Fifth Task, woo! It got stupid long — because this is me, you shouldn't expect anything else at this point — so I split it in half for the people who might have trouble reading 32k words in a sitting. If you need to stop at the end of this chapter, it's a pretty smooth break point, shouldn't have too much trouble jumping back in to catch the other half later.
Anyway, let's do this crazy thing.
The tournament they'd worked up for the Fifth Task was slightly absurd. It was generally preferred when organising events for the Triwizard Tournament that they have parts that allowed more student participation — after all, having a year-long competition that only involved one student from each school would be kind of boring. With how short of attention spans teenagers could have, Liz honestly doubted very many of the students would bother even paying attention if they didn't at least know a few of the people involved, if not actually be able to participate themselves.
Some Tasks didn't really allow for them to bring in more people — like the dragons and the healing, as examples — but some were a lot easier to open up. The teams for the First Task were a good example, and the quidditch tournament coming up. The sinking island treasure hunt thing for the Eighth Task, the Champions could each build a team to work with them, yes, but other students could put together their own teams to compete as well, populating the event even more. A duelling tournament was also a good example — having a single-elimination tournament with only three people would be boring (and also impossible), so they filled up the bracket with more students pulled from each school. Ten from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, and nine from Hogwarts (the host taking the slight disadvantage of having one fewer player), for a total of thirty-two competitors, perfect for a five-round tournament. Of course, thirty-one duels — sixteen in the first round, eight in the second, then four, then two, then the final — was kind of a lot to fit into one day, especially with only a single stage, but it was doable. They'd planned for the event to take three hours, not counting a brief break in the middle for people to get coffee and a biscuit or whatever, which wasn't so bad. But Liz thought that was expecting about five minutes between the start of one duel and the start of the next, it might go longer if some of the matches dragged.
Of course, that was before the Goblet had spat out Liz's name in addition to Cedric's, and they responded by doubling the scale of the events — since having the junior Champions directly fight the seniors didn't seem quite fair, they'd decided they would have two entirely separate tournaments. So, sixty-four participants, sixty-two duels. That was too much to comfortably fit into a single day, so they'd decided to hold the tournaments on separate days. All six Champions had been removed from the school Thursday afternoon, Liz, Artèmi, and Ingrid returning for the junior tournament on Saturday morning; the senior Champions were still at the abandoned manor house on the sea somewhere, watching the event through one of Babbling's displays, and would come in for their tournament tomorrow.
Liz and the others were brought in just slightly early, shuffled into the same plain wood building they'd waited in before the First and Third Tasks. It looked much the same as before, though there was more seating available than usual, chairs and sofas scattered around, and one of Babbling's displays was projected along one wall — a duelling ring had been set up in the same space the dragons' nests had been in last time, the same flat reddish clay she was used to from ICW events. So the people waiting their turn could watch the other duels, which was at least something to do. (Liz had forgotten to bring a book this time.) The three of them were left alone for maybe two minutes before Liz caught Ingrid wondering to herself if Liz and Artèmi were flirting — Liz wouldn't have said so, but apparently she was terrible at noticing this shite — and she abruptly broke off, going to the snack table to fix herself a cup of coffee, trying not to look as embarrassed as she felt.
It didn't help that Artèmi had also caught the thought (technically, caught Liz catching the thought), and was trying not to laugh at her.
Before too long, the rest of the day's duellists started trickling in. Liz wasn't at all surprised when Alexis and Évariste showed up — Artèmi's trio partners were some of the better fighters among Beauxbatons's younger students, obviously they'd be participating. Liz's duelling team gradually accumulated around her, first Chelsea, and then Katie and Oz, Artaimís finally showing up toward the end of their wait. They didn't want to entirely fill up Hogwarts's share of the slots, so the nobles on the team — who, already being wealthy and connected, didn't need the exposure of a duelling tournament in front of the entire country — had gracefully bowed out to let the commoners take them.
Artaimís was good, sure, but Liz was pretty sure she didn't have the raw power to stand one-on-one against the people the other schools would be fielding — she fully expected Artaimís to be eliminated in her very first match, but she'd wanted to participate anyway. If Artaimís wanted to get her arse kicked in front of the whole country, Liz guessed that was her business.
Liz didn't expect Grey to do any better — Artaimís had beaten him in the final for the third years at the last duelling club tournament in December — but it hadn't been her decision who would be participating, so, fine. If it had been her decision, she probably wouldn't have brought along Selwyn and fucking Weasley either. She guessed they were both...reasonably competent duellists — Selwyn was better, but Liz suspected that was mostly an advantage of experience more than anything, Weasley would catch up. They weren't great, she didn't expect them to get very far, but they were decent. What they were was seriously fucking annoying, Liz hated having to talk to either of them. Luckily for her patience, they stayed well away from the clump formed around Liz as the duelling team showed up, Selwyn schmoozing with the Durmstrangers and Weasley sulking in a corner — trying not to stare at the veela, which was at least a little funny.
James bloody Grey, though, didn't have the decency to leave her alone. He'd been named after Liz's father, and had heard all kinds of Girl Who Lived -related stories as a kid, and apparently hadn't grown out of being fucking annoying about it yet. Katie and Oz were no help at all, just silently laughing at her misery...
Sadhbh Monroe was nice enough, though she was talking to one of her Beauxbatons cousins instead of hanging out with them, and Eustace Scrimgeour was also participating — which Liz was kind of worried about, honestly. Liz and Artèmi had just spent a couple minutes teasing each other about facing off in the final, and with Eustace in the running she...wasn't sure that was going to happen. Last time Liz had duelled him had been over a year ago now, sure, but he'd flattened her, easily, seemingly with hardly needing to try. Artèmi might be able to beat him — she did have that record undefeated streak thing, after all — but then she might not, Eustace was very good. She was a little surprised he'd never shown any interest in joining the duelling teams, he'd kick arse at the ICW events...
Of course, Liz had no confidence in her ability to actually beat Artèmi if they did face each other, and there was every chance that they'd end up on the same side of the bracket so wouldn't be able to meet in the final regardless. But it was the principle of the matter...she guessed.
(Honestly, joking about them meeting in the final and playing off of Artèmi's suggestions that she wouldn't get that far had just seemed like the thing to do? She didn't know...)
It was maybe a half an hour after the Champions portkeyed in when Zabini turned up, accompanied by Arvīds, the younger Durmstrang judge. They went through a relatively brief welcome and final explanation of the rules — it felt like it took much longer than it really needed to because every line was said three times, once in English, Zabini then repeated herself in French, and Arvīds finally translated into norrois. (Apparently the name the magical Scandinavians used for their own language meant "northern tongue," the name translated literally in French, which seemed better than just "Danish" to Liz.) Not that there was really any new information here, it wasn't like the rules about what kind of magic was acceptable had changed since the First Task. There was a little bit of talk about the process of moving out when it was their turn, blah blah, whatever.
Arvīds was carrying a large length of cloth rolled up under his arm, when they were done giving the instructions he pinned it up over the snack table — Liz tipped up onto a knee and leaned around Oz so she could make it out. They'd already sorted out the brackets, the competitors put into the 32 spots randomly, with the caveat of ensuring that everyone's first match, at least, was with someone from another school. Someone would come in to update it after every match, so they'd be able to tell at a glance how the event was going. Champions would be awarded one point for each match they won, and an extra two points would go to the Champion of the victor's school, whether or not that victor was a Champion themselves. Liz was pretty sure they were starting at one point, so if the Champion actually won that meant they should get eight points, but Liz guessed the judges would cut them down to the maximum seven anyway.
All right, any questions? No? Good. If the four contestants for the first two matches could follow them out, please — Liz didn't recognise the student from Beauxbatons or Durmstrang, but Oz and Grey were apparently in the first and second match. After Oz got a few wishes of good luck from the team and Grey got a fuck you, go lose already from Artaimís — she was aware they didn't really get along, but she had no idea why — Liz got up, wandered over to the snack table to look over the brackets with half the rest of the room. It was rather crowded, she grimaced as people nudged her, their minds flaring louder, bloody annoying...
Looked like Ingrid was in the third match, and she was fucked — her first match was with Alexis, and Liz was pretty sure Ingrid wasn't good enough of a duellist to survive her. Viktor was very good, so Ingrid was about to drop into last place again. Chelsea was fighting Alexis in her second match (assuming she won her first one), and Chelsea was probably going to lose? Chelsea was quite good, but a duellist who could also whip out wandless fire magic and teleport around the stage at will wasn't really playing fair. Weasley was fighting some random Beauxbatons student Liz didn't know in his first match, but his second match was with Artèmi's other trios partner — even if he survived his first match, there was no way Weasley was beating Évariste.
Liz would be fighting in the seventh match, some random Durmstranger. Her second fight would be with whoever won in the eighth match — a pair from the other two schools, she didn't recognise either of the names — and her third fight would be with Évariste, and her fourth fight...probably Alexis. She'd be getting Artèmi's trio partners one after the other, and then she'd probably be facing Artèmi herself in the final. Because, yes, Artèmi was on the opposite side of the bracket — her first fight was the...thirteenth match — so it was possible for them to meet in the final.
(In fact, Liz had a pretty good feeling about that, but it was hard to tell whether that was just wishful thinking or not. Alexis and Évariste were both very dangerous fighters, either one could knock her out first.)
Anyway, it looked like Katie was in the eleventh match, so Liz wouldn't have to fight her herself, at least. They did it in practice sometimes, but she honestly didn't like fighting Katie, or Susan...or Artaimís or Chelsea or Oz, really. Just playing around, sure, but actually trying to win made her...feel a little uncomfortable. She couldn't say how, exactly, she just didn't like it. Katie would be matched with Scrimgeour in her second fight, and of course she'd be facing Artèmi before the final, and Alexis was between Liz and Chelsea or Oz, so at least it looked like she wouldn't need to fight any of her teammates. That was...good, that was good.
Liz grabbed a tiny sausage and went back to her chair — she nudged it a little before sitting down, so she had a better angle on the display. Katie checked the time quick, and the event was supposed to be starting. It looked like their thing here didn't have any sound at all, just the visuals, so, presumably they'd started the announcements and stuff, first round should be starting any second now.
"Good luck with Delacour," Katie said to her, out of nowhere. She must have identified Évariste as the first match she was likely to have serious problems with.
"Thanks. Good luck with Scrimgeour."
