After embracing the fact that Fila indeed had some muscle building. she of course had to make her own gym, and the perfect place for it? The old training ground.
The Masterpiece of creation that had ones been built by her was now removed, in its place laid a gym made from roots and boulders.
It got some disappointed looks from students who still used the place to relax, but Fila had another plan to make something else.
The passing days had been relaxing. She had ignored Theo for a whole six days now, hearing him trying to stop her in the common room and in the corridors made her smile a little. Making her consider if she had some weird fantasy about being superior. Fila dismissed that thought, she was already superior.
Fila stood in the center of her reimagined sanctuary, the cool morning air of Mount Greylock filling her lungs. The "temple" of delicate vines was gone. In its place was something brutal and honest. Massive boulders were suspended by thick, pulsing emerald roots that acted like heavy-duty pulleys, and wooden beams, reinforced with the same magic she used to strengthen Hugin and Munin, formed racks for pull-ups and squats.
It was honestly an impressive sight, and it had her consider maybe taking up a career in construction.
She reached up, grabbing a overhead bar made of petrified oak. Her new, shoulder-length haircut brushed against her shoulders as she pulled herself up, her biceps and back muscles flaring with a precision that Sloane's shears had only highlighted.
She could feel Theo's charcoal-toned aura hovering near the entrance to the yard. He was always there, a persistent, hovering ghost that didn't know how to haunt someone who had already moved on. Every time he tried to intercept her with a "Fila, please" or a "Can we just talk?", she simply walked through him as if he were a particularly boring draft in the hallway.
It wasn't just about the betrayal anymore; it was about the power. Seeing him struggle to find the right words while she stood there, looking like a storm caught in a dueling jacket, felt... intoxicating.
"superior?" she whispered to the wind, a sharp, jagged smirk crossing her face.
She dropped from the bar, landing silently on the grass. She didn't have to consider the thought for long. She was the Rosier and Grindelwald heir who had survived the Craciatus and got tortured. She was the Thunderbird Champion. She was the girl who had turned the school's most relaxing courtyard into a monument to physical and magical grit.
Hugin and Munin sat on either side of the boulder-press, their violet eyes watching the entrance. Theo took a step forward, his magic flickering with that desperate, indigo tint.
She looked down to a small vine made table that she had placed her self writing book on. These last few days she had brought it along a lot, being taught new things and even got some tips.
"We discussed that my magic might be the reason for my recent developments in my body, but how?" Fila asked the book.
The book fluttered to a new page, "You might not feel it, but controlling the plats like you do strains your body a lot. You are just used to the feeling. But now that you have the two panthers with you at all time, you constantly receive that strain. And in so making you grow muscle."
Fila had considered it. she knew that pulling the vines and flowers had made her tired in the early days of using her magic. But she didn't know that the two panthers were the reason for her starting to look like woman who could whop ass in the ring.
Fila traced the ink on the page, her fingers lingering over the explanation. It made a strange kind of sense. Hugin and Munin weren't just autonomous wooden dolls; they were extensions of her own nervous system, tethered to her core by invisible threads. Keeping them active was like holding a constant, low-level isometric flex that never ended, even while she slept.
"So, I'm essentially working out just by existing," Fila rasped, her voice catching that airy, amused lilt. "I suppose that's the most Rosier thing I've ever heard. Effortless power, even when it's exhausting."
The book's pages ruffled again, almost like a shrug. "It is a symbiotic tax, Ophelia. You give them life; they give you a reason to be strong."
She looked over at the two panthers. They were currently resting, their wooden flanks rising and falling in a mimicry of breath that she now realized was actually a rhythmic draw on her own stamina. No wonder she had been waking up with a ravenous hunger lately.
"Fila." Theo said carefully from behind.
She turned her head towards him, and she looked at him not saying anything.
"Im sorry." He said, he seemed sad.
Fila's breath had stabilized by now. "Yeah im sure you are. Anything else? Otherwise you can leave." She said coldly, and returning to doing pull ups again.
