Chapter Text
The two cats and a bird raced through the halls of Hogwarts with a cautious speed. Ophelia, the smaller cat, took point to check and sniff for dangers. Due to the nature of an animagus form Kyrr’s hearing aid still functioned to a degree even as a cat, but she still lacked the depth of sound from having two functional ears of equal hearing. To her, nearly everything sounded like it was coming from the left side.
Lia was still cautious, but knowing Kyrr was close by and ready to show off how wickedly sharp her oversized claws were helped her feel more secure. Or shift into her human form and demonstrate her dueling skills while Lia kept her status as an animagus hidden. She led the way to the storerooms, remembering when her team’s uniforms had been destroyed and needed to be replaced. The broom room was a separate area, one that also held the chests that contained the four balls that a game relied on.
When the time came Kyrr shifted into her human form to unlock the door without warning, while Orin held on for dear life and clutched fur that had suddenly become hair. If she could have, she’d have laughed, her talons still never even scraped scalp. Kyriel had an obscene amount of hair. She pushed open the door, and carefully closed it behind her before casting lumos.
Orin fluttered to a good spot to shift and changed back as Lia simply stood up into her human form. “So, where do we start?”
The room was larger than one might expect, and the walls were lined with brooms on hooks. The tables in the center of the room were the same that got the reducio/engorgio treatment to put them in the training grounds for students to polish the flying apparatus. Along the back wall were cases that occasionally juttered and jumped with the effort of the enchanted balls within.
“I’ll be honest here, if you need me to knock someone out with a punch or a dueling spell, I’m your girl. But detecting curses? Ehh?” Kyrr shrugged. “I’m sort of specialized.”
Ophelia frowned and rubbed her ribs in thought. “Maybe Revelio? If there’s anything hidden in here, that should do it.” She cast the spell, expression pure concentration. Nothing happened aside from Kyriel wincing.
“Dude. Do you cast any spells lightly?”
“Not really? Unlike you, I diversify. Unfortunately that’s why you keep putting pumpkins on my head in the dueling ring.” She gave Kyrr an annoyed look.
“Wait really? She keeps Pumpkin Johnnying you?” Orin couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “That’s just so… rude.” All three girls laughed as the American shrugged.
“She’s really picky about her hair, it trips her up for a second or two every time. Not that it always leads to a win. Her knockback jinx should be classified as a lethal weapon.” Kyrr grinned and wandered around the room. “My ass is still sore from yesterday.”
“Blame your center of gravity for that one, you giraffe.” Lia couldn’t help laughing. Their dueling skills were fairly evenly balanced, which made for a lot of fun and good practice.
“Suddenly I kind of want to watch you two duel.” Orin walked along the opposite wall, fingers ghosting over brooms.
“Sure, as long as you don’t mind me cursing a lot…” Kyriel trailed off and touched her ear. “Does anyone else hear that?”
“No, but I just stepped into a cold spot.” Orin froze, and felt the air around her with her hands.
“All the hair on my arms is standing up. Last time I felt like this, we were in a Cursed Vault.” Ophelia swallowed hard, alarmed. The brooms rattled faintly in their hooks. A sudden realization of how dangerous this room could become hit her, and she started backing up. “I think we should leave.”
“Yeah.” Kyrr’s concern echoed hers, and Orin nodded, all three girls slowly backing out. Once they were no longer close to the brooms, the rattling stopped.
“Okay, so they reacted to us? This is so strange.” Orin tilted her head in a birdlike fashion. “I can’t even imagine the amount of magic it would take to hex everyone who plays quidditch in the school.”
“That’s a lot of hexing. Or. One big curse.” Ophelia frowned. “You’d need something really important to all the players for something like that. Brooms aren’t going to cut it.”
“What, like the trophy in front of the great hall?” Kyriel raised a brow and Lia cringed.
“Ouch. Yeah, that could do it. And in plain sight like that? No one would believe us if we tried to examine it. That’s tricky.”
Kyrr looked at Lia, confused. “Can’t you just tell professor Hooch?” Orin snorted a laugh and Ophelia tossed her hands in the air.
