thundercloud611
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zuri osei
coded by natasha.
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Fandom Octowizard Tournament // Wizarding World // RP Thread
- Thread starter Aviator
- Start date
Aviator
are you laughing at my brother?
Vasu Saini // “Shiva’s Heir” // Male // 5th Year // Koldovstoretz Champion // Parselmouth
“That wasn’t directed at you,” Vasu responded when his professor apologized for not making him aware of the masquerade nature of the ball. “The whole event just seems poorly organized. Like I’m supposed to talk nice to my dance partners’ faces while privately thinking, ‘I hope you fail out of the tournament the first challenge’? Yeah, okay. Really, can’t we just leave it at the feast and the Goblet of Fire and call it a night?” Vasu rolled his eyes so dramatically that they were in danger of disappearing in the back of his skull. Meanwhile, as if he were listening to Vasu’s spiel with only one ear, Vinogradov picked up Vasu’s mask absently. He turned it over in his hands like one who examines a hundred-dollar bill for telltale marks of a counterfeit. And then, without a word, the Wine Man swished his wand through the air above the mask. It transformed beautifully, as would be expected of a Transfiguration professor, growing and curving before Vasu’s eyes. The snub of a nose sharpened, the plain oval shape contorted, so that small points dipped below the eyes like ruby tears. Watching it happen was gradual and elegant, like watching the little ballerina in a wind-up music-box rise to the occasion and stutter into motion amid musical accompaniment.
Vinogradov handed a fiery-red treasure trimmed in black to Vasu, complete with an unfrayed ribbon of smoothest silk. Vasu licked his lips nervously, like a student at recital. The reworked masterpiece was amazing, yet an uncomfortable warmth was starting in his middle and spreading to his extremities. He didn’t like being beholden to anyone, especially when the Wine Man and he didn’t see eye-to-eye in most cases. But the fact of the matter was that the Transfiguration professor had just saved Vasu from being the laughingstock of the ball, and that was more important than Vasu’s petty feelings about keeping score. “Thank you,” he bit out awkwardly, unsure what else to say in response to this unsolicited but very much appreciated help. “But Red Court be damned, red isn’t my color,” Vasu murmured to himself, having little desire to twin with Vinogradov. While he had little talent for Transfiguration, Vasu was adept at glamours and superficial appearance-altering charms. With a flourish of his wand, a ripple of light passed over the mask, and when it faded, the carmine color was replaced with deepest evergreen.
It was one of the colors of the Indian flag, representing the fertility, growth, and auspiciousness of the land until Shiva destroyed it, as all things inevitably ended by his hand to pave the way for new and necessary beginnings. Green and purple were also the colors of the Saini house crest, the emblem a snake with likewise scales. When Vasu beheld the mask anew, the green-and-black mask matched the shades of the jade-and-onyx engagement ring on the third finger of his left hand. Regardless of his tempestuous feelings toward all that the silly ring stood for, Vasu was a sucker for jewelry that matched an outfit, and when the jewelry couldn’t be altered, the outfit would be.
Disliking the concept of asking Vinogradov for further help but realizing it a necessary evil, Vasu asked, “Would you help me with one more modification, please?” The Wine Man looked at him, surprised, as if Vasu had given him a warm hug out of the blue. “I want to add horns to the mask, please. Make it look woodsy, like something the Fae would wear into battle.” Vinogradov raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t contest Vasu’s request. Another twirl of his wand, and as if following its looping motions, horns sprouted from above the eyebrow ridges and spiraled upward, forming delicate, dangerous points. “It’s perfect,” Vasu answered in response to whether the mask looked good. Vinogradov returned the mask to Vasu, whose eyes gleamed as he ran a hand over the sleek, spiky additions. “Thank you,” he said, still fixated on the mask, which minutes ago had been two-dollar trash from a party store. He suddenly wished Ekta were there to see it. His little sister harbored a heartfelt obsession for satyrs and faeries and centaurs, and she would have fawned over the woodland mask, which looked like it had been plucked straight from the pages of a storybook.
The door to the carriage opened, flooding the semi-dark interior with warm lantern light. Wearing a floor-length dress with geometric shapes in coral and peach, Sasha Golubev—Vasu’s competitor for the title of champion—stepped into the carriage, wobbling only slightly in her heels. She lifted her skirt as she sat, primly crossing one leg over the other, her body subtly shifted away from Vasu. As if she sensed the tension between them too, the knowledge of what was at stake. In a few hours, one of them would walk out of the ballroom champion, and the other one would just walk out. “Thought we lost you,” Vasu said softly, not yet sure whether he liked that notion. Sasha was a hilarious commentator capable of whipping the crowd into a frenzy, but right now, until the first challenge began, she was his biggest threat. The greatest source of competition. The opponent whom he had to beat. He found it somewhat ironic that, regardless of tonight’s outcome, they would be expected to go forward as allies, one of them seeking to advance the other’s glory for minimal credit.
“Hm,” Vasu replied shortly to Sasha’s assertion that the ball would be fun. “If you’re looking so forward to it, you can take my dance card. You’re a decent multitasker; flip-flopping between yours and mine shouldn’t be too hard on you,” he said airily. Vasu’s stomach was hollow, and the only reason he was looking forward to the dancing was finishing it, so that he could gorge at the feast thereafter. He thought American fare bland and tasteless for the most part, yet his mouth watered as he wondered what dishes would be served tonight. Stuffed crab? Goat cheese and pecan salad? Yellow rice and refried beans?
His comment earned him a dark look from the Wine Man. One corner of Vasu’s mouth lifted into an arrogant tilt. “Speaking of dance cards, Professor,” he said quickly before he could be reprimanded, leaning forward and making a show of stroking his chin with one hand as if he were deeply curious. “Do you happen to have ours? I’d like to know what I’m up against this evening before it’s game on.” Vasu’s smirk deepened with satisfaction as he saw Vinogradov’s eyes widen a fraction of an inch, and then the Transfiguration professor was patting his suit jacket as if he hoped he hadn’t forgotten the dance cards in the luggage that the attendants had already taken. Vasu had it more together than the Wine Man, a fact which provided him endless amusement.
The Koldovstoretz carriage lurched forward to the methodical cadence of horse hoofs striking cobblestone. While the Wine Man fumbled for the dance cards, Vasu contented himself staring out the window of the carriage, eyeing the looming mountain that they would soon be ascending. He had an odd premonition that that mountain would be prominently featured in the first challenge, whatever form it took. The thought made a shiver go down Vasu’s spine; perhaps illogically for a Quidditch player, he was terribly afraid of heights. A voice like chiming bells scattered his thoughts to the four winds. He looked over at Sasha, who had spoken for the first time since her entry. Her perfume contained notes of vanilla, brown sugar, and caramel.
She was leveling a stare at him that he’d never seen before, meek girl that she was with her head bent over her desk. The pale moon of her face was a shade whiter than usual, a bit of strain visible in the clench of her jaw. She was concentrating hard on something. Or fighting off nerves. The idea that Sasha might find him intimidating yet strove to engage him in conversation as if she didn’t was cute. “No one that we’re incapable of crushing with our combined strength,” Vasu said ambiguously, having no desire to bring up his past with Clara. The memories were too precious and memories were all he currently had of her, and telling them to Sasha felt like relinquishing the last of the fragile hold he had on Clara. They belonged to him and Clara and them alone. Or if Clara had moved on and forgotten about Vasu in the recent years that he’d stopped attending the gatherings of international families, then they were just his. The possibility that Clara might never spare him a thought presently—or even recognize him at tonight’s ball—saddened Vasu a little bit. “How about you, Little Dove? Any faces that are familiar to you?” he returned the question. They were like card players, shoving cards toward each other while trying to keep their full hands hidden, trading non-answers for non-answers.
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pearjuice
Member
thundercloud611
Junior Member
secondary
sasha golubev
coded by natasha.
Aviator
are you laughing at my brother?
Chahaya “Cha-Cha” Arif // “the Friendly Demon” // Male // Age 32 // Castelobruxo Professor // Legilimens
Once again feeling thankful that dancing had not been a mandatory component of his own Triwizard Tournament, Cha-Cha reached into an inside pocket of his suit. His fingers brushed against his vape, and he resisted the urge to take a drag, even though he was fairly certain that neither of his students would rat him out for doing so. He withdrew two lacquered rectangles with elegant lattices tracing the borders, casually noting that the first name on Ricky’s belonged to the emo-looking girl he’d met on the caboose. None of the other names on either card stood out to him. Cha-Cha handed them to each boy. Ricky accepted his with a self-deprecating comment about his dancing skills, or lack thereof. “Don’t worry about it,” Cha-Cha replied. “You will be far from the only student who’s never danced in a formal setting before. Just stay loose and try to engage your partner in conversation to distract from your movements.”