Katie winced, glancing off to the left. Scrimgeour was over there, chatting with a girl in a Beauxbatons-coloured scarf with short messy auburn hair, huddled on a sofa and— Ah! Liz recognised her now: that was Iris Ingham, they were dating. Or, courting, technically, but Liz got the feeling they actually liked each other, so the distinction wasn't really that important. "Yeah, that's going to be tough. I don't know if you noticed, but Eustace is a fucking monster."
"Considering he gave me a concussion last year, yeah, I had actually noticed."
"Right. The years we have Charms or Defence with the Ravenclaws he's always at the top of the class, talented bloody bastard." There was obvious irritation there, but also a note of...
Liz blinked, glanced up at Katie. "You think he's fanciable."
"Well, yeah," Katie admitted, with an inexplicable flash of awkwardness. Oh, it was just that Liz had called her out on it without any warning, felt kind of put on the spot, oops. "He can be seriously smooth sometimes, and, I mean, just look at him."
"...I do like his hair, but I'm gay, so, fuck knows if that's worth anything."
Katie just laughed.
By then, Grey was taking the stage with a girl from Beauxbatons Liz didn't recognise off hand. (The bracket was disproportionately girls, but girls on the average hit puberty before boys, so they tended to have a power advantage at this age, which gave them an edge in duelling; boys did catch up pretty quickly, Liz expected the senior Champions' bracket would be more evenly split.) They walked to the middle of the arena, marked by a circle of white chalk dusted over the reddish clay. The pair quick exchanged bows, then retreated to stand on the chalk circle across from each other, drew their wands and planted their feet in preparation to move. They still weren't getting sound, there must be a countdown, but Liz couldn't hear anything.
Since she couldn't hear the countdown, the duel seemed to spark off with no warning. Grey snapped off a standard stunning charm, the Beauxbatons girl sidled to the side while she cast...some kind of arc spell — it was a yellow-orange, Liz didn't recognise it by sight. Grey made to retaliate with some kind of charm, but the girl transfigured the ground under him with a wide underhand swish...meaning it probably wasn't a proper free transfiguration, but an integrated charm or an elemental spell of some kind. Which meant she probably wasn't actually a veela or lilin, their magic didn't like doing ice or water spells, and she whipped that out very quick and smooth. Awkwardly crouched down, Grey was taken by surprise, his feet immediately slipping out from under him to crash hard onto his side — the girl knocked him out with a quick stunning charm before he could do anything.
Well, that was fast. She'd known Grey would lose, badly, not sure why the hell he'd bothered going for it at all.
One of the organisers poked his head through the door to call for Alexis and Ingrid — Ingrid looked very stiff and uncomfortable, mind dark and cold, clearly knew she was fucked — even as Oz and some bloke from Durmstrang appeared on the display. Proper bows and everything, back on the line — Oz was holding his wand up near his opposite shoulder, feet close together, prepared to come right out with an arc spell of some kind. His opponent obviously saw that too, wand angled to start with a shield charm. The chatter that had sparked up in the waiting room as the Beauxbatons girl who'd just stomped Grey came back eased down again, reducing to anticipatory silence and an occasional whisper.
Oz slashed his wand down at an angle, leading into it with one foot in an exaggerated somatic form (Liz had been helping her teammates figure out that kind of thing), and— Oh, that wasn't a cutting curse or some other common arc spell, that was the stormhammer charm! Liz had actually taught him that one, when they'd figured out he had a natural talent for certain elemental magics. The concentrated front of wind crossed the space between them, bursting violently against the Durmstranger's shield — it didn't break the shield, but the weight of the wind against it was enough to knock the boy off his feet, tumbling to the ground and rolling over a couple times. Of course, the weakness of the stormhammer charm was that the intense wind it released wasn't easily directed, often catching the user nearly as badly as the target, but stepping into the somatic form Oz was already in a nice deep stance, with his weight forward. His arms pulled in and his head dipped down, his hair and cloak whipped wildly around him, but he stayed perfectly steady in place through it.
As soon as the wind let up Oz was in motion, darting ahead and tossing a string of hexes, his wand flicking and dipping; the Durmstrang boy actually managed to block the first couple, throwing up a shield while still on the ground. A light hex from Oz — Liz couldn't feel the magic from here, of course, but she recognised it as a light-tinted binding spell Oz liked to use — went straight through the shield, but the Durmstranger, tipped up onto his knees by now, must have seen it coming, a hard kick sending him rolling to the side over his shoulder, the spell missing him by a handspan. The Durmstranger sent some kind of arc spell at Oz's ankles, the spellglow skimming just inches above the ground, Oz caught it with a band of conjured ice, but the distraction gave the Durmstranger long enough to get up to his feet, retaliating with a hard orange spellglow and some kind of fire hex, Oz dodging the first and blocked the second, temporarily obscured by a sudden burst of flames.
Oz appeared through the smoke, running straight at the Durmstranger; obviously surprised, he staggered back, tossing off a hex which Oz easily skipped around, Oz retaliating with a brace of ice darts, the Durmstranger flailing to knock them away even while still trying to scramble away. A flick of Oz's wand, and a long band of red-orange extended out of the tip, snapped across the short distance between them more quickly than the boy could react, catching his arm around the elbow. The band still connected to Oz's wand, he yanked back, the Durmstranger drawn lurching toward him, overbalanced, Oz turning on his heel with the pull...and stuck out his elbow.
The Durmstranger slammed hard into Oz's elbow just under his ribs — the wind knocked out of him, the boy crashed to the ground, wand tumbling from nerveless fingers. Oz quick summoned the Durmstranger's wand, plucking it out of the air, and stepped up to stand over him, one wand in each hand pointed at his chest. His face looking very red, he held up both hands, surrendering.
"Jesus Christ," Chelsea muttered under the sudden increase in chatter as the duel ended. "Where the hell did Oz learn that?"
"I taught him the stormhammer charm."
"He picked up that orange whip-looking thing from Cynfelyn, last year," Katie said. "It's not too practical in most situations, though, so you don't see him use it very often. Or did you mean the footwork, and that trick with his elbow?"
"Yeah, that! That was some karate-looking thing, I didn't know mages did stuff like that."
Katie shrugged. "Sure we do, it's just not as common." After all, there was little point in beating someone up with your bare hands when you both had wands. "Oz has always been able to do that, he mentioned once that he first got into it visiting his cousins on the Continent."
"You mean the infamous ones?" Grindelwalds, Chelsea meant, Gellert's grand-nieces and -nephews. Oz never mentioned them, Liz hadn't even realised he knew them at all, but apparently back when he was a first-year he hadn't been so politic about it.
"Yep, those ones."
...Liz couldn't say she was surprised that the Grindelwalds of their generation were apparently super into martial arts. The family did kind of have a reputation these days, after all — being competent in a fight was probably a good idea, for self-defence if for no other reason.
Chelsea was leaving the room just as Oz was getting back, the two of them pausing at the door to trade congratulations and good lucks. They barely had a few seconds to tease Oz about beating up people with his hands — honestly, Bagshot, are you a wizard or not? — before Alexis and Ingrid were walking out into the arena. Ingrid opened with a stunning spell, which Alexis dodged, snapping back with a reddish spellglow, which Ingrid dodged, turning the motion into some kind of arc spell twisted into a loose spiral. Surprisingly powerful, Liz was a little impressed, and spread out over a large area, would be difficult to block or dodge.
For a human, anyway — Alexis flame-walked right behind Ingrid, and put a stunning charm in her back before she could turn around, the junior Champion dropping unconscious barely five seconds into the duel.
Not that Liz was surprised. From the First Task, she knew Ingrid was a competent duellist, but it was not her strongest area — as the recent healing Task had demonstrated, Ingrid had been picked as Durmstrang's second Champion for her skills in other areas. (Trying to balance off Viktor's strong and weak points, Liz would guess.) Alexis wasn't quite at Artèmi's level, but fucking nobody here was, she was very good. With the gulf between their skill levels, there was simply no other way that match was going to end.
The match after that was Chelsea's. The instant the start was called, Chelsea laid in hard on the Durmstrang girl with a fast stream of curses. She'd baited her into shielding the first couple weaker ones before quickly escalating with more powerful ones, pinning her down, stepping forward as she went to further narrow the time she had to react — she clearly hadn't expected Chelsea to be quite so aggressive of a duellist, her shield had wavered for a second at the beginning as she almost dropped it before leaning back into it to tank the next hex, her posture tense. Chelsea shattered her shield once, sending her staggering back, but she managed to get a second shield up...and then Chelsea shattered that one too, just a couple spells later.
The last curse actually punched right through the destabilised shield, the remaining magic not coherent enough to disrupt the spell envelope...and then the curse punched through the girl's chest as well. Upper right quarter, shouldn't have hit anything important, the sudden spray of blood out of her back made it look worse than it probably was. The girl reared back and fell to her knees, one hand reflexively coming up to her wound — a house-elf appeared at her elbow and popped her away after only a couple seconds.
Chelsea had started off pretty good to begin with, but, after a term practising with the team and learning proper duelling spells, she'd gotten even better. Still quick and aggressive, the streams of hexes she threw out varying between different spell classes unpredictably to make them harder to shield, and she could be shockingly brutal for such a sweet friendly Hufflepuff. She wasn't great at dealing with surprises, had a harder time getting back into her groove if someone managed to throw her off — which Liz could manage pretty easily by just quick-stepping around her to come at an unexpected angle — but if she could end a fight quickly that didn't really matter. Quite impressive, honestly, the degree to which she'd improved just since joining the team had taken Liz by surprise.
Of course, Liz was also gotten much more dangerous in the same timespan, but Chelsea was a normal person.
Ron bloody Weasley and some lilin boy were next — Weasley was flattened in barely ten seconds. He would have ended up facing Évariste before Liz had to fight him, but still, good. She wanted to spend as little time as possible around that annoying little shite, even if that time was spent hexing him.
Next up was Évariste and some Durmstranger, but Liz wouldn't get to watch it. She was called out of the room with her opponent — a girl from Durmstrang she'd never seen before, named Halina...something Slavic-sounding — into the shaded area outside, the stands to the left hidden from view by the canvas ceiling suspended overhead. They passed the lilin who'd just fought Weasley on the way, and Liz thanked him for kicking his arse for her, to the general bemusement of everyone in earshot. Liz and Halina were directed to stand near the big door set into the wooden barrier wall, very familiar from the Third Task, where they would wait.
There was no display here they could watch the match through, unfortunately. Not that it really mattered, Liz seriously doubted Évariste would lose.
