Its not often that you feel weird waking up in your own bed. But just that happened to Fila this Friday morning.
When she awoke from her deep deep sleep. She didn't really know where she was. She thought she would see the roof of a certain snakes room. But no, she actually had a night in her own designated bed.
Fila had fallen asleep in the common room, and carried to her bed by Miles.
She lay there for a moment doing inventory. Friday. The duel was tonight. Durmstrang and Hogwarts were arriving this morning.
The room was early-light quiet, the gold of the Amazon morning coming through the window at a low angle that meant it was not yet seven. She found her jacket on the floor, her boots somewhere near the door, her blindfold already in place because she slept in it and always had, and she pulled herself together in the efficient way but very slow way.
She needed to find Bea.
The corridor was quiet, the school not yet fully awake, just the early risers and the staff and the particular birds that started before the others. Fila walked with her hands in her jacket pockets, her wand even laying there and not in the holster.
Fila was so in her own thoughts and in the early morning drowsy ness. That she didn't hear the voices of incoming people around a corner.
And when it was too late, she bumped right into someone.
She walked face-first into someone who was only a bit taller than her.
The woman she had walked into had not moved an inch. Which was also unusual. Most people, walked into unexpectedly at seven in the morning in a foreign school corridor, shifted. This one had the quality of a very old, very well-rooted tree. She simply stood and looked at Fila with sharp eyes behind square spectacles, her dark hair pulled back severely, grey threading through it, her robes immaculate and her expression carrying the specific authority of someone who had been correcting people for decades and had gotten very good at it.
"Oh, im sorry. I was in my own thoughts for a moment." Fila said and gave a little bow of her head.
The woman in front of her gave a short chuckle. "That's alright dear." A calm, but warm voice said. Like a grandmother who just saw her grandchild fall.
And than the magic hit her, not by a spell. But the magic on the woman. Its beautiful light blue. And vast, vast as a tropical ocean. But something also lurked in it, a monster she had seen before.
Fila looked up at the woman. A typical grandma, old but not that old with warm blue eyes with a little green.
"Are you… uh, close to Dumbledore by chance?" Fila asked with a raised eyebrow under her navy blue blindfold. Only after asking her question did she take a look at the people behind the woman.
All wearing dark robes with different colored batches with different symbols.
McGonagall looked at her with an expression that had several things in it at once. Surprise was one of them. Sharpness was another. And underneath both of those, something older and more careful, the expression of someone who had learned to be precise about who they showed certain things to.
"That is a rather extraordinary question to ask a stranger in a corridor," McGonagall said. Still warm but with more weight in it now. "What makes you ask."
Fila considered how to say it. "Your magic," she said, simply. "It has something in it I've seen before. Not often. But once or twice, in people who spent a long time very close to someone whose magic was." She paused, finding the right word. "Enormous. It leaves a mark. Like soil that's grown something very large. You can tell, afterward, by what's still in it."
McGonagall was very still.
The students behind her had gone completely quiet. Fila was aware of them the way she was aware of most things, peripherally but completely.
"I'm sorry, stupid question. I should keep moving..." fila was about to start walking again.
"No no," McGonagall laughed lightly. "Well, I work with him afterall."
The pieces connected. Hogwarts, right.
"Ah right, I thought I knew that orange magic that feels like a raging fire. I'm sorry for bumping into, once again." Fila said with a light bow. And started walking again.
She walked down the corridor where the students stood behind her, she noticed that Harry wasn't there. He wouldn't be afterall he is only a first year. But some handsome boy with a yellow badger on his robe. She walked passed him and lightly bumped into his shoulder.
"Sorry." She turned and gave a little smile.
He didn't answer but he nodded.
Why did she do this? well June cant be alone for too long.
Someone else who she also caught as strange or odd, were two twins. Who seemed to have a too big smile for what they were doing. And as she passed them she saw why, dungbombs.
Fila kept walking but she slowed slightly, just enough, and as she passed the twins she reached out without looking and plucked one of the dungbombs from the nearest one's hand with the casual precision of someone picking fruit.
She turned to give the a little smile. Behind her there was a beat of silence. Then a very quiet, very urgent whispered exchange between two identical voices, both of them doing the rapid assessment of what had just happened and how.
She looked at the dungbomb in her hand. Small, brown, slightly warm, smelled faintly of something she chose not to identify further. She put it in her jacket pocket, which was probably not ideal placement but was what was available.
After her usual walk what she had learnt by now, she finally reached the snakes common room. And she even knew the knocking code. Two smalls taps, then two hard ones.
