Fate, Love, and Other Misfortunes | Jurdan AU
Rating: T
TW: No major archive warnings apply, although there is some swearing.
Summary: Ever since Jude received her soulmark she’s been waiting with bated breath to meet and consequently strangle her soulmate. When she finally does find him, however, there’s more than one surprise in store for her.
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Word Count: 2,478
Chapter 3: I Did Something Bad - Taylor Swift
Jude’s sense of triumph didn’t last long. Whatever had happened between her and Cardan on that pitch in the dark had triggered an unholy reaction in him and if she’d thought being the object of his bored torment earlier had been painful, things had now reached a whole new level.
What had started as petty insults and childish bullying now appeared to have escalated into a declaration of war.
Case in point: Today’s Potions class had been about the process of brewing a Cure for Boils. Jude had turned her back on her potion for one moment to check her textbook for the next step and then twisted around to find her previously yellow potion turning an angry fluorescent green, bubbling and frothing furiously before overflowing over the sides of her brass cauldron. Amidst the chaos, the only other thing she registers is the flash of vibrant cerulean hair out of the corner of her eye.
Nicasia. She had done this somehow and definitely at Cardan’s request.
Distracted by the realization, she doesn’t notice that her hands are instinctively reaching for the cauldron before it is too late. Searing, agonizing pain shoots up her right arm and she lets out a scream. Through blurred eyes she makes out a head of white hair rushing her and what looked like Taryn trying to push her way through the gathering crowd to get to her side.
“What is happening here?” Professor Snapdragon surveys the scene, brows raised as Jude clutches her burnt arm to her chest.
“Jude’s been burnt, sir,” Lil tells him rather unnecessarily as she makes her way to Jude’s side with Taryn right behind her.
“I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire,” the professor said tonelessly, sounding more exasperated than concerned.
Jude’s head snaps up at the accusation. She scans the faces of all her classmates standing around her and finds who she was looking for. Cardan’s face is expressionless but Jude would swear that there was amusement in that slight tilt of his lips. Nicasia stands next to him, bringing her delicate hand up to her face to cover her exaggerated yawn when she notices Jude glaring at her. The amusement on her face is obvious.
“You - You did this you son of a bitch,” Burnt arm forgotten for the moment Jude lunges forward in Cardan’s direction only to be pulled back by someone tugging on her robes. She whirls around to shoot daggers at whoever it was that was restraining her but Lil simply shook her head imperceptibly and refused to budge. For someone so petite she was possessed of a freakish amount of strength.
“Miss Duarte! Such language will not be tolerated in my class. 5 points from Slytherin.”
Jude is too angry and in too much pain to care about the injustice of her situation and the angry murmurs from the rest of the Slytherins.
“Now then, Miss Duarte - the younger one - take your sister to the infirmary please, and get Madam Grima to give her some Burn-Healing paste. The rest of you, back to your seats.” With an effortless flourish of his wand Professor Snapdragon clears away the mess around her cauldron before turning away with a swish of his robes and heading back to the front of the class.
The other students part like the red sea and Taryn steers Jude towards the doorway. Abruptly, she stops, twists her head back to look directly at Cardan, and between tightly clenched teeth hisses, “You’ll regret this, Greenbriar.”
The gauntlet had been thrown and the games had truly begun. The words on her chest seem to sting the way the palm of her left hand does when she makes a fist and sinks her fingernails into it, promising herself that she would teach Cardan Greenbriar a lesson if it was the last thing she ever did, soulmate or not.
~~~~~
“Jude! You ok, babes?” Lil disembarks from her broom at lightning speed, rushing up to Jude and gently taking her arm to inspect it.
“I’m fine,” Jude grimaces at the slight remnant of pain that flares when Lil brushes up against a particularly hurt spot but she really is feeling better for the most part. Madam Grima had said that the bright orange healing paste would take at least 12 hours to properly cure the burns and had insisted on keeping Jude behind in the infirmary for a majority of the day, hence why she had only shown up for the second half of quidditch practice.
She’d spent most of her time confined to the bed plotting ways to get back at Cardan.
Enough was enough.
