Fire Goes Whoosh PV Dee

In six years, two months and fifteen days at Hogwarts, Dee had seen her fair share of really strange things. Ghosts were the mildest of it, magical creatures, potions that could turn your heads into pumpkins and spells that would grow antlers on your head. More sinister things, too, live shadows in spider form, hag dolls and giant spiders, poisons and curses and things that turned her stomach. And yet, somehow, the castle never failed to produce new things to surprise her.

There was no real reason to her presence at the duelling club this day. No practice, no training with Percival. Strange as it might seem, she just liked the atmosphere at the duelling club. The spells in the background, practised repeatedly, dummies knocked over or flying backwards, set on fire or otherwise destroyed. Perhaps a result of years of duelling practice, but it left her in a state that was calm and focused - perfect for studying. Thus today, and frequently on other days, Dee came here for here to write essays or revise, leaning against the back wall, her words a barely legible scrawl across parchment. Today's subject was Transfiguration, and she'd made good progress, but was now letting her thoughts drift a little along with her eyes.

Many of the faces in the room were at least vaguely familiar, from her and their frequent visits. One was not. A short girl with a cloud of blond curls around her head was standing next to one of dummies. Closer than was reasonable if you wanted to practise your aim, or other aspects of your spellwork.

As Dee watched, the girl drew a wand and hit it against the dummy's surface. "Fire goes whoosh!" she proclaimed with great enthusiasm, and once she stepped aside, implausibly, a small fire flickered on the dummy's surface. Dee blinked, stared, and blinked again, as if the repeated action would make whatever she had just witnessed vanish from her memory. What in the name of seven manticores had she just watched? There was no way, at all, no way in hell that this girl had turned fire goes whoosh with a passionate whack into a working fire spell.

Closing both her mouth and her book, Dee nimbly pushed herself up from the ground and sauntered over to where the girl was still standing. The small flame on the dummy had gone out in the meantime, but the remnants were still visible, a bit of soot and the smell of singed fabric, although the dummies were enchanted to withstand all sorts of damage. "What the fuck was that," she asked flatly, turning to stare at the girl. Blue eyes and a button nose, Dee could proclaim with certainty that she had never consciously seen the girl before. "Please do that again." It was less a request than an order.

She glanced down at the wand in the girl's hand, trying to take a guess at its composition. It looked like... wait. She frowned and looked closer, incredulous. It looked like... "Is that just a stick?"

@Oonagh Brown

15th of November, 2025 @Dealla Prince

Oonagh was feeling vaguely smug and accomplished as a little flame started to sprout from where she had held the lit match, the flames licking at the - presumably magicked - material of the dummy that had fallen victim to herself. Unbeknownst to her these things were not actually meant to catch fire upon an onslaught of magic, which if she had known, would have been quite a disappointed discovery.

Her shenanigans or whatever it was that she was doing was quickly catching the attention of another student, a tall-grown girl that approached her with attitude, that Oogie was quick to mimic. "What the fuck was that," the girl asked and Oonagh suppressed an amused snort as she regarded the other student head to toe. Long brown hair framed her face, being drawn across one shoulder in soft waves. Piercing blue eyes bore into her own. If this girl thought Oonagh would cower under that gaze, she was surely mistaken.

Through her great amusement, Oonagh decided to double down, cockily twirling the stick in her hand and giving the girl a grin. "Why, magic o' course!" she almost drawled, her Scottish accent thick. As the girl pretty much demanded she repeat whatever it was she had done, the blonde imp just shook out her curls. "Nah, ye micht just have tae learn them tricks on yer own," she 'explained' before continuing, "it really ain't that hard tae do anyways..."

Oonagh had actually no idea about spell-work and whatnot, not that she cared to know. It seemed too much of a hassle to learn, making her brain hurt with all the things to keep in mind and whatnot. Chances were better to just wield a match box or throw a punch. Surely those techniques would end up more in her favour than waving around a stick.

