"Expelliarmus!"
James was fast and accurate. Red light tore toward Lily's chest.
She didn't try to block it. Her eyes were locked on his wand tip, and the instant the spell left it she twisted aside. The light skimmed her shoulder and struck the stone wall behind her, throwing up a spray of sparks.
His eyebrows lifted. Missed. She'd dodged. Quick reflexes.
Her wand came up and an Impediment Jinx flew straight at his front.
He knocked it away with a flick, and it burst against the wall in a scatter of silver shards.
Before his arm finished the motion, her second spell was already coming. A Leg-Locker Curse streaked low along the floor toward his ankles, timed for exactly the moment his balance hadn't recovered from the parry.
James made a sharp noise and sprang backward, heels shrieking across the flagstones. The curse passed under his boots by a hair.
He wobbled on landing, steadied fast, and cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Not bad." He was enjoying himself again, wand swinging, feet loose. "Who taught you that? They don't cover it in Charms."
She didn't answer. She was watching.
Where he'd landed. Which leg carried his weight. How far that jump had taken him. How long the gap ran between a spell leaving his wand and his arm resetting.
Her wand snapped up again, and a flock of golden birds burst out of the tip, twittering, hurtling toward him.
Two dozen of them churned into one mass of gold light, blinding, and blocking everything behind it.
Hidden inside that gold, matched almost exactly in colour, a spell rode along with the flock.
James narrowed his eyes and cut an upward arc with his wand. A wave of force blew outward and scattered the birds in every direction.
Then his eyes went wide and he threw himself sideways. The hidden spell shaved past his ear, took a few hairs with it, and blew a small crater in the wall, stone chips raining across the floor.
"Ssss." He touched his ear and his fingertips came away warm. Half the play went out of his face. "Playing dirty? Didn't have you down for that, Evans."
"You ambushed him first." Her wand never stopped. A Stunning Spell followed.
He slipped aside, and this time he stopped swaggering.
The next few exchanges left him oddly off-balance.
Nothing Evans threw had any real power behind it. Leg-Locker, Disarming Charm, Impediment Jinx, birds, water, sparks. Not one of them could genuinely put someone down.
But she refused to meet him head-on. She kept surfacing where he wasn't looking.
When he pressed in close, she gave ground. When he backed off, she came right after him.
He'd expected to have the redhead finished in three moves. Instead there were spells buried in bird flocks, real attacks smuggled inside showers of sparks. It all looked like fireworks, one flourish after another, and yet every landing point was worse for him than the last.
She never traded blows. She went for the angles he couldn't cover, the moments his weight was wrong, the blind spots behind his shoulder.
Four exchanges, five, and James hadn't gained an inch.
One he didn't clear cleanly. A weakening jinx grazed his shin and the leg buckled under him. Only quick reflexes kept him upright, staggering, and it looked ugly.
Lily showed nothing at all. Her whole mind sat on the tip of his wand.
A year in an abandoned classroom with Regulus. Footwork. Reading the next move. Sequencing. Combinations.
Feint to make the other side block. A block opens a gap. A gap is your next window.
None of it was theory any more, spoken across a room by someone standing opposite her. It came out of her own hands now.
James's patience broke, and the last of the grin with it.
He'd meant to knock a housemate around for a laugh. Instead she'd gotten hotter the longer it ran and nearly capsized him in the shallows.
Fine. Properly, then.
"All right, you." He set his teeth, changed his grip on his wand, and dropped his weight. "Playtime's over."
He stopped swaying, stopped needling. No more decoration. Two qualities only now: fast, accurate.
Spells came out one after another, thick as falling rain.
The pressure hit her at once.
His hands were far quicker than hers. She'd fire one and her wand wouldn't be halfway up for the second before his next was already there.
She abandoned attacking entirely and gave herself to defence, blocking one, dodging the next, blocking again.
Light thrashed along the corridor, red and gold and violet tangled together, shadows writhing across the walls, spell after spell thudding dully into stone.
She was driven steadily backward, but she wasn't only taking it.
The harder James pushed, the more predictable his landing points became.
Retreating, she watched for the seam between two spells and stole a strike into it.
A Leg-Locker to force a shuffle. Sparks across his face.
He'd have to split his attention to avoid them, and the assault would slacken for half a breath.
That half-breath was all she needed to keep from being crushed outright.
The fight ran much longer than James had planned for.
Over by the wall, Sirius had settled in to enjoy the show.
Evans, lasting this long against James. At first it was only novel.
He knew exactly what James looked like when he got serious. Hardly anyone in third year stayed standing and shooting back once that happened. Most were disarmed inside two or three exchanges.
And Evans was still holding.
He straightened off the wall and looked harder.
The longer he looked, the more the entertainment drained out of his face.
Something was wrong. He couldn't name it yet.
Her spells weren't strong. Standard classroom material, things anyone could cast. Individually, nothing. Strung together, they weren't right at all.
His brows drew in.
Never taking a spell head-on. Hunting gaps. Each move nesting inside the last, trading a small movement for a large advantage.
A spell hidden in a flock. A feint first, then the real one. Nothing heavy, and yet every single one left James covering one thing while another opened, wearing at him, steering him without him noticing.
He'd seen this somewhere.
Something surfaced.
Christmas holidays. The ballroom at Lestrange Manor.
The spellwork he'd watched that night, one flowing into the next, as if the caster had already read where his opponent would step and got there first, herding him into a corner with nowhere left.