“You would think so, right?”
Orin nodded in agreement. “One of the most predictable things about this school is that the professors are basically useless outside of teaching classes.”
“Damn. Well, can we check it at night when no one is around?”
“Trust me, sneaking around after curfew is a risk in general, but you do NOT want to be on the lower floor around the great hall at night. We will get caught. We’re just going to have to wait for an opening tomorrow.”
+++
Sunday morning brought clear skies and a crisp autumn scent, which boded well for having a mostly-empty castle. The curse breaker walked past the trophy case on her way to the great hall and slowed down to look at it. Even though it was just a hunch, she’d known it the moment everything came together that it was likely whatever had been cursed, though it didn’t tell her who was behind it. She reached out to touch the trophy she had won four times, hesitant. It felt like it shivered under her fingertips, and the hair at the back of her neck stood on end, but it could all have been in her own head.
She entered the great hall and walked over to where Kyrr was putting up another valiant defense in a doomed game of chess. Once she’d stopped being afraid of potential relationship consequences of never getting good at the game, she had improved ever so slightly. She might even win one day. Not today, though.
Kyrr sighed as Murphy took one of her rooks with a sheepish shrug. “You just left it out there.”
“I know,” she muttered, though she brightened when she saw Lia. “Any thoughts? It was buzzing my hearing aid.”
“It feels like it might be.” Ophelia sat at sighed. “Won’t make things easy.”
“Won’t make what easy?” Talbott sat next to Lia and offered her a plate of breakfast identical to his own. She accepted it with an apologetic smile.
“Sorry. I can’t say just yet.” Lia glanced across the table at Murphy, who was pointedly ignoring whatever they had planned.
“Checkmate. Sorry luv.” McNully scratched his hair and offered his girlfriend a halfhearted smile.
“Fuuuuck!” Kyrr groaned, then yelped as Lia pinched her side.
“Language!”
“Wait is THAT why they call you the curse breaker?” Kyrr blinked and Lia burst out in a giggle.
“Want to go again?” Murphy held up his king and grinned.
“No. No I am SO done today.” Kyrr got up on her seat and shifted into her cat form, startling him. She towered over the chess board and her tail lashed.
“Good sir,” one of the chess pieces murmured to McNully, “I do believe she intends violence.” A moment later it was batted off the board along with the rest of Murphy’s army, and Kyrr curled up on the board with her tail over her nose like a giant furry dragon.
McNully stared for several seconds as his brain processed what just happened, and then burst out laughing. “That’s one way to win a game! Kestrele strong arms her way to her first technical stalemate!”
To her side, Lia heard a faint chuckle, and she turned her head in surprise to see Talbott trying not to smile. “Really?”
“It’s just a literal catastrophe of a game.” Talbott shrugged and Lia finally joined in the laughter as the stress from their most recent escapades relented.
+++
After Ophelia and Kyriel left to meet up with Orin, and Talbott went to work on a minor prophesy reading he had been translating, Murphy looked up to see Face Paint Kid across from him. “Bloody hell, you startled me!”
“Sorry. I just… thought there was something you should know. I’ve been listening in on what’s happening with the quidditch teams.” McNully didn’t even bat an eye, the Kid’s reputation for eavesdropping was legendary. “And I wanted to warn you, I think your girlfriend is going to get into trouble if you don’t stop her.”
“Stop her? From what?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but it has something to do with the trophy case later today. If she’s caught up in a conspiracy they’ll take away her assistant ref credentials.”
“Yeah, I know.” The blonde commentator sat forward in concern. “Not that I think I can stop that girl from doing anything except winning chess. Why are you worried about her status as a referee though? I didn’t think you two knew each other at all.”
“Ah. Well, we don’t really. But she always smiles at me, and we’ve talked a few times. And you are one of my best friends, and she makes you happier than I’ve ever seen you.” He paused, and the rest spilled out in a giddy rush. “And she’s amazing on the pitch, she has such a good eye and her ability to track the action without interfering is top notch, she’s definitely going to go pro if she wants to just like you and if I want to be a quidditch talent scout having you two in my corner will go a long way.”
