InsaneJournal

To be honest, Sirius wondered what he was thinking agreeing to a duel with Lena Renaud, even in a controlled setting. The girl was filled with pent-up anger (misplaced, he thought) and aggression. At least it might be an entertaining match up, as opposed to him dueling, say, Lavender Brown, who would be apt to spend the entire time giggling and blushing.

He moved to position across from her in the Great Hall, which Remus had commandeered for the practise session, and pushed his hair off his face. "On my count," he said across from her, taking up the proper etiquette for practise duels. He held out his wand, bowed gently without taking his eyes off her, then straightened. "One - two - three."

Lena was ready for him. The extended back and forth they’d had only recently had practically dripped with his condescension and made her want to vomit. Research on him, she had point blank refused to do, but research for this duel she had spent some hours on.

“Castreo,” she snapped as soon as ritual allowed her. Certainly she hoped she’d caught him off guard - undoubtedly he’d block her hex, but she was hoping it at least knocked him about a little.

That was an easy one to block, especially since she'd spoken it out loud and had a tell just before she sent the hex at him. One of his dueling strengths was the observation of his opponent, though that wasn't something he had always been good at. At one point, he had been like her with his duels -- angry, impatient, unfocused.

He blocked it, stepped to the side, then cast the simple but efficient disarming spell at her. "Expelliarmus," he said carefully, hoping that she would react quickly enough to keep her wand in hand.

“Protego,” Lena countered, but it was a near thing, and she stumbled. Quickly righting herself, she glared up at him, determined to at least startle him.

Nonverbal magic had never been her strong suit, but she could do it, it just required a little more effort than saying an incantation. She tried now, concentrating hard both on the hex and on her facial expression, doing her best to catch him off guard.

“Tondesco,” she thought with all her might.

"Good," he said at her defense. That was important, and she needed more work on it. Though she didn't cast the next one verbally, he saw it coming. Barely. Soon enough to deflect it quickly and try to disarm her again. He repeated himself: "Expelliarmus."

That one damn near disarmed her - she was just a fraction too late throwing up her shield and it was a close enough thing that she actually lost her grip on her wand, though after half a moments grasping at air she caught it again. She actually snarled, letting herself vent a torrent of French swearing that would have made her father march her to the bathroom to have her mouth washed out, then squared off again, assuming the position to attack again. “Furnunculus,” she hexed.

The corner of Sirius's mouth quirked up at her frustration, reminding him of his early days struggling with the animagus process, then further down the line with DADA himself. If it had been a hex besides Furnuculus, he might have been more willing to let it hit him. But since he had a bad experience with terrible boils in his sixth year and a certain Slytherin whose name he wouldn't mention, he deflected it.

"Relax," Sirius urged her, though even as he said it he knew it wasn't going to make a difference. She would more than likely think he was being condescending when he was trying to help. "You're not going to get anywhere if you don't take your time." Then he cast Expelliarmus again, nonverbally.

She hadn’t prepared herself for non verbal onslaught and her wand sprung from her hand. She gave a small cry of dismay, grabbing for it but scrabbling like an idiot. Humiliated, she turned to face Sirius again, her shoulders slumped. She wanted to make it look like she’d given up, so that when she raised her wand and snapped “Electro” at him, she finally had a chance of catching him unawares.

She was beginning to wish she’d never begun this exercise in futility. She thought she understood now, that this first lesson was about humbling them and making them realize they didn’t know half the shit they thought they did. It was working, if that was the case. She just dreaded his smug look of self satisfaction when they finally called the match and ruled in his favor.

Sirius watched the wand flip out of her hand and Lena go after it. "One of the most important things about defensive dueling," he said carefully, keeping his eyes trained on her, "is observation and focus. And anticipation. You heard me say the disarming spell twice aloud. You should have known my next one wouldn't come verbally." And this time, he thought, he wouldn't try and disarm her at all.

Then, it wasn't precisely that she caught him unaware. He knew enough about her and about other teenagers and people in general to guess at what would happen next. It was that he was too focused on what he could say to try and help her that he wasn't ready for the hex. It struck him in the left arm, the bolt fizzing down to his fingertips and up to his shoulder. Sirius was unable to keep the wince of pain from his face as the spot on his arm went numb for a moment longer than he would have liked.

Thankfully, he wasn't left handed. "Good," he said through gritted teeth, stepping to the side and then casting "Gelesco" out loud and at her feet.

This time she was ready, and having hit him had given her a boost of confidence. Nonverbally, she concentrated and threw up a Protego shield, rapidly followed by an Exomento. Not the most attractive of hexes, but if it hit, Merlin, if it hit, the smug smile would be completely and permanently wiped from Black’s infuriating face.

Realistically she knew there wasn’t much chance of her hex actually landing, with any force at least. But even if she couldn’t get him with the full force, she might be able to manage a little hit…

Unfortunately for Lena and quite fortunately for Sirius, it didn't hit. Because he anticipated her next move (though not the hex; he would have been pleasantly surprised to know which hex she had thrown at him) as a nonverbal immediately, so he cast a shield charm to repel whatever she threw at him before his spell had even been repelled by her. "Good," he said again. "Better."