They were standing waiting for maybe ten seconds before she felt the Durmstrang girl's attention fixing on her, Liz glanced that way. She was taller than Liz (but then, wasn't everyone), with long light brown hair held in a practical plait, dressed in plain duelling-style trousers and jacket, a sort of half-cape-looking-thing off one shoulder in Durmstrang colours — there was no uniform for the Task, but they were supposed to wear something to identify their school. Liz had gone with her Hogwarts uniform cloak — worn angled to one side, so it didn't get in the way of her wand arm — and her Slytherin quidditch scarf, which she'd been told was good enough. Of course, she was also wearing a dress, because there was no uniform for the event, so she could wear whatever the hell she wanted. Even after years of quidditch and duelling, she still didn't like wearing trousers if she could help it. Some women professional duellists wore skirts on stage, so she didn't see why she couldn't.
Honestly, she was considering asking Flitwick if it'd be possible to come up with a more feminine uniform design for the duelling team for when she was Captain — optional, just so the girls on the team could have it if they wanted to — but she thought he might think it was silly and frivolous, so she hadn't gotten around to it yet.
Anyway, once the Durmstranger saw she had Liz's attention, she dipped her head in one of those silly polite noble gestures. "Halina Wiśniewska."
Yeah, Liz wasn't remembering the surname — it'd probably be easier to keep in her head if she'd absorbed any Slavic language by now, but, in one ear out the other. "Elizabeth Potter."
In very awkward-sounding, overly-formal French, she said, "I wish you good luck in our duel."
"...Sure." Weird bloody thing to bother saying, but fine. Probably some silly noble shite — the name sounded Polish, she remembered the noble families had at least partially survived the Revolution there. "I'll try not to hurt you too badly."
Halina made a face at that, irritation sparking in her head. More at the rudeness than the sentiment, Liz was pretty sure — she'd watched Liz in the previous Tasks, so was pretty sure she was about to lose.
They were standing there for maybe only a couple more minutes before the door swung open, pushed from the other side, and Évariste walked through. The tall, willowy, silver-blond veela seemed completely untouched from his fight, his Beauxbatons duelling team uniform spotless. His mind was all gleeful and bubbly, putting a skip in his step. She could feel the funny veela/lilin soul magic compulsion worm its way into her, making her feel light and giddy, a smile twitching at her lips — it was also unpleasantly frigid, light magic, Liz winced and tried to pull away. She thought he might have noticed that (or maybe just picked up on the dark-tinted magic so close to his own aura), twitched and glanced her way. Bursting into a grin, he chirped, "Potter! Hello, again. Didn't get a moment to drop by earlier. And don't you look nice today," he said, somewhat bemusedly, since turning up to a duelling event in a dress was a slightly odd thing to do. She was pretty sure she was the only girl in the Task wearing a skirt.
Of course, his attention crawling over her body — mostly in an aren't you adorable way than a sexy way, it wasn't that much more uncomfortable than just talking to someone — was also cold, Liz bit the inside of a cheek and clenched her fists to hold in a shiver. "Eyes up, Delacour. That didn't take you very long, did it."
He was confused for a second, worrying he was creeping her out. "Ah, the duel? No, I don't think Durmstrang are putting their best foot forward. No offence," he added to Halina. He didn't get a verbal reply, just a stiff nod, the Durmstranger slipping through the door past him — Halina had gone rigid as soon as the veela had shown his face, Liz couldn't tell if she could feel the weird soul magic stuff or if it was just racism. "I expect I'll be seeing you two matches ahead. I'm looking forward to it. Artèmi and Lexi both got to fight you one-on-one, but I haven't gotten a turn yet — I've been feeling a little left out, you know."
...Liz was a bloody cheating mind mage, and she still couldn't tell whether the silly boy was being serious or not. "What, getting struck by lightning just the once wasn't enough for you?" Honestly, she'd felt like a complete fucking badass in the First Task, exploiting Artèmi's trio partners being distracted by the fight to pop around and knock them out one and then the other. But she guessed that wasn't quite the same thing as a proper one-on-one duel, was it? She'd technically beaten Artèmi too, but she didn't really think that counted either — despite what she pretended to think whenever she and Artèmi were in the same room just to annoy her. "Anyway, I've got my own Durmstranger to beat down, wait your turn like a good boy."
Liz didn't stick around, moving through the door before she was even quite finished with the sentence — but she could still feel that Évariste found it very funny, bright and bubbling and intoxicating, she didn't quite manage to hold in a giggle. She was pretty sure the comment about how he'd be a very good boy for her was supposed to be suggestive, but she only half-heard it, the door swinging closed behind her again, so she was saved from coming up with a response.
They'd compressed the arena somehow, a patch of red clay that looked about the same size as the standard field for team matches filling the whole space that had held a rocky little hilltop and a dragon last she'd seen it — she was pretty sure the arena for the Third Task had been...twice the size? at least? Liz glanced up at the stands to her left, which made it very very obvious there was some space-expansion going on here. The image was warped in places, the light seeming to bend here, making the figures a little smeared or distorting the colours, or to refract there, chinks of the stands sticking out at funny angles with washed out images of people arrayed on them, the supposedly flat lines of the benches seeming to jump up or down at random times or slant at funny angles. Lensing effects from wards with space-manipulation elements, definitely — they'd be able to see the whole field just fine, but it looked funny from this side.
Of course, the important thing to Liz was that, despite the fact that she knew hundreds of people must be looking at her right now, she couldn't feel their eyes at all. There was a vague sense of pressure in the direction of the stands, but it wasn't nearly intrusive enough to actually distract her from what she was doing. Putting the crowd out of her mind, Liz turned away from the stands and followed Halina out to the chalk circle in the middle.
They actually couldn't hear the announcer in here at all, probably concerned that would be a distraction for everyone else, but that didn't really matter — duelling was popular enough in Europe that Liz assumed all the contestants would be generally familiar with the expected etiquette anyway. Liz joined Halina in the middle of the circle — bantering with Évariste had put her a few seconds behind — once they were both in place doing the proper formal bowing and everything. Well, technically, Liz curtsied, which was what she was told you were supposed to do instead when wearing a skirt — Sirius had taught her how to do it properly, as part of the dancing lessons ahead of the Yule Ball.
Halina seemed a bit baffled, and maybe slightly derisive, which was something of a relief, if Liz was being honest. At least she wasn't the only girl who sometimes kind of reflexively thought of super feminine shite as silly and...she didn't know the right word, exactly. ("Weak" wasn't quite right.) She was trying to work on that impulse — after being cued into wondering what was up with that by Severus jokingly reminding her that she was a girl a handful of times — but she couldn't help it sometimes, so, seeing other girls had problems with the same kind of thinking at least made her feel like slightly less of a fuck-up.
Liz turned on her heel, sharply enough her skirt swished around her knees a little, and retreated back to her side of the chalk circle. Turning back around to face Halina, she flicked her wrist, her wand popping out of its holster into her hand. Halina had taken a proper stance she must have been taught by some duelling tutor at some point — turned 45 degrees on to Liz, her wand arm forward, held at about waist level, to move right into a hex or a shield. Looked like she'd gotten proper formal training, which, duellists who'd gone through that sort of thing were a mixed bag, some really rigid and uncreative and others extremely dangerous. Artèmi had been formally trained, after all.
This wasn't going to be nearly that difficult, though. Liz had a good feeling.
After Liz and Halina stood staring at each other for a moment, there was a low sharp bong, deep enough Liz felt it vibrating in her chest — instantly, Liz snapped off a dark stunning hex, a blasting curse, and then a shield-breaker, before digging in her toes and jumping into a quick-step. Her periphery vision smeared out, her hair and scarf and skirt whipping behind her, she skid to a stop just to Halina's left. She was staggering backward, disoriented by the effects of the shield-breaker, Halina ducked a stripping hex, getting her feet back under her, blocked a blasting curse with a little disc of a shield (similar to contege, but a different colour), wand swishing back the other way casting some kind of arc spell — Liz didn't recognise it, but it was definitely light, sharp and cold and nauseating on the air.
Liz wasn't confident of her ability to block the unfamiliar hex, so she quick-stepped away instead, back and to the left, to give her more space for a second quick-step that would actually take her out of the way. (They'd been standing pretty close together, it was possible dodging straight to the side would have resulted in being hit by it in transit.) She came out several metres to Halina's right, the girl whipping around to face her. "Lacera, svartísi hvíðu!"
Halina put up a shield against the complex blasting curse — powerful enough to hold pretty well too, exploding with a shivering boom-crackle, lightning clawing at the ground — but that was exactly what Liz had expected. The follow-up spellglow was wider and longer than usual, and black, glimmering with silvery specks (like stars in the night), struck the shield before the lightning had even entirely faded. The odd spellglow seemed to transform itself into a liquid, running up the curve of the shield, and then abruptly freezing into hard black ice — solid and sparkling in the light, a smooth curve following the shield and reaching up and back into sharp spines at the sides and top. As though the shield had been blasted with water and then instantly frozen, or as though ice crystals had gradually formed under a stiff wind.
The ice would stay whether Halina kept the shield up or not, but it didn't matter — Liz's next move was the same regardless. Sucking a deep breath through her nose, calling up magic thick and hot and burning in her chest, intense enough it hurt more than a little, gritting her teeth, she hissed, "Apó astrapás sintétripso!"
The curse seared its way down her arm, leaping out of her wand with enough physical force that she staggered back a step, a bright flash of light crossing the metres between them in a blink — and with an audible boom, the air seeming to shiver. It struck the wall of black ice, and it shattered with an ear-splitting grinding and tearing, chunks of ice flung out in a cone. But, electricity sizzling and popping and snapping, the lightning hadn't gone away, arcs constantly zipping between the countless bits of ice, the lightshow bright enough Liz couldn't see what was happening over there very well at all.
She couldn't hear anything over the noise either, but she did feel a stomach-dropping lurch of shock and a flare of hot, stinging pain from the only other mind in reach.
Liz started walking in that direction before the electrified ice had even fully settled, grimacing against the pain radiating from Halina. She was still conscious, propped up with both hands on the dirt, trying to get a knee under her so she could stand up — by the pattern of scorch marks on her uniform, Liz would guess her legs maybe weren't cooperating right now. There were stripes of burns on her arms too, Liz was honestly surprised she was managing to push herself up that much. Once she was close enough she could aim precisely, Liz knocked her out with a quick stunning charm. Really a mercy, at this point, those burns looked like they fucking hurt, and she might as well be unconscious while she was being bundled off to the healers.
