Career Day Beyond Hogwarts Duelling Open

Maisie stayed in the back of the room. In fact, she found a nice spot on the back wall. Normally more extroverted and enthused, she felt out of place watching an accomplished duellist like Bridget Collins. But if she could leave with a modicum of an idea on how to improve, that would be something worthwhile. Nevermind a career, she just wanted to not get creamed constantly up there.

That hope was something that was somewhat spoiled by the fact there were only two other people here—and neither seemed particularly appealing. The first was a Slytherin girl who had spoken unkindly to Robin, and Maisie would not stand for that even if the blonde did seem intelligent. And on the other side was a Ravenclaw she didn't know (O'Conner as she called herself), but who seemed really, really chipper about duelling—something that seemed, well, frankly insane to Maisie Gemmell, who had never had a particularly fun or easy time on the pitch. She struggled for at least five minutes to figure out which of these was worse.

"Gemmell," she said as she meekly raised her hand and took a few steps closer to the Ravenclaw, "Mar—Maisie Gemmell." Ultimately, friendship was more important than however annoying the Ravenclaw's chipping might be. With a sigh, she resigned herself to her fate. At least her nervousness hadn't given way to revealing her birth name. After all, sucking at duelling was a distinctly Maisie thing; neither of her grandmothers had done that.

Better in this case to just listen and perhaps take some notes. "I heard you're great," she addressed Bridget. Beyond that, her fellow Ravenclaw was doing enough talking for all of them.

Mentioning @Bridget Collins, @Livia Machavariani & @Angel O'Conner

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Interacting With: @Maisie Gemmel, @Angel O'Connor, @Livia Machavariani, @Bridget Collins hhhh	✰	Word Count: 566
Mentioning: @Maisie Gemmel, @Angel O'Connor, @Livia Machavariani, @Bridget Collins	✰	Date: 23/06/26
Speaking: #115f3d	✰	Others Speaking: #theirchoice!

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ R O S Y ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

Career Day was really exciting. Also a bit much. Every corridor had another witch or wizard with a job and Rosy was starting to see just how many options there were after Hogwarts. The more exhibits she visited the harder it got to decide what to do. There were too many interesting careers to choose from. One thing really stood out to her. Professional duelling was something Rosy didn't know much about which made it more interesting. She wasn't on a duelling team. She didn't think she was especially good at it.. She was curious and that was enough for her. With her notebook under her arm Rosy headed to the duelling room. The room already had a few students gathered around the exhibit. Her eyes landed on a woman waiting near the entrance. Bridget Collins looked confident and professional just like Rosy imagined a duellist would. Some students had gotten there before her. A Slytherin girl was being polite while a younger Ravenclaw seemed excited. Rosy smiled at the contrast between them. One was calm while the other was bursting with enthusiasm. As she moved further into the room she saw another face near the back wall. She smiled when she recognized Maisie. "Maisie?" Rosy asked quietly waving at her. They weren't close. Rosy knew her well enough to recognize her. Rosy moved to the back. Stood near Maisie. "Glad I'm not the one standing back here " she said with a small smile. Her attention went back to the conversation at the front of the room. Angels excitement was hard to miss. Rosy found herself listening with growing interest. Rosy admired how easily some people asked questions. She usually liked to listen and speak later. The mention of duelling teams caught her attention. Growing up in the world competitive magical organizations still felt a bit unfamiliar to her. She understood sports teams. Duelling teams were still something she was learning about. When there was a pause in the discussion Rosy decided it was time to contribute. She didn't want to stand there silently. "Hi " she said politely looking at Bridget. "I'm Rosy Parker." She laughed a bit as she adjusted her notebook. "I think everyone else already asked half the questions I was going to ask." Her gaze drifted to one of the training dummies. They reminded her of how different professional duelling was from classroom magic. "I was wondering about the training side of things " Rosy admitted. "People always hear about competitions and victories. I imagine most of the work happens long before any match begins." Rosy thought of a comparison. Growing up she had watched plenty of football matches and athletic competitions. "In the world professional athletes spend hours practicing " she continued thoughtfully. "Is professional duelling similar? Do you spend more time training than competing?" Rosy paused before asking another question. This one had been on her mind since she entered the room. " Do you ever stop getting nervous?" she asked honestly. "Because I still get nervous presenting projects in class and thats not even close, to duelling in front of an audience." A small smile appeared on her face as she opened her notebook. Regardless of the answers she was already learning more than she expected. Whether professional duelling was a career she could see herself pursuing was still uncertain.. Understanding how it worked was proving really fascinating.

