((Just as a visual, this is who I would probably use as Raoul’s play-by if his character actually existed: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0NhdcMdhvWs/SknLR27fCDI/AAAAAAAAGxg/-zZyoPxtMO4/s1600/4.jpg))
It was difficult for Amelia, watching Belle duel with her husband. Amelia did not know Belle personally, but she knew the girl to be soft-hearted. It had to have been difficult for her to send killing curses at the one person in the world she loved more than anyone else – if marriage could be a sign of such a thing. These days, there were an equal number of reasons to marry someone that had absolutely nothing to do with love at all. Despite this, though, Belle did manage to complete the task, though somewhat worse for the wear. The cut to her shoulder looked particularly nasty, and Amelia doubted very much that Mariana’s simple Episky spells were going to do the trick.
Amelia had bigger things to worry about, though, it seemed. Without her volunteering herself, Professor Wilson had called her to be the next individual to step up and take the exam. Amelia would have much preferred to wait until the class had let out, volunteered to stay afterward so she could take the exam alone. She hated being the center of attention, much less the attention of her peers, and she disliked even more the prospect of what she was about to face under the scrutiny of her classmates and professor.
In Amelia’s case, Professor Wilson had picked a particularly unpredictable challenge for an exam. As she stood up from her chair at his beckoning, Amelia’s mind ran into over-overdrive (it nearly always existed in overdrive) as she began to think about what she was about to face. To her classmates, this challenge might have seemed like Amelia’s perfect situation. It was true that she was rational, logical, and clear-cut in her decision making – at least most of the time. But putting a self-induced exile on yourself from the social world meant that the few people that did manage to get past your defenses were exceedingly important to you. Raoul was one of those people.
It would have been easier if Professor Wilson had picked one of her parents. Yes, Amelia loved her parents and their influence in her life was undeniable, but the relationship she had with her parents was more one of blood and circumstance than something they had worked to form. With Raoul, however, Amelia had always felt instinctively close. Growing up, Raoul had been her protector, her confidant. They laughed together about the trials and tribulations of practicing the same piano sonata 87 times a day and snuck into their father’s study to try to look for new spells that both of them were too young even to pronounce, much less perform. At fancy dinners and gala events, Raoul was the one person she could snicker with, both of them taking on exaggerated “high society” accents and snickering away at each other’s upturned noses until Antoinette was close enough to make them both strait-lipped until she was out of sight again. Raoul was the one person who relaxed Amelia, made her come out of her ice castle. Although they were drastically different people, there had always been an easy sort of camaraderie between them, probably the result of both of them bearing the weight of their parents expectations which had, eventually, been what forced them apart.
When Raoul dropped out of school and left home, Amelia had been utterly lost. She had spent so much time pushing everyone else away that when it came time to find someone to turn to with the plight of her brother disappearing from her life, there wasn’t anyone around. His leaving had been one of the biggest influences on her personality, the determining factor, the glue in the walls that held up her castle. She hadn’t seen him for two years, though their letters were frequent, and now, as she stepped to the center of the circle of desks, Amelia would have to face him – or at least, something that looked like him – for the first time, armed with nothing but her wand and the dismal mental and emotional defenses that had never worked against him anyway.
Amelia fought the urge to close her eyes as the professor conjured her brother in front of her, though it might have been easier than watching her older sibling materialize out of thin air, looking exactly as she remembered him. His dirty blonde hair was unkempt and his face slightly stubbly, a trait Antoinette had constantly chided him for. She had chided him for a lot of things, including the tattoo on his bicep that was only half-visible beneath the short sleeve of his shirt. It was his only visible tattoo.
The sight of Raoul hit Amelia like a ton of bricks. On some subconscious level she was aware that her breathing had stopped, but it wasn’t until Raoul raised his wand and flung the killing curse in her direction that she had the presence of mind to do anything other than stare. So intense was her shock at seeing him – or whatever figment of him Wilson had created – that she nearly lost the duel before it began, throwing up a Protego charm at the last second, dissipating the jet of green light which had been destined for the center of her chest.
