Without thinking about it — she hardly could think, her chest tight and hot and almost strangling out her breath, her throat burning, her head too thick and buzzing for anything to get through, magic sharp and crackling like lightning through her blood and the air around her, she moved automatically, as easily as steering on a broom — Liz pointed her wand to the side and behind her, "Vetranjólu fönn," the magic hot and pounding pouring through her only making the anger twisting and burning in her stomach burn hotter, she jumped into a quick-step.
The unnatural black-purple snow gathered around Delacour knee-high was letting off a funny colourful fog as the magic evanesced back into the environment, Delacour gone very pale, lips almost blue, the movement of some kind of charm to brush the snow off his clothes stiff and clumsy (cold). He managed to block a slicing curse and lurch out of the way of a nightmare curse, a swirl of his free hand had a wave of white-gold flames rushing over him and out along the ground — Liz staggered back a step at the wave of frigid, nauseating light magic pouring over her — the dark magical snow sparking and sizzling from interference before vanishing. Delacour twisted the fire around into a column burning straight at her, Liz quick-stepped out of the way, casting a stripping hex and then a flaying curse, skipping out of the way of some light curse (too cold to Liz's magical senses to read), a blasting curse, trying to tint her fury into frustration she managed to get off a light binding hex, followed a second later by a dark bone-breaking curse. She felt a sudden stomach-dropping and scalp-tingling flash of surprise from Delacour, swiftly followed by a sharp flare of pain, but he disappeared in another flash of veelafire before she could follow up.
"Mutila! Transige, flévas sparassésþō!" Before waiting for that last curse to land, Liz quick-stepped, by the time she touched down Delacour was fire-walking, but — buoyed on the magic coursing through her, hot and thick and bright and crackling, feeling filled with it, she could hardly breathe, the world reduced to a blur — she knew exactly where he was going, threw a blasting curse followed by a shield-breaker, and then quick-stepped. She landed hard, with a silent bludgeoning curse — only standing a couple feet away, almost within arm's reach, Delacour didn't have time to respond, the blow at his stomach folding him over, dropping to his knees. Her wand raising over head, Liz skipped to the side to step over him, her wand sweeping down, "Deseca!"
Liz was blinded with a flash of white-gold light, blasted with stinging prickling cold — like stepping outside in the dead of winter — wheeling back a few steps. An intense sharp stabbing numbing cold crawling up her leg, a quick wash of warm water snuffed out the veelafire licking at the hem of her skirt. Gritting her teeth, Liz turned toward the wave of cold advancing on her, a thick torrent of orange-white-gold flames, magic crackling thick and furious through her chest and searing down her arm, a flick of her wand and the veelafire was transmuted into water, splattering down onto the clay ahead of her in a thick rain. (She groaned through grinding teeth at the painful draw on her magic, stabbing and sizzling through her chest and wand arm, hadn't thought that through.) The light magic was still in there, softly glowing a yellowish-white, but that was fine — a quick wind charm to push the mist still in the air back toward Delacour, and she hissed, "Rḕtte!"
She quick-stepped up and to the side — Delacour had a shimmery silver shield charm up, hemispherical, a washed-out image of him visible through it, bent double with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. "Affragmen percute!" Before the greenish spellglow could hit, Delacour swirled his wand in her direction, the shield firming up, glowing brighter. Which was the wrong move: the complex piercing curse struck the shield, and then shifted colours to a brilliant hot pink, spreading through the shield — and then it burst, slashing through the inside of the hemisphere with a spray of narrow blue-violet spellglows, Delacour's shocked pain ringing in the air and burning on her skin.
(She'd learned complex curses that could transmit through shield charms from Sirius — more advanced battlemagic, not the kind of thing school children were generally taught — and they really were the best thing ever.)
The silvery shield charm blinked out, Delacour laid out on the ground. He was still moving, but he wasn't going to be putting up much of a fight at this point, his uniform scorched and torn, bleeding from multiple shallow piercing curses. On his knees, wand still in his hand, he was trying to get up, but, pain thick and hot and shivering, he wasn't managing it very well, couldn't quite get a foot under him. Walking closer, her footsteps hard and heavy on the clay, Liz cocked her wand hand back, lips and magic beginning to form a complex blasting curse—
Her step hitching, she belatedly remembered what she was doing.
"Cude." The bludgeoning hex hit Delacour in the side, knocking him over onto his back, his wand flung from limp fingers to roll away across the dirt. Delacour was turning the air around him thick with pain and nausea and frigid light magic, but she stepped close anyway, leaning over him. Glaring down at his pale, blood-streaked face, his eyes trying to blink into focus, Liz hissed through clenched teeth, "Don't fucking molest me in public next time." Confusion was sparking now, making Liz feel vaguely dizzy, but she ignored it. She knocked him out with verveikt, forcing the magic stronger and darker than it really needed to be — she assumed veela would get ill from dark magic the same way she did light, so.
There was another low bong marking the end of the match, Liz turned on her heel and stalked toward the exit.
A minute later, Liz was sitting on a conjured stool just inside the door, being poked at by a healer. He seemed rather stiff and...she didn't know, exactly, something crackling away in his head. Liz wasn't really paying attention to him, focussed on trying to get a hold of herself — she was still angry. It was thick and tight and hot in her chest and her throat, making it hard to breathe, furious energy almost seeming to sizzle in her head, her hands clenched shaking on her knees. Her magic was even reacting to it, apparently. She couldn't really tell, but the healer bloke said it was interfering with his analysis spells, asked her to stop, but she couldn't really stop doing something she didn't even realise she was doing in the first place...
She had no idea why this was still bothering her so much. She didn't even know what she was so angry about anyway — Delacour pushing sexy feelings at her like that, in front of the whole bloody school, sure, but... She didn't know. It was bloody over, she should be calming down by now, but she still— Ugh.
After a little bit, Katie came by with Ingham, pausing a short distance away. "You all right, Liz?"
It took her a second to find her voice. "I wasn't hit." Well, she was maybe a little scorched by veelafire on her legs, but it wasn't serious. She suspected the healer was mostly thinking she'd strained herself at some point, which was fair.
"That's not what I meant." The display didn't exactly give them close-ups of the contestants' faces, but Katie knew Liz well enough to tell she'd been absolutely enraged. She even guessed Liz had barely stopped herself from seriously hurting Delacour at the end there, which, huh. Didn't know how she felt about that.
Which she guessed was fair, because Katie didn't either.
"...He was using the veela stuff to push lust on me, before the match started. I got angry."
There was a sudden flash of anger from Katie...which was somewhat gratifying, honestly. "Ah. That would explain it. But, I have a match to get to."
Liz frowned — for some reason, Katie seemed a little reluctant to leave. Didn't know what that was about. "Go, then. Good luck."
For some reason, the healer bloke was a bit less stiff and cold all of a sudden. She didn't know what that— Oh, he'd watched the match too, and had read Liz being...maybe a little more brutal than usual as racism, but something about that little exchange with Katie had changed his mind about her. Right, that made sense. She guessed.
The light burns on her legs were healed, and she was given a potion to deal with some of the internal damage from overchannelling — she had pushed some of those spells too hard — and that was about all the healer could do. She might end up with mild light magic toxicity, and she did feel a little feverish, so he was right about that — there wasn't anything he could do about that here, which was fair enough. He couldn't fix the patch of her skirt that'd been burned away, but she was still decent (if lopsided), that was fine. After a short hesitation, he said that if she thought she would have trouble cooling off before her next duel, he could give her a mild calming potion.