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ P A R K E R ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

Coded by: @Avery Gray

@Livia Machavariani | @Angel O'Connor | @Maisie Gemmell | @Rosy Parker

Luckily, Bridget wasn't left waiting on her own for very long. She was nowhere unfamiliar -- she knew the duelling room as well as her old dormitory -- but time apart was interacting strangely with her memories. So many spells and faces and hours belonged to this room. Duelling was duelling anywhere, but it didn't smell the same.

The doors opened and Bridget straightened to her full height, five foot six plus another inch from her boots. In walked not a NEWT student, as she'd expected, but someone much littler. A second year, maybe, or even a first year? To be here at that age showed impressive initiative, though she was off-putting a little in the way Astrea was: reserved and formal, though of course Astrea had the talent to be actually intimidating. Bridget smiled politely through her introduction, unsure of how to properly respond to a curtesy, but her expression widened into something quite genuine when the girl -- Livia, first year -- mentioned she was on the Viridian Vipers. "It's nice to meet you, Livia. I used to be on the Viridian Vipers, I hope you're liking it." She offered the top paper in her stack, titled Professional Duelling Information in thick, neat lettering at the top. "Being here to observe is great. I'll wait a few minutes in case more people are coming, but you can look over that for now, if you'd like."

The information sheets were not especially in-depth, but it wasn't information Hogwarts students could easily access during the school year. Wizards lacked the convenience of the internet, after all. It might not be so relevant to Livia now, since scouts didn't look at first years as far as she knew, but knowing the basics of league organization and season structure might interest her if she'd made it to this.

Since she still wasn't sure how popular this would be, Bridget was steeling herself for a few minutes of awkward silence with Livia, but she'd estimated incorrectly again. Another young student walked in, this one much more energetic. With the same patient smile -- she was really trying not to be intimidating, especially given the turnout -- she processed the comparative whirlwind of words. Everything out of Livia's mouth had seemed very measured; O'Connor was bright and eager. "Nice to meet you, O'Connor. I certainly hope I can help you with those things." Perhaps it did make a lot of sense to get younger students if they were on their House duelling teams, here seeking duelling advice more than job advice.

Another girl walked in, this one a little older, a little less forward. Bridget would have been like that, at her age. She drifted toward the back and was joined by one more young student, well-prepared with a notebook on hand. With a nod of acknowledgement, she returned her attention to O'Connor's questions for now. Exciting but overwhelming. Duelling certainly could be those things, and she was glad to hear it was for O'Connor. That seemed like a good mix to her. When pressure got into the mix, it wasn't always as fun of a sport. Maybe she should make a point of that? "For a first-time duellist, I would say to accept that it takes time to learn, like any skill. Mistakes are no fun, but they're part of the process. I think I could have used a reminder of that, and to have fun with it, when I was starting out." Given the circumstances, there was little chance a thirteen-year-old Bridget would have listened to any prod to have fun. It had been less about the sport, more about becoming a decent enough witch to protect her friends, but she hoped these kids weren't trapped in so dire a mentality already.