Ones she entered she threw the dungbomb to one of the students. He seemed happy as he caught it and ran of with it.
But she wasn't here to just go around, so she made her way towards the room at the end of the corridor of doors. And opened it carefully.
Inside several students were getting ready, and ones they saw Fila they all exited the room. A very odd thing to do just because she came, but that would also mean that a certain Brazilian girl is here and most likely sleeping.
Fila took small steps towards the hollowed out log and peaked inside. The girl wasn't sleeping, but she wasn't all awake either. "Good morning" fila said with a smile.
Bea was lying on her back inside the hollowed log with her arms folded across her stomach and her eyes at that particular half-mast that meant she had been awake for a while but had made a philosophical decision not to fully commit to it yet. Her hair was loose and spread out underneath her and she was still in whatever she'd slept in and she looked, objectively, like something that had grown there naturally and was simply part of the furniture of the room.
She turned her head at the sound of Fila's voice.
"Good morning," she said back. Her voice had the full morning texture, unhurried and slightly rough at the edges. She looked at Fila with those dark eyes, still soft, doing their slow morning inventory. "You're in my room. And why weren't you last night?"
Fila crawled into her bed beside her. "I fell asleep in the quest common room."
As fila crawled beside Bea she took in a deep breath, the smell she would want every day and night. Its kind of addicting to fell the smell of someone you like. Its odd that a smell of a person can be this good without perfume or anything.
"Uhu, Well I slept horrible because of it so hope your happy." Bea said, a bit angry now. Or trying to pretend to be maybe.
"lets just cuddle a little before we have to do the boring and important stuff." Fila said and snuggled in even closer, having her nose right into the neck of Bea. And gave a little happy wiggle when she felt her natural smell.
*sniff* this time it wasn't Fila. "Why do you smell like… Dung?"
This made her laugh. "I took it from two twins coming from Hogwarts. I met them in the corridor before, and also walked right into a professor."
Bea looked to the side and right at Fila, she didn't think she was serious. But Fila didn't say anything more.
The great hall was full of students. And not only that but from students from all over the world. Seeing all these different colors in one place isn't something that happens a lot, or at all.
Fila and Bea came in together, which by now had stopped being something that required comment from anyone who knew them and had become simply the way they arrived at places. Side by side, shoulders close.
Castelobruxo students filled their usual tables but pushed to one side to make room for the visitors, and the visitors had clustered by school in the instinctive way of people in unfamiliar places, and the result was a hall that looked like someone had taken a map of the wizarding world and folded it until all the edges were touching.
Red uniforms, and faces that looked like they could eat rocks. Durmstrang had arrived. And when looking at side by side to the Hogwarts students, the difference was stark.
Geller Grindelwald had during the summer had a discussion about just this. how he thought that Hogwarts just taught their students to be soft and Durmstrang taught to be rough. But Fila didn't think that their faces would reflect that but they did.
Ilvermorny and Castelobruxo could be said to be a mix or Hogwarts and Durmstrang.
Both taught their students that they might have to fight someday, and they prepared them for it. meanwhile Hogwarts said, 'nothing dangerous exists in the magical world'.
Fila looked over to the Hogwarts students and saw the two red haired twins.
"Hey go sit down, I'll be back soon." Fila told Bea who just nodded.
The two twins saw her approached and had a mixed reaction. "Sorry for taking your bomb, I just couldn't pass the chance." Fila said as she stood at the edge of the table closest to the twins.
Everyone else also looked over as she talked.
"We have decided to be mad, but if you did something good with it." one of the twins said.
"We will let it slide." The other finished.
Fila looked at the two, who they talked and ended each other's sentences had made her lost it for a bit and almost just blurted out what. "I gave it to a random kid in the snake tribe. So who knows what going to happened."
The twins looked at each other.
It was a very specific look, the kind that only exists between people who have been communicating in shorthand for their entire lives. A whole conversation happened in it, rapid and complete, and it lasted approximately one second before they both turned back to her with identical expressions that had moved from mixed reaction to something considerably more interested.
"We've decided," they said together, "that we're not mad."
"We're impressed," the first one added.
"Slightly," the second clarified.
"Just slightly," the first agreed.
Fila looked at them. Up close they were genuinely identical in a way that was almost architectural, the same freckles in the same places, the same particular quality of mischief running underneath everything like a current. But there were differences if you looked properly. The one on the left held himself slightly more forward, the one who spoke first, the initiator. The one on the right was a half-beat behind, the one who finished, the one who watched a little more carefully while the first one moved.
