HOL Ravenclaw

Your legs lead you to different places at Hogsmeade. Your eyes twinkle with delight as the field trip is off to a great start, stress-free with an array of places to freely go to.

In an open area fairly far from the others, you stand looking through the windows of each intricately built shop. You notice in your peripheral vision a shadow dark as night, but you pay no mind to it because you're more focused on exploring. That is, until the figure approaches you. Its voice is dark and mysterious, like its appearance.

Just as you thought the field trip was going to be stress-free. Your eyes widen in response and your senses heighten, and you question yourself for a moment as you process what they just said.

"I challenge you to a duel."

Task:
Write a minimum of 100 words from your character's perspective about how you feel as the person approaches you and challenges you to a duel. Do you feel prepared? Nervous? Surprised? Focused? Do you feel like you've learned enough? How does it feel having this happen during your field trip?

Alternatively, write at least 150 words about a time something unexpected happened to you. What was it? How did you initially react to it? How did you process the information or situation? Were you able to react quickly? What happened in the end?

This task is worth 10 beans. You can earn an additional 10 bonus beans for completing all Week Four tasks by Saturday, March 30th, at 11:59 PM (HOL time).

Their sudden appearance and the challenge they posed caught me off guard, leaving me feeling unprepared and unsure of myself. My mind raced with doubts. Was I ready for this? Had I learned enough to face a duel with this dark and mysterious figure?

I couldn't help but feel a surge of anxiety at the prospect of engaging in a duel, especially with someone as spirited as this person. The pressure of the moment weighed heavily on my shoulders, and I found myself second-guessing my abilities.

The timing of this challenge, during our field trip no less, only added to my unease. This was supposed to be a fun day of exploration and learning, not impromptu duels. Yet, here I was, thrust into a situation like this.

Still, I didn't have a choice, did I? I raised my wand and prepared for the attack.

I was more caught off-guard than anything. A duel isn't something that I had planned for my day, but this would likely happen whether I wanted it to or not. It came off as more of an inconvenience to my day, which I found surprising. I wanted to know why I was targeted for this seemingly random match. I'm not an arrogant witch regarding my dueling skills, but I have grown rather skillful due to my participation in the dueling club. Luckily, my muscle memory kicked in when I heard the word "duel" as I reached for my wand wordlessly. I decided to play into this to find out exactly what their goal was with this.

As soon as I heard what the challenger had to say, I reached for my wand. It was Oliver Royce from Slytherin, who seemed to hate me for no apparent reason. I felt a little nervous, but I remembered my father’s training that nervousness is never helpful in a duel. I was however not surprised, since it was a Duelling Club trip and I had a reputation for being good at duels, I expected someone to challenge me. I felt very focused and without any delay cast “EXPELLIARMUS!” at him. However, Oliver dodged it and cast “STUPEFY!” at me. In a fraction of a second, I cast “PROTEGO!” to defend myself, followed by “FLIPENDO!”. He then cast “EXPELLIARMUS!” at me.

I was always taught to be on my toes, almost as if it were a dance, so I was able to dodge his spell, but my Knockback Jinx hit him, and he fell on his back. My father’s first lesson was to finish the enemy when they were down. As I mentioned in Week 1, I have certain secret cards up my sleeve, and this is when I was about to use one of them.

After falling on his back due to my Knockback Jinx, he wasn’t ready to back down and accept defeat. So out of spite, I think he was about to cast “LEVICORPUS!” at me, but I quickly cast the Babbling Curse on him. Before he could finish saying the incantation, he started babbling nonsense. Humiliated, Oliver quickly got up, made a face and ran away.

I learnt about the Babbling Curse from my uncle George. During the 1980s, Hogwarts students would use this curse quite often, against their opponents in the Duelling Club.

After a week full of tirelessly practicing dueling spells and memorizing incantations, I had expected that this field trip was meant for some respite. However, when I was casually strolling at Hogsmeade to explore and this mysterious figure challenged me to a duel, I was shocked and surprised. An array of emotions raced in the back of my mind: my disappointment at my restful calm, peace, and mood to explore at Hogsmeade being disrupted, my nervousness at finally having to face such a situation that required my dueling skills out in the world without guidance, and my courage and confidence in my abilities to defeat this person because I was now more proficient at dueling than earlier, and it was difficult to discern or separately identify each emotion. I secretly laughed as I thought about how I was ready for this situation and had been preparing for it, but I was also slightly nervous and warned myself not to take the mysterious figure lightly because he was a complete stranger I knew nothing about. He could be another of Lord Voldemort's illegitimate children; who knows? My hand reached my wand and grabbed it, and cautiously but confidently, I revisited in my mind everything that I had learned in the past weeks and engaged in the duel as if just fighting yet another practice duel in the Dueling Club. I knew that tragedy, when it struck, would come without warning, just like in this situation, so I may as well stop thinking of "practicing dueling" and "actually fighting out there" as different. I saw the hint of a twinkle in the mysterious stranger's eyes and realized that he was amused by my eagerness to fight, but I tried to focus on my strategies and dueling moves and decided to give it my best, leaving the outcome, no matter how serious, to fate.

When I was about five years old, I did a community theatre production for the first time. They were doing a Christmas pantomime, and I was part of the junior ensemble, so we didn't have to do much more than stand and look cute, and maybe walk a few steps in the group dance numbers. Because of child labor regulations, the company had to have two sets of children, because we could only do a certain number of performances each, so each of us had a 'double,' another child that did our exact part but on the other set of performances. Part of this logic was also that if one child fell sick or couldn't perform, their 'double' could go on in their place.

On one of the performance days, it wasn't my turn to perform, but I'd had to come to the theatre in the morning to help put some costume pieces away ready for the next show. We did this, and I was preparing to leave again, when one of the adults in charge of the kids asked if I could stay for a little while, until the show was underway, because my 'double' wasn't feeling very well, and they didn't know if she'd be able to do the show. So, I sat in the audience with my family for the first part of the show, until the same adult appeared next to us at the back of the audience, saying the other child had tried to keep going but was too unwell, and they needed me to head backstage now and finish the performance off. I was very young and very energetic so it didn't really faze me and I just had a great time doing an extra performance!

My eyes widened in surprise. I did have a sneaky feeling that something unusual would happen but this was completely unexpected. It caught me off guard and I found myself fumbling around my robes looking for my wand, despite it being in my pocket. I didn’t feel ready, not at all, but perhaps it was just all in my mind. I had all the spells I needed to know already memorised and I did have a practice duel with an upperclassman the other day. Shaking my nerves away, I rotated my wrist and mimicked the pose the challenger had taken. I took a deep breath in even with the butterflies in my stomach. “I accept the challenge.”