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First week back. Eden was feeling refreshed after the winter break. On the train back to school he’d rearranged his second semester schedule so he’d have time to offer to help professors or do extra credit assignments-- he had to make up that stupid, unreasonable, ridiculous point deduction Winchester had cost him before the break. Anyways, all that faded as he made his way outside--noticed the weather, and headed to the dungeon classroom that served as the Dueling Club’s backup meeting spot. He caught the tail end of a conversation new-club-captain Chadwick was having with another student--taller, by the height:

No one will be watching as I struggle. ... I'd hate to end up in care of the healers."

”Don’t worry, we were all there at some point,” he jumped in, hopefully reassuringly. He smiled though, feeling exactly like that himself most of the time. It would be nice to be better than an older student at something. He greeted Chadwick with a stiff nod: ”Congratulations on the captainship.”

Eden had been hoping for the Dueling Club captainship when Lavinia graduated, and he beat Chadwick in duels occasionally. Disappointed? Yes. More than a little jealous? Definitely. But Chadwick was also one of the few people Eden saw regularly and felt comfortable around. Merlin’s beard, Eden got half his dating advice from Chadwick (although he did question how much was valid since Chadwick and Sparrow...were no longer a thing).

He cleared his throat awkwardly and saluted. ”Anyways, I’m going to warm up and work on my shield technique. Let me know if I can be useful, Captain.”

At the start of the school year, Sparrow had decided to show up at the Dueling Club to cheer on Chadwick and spend more time with him. ”Surprise! I just wanted to be here to cheer you on,”

Well, within a week of that they had broken up. Sparrow had gone back the next week, full of fury and ready to fight him for all she was worth, before getting there and realizing she not only didn’t know how to duel properly, but also there were so many other fun people to talk to when she wasn’t only looking at Chadwick. She had a grand time playing “duelist” and learning from the other club members.She had meant to go to Aidene’s Fite Club for Spring, but forgotten when it met.

Luckily Aidene would be at Dueling. After changing into something a little more her, Sparrow ran into the self-proclaimed “combat main” and en route to the dungeons confirmed that Chadwick had indeed accepted captainship of Dueling Club. Just the mention of Chadwick made her blood boil, even now. She supposed, for Chadwick, Dueling club wasn’t “a very big responsibility” that he “couldn’t handle’. No chance of him failing all his classes due to extra club responsibilities. After all, if Sparrow could run Drama, of course Chadwick would think he could run Dueling.

Either way, as Aidene went to barrage Eden with attacks, Sparrow greeted Finley with a cheerful ”Heya Finley! Are you joining the Dueling club? I wish I’d caught you last semester!”

Sparrow pointedly didn’t fill out a slip, not intending to stay since Chadwick was captain. All semester she’d made a point of never being paired up with Chadwick for assignments or never talking to him. She was burning with anger at Chadwick still. She knew she wasn’t a great duelist, but this was probably the last time she’d ever be in Dueling and be able to do this. For the first time since their breakup, she addressed Chadwick: ”You. I challenge you to a duel, Captain.”

Sparrow dipped her head in acknowledgement when Chadwick abruptly cut off his snarky comment to reply with an apology and compliment. She didn't believe any of his fancy words, of course, and was no less furious with him, but she could acknowledge he at leat tried to hold his tongue. Maybe three months of the silent treatment had some effect after all.

She drew her wand with a flourish, brought it up and bowed, again with flourish. Three steps away, pivot, and stance. She made sure her opponent was poised and ready before the polite expression on her face fell and she snarled: "Rictusempra!"

She wasn't about to give Chadwick any breathing room and immediately followed it up with "Impedimenta! Flipendo! Petrificus Totalus!"