He stepped forward, just a little, and threw a Jelly-leg Jinx at her, aiming once again for her feet but this time casting it nonverbally.

Lena was learning as she went and she, too, threw up a shield before he had a chance to act. Vogalio, she cast, having abandoned verbal magic entirely. It was the most she had ever cast without opening her mouth since they had begun non verbal magic at the beginning of sixth year, and as much as she hated to admit it, the practice was doing her a world of good.

She didn’t want to end this duel without having landed anything significant though. Not only was it a matter of pride, she knew that if she couldn’t manage it in this controlled environment, she didn’t stand a chance in the real world.

That one hit Sirius so when he opened his mouth to talk to her, holding up his hand to signal a pause, his voice came out with a horrible French accent and he couldn't help but smile, just a little. He wiped the spell from him silently (since thinking didn't seem to come with the accent, thankfully), and tried again. "Let's pause here for a second to talk about what we're trying to accomplish here," he said.

“I know what I’m trying to accomplish, sir,” Lena said. The sarcasm dripped from her voice on the word “sir”, much as it did every time she emphasized it in her writing, making “sir” sound more like “you gigantic pile of human garbage”. But then she reconsidered, cocking her head to the side as she thought.

“To be perfectly honest I came into this wanting desperately to hex your bollocks off and show you up, sir. But I see now that I’m not… not there yet. You’re just better than I am, much as I hate to admit it. There’s still too much I don’t know.”

She smirked. “But you, for your part, have to admit that I got you with the Electro and the Vogalio. And that I wasn’t entirely horrible, and that I did in fact manage to more or less hold my own. Sir.”

"Yes, you held your own," he said, not mentioning that she would probably have stood no chance in a real duel, be it with him or someone else, like a Death Eater or likewise, "but you've missed the point. You went off on me about wanting to do something, to know how to defend yourself, about being treated like an adult, and you've proven you're not there yet." He tried very hard not to sound condescending, though he wondered how well he accomplished it. Sometimes he couldn't help his tone.

"That's not defensive magic," he continued. "That's offensive magic. You're never going to be able to hold your own if you don't know the difference. It isn't about hexing someone's bollocks off, as you so eloquently put it." Oh my God, Sirius realized, horrified with himself, he sounded like Minerva, like Moody, like anyone that, when he was her age, tried to tell him he was doing it wrong. He tried to wipe the disgusted expression off his face so that she didn't read him wrong.

"The first rule of defensive magic," he said, "is to get the upper hand. The best thing you can do is disarm your opponent. If your opponent is disarmed, what else can they do to you? The second role of defensive magic is to know how to protect your wand. A solid shield charm takes care of this every time. Once you have those basics you can worry about how to accomplish the next step.

Sirius moved back into dueling position and looked at her. "Now," he said, his tone sharp and commanding. "Disarm me."

Sighing, Lena moved back into position. She watched him for a long moment, keeping her expression neutral, then thought Expelliarmus with all her might, immediately throwing up a Protego the way she had learned.

He hadn’t needed to tell her that she’d missed the point, because she got it, really. She had learned the hard way that she just wasn’t as good as she’d thought. The lecture was unnecessary, and it was only making her want to try hexing his bollocks off again.

That she wasn't as good as she thought also wasn't the point, not that he knew she was thinking that. Instead, he focused on the task at hand and deflected the disarming curse. He didn't throw anything back at her though. "Again," he said.

She attempted another Expelliarmus immediately, concentrating on trying to get through his seemingly impenetrable defences. At the same time, she kept her shield up. Even though he didn’t look like he was attacking, she had managed to learn the hard way that he attacked when you least expected it.

Again, Sirius deflected it, this time sending a shower of sparks off toward Lena's left. Instead of telling her to try it again, he lowered his wand and crossed to her, forgetting that they had an audience. Damn Remus for making this a spectacle. He started to reach out for her wand hand. "Let me show you a trick," he said.

Violently, Lena jerked away from his reaching hand. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped, glowering at him. “Don’t you ever touch me.”

Too late it occurred to her that she was being more than slightly disrespectful to a teacher, but she didn’t amend her statement, nor did she append it with a “sir”, even a sarcastic sounding one.

Sirius felt the heat of frustration bubbling in his stomach, and he almost snapped right back at her. For some reason, he held his tongue so when he spoke, his tone was even, calm. "I was going to touch your wand, not you," he said.

But he'd had enough. Sirius stepped back and raced a hand through his shaggy hair. "I think we're done here. Good job, Renaud. You're a good dueler and you'll get better with more instruction." He nodded firmly. "Come by my office sometime this weekend and we'll talk."

He turned to catch Remus's eye before stepping down off the platform and returning to his fellow professors.

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” Lena muttered. But aloud, she was more polite. “Thank you for the duel, sir. It was… enlightening.”