#ulupi

2. Chitrangada enters Hogwarts the only daughter and heir to her family’s vast Welsh fortune. Traditionally, they are a family that has kept to themselves, far enough from the grip of London that they are easily forgotten amongst the high drama of the Sacred 28. Not for them are the vices that often plague the privileged – they cannot afford to lose an heir to liquor or grudge at the gaming boards. Even less do they suit the political intrigue of the English, the power plays and ideological warfare that has led to Kamsa’s 25-year iron grip. Chitrangada is raised safely in the family home, told to keep her head down and finish seven years without attracting any notice from those who might try to have her fight their battles. Courage too is just as likely to cull the lineage as stupidity.

“Gryffindor,” the Sorting Hat screams the moment it touches the 32nd in a line of Hufflepuffs.

3.“You know,” Chitrangada hears from somewhere in front of her,“there’s an easy fix to your problem.”

Chitrangada looks up, furiously brushing away her tears and attempting to pretend that she wasn’t just crying in an abandoned classroom.

“What do you know about my problems,” she asks the girl, a Ravenclaw by the looks of her robes, perhaps a year older than Chitrangada herself. The girl lowers herself to the ground, resting her back against the wall next to Chitrangada.

“You want to fight, yes?” Chitrangada bites her lip.

“It’s not so easy, you see my family–”

“I know about your family.” Chitrangada furrows her brow. “Then you know why my father won’t accept it.” She snorts. “And he would be right! I would be endangering everything my family stands for, for nothing!” Tears leak from the corner of her eyes and she buries her face in her knees once more.

“But you’ll do it anyway, won’t you.” It isn’t  a question. “Why?’

“Because things are so horrible, and I knew nothing,” Chitrangada says to the blessed dark behind her closed eyes. “I can’t go back to my home and spend the rest of my life reading obituaries and know that I did nothing to keep people safe!” She swallows.“I won’t run,” she says finally,“especially knowing how many people don’t have the option.”

The girl shifts closer and sighs, bringing her own knees up to her chest until they both sit side by side, shoulders a seam.“That’s as good a reason as any,” she says,“and so I’m going to help you.”

Chitrangada raises her head, and it is a moment that she will remember for all the rest of her days. The moonlight streams through a window, and it makes the other girl’s hair shimmer, brushes against the delicate planes of her face, nestles in the curve of her slight, faint smile.

But most of all, it lends a gleam to her eyes, iron that has turned into the steel of certainty. Chitrangada’s heart skips one beat, then another, and suddenly she feels like there is nothing she cannot do.

You only die if you lose,” the girl says,“so don’t. I’ll help.”

Chitrangada blinks. “Don’t lose?”

“Easy, right?”

Chitrangada smiles.

4. The girl, Ulupi, turns out to be a born researcher who for some reason has decided to focus her considerable energies into turning Chitrangada into a fighting machine. Ulupi finds books, pamphlets, old scrolls squirreled away in the recesses of the library, ranging from defensive spells to healing salves, battle theory and runes that turn one’s steps silent. 

The only thing Ulupi is not is a duelist, which means that Chitrangada by her fourth year is a master of theory, but only middling in practice. At night, she starts to slip out of the Common Room to practice stinging hexes at targets.

If practice is merely an excuse to drown herself in work, to have something to do when not with Ulupi than think of Ulupi, of how pretty and smart and lovely she is, and how she cannot give Chitrangada children,then no one but Chitrangada and her poor conjured dummies needs to know. Ulupi would conjure bubbles and remark that they are better training for reflexes, but Ulupi also prefers to be asleep between the hours of 12 and 8, so Chitrangada and her dummies are alone.Or, that is what she thinks, until she walks into her usual classroom and finds herself dodging a stunner.

“Protego,” she shouts instinctively when she feels the whiz of the next, without even the sound of an incantation for warning. It is the new moon, and the room is still pitch black.

“Lumos.” In the light, Chitrangada sees her attacker and gasps: Arjuna, two years her senior and said to be the most gifted duelist in generations stands with his wand out. He blinks.

“What are you doing here?” Chitrangada’s eyes widen.

“What are you doing here?”

His eyes move from her to the dummies spread around the room. “I was practicing.”

“In the dark?” And yet, Chitrangada looks and there are marks on the dummies that she knows weren’t there the night before. It is true: Arjuna has learned to duel in the dark.

An expression crosses Arjuna’s face, but he is too trained for Chitrangada to decipher its meaning.

Another stunner, and Chitrangada puts up a shield. He aims another, nonverbal the whole while, and Chitrangada is annoyed enough that she sends a stunner back. Arjuna’s shield is a work of art, his stance a mirror of the dueling text Ulupi had found last winter, and they begin to fight in earnest, trading spells until finally Chitrangada is panting, her wand in Arjuna’s left hand.

She will never be an auror, she thinks, and blinks away her hot, furious tears. She will die in the streets of London, ending the family line by 18. She will break her father’s heart.