Upon being asked whether she was holding a stick, Oonagh gasped in mock offense. "How dare ye, it be a fancy stick that does magic better than whitever yer wielding for sure!"

Oonagh had no idea what she was actually doing at this point, however she would now not back down from this self-decided challenge. Or well, whatever was going on anyway. She still had the box of match sticks hidden within her fist that was not wielding - as the other girl had correctly guessed - the stick that she had simply plucked from the ground at some point throughout the day, when she had realized that she had forgotten her 'wand' in her dormitory. Not that it was of much use to her anyway, so she figured it would make little difference to simply walk around with a normal stick instead.

She knew that others were certainly able to cast magic with these little sticks, but for her especially in made no difference, since none of these magic words seemed to stick. And regardless of how often she had tried to mutter them, her wand refused to even give off a spark of light. And a torchlight was out of the question as it would apparently just explode in to her face if she dared bring it into the school or even the train. Her parents had even taken away her phone, just because they knew she would find a way to bring it to school otherwise and they at the very least heeded the warnings of the professor that had stopped by before her first attendance to the first school year.

Well regardless of things, she was now standing in front of a girl that looked very much older than her, though that would not scare her, if Koko was any proof of that, and stared back defiantly at the brunette.

"Why, magic o' course," the girl claimed, like Dee hadn't spent an unreasonable amount of time in this room over the past six years and seen nearly any form that fire spells could take.

Distinctly unimpressed, Dee gave the girl a onceover from her messy cloud of hair to the scuffed tips of her boots, then raised her most condescening eyebrow. "Magic o' course," she echoed mockingly, in a bad imitation of the girl's very rural Scottish accent. Luckily, duelling AJ had prepared her for having to sort through the alphabet jumble that was apparently Scottish English. She grinned one of her sharpest grins, the ones without a trace of friendliness in them. "How about I show you some real fire magic and you can reconsider your stance in this conversation?"

Some children, however, did not know when to stop - and clearly, this girl was one of those thick-headed children. (As Dee had been, if she was honest, but she rarely was if it was inconvenient to her.) Ah, yes, of course it wasn't just a stick, it was a fancy stick, definitely capable of doing real magic. Rolling her eyes, Dee made an attempt to dart forward and simply snatch the stick from the child's hand to give it a closer inspection... but the gods and Lady Luck were not on her side, and instead of slipping in and yanking the stick back the way she should have been able to, Dee's foot got tangled in her own robes and she went down like a log.

"Shi-" Unable to free her foot in time to regain her balance, Dee landed in an ungraceful jumble, somehow bumping her right knee and hip on the ground even while she half caught herself on one arm. Her hand had already been stretched out, and in a scramble to hold on to something, she felt rough bark between her fingers - and took down the stick, pardon, wand with her on the way. There was a very ominous crack noise, and Dee was extremely relieved to find that it hadn't come from her hand, despite some less than comfortable throbbing in her wrist. No, the poor victim of Dee's unexpected bout of clumsiness had been the questionable wand, which now lay next to Dee's splayed hand on the floor, cracked into two pieces that were connected by only a few feeble strings of fiber. Dee sat up, then crossed her legs, and picked up to inspect it. The other half dangled sadly from the part she was holding. "Oops?" she asked doubtfully. It was definitely just a stick, and not even a very fancy one. Grey and dry from the November weather, rough bark that was peeling off in places, it could be any of a thousand twigs randomly picked up from the Hogwarts grounds. It even looked vaguely like it had been chewed on, and Dee wasn't sure if it had been some sort of rodent, or the kid in front of her.

Which begged the question why this girl was standing in the duelling club with a dry stick, yelling nonsense and setting dummies on fire. Dee frowned at the wooden pieces for a moment longer, then up at the girl. "Do you... not have a wand?" she questioned, confused. "How did you..." She trailed off, blinking. "Are you someone's little sister or something? Some Muggle-born student, and they what, sneaked you through the Hogwarts Express in their trunk? Are you a Muggle?" While it felt somewhat questionable that they'd managed to hide her at the castle for two months, it seemed the most logical explanation for the absolutely bizarre display she'd just witnessed. And the girl's apparent lack of a wand. And her insistence on calling it a fancy stick that did magic. It did not quite explain the actual flames Dee had seen, but she'd find an explanation for that part, too.