She filed it.
"I'm Fila," she said.
"Fred," said the left one.
"George," said the right one.
Fila looked at the two, but her eyes seem more drawn to Fred. They had long hair, which to her didn't suit them. But if they didn't have that they would be very passable. Maybe.
"Weasley," they said together, apparently feeling this was important context.
"Grindelwald," Fila said. "Ilvermorny."
The name landed. She watched it land, the way she always watched it, reading the reaction before anyone had decided what reaction to perform. Fred's eyebrows went up fractionally. George went very slightly still for just a moment.
Then Fred said: "As in."
"Yes," Fila said.
George looked at her with the more watching quality she'd identified. Not hostile. Genuinely assessing. "You don't look like what I expected," he said.
"What did you expect."
"Something more." He moved his hand in a vague gesture that covered a lot of ground.
"Intimidating?" Fred offered.
"Yes," George agreed. "More intimidating."
Fila raised an eyebrow. "Its hard to look intimidating when you look this good. But you haven't seen me in a duel yet."
Fred and George looked at each other.
The look lasted exactly one second.
Then they both looked back at her with expressions that had completed some kind of internal upgrade, moving from impressed to something that didn't have a clean name but involved a significant amount of respect and what appeared to be genuine delight.
"She said that with a straight face," Fred said.
"Completely straight," George confirmed.
"No hesitation," Fred said.
"No qualifier," George added.
"Just." Fred gestured at Fila. "Stated it. As fact."
"As fact," George agreed. "Because it is fact, presumably."
"Presumably," Fred said, looking at Fila. "Is it fact?"
"Yes," Fila said.
Another look between them. Shorter this time. The kind that meant they'd already decided and were just confirming.
"We like her," Fred said.
"We established this," George said.
"I'm establishing it again," Fred said. "For emphasis."
Talking to these two was harder than it seemed. The normal mind couldn't comprehend the amount of time someone had to train to be able to finish each others sentence and know exactly what the other thought all the time.
Fila needed a break and looked at the rest of the little hogers. And that's when she saw the boys again, "Hey what's your name?" she said while looking at him.
"Cedric Diggory" he said politely. "and you must be Ophelia. Or the flower of Ilvermorny."
The rest of the table looked at him and then at Fila who had a slight smile on her face. Prouder than anything. "Yes that's right, has my name reached Hogwarts too?" she asked genuine.
"Yes and no, it more in the pure blood circle that ive heard about it." he answered. And that more than anything told her more than everything. Fila hadn't realized that he was a so called pure blood. he sure didn't act like one.
"Are you single?" The words cut the table, every girl at the table sent her death threat through the eyes. And it made the boys widened their eyes since it came out of no where.
Fila stood with a playful smile, she now understood what was happening even without having to visit the school. This Cedric guy seems to be the boy wonder of the school. The girls dream guy so to say. Which made it so much funnier to try to get him for June.
"I… im not really looking for anything right now." He answered, but he had a bit of a blush. Seems like the most handsome guy in school isn't very experienced.
Fila clicked her tongue. "Shame, I had a friend who I think you would like."
The girls gave her a confused look. And then they understood that she wasn't interested in him.
The awkward silence that had followed was finally broken by Fred. "Fila, how is going to duel later?"
'oh so you actually like duels, and not just mischief.' Fila thought and looked at him.
"My teammate Marcus who is sitting there." Fila pointed towards her team and explained which one of them Marcus was. "And he is going against Yumi, the really short Japanese girl. Or I think she is Japanese."
"Who do you think will win?" George asked right after.
Now Fila could do two thing, either she tells the truth. Or she could come up with some bullshit and trick them, what would they even do with this info? She looked down on them, her blindfold hiding most of her scanning face. Trying to find some hint into why they needed to know.
And while doing this, why the fuck did these two school come for one match…
"Shit." She said and almost laughed at herself. 'its not just one duel tonight' she realized and put all the puzzle together.
Making two schools get over her from halfway across the world for one duel? No, no way.
"I don't know, but I have another question. How long are you going to stay here?" Fila asked, in a strangely hurried voice.
"two days." George and Fred said at the same time. "Today and tomorrow."
Fila almost started laughing, how could she not have seen this earlier.
"Alright well enjoy the show later, I have some stuff to do now." She smiled, waved and left before any of them could even say anything back.
