The school continued on in its normal ways. Finals were still creeping up on the students, the weather got better. And Fila got more annoyed everyday that went.
"I wont survive, why would someone want to know what clothes im going to wear at the competition. Its not even close, its in October." Fila complained while brushing the fur of a niffler.
Milles sat beside her, his expression was that of a surprised dog. The niffler is a naturally hard creature to catch. None of the others had managed to catch theirs yet. But Fila had just walked up to hers and picked it up like it was a cat.
"Because people like the news and… other things than school, not many get to travel to Japan to duel Fila." He explained
Fila knew he was right, but from her perspective it was still really annoying. If they want to ask questions they could atleast ask how she was going to win or something.
"If they're going to treat me like a circus act, they could at least ask about the teeth on the lions," Fila grumbled, her fingers expertly scratching the Niffler behind its ears. The creature let out a long, purring sigh, its little paws twitching as it dreamt of shiny things.
Milles shook his head, still staring at the docile beast in her lap. "You're the only person I know who can make a Niffler look like a common housecat. How did you even get it to stay still? Everyone else is currently being pickpocketted or dragged into the bushes."
Fila held her Niffler up like a cat and looked at her, or was it a him. "I don't know I just looked at it and picked it up." Its really cute, looking like a platypus.
Milles sighed. "Its your birthday tomorrow right?"
Oh right, my birthday. April 10.
"Yeah it is, did you get me a gift?" Fila said while looking at him.
Milles nodded with a sly smile. "I did. I think your going to like it a lot." He was very proud about it. "The tower is having a party for you, you probably already know this."
Fila groaned, letting the Niffler sink back into the crook of her arm. "A party? During finals? That should be a school offense."
The sun shined high today upon the field where magical animal studies was held. This while class was just so that student got to know the creatures and how to take care of them and which ones to stay away from.
Amazingly enough the class didn't talk about what to do when one stands before a thunderbird at the peak of a mountain but besides the point. The feather she had gotten was now safely tucked away in her talking book, the book had recommended it there and Fila didn't have anywhere else to hide it. and according to the book that feather, which is specifically meant for her from the thunderbird. Would make a very compatible wand for her. Even better than the one she already had.
Fila looked up to see Theo having what looked like a duel with his niffler. "How did it go with that girl. What was her name?"
Milles was also watching the brawl. "Sophie, I think she likes him."
Fila smiled, she liked that. Theo finding someone like that who gave him a smile that she didn't see often from him.
"Oh and Elliot and Calla are probably doing something as well." He just blurted out.
The world froze and Filas grip on the niffler loosened. She slowly turned her head towards him, as if he just said some world ending news. "And im just now hearing of this now?"
Milles winced, realizing he'd let the cat, or rather, the Niffler, out of the bag. He shifted uncomfortably, avoiding Fila's piercing gaze. "I thought you knew! I mean, they aren't exactly subtle. Elliot has been 'studying' in the library near the Herbology section for three weeks, and Calla suddenly has a very intense interest in 'advanced defensive theory' that only Elliot seems to have the notes for."
Fila's brain performed a quick mental audit of the last fortnight. The hushed whispers when she entered the dorm, the way Calla had suddenly started braiding her hair with enchanted silver twine, and Elliot's sudden habit of tripping over his own feet whenever Calla laughed.
"I've been too busy being an 'Oracle' and a 'Wildcard' to notice my own roommates are staging a romantic subplot," Fila muttered, finally pulling her gaze away from Milles to watch Theo, who had just been successfully pickpocketed of his shoelaces by his Niffler.
But it made sense, that time when they didn't come down to the pond and both fell asleep on the couch when studying. Fila scanned the surrounding. She needed to have a emergency meeting with her sister in arms, June.
Filas eyes fell on the students like a hawk. And then she was spotted, talking to Hugo. Fila snapped her finger and two vines from the nearby forest snapped out and grabbed her around the waist.
The vines didn't just grab June; they hoisted her a solid six inches off the ground and reeled her in like a caught trout toward the shade of the large oak where Fila was sitting. Hugo, left standing with his mouth open, blinked at the empty space where his conversation partner had just been.
"Hey! Unhand, or un-vine me!" June yelped, flailing her legs until she was deposited unceremoniously on the grass next to Fila and the purring Niffler.
She smoothed her robes, looking between a smug Milles and a very intense-looking Fila. "I assume this isn't about my overdue Arithmancy homework? Because that's a very specific 'I'm-about-to-interrogate-you' look you've got on, Fila."
"Elliot and Calla," Fila said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous frequency. "Milles just spilled the tea, and apparently, I'm the last person in the North American wizarding world to find out. How long has this been a thing? And why wasn't I briefed?"