@Oonagh Brown

15th of November, 2025 @Dealla Prince

Perhaps Oonagh had approached this situation with more attitude than was smart or wise, luckily she considered neither of those attributes important enough to warrant consideration in her decision making skills. So once met with the condescension and possibly even scorn of the older girl, the brunette in front of her, she doubled down and returned the raised eyebrow with a look that could go down in history as the most smug and self-satisfied innocent face a kid has ever returned in a battle of wits and attitude. "Magic o' course," the brunette drawled, a repetition of Oonagh's own previous words, voice assumingly mocking, though the blonde whirlwind only responded in a manner of being tone-deaf, her statement back a simple yet efficient "Aye," afterwards underlining the word with a bob of her head, ending with a complacent smile.

"How about I show you some real fire magic and you can reconsider your stance in this conversation?" Oonagh gave pause, after the other girl uttered the statement and briefly considered it. She did quite love fire shows, there occasionally were some whenever circuses were in the city or festivals were being held. She would occasionally visit those with her friends from her normal school, sometimes her parents took her too when they were available and able to leave their responsibilities behind. The animals would not feed themselves and her father had long journeys to accomplish whenever he drove to or from work and usually arrived just in time for dinner, which was only because her mum had dinner ready whenever her dad got home. Perhaps Hogwarts had gotten it all wrong and her mom was the witch who was meant to visit this school, though she was much too old for a first or second class, she surmised in the end of her train of thought. Which brought her back to the present and the girl that had just offered to display a magic pyrotechnics show for her and who was Oonagh to say no to that?

"Be thare much spells wi' fire then? Aside from mines of cou'..." she asked, not willing to let go of the ruse yet, whether or not it was actually fooling anybody or not. It felt very much beside the point of the claim of having cast a spell that had left a scorch mark on the dummy.

The next few moments happened a little faster than anticipated and when the girl lunged for her in an attempt to snatch her stick as Oonagh quickly realized as the other girl's hand wrapped around the mundane piece of tree, the Scot had found among many others on the grounds and deemed it extra pretty and worth keeping, both of them tumbled to the ground in a very bad attempt from the brunette at blatant thievery. Oonagh gave off a quick yelp and a little shout as they went tumbling down and was pretty sure to have jammed her elbow toward the brunette involuntarily, though part of her hoped it had hit the girl for being the cause of their fall as Oonagh's back slammed into the stone-y ground, rocks rattling along her spine and a pained groan escaping her lips as she glared at the brunette and gave an aimless kick toward her vicinity in revenge; an action she deemed to also be deserved.

When the girl however held aloft her now very broken wand... well stick really, she gave an exasperated gasp and pushed herself up into a sitting position, mouth agape as she stared at the two pieces of wood, barely still connected by a few loose splinters and a thin sliver of bark.

"Ye brak it!" she exclaimed and reached for what was left of the stick, snatching it back and staring at it like it was a lost treasure of some kind. "Ye brak ma pretty stick!" Her voice that was previously laced with shock, now took on an accusatory tone as her gaze narrowed into a glare, directed at the brunette.

As the brunette went on with asking her a tirade of questions, Oonagh was still busy mourning her stick and only half listened, anger and indignation swirling in the pits of her stomach, glare still directed at the girl. Before her head finally snapped out of it and her hand tightened in a fist around the broken pieces. "Huh?? Whit the #### ar ye talkin aboot?" she finally relinquished, somewhat flabbergasted. Her eyes narrowing once more, this time however it appeared to be more confusion rather than anger, as she got off the ground, staring at the brunette, dumbfounded.