Ricky kept his gaze steadfastly directed on his knees, not meeting Cha-Cha’s or Lisandro’s eyes. He was pinker than a glass of rosé when he claimed that he just wanted to celebrate Lis’s birthday tonight. Which Cha-Cha didn’t think was untruthful, but he also got the sense that there was something else he wasn’t being told. “I’m sure that we can hold our own party after the festivities end. Assuming that you guys aren’t opposed to staying out a little late before your classes tomorrow. But there’s a whole town to explore, so I’m sure we won’t be bored if you want to go out,” Cha-Cha said with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. Unlike when he’d been a student traveling to Mahoutokoro, Cha-Cha now had disposable income and two young pupils to spoil with it. And they’d only be staying at Ilvermorny for a month before it was time to pack up and leave for the next school on their itinerary—Castelobruxo—so they’d have to make the best of the little time they had in America.
The cart continued to bump over rough terrain, sloping gradually upward as they began the climb up the mountain. Cha-Cha had been sitting cross-legged on his bench, but as the carriage tilted, he was forced to brace his feet against the floor to keep from toppling forward out of his seat. He repeatedly tried to engage Lisandro and Ricky in conversation not pertaining to the tournament—about the performance of the Tutshill Tornados, how they’d spent their summers, Ricky’s aspirations for next year once he graduated—but both boys gave monosyllabic responses and repeatedly twitched their heads outside of the carriage window, as if to obsessively check how much farther they had to go until they reached Ilvermorny Castle. Cha-Cha inferred that his energy was too great to match that of his companions and reluctantly abandoned his attempts at small talk. So they sat in silence for the second half of the ride, broken only by the steady clop of horse hoofs on stone. The quiet made Cha-Cha restless, but he busied himself by watching the growing distance from the ground below, until the train station was swallowed up in a sea of blue mist and rendered invisible.
After an hour of maintaining a steady pace and squeezing around tight bends along the side of the mountain, the carriage finally drew to a halt. One of the horses snorted and pawed the ground triumphantly as the coachwoman clambered down from her perch to open the door for her passengers. Cha-Cha waited for his students to deboard and then followed suit, one of his knees cracking as he stood and eliciting a wince from him. His knees had never cracked before he’d worked as a server with all-standing shifts as long as fourteen hours, and it was one of the few things that betrayed his age.
Ilvermorny Castle was a motley assortment of buildings of various sizes and shapes, as if a child had been making a fortress out of randomly placed blocks. Faded stone that at one time might have been candy apple-red was crowned by lapis roofs. Here was a steeply gabled roof, there a pointy spire, and beside it a flat-topped rectangle that would have been plain if not for the massive, mossy tendrils that snaked through the building, threading inside one window and out of another, as if its life force was entangled with the castle. A fence of pale bricks surrounded the castle, interrupted by a tall gate with black curls of iron fashioned into artful shapes.
If Cha-Cha had thought it cold outside at ground level, the elevation of several hundred meters was practically freezing. His teeth chattered in the blowing icy wind, and he watched with morbid fascination as his breath fogged. He hadn’t been this far north since his imprisonment in Azkaban, located on an island in the middle of the North Sea. With a minimal exchange of words, the Castelobruxo boys followed the only team preceding them—Beauxbatons—down a lantern-lit path carved into rock that ended at the black iron gate. Cha-Cha walked as briskly as their predecessors would allow, eager to take shelter from the biting wind that tore his hair sideways and made him shiver uncontrollably in his insubstantial suit jacket. It made him feel endlessly appreciative of the fact that the Amazon Rainforest where their campus was located almost never dipped below a balmy twenty degrees celsius, and it was an exceptionally cold night when it did. The heavy rainfall that pounded the rainforest from November to March was a small price to pay for year-round warmth, especially when Cha-Cha was familiar with the comparatively brutal monsoons of the Indonesian wet season.
A short, cold eternity later, the gates were parting on silent hinges. Struggling not to speed up and trod on the heels of the Beauxbatons team, Cha-Cha forced himself to walk at a pace of half-frozen dignity, having lost the ability to easily curl and stretch his fingers. It made the task of tying the mask behind his head strangely complicated and slow-going, despite his ample experience blindly tying aprons from restaurant work. The mask he’d chosen was surprisingly hard and heavy, created of bronze and stylistically tarnished in places to give it an old feel. Between the eyes, a carved zipper opened halfway, revealing a cluster of interlocking gears sprouting in the center of the forehead. The right eye was partially obscured by a metal screen, and two buttons decorated the space just above the eye sockets. Lastly, below the screened-off eye was a fashionable buckle on smooth fabric, enhancing the antique, industrious image. Cha-Cha adored steampunk, and he’d searched high and low for a mask that captured its essence. Amid his modest and relatively cheap outfit, it was easily the most expensive piece.
He’d just finished fixing the mask across his eyes when the procession arrived at a hulking pair of statues that flanked the heavy metal doors. Cha-Cha remembered reading that they resembled Ilverymorny’s founders, Irish pureblood witch Isolt Sayre and her Muggle husband, James Steward, who’d established an informal place of magical education in the mid-seventeenth century.
The room immediately inside was perfectly circular. Torches lined the walls in sconces, throwing long, dancing shadows like a play of shadow puppets. The marble floor was the room’s widest point, narrowing into twin rows of balconies as it extended upward. Students wearing ceremonial pointed hats crammed onto these balconies, pointing and chattering excitedly at the tournament arrivals. A Gordian knot denoted the center of the marble floor. Standing equidistant from the knot were four animal statues arranged in an X-Y axis. The Beauxbatons students—a curly-haired blond boy, a leggy brunette, and a pale-haired Asian girl—in front of Cha-Cha were taking turns approaching the knot while the others hovered by the edge of the room, crowding the entrance. A dramatic pause created by a combined intake of breath preceded each student’s arrival atop the Gordian knot, and then one or more of the animal statues would react, the many-legged cat yowling, the bipedal porcupine lifting its arrow into the air.
Cha-Cha slid beside the Asian girl, whom he recognized from Ricky and Vasu’s compartment on the train but whose name he had never learned. He caught her eye as they waited for the boy on her team to approach the knot. “A Sorting ceremony, isn’t it?” he guessed. “It would appear that most of the magic schools have some kind of housing system. Does Beauxbatons have Houses or Courts?” She informed him that yes, but only three. “Such is the case with Castelobruxo too. There’s Dauphines, Sylphs, and Undines at our school. Which House do you belong to at Beauxbatons?” The girl told him that she was a member of Papillionlisse—a French word that Cha-Cha had to get her to repeat slowly because he wasn’t sure what she was saying the first time—that was distinguished by its members’ artistic inclination and compassion, its emblem a butterfly. “Interesting,” he murmured as she broke away to take her turn at the Gordian knot, drawing a parallel between Papillionlisse and Sylph, the Castelobruxo House that represented dreamers and ruled the imagination.
After one of the statues claimed her amid a roar of applause from the spectating Ilvermorny students, the girl bounced back to Cha-Cha’s side and encouraged him that it was his turn. “But I don’t know what any of the Houses here mean,” he protested, feeling as though it was necessary to understand the experience for it to be a worthwhile one. She assured him that it was okay, and that none of her team understood all of the intricacies of the American Sorting ceremony either. “Well, no harm trying, I guess,” Cha-Cha relented, pushing the steampunk mask up the bridge of his nose and crossing to the center of the room. He stood atop the Gordian knot, shifting uneasily in his brown leather boots, trying to see the circle of statues all at once even though it was impossible.
When nothing visibly happened and the silence was broken by a smattering of applause, Cha-Cha whirled around and saw that the turquoise gem in the snake’s forehead was glowing. Half a second later, there was a metallic twang! and to the right of the snake the porcupine had brandished its bow and arrow. Was it abnormal for two statues to react? Did even more of them react sometimes? Cha-Cha didn't know. Feeling empty and unaffected because the choosing had no deeper meaning to him, he vacated the knot at the center of the room, hastening back to the safety of the anonymous fringes. “I guess we’ll have to ask somebody at Ilvermorny what our statues mean,” Cha-Cha said to the same girl he’d spoken with previously, hoping that his snake didn’t indicate a person of a treacherous or deceitful nature as it did in many cultures, but he wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it did. Betrayal and deceit were easy as pie and cake for a Legilimens who had no compunctions about how he used his power. Maybe the porcupine choosing him softened the blow, declaring Cha-Cha to be more than just a conniving individual, but a conniving individual nonetheless.
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captaindanger
Peter Parker
FROSTBITE4395
Colder Than Hell and Worse Than Death...
Odinson LocJaw"The Young Giant"
Mood: Proud Year: Ten Location: Japan to Ilvermorny Role: Champion Outfit: Clickers View in question: Clicky
Holding a mug the size of the average four year old, holding enough alcohol to kill one, Odinson took one last swig before tossing it into the vast expanse of water that incased his surroundings, the waves were heavy and dangerous; They crashed against the rocks around him as if they were aiming to kill. Though the treachery of the waves did nothing but add to the beauty of the view, even someone like Odinson couldn't help but stop and admire it. The water was a crystal blue, if you weren't careful enough with you first scan you'd even think that it was actually made out of crystal. Odinson stood atop the edge of a cliff, barely out of reach from the disastrous waves, though the chaos was beautiful to him, calming even. It all came together and gave him a sense of peace, although the noise was loud and obnoxious to some it brought quietness to him. So much so that he almost didn't hear a professor calling his name from behind, "Mr. Odinson!" the teacher had yelled, his tone stern and his voice clear, "It is time for you to make your journey to Ilvermorny. We had discussed having you make the trek with a professor alongside you for a secondary base of protection but ended in a unanimous vote for the usage of a one-way portkey." The professor stopped his speech to summon a pin that one would attach to a shirt or a jacket, it was one that had belonged to Odinson since he was a young boy, a remembrance of sorts of his mother. It was an old, rusted pen in the shape of an enterprise worker emblem, it was from the muggle televised series 'Star Trek', a series that Odinsons mother had apparently loved. "Attach that to your clothing and you'll see yourself at the gates of Ilvermorny. A school I'm sure you'll be fond of." The professor said, "I've always enjoyed this view. As a student I would sometimes come here myself, and just.. meditate. Well- I suppose I've said my peace. Farewell Mr. LocJaw. I wish you luck." With that, the professor disappeared.
