Paragraph 7 : Bold And Bright

They woke up the next day to alarming news. A number of Ravenclaws had ostensibly made their way from their Common Room to the Gryffindor's Common Room, and on reaching its entrance, had turned left, gone to the statue of David the Blood Quencher, spent some time there, then retraced their steps to return to their own Common Room, which implied that they had once more gone past the entrance of Gryffindor's Common Room. This had upset several Gryffindor students, who thought it was a ruse in preparation of something nasty against the Gryffindors. One of them, seventh-year Matthew Fourbanks, had decided to retaliate by challenging to a duel any Ravenclaw who felt like defending the honour of their House. The underlying idea was apparently that, if Ravenclaws knew that provoking the Gryffindors would make them in danger of a swift response, they wouldn't dare any more dabble into questionable methods. This was the official rationale at least. It would have probably been wiser to assume that some Gryffindor student had overreacted, and found a pretense to get a duel. This whole incident sent the morale of the four down. Judith's take on the potion had never looked more true than at this moment. Maybe it actually was a vessel for dark magic. They blamed themselves for what they now considered as their recklessness. Their friendship had started when somebody had sent them anonymous notes, and one of the goals they wanted to achieve when using the potion had been to find the source of theses notes. Now, they had themselves sent anonymous notes, and they had one more worry : somebody might make a better use of magic than they did, and find out they were behind those anonymous notes. Sigismond and Eleanor made more or less conceited efforts to get to know more about the potential duel, since Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were the Houses involved in this opposition. They both spent extra time in the Common Room of their respective Houses, and paid careful attention to whatever they could eavesdrop there. Eleanor even took the risk of enquiring about what was up with regards to the proposed duel, to no avail. Actually, very few people seemed to have information about what was bound to happen, since Agatha Houstack, the queen of gossip herself and thus the only person that could be more anxious than them to know what the future held, was none the wiser about it than anybody else. Days went by, and the four started thinking that the project of a duel had been dumped. They were therefore stunned when they heard stories about what had happened between Matthew Fourbanks and his antagonist, who had been Deborah Scart, a stern-looking, black haired sixth-year Ravenclaw who wore glasses. Soon everybody in the castle had heard one version or the other of the short fight. Fourbanks and Scart had purportedly met at 11pm, in a corridor on the top floor of the castle. To avoid detection during the negotiation needed to set up a time and a place that would fit not only the requirements of a secret duel but also the respective tastes of the opponents, no intermediary had been employed, and Miss Scart and Mr. Fourbanks had communicated through owl-post. Yet all these efforts would prove having been incompletely successful. Miss Scart and Mr. Fourbanks, at the agreed time and place, performed the usual niceties, then Miss Scart swiftly struck. She began with a stuttering spell on Mr. Fourbanks, which took off the equation the risk of most of the spells that he could have in store. Already three seconds into the duel, Miss Scart was confident she had the upper hand. She then proceeded to cast in a derisive voice a spell that would slow down every move by her adversary, and waited to watch in slow motion the latter try to find a solution. She crowned her evening by casting a third spell, that changed Mr. Fourbanks into a portrait, that she hung on a hook of the wall with a casual 'Wingardium Leviosa'. She then left the arena pretty satisfied with herself. The Gryffindor representative was now moving at a third of the normal speed his head from one side of the portrait to the other, eager to find an exit to the enchanted frame. He tried to jump out of it, but landed on his back, having bounced off the front of the painting as if it had become a wall. His desperate attempts at escaping could have lasted long if absolutely nobody had acquired the knowledge of the duel happening there and then. After the departure of Miss Scart, Trevor Umphrey, a fifth-year Hufflepuff, uttered 'Finite Incantatem'. The mostly two-dimensional portrait dissolved into the actual three-dimensional Matthew Fourbanks, who fell on the floor, got back up on his feet, and used a spell to get rid of the dust that his uniform had gathered when he had hit the floor.

Why are you there?

Fourbanks asked, delighted at the sight of Trevor Umphrey.

Just read your mind. I didn't want to miss a duel. After your open challenge, I knew I just had to monitor you and wait for the time when you would be thinking about the scheduled place and time

Trevor replied

Lovely creepiness

Fourbanks added in an amused voice. Trevor explained

I don't read the mind of girls, you know

I am so relieved

Fourbanks quipped. Trevor had one question, though.

Why didn't you use the spell you had in mind at the very beginning? You could have beaten the clock and Deborah

Fourbanks detailed

I liked very much having this spell in my arsenal. Actually, I wouldn't have durst challenging anyone if I hadn't had it ready. Trouble is, this spell comes from a wizard that is not commendable. Before the duel, I had dismissed this problem. I like this concept so much. But when I was in front of Debbie, I had to make a choice. I pondered the use of this spell. It gave her time to do her stuff, and she did brilliantly

Trevor was missing a piece of information :

What does this spell do actually? I didn't get it when I saw it

Fourbanks obliged :

You put all the spells that your opponent could cast to hurt you in an object. And they can't use these anymore against you, as long as the object remains intact

Trevor became lost in his thoughts. But the time was passing by, and they had to make it to their Common Rooms as quickly as possible, in order to minimise the risk of being caught out of bed. Both succeeded, and it turned out that Deborah Scart had not met any authority figure on the way back either. The situation of the four was now different. Should anyone find out Eleanor had sent the anonymous notes, she would be more than fine, she would even end up congratulated. For she had made it possible for a Ravenclaw to display her skills in impressive fashion. Besides the immediate common view that it was first and foremost a House victory, a few Ravenclaw students couldn't help but note that Fourbanks had magnanimously praised Scart's abilities, and that solely looking at the duel's outcome would be tantamount to intellectual fraud. At the opposite of the spectrum, should somebody discover that Eleanor had been involved in this magical fracas, it would not pan out for Sigismond. Everybody knew of his tight connection to Eleanor, and his fellow Gryffindors would hold him accountable for Matthew Fourbanks' defeat. Even though they didn't know that the duel was a faraway consequence of his friendship with Eleanor, he was seen with suspicion as a notorious friend of a Ravenclaw student. The ambience in Gryffindor Common Room was morose, since their latest champion had, in the mind of most students, failed to uphold the status of Gryffindor as the House of the brave-hearted. According to their assessment, he had backtracked in front of a difficult choice, and that was sufficient to prove he had acted dishonorably. Some students did on the contrary consider that he had shown restraint when he could have used powerful dark magic, and that placing decency over the egoistic will to win was exactly the kind of noble behaviour that Gryffindor was supposed to prize. Consensus however was that Miss Scart had won without courage either, and was therefore a student that any normal Gryffindor should despise or hate.