Once Halina was down, there was another low boom, marking the end of the duel. Liz glanced up at the stands — she could see people were applauding up there, but she still couldn't hear them at all. Slipping her wand back into its holster, she dipped into a second quick curtsey, then turned and walked back toward the entrance.
A couple of minds had appeared in the arena with her, staff meeting her at the door, she had no idea where they'd been a second ago. One of them cast a couple quick healing analysis charms (Liz tried not to grimace at the prickly spines clawing over her) as the other opened the door. He must not have found anything wrong — she had overchannelled a little bit, but not enough to do any serious damage — because she was waved through the door without comment. There were two students waiting there, one from Beauxbatons and one from Durmstrang (she didn't recognise either of them), they traded nods as Liz went by.
By the time she got back the waiting room, Ingham and an unfamiliar Durmstranger were on their way out. She felt Ingham watching her, curiosity sparking in her head — Liz had seen Ingham around, but she went to Beauxbatons, they'd never spoken before — but they passed each other by without a word, Liz stepping back inside. The chair Liz had been in before was still empty, though Katie had sat down on one of the arms since she'd left, leaning at an angle against the back. Liz hesitated a moment, before flopping down into the chair anyway — she was sitting pretty close, but it was only Katie.
"You know," Katie drawled, dark amusement shivering and sparking in her head, "I'm starting to get the feeling you enjoy electrocuting people."
Liz shrugged. "If it's what works."
"You're kind of scary, you know that?"
"Just a couple months ago, you were thinking I was mumsy."
Liz wasn't trying to be funny, but that just made Katie even more amused — and something else, softer and squishier. "Yeah, well, sometimes mums are scary."
...Yeah, Liz was just going to not respond to that.
Of course, Katie thought Liz just awkwardly dropping it and moving on was also adorable, because apparently she just couldn't win.
(She realised Katie meant that sort of thing as a compliment, with the weird isolated agrarian subculture she'd been raised in and all, but it still made Liz uncomfortable.)
By the time Liz was paying attention again Ingham's duel was already starting up, the match between them must have been very short. It didn't take very long at all for Ingham to flatten the Durmstranger, a couple exchanges in maybe only ten seconds — Liz guessed it wasn't really a surprise that the girl Eustace Scrimgeour was courting was actually kind of a badass. After that, Artaimís was up, fighting some Durmstranger boy...and she lost. Liz had expected Artaimís to not make it very far, since she was only a first year. She managed to hold on for a couple minutes, but she spent most of the fight scrambling to defend herself, dodging and rolling and throwing up shields only to tumble away as they shattered — rather athletic, which was impressive in its own way, but she just wasn't good enough yet for this competition.
Next up was Katie, against some Durmstranger, and then Eustace, against a girl from Beauxbatons. Naturally, they both downed their opponents in only a few seconds — Katie pelting her opponent with a conjured bludger that sailed straight through the shield raised to stop a blasting curse, stunning her while she was disoriented, and Eustace just overwhelming his with a thick rain of curses too rapid and powerful to resist. They'd be facing each other in their next match which was going to be...interesting. And by interesting, she mostly meant Katie was probably going to lose, but Liz still wanted to see how well she did.
The rest of the matches in the first round were quick and largely uninteresting. Artèmi won hers instantly — her opening hex went right through the shield her opponent raised to stop it, ending the fight with literally the first spell — which was just as anyone should have expected. Selwyn downed some bloke from Beauxbatons after maybe thirty seconds, Sadhbh set her opponent on fire after a brief exchange, and the last match was a pretty bland, boring duel, the two tossing plain spellglows back and forth and hardly even moving much, ended in maybe a minute.
After five, ten minutes to let people dip into the toilets if they had to and for the eliminated contestants to get up to the stands, they moved straight into the next round — there would be a proper break before the quarterfinals, but this event would already be long enough without wasting time. Next up was Oz and the Beauxbatons girl who'd beaten Grey. Oz and the girl walked out together, Oz being his usual chatty gregarious self, the girl laughing as they disappeared through the door. Liz couldn't hear it from here, but she was pretty sure, from the feelings coming off their minds, that Oz had been jokingly flirting. Oz did have a girlfriend, so definitely jokingly flirting, he was just silly like that sometimes.
"Oz is such a suave little bastard sometimes," Katie drawled. Oh, so she'd noticed it too, not just Liz imagining it then. "I swear, he has to be trying to be as charming as possible at al times, he's been like this since second year, it's so weird."
"You take a turn being charmed, then?"
"Well, we did go to Hogsmeade together once, back in third year, but it didn't work out."
...Liz might have guessed that, honestly. Not that Katie and Oz went on a date once, there was absolutely no hint of anything like that in the way they talked to each other, they were just friends — Liz did catch them checking each other out now and then, but that was perfectly normal for teenagers, didn't really mean anything. (Liz would be a huge hypocrite to judge Oz for noticing Katie's, well, everything, and she was aware Oz kind of liked Liz herself, but he had no intention of actually doing anything about it, so.) She meant, if it'd occurred to her to think about it, she might have guessed that a relationship between them wouldn't have worked. It was hard to put her finger on why, exactly, the vibes just weren't right.
...
They were both romantics, in their own way, but they were both active — she meant, they were inclined to be the one sweeping people off their feet, or whatever, not to be the sweep-ee. Liz hadn't really payed any attention to Katie and her last boyfriend — she hadn't even realised they were dating until after they broke up, in fact — and she was pretty sure Katie was dating one of the sixth-year Ravenclaw girls at the moment, didn't know anything about that at all (didn't even remember her name), so she could be pulling this out of her arse, but that was the feeling she got. She could imagine how that could make trying to date kind of awkward.
Honestly, Liz would have absolutely no idea how to be the...idea person in a relationship, so Katie being into it might actually be convenient. As long as Katie being all squishy and romantic didn't make her too uncomfortable, anyway. But Liz still wasn't ready to try dating again, so that didn't really matter at the moment — also, she was pretty sure Katie was dating that Ravenclaw girl for now. Still good to know for later, she guessed.
...Okay, that was a weird tangent to go down, what the hell. Just, pay attention to the duelling, fuck's sake.
By then Oz and the Beauxbatons girl were on the display, in the middle of the arena, they did the proper bows and everything before retreating to the chalk circle. The image was good enough that Liz could see they were both grinning — apparently they'd entertained themselves with whatever they'd been talking about along the way. They stood unmoving for a moment, waiting for the start, before Oz abruptly lunged forward and stabbed out with his wand (another exaggerated somatic form), a bludgeoning or piercing hex jumping from the tip. (Liz couldn't tell for sure which without feeling the magic.) The girl had obviously seen that coming, started sidling to the side before the hex had even started flying, casting some kind of arc spell, and then a bright silvery-white hex (light magic, definitely), Oz blocking the first and stepping around the second, adding the movement to the slash of a slicing curse, more hexes spitting from his wand with little flicks, she blocked the slicing curse and dodged the next hex, as she ducked under the next cast something at the ground with a big sweeping circle—
In a blink, a huge patch of the clay arena was covered in a layer of ice, the surface smooth and reflective...and the girl was, somehow, sliding unnaturally quick and easily along it, leaning a little into a curve around Oz — that had to be magic of some kind, it was not natural movement, the way she just slid along visibly unnatural. Not to mention her balance should be way off. Oz was taken by surprise, his boots skittering on the ice, the girl shot a couple hexes at him — while still moving, aim impressively precise — and Oz just fell, the hexes shooting over his head, cast some kind of spell to vanish the ice under him. Getting up on a knee, he tossed a hex at the girl, and she just sped up slightly, the spell going wide, and fired back at him, one hex after another after another, the girl kept sliding across the ice in a circle around Oz, trying to overwhelm his shield. That was going to be difficult to do, Oz was excellent with shield charms — the girl even managed to shatter it at least once, but Oz replaced it more quickly than she could get another hex off. He wasn't quite as good with defensive magics as Brendan, but he could probably keep that up indefinitely anyway.
Of course, just keeping a shield up wouldn't help him actually win. He occasionally managed to fire off a hex at the girl, but she just had to vary her speed to throw him off. After probably a good two minutes of this, Oz tried to get clever — a hot gust of wind turned a strip of ice radiating out from the centre into a cloud of steam, a little bit ahead of the girl. But she just jumped — unexpectedly high to get over the gap, probably assisted with featherweight and/or banishing charms — turning in mid-air as she flew through the steam, landed again moving backwards, tossing more hexes at Oz underhand...
Huh. Now that Liz thought about it, the way she was moving was kind of reminding her of catching some muggle figure skating on the television at the Dursleys, bloody ages ago. (While dusting out Petunia's bloody annoying cabinet of bric-a-brac and souvenirs and whatever, Liz hated that thing, but she wasn't thinking about that.) The way the girl moved over the ice was similar — a little too fast and easy, and she didn't need to do whatever the proper term was for the thing the skaters did to propel themselves along, presumably she was using some kind of magic for that. And the way she'd turned in the air and landed backwards, just, too similar, it couldn't be a coincidence. Was this girl a figure skater? Did mages even do figure skating? She didn't actually know, it'd never come up...
Anyway, Oz tried to break up the ice, the girl jumping over it every time, occasionally repairing it with additional castings of whatever spell that was. Oz cast some kind of wide-angle arc spell, the girl jumped high, turning at an odd slant, her body parallel to the ground, her wand coming out to jab downward as she dropped. There was a bright flash of light as the girl hit the ground, and then a sudden explosion of pure white snow, a thick wall of it sent flying in all directions — fuck, Liz had some experience with water-based elemental spells, casting that much ice at once was absurd. The deluge of snow went right through Oz's shield — not designed for physical force, apparently — the impact and the weight knocking him over onto his side, hard, half-buried in the stuff.
There was a dizzying lurch as the image zoomed in — Oz's wand had bounced out of his hand, skittering away across the ice. It zoomed out again, the girl was effortlessly gliding across the ice, curving around Oz toward his wand, summoning it up to her free hand with a flick. She reversed directions with a couple of graceful-looking curls — definitely reminding Liz of figure skating, simply could not be a coincidence — making back toward Oz. Another powerful elemental charm of some kind had the ice and the snow gusting up into a thin wispy fog, starting at the middle of the field and spreading out in a wave — the girl smoothly hopped off the ice as it vanished out from under her and skipped to a halt, standing over Oz to hold him at wand-point.