Odinson had been awaiting this day, if you had asked him even a week prior if he thought he would be a part of the Triwizard tournament in any way at all he would have said no and walked away. But here he was, standing in a scenic area about to travel to the other side of the earth using nothing but an old pin that would attach to ones shirt or jacket. "Here goes nothing." The giant said as he attached the pin to his jacket. As if in a book he had teleported to Ilvermorny, the rain was heavy as he arrived, drenching him almost immediately. "Are you the student from Mohoutokoro?" A man yelled, using his wand to keep the rain away, "Your things are ready for you, I'm sorry to say that you are the first from your school to arrive." The man yelled, leading Odinson into the castle.
Odinson had been scoping out the land of Ivlemorny, learning the habits of the students, watching the professors as they moved around, to him any amount of information was enough.
WanderLust.
WildFlower
Beauxbatons Secondary
KIARA SINCLAIRE
coded by natasha.
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Sanctuaryforall1
Pyrrha Nikos Lives On
Naomi Eun Hai (De Vries)
Beauxbatons - Female - Muggle Born - Secondary
The ride from the train station to Ilvermorny was far from unpleasant as Naomi took in the scenery and made pleasant conversation with Kiara. She could sense the energy bubbling within Raph as he drummed his fingers and hoped reaching the school and stretching his legs would help him to relax. It didn’t annoy her in the slightest but she could understand the irritation he must feel by being cooped up for so long. It also did not go unnoticed by the young woman that Kiara had removed her shoes. It hadn’t occurred to her to offer to enchant her fellow Beauxbaton’s shoes like she had her own but she made a mental note to bring it up before the next dance. Her own shoes, much like her dress, has a nature-inspired touch to them. They were actually one of her favorite little projects she had worked on in recent weeks and she was excited to have a chance to wear them after many successful trial tests. The heels were not stitched and glued together but instead they had been grown with gentle yet firm vines that wrapped around her ankle and down her heel. The open toes of the heels were met by an arc of soft pale flowers that grew together in order to secure the front of the sandal-like block heel. They were incredibly comfortable and secure, having been tested in all sorts of trials by Naomi herself, and if Kiara wanted a pair she would happily grow another for her.
As they drew closer to Ilvermorny the professor accompanying them pulled slips of elegantly folded paper from their person and handed one to each of them. Unfolding the tiny slip of paper Naomi’s mahogany gaze fell upon the names of those she would be dancing with this evening.
Lanre Owusu
Odinson Locjaw
Lisandro Valencia
Raphael Badeaux
Theo West
She smiled at the first name, which belonged to one of the young men she had just met, and the fourth name, which belonged to her dear friend Raph. While she wasn’t as close to Raph as Kiara was she still greatly enjoyed his company, Kiara’s too, and looked forward to having a chance to hopefully grow closer as a team in the trials to come.
Once the carriages arrived at Ilvermorny Naomi found herself at the back of the herd of Beauxbaton students and in the company of a gentleman who she deduced was one of the professors from another visiting school, Castlebruxo. Chatting with him was a pleasant experience as they spoke about the different schools and their sorting ceremonies. “When the time comes you’ll have to tell me your feelings on Beauxbaton’s ceremony, the colors will take your breath away.” She smiled, her voice light and gentle almost like a cloud as she spoke.
Soon it came to be her turn to be sorted and without hesitation the young woman approached the Gordian knot. Blinking and looking from statue to statue a smile painted itself upon her lips as the Pukwudgie began to glow bright with acceptance. Grabbing the soft upper layer of her pale purple skirt with both hands, Naomi gave the statue a curtsy, an odd gesture but she didn’t care as it felt like the right thing to do in the moment.
As she stepped back into line with the others she waited patiently for the man behind her to be sorted. For a moment it seemed as though nothing was happening but despite the chatters of those around her she did not worry for him, instead she chose to simply believe. When two statues began to glow with acceptance towards the young professor Naomi smiled and gave him an encouraging nod. “A conversation I am eager to take part in.” She replied to him as he took his place beside her once more. “It will certainly be interesting to find out who the world now thinks we are.” She added as she pulled her mask out of her pocket and fiddled with it for a moment. “But for now I guess we can be whoever we want, so long as it fits on the dance card.” She jested innocently and secured the delicately woven light purple and silver mask upon her face. The details of it were intricate yet not so much that it was displeasing to look at. Once again fitting the theme of her attire it was nature inspired with finely crafted vines swirling and weaving around each other, some holding little pale flowers. The mask was not solid and only covered her eyes, leaving the rest of her face free for the world to see along with her mahogany gaze.
Mentions: Cha-Cha
Aviator
Raph
captaindanger
Kiara
WanderLust.
TEMPLATE © BOKEH
Aviator
are you laughing at my brother?
Vasu Saini // “Shiva’s Heir” // Male // 5th Year // Koldovstoretz Champion // Parselmouth
“No, dear,” Vasu corrected, a haughty note in his voice. He paused for half a second, letting the suspense build. “Surprised is what I am when you’re standing front and center in a room and people still blurt their secrets out, because they just don’t care you’re there.” The transformation on Sasha’s face was instant. Her eyes flared wide, her ears blazed raspberry red, and her lower lip trembled, in that order. Vasu realized with some astonishment that he’d struck a nerve. Goddammit, blond girls and their little baby feelings! They were too bloody sensitive. Sasha had left him an opening for a witty retort, and Vasu wasn’t about to let the goods go to waste. He hadn’t actually believed what he’d said, but clearly Sasha had taken it personally. “It was a joke,” he snapped, as if this would suffice for an apology. Vasu crossed his arms and pursed his lips, thin as thread. If Sasha couldn’t see that he was just teasing her, then that was her problem. She ought to know better; he had no reason to dislike her as of yet. But if she kept up this wounded sissy complex… “You set me up for a shot. So I took it.”
Vasu could sense Vinogradov glaring daggers at him, seesawing between putting a damper on the momentous evening with a semi-public scolding and letting his students quarrel amongst themselves. Vasu practically snatched his dance card out of the Wine Man’s hand the second it was revealed, busying himself in the neat cursive script so that he could ignore the carriage’s other occupants. There were five names printed in looping black ink. Apparently Vasu was to kick off the evening with a girl named Gavriel—at least, he hoped it was a girl; Vasu had never heard of such a name before, but he’d rather be slow-roasted on a spit than have to slow-dance with another boy—from Ilvermorny and end it with his fellow Koldovstoretz representative. His heart fluttered when he noticed Clara’s name as his fourth partner. For better or worse, that was going to be a memorable experience; at least he’d have that much to look forward to while he suffered through the previous three dances. Sandwiched in between her and Gavriel were an Aurelia and a Zuri, both from Uagadou.
The air smelling musky with spite and repressed words, the Koldovstoretz committee spent the rest of the carriage ride looking anywhere but at each other: out the window, at their dance cards, at their shoes, into mirrors and making infinitesimal corrections to their appearances. To give him something to do, Vasu took the lucky coin out of his pocket and rubbed his thumb over the engravings of the wizard’s hat on the front and the snake’s tail on the back. Is the Wine Man going to be a buzzkill all tournament? he thought of asking. Will this masquerade ball be as ridiculous as it sounds? Will the food be any decent? But he didn’t, because they were all questions that would be answered soon enough. And because the lucky coin was supposed to be a trick up Vasu’s sleeve, an edge over the competition. He wouldn’t use it in front of Sasha until he was chosen champion, the threat she posed eliminated.
And if you aren’t? whispered a critical voice in the back of his mind. It sounded revoltingly like his grandmother’s voice. Vasu banished it, determined not to let thoughts of her poison his evening. Today at the platform, he’d bid her farewell until winter break at the very least. Maybe longer if he decided not to return home for it and risked her ire. But then he wouldn’t get to see Ekta or his mother. It felt cowardly, hiding away at school when it wasn’t in session to avoid his grandmother. She’d ruled his life long enough: told him he couldn’t date throughout school because he was already betrothed to another; withheld information of his father’s illness and death because it would disrupt his academic performance; locked him in rooms at home until he passed each of the tests she’d set for him in an attempt to breed a wizard of unparalleled skill among Vasu’s year.