June's expression shifted from annoyance to a guilty, lopsided grin. She sat cross-legged, glancing at the Niffler, which was now trying to see if it could fit June's wand-tip into its pouch.
"I tried telling you, but you have been so busy with the dueling training and just running away from everyone trying to ask you a question." She explained. She leaned backwards. "And I mean, if you think about it. I was pretty obvious."
Yeah okay it was, but not during the time. just afterwards.
"Where even is Calla, I haven't seen them since the start of class." Milles asked. And both June and Fila looked around.
Alright enough of this, Fila held her hand to the grass. Might as well try to find them using some of the new fancy tricks she had learnt.
Green little sprouts popped out of the ground here and there in the clearing, they weren't in the clearing. So she widened her search, into the forest. The trees and flower working like surveillance cameras, she couldn't see what the plants saw but they sent almost like feelings to her.
And it didn't take long until she got a familiar feeling of warmth back. She stood up hastily, the niffler holding on but her hair and it sat on top of her head. Fila was honestly surprised the niffler hadn't ran away yet.
She walked through the forest, bushes and branches moved out of her way, stumbling behind her were June and Millies.
The forest floor seemed to rearrange itself under Fila's feet, roots retracting into the earth to ensure she didn't trip, while the Niffler perched on her head steered her like a tiny, furry captain, its little paws gripping her hair for balance.
"Fila, wait up! Some of us aren't one with the shrubbery!" June called out, ducking under a low-hanging pine branch that had snapped back into place a second too quickly.
There, in a small clearing where the sunlight filtered through the canopy in golden pillars, sat Calla and Elliot. They weren't exactly "studying."
June soon after walked out of one of the bushes and stopped like she had seen a ghost.
"What kind of study requires that kind of kissing." Fila teased and it made both of the love birds jump.
Elliot jumped so high he nearly fell backwards. Calla, meanwhile, scrambled back on the log, her face turning a shade of crimson that actually surpassed the sunset.
"Fila!" Elliot squeaked, his voice cracking like a dry twig. "We… we were just testing the... the somatic components of... uh..."
"Of what, Elliot? Heart-rate-induced Transfiguration?" June laughed, finally stumbling out of the brush and leaning against a tree to catch her breath. "Because you look like you're about to transfigure into a puddle of embarrassment."
Fila crossed her arms, the Niffler on her head shifting its weight and letting out a judgmental, high-pitched chirrup. "I've been tracking vines and calculating dueling arcs for a week, and I come out here to find that my best friends have been holding a private romantic drama in the woods. I feel insulted. Not because you're together, but because you thought you could hide it from the person who literally talks to the dirt."
Calla sighed, finally regaining her composure, though her ears were still pink. "We weren't exactly hiding it, Fila. We just... didn't want to make things more complicated for you. You have enough to deal with being the 'Grindelwald Champion' and the school's most wanted interviewee."
"Complicated?" Fila walked forward, the Niffler swaying precariously on her head. "Seeing you two happy is the least complicated thing in my life right now. It's the only thing that actually makes sense."
"Exactly," June added, finally picking a stray leaf out of her hair. "We need someone in this group to have a normal life so we can live vicariously through you while Fila is busy growing sentient forests and I'm busy failing Arithmancy."
Calla laughed, the last of her defensive posture melting away. She stood up and walked over to Fila, reaching up to gently scratch the Niffler behind its ears, a move that usually earned a bite, but the creature just closed its eyes and leaned into her hand.
"Okay, okay. We're sorry for being 'resonant' in the woods," Calla joked, throwing a wink back at a still-flustered Elliot.
The group headed back towards the area where the lesson was held. And to which they saw the professor looking at them, while the rest of the class had already left.
What followed to no ones surprise, detention. After school day there would be an hour to sit in a secluded classroom, there the students had to study.
After the detention which felt more like a study room and not much of a punishment, because now fila didn't have to study in her room. Instead she walked towards the training ground.
Professor Hale had given each of the champions a task, or several. To make sure they were prepared. Fila's tasks? Make more flowers.
"Flowers," Fila muttered, her boots crunching on the gravel of the dueling yard. "He wants the girl who can summon a three meter tree golem to focus on petals."
And yet. She understood, relying on one thing to win the match may not work.
She stood in the middle of one of the dueling circles. Her feet close together, hands behind her back, hands clasped together.
'Calm' her mind thought, the noises faded. Her mind at ease. She felt the familiar feeling of her magic twirling around the yard.
"Now than." Her mind was almost scrolling though the different things she could try.
While Fila was in her own little world. The training ground saw a drastic change. Once gravel ground now had a soft layer of grass covering the whole yard. Small sprouts had appeared, and some small typical flowers.
The once still yard suddenly rumble just a bit. And than, boom. A thick vine of thorny rose stems shot out of the ground at one focused location. Once the stem stopped growing upward it bloomed, not with roses but with Angel's Trumpet.