...Fucking hell.
There was a little bit of delay before they moved on to the next duel, the display showing a few adults crawling across the field doing some kind of spellwork. Reversing whatever magic might still be in the environment and drying it out, Liz would guess. There was a bit of low chatter in the waiting room — not all of it in languages Liz understood, but by the mix of feelings on the air, she would guess a lot of them were as impressed by that trick with the ice as Liz was. Finally, Évariste and his opponent (another boy from Beauxbatons) were being called out to wait their turn, and Chelsea and Alexis were walking into view on-screen. Liz fully expected Chelsea to lose this match. Chelsea was pretty good, even better than she'd been in the club's tournaments before she'd learned any proper battlemagic, but Alexis was better. More powerful and more practised, yes, but also wandless fire magic was cheating.
Maybe she'd be able to hold out for a little bit, though? She could be thrown off by getting knocked out of her rhythm, but she did have practice now with Liz quick-stepping around, maybe she'd be able to keep up. Liz could still throw her off, but then, she was familiar with Chelsea's style by now, which was an advantage Alexis didn't have. Though, the mind magic shield she'd taught all her teammates wouldn't work on the soul magic lilin did — Alexis could distract Chelsea just as easily as she'd done against Liz in their sole one-on-one duel, back over the summer. So, it was mixed, hard to say how it would go. Still pretty sure Chelsea would lose, though.
Chelsea and Alexis did the proper formal bowing and everything, retreated to the chalk circle. They stood waiting for a moment — Alexis smirking, hips cocked, Chelsea tense and ready to jump. Then they both abruptly started moving, Chelsea tossing off a curse, Alexis stepping to the side even as she cast her first spell, which Chelsea also dodged, casting more curses as she went, Alexis dodging the first, catching the rest on a glittering greenish shield (Liz didn't know that one) while throwing a stream of black lilin fire with her free hand, Chelsea deflecting it to the side with some kind of wind charm, turning the flourish into a long curling motion, a slicing curse contorted into a dense spiral, Alexis vanished in a burst of black fire instead of trying to deal with that.
In the instant she had before Alexis came out cursing, Chelsea cast...some kind of elemental charm, conjuring a bank of misty fog in the middle of the arena. There was another quick exchange of spell-fire, the light reflecting off of the suspended water droplets on the air making the spellglows seem larger than they actually were — Chelsea and Alexis were still mostly visible, only slightly greyed out, the refractive effects on the spellglows were much more noticeable, the blobs of coloured light making it a little hard to see what was going on. The spell-fire only lasted maybe fifteen seconds, Alexis fire-walking again—
The cloud of fog undulated, a wave staring in the middle and spreading out, a burst of rainbow sparks carried along it — and the sparks lingered, little multicoloured sizzles zapping between the miniscule water droplets suspended in the air, a constant subtle lightshow. What the hell...?
Whatever Chelsea had done had cleared the air a little bit, enough to make out what was happening more clearly through the multicoloured electricity. She rolled over her shoulder to avoid the curse Alexis came out of her fire-walking with, cast a wide arc-spell while still on one knee, the powerful curse buying her time to get back up to her feet. Chelsea jumped right into a chain of curses, fast and aggressive — by the dullness of the spellglows, how some of them seemed to shiver a little, unstable, they must be cast rather weaker and more sloppy than she could manage, but she was prioritising speed, trying to overwhelm Alexis with sheer volume. After all, getting hit with a weak, sloppy blasting curse would still fucking hurt. Alexis managed to dodge or block all of them, but she only got the rare spell of her own off, her aim even a little wide for a couple of them, thrown off by trying to snap back to cast a shield too quickly, Alexis retreating step by step. Which was kind of impressive, really — Alexis wasn't as fast as Artèmi, but she wasn't exactly slow either — but then, Chelsea had always been a rather aggressive duellist, so. Finally, Alexis decided she wasn't going to get the upper hand this way, vanishing in a burst of black fire, a second flare of fire simultaneously appearing behind Chelsea—
All the little rainbow sparks of electricity, directionless sizzling in the air, abruptly zeroed in on Alexis, landing like a dozen strikes of lightning all at once, Alexis temporarily obscured with a bright flash of multicoloured light. The energetic reaction had apparently forced all the water out of the air, the image perfectly clear — showing Alexis laid out on the ground, her clothing and her skin striped with countless burns, unconscious. An elf popped in to ferry her over to the healers before Chelsea had even managed to whirl around to face her.
...
What the fuck was that?!
"Damn," Katie muttered, low and slow, her mind shivering with something unreadable. "Chelsea's been holding out on us."
Yeah, no shite.
Évariste was up next, but Liz wouldn't get to watch it, she and some Durmstranger whose name she hadn't bothered to remember were called out to wait their turn. Liz was still rather dazed by the sudden end to Chelsea's match, staring open-mouthed at the display, Katie had to tap her arm to get her attention. They passed Chelsea in the shaded area between the arena and the waiting room — grinning, her mind ecstatic and sparkling. Liz paused, the Durmstranger continuing ahead of her, "What was that?"
Drifting to a halt, Chelsea said, "Hmm? Oh, you mean the lightning?"
"Yes, I mean the lightning! I don't— That was awesome, how did you figure that out?"
Chelsea grinned, mind warm and squishy, pleased with the compliment — Liz did always win in their practice duels, after all. "I knew I might end up needing to fight veela or lilin, here or at our next event over the summer, so I looked it up. Found a reference during the war against their empire to— Did you know there was a worldwide war to force people into Secrecy?"
"Um, yeah, I've read about it."
"Binns never mentioned it, I had no idea until Ollivander started. Anyway, yeah, there was a reference to how wizards won against their people back then, I tracked down the spells. Wasn't sure I'd have time to get off both of them, but it worked out."
"Well, shite, good show." Probably not the most politic spells to be using, when Liz thought about it. She knew from a French history book Tamsyn had recommended that veela and lilin considered the war Chelsea was talking about (plus various conflicts in the preceding generations) to be an attempted genocide — supposedly, their population still hadn't recovered to 15th Century numbers. (Not as bad as the vampires got it, but still bad.) Using spells humans had invented to try to murder their entire species was maybe, you know...rude? Not the most considerate thing to do, at least. Though, it seemed like Alexis herself hadn't recognised them, presumably she would have moved out of the fog if she had. "We clearly need to practise elemental magic more, that was really good. I know plenty of good lightning-based spells, we can look into it."
Chelsea giggled, sounding slightly hysterical. "What, not electrocuting enough people yourself, so you have to get me in on it too?"
"Hey, someone in your trio's gotta do it — now that you've shown a talent for it, it might as well be you."
At least she was trying to be funny this time, people laughing at her was just vaguely satisfying when she was doing it on purpose.
This time, her opponent didn't try to introduce herself at all, just stood there tense and uncomfortable, dread coming off of her in thick, hot, steamy waves. Halina was actually one of the better duellists in the duelling club in their year — which was fair enough, Liz guessed, she'd seemed decent — and Liz had hardly broken a sweat. This girl lost to Halina with some regularity, she fully expected Liz to effortlessly crush her — she was not looking forward to being electrocuted. Which was just kind of funny, honestly.
A flare of discomfort, the girl belatedly noticed Liz in her head (tipped off by the foreign sense of amusement), firmed up her mind to push her out — she didn't do a very good job, obviously not particularly skilled with occlumency. Liz retreated just to be polite, since she hadn't really intended to worm her way in there in the first place, but she was just being polite.
...Well, she knew how she was going to beat this girl without hurting her now.
They stood there in uncomfortable silence (on the girl's end) for at least a few minutes. Apparently the lilin who'd beaten Weasley was quite good. Finally, the door swung open, Évariste walking through — he was limping a little, a healer following close at his shoulder, his too-cold mind flickering with pain. Liz grit her teeth, trying to push the feeling off. (Veela could be such a pain just being around, honestly.) His uniform was blackened and torn in a couple places, hot lilin magic still clinging to it, obviously his opponent had managed to get in a few good hits. Liz was a little disappointed she hadn't seen the match, looked like it'd been quite a show.
The Durmstranger slipped through, but Liz lingered for a second. "You're going to be fixed up in time for our match, right? Would hardly seem fair to kick your arse when you're not well."
Évariste gave her a toothy, bloody grin. "Oh, don't worry about me, Liz, this fine bloke will have me all fixed up in time to burn that smug smirk off your face."
Ooh, someone was in a sour mood. Being sure to put a smug smirk on her face, Liz drawled, "In time for you to try, maybe." She turned and walked out into the arena before Évariste could respond, someone swinging the door closed behind her.
Liz followed her opponent out onto the field, frowning a little at the magic on the air — it was subtle, but she felt something, cold and hot and...ticklish. Odd. Lingering effects from some interaction between veela and lilin magic? She expected the staff must have tried to clear it, it wasn't nearly intense enough to interfere with casting anything, but it was peculiar. Anyway, meet the Durmstranger in the circle, proper curtsey, retreat back to the chalk line.
She didn't bother drawing her wand, the Durmstranger's mind sparking with confusion. Liz smiled, which the girl just found unnerving — which was also funny, Liz had to choke back the urge to laugh out loud.
The instant the starting bell rung, Liz forced herself into the girl's aura, interposing herself between her mind and her body — and, sinking down even while she pulled up, stole control of it away. It felt funny, the phantom feeling of the girl's body thick with pins and needles, half numb, her head spun for a second, temporarily disoriented by the doubled set of senses coming in. Liz was completely ignoring her sight and hearing, or anything limited just to her head, because she didn't need those to move her, but it still took a moment to get used to, suddenly sort of having two bodies.
Nauseating horror surged in the girl's mind as she tried to move, but couldn't, which was just uncomfortable. She didn't have much attention to spare, but she tried to press a flat, cool feeling of ease into the girl's head anyway — calm down, I'm not going to hurt you. We have an audience, remember.
Liz-as-herself started to walk across the chalk circle toward the girl — a bit stiffly and slowly, controlling two bodies at once was hard — while Liz-as-the– while Liz-as-Minna sank down to her knees. As Liz-as-herself got within arm's reach, Liz-as-Minna offered up her wand with both hands; Liz-as-herself took it, and Liz-as-Minna held her hands low to her sides, open with fingers splayed, bowing her head. With her surrender, there was another bong echoing through the air — the match was over, without even one proper spell cast.