No more, Vasu reminded himself. He would endure all of tonight’s frivolities because it was the first stepping-stone to liberating himself and his mother and sister from Aditi’s tyranny. No one told him whom he could date. When he had jumped through enough hoops that he’d earned a meal or a nap. That his mother couldn’t buy a new work shirt when the few she had were going threadbare because Aditi had to get her weekly manicure instead. Failure wasn’t an option, because failure meant continued enslavement to the family matriarch for the indefinite future. Vasu’s parents had been relatively young when they’d had him; his grandmother was sixty-three years old. How many more decades would he eke out under her thumb? The average witch’s lifespan was 137 years. Would Vasu be in his mid-seventies and still receiving summons to the temple for daily prayer? It won’t come to that. It can’t. Vasu’s mind spun in dark circles. If he failed to win the tournament, to win enough money and fame to support himself and his family, to guarantee a steady job after graduation, then Aditi would have to die. And Vasu would break every teaching in the Vedas to see it through and most likely condemn himself to eternal reincarnation as a shoefly, but some things had to be done despite the cost.
When Vinogradov spoke to announce that they would reach the castle in just a few minutes, Vasu jerked and forced a smile, as if he hadn’t just been considering senicide and the best method to get away with it. “Can’t wait,” he said, his voice falling so flat that it was almost funny, since Vasu hadn’t intended it as sarcasm. He tucked the coin back into his pocket and sat up straighter in his seat. The birdsong seemed to quiet, and an air of anticipation hung over the mountainside, as if the whole world were holding its breath. Vasu felt as if he should be doing something, making some kind of last-minute preparations. Back home, before they went onstage, Vasu and his fellow actors would drink warm lemon tea to loosen their pipes and then circle up to harmonize the scales together. But Vasu got the impression that the only thing he and Sasha would harmonize was their mutual desire for the night to end.
Let’s get this over with. He internally rolled his eyes as the carriage slowed down, and Vasu was leaping out before it had come to a full stop. He covered the distance to the muted cranberry stone of Ilvermorny Castle at a brisk clip, not bothering to wait for his companions and almost mingling with the group ahead of them, the Hogwarts team. Lanre swung around at the sounds of trailing footsteps, and Vasu returned his wave with a curt nod. The air smelled of impending rain and disappointment.
He didn’t don his mask, the foolish thing, until custom dictated, until he was crossing the bridge that led over the short moat and passing through a pair of heavy wooden doors ensnared in vines. And then he slid the green garment over his head so that it encircled his eyes and the horns poked up through his dark curls. Vasu had asked the Wine Man to replicate the helms that Fae warriors wore into battle. But with the leafy halo he wore, he felt more like he’d been cast as a shrub in a low-budget play.
Vasu blinked in the sudden light on the other side of the doors, the gloomy pall of twilight vanquished by rows of blazing torches. They had stepped into a circular chamber, and the halls that branched off from it were distinguished by different color flames, raspberry pink and royal blue and daffodil yellow. The room smelled of woodsmoke and apple cider and caramel popcorn. Vasu looked up, and surely enough, most of the students huddled on the tiered balconies were grasping either heavy mugs, striped paper bags, or both. He wondered whether he might get away with a spiked cider; surely, if they had alcohol set up at the professors’ table, there was a way to get his hands on some. Vasu felt at peak performance when he was three drinks in, so it would take a fair amount of cider to get there, but he’d take what he could get.
His gaze didn’t linger on the balconies of Ilvermorny spectators for long, chattering and pointing and taking swigs of cider. The center of the circular chamber was dominated by a perfectly symmetrical, golden shape that looked like three leaves that had been fused together. Or a Venn diagram of three different categories, with a center cluster of commonality. Masked students were taking turns walking up to the emblem, standing on it, and awaiting the reaction of one of four wood carvings that lined the edges of the room, equidistant from one another. Ah, the four Ilvermorny houses. Vasu had read about these in the foreign studies lessons that Aditi had thrust him into at age seven. There were Wampus, Pukwudgie, Horned Serpent, and Thunderbird, if memory served. Most of the students were chosen fairly instantaneously by a statue, lingering on the emblem for no more than a second, so the unofficial line was moving at a quick pace.
When it was Vasu’s turn, the shadow of a smile played over his lips as he strode into the center of the room. He had a good idea how his Sorting would go. Surely enough, as soon as his loafers brushed the golden leaves, the Wampus cat threw its head back and gave a mighty roar that shook the stone pillars and vibrated in the bones of Vasu’s chest. Wampus, the warrior house. He’d expected nothing less, though Vasu held Horned Serpent in high regard, too. But he knew himself well enough to know that his avid studies were instrumental to enhancing his natural strength, not the other way around.
On the other side of the room, students were queuing up into another line, but this one was more regulated. Gray-robed staff were nudging students into strict, single-file formation, telling them exactly how far apart to stand from one another, giving them handheld mirrors and instructing them to make necessary adjustments to their appearances. As he approached, Vasu could see that one of the branching hallways led downward, a wide set of stairs disappearing into a velvet curtain the color of fresh-plucked roses. Beyond it, he could hear a woman’s voice, amplified with a Sonorous spell.
“...and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce to you the candidates for champion for the first-ever Octowizard Tournament. First up, representing Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, is…”
A stocky golden-haired boy was grasped by the elbow and ushered down the stairs toward the curtain. He was tense, as if startled by the touch and even more bewildered by what awaited him on the other side of the curtain. Vasu felt thankful that the Koldovstoretz team was halfway down the line, so that he would have ample time to observe the cues and codes of behavior before his showtime. Although he knew he didn’t really have to worry; he was born for the stage, and this setup of students in their ballroom finery, fussing with their hair and receiving muttered last-minute directions, reminded him of the ordered chaos of backstage.
The line with the students snaked around the left side of the circular chamber. On the right, waiting in a separate line, stood eight older individuals, the men taller and broader, the women more curvaceous and refined in their beauty. Vinogradov stood among them, fifth from the curtain. The professors from each school. Three individuals ahead of him, a flash of fairy tale-red drew the eye like a bloodstain on white linen. Vasu felt a jolt like a missed stair as he recognized Cha-Cha, despite the bronze mask with gears poking out of it like a disemboweled clock that obscured the upper half of his face. As he stared in open disbelief, closing his jaw from where it had slackly fallen open, blinking rapidly as if the illusory image before his eyes would change, Vasu felt tricked. It was not a feeling he enjoyed.
So he’d made enemies with a professor. Not even on the first day of the tournament, but on the train ride. Logically, Vasu knew he ought to feel afraid. As a professor—a professor, good fuck! How bloody old was Cha-Cha? At most he looked twenty-three, but with his hair down he looked hard-pressed not to get carded at a club—Cha-Cha would be a more experienced spellcaster, have a more esoteric knowledge than Vasu in at least the subject he taught, whatever that may be. And in their brief encounters, Vasu had beheld Cha-Cha cast wordlessly and wandlessly in different instances. But instead of fear, Vasu inexplicably felt… charged, like a battery in an electrical surge, humming with power. Like he was strong enough to go head to head with a professor. After all, Vasu’s selection for the Octowizard Tournament was an irrefutable acknowledgement that he was one of the most impressive wizards of his era. He’d been inventing his own spells to make new products or enhance existing ones at his parents’ shop since he was old enough to use a wand. Plus, there was something validating about having an enemy as powerful as Cha-Cha. It made Vasu feel strangely reassured of his own worth after Aditi had suggested that he was never good enough for the entirety of his youth.
Sorely regretting the fact that looks couldn’t kill, Vasu tore his gaze away from the professor in the clockwork mask, who was obliviously running a hand through his hair in a gesture that Vasu couldn’t yet tell was out of nervousness or vanity. Vasu set his burning stare on the curtain, which the line was inching toward at an infuriatingly slow rate. Hearing a scuff of shoes behind him, Vasu turned to find Sasha standing there, shifting her weight from foot to foot in an anxious little dance that would have done her no favors at a card table. With her heels on, they stood eye to eye. Her gaze darted from the curtain to Vasu, and he saw the barely concealed panic in their cornflower depths. Sasha’s face was as pale as an early-morning sky with it.
Vasu generally despised open displays of weakness, but this one he could empathize with. He remembered performing for his very first school musical when he was eleven years old, playing the part of Alina—a girl, no less—in The Republic of Karthain, and the iron bands of fear that had tightened around his chest. Stage fright was one of those things gradually conquered through experience, and he was rapidly inferring that Sasha had none. Her chest was rising and falling in short, shallow pants. “Breathe through your nose, Sasha. Lowering your carbon dioxide will cause your blood pH to spike, and then you’ll feel ten times worse when you’re numb and dizzy,” he said matter-of-factly. “Not to hasten your demise, but they’re calling the candidates alphabetically by school. You’re supposed to be ahead of me in line.” Vasu made to step around and behind her, but Sasha didn’t budge. She stood rooted in line.
Normally, Vasu was not a fan of unnecessary touching. He did not resort to physical contact unless an argument needed to be resolved with more than just words. But seeing as Sasha was not going to move of her own accord, and the contact might comfort her, Vasu set an open palm on her spine and gently pushed her forward. Impossibly, the tension in Sasha’s body increased for a split second, and then her muscles drooped in relaxation all at once. The fabric between her shoulder blades wasn’t stretched so tight, and the air whistled through her nose as it left in one prolonged burst. Vasu felt her heartbeat slow slightly. Sensing that his close proximity was calming her, he didn’t immediately move away.
