wands at the ready! ||
Once you took family and the intangible concept of justice out of the equation, there were a few things Gretchen loved more than anything else – namely getting to flex her dueling muscles to knock people flat onto their backs, and getting to succeed at something in front of an audience. Her Monday night dueling seminar at Hogwarts was shaping up to be the perfect intersection of those two things.
She’d spent the weekend convincing herself that she was still ‘young’ and ‘hip’ and not so far out of touch that she stuck out like a sore thumb. Now that it was her time to shine, however, all of that had gone out the window – she was happy to stand out, happy to have all eyes on her as she knocked an overeager seventh year volunteer flat onto his back against the cheap blue mats provided by the school. That alone would have been impressive enough to bask in. But she was Gretchen...so she put a boot to his chest imperially and tucked her wand into her pocket and basked in it for a moment longer.
Following her demonstration – triumph is the word she’d use, but nobody had asked her – the rest of the students (and some curious alumni who’d stopped in) were divided either into pairs or to observe against the far walls. Gretchen moved through the rows of people with a joyful confidence, the kind that came from not having to play dumb or be discreet or wear various disguises that kept her from being the best parts of Gretchen that usually could only come out during late nights skulking through alleys.
She really loved this, too – for more reasons than the coursing of magic through her veins, the afterglow of a successful face-off. She got to say things like shoulders back! and don’t get into your head about it! while her heels clicked against the stone floor.
Gretchen only stopped when she ended up catching someone’s eye.
“What’s up?”