...That was probably a good idea, honestly. She was still angry, and— Yeah, sure, let's do that. It wasn't the same potion as the ones Severus gave her, tinted more toward a soft lavender, the taste of the flowers noticeably stronger, the potion itself smooth and cool but leaving a warm tingly aftertaste. The effect was delayed by a few seconds, and... It wasn't nearly as strong as her blue ones, and without the funny, one-step-removed effect, just a mild cool ease spreading out from her stomach, the tension knotted through her relaxing bit by bit.
Liz sighed — that was better. She didn't know what the hell she'd still been so worked up about anyway...
By the time Liz got back to the waiting room, Katie already had Ingham on the back foot, scrambling to defend herself from a storm of transfigured metal darts and bludgers and sickles, barely avoiding or blocking the occasional curse Katie slipped in. That probably wasn't going to last much longer. It was hard to work up any interest in the match, Liz feeling soft and cool and numb from the potion — hopefully this would wear off before too long, trying to fight through it would be a pain — so instead of standing around watching Liz drifted toward the food table. The potion was tamping down feelings stuff, but for some reason she still felt a little hungry. Liz had just recently been reminded that she probably still didn't eat enough (Chelsea and Katie hadn't directly said as much, but she'd gotten the message), so it maybe wasn't a bad idea.
She barely remembered not to take one of the remaining ham and cheese sandwiches. Stupid Seer horseshite, those looked so good...
Liz returned to her chair with a cup of coffee and another of those buns spread with cheese; Chelsea was sitting nearby, half watching Katie's match, half trying to figure out what the fuck to say to Liz. Partially because they were about to have to fight each other, and Chelsea wasn't really looking forward to it — especially after watching her beat the shite out of someone like that — but also she was kind of worried Liz wasn't okay. Katie had pointed out something was wrong during her match, so. But she wasn't sure she wanted to ask, because Liz seemed like she was fine again, and maybe it was private, Liz could be prickly, she didn't know if it would be taken very well..
She was about to say something, if only because Chelsea mulling over it was distracting, when she felt Artèmi's mind coming their way. Chelsea noticed her a couple seconds after Liz did, started preemptively tensing up — worried they were about to have a fight about how Liz had just beaten up Delacour. Which, Liz was confused for a second, turning to frown at Chelsea, of course it wasn't about that, couldn't Chelsea feel that— Oh wait, no, she couldn't feel the exasperation and sympathy in Artèmi's head, not everyone was a mind mage, you fucking idiot...
Artèmi came to stand over her chair, before even quite coming to a stop she said, "Évariste pushed arousal on you, didn't he?"
She felt a flash of surprise and realisation from Chelsea, shifting into concern, Liz glanced that way for a second before turning back to Artèmi. "Ah, yeah. I got a little carried away."
"No, he deserved it," Artèmi said, her voice dropping and her mind going steely-hard for a blink. "I've told him to stop doing that but, well. You know how veela can be sometimes, but you'd think he'd know better than to sexually assault someone like that."
Liz frowned a little at the word choice, but, she guessed that was probably accurate, wasn't it? She'd even said something similar, before stunning him at the end there, but she hadn't really paused to consider what she was saying, exactly. Hmm. "Well, hopefully it blowing up in his face with me will teach him a lesson."
It didn't seem like Artèmi had much confidence it would — she forced out a sceptical scoff, her eyes tipping up to the ceiling. "Regardless, I'll be telling the whole carriage what happened, so they know not to take it personally. When I beat you down in the final, it won't have anything to do with what happened in your match with Évariste — I'm simply better at this than you are."
Liz rolled her eyes. "Keep telling yourself that, Cæciné."
"Honesty is a virtue, Potter. But I believe I'm up again now. Andrews," she said to Chelsea with a little nod, before walking off toward the door — it clicked open when she was halfway there, some bloke calling for Artèmi and Sadhbh.
(She tried not to stare and completely failed, her eyes drawn by the way Artèmi's hips swayed as she walked. Stupid pretty bitch...)
While she'd been distracted by Artèmi, Katie's match had, in fact, ended. Both Katie and Ingham had already left the field, scattered with damp and scorched patches, bits of ice and transfigured stone and metal scattered all over the place. There were a few people crawling over it, cleaning the place up, it'd probably be a couple minutes before Artèmi's match could start.
"Hey, um." Chelsea paused to consider how exactly to word what she wanted to say, but came up with nothing, the stiff silence dragging on. There'd been something flickering and squirming in her head ever seen Artèmi had come over to talk about Èvariste, she felt like she should say something, but she didn't really know what. It didn't help that, well, muggleborns could be shockingly racist about nonhuman beings sometimes — the Light kids tended to be nicer to muggleborns, so sometimes they ended up absorbing the Light's intolerance of nonhumans without realising it, and also there being other kinds of people was just new to them, it took longer for some to get used to the idea — but she knew that Liz very much wasn't, but she hadn't had enough conversations involving the weird veela emotional compulsion stuff to be confident in her ability to talk about it non-racistly. Also, Liz could be private, and extremely prickly, it was hard to guess how she would react to...concern, or whatever the fuck Chelsea thought she was supposed to be offering right now. (Normal person feelings were very confusing sometimes.) It didn't seem like Liz wanted to talk about just basically having been sexually assaulted in front of a huge bloody crowd — in fact, she seemed even cooler and more distant than usual, Chelsea guessed she'd taken a calming potion — but it still seemed like she should, she didn't know...
Of course, Chelsea was intentionally not shielding her thoughts at all, just in case Liz was looking. "I'm fine. I'm not, I don't know." Liz wasn't sure what a normal thing to feel in this situation would be, but before the calming potion she'd mostly just felt angry. Now that she'd calmed down a bit — the potion hadn't entirely worn off yet, but she could feel the cool smooth ease start to fade away, and it didn't seem like the tense rage was coming back — she was really back to normal, she was fine. "I'm not quietly freaking out or whatever. I'm sure Severus will make a point of asking me about it later anyway, don't worry about it."
"Right, good." The thought of Liz and Severus having a conversation like that was surreal to Chelsea, but she knew from various things Liz had said since she joined the team that their relationship worked for them, no matter how bloody weird it seemed to everyone else. So, good, that was good.
Liz shook her head to herself, blocking out the weird tangled conflicted thoughts in Chelsea's mind. The thought of Severus being a responsible guardian or whatever seeming weird was fair enough, she guessed, but she really didn't see how it was Chelsea's business to worry about it — people actually giving a shite about her was still so unexpected and strange sometimes.
Sadhbh and Artèmi were just walking into view on the display as the door clicked open to let in Katie — the field being cleaned up and Katie being healed had ended up taking more or less the same amount of time. Her clothes — Katie had gone with plain muggle-style denims and an old reddish vest, her duelling uniform jacket over it — were slashed or scorched in a few places, a couple bloodstains visible here and there, but she moved as smooth and easy as ever, whatever injuries she'd gotten so far apparently not bad enough to slow her down too much. Though, when she flopped into her chair, Liz noticed she was turned slightly to the right, preventing putting too much pressure on her left shoulder — must still be a little tender around the temporarily-shattered bone. "Hey."
"Hey. I missed most of the match, how'd it go?"
Katie shrugged — again, favouring one side, now that Liz was paying attention it was obvious. "Ingham's got a bit of power behind her spells, but she's not as good as Eustace. Took me a few minutes, but it wasn't that bad. Except one lucky bloody wind charm knocked a bunch of shite back at me, that's why the..." She trailed off, gesturing at the nicks in her own clothes.