“Hold it together for Vinogradov if you can’t do it for yourself. He’s counting on you. All of Koldovstoretz is,” Vasu said in little more than a whisper. He stood directly behind Sasha, talking over her shoulder, and his breath stirred the hair around her ear. “I want you to imagine it as a Quidditch game that you’re commentating. Go out there and give a deep curtsy. Actually, don’t do that,” Vasu corrected himself quickly. A curtsy, especially to the unskilled, required some coordination. As nervous as Sasha was, there was a possibility she’d tangle her legs and trip herself. “Strike a pose, then make eye contact with someone in the front row and wink. Move slowly, deliberately, like you’ve all the time in the world. They’ll go nuts over it.”
thundercloud611
Junior Member
secondary
sasha golubev
coded by natasha.
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captaindanger
Peter Parker
Sanctuaryforall1
Pyrrha Nikos Lives On
Professor Birger Einar
Durmstrang - Male - Pureblood - History of Magic Professor
Taking a seat in the carriage with two of his favorite students Einar positioned his cane between his legs with his hands resting on top of it, one on top of the other. He had chosen to sit beside Cosmo so that the bulk of him didn’t risk wrinkling and ruining Clara’s dress. In the back of his mind, he could still hear the memory from countless moons ago of his darling little Runa.
“Papa! Papa! You must give a lady space so her dress never wrinkles!”
Years upon years later he could still hear his daughter's voice as though the two had just spoken. He could still picture her princess dress-up gowns and the little teapot she used when they had tea parties with all of her stuffed animals and he was the guest of honor. Oh, how he would give his last breath to partake in one more tea party with his darling little Runa and her sweet giggles that once filled his heart with joy.
There were times when the old man pictured what his children would be like now, or what they would have been like when they were his student's age. None of them ever made it to the age of attending Durmstrang, all of them taken far before their time. Had they lived he liked to imagine they would be much like many of his favorite students. Perhaps Runa or Thora would have been like Clara? Perhaps Sture would have been like Cosmo? He would never know. His fondness for the twins stemmed from many places but part of it certainly came from the sparks within them that reminded him of his own kin. Clara and Cosmo might not see it themselves and he certainly never mentioned it but he could see Sture in Cosmo’s confident, trusting, and selfless nature. In Clara, he could all too easily see Runa’s charm and cheeky spirit as well as Thora’s curious and observant nature, the young woman as unpredictable as both of his girls had proven to be. Both students were certainly their own people and Einar was not old or senile enough to truly confuse them for his children but over the years of watching them grow he had truly come to consider them like family. Not to replace those he lost but to grow as families often did.
The ride to the school was a scenic one much like the train and Einar pointed out several of the native wildlife and told stories he had learned during his youth as he traveled the world. At one point in the journey, he looked over at Clara and smiled in the way a proud father might, nodding to her and saying, “You look lovely Clara. I hope I am not the first to say it for I certainly doubt I will be the last.” His tone was soft and warm, low but not carrying the normal thunder it often boomed with. Looking over at Cosmo he grinned and shouldered the young man fondly, “And it seems before my eyes young Cosmo has grown into quite the man. I am more proud than I can ever express to bear witness to the young wizards you both are becoming.” He spoke, his voice returning to its usual boisterous rumble.
Before he knew it the carriage was pulling up to the front of the school and the trio was soon setting foot on solid ground once more. As he removed himself from the carriage, Cosmo watching to steady him if needed, Einar gave the young man an appreciative clap on the shoulder before turning to Clara. As the young woman began to step out of the carriage Einar offered her his hand, a polite gesture and caring gesture that she was free to accept or deny at her leisure. Once they were all free of the carriage confines Einar began to move forward, his cane thumping the ground in sync with his strides as they followed the flow of students into the halls of Ilvermorny Castle.
All around the students of different schools spoke among their classmates and future competitors. Einar spotted a few professors talking with students and looked forward to the day he would know the names of each, student and professor alike. For a moment his eyes locked onto a dark-haired young man, likely in his early thirties, who was talking to a young girl that was clearly a student. Recognition sparked within Einar the moment he spotted the back turned to him, even with a mask on he would recognize Cha-Cha anywhere, especially after all they had been through. He did not let any of his thoughts or feelings show outwardly and he made sure not to watch for too long. Instead, he turned his attention towards the ceremony being performed and cheered, banging his cane rather than clapping, when each individual was sorted into their Ilvermorny house.
When the time came for him to step towards the Gordian knot Einar did so without hesitation. At this point in his life there wasn’t much that he wasn’t willing to try and being sorted into a house from another school certainly sounded like an interesting experience to have. The old man’s eyes looked upon the faces of the statues as he stepped forward but before he had even made it fully towards the point the others had at the center of the knot the Wampus began to roar ferociously. Cheers exploded all around him but inside Einar felt a dagger twist in his heart, he had worked hard to leave the warrior behind and yet it seemed to still be a core part of who he was. Stepping back out of the knot he looked to Clara and Cosmo with an encouraging nod. “Embrace the moment you two. You deserve to be here.” He told them with warmth like a hearth in his tone as he pulled a wolf-shaped mask from his pocket and began adjusting it to his face.
Mentions: Cosmo, and Clara
pearjuice
Cha Cha
Aviator
Naomi
TEMPLATE © BOKEH
pearjuice
Member
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Aviator
are you laughing at my brother?
Chahaya “Cha-Cha” Arif // “the Friendly Demon” // Male // Age 32 // Castelobruxo Professor // Legilimens
He extended a hand, and with a smile that made her eyes resemble the sugared brown of a honeycomb, the Beauxbatons girl accepted it. As soon as she did, Cha-Cha was enclosed in a kaleidoscope of colors and sensations. A makeup brush tickling her cheekbones as its user dabbed paint onto them, eyeing her reflection in a circular mirror. Soil encrusted under nails as she potted a green hydrangea. The jovial tempo of an Elvis Presley song, undercut by a strong current of fear. The lasting sting of a slap across the face.
You’re bleeding, Naomi, Cha-Cha thought, withdrawing from their handshake as quickly as he could while still being polite. The faucet of memories abruptly cut off. “Bleeding” was a term that Cha-Cha had privately coined to describe when others unconsciously projected memories or emotions without him trying to view them, cleverly named after the card-playing slang when a player unwittingly held her cards in such a way that they were visible to her opponents. There was a higher probability that others would bleed when they were intoxicated or if they touched Cha-Cha, but it wasn’t an exact science. Sometimes when caught up in strong emotions people bled anyway. And those who were well-versed in Occlumency didn’t bleed at all.
Before he departed the assembly of students that had tidied enough to be decisively called a line, Cha-Cha pivoted away from Naomi so that he was facing the rest of the Castelobruxo team. Lisandro was restlessly fiddling with the cuffs of his jacket again, wearing a look like a man asked to select his own execution date. Ricky hovered at his elbow, looking concerned but uncertain how to help. “Hey now, don’t fret,” Cha-Cha said gently, lowering Lis’s wrists so that his student would look at him. “Just remember, when you go out there, they’ll all be cheering for you. Life is far too sacred to let it go to waste. You should treasure these moments, while you can.” Cha-Cha's voice was equal parts dreamy and melancholy, his eyes aged as if he'd observed the universe for centuries and knew all its secrets. How he missed youth, the simplicity of life that accompanied it. He briefly wrapped Lis up in another one-armed hug, just as he had when wishing him a happy birthday. Thankfully, Lis didn’t bleed when Cha-Cha touched him. When bleeding exposed Cha-Cha to overly personal, poignant memories, it often took a toll on him and spoiled relationships from occurring naturally. And it wasn’t as if Lis hadn’t bled to him before, so Cha-Cha knew that his home life was more sour than sweet.
He pulled away from Lis and turned to Ricky. “Knock ‘em dead, kiddo,” he said affectionately, knowing that Ricky could hold his own and didn’t need Cha-Cha to coddle him. Standing with his shoulders back, the butterscotch light rendering his hair a lovely amber color, Ricky glowed like a new sun. The competence he radiated, the way that he supported his teammate and didn’t view him as a rival for the championship, made Cha-Cha unexpectedly proud to see, if slightly certain of which of his pupils would be chosen. The thought made Cha-Cha feel a little guilty. Lisandro was a stellar student with a knack for critical thinking that was evident in his essays. He just lacked the charisma that had propelled Cha-Cha all his life, making Lis harder to instruct in a meaningful way. Cha-Cha sometimes got the impression that Lis didn’t want Cha-Cha to get to know him in a personal way, that Cha-Cha was too much energy for him and Lis wanted to maintain a careful distance. It was a reaction that Cha-Cha was conditioned to when others chose to only see him for the darker parts of his past. After all, Lis came from a pureblood family. Cha-Cha doubted that Lis’s mother would extend a letter with half as many kind words as Marcia’s had toward him.