Maisie Gemmell was the older student at the back. She didn't lead with a question, but rather a secondhand observation. I hear you're great. Bridget tried for an appreciative smile, but it may have tilted toward a tad awkward. Her name might still be circulating Hogwarts duelling, a year after graduation, as the mostly-undefeated witch and former captain of Slytherin, and Maisie had been around duelling last year, Bridget was pretty sure, though non-Viper younger players had been less on her radar. It was also possible they'd heard of her season on the Magic Marinas, but much less likely; they made nationals, but hadn't gone very far.

Last to introduce herself -- in this batch, at least, Bridget would be here for a while -- was Rosy Parker, prepared with curiosity about training. Bridget guessed that Rosy wasn't on a duelling team already, or maybe any Hogwarts sport, and might even be new to the whole concept of magic. Luckily for her, the work that went into duelling wasn't so different from the work that went into a sport like football, though it was more mental than physical. "You're right, it is a lot of practice. The match itself will be an hour or less, but I'll have spent hundreds of hours training by the time I get there."

As for nerves? That was a good question. Truthfully, "Not really. I think it depends on the sort of person you are, but if you're competitive or really care about something, nerves are part of it. You get used to managing them, though." Bridget still got a knotted stomach walking up for her professional duellists. There had been one duel where that wasn't the case: her very last duel at Hogwarts. Beside Ruby and Astrea, she'd felt so confident, so prepared, that of course they would execute exactly what they've trained for. "It's not impossible," she amended, "if you trust yourself and the teammates next to you."

Bridget took a little breath, wishing she had a water bottle on hand. Her throat wasn't used to all this talking; she did incantations and the regular conversation with her teammates or Koko or Howard, but that was about it these days. With the intial questions out of the way, she should push on to her spiel and properly introduce everything. "Well, for anyone who doesn't know, my name is Bridget Collins." She was sure that was listed with whatever Career Day directory had led them here. "I graduated Hogwarts last year and when I was here, I was on the Viridian Vipers for five years. Now I'm a league two duellist with the Magic Marinas, which is a team over in Cork.

"I have information sheets you all are welcome to take," she continued, raising the stack to draw their attention. "I can answer questions about what professional duelling is like, my current team, recruiting, or duelling generally. I've also set up the training dummies if you'd like advice on your casting. And --" she hoped she wouldn't regret this, but at least younger students didn't know as many heavy-hitting spells -- "You can try to hit me with a spell. Just one."

Information sheets are a summarized form of the Professional Duelling Lore

Still open to anyone else who would like to join

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WC: 365

Interactions: Bridget

Date: 20/06/26

Time: Unknown

OOC Note: Reducio Tatsu is mean

Mentions: Reducio @Bridget Collins

Speech: Reducio #6397b0

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When Fawkes first heard about the fact there was a career day, her mind first cycled through what all she would be interested in. Her ideal path would be to become an Auror like her mother, however she was open to other potential career paths as well.

As of current, she was interested in duelling as a potential career. She had barely been duelling captain for maybe 2 months at this point? But her interest in duelling had increased tremendously in that time. She loved being a moderator for duels and she loved participating in them even more! It was a rush of adrenaline unlike any other.

She made her way over to the duelling club. Ah it seems she was late for the event as there were already others present. She did happen to come in as the duellist hosting the duelling career was introducing herself. Bridget Collins. Familiar name but she wasn't the most sure. She wanted to ask some questions but didn't want to interupt.

She waited for a few minutes before nervously going up to her. Uhm hello. She said softly. Her voice tended to do that when nervous, go much softer than what it was supposed to be. Especially around adults or older year students. I'm Fawkes Chaos. I'm one of the duelling captains for the Murder of Merlin and also on the duelling waitlist. It was funny saying the name of the Ravenclaw team out loud in her soft voice. The name was meant to be powerful, instill maybe a bit of fear? Instead it sounded like a timid thing.

I um just wanted to ask if you had any tips for being more I guess confident? during spell casting? I-I've been having a bit of trouble with being able to cast spells during a match. She wondered if her wording was fine for this. She wasn't exactly sure how to explain it but whenever she was in a duel her spells were much harder to cast than normal. Perhaps it was her wand? Or maybe it's cause of her lack of practice. Either way she did want to know if there was any way to help improve it.