"That's two matches in a row you actually got hit by something. You slowing down on me or something?"
"Oh, shut it, Liz..."
Sadhbh's match with Artèmi was, as should be expected, very short. Not to say Sadhbh wasn't good, she was, but Liz had beaten her as a third-year, so. They both fired off hexes as the match started, more or less at the same time, Artèmi deflected Sadhbh's aside but Sadhbh was actually hit with Artèmi's — it didn't have any visible effect, Liz had no idea what it'd done. Sadhbh dodged a follow-up hex, shielded another two, staggering, a swirl of her wand conjuring a massive wave of blue-white flames. Artèmi cast some kind of charm that twisted the fire into a big spiral, like a mid-air whirlpool tipped up sideways, an arc spell of some kind sent off at Sadhbh — Liz had no idea what Sadhbh did about that, she was entirely hidden by the big whorl of fire blocking off a good third of the display.
Then the flames clenched, sharply drawn in toward the centre, crystallising into narrow shiny blue darts — condensed fire was a neat elemental magic trick, but Liz didn't have the talent with fire spells to pull it off herself. They pelted the ground in a constant hail, with each impact setting off a brief burst of flame and flinging puffs of charred clay into the air, the cloud of fire contracting and shrinking as it was expended. Eventually, the fire was gone, the smoke settled, to reveal Sadhbh laid out on the ground, clothes scorched and slashed and hair smouldering, but still moving. Artèmi tagged her with an orangish hex, and Sadhbh went limp — an elf popped in to bring her to the healers a second later. And that was it, the whole colourful thing taking maybe twenty, thirty seconds total.
Katie sighed. "I'm so fucked."
"Look on the bright side, at least you're not going to end up with light magic toxicity after your fight with her."
"Ugh, good point, that shite looks miserable..."
Liz just shrugged — she wasn't sure her sensitivity to light magic was any more unpleasant than the dark version. She'd seen dark magic poisoning a few times — out of their duelling team, Oz was most susceptible to it — and it mostly seemed to make people feel intensely cold, stiff and frozen, shivering. Relatively easily managed by wrapping the person up in blankets and setting them in front of the fire with a hot drink while they waited for the potions to do their job. Liz getting light magic poisoning was hotter, feverish and dizzy and sweaty, it was different but she didn't really think it was worse. Though the dark kind seemed to involve less vomiting, she did hate that...
Besides, she was sure she was going to be unconscious through the worst of it. But still.
"I guess we've gotta fight now," Liz said to Chelsea.
She grimaced. "Yeah. No hard feelings?"
"Yeah, just think of it like practice, I guess."
"Sure." Chelsea was pretty sure she was going to lose, but she did have a couple tricks up her sleeve worth trying — though she was being careful not to think of them directly, just in case Liz was watching.
If you're not keeping me out, I'm pretty much always watching.
Chelsea twitched a little at the thought, eyes flicking to Liz. "You're bloody creepy sometimes, you know."
"Can't really help it," Liz admitted, shrugging. "My magic just does that. Apparently I broke something when I was tiny, childhood legilimens thing, it happens. I literally can't turn it off." She could choose to stay out of people's minds, of course, but it took conscious effort to hold herself back, especially if she was actively talking to them. Honestly, it was even harder than it used to be — she suspected that was a function of her growing more powerful with age, as all teenagers did, her aura extending further around herself, so if she was close enough to talk to someone her mind was definitely already in contact with theirs? That would make sense, from what she understood of the mechanics of how mind magic worked. Whatever, not really important...
Of course, Chelsea was quietly horrified by the thought that Liz had broken her mind as a child — that reaction would be why Liz generally didn't tell people why she was, well, the way she was. Having grown up in the magical world, Katie was familiar with the shite that could happen with childhood legilimens, so she just felt vaguely sympathetic about it. And also amused with Chelsea staring wide-eyed at Liz, that was kind of funny.
The same bloke as usual stuck his head in the door to call them up a moment later, Liz took a last gulp of her coffee before following Chelsea out of the waiting room. Artèmi was in the shaded area beyond, just a few metres away, waiting a step to the side for them to go by. Smirking, she drawled, "Don't disappoint me, Potter." By losing and failing to meet her in the final, she meant.
"If I do, you'll hardly be the first." That she'd disappointed them by not being the Girl Who Lived they'd all been raised to expect was a large part of why so much of the school had disliked her way back in first year...and a lot of them still kind of did. Of course, the people who cared about the Girl Who Lived shite had other reasons to hate her now, just saying. Didn't see how that was her fucking problem, it wasn't like she'd been the one to build up that stupid story in the first place...
By the time they got out there, the hot-cold crackle of clashing veela and lilin magic had long faded, enough duels and enough attempts to clear the field neutralising the magic in the environment again. Though there was a faint chill of light magic on the air, probably from that blue-white fire a moment ago, it was barely noticeable. The two of them walked out to the circle, Chelsea's pace stiff and steady, determined, Liz's hands folded behind her back, putting a casual saunter on her step she'd borrowed from Katie — she'd literally never seen Katie in a skirt ever, but Liz liked the way walking like this made her dress sway back and forth around her legs. Of course, she was pretty sure Katie just did it to draw attention to her hips, which it definitely did, but.
(No, she did not need to think about Katie's arse just this second — she was kind of in the middle of something. Stupid bloody hormones...)
In the middle of the chalk circle, Chelsea turned to face her. She bowed, Liz did a proper curtsey again...which maybe looked slightly ridiculous, given how badly burned the hem of her skirt was, but oh well. She retreated to the chalk circle, turned on her heel, her wand slapping into her palm. And she watched Chelsea on the opposite side of the circle, tense and ready to move, waiting for the match to start.
...Hopefully she could win this match without actually having to hurt Chelsea. They weren't especially close, but they were still, you know, teammates. It felt wrong somehow.
Liz moved instinctively, beginning the wand movement before she heard the signal, casting "Verveikt" even as the bong shivered through the air. Chelsea started to move at the same moment — Liz was tipped off by Seer instincts, but Chelsea had guessed that and reacted accordingly — barely turning to the side and out of the path of the spellglow, even as she cast a stripping hex back at Liz, which she deflected, twisting into the wand movement for a bludgeoning hex, but Chelsea had turned the follow-through from her hex into the arc of a severing curse, Liz had to break off the hex to shield instead. Even before the curse expended itself against her shield in a teeth-grinding clash of magic, Chelsea was advancing, more hexes flung at Liz's shield with each step — closing the distance so she had less time to react — the spells weak enough Liz's shield barely shivered from the impacts but still enough to incapacitate her if they hit, Liz recognised the swirl of Chelsea's wand as a shield-breaker, dropped it before the dark green spellglow could hit, stepped out of the way of the next hex, deflected a binding hex and then a light stunning spell, she felt a faint flicker of surprise from Chelsea's head — deflecting polarised spells was rather more difficult — took the momentary pause as opportunity to toss a piercing curse, her wand swishing back around in a slicing curse, but Chelsea dipped out of the way of the first, moving into a quick wide triangle step that actually managed to bring her around the second (damn, not bad), slashing back with her own severing curse, Liz had to block it, dropping her shield before another shield-breaker could hit, skipped to the side out of the way of a light hex of some kind, deflected aside a stunning hex, and then a piercing curse, and then a binding hex, managed to get off a stripping hex while Chelsea was winding up a complex blasting curse (which Liz dipped around), but Chelsea caught the hex with a tiny little disc of a contege, immediately moving right back into a bludgeoning hex, swiftly followed by another hex, and another and another and another...