As Cha-Cha turned, he caught the eye of the goth girl from the caboose, transformed in a sage-green dress with a mask that shimmered like scales, bedecked with tiny green and red snakes. He gave Clara a subtle smile, betraying no other hint of recognition. Then Cha-Cha retreated to the edges of the room, where the other professors had formed an informal line after bidding their students farewell and good luck. He watched the silver-robed attendants flit over the students with mild disinterest, wondering if anyone would care if he snuck a hit of his vape but not curious enough to try it out.
Cha-Cha hadn’t been standing there for a minute when he was joined by a towering professor wearing a wolfish mask and carrying a silver-headed cane. Despite the deep lines in his face, the man had a barrel chest and a gray beard that only emphasized the square of his jaw. As the previous person to have joined the line, there was an empty space next to Cha-Cha, which the cane-wielding professor filled. “Some ball, isn’t it?” Cha-Cha said by way of greeting, swiveling only halfway toward the newcomer in case the other man chose to ignore his attempt at small talk.
But he didn’t. As if just realizing Cha-Cha were there, the older man peered over his shoulder at him. Then his dour-looking expression lightened and he responded in kind. Cha-Cha turned toward him fully. “You’re the Durmstrang professor, yes?” He didn’t reveal that he knew this because the other professor had been standing beside Clara, but given the man’s militant soot-black robes and wolfish mask, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. Something about him conjured the mental image of a Viking. He loomed almost a full head over Cha-Cha, who likely would have been taller and broader if he hadn’t been so malnourished as a child. Fortunately, it hadn’t affected his brain development; at least Cha-Cha hoped it hadn’t.
There was an unexpected sharpness in the elderly professor’s pale gaze as he nodded affirmatively, introducing himself as Einar. Unexpected because Cha-Cha was used to seeing glazed eyes when others who had yet to be conditioned to his hypnotic aura stood so close to him, as Clara had demonstrated when Cha-Cha offered her his jacket. How interesting. Einar had at least a moderate knowledge of Occlumency. Which wasn’t uncommon for someone who had been alive as long as he, but neither was it the norm; most schools didn’t teach Legilimency or Occlumency, which had been a serendipitous occurrence for Cha-Cha. His own little marketing niche had made him valuable in Headmistress Lorena Dantas’s eyes, and ever the shrewd businesswoman, she’d exponentially sped up his release from Azkaban so Cha-Cha could teach the tricks of the trade to Latin American wizards.
“Nice to meet you! I’m Cha-Cha of Castelobruxo. Is Einar a first name or a last name?” Einar replied that it was his last name without elaborating on his first name. Then he humorously echoed Cha-Cha’s question. “A nickname,” Cha-Cha replied, rewarding the old man’s irreverence with a smile. Cha-Cha had a look like he was trying to sell you something, and a smile that made you want to buy it. Then, for some reason, though he habitually did not reveal much information about himself, he added, “I don’t have a last name. At least, not a real one.”
When all eight of the professors had been presumably corralled, a pair of gray-robed attendants marched to the head of the line and told them to follow. They led the professors down yet another of the halls branching off of the circular chamber, this one darker, the color-changing torches displayed at farther intervals, and winding, as if they were traversing the backstage catacombs of the school. Cha-Cha looked around curiously, spotting some unused wooden tables leaning against walls, stacks of chairs half-covered by white cloths, occasionally catching glimpses of his clockwork mask in dusty gilt-framed mirrors. With the near exception of Clara, no one had recognized him yet as “that terrorist who was in the news ten years ago,” and much of his anxiety had dissipated. Maybe it was a side effect of coaching Lis and Ricky through the ceremony, being brave on their behalf distracting from his own internal struggle. Rather, Cha-Cha felt a childish sort of excitement as the group wound through the semi-dark corridors, eager to embark on adventure and see where the disused tunnels would deposit them.
And it was at the back of what Cha-Cha assumed to be the Great Hall. Gold was everywhere, in the crystal chandeliers arching overhead, the white marble floor veined with it, the candelabra adorning the long tables of spectators. Even the utensils that set the table, even though the feast had yet to begin. Stained-glass windows depicted triumphant scenes of Isolt Sayre and James Steward defeating a dark, many-headed monster that threatened their family. Students sat at four long tables with benches, running half the length of the Hall. Perhaps the seating arrangements represented the four houses, Cha-Cha guessed. The other half of the room was glittering and barren, presumably reserved as the dance floor. As the attendants discreetly directed the professors to a small table that had been erected along one wall, facing the dance floor, Cha-Cha dodged a House Elf, nimbly halting before he trampled it. The tiny, long-eared creature was carrying a stack of several dishes with gleaming metal covers, piled so high that she was seeing around it rather than over it.
The clack of Einar’s cane against the floor sounded only mere inches behind Cha-Cha; everyone behind him had been forced to stop suddenly too. “Need some help with that?” he asked the House Elf brightly, bending halfway to relieve some of her burden. But before he could lay a hand on the dishes, she twisted away with the stack, hissed at him, and scurried off. Cha-Cha’s face fell as he straightened to find one of the attendants glaring at him for holding up the procession. Chastened, he joined the small table where most of the other professors were already sitting. Einar wordlessly sat across from him.
On a dais at the center of the room, a middle-aged white woman with an asymmetrical pixie cut and crisp gray suit was magically amplifying her voice in preparation of announcing the student representatives for each school. But first she was going on about how this tournament was the first of its kind, and what an honor it was to introduce the foremost faces of the future of wizardry to the world. Finding that the woman wasn’t particularly talented at rhetoric, Cha-Cha boredly scanned the table, in search of something else to occupy his attention until the students were introduced. Papery bags contained loaves of toasted French bread spaced at intervals along the table. Cha-Cha reached for one, having eaten nothing on the train. Actually, having eaten nothing today. After a childhood battling hunger and four years of imprisonment where he’d occasionally have his food taken from him if he didn’t wolf it down, accepting food when it presented itself was first nature.
He broke off a piece of bread with a crisp, musical wrench that wafted delicious notes into the air. He was about to pop it into his mouth when an ocean of eyes turned to him, their disapproval clear. Cha-Cha dropped the bread numbly on the small plate before him, knowing that he’d broken etiquette. “Sorry,” he whispered. He could count on one hand the number of events like this he’d attended as a guest rather than as wait staff. Clearly not enough, because Cha-Cha had managed to piss off people twice within the span of so many minutes.
Fortunately, to provide ample distraction from his failings, another House Elf was circuiting the table and taking beverage orders. Another one followed close behind, dragging a cart laden with bottles of liquor and mixers and wine. Cha-Cha normally didn’t drink, but his stomach was eating itself. And besides, it wasn’t often he was offered free alcohol. It might even liven up the party, said the devil on his shoulder. By the time that the House Elf reached him, he was restraining a mischievous smile. “Do you happen to have a Malbec in there? Preferably an Argentine one?” The House Elf replied that he had a bottle of Mendoza Malbec. “Perfect,” Cha-Cha purred, handing the wine glass that was on the table to the vertically-challenged House Elf who would be damned to reach across him. Cha-Cha excitedly drank in the sight of the House Elf pouring his wine for him. For two years he’d done nothing but pour wine for rich Muggles as they discussed their investments, upcoming elections, and the woes of their love lives. It was surprisingly satisfying to be on the receiving end of such pampered treatment. It made Cha-Cha feel like one of the elite, which he knew was a goddamn lie but it felt great to pretend.
“Thank you,” he said, unable to hide a smile as he accepted the full wine glass. For his convenience, the House Elf extended the bottle for him to take, too. “Very much,” Cha-Cha finished, snatching up the bottle greedily. He swung back around on the bench, plunked the bottle down on the table, and took a few sips of wine to mollify his empty stomach, relishing the competing flavors of blackberry, vanilla, leather, and tobacco. Lorena, a Sauvignon snob, liked to mock Cha-Cha’s taste in wine, telling him that he had a child’s palate that only extended to cheap, sweet stuff. Perhaps she was right, but unlike her, Cha-Cha did not pretend to be a connoisseur. He only drank wine on special occasions, usually reserved for when the two of them went out to dinner together. And he didn’t touch hard liquor at all. He had a history of disaster with that—typically ending in clothes off, a telepathic meltdown, profuse vomiting, or all of the above in that order—and Cha-Cha was inclined not to repeat past mistakes.
It didn’t help that the smell of Firewhiskey turned his stomach every time a bottle was opened. Firewhiskey had been the drink of choice of one of the particularly brutal guards at Azkaban, who would use the most minute excuses for insubordination to administer a beating. One time, when Cha-Cha was twenty-one and a brand-new inmate, she’d broken a bottle of the stuff over his head during an interrogation when he didn’t give her the answers she wanted. In the same session, she’d methodically broken all of his fingers and left him with the burn scars around his wrists that he still had today.