Angel's Trumpet is a very dangerous flower, not just to muggles but to wizards as well, as it may cause hallucinations. And may even be deadly, but controlling the dosage would be easy for the little flower mage.
Fila moved on with her training, flowers becoming sharp as needles, bushes thick enough to protect, vines used to slap the opponent and to protect.
But, the feeling fast faded. She knew how to do all this, her magic wasn't like normal magic where training with it made one better and stronger. Ancient magic from what she learnt from the book, was more like puzzle. The more you understood the better you got. It sounds kind of the same but its not. Think of it as a new wizard picking up a wand, that wizard wouldn't be able to cast even one spell directly, sure he could but not a efficient one. But with ancient magic you could do whatever almost instantly. It like having a teacher teaching inside your head all the time. so when you cast that spell it will be very efficient directly.
With that said. Boom. Fila crushed a boulder she had lifted out of the ground. The boulder crumbled like sand after she released it.
Dust and grit settled over the grass as Fila lowered her hand. The sheer contrast was startling. the delicate, drooping bells of the Angel's Trumpet swaying gently in the breeze she had created, and the decimated remains of a three-ton rock at their stems.
But this wouldn't be used in the competition.
She needed something friendlier. Fila of course knew the old spells like confringo, bombarda, depulso but there had to be something she needed a so-called edge. Everyone would use the usual spells, but also no. The Japanese student would most likely have different spells, even the students from Castelobruxo, would most likely use something with herbology.
"Could ask the book" she said to herself and left the now grass filled training yard behind.
She walked past the commonroom without stopping, she needed to do this now otherwise she would forget it.
The book already laid open on her bed when she arrived.
'You need to come up with something yourself' the plain ink text.
"Come on, give me something. How did you even know I was coming?" she asked as she slumped down on the bed next to the book.
'I'm a self-writing and thinking book Ophelia, are you even surprised.'
Touche. But now that she had gotten a firm rejection from the book, she now felt that her steps needed to be remade. "You said a while back that a student about a hundred years ago used ancient magic, what kind did he or she use?"
The book laid empty for a while before a series of word appeared.
'He or she reportedly used a lot of different spells, like you use almost like a gravity spell to throw around enemies. Thunder as well."
That helped nothing, but understandable since there is nothing written about this student, mostly word from mouth information.
Fila Laid starring at her ceiling for a long time. even as June and Calla retreated from the commonroom she still laid there. Deep In thought. Using thunder would be fitting, with the thunderbird feather and storm. IF she even could that is.
"FILA!"
Fila jumped and looked over the her right. June was sitting with her face basically buried in Filas ear. "Omg, stop thinking so deep tat you seem dead."
Fila rubbed her ear, scowling. "I was contemplating the nature of power and legacy, June. It's hard work. You should try it sometime between failing Arithmancy and spying on our roommates."
June rolled her eyes, plopping down on the edge of the bed and nearly sitting on the Talking Book, which gave a sharp, indignant snap of its leather cover. "Contemplate on your own time. It's nearly midnight, which means it's officially your birthday in about" she checked a tiny, enchanted watch on her wrist, "three minutes. And the 'Tower' doesn't wait."
June grabbed Fila by the arm, soon after Calla took the other arm. They both held her tight. Not giving her the chance to escape this. birthdays had been a very special things at the tower. They would all sit up late, and be the first ones to say happy birthday. The following day one would basically be a queen or king for the tower. PURE torture in Fila's mind. She hated that everyone was listening and looking at her.
Fila's boots dragged against the stone floor as she was practically hauled down the spiral staircase. The air in the Thunderbird Tower was already humming, a mix of static electricity from the house's namesake and the frantic energy of fifty students who had been waiting for the clock to strike twelve.
"I'm literally a champion of an international tournament," Fila grumbled, trying to dig her heels in. "I should have immunity from forced socialization."
"Champions still age, Fila," Calla laughed, her grip firm. "And thirteenth birthday only happens once. It's the law of the Tower."
As they reached the final step and burst into the common room, the silence was absolute for exactly three seconds. The fireplace was roaring with blue flames, and the enchanted clouds that usually drifted near the ceiling had turned a celebratory gold.
"THREE... TWO... ONE!"
The roar that followed was deafening.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FILA!"
Fila looked empty, everyone staring at her with smiles and what looked like confetti cannons aimed in the air. And than it became quiet as the celebrators waited for her response, but she stood there, almost hollow.
"Whoa," Theo shouted, "Fila, I know you're excited, but try not to shock the guests!"
Fila looked around and finally said. "Thank you everyone."
Stella walked forward holding the so famous tree carved crown. And put it on her head. "There you go, queen for the day." She said with the warmest smile.