Up and Down

Fight and Flight

Spoilers for "Fire and Vice" and "In the Shadow of the Study".

She is careful not to use that spell when anyone she knows wouldn't approve of them can see or hear her. Her duelling skills are sharp enough.

But sometimes, it's not as simple.

Back  to back with Poppy, surrounded on all sides by poachers. The roar of  fighting dragons is threatening to split their eardrums. The thrum of  ancient magic beats through her body.

With a flick of her wand,  she sends an anvil into the air. It hovers there for a heartbeat - a  single one that feels like ten - and at the swing of her arm, it's sent  careening into a man. The sickening crunch of crushed flesh and bone  follows.

"Get her!!"

All at once, the room erupts.

Fire  shoots from the wands of the poachers, the ground rumbles and glows,  and the air crackles with lightning, making her and Poppy's hair stand  on end.

Anna rolls out of the way of a Bombarda with practised  ease. She has taken to wearing absolutely scandalous trousers for such  outdoor excursions, in light of the injury she sustained while out on  one such adventure with Sebastian.

It was the long skirt that  caused her to trip and fall and be bitten that time. The kind of skirt  she now leaves behind when out in dangerous circumstances.

The kind of skirt Poppy is still wearing.

The Hufflepuff is engulfed in flame, but she quickly douses herself with a water-creation charm.

But  the ground is moving under her feet, and Poppy stumbles and falls. Anna  knows all too well what this spell does. Aguamenti wouldn't be enough  for that.

Her eyes lock on the wizard casting the spell. He is about to unleash it. He is about to hurt Poppy.

The anger and darkness that are always there but often dormant and concealed rear their heads.

He won't hurt Poppy. Not if she hurts him first.

Red  tendrils of lightning shoot along her arm and down her heartstring-core  wand. The presence of dragons so close by seems to empower her wand,  empower her.

"Crucio!! "

The man shrieks as the  tendrils wrap around him, folding at the knees and at the waist, his  whole body twisting and writhing in pain. Some of the wizards take a few  steps back, shocked.

She keeps the spell alive through her desire to do harm to someone who dared raise their wand at her friend.

"Dark magic..." Poppy's eyes are big as saucers, "Anna, how?..."

Finally, the spell ends, but the man is still twitching on the floor, his muscles spasming out of control.

It feels good.

So much better than when she used that spell the first time.

Trapped.

She had not known the true meaning of the word until the enchanted gates swung shut behind them with a sickening screech.

Not  even when the door of Gringotts vault had closed on her, she believed,  somehow, that she would make it out. Perhaps it was the presence of  professor Fig. Perhaps it was the faint trace of ancient magic that she  could sense, even if she didn't know what it was.

No such thing  here. The walls exude malice, and the dark beyond the faint circles of  light of her and Sebastian's wands is carnivorous.

Ominis is breathing fast, pacing around the narrow space. He is panicking, and Anna cannot blame him.