Several minutes of unpleasant memories and the Headmistress droning later, Cha-Cha had quaffed the glass of wine. It required all his self-discipline to ignore the fragrant hunk of bread sitting before him. He was in the act of pouring himself a second glass when, with a forced note of enthusiasm interjected in her voice, the Headmistress announced the first student representative. “Now introducing Raphael Badeaux of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, seventh year.” A round of applause met the swish of the curtain that admitted a boy with a cherubic crown of honey-colored hair. Between sips, Cha-Cha gently set his glass down to join the applause. The boy, Raphael, did a slow lap of what would become the dance floor, until he was standing along the wall on the other side of the room, directly across from the professors’ table. The second he stopped, the next student was emerging from behind the curtain, introduced as Naomi De Vries. Cha-Cha recognized her immediately as the girl he’d been talking to about the Ilvermorny Sorting Ceremony, and he flashed her a supportive smile.
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Sanctuaryforall1
Pyrrha Nikos Lives On
Gavriel Sylvie
Ilvermorny - Female - Half-Blood - Champion
The idea of getting a picture of the three of them together had Gavy nodding her head enthusiastically and gently she bumped shoulders with Ramona. “Luckily for us, we have a master photographer on deck.” She pointed out with an encouraging glance towards her classmate. “But no pressure, I am sure we can find someone to snap the picture for us too.” The multi-color haired girl added as she seemed to realize she had put Ramona on the spot. “I just happen to agree with our dear Professor Monroe here that this moment needs to be memorialized, one way or another, and preferably before I get annoyed and lose my dress.” She added, the end of her comment only a semi-joke but also quite the possibility if the gown decided to get in the way of her being able to move however she wanted. Truthfully she had strongly considered wearing a jumpsuit rather than a dress but the gown her sister found was so perfect she knew she needed to wear it…even if it meant sneaking off to the dorms part way through the night to change back into her jeans and t-shirt.
During the familiar carriage ride to the school, Gavy was practically vibrating with excitement and struck up conversations with both Ramona and Professor Monroe in an attempt to keep herself from bubbling over with pent-up energy. Her hair and eyes were still a tie-dye rainbow of blue and purple that faded and intensified with every passing heartbeat as her emotions ebbed and flowed. “So the visiting students and professors are going to be sorted into Ilvermorny houses?” She asked and couldn’t help but be curious as to which houses her new friends would find themselves in. “That should be interesting to watch. What do you think Ramona, should we tell them what each house represents or take bets to see how long it takes for them to figure out?” She chuckled playfully and knew herself well enough to know she would absolutely cave and explain her schools houses to Cosmo, Kiara, and Raph if they asked.
When it came time for Professor Monroe to pass out the dance cards Gavy took hers and opened it, curiosity buzzing in her brain. Her multi-colored gaze scanned the slip of paper as she took in the five names scrawled upon it and couldn’t help but grin upon reading the third and fourth names.
Vasu Saini
Lisandro Valencia
Raphael Badeaux
Cosmo Winter
Ricardo Pitanga
Knowing two out of the five names wasn’t bad in her books. Sure, some of the others might know each other from years past but as a wizard who grew up outside of the wizarding world, it wasn’t uncommon for her to play a bit of catch-up when it came to significant families and figures. Honestly, she preferred it that way. She might not enjoy the journey that led her here but at least she was able to meet people and see them as just that…people. Old wizard family names meant nothing to her, the person they decided to be was what she cared about.
Once the carriages arrived at the school Gavy waited with a bouncing leg for Amity and Ramona to step out before she bolted out of the vehicle behind them. They were one of the last carriages to arrive which meant things might have already started and she didn’t want to miss the group she had met being sorted into their Ilvermorny houses. “Come on Ramona!” She laughed and took them by the hand without a second thought. Looking over her shoulder she waved an arm towards Professor Monroe. “I’ll cut us a path through the crowd!” She called out and booked it into the building without a second thought or care, her mind dead set on getting the best view to see the sorting ceremony. Luckily for her, she got there just in time to see it begin and made swift work of finding space for Ramona and Professor Monroe beside her by playfully flirting with a few boys who were more than happy to help her out. As the visitors were sorted Gavy cheered along with the others, her celebration rising in volume for Cosmo, Raph, Kiara, and the girl she had figured out to be Clara.
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Vasu Saini // “Shiva’s Heir” // Male // 5th Year // Koldovstoretz Champion // Parselmouth
She was going on about gummies and how she should have snuck some into the carriage with her. Vasu’s brow furrowed, equal parts quizzical and frustrated. Did she think the Wine Man would reprimand her for eating candy prior to the ball? And more importantly, with everything going on, candy was on her mind? With her torrents of nervous energy, any sugar she had now would cause her to bounce off the walls. “No, Sasha, when we finish up here our first order of business is getting you a drink. Getting both of us a drink,” Vasu amended, his nerves fraying from the secondhand panic of having to play nursemaid and calm her down. The legal drinking age in Russia was eighteen, but if you were willing to pay a little extra, most bartenders had no qualms serving minors; it wasn’t as if law enforcement was paid enough to actually enforce the law unless it benefited them. Vasu knew the drinking age in America was even older, and bribery wasn’t as widely accepted, but the bartender on the train not inquiring as to his age gave him hope that they’d be able to acquire alcohol with relative ease elsewhere too. He guessed he’d find out sooner or later.
The promise of liquor seemed to calm Sasha somewhat. Or at least startle her into silence, because surprisingly she stopped talking all at once. In the quiet that hung between them, the pounding of her heart seemed disproportionately strong against Vasu’s hand. He realized that she was waiting for him to continue, but he had nothing left to say. He wasn’t Vinogradov, who could come up with soft words of encouragement at the snap of the fingers. He wasn’t the pretty boy from the train, Ricky, who charmed girls with just a smile. He was Vasu Saini, the Keeper who brutally winged Quaffles back at Chasers who got too close, the target of envious looks during school auditions when he swept onstage and stole the show. Vasu’s company was like a shot of something bitter and strong—bracing, and best to abstain if you couldn’t handle the kick. He didn’t have the syrupy sweetness that Sasha needed to hear right now.
But he did have showmanship. And he always performed best when he had a plan, a script to play by. So give her a script, whispered an ingenious voice. “Sasha,” Vasu said with sudden conviction, as if saying her name was casting the spell he knew would end the duel. Standing this close to her, her vanilla-caramel perfume was slightly overpowering yet enticing. He spun her halfway around so that he was staring intently into her cobalt eyes. “I have an idea.” He drew closer, lowering his voice confidentially, his plan for her ears alone. He hadn’t even gotten halfway through his instruction when she began shaking her head numbly. She started to say she couldn’t do it. “Yes, you can,” Vasu cut her off firmly. “Sasha, you’ve commentated for the International Quidditch Finals and killed it. It’s just like that, except instead of hearing your voice, the audience is seeing your face. There’s no risk of saying something foolish.” Either she had reluctantly chosen to believe him or she was just intimidated by the fervor in his eyes, but Sasha let him continue.
As they argued, the line gradually crawled forward, until finally, only the Hogwarts cohort separated them from the curtain that hung down, big and menacing like an executioner’s blade. “Run it through your head a few times. We still have another minute before you go onstage. Just don’t forget the steps.” Sasha let the conversation drop, hopefully to review the part that Vasu had assigned her rather than in an attempt to ignore him. Vasu withdrew, shifting his weight from foot to foot in anticipation as he too ordered his thoughts. His gaze wandered the antechamber, falling on a vase of red, white, and pink roses on a shelf of dusty tomes, a lone pop of color amid a cloud of gray. Seized by spontaneous brilliance, Vasu shouldered his way out of line and walked up to the shelf, moving faster when one attendant asked him where did he think he was going. He plucked a single long-stemmed pink rose from the vase; pink was Ekta’s favorite color. He made sure to do it while he was turned halfway around to face her, so that his body blocked the motion of his arm darting out to the side from the mouthy woman’s view.
“Sorry,” Vasu said in a sweet voice like poisonous berries. He flashed a smile that he hoped didn’t have too much teeth to be good-natured. “I saw a book by one of my favorite authors and just had to check it out.” He obediently returned to the line, walking at a slight angle so that she wouldn’t see the rose concealed in his right hand. Enough performance in front of crowds had engrained in Vasu a casual knowledge of sleight of hand, the exact angle to conceal a trap door from the audience’s perspective, a burst of noise on one side of the stage while trickery happened on the other. The woman frowned at him, watching him hawkishly as he reentered the line, but let the subject drop, turning away to converse with one of her co-workers.
“Do you mind?” Vasu asked the Mahoutokoro boy with the blue mask, who’d crept up in line to refill the gap that Vasu had left, as if by getting out of line Vasu had rescinded his spot when in reality he’d still be called after Sasha. The tiny boy remained in place for a second, as if he were thinking of telling Vasu to make do with the little space he had, but then he retreated a step. Vasu snorted softly and got back in line behind Sasha, twirling the stem of the pink rose between his thumb and forefinger. One more swish of the curtain, and then she was standing at the head of the line. “Remember what to do?” he pushed, forcing calm into his voice. Without turning around, her gaze locked on the cherry-red curtain, Sasha nodded once. And then in a velvety voice, a female announcer was summoning Sasha to the stage. She brushed past the curtain, allowing Vasu only a glimpse of the marble-white dance floor and long picnic tables populated by hundreds of faces on the other side.
