Cunning

After trading away all the cooked spider legs in her backpack, Aya struggled over to Hermione with a huge bag of snacks in her arms and sat down beside her, happily rummaging through them.

"This is delicious!" One of Hermione's hands was black with grime, and with the other she carefully picked up a piece of meat and ate it. "It's so tender. What kind of meat is this? Crab? How much would a crab this big cost?"

"It really is good," Harry agreed. He hadn't eaten dishes made with particularly expensive ingredients, but he thought this definitely counted as delicious—and it was the meat's natural flavor, too!

"You're awfully generous today-" Ron's mouth was stuffed with meat, and he narrowed his eyes in satisfaction. "Will there be a next time? I'll trade again!"

"Spider meat~" Delighted, Aya picked up a piece of candy she'd never seen before, unwrapped it and tossed it into her mouth. "The freshest kind. I asked Professor Snape. Spiders are venomous, but their meat isn't."

"...Huh?" Ron stopped stuffing meat into his mouth and looked over in confusion. "Sorry, what did you just say this meat was?"

"Spider meat," Aya repeated. "You couldn't tell, could you? You'd never have guessed. The spider was as big as a car. One spider is too much to eat, so Duoduo told me to share."

"Sp-spider meat?!" Ron choked and started coughing wildly, spraying the meat in his mouth all over the table.

"You're gross, Ron." Aya clutched her precious snacks and edged away. "It's really not that disgusting. If you want to see the corpse, I can show you that too."

"I don't want to!!" Ron finally caught his breath and immediately shouted.

He might have been afraid of live spiders, but he didn't like dead ones either!

"What kind of spider is that big?" Harry asked curiously, gesturing with the spider shell in his hand. "This leg is almost thicker than my calf."

"An Acromantula."

"...Aya, you didn't kill Hagrid's pet spider, did you?" That was Hermione's first thought. "Doesn't that mean we're... eating buns soaked in spider blood?"

"It's spider meat," Aya said, rubbing her chin. "There are so many spiders. Surely I didn't just happen to get Hagrid's? Can spiders here really live that long?"

"H-how long?" Ron swallowed. He was a little put off that it was spider meat, but the meat was damn sweet and fragrant.

"Is your brain broken? Didn't we just find out that Hagrid kept that spider fifty years ago?" Hermione was speechless.

"Yay, it was a grandpa spider! Grandpa spider's meat is so tender. Wait-doesn't that make Hagrid a grandpa too?" Aya clapped her hands, then suddenly stopped.

"...Do we have to count it like that?" Harry hesitated. "Hagrid doesn't look old."

"True, most people don't really like being called old," Hermione said thoughtfully. "But Hagrid must be at least sixty. Isn't it a little fake to call a sixty-year-old man uncle?"

"Even in my family, he'd be old enough to be a grandpa." Ron absentmindedly pulled off a piece of spider meat and gnawed on it.

"Then who knows how many generations of great-grandpa that spider was," Aya said, pulling at a gummy candy. "There were more than thirty in the group I met, and that was pretty close to the edge of the Forbidden Forest."

"...You went into the Forbidden Forest?" Hermione asked.

"...Ah! I just remembered, it's time for Xiaohua to eat. I have to feed her." Aya sprang to her feet and scampered away.

"Xiaohua doesn't need to eat at all," Harry said.

"No, she didn't even take Xiaohua with her." Ron pointed at the cat on the sofa.

"Why are there so many Acromantulas in the Forbidden Forest?" Hermione paid no attention to Aya's sneaky behavior. She thought it was already quite a feat that Aya had behaved herself for so long recently. "Acromantulas aren't very common creatures."

"Maybe Hagrid's spider met his one true spider in the Forbidden Forest," Ron said carelessly. "You know, I have to say, even though Acromantulas look disgusting in pictures, this meat... as long as I don't think about it being spider meat, it really does taste good!"

"You got used to it fast." Harry sucked on a piece of spider meat too.

None of them gave the number of Acromantulas much thought. Hermione guessed that Aya must have been lucky to run into them before. After all, the Forbidden Forest was on Hogwarts grounds, with Dumbledore keeping watch above and Hagrid patrolling the forest below. She didn't think for a moment that the spiders could overrun it.