Jesus Christ, when had Chelsea gotten so fucking fast? The spells were super weak and flimsy, sure, but Liz still couldn't just let them hit her...
She gave up, deflected a final hex before jumping into a quick-step, at an angle behind Chelsea. By the time she landed and turned back around a ring of earth had been transfigured up around Chelsea — what the fuck... — the hex she'd opened with splashing uselessly against the wall, Liz followed that with a blasting curse to clear it. She felt a little pulse of light magic, and a flash of white-gold light shot up out of Chelsea's tiny little fort. Okay, Liz didn't know what the fuck that was about. The wall on this side was blown apart by Liz's curse, Chelsea shoved back into the opposite wall and pelted with debris, "Haldist, vervei—"
Liz cut off at the feel of frigid light magic approaching her. The flash of light before hadn't vanished — it'd arced up into the air, and had then arced down straight at Liz. Not looking like a normal spellglow, a brilliant sunny gold that was honestly hard to look at — elemental sunlight, or just because Liz was sensitive to light magic? — and it'd flattened as it flew, extending out to the side like wings, coming to a point at the front like a beak, leaving curling little trails of light in its wake...
...What the fuck was that?
She couldn't tell what that spell would do when it hit, but she could guess well enough that it'd be unpleasant — she quick-stepped away before it could reach her. There was another pulse of light magic as she came out, Chelsea casting another bird thing, she whirled around, but the spell wasn't aimed anywhere near her. Chelsea cleared the remains of her ring-wall from around herself, Liz snapped off a bludgeoning hex, a stunning hex and a stripping hex — Chelsea was clipped by the first, but she just let herself fall out of the way of the latter two, a swipe of her wand aimed from the ground casting a jagged arc of a slicing curse at Liz. She quickly blocked it, retaliated with a lightning curse, Chelsea transfiguring up the ground to shield herself against—
Liz twitched at the feeling of light magic approaching from behind — she glanced over her shoulder to see one of the funny bird things, only metres away and coming fast.
What the fuck...?
She quick-stepped away, staggering a little as she landed. At the angle she came out, she could see the second bird-thing, because it was still around too, somehow. And the illusory bird banked, turning in her direction...
...because whatever the hell those things were had a tracking element — they would follow her around the field until they hit something or friction against the ambient environment broke up their envelopes. And even while Liz was watching the bird turn, there was another pulse of light magic from Chelsea, another white-gold spellglow arcing up into the air, they only took a couple seconds to cast.
Son of a bitch.
"Cumfulmine lacera! Deseca percute," Chelsea had thrown up a shield charm to catch the severing curse, "Adure verv—" Before she could even get the stunning hex off two of the funny sunlight birds were zeroing in on her, she abandoned the hex and quick-stepped away. She felt another pulse of light magic as she came out, for fuck's sake, spun around back toward Chelsea, casting a slicing curse as she went, Chelsea got off a blasting curse before putting up a shield, Liz stepped out of the way while casting a stunning hex, but she missed, the visual distortion from Chelsea's shield throwing her off, Chelsea laid straight into a rapid rain of hexes, Liz dodged the first and deflected away the second and the third, barely got a shield up in time to tank the fourth, fifth, sixth, sidled out of he way as a light hex slipped right through her shield, a sloppy slash of her wand as she staggered sending off an arc of a slicing curse at a funny angle, but at that point the light-birds were closing in on her again, she quick-stepped away — feeling another pulse of light magic in the near distance, fuck fuck...
All right, all right, the more birds Chelsea cast the less time she was going to have to actually fight before needing to move again, she had to figure out a way to take care of those if she was going to keep up. Liz quick cast a bit of ice — elemental magic, not conjuration — sent it flying at one of the birds...but it flew straight through it, continuing on without any effect. While she was doing that, Chelsea cast another of the fucking things, and started flinging hexes at her, Liz escaped into a quick-step again.
She'd placed herself in the path of another of the light-birds, only a short distance away, winging low over the ground as it approached. Liz cast a splintering charm at the ground near her feet, to loosen up the clay a bit, and with a swish lifted up a bunch of dirt and blasted it at the bird-thing...to absolutely no effect, son of a bitch...
...These things weren't illusions, were they? Liz was going to feel so stupid if they weren't even real.
Liz experimented quick-stepping around the field, watching the way the birds wheeled around to follow her. Of course, she had to completely ignore Chelsea casting more of the bloody things, but there was really nothing she could do about that — if she didn't figure out a way to deal with these bloody things, she was going to be overwhelmed no matter what she did. Right, okay, if she quick-stepped across them at an angle like this, they would wheel around, and then if she quick-stepped again at an angle this way — and then again, her comfortable range was too short to get past the pack — the one in the back would have been interrupted in mid-turn, and get to her far in head of the others... Right, perfect. As the light-bird swooped in at her, Liz set her feet, hissed out, "Aigíða," the light magic burning ice-cold down her arm, the silvery shield popped into existence.
The light-bird hit the shield an instant later — and burst, the shield shivering with the impact, releasing a flash of yellowish light through the shield that clawed and prickled at her skin like a sudden frigid breeze. There was still light magic on the glow, even through the shield somehow, as the chill faded Liz started to feel slightly too warm. Not quite like a fever, yet, more like blushing really hard, but...
God fucking dammit! They were real, they were just unaffected by physical barriers. Probably needed a living target, or else magic dense enough to interfere with their envelope, like a shield...except shields were transparent, at least some of the effect of the spell carried on the light it released, so she'd still give herself light magic poisoning trying to block the fucking things. And Chelsea was just casting more and more and more of them, Liz had only managed to get rid of one and she must have cast another five just in that time, it...
These light-bird things fucking sucked, where the hell had Chelsea learned this?!
There was nothing Liz could do about the birds, she had to avoid them and, just, hope that she could down Chelsea before there were too many for her to stay away from. Over the next couple minutes, Liz skipped around Chelsea, throwing curses at her whenever she landed, quickly getting drawn into a rapid exchange of spells that went on only as long as she could before the birds started catching up, and she had to move again — repeating the process, over and over and over. Chelsea had obviously seen that coming, each time Liz disappeared she tossed another bird in the air, taking a few steps in a random direction as she did, throwing Liz's aim off, or transfiguring up the dirt to block arc spells she couldn't easily dodge. Liz would only have fifteen seconds to try to hit Chelsea with something before she had to move again, and she was too bloody fast, and always moving, hard to hit, Liz only had time for a couple good spells before Chelsea was pinning her down with a steady stream of weak flimsy hexes, not enough to break Liz's shield but close enough together to stop Liz from casting anything more, and then she had to move again, the birds coming around, another round of the same game starting as Liz landed. And again and again and again, the flock of birds following her only increasing, dozens of them now, Chelsea adding to them far more quickly than they dissolved away.
As bloody frustrating as this was, Liz found herself smiling. She was honestly very impressed and, paradoxically, kind of pleased. Chelsea must have developed a strategy to deal with Liz specifically, or else anyone else who'd picked up quick-step, just in case — Liz had had no idea she'd been working on this, had somehow managed to keep it from her, Hufflepuff had picked up some subtlety from somewhere...
Unfortunately for her, Liz was a devious little shite, and she'd managed to hang on long enough to think the problem through.