Liz-as-herself handed Liz-as-Minna her wand back. There, I didn't electrocute you — you're welcome. Liz let go of her hold on Minna's body, shaking off the moment of disorientation as she snapped back to just being herself. Ignoring the frothing-clingy-sickly-sweet discomfort and fear boiling off of Minna, Liz turned to their audience, dipped in another curtsey, and started back toward the door.
She passed Ingham and her opponent from Durmstrang, not at the door, but several metres past it well into the shaded area — the match had been so quick that the pair after her hadn't had time to get all the way to the door to wait. At the surprise and confusion wafting off of them, Liz just shrugged, continued on. One of the staff people was standing at the door into the waiting room building, calling for the next pair, Liz had to wait a moment for them to clear the entrance. The staff person backed off, and then Eustace came through, shortly followed by Katie. Dark amusement bubbling in his head, Eustace drawled, "Perfectly intimidating, Potter," as he walked by.
"Thanks...?" She wasn't entirely certain whether that'd been intended as a compliment.
"Did you just possess that girl?" Katie asked. There was a slight anxious edge in her mind asking the question — she wasn't unaware of the fact that Liz could be kind of scary, but sometimes she was more strongly reminded.
"Yeah?"
Katie bit out a thick sigh — abruptly, for some inexplicable reason, the strongest feeling going on in there now was exasperation. "Liz, was that really necessary?"
"Well, no. But, she was scared of how much being electrocuted was going to hurt, so, winning without actually cursing her at all seemed like the kinder thing to do." Liz realised she was kind of shite at this stuff sometimes, but she legitimately had been trying to be nice.
That just made Katie feel even more exasperated, strong and thick enough and with a cool edge of dark humour that it was actually almost reminding Liz of Severus. "You realise you probably just traumatised her for life. Okay, probably not literally, but you know what I mean. It wasn't the kinder thing to do, Liz, honestly."
...Oh.
Okay, when she slowed down and thought about it, that should have been obvious. She'd been thinking, just, win without hurting Minna at all, how could she do that? Stunning and binding charms weren't a guarantee, if Minna was at least a minimally decent duellist. If she used compulsions to try to force Minna to surrender, she could at least try to resist it, which could be unpleasant and even painful depending on how it goes — not to mention it would inevitably be a massive invasion of her privacy. It hadn't seemed like Minna's self-awareness was good enough to even detect Liz possessing her — it was a very different kind of influence than normal mind magic, acting on the body directly instead of the mind, most people weren't accustomed to paying that close of attention to the energy of their own body to even notice — and it wouldn't require seeing any of Minna's memories at all, so. It'd seemed the softest option.
It was possible that so closely feeling Minna's dread, waiting for their turn, had motivated her to find a way to win without hurting her more than was...entirely rational. Liz was fully aware that she would freak the fuck out if someone were to just steal away control of her body like that — especially if it was someone she was already mildly frightened of. But that thought hadn't occurred to her at the time, it— She was a crazy person, she normally didn't assume that people would react to things the same way she would, because she knew they often didn't. So, sometimes, before doing things, it didn't occur to her to wonder how she would feel about being on the other side of it — she didn't assume it was relevant. She maybe probably should have thought about that, for a second at least.
In her defence, the only person she'd ever actually possessed before was Daphne, and her reaction had been, er...not negative, let's put it that way. Rather intimidated, but not at all in a bad way — which had made absolutely no sense to Liz, but she didn't have to understand why people felt the way they did to notice they did. She wouldn't have expected Minna to find it unnervingly erotic, like Daphne had — Daphne also wasn't a normal person — but, you know, better than being sent to the healers with electrical burns.
Yeah, it really should have occurred to her that that maybe wasn't as neat of a solution as it'd seemed. Too late to do anything about it now, though.
Liz shrugged. "Oops?"
At least Katie couldn't be too deeply unsettled by Liz just openly possessing a girl at a school tournament — she thought that was very funny, for some reason. Liz wasn't trying to be funny this time, but she preferred her friends not be scared of her, so she'd take it.
The waiting room was starting to get a little empty at this point. By the time she got back, the students still in here had dropped to seven: Chelsea, Artèmi and Évariste, Sadhbh and Selwyn, the Beauxbatons girl who did the figure-skating-like trick, and some Durmstranger Liz hadn't paid attention to. (Liz herself made eight.) They were settling into the quarterfinals now, in a few more matches they'd be down to eight players total. As ridiculous and overdone as this Task was, it wouldn't be too much longer now.
Stepping inside, she felt eyes flick to her, unease and suspicion emanating from multiple minds...reminding her rather a lot of second year, when a depressing proportion of the school had been irrationally convinced she was petrifying people for some unfathomable reason, or way back at the beginning of first year, when she'd talked to a snake and thereby proved that she must be evil. Or, you know, any number of things between then and now, when too many of the kids at Hogwarts got all paranoid that she was a super scary dark witch over some random thing or another. She generally found those irritating — most of the time she hadn't even done anything — but this time she had to admit, yeah, the ability to casually steal control of people's bodies away from them was pretty intimidating. This was fair.
Liz ignored it as well as she could, just walked across the room and flopped back into her chair. By the time she sat down, Ingham's match with some Durmstrang boy was already coming to an end, the Durmstranger marked up with a couple spells and limping, stumbling back and flailing to hold off a stream of hexes from Ingham — barely ten seconds later the boy was folded over with some kind of bludgeoning hex slipped right through his shield and then stunned, ending the match. Which meant Eustace was probably going to be fighting his girlfriend next round, awkward. Assuming Katie lost, anyway, which was probably a good bet...
A moment after Ingham cleared the field and her opponent was revived and led off by a healer, Katie and Eustace came wandering into frame, Eustace's long orange hair flicking a little in the light breeze. Eustace was walking all smooth and composed as usual, Katie looking rather tense — but, even without being able to feel her mind, Liz could tell that was a determined tension, her chin up and her hands fisted at her sides. She had to know there was every chance Eustace was going to be kicking the shite out of her, but it looked like she was going to put in a hell of a try anyway. They came to the middle of the field — Scrimgeour said something, Katie rolled her eyes (visible from this distance by how she turned her head) — did the proper bows and everything, retreated to the chalk circle, wands in hand.
Scrimgeour stood in a light stance, loose and ready, but Katie was bouncing on the balls of her feet, her wand tapping impatiently against her hip — eager to get this over with, by the look of it.
Katie leaned to the side even as Scrimgeour lunged forward with a hex (stunning or bludgeoning, maybe), an underhand swish of her wand blasting a thick stream of clay right at Scrimgeour. None of it hit him, hunkering under a hard white shield charm, Katie using the free moment to...transfigure the ground? The reddish clay under her feet was altered in patches, into a whitish-greyish granite. She must have some plan, Liz wasn't sure why that was worth the effort when she could be flinging curses at him. She'd only had a moment, Scrimgeour sending a curse at her, she dodged, retaliating with a binding hex and then a stripping hex (Liz knew what Katie's favoured spells looked like pretty well by now), Scrimgeour replied with a burning orange curse Liz didn't recognise, a flourish of her wand had some of the granite she'd transfigured flowing up into a small barrier, the impact of the curse cracking and then blasting it into a dozen pieces, a wide-angled banishing keeping any of them from hitting Katie, a follow-up hex was deflected away — ooh, perfect timing, she'd started picking up hex deflection while helping Liz with it — Katie twisting the movement into a dark crushing hex, but then she aimed more spells at the ground, transfigurations rounding off the debris, spun out of the way of a hex from Scrimgeour, transfigured up more stone to catch a curse, cracks spiderwebbing through the pillar, Katie then shattering it with an overpowered bludgeoning hex, hard enough some of the pieces went flying at Scrimgeour, he dipped and turned out of the way of the nearest ones, snapping off a few curses, one two three, Katie dodging one and catching two on more transfigured stone, retaliating with hexes of her own, stripping and binding and piercing, a swirl of a wide-angle banishing charm clearing the debris out of a circle around her, transfiguring up another pillar...
After a couple minutes of those kinds of exchanges — Scrimgeour firing off a stream of powerful curses, Katie replying with more minor hexes and defending herself with transfiguration, occasionally flinging the debris away from herself — Liz figured it out: Katie was filling the field with convenient transfiguration material. Clever.
Another series of exchanges, one spell burst against Scrimgeour's shield to release hundreds of little ball bearings around his feet. Scrimgeour paused for a second, clearly bemused — that kind of spell might be useful on a standard duelling stage, with a hard floor, but on clay it seemed kind of pointless. Katie cast a quick series of spells at the debris around her while he was distracted, the stone seeming to flow into new shapes, some wiggling a little in place, one reformed itself into a disc of bronze. A pinkish curse flying in at her, Katie hopped out of the way, landing on the bronze disc, and it abruptly started sliding across the ground, as though its bottom surface were frictionless.
Scrimgeour cast a spell at her, it went wide, he cast a long strip of fire in her path instead. Crouching down on her disc, Katie jumped, a wide swish of her wand turning the fire in front of her into water, Liz heard a couple gasps in the room, minds shivering with surprise. That was elemental transfiguration — someone Katie's age heavily using transfiguration in a fight was already unusual, but elemental transfiguration was a much rarer skill, the magic significantly more difficult, even considered a form of alchemy in the Continental system. (Liz actually found it easier than normal transfiguration, for some reason, because being a mind mage was weird sometimes.) Katie landed on the other side of the fire soaked, her hair and her clothes plastered to her skin, a charm dried her again, the water puffing out in a cloud of steam, she sidled around a curse, another spell concensing the steam into dozens of needles of ice, charmed with some effect by a swirl of her wand, the ice sparkling with contained magic, a jab sent them flying out at Scrimgeour. He intercepted them with a burst of fire, but as they melted they somehow transmuted into lightning — she must have embedded a lightning curse into the ice, which was a neat trick, Katie was unfairly good at ice spells — Scrimgeour scrambling to put up a shield, Katie's bronze disc from before transfigured into a brace of curved, sickle-like blades, sent winging at Scrimgeour with another charm...
Okay, maybe Scrimgeour wasn't as good as Liz remembered? Katie was putting her best foot forward — she'd already pulled out a couple of her best tricks they were working on in practice — but Scrimgeour was having a way harder time keeping up than she would have expected. It'd been over a year since Liz had fought him, maybe she'd just been given an inflated impression of how good he was before she'd gotten proper experience...