Only Aya, who diligently went spider hunting every week, knew how inexhaustible the supply of spiders in the Forbidden Forest was.

After they filled out the list of students staying at school for Christmas, another school event came along in the third week of December, right on time.

No, it was organized by Lockhart. Before the Christmas holidays, he seemed to want to restore some of his reputation among the students and keep them from saying bad things about him when they went home. So he applied to the school to hold a Duelling Club, hoping to prove he still had some ability.

"PVP?" Aya stood in front of the noticeboard with interest. "I thought you didn't have that here. Turns out it just wasn't time yet?"

"A duel is a duel. What's PVP?" Ron said. They were used to the unfamiliar terms Aya occasionally came out with. For example, she had called her one-sided attack on Dumbledore PVE. "Has the school held one before?"

"A long time ago," Hermione said. "Are we going?"

"Yes!" Aya raised her hand and eagerly answered. "I want to go!"

"Shall we all go?" Harry looked at the students gathered around them. "I think most people will be there. It shouldn't be boring."

"I wonder who our duelling professor will be-"

"Maybe Professor Flitwick?"

After eight that evening, the students returned to the Great Hall. The long tables for the four houses had disappeared, and a large gilded stage had appeared along the wall, illuminated by the candles in the hall.

Aya looked around, then pulled Hermione and the others through the crowd to the front. With Xiaohua clearing the way, it was easy.

Almost every student had come. The crowd was packed tight, everyone wearing an expectant expression and holding a wand. Some were even practicing their moves on one another. As Aya squeezed forward, she felt several wands poke her-of course, she immediately poked back with her own.

"Is it Professor Flitwick? He was a duelling champion when he was young. He'd be the best duelling professor!" Leaning against the stage, Hermione excitedly craned her neck to look in both directions.

"Will he get onstage too? Can we challenge him?" Aya was eager to try.

"Aya, you have to use your wand," Harry reminded her quietly.

"Okay, wand, wand!" Aya nodded vaguely.

"No using Xiaohua," Harry continued.

"How am I supposed to fight without Xiaohua?" Aya protested. "Xiaohua is me, and I'm Xiaohua. We're one! If I go onstage, she has to come too!"

"But this is a wizards' duel," Harry said.

"...Who cares what kind of duel it is? Winning is what matters most!" Aya retorted, turning back to look for Professor Flitwick's tiny figure.

Then she saw Lockhart in his magenta robes.

"I don't want to fight him," Aya said in disappointment. "Beating someone who can't even lock his own office wouldn't give me any sense of accomplishment."

"...Did she just say something outrageous?" Ron asked Harry quietly. On his other side, Hermione was already waving and cheering for Lockhart with some excited girls.

"What wouldn't she dare say?" Harry whispered back in Ron's ear.

Lockhart walked onto the stage, immaculately dressed and radiant, the smile on his face seemingly glowing. Snape followed beside him, dressed in black with a gloomy expression.

"I want to duel Professor Snape!!" Aya screamed excitedly, drawing horrified looks from the people around her and earning a vicious glare from Snape onstage.

"Oh, excited little cat, do calm down. We professors can't fight our students." Lockhart beamed from the stage, raising his voice and holding out both hands in a calming gesture. "Now, gather around. Can you hear me?"

"Who couldn't hear that?" Ron muttered. "He doesn't even use Sonorus."

"Maybe he has a good voice," Aya guessed, then offered a sincere suggestion. "He should take the approach of pursuing the simplest path, doing everything himself and not relying too much on spells. At least he wouldn't be exposed so easily." Lockhart's long-running drama lessons had already shattered the illusion for quite a few students. Those who still liked him now were readers and fans of his looks.

"He never would, that show-off," Harry said with a curl of his lip. He thought that if he couldn't find a job in the Wizarding World after graduating, perhaps he could become a stage actor—the kind who specialized in playing monsters. By now, when he played an angrily howling Werewolf in Lockhart's class, he was practically overflowing with emotion.

"Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape," Lockhart said with a broad smile. "He tells me he knows a little about duelling himself, and he has generously agreed to help me with a little demonstration before the lesson-"

Aya glanced at Snape, who had his arms folded and a dark look on his face, and had just given a derisive snort. "Looks like this assistant wants to beat the professor himself to death."

"If it were me, I'd have run already. Lockhart's a lot like you in that respect," Harry said.

"You're insulting me." Aya pressed her wand against Harry's arm. "Want to fight?"

"...Would I dare?" Harry was speechless.

"If only they'd both take each other out," Ron said hopefully.

The two professors onstage, utterly different in style, walked to opposite sides of the stage, then turned to face each other and bowed—or rather, Snape merely nodded impatiently, while Lockhart made a flamboyant bow.

"Bow to each other as husband and wife-" Aya drawled, but the moment the words left her mouth, Hermione clamped a hand tightly over it.

"Don't force me to make an enemy of the world when there are so many people here," Hermione warned. "We can't beat Professor Snape."

Onstage, Lockhart was explaining duelling etiquette to the students, and then-

Then, in the instant it took for masters to exchange blows, Lockhart went flying.

Snape rolled his eyes in disdain onstage. The Slytherin students applauded and cheered, while Lockhart's fans clutched their faces and cried out in alarm.

Lockhart staggered to his feet. His hat had fallen off, and his previously immaculate blond hair was standing on end. But he still held to his principle that if he wasn't embarrassed, everyone else would be, and stubbornly climbed back onto the stage.

"Good, you all saw that, didn't you? That was a disarming charm. As you can see, I lost my wand." Lockhart still wore his standard smile, showing eight teeth. Lavender and Parvati excitedly touched the wand they had picked up, then returned it to him.

"Ah, thank you, Miss Brown. But I must say, Professor Snape, it was a splendid idea to show them that move. Of course, if I'd wanted to stop you, it wouldn't have taken much effort, but I had to let them see it for themselves..." Only then did Lockhart notice Snape's murderous expression, and he hurriedly finished, "That concludes the demonstration. Now, pair up. I'll come among you. Professor Snape, if you're willing to help me..."

"He used 'if,'" Aya said, finding it novel. Without waiting for her friends to answer, she quickly pushed against the crowd to Snape's side. "Professor, come on, let's have a fair duel."

"If you use only your wand," Snape said coldly.

"Goodbye." Aya turned to leave, then spotted Draco staring at her in shock. "Ha→ha↗ha↘, Malfoy, accept my challenge!"

"...No." Draco kept a blank face. Though he still hadn't avenged his father being sat on, someone with his small frame—no, a delicate young master's body like his-couldn't beat Xiaohua.

"Yes, you will." Aya walked straight over, grabbed his sleeve and dragged him out from between the two tall boys.

"Really?" Draco perked up and immediately rescued his robe from Aya's hand. "Stop grabbing it, you'll wrinkle it. Can't you be a little more careful? You said it: no Xiaohua, and I'll fight you."

"Fine, I won't use her." Aya planted her hands on her hips. Since she was only average at her homework, Hermione had made her study many spells. Though she still preferred to rely on Xiaohua, she was no novice at magic anymore! "But honestly, I have Xiaohua, and you have two followers. Maybe next time we can bring our followers and have a fight."

Draco didn't answer.

Ha, Crabbe and Goyle?

They were his physical bodyguards.

"Face your partners!" Lockhart shouted from the stage. "Bow!"

Aya nodded like Snape, only to find that Draco across from her had merely nodded too.

"Copycat!" Aya accused, pointing at him.

"You're the copycat!" Without Xiaohua there, Draco was particularly confident. He thought he might be able to wipe away his previous humiliation today.

"Wands at the ready!" Lockhart said loudly. "When I count to three, cast your spell and disarm your opponent. Only disarm them. One-two-three!"

"Ha! Expelliarmus!" Aya acted quickly as soon as Lockhart said one. In a duel, how could she let someone get ahead of her?

Draco had actually raised his hand by the time the red spell hit him. Surprise, regret and annoyance crossed his face as the wand was knocked from his hand and flew toward Aya, who jumped up and caught it—he had planned to make his move on two!

Damn that cunning cat!