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shoutout to Alicia for guessing the amount of words (9487 so y'all better comment a shit ton cause this bitch took TIME)
don't forget to vote!!
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We're both on opposite sides of the room panting, wanting to double over and place our hands on our knees to catch our breaths, but standing warily with our wands drawn trying to guess the other's next move.
We've only been dueling for fifteen minutes, but we're both already exhausted.
Our first duel was violent, explosive even. We've toned it down since then, though he is no less conniving and I am no less brutal. My left arm is still wrapped, the bone broken under my Dark Mark slowly healing, though my dislocated shoulder is nothing but sore now. Luckily, Draco's spells have mostly been hitting my right side, whether that's luck or intentional. I have a deep gash down my right bicep that pangs with every second, and he used Langlock on me to give me a taste of my medicine, so now I glare at him tiredly with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth. He also knocked me right off my feet near the start, so there's a nasty bruise forming on my tailbone that probably won't go away for a little while. I think I may have hit my head on something too, because my vision is a little blurry and won't clear no matter how much I blink.
He also used a dancing jinx on me. My feet are twitching.
But he isn't doing so well either. I blasted him into the wall, and his head hit the corner of a portrait, so there's blood dripping all down the side of his face. I spelled the bones in his right hand away, so he's forced to use his non-dominant hand for his wand. Though he's avoided all my Stunning Spells, one hit the wall dangerously close to his head, and I think he's still disoriented from that. Still, he watches me gravely.
"Aren't either of you going to do something?" Aunt Bellatrix sighs showily, her wide eyes glancing between the two of us while she pouts and plays with one of her curls.
I swallow thickly, stepping forward and flicking my wand towards him. He deflects my jet of red light easily before sending blue light towards me that I shield off to the side. Draco steps forward, but I quickly hit him with an Impedimenta that throws him backwards, and I take the time in which he stumbles back and recovers to turn to Bellatrix.
"I think we should take a break from dueling," I say firmly, my breaths heavy.
She tilts her head at me, vicious black eyes penetrating mine. In the two weeks she's been training us, I've learned to keep the terror that strikes up in my chest at the mere sight of her under wraps. It's still there. That nagging thought that she's the one who killed him, that she's the one who killed me, and that she might easily do it again constantly sits at the back of my head, but I'm tired of trembling every time she looks at me. Occlumency is, without a shred of doubt, the most difficult thing I've attempted to master. It takes a kind of mental strength that I don't think I had even before the attack at the Ministry, and a strength I definitely have been struggling to find ever since.