During another exchange of spellfire, Katie gestured with her free hand, a piece of debris floating up into the path of an incoming curse, so she could use her wand hand to simultaneously cast a curse of her own — Liz felt herself grin. Pointing at the display, she said, "Did you see that? That was wandless magic, I taught her that." The Aurors wanted applicants to be able to do a minimal amount of wandless magic, particularly a good strong dispel and a summoning charm, and Liz could already do both, so she'd been helping Katie work on that when they weren't busy with something else.
Chelsea's mind bubbled with a funny warm squishy feeling Liz couldn't quite name. Amused, definitely, but she couldn't figure out what the rest of it was about. "Feel more proud of yourself, why don't you."
"I think I will, thanks."
They were several long minutes into the fight — duels didn't normally last nearly this long — when Katie was hit by a hex while setting up another ice elemental effect, snapped out so quick she didn't see it coming in time. A hard bludgeoning charm, Katie was flung off her feet, spun around once before crashing into the transfigured stone ground. Ice sprung up in a dome around her before Scrimgeour's follow-up spells could hit, it was shattered with a blasting curse a moment later, but Katie was springing up to her feet through the ice the same moment, her arm immobilised against her side — something in her shoulder must have been broken or dislocated — gathering up the scattered ice and transmuting it into lightning, zipping between them in a blink, Scrimgeour barely got a shield up in time. Her wand swirling over her head, Katie cast a long spell, her lips silently flapping with the incantation, sidled out of the way of Scrimgeour's first curse, whatever Katie was doing done by the time the second was reaching her, stopped by a contege, snapping back with a blasting curse and a slicing curse and a nightmare curse and—
The stone debris that had been thrown all over the field over the course of the match suddenly moved — round balls and narrower longer spears, all of them lifting off the ground and flying right at Scrimgeour. In the middle of shielding a curse from Katie, he twitched, surprised, the shield cracking enough for the nightmare curse to slip through and hit him. But he kept moving — Scrimgeour's occlumency was good enough to at least partly ignore the hallucinations and terror the spell would create — stepped to the side and fell to a knee, an odd shimmering dome appearing around him, transparent but distorting the light, like a heat haze. All the debris abruptly halted as soon as they entered the haze, all their momentum stripped away, listlessly drifting to the ground over the next couple seconds.
Scrimgeour slapped aside a curse from Katie, came back up to his feet with a torrent of blue-white flames, sweeping out toward her; Katie caught it with a shield, inverted into a bowl, concentrating the fire so she could transmute it into water. It seemed Scrimgeour was on to her tricks now, he swept up some of the stone into a physical barrier even as Katie transfigured the water to lightning, briefly stitching the two duellists together with a jagged flash of blinding light. While he was distracted by the light and the noise, Katie swirled her wand in a spiral at her side, a glowing blue ball accumulating at the tip of her wand. She lobbed it toward Scrimgeour in an underhanded toss, the odd spellglow arcing up before beginning to drop.
Liz smirked — the match was over. Even if Scrimgeour knew what that spell did, and how he started skipping back a step suggested he didn't, it was probably too late to do anything about it.
The blue ball hit the ground, landing among the transfigured stone Scrimgeour had helpfully gathered together for Katie, within maybe half a metre of Scrimgeour's feet. The transfigurations reverted, violently — Scrimgeour was temporarily obscured by the explosion, the clashing magics producing a smeared glittery multicoloured cloud, magic evanescing away with crackles and flickers of illusory lightning and fire, blue and orange and violet. When the mess cleared, Scrimgeour was on his knees and one hand, struggling to push himself up, his clothes slashed, bleeding from multiple places, his hair messy and scorched. He tried to roll out of the way of a stunning charm from Katie, but he didn't quite manage it, too slow — the red spellglow flashed over him, and he fell limp.
Katie jumped off the ground, pumping her fist in the air, obviously ecstatic — and then cringed on landing, clutching at her shoulder. Yeah, you're still injured, silly. Not that Liz could blame her really, she'd just beaten Eustace fucking Scrimgeour in a one-on-one match. Bragging rights forever.
Granted, it looked like Eustace wasn't quite as good as she'd thought he was, but still.
Next up was Artèmi against Selwyn. Fortunately, Artèmi beat her quickly and easily, which was vaguely satisfying, because fuck that racist bitch. Unfortunately, it was also painlessly — after barely fifteen seconds, Artèmi slipped a light stunning hex of some kind through Selwyn's shield, knocking her out in an instant. Liz would much rather Selwyn be sent to the healers with horrifying, agonising injuries, if she was being honest. (She really did not like Ceinwen Selwyn.) The after-effects of the light magic would probably be somewhat uncomfortable, at least — Selwyn's magic was only mildly dark-tinted, not nearly as bad as Liz's — and hopefully she'd feel at least a little humiliated from being so smoothly and casually defeated. Probably not, though — it was Artémisia Cæciné, losing was just kind of expected...
Oh well.
Artèmi had already gotten back and Sadhbh's duel with some random Durmstranger already started before Katie walked through the door again. Her face looked a little redder than normal, sparks and shivers going on in her head — annoyance and discomfort, not sure what kind of discomfort, but also no small amount of glee and smug self-satisfaction. Which was totally fair, since she had managed to beat Eustace bloody Scrimgeour. Honestly, Liz found it a little nauseating how people's heads could get so mixed up like that sometimes, too many feelings going on at once, she did her best to pull away as soon as she noticed.
Not that it really helped all that much. Both Severus and Tamsyn were pretty sure the way she picked up people's feelings was more of a Seer thing than a mind mage thing — it was a little milder if she wasn't focussing on it, but it didn't really go away. Annoying bloody thing.
"It took you a while to get back," Chelsea said as Katie neared where they were sitting. "Are you okay?"
Katie grimaced. "I'm fine, healer patched me up — I'm a little dizzy from the pain potion but it should wear off before my next match." She summoned over an empty chair, the thing sliding over to clunk against Liz's, before flopping down into it. Liz winced at the flare of pain she felt from her direction, Katie letting out a hiss, cursing under her breath in...Cambrian? maybe? Didn't sound quite right. Might be Scots, actually, some mages in rural communities up there spoke Scots... "Bastard bloody well shattered my clavicle."
"If it makes you feel better," Liz said, "Scrimgeour was a fucking mess at the end, so I guess you're probably even."
"Ha! Yeah, I guess..." Grinning, pleased with herself, Liz felt Katie's eyes on her for a moment before she looked away. "Did I miss Cæciné and Selwyn?"
"Yep. Artèmi stunned her in like ten seconds."
"Good — I'll have to make sure to rub it in later. Can't let her forget it too quickly, you know." Liz might have to deal with Selwyn now and then due to both being in Slytherin, just passing through the common room, but Katie had had classes with her for four and a half years now. They did not get along.
"Give her a good fuck you from me."
"My pleasure."
Eventually, Sadhbh managed to beat her Durmstranger. Setting him on fire, because of course she did — the Monroe twins liked their fire spells. Sadhbh walked back in a minute later, and a staff person stuck their head in to say they'd be having their break now. About forty-five minutes, it looked like, they'd give everyone a five-minute warning before the first match. (They weren't entirely certain on the timing for complicated organisational reasons, it wasn't important.) There was a flicker of magic, and the food on the table was refreshed with more substantial, lunch-like things — though not quite so much of it, since they were only down to eight people. There would be staff around out the door if you needed anything, okay, until then.
Liz waited a few minutes before checking out the food table. She wasn't super hungry, to be honest — it hadn't been that long since breakfast, and unlike Katie or Évariste she hadn't been subject to any serious healing spells — and she'd rather not elbow her way around the four people that immediately went to get lunch. The food on offer was, once again, a mix of the sort of stuff they had in the three schools' host countries. She tended to avoid the northern stuff entirely (not a big fan of pickled fish, thanks), but the Aquitanian stuff was generally fine...
There were some baked (fried?) ham and cheese sandwiches that looked pretty good, but you could never be sure — Liz grabbed a fork, split off a big of the ham, and tried— Nooope, no no no, that wasn't edible at all. Even if she weren't trying to make a point of avoiding unpleasant echoes as much as possible, she probably wouldn't tolerate one of these sandwiches anyway, all sour and nauseating and vile, her stomach churning and her skin crawling, ugh, where the hell had they even gotten this stuff? There were two pots of soup or stew or whatever the fuck, but there was practically no way for Liz to be sure if that would be any better — and given what the 'ham' was like, she wasn't inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. There were a couple other things, but she didn't trust any of the meat — even though the sausages earlier had been fine, but that ham was, just, ugh — and none of it seemed particularly appetising at the moment.
For a second, Liz stood there and cursed Tamsyn in her head — just had to be so bloody reasonable all the time...
Fuck it, she'd just have something small to stave off hunger for the rest of the Task, then. There were these little buns — layered, puff pastry, looked like, kind of reminded her of croissants but not in the right shape — she knew there would have been butter between the layers, she peeled off a piece and, yeah, good, the dairy was fine, apparently. There was also some...soft cheese spread shite, didn't know what that was, exactly, but it wasn't bad for Seer reasons, so. Liz tore a couple of the buns open, spread on some cheese, and got herself another cup of coffee — the coffee here was also fine, thankfully. And that would just have to do it, she guessed.
Good thing she wasn't particularly hungry, because if she was this would suck.
As long as she was at the table, Liz looked over the tournament bracket hung up on the wall — someone had updated it as they went, winners highlighted and the eliminated contestants crossed out. Ha, that was funny, the quarterfinalists were four Hogwarts students and four Beauxbatons students, all the Durmstrangers had been eliminated. Durmstrang really weren't doing so well this time around, were they? Anyway, she was looking for... There she was, Èlia Conxita Serra-Jimenès i Seydu. Jesus Christ, had enough names yet? Liz was just going to assume that "Èlia" was the first name, and that it was pronounced more or less how it looked, because the rest of that was too much to keep straight.
Liz took her buns and her coffee back to her chair, carefully sat down without spilling anything. Katie and Chelsea were still sitting here with her, Sadhbh chatting with Ingham, Èlia over with Artèmi and Évariste. Liz had gotten the feeling before that there was a bit of...cliquishness going on with the Beauxbatons students (and the Durmstrangers) — she guessed Ingham didn't get on with Artèmi and her friends. But Ingham was British, and Liz remembered the Inghams and Monroes were somewhat close (if a bit politically complicated these days), so Sadhbh and Ingham were probably cousins or something? Whatever.