There was only so much of Cardan’s bullshit that she was willing to tolerate, and Taryn or no, Jude was done with letting him walk all over her the way he did with everyone else. And maybe a small part of her anger was because of the whole soulmate situation. It killed her that he would get to go live his life with the woman carrying his words whilst she would forever remain an object of disgust in the eyes of the man who’d said hers.
“Duarte, heard you got sent to the infirmary today! You should feel free to skip today’s session,” Fand yells from her position at the quidditch loop.
“I’m alright, just a little sore!” Jude yells back.
Fand assesses her for a moment and shrugs in a fine-then-do-what-you-will sort of way before going back to showing Zoe Tatterfell precisely how to direct the quaffle through the loop.
The familiar feeling of being high up in the air again is so comforting that the slight throb of her wounds seems to go numb and she closes her eyes against the later afternoon sunlight falling on her face, a refreshing change from the sterile whiteness of the infirmary.
“Alright Jude, now that we’ve ascertained that you're ok, it’s time to plan our revenge.”
The words surprise her, not because of the resolution with which they were delivered but because they had come from Van’s mouth. He had always been the most reserved member of his friend group and even though Jude had spent a lot of time around him, Garrett and Lil, she hadn’t thought that Van would be this pissed off on her behalf.
An odd glow fills her chest and it only spreads further when Garrett pulls up to hover next to them on his broom and says “Personally, I’m thinking we should get rid of all of his beloved hair, make him walk across the castle to the Infirmary bald until a Hair-Gro potion fully restores it.”
“Actually,” she grins, “I think I’ve thought of something with a more special brand of humiliation.”
The Special Brand of Humiliation required quite a bit of planning ahead, as well as some rather advanced research. Thankfully the spellbook titled ‘Prankster Spells and Wishing Wells’ that Lil had (rather alarmingly) stashed away in her dorm room provided the information that their Sixth Grade Charms textbook did not and barely a week after the Potions incident, Jude’s plan was set in motion.
It began the way all good pranks did; with a diversion. With a subtle wave of her wand and a tiny whisper during Charms class, Lil sets fire to the little tuft of black hair that always fell over Van’s face.
Of course, it’s only an illusion spell, a pyromaniac’s party trick that Lil was scarily good at casting; harmless and more for show than anything else but it had the desired effect. Van’s exaggerated shriek is loud enough to draw not just Professor Randalin’s attention but also the startled stares of the rest of the class.
Acting quickly, Jude clutches her wand discreetly within the folds of her robe and casts the Nonverbal spell that she’d been practicing in the privacy of her dorm room for the past few days, gleefully savouring the sweet taste of revenge. Cauda, she thinks furiously, unsuccessfully trying to conceal the laser glare she is currently directing at Cardan, two desks away from her.
For one heart-stopping moment, it looks as if the spell isn’t going to take effect. Van’s hair has been rescued with one flick of Professor Randlain’s wrist, and people are turning back to face the owl feathers on their desks that they had been attempting to incinerate before the diversion.
Jude’s heart sinks.
And then, she spies it. A tuft of black hair peeking out from under Cardan’s robe, not unlike the hair falling over Van’s face that had so recently been in fake mortal peril. Wild laughter rises up in her chest fighting to break free, and her wide grin tells Garrett all that he needs to know when he silently turns to confirm her success with a raised eyebrow.
Cardan Greenbriar has a tail.
She has just given her soulmate slash nemesis a tail .
“Uhh, Cardan?” Pippa Bramble, a Ravenclaw with freckles and a generally cheerful disposition pipes up from her position at the desk behind Cardan’s.
“Yes?” It was amazing really, how much condescension he could fit into one syllable.
“You-You have something sticking out of your robes.”
Cardan appears unimpressed but a cursory downwards glance makes him stiffen imperceptibly. There it is, swaying back and forth like some sort of bizarre and hairy pendulum, getting faster when he starts to panic.
Jude watches the blood rush to his cheeks, his jaw clenching tightly enough to cut stone, and maybe she’s a slightly deranged masochist because all she can think of is the inevitable moment when he will look up at her, hurling invisible knives and promising revenge with invisible sparks flying angrily around him. The thought doesn’t incite fear within her as it should. Instead, she’s almost excited.
It takes a moment for things to register but within minutes the class erupts.
“Is that a tail ?”
“Omigosh, it’s swishing .”