Liz gave up on trying to hex Chelsea directly — not like she was getting anywhere with it anyway — and quick-stepped away, and then again, putting a fair amount of distance between the two of them. Looking back, the field in that direction was fucking crowded with light-birds, Jesus, she hadn't realised there that many of them, dozens and dozens of the things. (How long had this duel been going on, anyway?) The flock of spells contracted somewhat as they turned toward Liz, zeroing in on a single point bringing them closer together. As the front neared Liz, she quick-stepped at an angle to the side, and then again, and again — bit by bit, moving in a loop around the pack of light-birds. Chelsea was casting more birds, occasionally sending a hex at Liz, but she ignored that, and just kept looping around, the birds constantly trying to turn to follow her, condensing tighter and tighter and tighter...
That would do. Once she came back around to the side of her loop nearest Chelsea, she turned away, quick-stepping back in her direction. She cast a quick hex on landing, and then quick-stepped forward again — at a slight angle, to make sure she didn't accidentally run into her own hex — glanced over her shoulder. There was a tight brilliant ball of golden light behind her, so many birds so close together and so bright they blurred into a single mass. Too far back, a little more time. Liz turned back around to fire a stripping hex at Chelsea, deflected away a stunning spell, a swish of a slicing hex, one of the birds not in her pack was getting close, so she took a short quick-step at an angle, the thing whizzing past, she shielded a wide-angled fire spell of some kind from Chelsea.
She could feel the intense wave of light magic approaching her back, burning cold, that was close enough. "Rḗtte!" Chelsea was obscured in an intense flash of light, the air shivering with thunder, forcing her to shield — Liz quick-stepped once, and then a second time, landing behind her. Turning on her heel with a sweep of her wand, "glacialum," a shoulder-high wall of blue-white ice a couple metres wide suddenly sprouting up out of the ground between her and Chelsea. There was a flare of surprise and a dull throb of pain from her, oh, Liz had caught her foot in the ice, didn't even mean to do that. Oh well, that worked. Skipping back a couple steps, "Svartísi hvíðu!" Liz barely had time to make out the peculiar spellglow before it struck the wall of ice, a wave of blackness sweeping over the wall and splashing around and over it before it crystallised into glittery black ice, thick and still giving off a steady aura of smooth, warm dark magic.
Pulling hard, the magic crackling through her sharp and hot, with a long wide swirl of her wand all around herself, she cast, "Speiron nykterinōs hyfaínoito." A dense stream of solid black threads — spellglow so deep and featureless it didn't reflect any light at all, just a pure absence — spread out from her wand, curling around her in a small dome (she crouched to make sure she would fit), weaving together tighter and tighter, the field around her swiftly segmented, and then shrinking to tiny chinks, and then vanishing entirely. Suddenly it was dark in here, Liz couldn't even make out her hand in front of her face — through the steady glow of warmth from the very particular dark shield charm (specifically for use against elemental sunlight or fire), it quickly started to feel cold.
Thankfully, she didn't have to wait very long: the birds started landing only a second or two later. It was surprisingly quiet, little whooshes as air was displaced, the hissing and popping of ice sublimating way louder than the spells themselves — and Chelsea's panicked cursing, quickly overtaken with shouts and groans of pain. Liz grimaced at the hot sharp sensations washing over her, but they blinked out before too long. She could still feel Chelsea there, but her mind had gone dim, unconscious. The storm went on, some of the birds actually got through the wall of ice to burst against her shield with little ringing thumps, dim flashes of silvery light pulsing through the perfect blackness with each one. But only a few, and then they stopped.
Liz waited another second, clenching her teeth against the urge to shiver. (She'd never cast this in a full dome before, fuck it got cold in here.) That was probably good enough. "Lȳe." Light pierced into her dome as gaps opened up in the black, swiftly widening as the shield unravelled, the black threads dissolving away. At around the same time, Liz felt a crackle of elf-magic, a pop! she whirled around, and then another pop! a second later — Chelsea was gone, carried off to the healers. All right, then.
Slipping her wand back into its holster, she pushed herself to her feet, a little stiff and clumsy from the cold, tried to rub feeling back into her hands. She turned to the audience to— She jumped as she felt light magic burning into her range, glanced over her shoulder. Leaning into a quick-step, she barely got out of the way in time, frantic enough she lost balance on landing, her knees digging into the clay. Fuck, there were still some of those weird sunlight-birds around — looking around as she scrambled to stand, it looked like one, two, three...six? Ones that hadn't been drawn into her path, flying at odd angles, wheeling back around toward her from multiple directions as she watched. Well, that was annoying.
Shouldn't be a problem though. Liz had a few seconds until the nearest got to her, so she turned back to the crowd to dip in a quick curtsey before jumping straight into a quick-step. She zig-zagged her way across the field, slowing the birds down by forcing them to take multiple turns — as she neared the door out, she waited a moment for the birds to close in, quick-stepped to the side, the birds turning to follow her, and then back the way she'd come. Once the birds were flying away from the exit, Liz skipped past them again, the things wheeling around giving Liz time to quick-step out, one of the staff people slamming the door closed behind her.
Fucking hell. She was going to have to congratulate Chelsea for the neat trick later, but they were seriously annoying to deal with.
The healer, to Liz's complete lack of surprise, informed her that she had mild light magic toxicity — no shite, so that's why she felt uncomfortably warm and mildly dizzy, never would have figured that out on her own. There wasn't really much he could do about that, though. Treatments for light/dark magic poisoning had to be proportional to the person's body weight and the severity of the exposure, and they preferred to do it under observation, to make sure they didn't overshoot the mark or fuck something up. He did give her a small dose of a potion for it, but he was intentionally undershooting by what he felt was a safe margin. The dose should be small enough to not accidentally poison her — there were a lot of volatile byproducts and stuff, alchemy was complicated — but he also didn't expect it to fully do the job. It was the best he could do, really.
The talk went on long enough that Katie and Artèmi had already passed by to start their match. Liz had felt their minds going by, but she was far enough off the path that Katie hadn't paused to try to say anything, so. Once the healer released her — the flush and the dizziness feeling a little better, but the potion had also made her vaguely nauseous — Liz rushed back to the waiting room to check the display. Right, their duel hadn't started yet, she had a second. Her coffee was still sitting on the arm of her chair, she gave it a quick warming charm as she walked by to the table to get another of those buns — hopefully it would help settle her stomach a little, but it was honestly hard to say, healing potions could be a pain like that.
They must have finally gotten rid of all those light-birds...or maybe they all crashed into the wall trying to follow Liz? There were wards in there that probably would have stopped them from just flying through. Anyway, around the time Liz was sitting down, Katie and Artèmi were walking into view on the field. Liz could see they were chatting, light and casual, but there wasn't any sound, so. They traded bows as usual — Katie's a bit more elaborate than usual, adding silly little hand twirls and everything — and backed up to the chalk line to wait.
Katie looked way less stiff and nervous than she had fighting Scrimgeour, but Liz guessed she'd probably thought she had a chance against him, at least. There was absolutely no way she was beating Artèmi, though, so no pressure?