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Date June 20, 2026 Time early afternoon Location Dueling Club, Hogwarts Tags @Bridget Collins

Reducio "dialogue" | thoughts

Robin picked up pace as he squeezed through passerby peers on his way to the dueling club room. The boy totally forgot that career day was today, his mind was too focused on studying for finals. He only realized his mistake during lunch, as there were a few speakers stationed in the Great Hall. There was one particular graduate Robin would like to interact with—Bridget Collins—as the billboard had listed, she's a professional duelist and was on the Slytherin dueling team during her time here. Robin subtly frowned at the thought. He strangely didn't harbor too much resentment against Slytherins regarding dueling even though he was waiting to enter Ravenclaw's. "Team spirit" is barely in his dictionary. Still, the snakes won in house points a couple times in a row already, and that slightly—with lack of a better phrase—pisses him off.

That being said, academic excellency had nothing to do with dueling. Robin adjusted his facial expressions as he approached the double doors, then pushed them open, revealing the spacious dueling club room. There were still some students there, Robin wasn't sure if they'd stayed for the whole morning or if they just got here like him. He scanned the room for any familiar faces, but there were either none or all blocked by obstacles. The boy did, however, very clearly see the oldest person in the room. He assumed the woman was Bridget, as she was giving tips to someone standing in front of her.

Robin creeped to a corner of the room, hoping that nobody would talk to him randomly. There are only girls here for some reason, not that Robin gets disproportionately nervous in front of them, he just found it weird. He knows boys who like dueling, why aren't they here? He dwelled on the thought for a moment before catching a gap in Bridget's speech. The Ravenclaw boy half-raised his hand and cleared his throat before speaking.

"Hallo Ms. Collins, I was mainly curious about how you decide to use which spells during the duel?" He paused to rephrase the question a bit, "I mean, duels go by pretty fast-paced, I feel like. Do you rely more on intuition born from practice or is there a general strategy you go by? If so, do you change the strategy based on your opponent, like if they have higher or lower stamina?" Robin paused again and tried to remember if there was anything else he wanted to ask, nothing came up immediately. He then added a polite "Thank you," after the questions and adjusted his glasses to focus better.

Reducio

it seems like everyone else wrote that they're here in the morning, but robin had other threads then so that's why i wrote this as in the afternoon. if any of y'all plan on not being here during that time, just don't interact with robin and it'll not have a time conflict (that's why i didn't really describe the people already there)

@Fawkes Chaos | @Robin Lockett

As soon as things got going, they occassionally slowed but didn't stop. Bridget was internally a bit stunned, completely thrown off her expectations, but she hoped she didn't look it. Like any good duellist, she could adapt, think quickly on her feet, and if today was going to be a lot of giving duelling tips to younger years, then she could do that. Captain Bridget took the wheel, patient and attentive, only a little more professional than she had been back when she helped lead the Viridian Vipers.

She was lucky enough to even get one of the new captains today, a shy girl by the name of Fawkes Chaos. Bridget leaned down, just a bit, to catch her words a little easier. Hopefully she was comfortable enough to project when she was leading team practices. "Nice to meet you, Fawkes." Like some of the earlier questions she'd gotten, what Fawkes wanted to know boiled down to how to be a better duellist. Bridget would give an answer that boiled down to much of what she'd said today, what she'd told herself for years: "It's all practice. The more you practice, the more you catch your mistakes."

That wasn't all, though. She pressed her lips together, slowing down to reconsider for a second. This was something Bridget was working on, listening to new teammates and coaches and not just the part of her that equated perfection and time. "It's also... finding what works for you. Experimenting with your concentration and visualization can help. And if you can, think of a duel as just another practice. When you stress yourself out, sometimes you perform worse." Bridget would know a thing or two about stress-based miscasts, given a recent ridiculously failed Reparifarge when she'd found herself sealed into a tomb. That wasn't an anecdote she was going to share for Career Day, but the concept applied.