A few seconds later, a chorus of noise rose from the audience. Fortunately, it sounded more like cheers for Sasha pulling off her pose and wink hitchlessly rather than laughter at a blunder. As Vasu held his breath, waiting for the moment that his own name was called, his blood rushed around like wine sloshing in a cask. This would go right. Failure was not an option; it had to go right. He smoothed away a curl of hair where it threatened to tangle in one of the horns of his mask.
“Vasu Saini of Koldovstoretz Wizarding School, fifth year,” beckoned the unseen voice.
And then it was happening and he was gliding past the curtain and onto the stage, one arm held primly behind his back, the other crooked at an elegant angle that invited applause. A smile that was all subdued enthusiasm without being foolishly giddy pasted itself onto his face.
The Koldovstoretz team had the misfortune of being right smack in the middle of the lineup. Neither one of the pioneers to kick off the ceremony nor one of the best-for-last finishers, audiences were prone to forgetting the middle positions that blurred together. Vasu wasn’t sure whether his audience’s approval would have any positive impact on his performance in the tournament, but he figured it definitely couldn’t hurt, especially if a challenge included spectator participation. If he wanted Sasha and himself to be remembered in a good light, to sway these students with loyalty to Ilvermorny to root for them instead, they’d have to earn it. Do something to stand out from their competitors.
Vasu’s gaze flashed toward a smaller table on one side of the golden ballroom, secluded from the four long rectangles that the students occupied. While he hoped to make fans of some of the Ilvermorny students, it was even more important to impress the team of professors. Unlike the student audience that would change monthly, the professors would be following the champions and secondaries from school to school over the coming year, evaluating their performances in each trial, instructing their pupils where to strike if they detected a weakness. The professors were to act as mentors, after all. The champions were hunks of metal that the professors sharpened into blades.
Closest to the stage was Clara and Cosmo’s mentor, the hulking gray-bearded man with ramrod-straight posture, as if he were formerly a soldier. Across from him, in sharp juxtaposition, Cha-Cha slouched lazily over the table, one hand supporting his chin, the other holding a wine glass, which he mockingly raised in salute when Vasu’s eyes met his, ruby-stained lips set at an insolent tilt. Behind him, only visible because Cha-Cha’s weight was distributed on the table as much as it was in his seat, was Kazimir Vinogradov. Who ironically enough is not the Wine Man in this instance, despite the color of his suit, Vasu thought with a glimmer of amusement.
Vinogradov’s expression was impossible to read as Vasu took the stage. It wasn’t uncommon for the Transfiguration professor to fall, at any time, into a melancholy slump where he detached from the world, keeping his cards close to the vest. It was one of the reasons Vasu wasn’t particularly fond of him; he seemed to tune out of the world at random moments, cutting off any possible avenue of conversation. Thus, knowing that he shouldn’t value Vinogradov’s opinion yet craving his approval anyway frustrated Vasu endlessly. Especially the fact that he wasn’t getting it. Not even a flicker of a smile at the edges of his lips. For Shiva’s sake, Cha-Cha had given him a sunnier expression, even if the raising of the wine glass had mildly resembled the draw of a weapon. Vasu’s heart fell just a little. The rejection, the lack of acknowledgement from a professor who clearly wanted no affiliation with him, reminded him bitterly of Aditi telling him that he was unfit to be family patriarch. No number of external metrics of achievement were enough to change her mind when she was the dealer and the deck was stacked against him.
Determined not to let Vinogradov watch impassively as he filed across the floor, determined not to give Aditi’s endless criticisms any real basis, Vasu kept the polite smile painted on his face as he rounded the first corner of the floor. He was now at the lip of the dais, at the forefront of attention, until he walked across its length, turned one more corner, and faded into oblivion. But he wouldn’t let that happen. He would not fade silently as his grandmother wanted, a dying star. He had been born to shine.
Vasu stopped nimbly at the very edge of the stage, turning halfway to face the audience. Swiftly, before he commanded the stage for an indecently long and showy period when there was another representative waiting to be announced behind him, he knelt with the pink rose extended. Its recipient was a young Ilvermorny girl with her hair in pigtails and owlish glasses too big for her face. “Happy Tournament Eve,” Vasu said with a glittering smile. The girl exploded up from her seat to snatch the rose, almost taking Vasu’s hand with it, like a crocodile snapping up lunch. She shrieked deliriously as she crushed the stem in her hands, echoed by the gaggle of tween girls around her, who crammed closer to peer at the rose.
Vasu continued his lap around the stage, straight-backed and supposedly deaf to the way that the audience’s cheers soared. He made eye contact with Sasha, standing at the end of the line of students who had already walked, and gave her an almost imperceptible nod. Vasu extended one hand with the droop of the wrist that invited a clasp. Sasha took it, and he drew her onto the stage with an elegant step in which she crossed in front of him and landed on his right side. Their hands held high over their heads, he bowed deeply, pulling her into a curtsy. The audience went wild. They hollered, whistled, and climbed out of their seats, rewarding Sasha and Vasu’s show of unity with a standing ovation. Still holding hands like children in a fairy tale, they filed off the stage together, while the audience continued to carry on so heartily that the name of the spiteful Mahoutokoro boy was drowned out.
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Aurelia Quansah
Uagadou - Female - Pure Blood - Secondary
“Well worry not,” Auri spoke over her shoulder as she stepped into the carriage at the behest of their professor and took her seat, watching Zuri climb in after her. “I can speak for the both of us when necessary if you would like.” She assured her in a not unkind manner, clearly wanting to understand and aid her classmate in the evening to come. Social gatherings weren’t for everyone and Auri didn’t think any less of Zuri for preferring to preserve her social battery. “We all have our strengths and I’m sure yours will make up for my faults countless times over before this tournament is done.” She added, wanting Zuri to understand that she viewed them as a team, partners, and that meant she was there to help Zuri just as she hoped Zuri would be there to help her. From the moment Auri heard about this competition she knew she wanted to compete, to test herself, and having Zuri there to work alongside her made it that much more interesting.
When the carriage began moving Auri looked expectantly at the professor who was accompanying them. “Professor Kianga, I think it would be best for Zuri and myself to acquire our dance cards now so we have ample time to strategize.” She spoke to the professor diplomatically, politely trying to point out that the two students shouldn’t be finding out who they would be dancing with only as they are stepping out of the carriage. Her words earned her a small smirk from the Transfigurations professor as she dug into the pocket of her suit and pulled forth two nearly identical cards, only differing in the names scrawled upon them.
“Save your ballroom etiquette for the dance floor Auri, I hadn’t forgotten.” Professor Kianga replied half-jokingly as she handed each of the young women before her their dance cards. “And remember, just because you might know some of these names doesn’t mean they will be the same person once the competition begins. For some it already has and people change when they have something worth fighting for.” She advised her students as she leaned back and rested her arm on the small ledge running along the wall of the carriage, her legs crossed comfortably as she carefully watched Zuri and Auri examine their dance cards.
Auri let out a small chuckle at the professor's words, knowing the older woman was fair in calling her out. They had spent enough time around one another over the years that Professor Kianga always knew when Auri was channeling her grandmother rather than speaking as herself. It didn’t happen so much with her classmates but when Auri was around professors she tended to speak with great formality, a trait picked up from accompanying her mother and grandmother to countless political and social events.
Flipping her sealed dance card over Auri swiftly opened the paper to reveal a list of names. The first one she read brought a smile to her painted lips as she recognized Lis’s name. The three names that followed were ones she recognized as well from social gatherings during her travels as well as stories in the papers. The last name on the list she was familiar with from the quidditch finals this past year. All interesting individuals, some she had the privilege of already having met and others remaining in her mind due to her photographic memory and love for news both local and international. “How’s yours looking?” She asked Zuri after a moment.
Soon after Zuri replied and they conversed a bit more, the trio arrived at Ilvermorny School. Professor Kianga opened the door and stepped out to allow her students to follow her. Auri waited patiently for Zuri to depart before she descended the steps of the carriage herself. Looking up at the school it was as grand as she had read and seen in photographs and paintings with towers that stuck out like claws reaching toward the sky. Following the crowd as students and staff converged on he steps to the school Auri kept her place behind Zuri and gave the girl a reassuring smile when their eyes met. “If you need an excuse to bow out of a dance I find claiming cramps works wonders.” She whispered to her classmate with a wink. “Trust me, I’ve had to escape a dance partner or two in the past. Only so many ‘my horse is bigger than your horse’ conversations a girl can put up with.” She added with a shake of her head and roll of her eyes. She hoped that her comments would help Zuri feel at ease as they made their way into the school.
Patiently Auri awaited her turn to be sorted into an Ilvermorny house. When Zuri’s turn came she cheered a bit louder for her than she had anyone else. As the heiress-to-be found herself approaching the Gordian Knot she held her head up with confidence but also with curiosity. She wanted to take in as much as she could about the sorting ceremony and all the details that she could delve into later. Standing in the center of the knot she examined each of the carved statues and awaited one to claim her. To her great interest at almost the exact same time the Horned Serpent’s forehead began to glow and the Puckwudgie raised its arrow to the sky. Two houses had claimed her, she had seen it happen to others in the group and found herself curious as to how common such a thing could be.
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