After a few seconds standing around, Katie's wand came up in an underhanded tossing motion, casting one of those ice spears she liked so much — the thing just burst into a puff of harmless steam a couple metres away from Artèmi — she dipped around one, two hexes from Artèmi, her wand pointed at the ground, casting some kind of transfigurative spells as she moved. She had to stop to block Artèmi's third hex, an orangish arc spell of some kind, while holding the shield a gesture of her wandless hand lifting a cloud of rocks off the ground a couple swishes of her wand and they transformed into a bunch of bronze blades and bludgers, she banished them—
A narrow, spiralling jet of fire struck the lead edge before they'd hardly even started moving, and then exploded — surprisingly large and forceful, debris sent flying in all directions, Katie knocked off her feet to crash hard on her back. Hexes were flying from Artèmi before the smoke had even cleared, Katie rolling over her shoulder back onto her feet — the awkward motion too smooth and easy, must have gotten help from some kind of spell — she hopped out of the way of a bright white spellglow, shot off a piercing curse, but Artèmi was casting her own curse at the same time, she barely managed to get her wand twisted back around in time to deflect it down to the side. The yellowish spellglow struck the ground a couple metres behind her and then exploded, throwing off arcs of fire, they didn't touch Katie but she still staggered a little from the the unexpected violence of the impact, a hex was lancing in straight at her heart so Katie just let herself fall, collapsing into the clay with a little puff of dust. Artèmi cast a couple more hexes, the first missed, Katie rolling out of the way, the second caught with a shield, Katie then transfiguring up the ground to cover her long enough to get back up to her feet.
Some spell from Artèmi set the barrier on fire, funny yellow-green flames suddenly thick over the entire surface, Katie staggering back in surprise and from the heat. An orange-white spellglow slipped right through the flames — the wall underneath didn't stop it, Liz guessed the odd fire spell was burning away the transfiguration somehow — and struck Katie right in her centre of mass before she could react. She was instantly knocked unconscious, falling limp to the ground.
...Well, shite. That was fast. At least Katie hadn't gotten hurt, she guessed.
A minute or two later, the door clicked open, Artèmi walking into the room — she looked completely unharmed, of course, her uniform untouched. Her hair even still looked nice, for fuck's sake, Liz was certain hers must be a fucking mess. She'd even tried to plait it and everything, not that she'd expected it would do any fucking good...
Trying to brush off the familiar irritation with her own frustrating hair, Liz asked, "Hey, what are you doing back here? Aren't we up next?"
"They seem to be giving the spectators a moment to get into place. I suppose the timing of the event was arranged on the assumption that the semi-finalists may need healing."
Liz scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Well, that was silly of them, have you even been hit by anything yet?"
Her lips twitching in a smirk, Artèmi shrugged. "The brackets weren't arranged yet, I could have been in the first semifinal match. Excuse me." Artèmi continued past Liz's chair, on toward the toilets — using the break to take a piss, apparently. Liz didn't need to go, but some water was probably a good idea, especially considering how much Artèmi liked fire magic. Her coffee cup was empty, she cast a quick cleaning charm, and then filled it with a water-drawing spell. Pure, magically-summoned water tasted slightly odd — without the salts and minerals and shite, flat and, she didn't know exactly — but it didn't really need to taste like anything in particular, it was just water.
Artèmi was back a moment later, sauntered across the empty waiting room to loom over Liz's chair. Loom, honestly, sounding dramatic in her own head, Artèmi was tiny — taller than Liz, yes, but not by very much. And Liz probably took up more space, actually, with her hair being fucking ridiculous, and Artèmi was all delicate, Liz's hips were probably more noticeable...
And now Liz was imagining what Artèmi looked naked, stop that, for fuck's sake...
Warm amusement bubbling through the background smooth chill of her magic, Artèmi smiled down at her all soft and pretty. She'd definitely caught that thought — she was standing close enough to Liz's chair that she was inside her aura — but she was unbothered by it. Which did make sense, Liz guessed, after long enough just existing as a mind mage coming across people having sexy thoughts about you just became normal. (It still made Liz uncomfortable, a lot of the time, but Artèmi didn't have the issues she did.) "I'm flattered, Liz, but I hardly think we've the time before our match starts."
"Aren't you straight, actually?" Liz asked, frowning to herself. She'd caught from Artèmi's head that she and Fleur's baby sister were screwing, but she was pretty sure it didn't count when it was a veela — they had the whole making-you-feel-what-I'm-feeling thing going on, after all, she was pretty sure it'd work just fine so long as the veela was attracted to you. When Évariste was messing with her, she hadn't really felt attracted to him, particularly, but that wasn't what he'd been going for. She was pretty sure the flirting was just to tease her, she hadn't noticed anything obviously gay in Artèmi's head...
Not even trying to hide her amusement, Artèmi shrugged. "Pleasure is pleasure."
...Liz had no idea what the fuck that was supposed to mean.
"It seems we are finally getting a fair rematch. Though I can't imagine you're going to do any better at full strength than you did the first time we fought."
Liz scowled. "It is not a fair match — you're completely unharmed, and I already have mild light magic poisoning."
"As close as we're going to get in the short term, regardless. Unless you've progressed beyond manipulating muggles and untrained children, I'd recommend not resorting to mind magic this time. I don't want to make you cry in front of a crowd again, but I will if you force my hand." Artèmi felt less than entirely comfortable teasing Liz about that — she was well aware that the flood of positive memories she'd hit Liz with at her first duel had only made her tear up because her life kind of sucked and she wasn't used to feeling that shite — but she was also aware that Liz didn't want Artèmi to baby her about it, so.
"What, your teammate bloody molesting me in public wasn't humiliation enough, you've got to add on to it?"
There was a sharp flinch in Artèmi's head, discomfort and low-burning exasperation with Delacour. She didn't show it on her face, but Artèmi was taking that comment way more seriously than Liz had meant it, now kind of uncomfortable with the idea of kicking Liz's arse in a minute here — she would still do it, of course, but she felt like a bitch about it.
Which was completely fucking unnecessary, honestly. "Going soft on me, Cæciné? That almost feels like sympathy for the enemy I feel."
Artèmi let out a huff, amusement bubbling past the discomfort again. "Well, you're simply so pathetic, I can't help it. Like kicking a kitten for scratching you — sure, it has claws, but it's not really fair, is it?"
Liz rolled her eyes. "Oh, fuck off."
Once she'd gotten her teasing in, Artèmi slipped away again, giving Liz a moment to prepare herself for the match however she thought appropriate. Which was kind of odd, because it wasn't like Liz needed to do any preparation or whatever — if she were still angry over Delacour, yeah, she'd like a moment to calm down, but at this point she just wanted to get this over with already. Even more oddly, Artèmi was using her moment of semi-privacy — standing a few metres away, her back to Liz, her hands loosely folded behind her — to pray. Liz was so bemused that it took her a moment to realise she was eavesdropping, backed out of Artèmi's mind, since, she didn't know, intruding on that seemed rude somehow.
Liz had had no idea Artèmi was religious. Well, okay, not no idea, in retrospect there'd been a couple hints here and there — in particular, she remembered something about some kind of shrine or something up in the mountains somewhere — she'd just never thought about it that hard. She wasn't really surprised, by now she realised that most mages were religious in one way or another — even if a lot of them didn't take it very seriously, like those Christians back in muggle England who'd go to church on Christmas and Easter and mostly not think about it the rest of the time. She was kind of curious, the bits she'd caught hadn't been clear enough to get much — she knew it was a goddess Artèmi was praying to, and something about fire — but people could be super private about this shite, so she held herself back from peeking. Presumably, if Artèmi didn't mind if Liz overheard, she wouldn't be doing it silently.
Given how much Artèmi liked fire spells, Liz guessed it made perfect sense that she apparently worshipped a goddess who had something to do with fire? Like, sure, why not.
(The way her mind went all smooth and calm while doing it was...interesting. But now Liz was thinking about peeking again, so.)