It was a good thing Bridget could talk about duelling all day. The questions came in waves, and eventually she'd find a lull to tend to her increasingly dry throat. Packing a bottle of water would have been smartest, but conjuring a flask and then filling it via Aguamenti also worked, even if Transfiguration wasn't her strongest area of magic.

Tips on nerves and confidence were trickier -- she knew from her time with the Vipers that it could vary from person to person quite a bit -- so she was happy for the boy who approached asking about strategy. He didn't give his name, but was very poltie, and she nodded along to his words. "Good question. I like to strategize with my teammates beforehand so we have targets in mind and set spell combinations for different scenarios, but of course you can't prepare for everything that happens. Then, yes, it's quick-thinking, which comes more easily with practice." Practice, practice, practice. Perhaps she should have included that on the information sheets. "I would definitely recommend knowing your opponent's strengths and weaknesses, if you can, and playing to them."

Not skipping over you lovely people who have posted previously! I just wanted to give our new additions something to work with

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XXXXX𝓣he noise of scuttling children in search of the right room for career day faded away as Mylo stepped into the familiar space that was the duelling room. The familiarity of the four walls bringing a sense of comfort, a sense that quickly felt off as they noticed the distinct lack of spells, or soft chatter of strategies being discussed.

They had expected this, and as such did their best to ignore the odd feeling. Instead focussing their sights on the scene in front of them, noticing the small group of students - mostly younger years it appeared - that had gathered to gain some information on how professional duelling worked. Mylo themselves had come here for the exact same reason, they had been duelling for a while now and although they had never been the greatest at sports it was still always good to consider their options, and what better place to find out about their future career opportunities than a day dedicated to it!

Seeing that the invited duellist had finished answering the questions posed to her Mylo made their way over, recognising the duellist as Bridget Collins in the process. They hadn't duelled against her but had known her from the brief period of time they had overlapped at school, they also noticed Maisie standing off in a corner, seemingly not wanting to take the lead on the conversation that was being held. It was slightly unlike her, to stand in the background, so Mylo made a note to go and check in on her after introducing themselves and asking their question. They did throw a quick smile and wave her way, not wanting to make it seem like they hadn't seen her or were ignoring her.

As they approached he filtered the questions they had into one simplified query, not wanting to take up too much time and wanting to allow others the space to satiate their curiosities as well. There weren't too many people in the room yet, however these things could ramp up quite quickly. Wiping their slightly clammy hand on their trousers Mylo walked up to Bridget, hoping that they had indeed read the room correctly and that she had finished answering the previous questions.

"Hi, sorry for coming in slightly later. I'm Mylo, third year Ravenclaw duellist and previous captain." Unsure if their title had been necessary to add, but they had heard others introduce themselves with their positions so they hoped he hadn't done it wrong. "I just had a quick question, how do you deal with opponents who are stronger than you in every way? Is there a certain strategy you try to implement or is that something that just requires pure luck at that point?" They asked.

Mylo was very curious to hear the answer to their query, they had first hand experience with opponents who had been stronger in every way and had pummelled him into the ground. They knew that fighting people who had more experience and knowledge was a very good way to improve themselves, however it was also nice to stand a chance and have hope for victory.

While waiting for Bridget to answer Mylo snuck a quick glance at their friend, resolving to make their way over to her after they had gotten a response.

date ; 20/06/2026 mentions ; @Bridget Collins | @Maisie Gemmell actions ; languages ; speaking — bsl — thoughts Duelling room ; location 549 ; wordcount ; ooc notes dad — pa — andrea ; family 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌 𝐎𝐍, 𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐑 ; 𝓯𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓼 𝔀𝓲𝓵𝓵 𝓫𝓵𝓸𝓸𝓶 𝓪𝓰𝓪𝓲𝓷. xx

xx

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