Murphy offered him a little smile. “Facepaint Kid, you’ll get there just fine on your own.”
“People barely notice me even when I have my face covered in paint.” He sighed and scratched at his hair. “I don’t mind that everyone uses my nickname, I actually prefer it to my real one, but it makes me forgettable. Anonymous. Only one person in the last two years even asked me what my real name was.”
“Oh.” Murphy startled, chagrined, trying to rake his brain for if he’d ever known it. “Ah, uh, what is it?”
“I’m not telling you, it’s terrible.” Facepaint Kid blinked as Murphy gave him a look. “I didn’t tell her either. But you know, she asked at least. With you two I might get noticed someday.”
“As long as she doesn’t get kicked out of the quidditch program.”
“Exactly.”
+++
Orin sat in what had unofficially become the unofficial Trio’s headquarters, petting the elderly niffler that still visited from time to time the way old men would retrace their steps. In her free hand was a book, one of several she had around the small space in true Ravenclaw fashion.
Ophelia walked in and smiled to see her. At the white haired girl’s feet was a large fluffy cat with a disdainful look and her ears half back. “Okay, all here? I think I have a plan.”
“Kyrr is…. Still a cat.” Orin raised a brow as the Niffler jumped down from her lap to inspect the new “animal” as though he had no memory of it hunting him. Kyriel curled up in a ball and the niffler bumped his nose to hers before climbing onto her like she was a child’s racecar bed and he wanted to nap. Kyrr curled her poof of a tail around him to keep him warm and closed her eyes, apparently napping.
“Yeah. She had a playful spat with Murphy earlier over chess and just hasn’t changed back. I know it’s odd but this is actually pretty normal for her. And she is listening.” Lia looked down into the peaceful thoughts of Cat!Kyrr, who was worried their niffler friend was a bit colder than he should be, pleased with herself for defeating a chess board, and generally just waiting for them all to make a decision that would require her to be a human again. “She thinks the niffler is too cold.”
“He’s elderly. At this stage they don’t regulate well. Honestly this is probably good for him, cats have a pretty high body temperature.” Orin shrugged. “I know this is usually your thing, but I’ve been researching curses in the hopes of finding our culprit.”
“Please, it’s not just my thing. I’m happy for backup, believe me. Lia sat on her chair, and picked up a book. “Find anything useful?”
“Based on how you describe opening past cursed vaults, cross referenced with what I’ve been reading, it seems like curses either require a specific key to break or a powerful counter-curse spell. Or just overwhelming amounts of magic. Since we don’t have the third, and finite incantatum is the best we have without asking Flitwick, finding the key would be the easiest method. There’s always some sort of clue to the key in order to set the key. Usually.” Orin looked up at Lia, who was staring at her in surprise. “…what?”
“Where have you been all this time?”
“Playing quidditch. Taking care of animals on the reserve? Fighting migraines?” Orin shrugged. “I think through problems. It’s just how I work.”
“Well I am definitely going to ask you more questions, but for now…. How do we confirm that it is actually cursed?”
Kyrr yawned and stretched out into her human form, still mostly in the same position, cradling the sleeping Niffler. “I asked Sunshine earlier if he knew of anything, and amid the word vomit of percentages and facts he mentioned there’s an ointment that glows when rubbed on a cursed object. I asked Penny if she knew how to make it, and with a little work and a raid on Snape’s storeroom, I got it.” She fished in a pocket and offered the small tub of ointment.
Lia sputtered. “It’s barely noon!”
“I skipped my run.” Kyrr shrugged. “Not my fault you like to sleep in on the weekends.”
“So all we have to do is get the trophy, bring it here, test it, and then go from there.” Orin chuckled. “Simple.”
“Muffliato, reducio, accio. It’s the classic combo.” Ophelia grinned. “As long as no one is around, we’re in and out quick as a wink!”
“You should not have said that.” Kyrr shook her head.
“We are doomed,” Orin agreed.
Lia sighed, and felt her eye start to twitch. “I knew it the second the words left my mouth.”