Someone showed up to call them out eventually — Liz was a little worried Artèmi might not have actually heard, as deep into it as she was, but she started moving toward the door at the same time Liz did. They were waved right through the shaded area and through the gate into the arena. Apparently they'd taken the longer-than-usual break to clear out the arena more thoroughly, the chalk circle at the middle ahead retouched, and smooth, any traces of foreign magic cleared from the environment, bland and featureless. Though, now that she was paying attention she felt a faint crackle of wards that way, against the wall to her right — she suspected that must be where the people who'd inexplicably appeared inside of the arena a couple times before must be hiding.
As they walked toward the middle, the funny calm in Artèmi's head gradually broke apart, a bit more swagger slipping into her walk. Shooting Liz a quick smile, she said, "Don't worry, I'll try not to hurt you too badly."
Liz rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Just try not to burn off all my hair again, please — after the First Task my hair came back in while the skin was still tender, fucking itched."
Artèmi was slightly confused, before (correctly) guessing Liz must have one of those magical traits related to hair floating around. "That wasn't me, I was eliminated before you."
"Yeah, it was a veela, though — your shite would be light magic too, takes longer to heal."
"True enough." They reached the chalk circle, Liz was a step ahead so she continued on a little further than the precise centre before turning around. "How is your magic so intensely dark at your age anyway?" Artèmi asked, curiosity tingling in her head — she'd wondered about that before, but hadn't thought it was appropriate to ask. "You are human, aren't you?"
"None of your fucking business, Cæciné." Because they were both cheating mind mages, they were able to coordinate the timing of their curtsey/bow more or less perfectly. Liz pretended not to notice Artèmi's amusement at the image of Liz doing a proper curtsey in her visibly fire-damaged skirt. Turning quickly enough to make a hiss of dry clay rubbing against itself as it moved, the blackened hem of her skirt swishing around, Liz walked off. She turned back around on the chalk circle, her wand slapping into her palm as she went. This time she settled into a proper stance ahead of the bell, shoulder-on to Artèmi, her right foot back, wand held in a loose grip at about shoulder-level — ready to advance into an arc spell or retreat into a shield.
Artèmi's opening stance was much shallower — the toes of her right foot pointing forward and her left pointing to the side, her heels maybe only a hand-span apart — her wand hand forward, held ready at waist-level, pointing right at Liz. This was from a duelling style developed in Italy, favouring light quick charmwork. Liz knew, from photos and written descriptions of Artèmi's previous matches and talking the over with Sirius, that Artèmi tended to open with it, and step into it when someone was hiding under a shield and she wanted to pin them down with a rapid rain of spells, but she'd slip out of it to other styles when the situation called for it.
Because Artèmi had gotten lessons from proper teachers and shite, for going on a decade at this point already — Liz knew from those memories she'd thrown at her in their first match that Artèmi's family had even started her with fencing when she was still too young to use a wand properly. (And even that had been a compromise, apparently, significantly younger than her fellow students, Artèmi had begged.) Liz was good, sure, and powerful for her age, but Artèmi had much more experience than Liz did, and formal training Liz had only started getting a little bit of recently, mostly just the things Sirius thought were important to know. As much as Liz might technically be the more powerful mage between the two of them, she was well aware that Artèmi was the better duellist, by an insurmountable margin. There was basically no chance of Liz actually winning this match.
Honestly, she'd be pleased with herself if she lasted for even a couple minutes.
Acting on instinct, Liz stepped forward with a slash — Artèmi started moving at the same time, probably cued by something on Liz's mind somehow — "Arcum fragmentum!" the incantation started before the match technically began, the low bong shivering along when she was halfway through. She felt a flinch of surprise from Artèmi at the incantation, the complex arc spell descending on her in a spiral — Artèmi had cast a blasting curse, unprepared for such a strong opening, she barely got a shield up in time. Liz sidled around the searing cold yellow-white of Artèmi's first spell, Liz's shattering her shield with a loud clattering and a hissing and sparking of magic, advancing a step with each spell, "Lacera verveikt inimicam exarma kali-hana excide—"
Wheeling back a step, Artèmi cleared the interference from the shattered shield with a sweep of her wandless hand, deflected the complex blasting curse aside, caught the dark stunning charm with a shield — and then twitched as the light binding hex slipped right through it. Artèmi was actually hit, thick rope formed of blue light coiling around her, clamping her arms against her sides. For a second, Liz thought she might actually have her — come on come on come on — but Artèmi lurched out of the way of the stripping hex, flopping over onto the ground, a surge of green-yellow flames suddenly bursting into life, crawling over her head to toe, whatever that fire was making Liz's freezing hex fizzle out to no effect, Artèmi rolled out of the way of the next curse, clay flung up in her wake, and the bonds were suddenly gone, Artèmi popped up to her feet again. And she came out cursing, a pair of burning white spells, Liz skipped out of the way of the first, started the motion for a blasting curse but cut off to deflect the second one instead — the light magic powerful enough Liz's fingers burned from the cold — and then a familiar orangeish arc spell, Liz threw up a shield to catch it.
Damn it! And that was so close!
An unfamiliar spell with the jagged feel of a shield-breaker was coming up, so Liz dropped it — slipping to the side just in case this one also had an effect if it hit a person — tossed off a piercing curse, and then there was a blast of red-white fire rushing at her, Liz threw up a shield—
When the fire hit her shield, Liz was unexpectedly flung backward, hard — she flew for a second or two before she hit the ground, arse first, and then her shoulder, she tucked into a roll, after a couple times around she slowed down enough to dig a knee into the ground, dragging herself to a stop. She tried to push herself up to her feet, but didn't quite make it, teetering back down to her knees as her head spun, dizzy. Ugh, what the fuck...
She felt sharp cold magic lancing in at her, planted a foot and pushed into a quick-step. Since she wasn't even properly standing up, she landed awkwardly, skidding on the clay on her knees, but the bloody spinning had settled down enough she could stand again — teetering for a second, dammit. She shielded a hex, not confident enough of her aim to trust her ability to deflect at the moment, slashed back with a slicing curse, a blasting curse, a wave of blue-white fire was rushing in at her, she blew it away into wisps with an elemental wind charm — heavy with mist, turning the air above them a bit foggy — dodged around a...binding hex, maybe, "Deseca, frangatur, dilabentem," she sidled around a hex of some kind, "Rḗtte! Svartí—"
Liz cut off the spell when she realised Artèmi hadn't shielded the lightning, as she'd expected — instead she'd somehow managed to jump into the air, several metres off the ground, flipping up to the left and out of the way. How the... Must have flung herself up with a banishing charm, or something. Swishing her wand over the ground, "hvítan," a smooth coating of shining white ice spread across the ground away from her, but Artèmi was suddenly enveloped in yellow-orange flames, melting the ice ahead of her landing, and then rushing away from her, the ice all immediately evaporated — the force also blowing up dust with the steam, Liz shielded her eyes with her forearm.
"Not bad, Liz." That was Artèmi, her voice amplified, the words comfortably audible despite the distance separating them. "Someone's been practising."
Gritting her teeth, Liz tossed a blasting curse at her — she easily deflected it out of the way, but that wasn't really the point, Liz didn't even follow it up with anything. (It looked like Artèmi was pausing for whatever reason, might as well catch her breath for a second.) The condescension really wasn't necessary.
Even if she had been planning on following it up, she probably would have been distracted anyway, an odd cool thrum shivering through the air, a faint prickling running over her skin as it passed by. Artèmi raised both hands over her head, the tip of her wand meeting her extended pointer and middle fingers. "How about we stop playing around, hmm?" A faint glow sweeping over her for a second, her hands came down, her wand drawing back but her fingers pointing at Liz...intense golden-white light blooming around her hand, faint sparks crackling in the air around her...
