InsaneJournal

There were so many targets to choose from, Lady Noir thought as she skirted away from where witches and wizards had paired off and begun to duel. When she arrived, the battle had already begun, wands drawn, flashes of light in an otherwise dark field. Her mouth curled up into a satisfied smile beneath her feathered mask.

After her exhausting conversation with James Potter, she carefully planned her next step. Delivering him -- and whatever trap he was setting for her -- into the hands of her Death Eater friends. Well, not friends yet, but perhaps they would be soon enough. The entire thing was simply marvelous.

She held her wand carefully and narrowed her eyes behind her mask until she spotted -- ah, James Potter. The annoying arse who technically orchestrated this entire thing. How wonderful.

She lowered her hood and marched toward him, wand raised. "Incendio," she whispered, the orange glow and flame streaking out of her wand at Potter's legs.


The years -- kind as they had been to James Potter -- could not be half so kind as a duel with his old compatriots. Age had been lifted from him and his body found its old rhythm, responding with a grace rarely found out of the air. He’d managed to fling a Stunning Hex at the back of a masked head before a light in his peripheral vision dictated that he turn. The flame which leapt toward him was (with a clap of his hands) disintegrated into a thousand tiny shards of ice. And as his eyes, re-acquainted with the low light, began to pick out the details of the flame’s generator, he smiled.

Lady Noir. Who else would wear such a fancifully decorated mask?

“My Lady,” he greeted her with a bow. And he followed that with a brightly-coloured stinging hex to the hands, followed by a silent disarming spell.


She easily shielded herself from the shards of ice spewing back at her, scowling. "Potter," she said in a crisp alto. "I see you found your way here and even -- brought along some of your friends." She avoided the hex to her hands and felt her wand twitch away from her for half a moment before shielding herself again from his disarming charm.

"With a bow like that, perhaps we ought to dance." A slow smile spread over her face, beneath her mask, and she sent the dancing jinx at him with a woosh of orange.


“ … I hope you’re a talker, my Lady,” -- then, a scoff, bitten off by a growled out protego. James used the remainder of the shield charm’s spell to eat the distance between them with bullish and headlong strides.

A swirling orange bolt of light, aimed at her feet, was meant to be a distraction to the main charge of his riposte. “Accio mask.”


Her mask didn't matter. Not really, but her feet did, which was why she concentrated on deflecting the bolt at her feet and whipped her face around to look at him, eyes narrow. She watched her mask shoot into his hand, and she smiled wider, showing her teeth. "I'm not sure what you hope to accomplish with that," she said gently. "It's dark, and you're not going to recognize me anyway."

As she spoke, she flicked her wrist and shot long ropes out of her wand that curls around his wand arm, at the elbow, and jerked him forward to her.


“At least you’re a talker. Tell me a little more about how I only have to recognize your face, my lady …”

How convenient it was, that whatever obscured her face did not also obscure her tone. He committed the alto timbre to memory as the ropes pulled him nearer. Though there hadn’t been a great deal of time to think, as soon as he was in striking distance, his knuckles sought to meet her ribs.


"No touching," she purred, blasting a stunning spell at him from this close range and jumping, less gracefully than she'd like, out of his reach. But she gave him what he asked for, because she knew very well that he wouldn't recognize her. None of these imbeciles would -- on either side. Purposefully done, of course, and very carefully too.

Lady Noir, with a smile on her face, lit up her own face for him, a private show if you will.


Though the Stunner did its work in making James slow, he slowly curled to his knees to behold her little tableau. Dark eyed, fair skinned … she could have been anyone. But he knew, knew ineffably, he would remember the knowing prattish sneer on her face. A face to which he immediately aimed a slashing hex.

If he could not recognize her, he could mark her.

“Get bent.”


Lady Noir turned her cheek in time for the hex to hit its mark, barely. She felt her skin explode just under her ear, and she hissed at him and slashed her wand at him with a low growled "Crucio" which she knew would hold. Long enough, at least. "You're a disgrace," she said, seething. "To wizardkind. To mankind." Her grip on her wand with tight but firm, and she slapped her free hand, though gloved, up to the bleeding cut on the side of her neck.


Having withstood the Unforgivable Curses of the Dark Lord, James was a fair assessor of the curses’ power. So, when the Cruciatus lit his nerve endings on fire, he had a moment to distinguish the differences. Much like Bellatrix Lestrange had always intoned, a curse was nothing if you didn’t mean it. And he well knew that she did, and he well knew that she took delight in the pain she caused. Through gritted teeth, he could just lift his wand and make the pronouncement that would end the glamour which disguised her. “Finite --”

But before he could fully engage the charm, his vision was blanketed in a crystalline blue-black haze. And as it billowed, he knew that she would either take the moment to dispatch him once and for all or flee. Betting that she’d pick the former over the latter, he threw one last curse into the void (Reducto!) before flattening himself on the ground and lying still. Eventually the powder would settle and James, intent on never being seen as one who flees, meant to provide protection to any too wounded to leave.


The sudden darkness caused Lady Noir to drop the curse causing Potter to writhe in pain on the ground, and she turned, cloak billowing behind her, as she tried to determine the source of it. Someone had disrupted the duelling, taking the coward's way out, scattering them all. She hissed through her teeth and stayed still, silent.

She could hear cracks of Disapparition all around her, and she knew both sides were taking advantage and leaving. Quickly, she set her wand in her palm and murmured "Point me" allowing it to spin until the tip pointed due north. Though she couldn't see it, she could feel it, and she took off smoothly in the opposite direction, south, away from the last sparks of the duels and away from those fleeing.

It wasn't until she was far enough away, out of the blinding darkness, that she closed her eyes and disappeared with a crack!.