A few went wide around Chadwick, and others deflected away. Sparrow had enough awareness to call out a "Sorry!" between her onslaught of spells when she heard a yelp, but was otherwise focused on the duel. Over the last few months her companions had very clearly taught her to not just throw a bunch of random spells like she might want to, and focus on deliberate spells, but after a little of the carefully-planned combination, she got more concerned with just keeping up an onslaught of launching any random spell she could think of. Not all of them were very offensively useful, and there was an occasional spell that just didn't quite work because she wasn't focusing so much on the spell as on hitting Chadwick and not giving him any ground. "Impedimenta! Um--Lumos! Vox Dementis!"

Practicing maintaining a shield against Aidene's steady rhythm of nonverbal spells, Eden was very focused until a stray spell struck him from the side. "Ow--HEY!" he whirled, throwing up another shield in case there was another stray. "Watch where you're deflecting, you id--!" Thankfully he cut off before he screamed profanities at them too.

Aidene cut off the moment she noticed the stray spell come in and glanced around to see Sparrow and Chadwick's battle get heated. She checked in with the collateral damage, ready--a little late--to shield any more stray spells: "They're really going at it, huh. Everyone ok?"

▬▬"If you don't expect to like someone and then you do, that's an incredibly exciting moment."▬▬

Chadwick wasn’t sure how he was going to run dueling this year. He knew he wanted to do some extra learning with how to fight if you were disadvantaged, no matter what that disadvantage was. Hard of hearing? Slow to come up with an appropriate spell to cast? Color Blind... He laughed when he thought color blind, and realized how silly all of these were really. Surely by time they were in second year or higher the students didn’t find themselves as being disadvantaged as much, like Finley wasn’t.... but... maybe If they did, they would find a place at Dueling Club? If anything, maybe it would be a good place to learn what others had to go through. He sighed, he would get ideas from his fellow dueling club members, once they arrived.

He also had hopes of having a few people duel this year, maybe next meeting after they did some reviewing this time?

He nodded to himself, sat out some forms for people to fill out, and waited for anyone to come in.



OOC: Please fill out this form on first post:


Steffy note: Going to try to open a second meeting of the club around mid-march; so try to get your kids to the intro meeting before then smile

Eden made his way down to Dueling Club Wednesday afternoon, ready to get back into gear. He had spent the summer studying, but there was only so much reading and memorizing could get him. Dueling was the best way to get back into shape with his combat practice and practical spellcasting!

He seemed to be a little early though, as only Chadwick and Finley were there. Finley Archer Eden had no issue with: the older Ravenclaw seemed a perfectly studious and friendly sort the short time Eden had known the boy in club. Plus he seemed a responsible prefect. But Chadwick...Chadwick Knapp, the first person outside of his sister that Eden dared think he could consider a friend, the first person he thought of as a rival....Eden had complicated feelings about Chadwick Knapp, but mostly this week they boiled down to Why in Athena’s name did you ask Calliope out after I expressly told you I was going to do so?

So when made it down, Eden just filled out a slip, gave a salty ”Hello.” and ”Good afternoon,” and went off to the side to practice a few simple spells in warm up.

Eden Harper of House Hufflepuff

"Mattie!" Eden's surly mood dissipated a little as his little sister joined him in the Clocktower Courtyard. He had almost forgotten that this was the year Mattie could attend Dueling club as a full member. The Harpers weren't usually very touchy-feeling about greetings, but Eden nonetheless turned to the other present members of the club to introduce her "Excuse me," he interrupted. "I wanted to introduce my younger sister, Mattie Harper. Mattie this is Finley Archer, sixth year... Ravenclaw, right? And this is Chadwick. I mean, Chadwick Knapp, the current club captain." Chadwick's name had come up a few times before when Eden ranted to Mattie in private: sometimes he was a friend, sometimes he was a rival, sometimes he was just WhY???

In any case, he gave Mattie a moment before saying "Usually I start with a warm up, practice a few drills on whatever technique we're working on, and by then people have arrived and we get some mock duels running. For example, Captain Knapp has presented some interesting strategies for fighting when disadvantaged." Personally Eden thought the ideas were very interesting if not overtly useful, but he was still salty at Chadwick and would not suffer making a direct compliment.