Was that elemental sunlight? And, had her aura flared just now? were those sparks from the interaction of her aura with the environment? Liz was just remembering Sirius saying, if she ran into someone whose aura flared as they cast curses, to run away...
Well, this was going to suck.
The spell was released, an arrow of sunlight racing at her heart — that's what that motion had been, she realised now, drawing a bow — she quick-stepped out of the way, turned on her heel and came out with a blasting curse, Artèmi dodged it, a slash of an unfamiliar violet arc spell coming back at Liz, she quick-stepped out of the way again, turning her momentum into her own arc spell, Artèmi had to stop to shield, she immediately fell into a stream of spells, a stripping hex a piercing curse a blasting curse, another arcum fragmentum to keep Artèmi pinned down, lightning crackling down her wand-arm she—
—twitched when she felt the burning hot-cold arrow of sunlight coming into her range again — fuck, this thing tracked her too! A quick spiral of her wand, "Umbrosam!" a shadowy black shield wisping into existence the instant the arrow struck it. The two spells annihilated each other, sizzling prickling sparks of interference clawing at her skin, she fought past it to deflect a stunning spell. Liz shot off a couple hexes, but she barely had time before another cloud of fire was rushing in at her, an arc spell slashing through it, nope, she quick-stepped away again.
As she landed, Artèmi whirled around to face her, another glow of elemental sunlight around her hand, fuck! She released the arrow, Liz cast a binding hex with a flick of her wand, caught the arrow with another shadow-cloak, by the time it cleared another blasting curse was coming in at her. Frustration clawing at her throat — she'd thought she'd started off well, but it turned out the previous times Liz had fought Artèmi she'd been holding things back (though probably not in the First Task, too overwhelmed to break out the big guns) — pulling magic up and layering it thick over her hand, instead of just slapping the curse away she pushed out. Deflecting spells was hard enough, reflecting them straight at the caster was even harder — she'd picked the trick up from Sirius, who was annoyingly good at it, like a third of their practice duels she fell to her own spells. Her aim was worse than his, Artèmi probably didn't even need to lean out of the way, but the sudden lurch of shock she felt from all the way over here was still gratifying.
Artèmi still managed to block her follow-up blasting curse, dropping the shield and spinning out of the way before her black ice spell could land, the odd black-and-silver-speckles spellglow continuing on past her, a slash of an arc spell, Liz snapped off a piercing curse before jumping into a quick-step.
By the time she landed, Artèmi was firing another sunlight-arrow straight up into the air, fuck, that was going to be a problem later. They traded a few spells, Liz getting off a couple hexes, but she needed to pause to shield an arc spell, and then too many curses were falling fast and heavy from Artèmi, one after another after another, Liz couldn't keep up, quick-stepped away again.
Artèmi was using the time Liz was quick-stepping to fire another arrow — which meant she had a second. Magic burning hot and frigid through her, "Aquilo terra saeviat!" She grimaced at the pain of the spell ripping its way out of her, arm and chest stinging and pounding, but it worked, a deafening roar of wind pummelling the ground, hard enough to fling up clumps of clay, oversized spikes of hoarfrost sprouting up, racing across the field toward Artèmi. She quick-stepped up to the side — back far enough to not get caught in her own spell — one of the sunlight arrows slamming into the ground at some point along the way. Skidding to a halt, "Affragmen percute!" Liz hissed as her already-strained arm flared in protest, shite, okay, she was maybe hurting herself a little...
Artèmi was holding back the elemental spell with some kind of burning red barrier, almost looking like a wall of fire, so she just half-turned to Liz, slapped the curse out of the way with her free hand. But Liz had been expecting that: instead of continuing on, the complex piercing curse burst into a spray of narrow spellglows — Artèmi had managed to alter the angle they were coming in at, but she was still inside the cone, her left side peppered with several blue-violet piercing curses. Artèmi staggered, her fire-wall dropping — not that it mattered, Liz's spell was burning out already anyway — ducked under Liz's follow-up hex, an underhand slash of her wand sending an arc spell at Liz, instead of taking the time to block it she quick-stepped instead, leaning into a—
A narrow beam of sparkling golden light shot through her — not moving like a spellglow, but like, just, a concentrated stream of sunlight, she didn't even see it move before it was already hitting her. It didn't hit with any force, but it was cold, Liz stumbling back anyway. It blinked out after a second but the chill lingered, but, paradoxically, she quickly started to feel flushed, as though suddenly overheated, and nauseous, her head spinning, she teetered a couple steps before falling to one knee, another burning cold curse narrowly missing her head as she dropped.
She didn't know what the fuck that thing was, but she was pretty sure Artèmi had just instantly given her light magic poisoning. Fuck, she was so fucked.
Another spell was coming in, Liz pushed herself off the ground straight into a quick-step, but she was too dizzy, landing rough, skidding down on her knees again. A wild slash of her wand sent a severing curse in Artèmi's direction, wide enough it didn't matter if her aim wasn't great — as fucking dizzy as she was all of a sudden, it was hard to get her eyes to focus, but she could still see multiple blotches of blood starting to spread and drip all down the left side of Artèmi's body. Ha ha, Liz had managed to get her with something, that was worth bragging about no matter how badly she ended up losing.
Still kneeling, Liz blocked an overpowered blasting curse from Artèmi, but thankfully she was forcing as much dark magic into the shield as she could anyway, to try to clear some of the light magic still burning away in her middle. That was unpleasant, of course, a crackling of interference inside of her — it did hurt, but mostly it just felt really fucking weird — Liz powered through the feeling until the interference faded away (tanking a second curse), dropped the shield and pushed herself wavering up to her feet. (That wouldn't have cured the light magic toxicity, of course, but it would stop it from getting worse.) Another slash of an arc spell, a piercing curse a blasting curse, Artèmi blocked or deflected them all, and then the air around her was glowing, resolving into several sparks of crystallised sunlight — like with elemental fire, but with sunlight, what the fuck — she sent them flying at Liz but she escaped into a quick-step, crashed down to her knees on landing again, quick pushed herself up to—
A bright orange-white curse was flying right at her, she barely managed to see it coming in time, leaning out of the way — she wasn't quite fast enough, the curse missing her centre of mass but striking her in the shoulder instead. A hard frigid pulse of light magic, and it burst, the force flinging her onto her back, the impact knocking the wind out of her, streams of fire flying, her wand hand came up to her shoulder without thinking, wet, she knew she was hurt but she didn't really feel the pain, adrenaline surging like lightning through her veins, her head pounding and her mouth filled with copper and herbs, she felt another cold hex coming in and she forced herself to roll — a strangled cry wrenched from her throat at the harsh scraping heat as her wound was pressed against the dirt, that she felt — waveringly pushed up to her knees, hissing through her teeth, "arcum fragmentum," tried to get her feet under her, her head spinning and the ground tilting—
—she was pretty sure her clothes or her hair (or both) were on fire, she quick put them out, before sending another couple curses at Artèmi, lightning snapping around her as they resolved, echoing dimly in her ears, she threw up a shield against some kind of arc curse, fell to one knee before a light curse could slip right through it, ducking under the spell, sent off another slash of a complex severing curse and—
—something slammed into her back, multiple dull hits, numb and cold, she flailed to deflect a hex from Artèmi, catching her wand at an awkward angle and turning—
Oooooops
Aftermath next, and after that I'm going to take a break to do a couple First Contact scenes. Wooo...