“Ew, that’s disgusting. ”
Gleeful shouts and italics fly across the room and it is complete chaos, but even amidst the sea of yelling teenagers Jude’s attention is fixed on the boy in the middle of it all, the center of attention as he so usually is, except this time it wasn't intentional.
His focus is now trained on only one thing, one person, the cause of his fury and embarrassment; her . He’s finally singled her out from the rest of the crowd and it’s just what she anticipated, except, more. The invisible sparks coming off of him are so incendiary she almost feels burnt.
A shiver runs up her spine and she turns away, breaking the hold that those ebony eyes had her in.
“Looks like your crazy plan worked after all,” Lil appears at her side out of nowhere, a flash of little white teeth showing through her grin.
“Nice one, Jude,” Garrett appears on her other side to perform their special handshake plus fist bump combination under the desk whilst Van continues to pat at his hair like the secret drama king that he is.
Professor Randalin manages to calm the class down eventually, waving his wand around in an attempt to get them to part so he can get to Cardan. Cardan, who is standing stock still, an imperceptible rock hurling pure fire at anyone who dares to laugh at him.
Slowly, people seem to recall that he is the youngest son of one of the oldest, most powerful wizarding families, and bit by bit the amusement starts to fade, replaced by pure sympathy for whoever it was that pulled this genius but suicidal prank.
Jude’s suspicions that she is a masochist are confirmed when she senses her classmates’ trepidation and still feels no fear. This was war and she was determined to win.
~~~~~
Cardan’s tail continues to swish in the infirmary for the next 24 hours. One of the things that Jude had so appreciated about the spell she’d used was that it required at least a day to fade off and that there was no easy way to remove the tail otherwise. Those 24 hours were the best hours of her life and there was an extra spring in her step when she and her friends headed to the quidditch pitch for practice. The Ravenclaws had just completed their session and they were very noticeably missing a member.
News of the morning’s antics had spread across the school like wildfire, even faster than her Potions incident, although the story had somehow gotten so warped that the general consensus was that Cardan’s entire lower half had been transformed into that of a donkey instead of just a tail growing on him. It was a rumour that Jude joyously held hostage in her head, coming back to it whenever she wanted to relive the day’s events.
Later in the privacy of her empty dorm room, she brings it back to the forefront of her thoughts to gloat over like a beloved pet when Taryn quietly enters the room, alone for once, no Sophie or Surin attached to her side.
“Hey, sis,” she says, coming to sit next to Jude on her plus mattress, gracefully tucking her feet beneath her thighs on the forest green bed sheets.
“Hey. What’s up?” Taryn rarely ever sought Jude out and when she did it was usually for a reason.
“I heard you had a rather eventful Charms class today.”
Taryn had elected to drop Charms after her O.W.Ls, so whilst Jude was carrying out her revenge plan her twin had been at her Arithmancy lesson. It was another reason why Jude had chosen to cast the spell during Charms class where her twin wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on her. She’d known that if Taryn knew about her plan she would do her level best to persuade her that she should give it up and keep her head down, and the last thing Jude wanted was to have to deal with her younger sister’s criticism.
“Yeah, some genius gave Cardan Greenbriar a tail.” Play it cool, she tells herself.
“Right.” There’s something in Taryn’s tone that makes Jude want to hide her face behind a pillow before she gives everything away.
There’s a long pause in the room, a little more awkward than is normal.
Taryn plucks at a stray thread sticking out from the curtains hung around Jude’s bed. “Just a tail? I heard something about donkey hooves too.”
“Nah, just a tail. It did swish though.”
“Ah well, if it swished I suppose I can be satisfied, even if there were no hooves.” They share a grin, each of them facing a mirrored version of themselves. So completely alike and yet so different.
~~~~~
That night Jude dreams of a boy with ebony eyes and curls, a donkey tail waving behind him, occasionally brushing his hooved feet. She smiles in her sleep.
~~~~~
A/N - I’m back! Sorry about the wait, to anyone who’s actually keeping up with this fic. I got a bit busy with exams and quite a few recent debating tournaments.
Anyways, I am aware that this chapter was extremely dramatic but honestly I think it’s pretty in character for these two. Let me know what you think in a comment or ask and notes and reblogs are always appreciated.
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