Fighting Club
Time: March 10th-25th Place: Fields on the Hills of Battle near Hastings Status: Open
That Bran wasn’t the most patient of all people was no secret. That she loved being the one in charge and would absolutely indulge in strutting in front of a group of students was no surprise. That she was power-hungry and craving respect especially when leading something like the Fighting Club was nothing anyone doubted. Not even Bran herself.
And yet.
At first, on the 5th of March, she had called everyone who had shown up to come closer (most of them ordered here by Caradoc but some of them here out of their own free will), then put them into two groups: Respectable Fighter and Basically A Dishonor To Your Family (decision based on a brief Duelling Assessment, one group member against another).
Then she given the Respectable Fighter group to Sirius Black. His job was not to teach them something new, but to revise all that they already knew, all that they sometimes didn’t dare to execute because other spells and strategies seemed more familiar, and make sure everyone was at the same level. He had until the end of March to achieve this. Whether he wanted to erect a boot camp or have regular one-to-one meetings, she didn’t care, as long as it was before noon.
As in the afternoon, it was her turn. The Disowned, as she called them now, met all together for the first five days and played, over and over again, one of Bran’s favourite childhood games: Dodgecurse. Only that, except of just avoiding curses flying their way, Bran planted more and more obstacles into the field, ranging from simple mud to whole entire earthquakes. Who won didn’t matter; by the end of day five and at least fifty played matches, no one was not sporting at least a little wound.
And only then, on that 10th of March, Bran began with her wand-to-wand training. Only then, because not only had she learnt everything there was to know about her students, but also because only then, the student knew that when Branwen Yaxley began a fight, it was not to play but to win. Not once had she shown pity towards the dodgecursed fallen players, just coldly sending them to Benjy waiting by the side-lines. Not once had she paused a game because a player saw themself unfairly treated or thought her obstacle too dangerous. Not once had she been easy.
And yet.
She had not been unfair. Not blind. Not self-centered, prideful or impatient. And more than anything: she had not been irresponsibly cruel. When Dearborn had first come to see her class, he’d raised his eyebrows and asked: “We need them alive.” And Bran had nodded, saying: “By the end of this, they’ll stay just that.” Because that was what she was doing: she was teaching them the way she’d been taught. Harshly, with force and no remorse, but not irresponsibly.
Never did she go to a point that it could irreversibly hurt someone. Never did she do something she didn’t fully believe they could handle. And therein lay the thing that surprised even her (the ‘and yet’ of it all): perhaps Bran really was all the things people said about her, prejudiced, brutal and power-hungry, but at the end of the day, she saw her students as an extended version of herself. In their failure she was ashamed, in their success she was proud. She pushed them hard, yes, but never so hard it would break them. Instead, just hard enough for them to realise their own limits -- and how distant some of those really were.