“You’re good,” she hears from beyond the veil of her intense self-pity, “if a little unpracticed. Why don’t I know who you are?”

Chitrangada frowns. She is rich for sure, but Arjuna is a Kuru of London, one of the Sacred 28. Headmaster Bhishma himself is his Grandsire, and it is common knowledge that Arjuna has been trained as a duelist since three years of age. He attends classes to satisfy his elders but notoriously refuses to spend free time with his peers. Why would he know who she is?

“I’m younger than you,” Chitrangada finally offers when she realizes the question wasn’t rhetorical.“We don’t share any classes.”

“But we have people of all years in Dueling Club and I thought I knew everyone there.” Chitrangada’s eyes widen – the Hogwarts Dueling Club is a society for the elite, and while it is open to anyone in name, entry is usually based on invitation. Chitrangada trains in secret, in order to prevent word from getting to her father.

“I was not invited,” she says, and then when she sees Arjuna attempt to object, she adds–“My father would not approve.” Better he think her father old-fashioned than be forced to explain the family curse.

Arjuna’s eyes harden. “How have you trained so far?”

Chitrangada shrugs.“Books.” To speak of Ulupi is to think of her, her sweet smile, the way she smells of flowers, the brush of her fingers when she passes a pamphlet across their shared desk. Chitrangada ruthlessly crushes the thought of her best friend.

He exhales.“Books.” Chitrangada nods.“Then you are remarkable – to have lasted so long against me without proper training. Are you sure you won’t join the Club? We can be very discreet, and you are probably better than a fair few.”

Chitrangada smiles, heart light at Arjuna’s praise. Perhaps she might make it to 19 after all.“No,” she says,“as much as I might like to, I’m afraid it’s quite impossible.”

“Fine,” Arjuna shrugs, and Chitrangada tries not to feel hurt at how easily he brushes her aside. But then he moves back into the dueling stance and Chitrangada’s heart skips another beat. He smiles, tossing Chitrangada back her wand.“I’ll just have to train you myself.”

Chitrangada’s jaw drops. She is in love.

5.“You are not in love with me,” Arjuna says a year later when Chitrangada confesses her deep, abiding passion for her illicit dueling master.“I don’t know why you just won’t tell Ulupi.”

”Ulupi?” Chitrangada splutters.“If you don’t like me you can say so, there’s no need to make implications!”

Chitrangada managed to keep her midnight sessions with Arjuna a secret for an entire week before Ulupi came barging into their classroom, furious at being kept out of the loop. By the next week, she had drawn up a new schedule that allowed Arjuna and Chitrangada at least four hours of sleep and given Arjuna a tome about training to duel without the use of each of the five senses.

“I don’t need to make implications,” Arjuna says,“she’s already told me.”

“Told you what?” Chitrangada blushes crimson, reminding herself to breathe. Does Ulupi know? Chitrangada has tried so hard to keep her feelings to herself.

“That you think you need to be with someone who can give you an heir, and since Ulupi cannot you are convinced it is best to live in misery, hopefully marrying some man who will give you a child before you die in the Auror service.”

Chitrangada’s knees shake, and she feels herself sinking to the ground, her lungs tightening until she can’t breathe. She hears Arjuna calling out, and when she next opens her eyes it is to the horrifying sight of Ulupi’s face, one single tear running down her cheek.

“How could you be so stupid!” Chitrangada is not sure if this is directed to her or Arjuna kneeling behind Ulupi, wringing his hands.“I’m talking to the both of you!”

“Ulupi,” Chitrangada begins, but stops at Ulupi’s outstretched hand.

“Did you really think that after everything, I wouldn’t have a solution?”

“Does the Hogwarts library have books about…” Arjuna’s voice lowers.“procreation?”

Ulupi rolls her eyes.“It has books about sex too.” Arjuna flinches.“But no, I found this at a Muggle bookstore last summer. You’re going to be a sperm donor!”

“A what?” Arjuna and Chitrangada say this as one. Ulupi laughs.

“Well,” she says,“the muggles have figured out how to isolate what of Arjuna is needed to create a child, and so he will….donate –”

“Donate my –”

“Yes,” Ulupi says, finally flushing herself.“In a little bag. Then we will… insert that into Chitrangada, and she will have a child!”

A moment of silence. “A child,” Chitrangada whispers. Is it possible?

“My child?” Later, they will all laugh at the sheer amount of scandal in Arjuna’s voice.

Ulupi glares. “Well it doesn’t have to be your child if you don’t want it to be! The child will have two parents once Chitrangada and I marry, and even if she dies I will be a researcher and stable enough to satisfy the family.”

“Marry,” Chitrangada breathes, gazing at Ulupi as if it is again the first time. In a way, it is. She is, if possible, even more beautiful than that first night, all blazing eyes and steel certainty that even the stars will move to align with her vision for their future.