And the Transfiguration counters, so precise they were unreadable. Great sweeping transformations coming apart at the seams in a heartbeat. Work no spectator in the room could follow.
This fight was nothing beside that. The gap was absurd, comparing them at all was absurd. But the resemblance sat there and wouldn't leave.
His frown deepened, grey eyes fixed on Lily, and something strange came into them.
A little Gryffindor witch. Muggle-born. Where had she learned to fight like this?
The thought pushed even Snape's words out of his head.
On the floor, James had the fight in hand.
He came harder, driving her step by step toward one end of the corridor.
Her retreats grew clumsier, her blocks heavier. She hunted for a gap to answer through, and this time he left her none. Spell locked to spell, seamless.
Two Disarming Charms in a row. The first forced her sideways. The second was thrown to meet her where the dodge would put her.
She slipped the first, and the second was already waiting. No room left to move. She took it on a Protego.
The silver barrier flared in front of her, the spell smashed into it in a burst of red, and the impact knocked her back two steps.
Before she'd steadied, his next spell arrived.
A Stunning Spell, brilliant red, too fast for the eye to track.
No time for a second Protego. She threw herself sideways and it passed her ear with a thin, tearing whistle.
She hit the floor, palms scraping raw on the flagstones, hot with pain. Her wand stayed in her fist.
She rolled and came up on one knee, breathing hard, strands of red hair loose from behind her ear and sticking to her damp cheek.
"Expelliarmus!"
James took the opening. Third Disarming Charm.
Too fast. She hadn't made it to her feet before the red light reached her, catching her square in the chest.
Her wand tore out of her palm, spun end over end, and clattered away down the corridor, coming to rest beside the suit of armour in the alcove.
Empty-handed, half-kneeling, her chest heaving.
The corridor went quiet. Only two sets of ragged breathing.
"Ha!"
James let out a long breath, propped his wand on his shoulder, tilted his head and looked her over with enormous satisfaction.
"Look at that." He jerked his chin at her, then pointed his wand at the one lying under the distant alcove. "Can't even keep hold of a wand, and she wants to play hero."
She lifted her head. Green eyes came up, steady, and she didn't scramble after the wand the way he'd expected.
That threw him for a second. Then he laughed louder.
He paced a half-step around her, head rocking, tone pitched like sympathy.
"Evans and her nose in everyone's business." He tutted. "A prize Potions student, Slughorn's little darling, and instead of brewing you're out here in a corridor sticking your neck in."
He put real volume behind the next part. "For what, exactly?"
He turned and looked down at Snape slumped against the wall.
Snape was still locked stiff, Petrification holding him, unable to move or speak a syllable.
His eyes worked, though. He could see and hear, and they were fixed on James with hatred close to spilling over.
"For him?" James lifted his chin toward Snape, smile turning ugly. "Open your eyes and take a good look at what you're defending. A Snivellus. Broke, stinking of mildew, hair you could fry an egg in, skulking down in the dungeons with the rest of the snakes all day."
He took two steps that way, leather shoes grinding on scattered stone.
James sneered. "This thing here..."
He looked down at Snape, contempt naked in his eyes. "And you think you're worth someone standing up for you? A girl who can't even keep a grip on her wand fights better than you do, and you've still got the nerve to walk these corridors?"
Snape's eyes nearly caught fire.
Half of it aimed at James, hatred enough to choke on.
The other half drifted toward Lily, standing not far off.
Being ground down like this shamed him, and he hated it. And Lily was watching every second of it. Watching him trampled into the dirt, unable to move, unable to answer a word.
That was worse than anything James said. He'd have preferred an empty corridor, left to rot here alone.
Lily heard James. She saw the look in Snape's eyes.
She didn't take the bait and she didn't answer back.
Half-kneeling, blood beading where her palms had torn, knees aching, she was in no hurry to stand and made no move for her wand.
She was still watching.
James stood two paces from the alcove, posture loose.
That last exchange had cost him something, and the effort was exactly why the smugness sat so solid on his face.
"Honestly, Evans, you were better today than I've ever seen you. But against me? No chance." His grin twisted his mouth sideways. "Your best round didn't put me down, and now you haven't even got a wand. So what's left?"
He came half a step closer, head cocked, mouth curling higher.
"What, still sulking? Get up, then. Wand's right over there. Go on, pick it up, I won't stop you. Then we'll go another round and I'll show you what real ability looks like."
Her gaze passed over the alcove, entirely unmoved.
Her wand had rolled there, beneath the alcove, at the foot of that old suit of armour.
She looked at the armour itself. Standing in the recess, taller than a man. Helmet, breastplate, vambraces, greaves, one section stacked on the next.
Nothing much anchored the base. It simply stood there in the alcove, the helmet sitting crooked on top, and the whole thing looked unsteady.
Her mind moved fast.
Head-on, she couldn't beat Potter. The last few minutes had made that plain enough.
He was too quick. Quick enough to take her wand.
But she didn't need to beat him head-on. She only needed him to walk where she wanted him.
The wand lay under the armour. Going for her wand was the most natural thing in the world.
Potter would block her, taunt her, follow her along the line she took toward it.
Her fingers stirred at her side.
Everything she'd drilled this past year had never once been used in a real fight. It had always felt like a separate thing from duelling.
Today it would do.
She pushed herself up and ran for the armour, eyes locked on the wand on the floor, every line of her saying she wanted it back badly, her footwork deliberately a little frantic.