She was only sitting for a few seconds when Chelsea asked, "You feeling okay, Liz?"
Confused, she blinked up at Chelsea, glanced between the other two girls. Katie had gone through the most intensive healing of the three of them, so of course she'd gotten the heaviest lunch — one of those ham and cheese sandwiches and a bowl of the thinner soup out of the two of them...which looked theoretically good, honestly, if it weren't for how gross the ham was. Chelsea had gotten the thicker soup, poured over one of the same buns Liz had gotten torn into pieces, and a little bit of some kind of vegetable thing that'd been on the Durmstrang side, she didn't know what. Liz was pretty sure the question was because her lunch was really nothing by comparison, but she didn't get what the point was. "Um, yeah? Why?"
There was a shiver of awkwardness from Chelsea, Katie let out a little hum, gesturing with her fork as she chewed. "Chelsea's too polite to say she's wondering if you're starving yourself. Because you're so tiny."
"What, really?" Hardly the first time someone had thought that, but it'd been a while...
"Katie," Chelsea groaned, "don't just come out and say that..."
"Oh, lighten up, Andrews, it's just Liz." Meaning that she was hardly likely to take blunt phrasing the wrong way — also that Katie was extremely sceptical that Liz was intentionally under-eating to stay thin and pretty or whatever. She found Chelsea's assumption very funny (because it was Liz) and also rather muggleish, but she didn't expect Chelsea to pick up on that. Chelsea was a bit irritated that Katie clearly wasn't taking the possibility seriously, and she was also pretty sure she was being mocked, but she wasn't sure how. Which wasn't an entirely unusual feeling, honestly — since she'd joined the team, Liz had learned Chelsea and Katie got on all right for the most part, but their personalities still clashed sometimes.
Before Chelsea could find some way to respond, Liz said, "It's fine, just, they're not very careful about suppliers sometimes. I tried the ham, and it was extremely unpleasant. Seer shite, you know." She shrugged. "I wasn't particularly hungry anyway, breakfast wasn't that long ago."
"Yeah, but you're bloody tiny, aren't you? Bet you could live just on my family's table scraps." Katie didn't realise Liz kind of actually had lived off of the Dursleys' table scraps for the first several years of her life — not being mean, just trying to be funny.
"Only because your mum had like a dozen too many children, you could probably feed a normal-sized family with your table scraps."
"A 'normal'-sized family of elves, maybe." That time, kind of implying Liz was included with the elves was intentional.
Liz rolled her eyes — she knew most mages would be offended (to put it mildly) at being compared to a house-elf, but she actually got elves, for the most part. And she realised her relationship with Nilanse was odd by British standards, so. It was really just exasperating. "Shut up, Bell."
Katie grinned, her mind sparkling. "Make me, Potter."
"Meet me in the final and maybe I will."
"Ah ha, so you like to show off, I never would have guessed."
Liz was just about to say something about it being more fun to embarrass Katie in public, when Chelsea blurted out, "Oh my god, would you two stop flirting for five seconds? And aren't you dating Lettie Prewett?"
"I don't know if I'd call it dating."
"Then what would you call it?"
"Passing time? shagging between arguments? horrifying her fiancé's family for our mutual enjoyment?"
"Ugh, you're impossible, you know that."
"I'd be disappointed if I weren't."
There was a bit more bickering between the two of them after that, but Liz wasn't really listening — she'd sunk back in her chair, poking at one of her buns, and trying to ignore the heat on her face. She hadn't even noticed the innuendo until Chelsea pointed it out.
Was she really that bad at telling when something was flirting? This wasn't the first time this had come up, just...
Anyway, Liz mostly ignored the rest of the conversation, even after the embarrassment had worn off a bit — Katie and Chelsea were chattering about shite to do with Prewett (that was her name, Laeticia Prewett, forgot) and kids in their year or the NEWT students, nothing Liz really cared about — just munching at her cheese buns and sipping at her coffee. She was finished before too long, wandered off with the remains of her coffee, leaving the two of them gossipping.
Artèmi and Évariste noticed her approaching the Beauxbatons group first, long before she got anywhere close — her mind magic tended to follow what she was looking at whether she wanted to or not, and the two of them were both sensitive enough to notice. The conversation cut off she got within earshot, Artèmi smiling up at her all soft and feminine and innocent. (Liz had no idea how Artèmi had learned to lie with a smile like that.) "Hello, Liz. I see you're still doing well." Hadn't gotten the shite kicked out of her yet, she meant.
There was a cool creeping of discomfort as Èlia noticed her, Liz tried not to react. It looked like someone had explained that Liz had probably possessed Minna which, being a normal sane person, Èlia found rather unnerving. Well, this was awkward. "Artèmi. I see you haven't hospitalised anyone yet — unfortunately. You could have put Selwyn down harder, you know, she's an awful bigot and annoyingly smug about it."
"If I hospitalised every bigotted Briton I came across, the facilities here would quickly grow overwhelmed."
...Fair.
"Were you looking for something, Liz? Or," Évariste drawled, a smirk on his face and his (too-cold) mind bubbling, "have you just come to enjoy our company?"
Liz rolled her eyes. "I have no interest in your company, thanks. I was actually coming over here to talk to Èlia." She turned to summon one of the abandoned chairs dotted across the room — not even bothering to draw her wand, bringing one floating over to herself with a flare of magic and a flick of her wrist.
(Évariste snorted. "Show-off.")
There was a crackle in Èlia's mind, twitching in her seat and looking up at Liz. The casual wandless magic wasn't making her seem less intimidating, but Èlia was trying to act normal — besides, Liz might be weird and creepy, but nothing was going to happen with Artèmi and Évariste right there. "Eh? Perqué?" That wasn't French, must be some Aquitanian dialect.
Bonelessly flopping down into her chair Liz asked, "Was that figure skating, earlier? In your duel, I mean, the way you moved seemed familiar."
"Ah!" There was a flicker of surprised in her head, quickly followed with a bright warm flash of pleasure, Èlia breaking into a grin. "Yes! Yes, it is. It is not often someone notices that." There was a bit of an accent on Èlia's French, the instincts she'd picked up from Valérie judging it as vaguely Spanish. Magical Aquitania did include parts of the east of Spain, but it was also possible Èlia was just Spanish — Beauxbatons was an international school, after all — Liz didn't know enough about the country on either side of Secrecy to tell.
"Yeah, I didn't realise mages did figure skating at all."
"They don't, for the most part. My dad is muggleborn, we were visiting my grandparents when the Olympics were in Sarajevo when I was...five or six?" She said it as though it were a question, glancing at Artèmi and Évariste.
Évariste shrugged — obviously he had no idea — but Artèmi said, "I think that would have been in Eighty-Four? January or February, I think."
"I was probably five, then. Yes, I loved it, my aunt arranged for me to have lessons and all." Her muggle aunt, she meant. "Normally it is only the muggleborns at school who recognise it — I've used that spell before, to play around. I didn't think you would know of it, I thought you were nobility?"
Èlia, it turned out, was only vaguely aware of the ridiculous Girl-Who-Lived stuff — apparently Lily was a somewhat well-known figure among the muggleborns of other European countries, but the story they told each other was very different than the dominant one in Britain. She'd ignored the scandal around Liz's guardianship last year, and hadn't really been paying attention to the news around the Triwizard Tournament either, so she'd completely missed that Liz had been raised in the muggle world, assumed she was like the rest of the British nobility. And they didn't exactly have a great reputation among working-class Aquitanians, to put it mildly. (They had been on opposite sides of a war not that long ago, Britain had invaded their country and everything.) The edge of anxiety from the scary creepy mind mage talking to her had eased somewhat when Liz had asked about the figure skating thing, the rest of it disappearing as Liz made it very clear that she thought the nobles here were full of shite, Èlia then just pleased to talk about figure skating with someone who actually knew what the fuck it was, grinning and mind sparkling and feet idly kicking.
Liz had kind of assumed Èlia was a duellist who was into figure skating on the side, but it was actually the other way around: Èlia was seriously into figure skating, and sometimes played around with duelling when she had the time. She competed in national competitions and everything — she was even hoping to get into the world championships this year, and ultimately the Olympics by '02, or even '98 if she was lucky. Competing for muggle Spain, apparently. (Technically, since she was born in magical Aquitania, she could choose to be Spanish or French on the muggle side, but she'd chosen to go with her grandparents' country, at least in part because the competition for nationals in Spain wasn't as stiff — not a lot of ice in Spain, after all.) Mages did have a slight advantage over muggles in the sport, but not one that prevented Èlia from competing. Falls on the ice could hurt, and mages had a greater resistance to impacts, and also it could be kind of rough on the body even if you didn't fall and break something, so skaters accumulated stress injuries — figure skaters were heavily weighted toward the young end, since they tended to effectively age out pretty quickly. Mages' greater resistance to injury and access to healing magic meant Èlia would be able to stay competitive a lot longer than muggles could, so she'd get more shots at the big competitions, but so far as the actual mechanics went it was still mostly fair.
All that was interesting enough, Liz guessed, but mostly she wanted to know about the spell. Icing over the field was just elemental magic — the one she'd used to move around was a spell of her own creation...sort of. A couple years ago now, she'd found an arithmantic treatment of a spell to move over water, had replaced the terms to interact with ice instead, and tweaked how the user interfaced with the components to get the physics to behave more similar to skating. Not perfectly, of course — she didn't need to push herself along, for example, the spell took care of that — but as close as she could get it. She hadn't been able to reduce the end result to something she could cast, so she'd asked an elder cousin to look at it for her, and after a couple weeks she'd had her spell. It hadn't turned out quite the way she'd wanted, she still preferred to just bring her skates (or transfigure her shoes into something passable in a pinch) if she wanted to practise on short notice, but it was fun to play around with. And she'd sure taken Oz by surprise, so.
Èlia promised to write Liz with an explanation of how the spell worked — it was too complicated to just tell Liz the incantation and have it work properly. (Magic could be like that sometimes.) Right, that was all Liz had wanted to talk about, thanks. She'd kind of been planning on leaving once she had what she wanted, but she ended up being roped into a conversation about sports in both the muggle and magical worlds, and a lot of the complicated economics and politics around it. Which, okay, a lot of that was interesting, she guessed, but she wasn't super knowledgeable about anything on the muggle side...
Everyone was a little taken aback when Liz admitted she was seriously considering getting into professional duelling after school, which she thought was rather silly. Was it really that unexpected? It was fun, and it wasn't like she had to worry about money...