"It's not just an apology for the girl, Fila," Theo said, his voice cracking with a frustration he finally couldn't suppress. "It's for six days of being treated like a ghost. I made a mistake, okay? I went back to something familiar because the way you've been acting... the way you look at me now... it's like you're looking at a stranger."
Fila paused at the top of the bar, her chin resting just above the wood. She didn't look at him, her attention fixed on a distant mountain peak.
"Maybe that's because you are one, Theo," she rasped, the words sliding out with a terrifying, smooth indifference. "Strangers are the only people who need to explain themselves. Friends usually just keep their word."
Her plain white blindfold matching her streak of white felt like a ghost looking at him. A ghost of her former self maybe.
She walked to him with silent steps, her bare feet felt the grass around them. Her white crop-tank top showed the muscles she had built up with magic and hard work.
"Do you even know what you did wrong?" Fila asked as she now stood one meter away from him. But the distance couldn't feel further away.
"I talked to her." He began, his voice almost unsteady. "I talked to the person who disrespected the fact that my best friend got tortured, and told me to stop worrying when something so terrible happened to my friend. She didn't care."
Wow he actually knows what he did. Or did he ask June and Calla.
"Yes, you did Theo, they took my eyes and my life. And your little pathetic excuse of girlfriend wanted to be the main character all the time. so she got jealous, and then you crawled back into her lap like a sad little puppy." The words hit harder than they should have, but she didn't care. If he needed to hear this in the most brutal way possible, than so be it.
Theo stood there, the color draining from his face until he looked as pale as the white streak in Fila's hair. The air in the training yard seemed to thin, the heavy silence punctuated only by the rhythmic, low-frequency hum of Hugin and Munin's wooden bodies.
"I didn't crawl back," he whispered, though the defense sounded flimsy even in his own ears. "I just... I wanted a moment where I wasn't the guy holding the pieces of a broken person. I wanted to remember what it felt like before the mountains."
"And in doing so, you confirmed exactly what she thought," Fila rasped, her voice dropping into that dangerous, velvet purr. She took a step closer, her bare feet silent on the grass, her physique illuminated by the harsh morning sun. "That my 'situation' was an inconvenience to your social life. That the 'broken person' was a burden you needed a vacation from."
She tilted her head, the white blindfold making her look like an impartial, unfeeling judge.
And than she lifted her blindfold. Theo's eyes widened. "This is what they did to me." And than she sat her blind fold back, "What did they do to you or your girlfriend?"
Theo stood quiet for a long time.
"Im not trying to make you cry for me Theo, but if a friend says that he would cut someone out if they disrespect his friends. Than I expect him to do so." Fila turned back to her gym.
She had already finished working out for today, but now that punching back looked tempting.
"You wanted to remember what it felt like before the mountains," Fila rasped, her voice light, almost conversational, as she wrapped her hands in thin strips of linen. "But you forgot the most important rule of the climb, Theo. You don't look back at the base when you're halfway up the cliff. You focus on the person holding the rope."
She took a stance, her bare feet gripping the grass. Her sapphire vision was crystalline now, focusing entirely on the density of the vine-bag.
Thwack.
Following that brought a shift.
Theo didn't try to talk with Fila more. But she seemed to try making a change according to Calla.
"He told her to go F herself today." Calla said while brushing Filas hair in the dorm room.
Fila was actually surprised. "Really? but did he mean it or did he go apologize right after?"
Calla shrugged. "That I don't know." She said. And than she looked down at the back of Fila. She touched it lightly, tracing the outline of muscles that had built up.
"He meant it," Calla murmured, her fingers pausing near the base of Fila's neck. "Stella said he didn't even look back. He looked... hollow. Like he finally realized the person he was trying to 'protect' doesn't need his protection anymore, and the person he was trying to please doesn't deserve his time."
Fila let out a dry, raspy chuckle, the sound vibrating in her chest. "It took him long enough. A week of being treated like a ghost is apparently the magic number for common sense to kick in."