If a threat to her life wasn’t enough to bring Amelia’s mind back to the present, nothing would have been. It was difficult to pull her mind away from the sudden flood of memories that the sight of this Raoul-like person brought upon her; she had carefully hidden away the memories the two of them shared, but the mind was not a box without a handle – it was more like a safe. With the right combination, the door would open.
This is an exam. This is not real. That is not Raoul. Raoul has been in hiding for two years to stay out of the eyes of our parents and society at large. He definitely did not come back to kill you.
He would have sent someone else.
Despite her panic at the current situation, Amelia’s wit was, for once, her saving grace. Her mind, even clouded as it was with thoughts of what to do, still managed to hold on to a bit of the caustic wit and sarcasm and allowed her to find her focus. Amelia smirked at her own thought process and gripped her wand tighter, more prepared now that her mind had regained its usual control. Now all she needed was a plan.
”Relashio! Duro!” Raoul shouted, flinging another two spells in her direction while moving his feet to adjust for her movements. Raoul had always been better at gauging the movements of his opponent, though Amelia was better at mental predictions from all the time she spent watching and analyzing people. It was the reason he had always won in their backyard “sword” duels – when the swords had been sticks and Amelia was still young enough to get away with an hour or so a day of being a kid – and Amelia had always trounced him at chess.
“Protego horribilis!” Amelia countered, relying on her skills of defensive magic to protect her until she was able to finalize her plan. Knowing her opponent had given her an idea, but she would have to wait for the right moment in order to make the attack. Raoul, despite all the fond memories and her idolization of him as a child, had some significant shortcomings that Amelia would be able to exploit if given the right opportunity.
“Confrigo!” Raoul countered as Amelia’s shield fell once more, and she threw up another defensive spell to stop his progress. She knew that Raoul would likely be able to dodge most of what she threw at him, so her plan didn’t involve attacking him directly, but instead using his cockiness and trigger-happy nature to make sure this exam went in her direction.
Making a quick step to the side, Amelia raised her wand for the first time in an offensive position, bringing it down heavily as she shouted, “Expulso!” over the sounds of ricocheting spells. Only unlike Raoul, Amelia didn’t aim for her opponent, but rather a spot on the floor a meter away from where he stood, close enough to make him dodge, but far enough away that he could have easily escape, which he did easily.
“Is that all you’ve got?” Raoul challenged, mocking her with his grinning, malicious eyes, a malice she had never known him to have toward her, “You’re going to have to do better than that if you’re going to best me. Do you think you’re dangerous? I laugh in the face of danger!” Raoul mocked, tipping his head back and throwing his arms wide, the deep bellows of his laughter filling the room. Except it wasn’t the laughter she remembered; it was cold and heartless, the way most of the world believed her to be. It was this emptiness that gave her the conviction to do what she had to do next.
“Some things never change,” Amelia muttered confidently to herself quietly before leaping into action, raising her wand quickly and performing the wandwork to cast Langlock at Raoul, which hit him squarely in the throat and stopped his laughter immediately. Though most would be confused by her use of this spell, Amelia was certain that it was the only one that needed to land for her to see victory in her future.
Raoul, having dropped out of Hogwarts at the beginning of his sixth year, had never learned non-verbal magic. Without his voice, the battle was already lost.
And Raoul knew it. It took him only seconds after Amelia landed the spell to realize that he had lost his ability to speak, and the malicious laughter that had inhabited his eyes was replaced with cold fury. In one swift movement, Raoul threw his wand aside and launched himself at Amelia, prepared to take her down physically, a feat he would have been more than capable of if Amelia hadn’t been ready for just such an attack.
“Avada Kedavra!” Amelia shouted, her voice filled with defiance as her spell connected with Raoul’s sternum, his angry face just inches in front of Amelia’s own ferocity before he collapsed to the floor, his arms still outstretched toward Amelia when his body hit the stone, motionless. Though her eyes could see that the Raoul-impersonation was dead, it was nearly a minute later when Amelia finally lowered her wand and became aware of her racing heartbeat and heavy breathing.
by Mariana Diggory Thu Apr 29, 2010 10:06 pm