With brisk steps she made her way to Bea. This was going be the hardest to tell, the girl who was so scared to be drawn could be drawn again tonight. Fila saw her sitting at the table, in a relaxed kind of way. And Fila had to stop for a second. Her smile could be seen from where Fila stood, warm and gentle but with a hint of electricity behind it that could shock you if you weren't careful enough.
"Bea," She said from right behind her.
Beatriz looked up and meet the face of Fila looking down at her. "Yeah?"
Fila just made a small gesture with her head to say, "Need to talk. Come with." And Bea understood.
Once in the corridor again they stopped by a secluded spot. "Oh, my Fila, if you wanted me alone you could've just said so." Bea winked, clearly in a playful mood tonight.
"Um, I have something to tell you." Fila began, and Beatriz noticed the change, both in posture and the tone. "I think there is going to be a second duel tonight."
The girl in front of her didn't show much reaction to this, none actually.
It took a while for her to do anything, and she just sighed. "Yeah I know." She lowered her head slightly.
Fila gave her a blank stare, wondering if she heard that right. But she did but, what? "You knew?"
Picking up right where you left off —
"I figured it out yesterday," Bea said. Still looking at the floor. "Two schools traveling halfway across the world for one duel that isn't even a final. It didn't add up." She paused. "I just didn't want to think about it."
Fila looked at her. "How long have you been not thinking about it."
"Since yesterday morning." A small exhale. "Maybe since Tuesday if I'm being honest."
"Bea."
"I know." She looked up. Her eyes were steady, the composure she defaulted to when something was happening that she'd already decided she was going to handle. But underneath it, in the place Fila had learned to read after a week of paying close attention, there was the other thing. The worry she didn't want to be having. "I know. It's fine. I knew when I became a champion that I'd have to duel eventually. I've always known."
"That's different from it being tonight," Fila said.
"Yes," Bea said simply. "It is."
Fila wanted to say something but she didn't know what. She knew Bea was worried, and Fila worried about her. It's a circle of worry. Something that she didn't want, it felt really bad.
"I mean, the odds are low that even one of us gets picked." Fila said as she sat down against the wall. Letting her slide down against the rough stone wall. Hitting something on her back that made her slightly feel pain.
Bea looked at her sliding down the wall and then looked at the floor beside her and then sat down too, with considerably more grace, her back against the stone and her knees pulled up.
"There are a lot of champions," Fila said. "Castelobruxo has four left after Enzo. Mahoutokoro still has three excluding if Rin can go in yet. Ilvermorny has four excluding Marcus tonight." She paused. "That's 11 maybe 12 names in a bowl. Two come out. The odds that both of them are us are not nothing but they're not inevitable either."
"I know the math," Bea said quietly.
"Mhm." Fila just let out.
"I'm not scared of the math," Bea said. "I'm scared of." She stopped. Started again more carefully. "I've been watching you train Marcus all week. And I've been thinking about what it would mean if I got drawn. If I had to stand on that platform in front of everyone." A pause. "I've been in difficult situations before. I've handled things that were hard. But this is different because."
She didn't finish the sentence.
Fila waited.
"Because you'd be watching," Bea said. Very quietly. "And I want to be good. Not for the tournament. Not for Castelobruxo." She looked at the corridor floor. "For you."
If you only knew the screech fila made inside herself right now.
Fila pulled her head down to her shoulder, "You don't have to be good for me in dueling, idiot." She said and patted Bea's head, slowly combing her hair with her nails. "Just be you, and I will still look at you the same, even if you lose or win."
Bea turned her head and looked at her. Close, in the corridor, just the two of them against the stone wall. She looked at her for a moment longer. Then she leaned her head sideways until it rested against Fila's, temple to temple.
They sat like that for a while.
The stone was hard and slightly cold against Fila's back and she could still feel the thing she'd hit on the way down, a ridge in the wall that had introduced itself firmly to her spine, but she didn't move.
"If I get drawn tonight," Bea said, to the corridor, "I'm going to need you to not look worried. Whatever you're feeling, keep it." She paused. "I'll be able to see you and if you look worried it'll get in my head."
"I don't look worried," Fila said.
"You have a specific way of holding your jaw when you're worried," Bea said. "I've learned it. It's very subtle. But I've learned it."
Fila considered this. She had not known she had a specific jaw thing.
After sitting there for awhile, just the two of them. listening to the students talk and do their thing in the great hall. They stood, its almost time. "Bea if I get chosen, and win. I want a reward." Fila said with a very warm smile.
But the smile wasn't some ordinary smile, and that Bea could both feel and see. "I will see what I can do…"