The students in the stands cheered and applauded again while Oleandra mentally counted up the points. Following the second task, each champion's cumulative score was the following:
Oleandra Greengrass (Hogwarts): 89 pts.
Viktor Krum (Durmstrang): 88 pts.
Harry Potter (Hogwarts): 83 pts.
Fleur Delacour (Beauxbatons): 52 pts.
This meant that Oleandra was in the lead, beating Krum by one point!
"Three cheers for moral fibre!" Oleandra shouted gleefully over the crowd's applause. "Hip, hip, hurrah!"
"Well, it looks like you've made it, somehow," said Daphne, wearing a slight smile on her face. "But I hope you'll take the third task more seriously."
Oleandra didn't get the opportunity to answer her, because Tracey had just run down from the stands and jumped into her arms, knocking the wind out of her.
"I knew you could do it!" she said, blushing slightly after separating from her. "And you're in first place, too! You're all set to win this tournament!"
"I know, right!" said Oleandra happily.
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In the week that followed the second task, Oleandra could not get a single moment to herself; everywhere she went, people (mostly Slytherins) would ask her what exactly had transpired under the lake's surface. It was natural they'd be curious; after all, after watching a full hour of nothing but the surface of the lake, who wouldn't want to know what had happened under it?
Annoyingly, Viviane was now also on her case, pestering Oleandra to learn fencing, just because she had summoned Arondight to her by mistake during the second task.
"Nobody carries a sword these days!" Oleandra argued back to her. "I'm doing fine already with my runic magic, and I'm busy enough as it is learning regular magic in class. Besides, what do you know about fencing?"
"I taught Lancelot everything he knew, remember?" Viviane shot back. "Before he ran off with Arturus's wife Guinevere, he was his strongest knight!"
"Fine, I'll agree that you're great at messing up everything you do," said Oleandra snidely. "But I'm not like you; I actually learn from my mistakes."
"If you really do learn from your mistakes," said Viviane, on the surface completely nonplussed, "then you had better also learn from mine. If I'd had my sword on me at the time, then Anna wouldn't have killed me so easily."
But Oleandra could tell she was distraught; when she was excited, Viviane defaulted to calling King Arthur by the name she'd first known him by: Arturus, when he'd still been a lowly legionnaire in the Roman army who had no idea of his lineage and his formidable destiny, after he'd been brought to the mainland to protect him from his father. Similarly, Viviane liked to call Morgan le Fay (Morganna) by her pet name for her, Anna.
Back when they'd still been Fairies in both body and soul, before crossing over back to Earth, Viviane and Morgan had been sisters. And after their rebirth as humans, Morgan had become Arthur's half-sister. What a complicated family…
"Explain," said Oleandra squarely, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
"Anna used the Killing Curse on me with the Elder Wand," Viviane said, shuddering at the memory. "But if you'll remember your Professor Moody's lesson, the Killing Curse penetrates all magical wards like a hot knife through butter, until it finds something to kill. But there is one thing that it cannot penetrate: solid matter, like say, a sword."
"Still seems like it'd be more convenient to dodge," Oleandra commented. After all, she could fly without a broom, and as such, she was much more mobile than your average earthbound Wizard.
"You can't always dodge," tut-tutted Viviane.
"Fiiiiine," Oleandra drawled. "But I won't start right now, Professor Dumbledore's confiscated it. And besides, I'll have you know that even though I'm already in great shape for a Witch, I'm way too weak to swing such a big sword for too long; are you sure that's not a great sword?"
"It's a longsword," Viviane said, rolling her eyes. "It's in the name: long. Very well then, we'll wait until summer to begin our lessons; but know that you can summon Arondight at any time, as long as you're standing in a lake."
For all of her complaining, it's not as if Oleandra wasn't intrigued by the idea of using a sword; the gears were already turning in her head. After learning the automatic retaliation runeword on the Irish sword Fragarach last summer, all she'd needed was a proper weapon to use it with…
She imagined herself twirling Arondight like a lightsaber, deflecting curses back at her enemies like blaster shots and casting spells by weaving hand signs with her left hand… If it hadn't been for her capricious nature, she'd probably have been a better fit in Gryffindor, which had been her father's House.
And she knew that this fighting style was effective; after all, this had been how Godric Gryffindor himself had fought to unite the Wizarding clans of Britain, a thousand years ago. Minus the runic magic, probably.
Oleandra sighed; if there really was one problem with this whole idea, it was that she didn't want to build too much muscle on her upper body. Nevertheless, she was still only fourteen, and she had room to grow. And even if she was too weak to swing a heavy longsword one-handed now, what was magic for, if not to make one's life easier?
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Just as things were calming down a few days into the month of March, a whole new wave of drama washed over the school again, sparking rumours and thinly veiled pointing and giggling in the champions' directions. Rita Skeeter was back at it again, smearing dirt all over their reputations. This time, instead of writing an article for the Daily Prophet, she had done a piece for Witch Weekly, which was full of celebrity gossip. And like it or not, Oleandra was now somewhat of a celebrity…
As the Slytherins were walking to their first Potions class after the second task, Oleandra noticed that a group of girls had huddled around Pansy, evidently finding something very funny.
"What are you sniggering at?" Oleandra said, peeking over Pansy's shoulder.
"Take a look yourself, blood traitor," she snickered. She had never let Oleandra live down the fact that she had accepted a Weasley's offer to dance.
"As far as I know, the Weasleys are pure bloods," Oleandra retorted, snatching the newspaper out of Pansy's hands.
Oleandra couldn't help but laugh when she read the headline!