June walked through the door. "Calla they are holding the raffle for the trip to Castelobruxo!"
The two girls on the bed looked at her like two deers standing on a road.
But it didn't take long for Calla to stand up and rush through the door. Leaving Fila to brush her won hair.
The trip to Brazil wasn't just for the champions. Some more students would come with as support, only brining us five wouldn't get very exciting in the stand overwatching the fights. So of course everyone had entered for a chance to see the legendary jungle school of south America.
Fila put on some normal clothes. A gray oversized hoodie and a pair of leggings. And also made her way to the great hall where the raffle held place.
The Great Hall was buzzing with a frantic, hopeful energy that felt like a swarm of Billywigs. For most students, Castelobruxo was a myth, a golden temple hidden deep within the rainforest, protected by Caipora and legends. To Fila, it was just the next arena.
As she stepped into the hall, the sea of students seemed to part instinctively. The oversized hoodie swallowed most of her frame,
She made her way towards Sera who sat at her house table. Sear was actually a Pukwudgie, but fila didn't really care about where she sat.
Sera looked towards her as she approached and scooted over for room. "Welcome Fila." She said with a smile.
"Everyone is so loud." Fila complained as she sat down, drawing the attention of near sitting pukwudiges.
"It's the raffle fever," Sera whispered, nudging a plate of grapes toward Fila. "Everyone wants to see the golden temple. They say the air there tastes like magic and the trees move when you aren't looking. It's a bit much for a Friday evening, isn't it?"
This didn't feel necessary for fila, yet again she was selected to go there.
Up by the professors table stood Fontaine and professor Hale. Looking closer they seemed to have some sort of bowl on a small table. With names of everyone who had wanted to enter, and to Fila this was even more confusing. She didn't even know when this raffle had opened. Probably burying it under all the training and studying she had done the last weeks.
Headmaster Fontaine walked up to the podium and tapped it, making an echoing sound throughout the hall. "Everyone, your attention please." He said gently, making everyone quiet.
He looked around the room ones before speaking again. "Tonight we will decide who will accompany the champions on their journey to Castelobruxo for the 1991 School Dueling championship." He paused, letting it sink in and watching the reactions of the students. "Each house champion will have three students from their house accompanying them, that means Pukwudgie will have six spots, Horned serpent three, Wumpus three and Thunderbird three."
This had apparently been known before, and yet again Fila looked at Sera who had to yet again explain when this information came out.
"Have you attended any information meetings?" Sera asked quietly.
Fila looked at the blond girl, "I didn't even know about them." she said and shrugged.
Sera gave a small, amused huff and shook her head. "Fila, they've been announcing the meetings at every dinner for the past two weeks. I think you've just been so focused on those boulders and your panthers that you've tuned out the rest of the world."
Fila popped a grape into her mouth, leaning back as she adjusted the oversized hood. "Probably. It's more peaceful that way."
The Great Hall fell into a tense, expectant silence as Fontaine reached into the bowl. The shimmering names within swirled like a miniature galaxy before his hand plucked the first one.
"For house Pukwudgie." He began and looked at the names. "Julia Kurtha, Kristoph Hissen…" and the rest of the four.
It seemed like the ones selected had to be well of in school. Meaning that someone with bad grades, or being far behind wouldn't be allowed to go.
The raffled continued. Students cheered when their names got drawn, others let out disappointed sighs. Fila didn't listen until her house would be drawn, and just kept eating grapes. Sera looked at her, she seemed to look for something in the girl who had just done a one-eighty from last term. Almost not recognizing the Ophelia she had met last year.
"And for Thunderbird." Fontaine finally said, which made Fila finally start to listen. "June Whitaker…"
"YES!" June voice rang out across the hall, out screaming everyone else who had celebrated.
Even the professor couldn't hold back a chuckled as the rest of the hall laughed.
Fila turned to her friend, who already waved to her excitingly. Having June by her side would definitely improve her mood and maybe make the trip feel like something else other than a fighting fest.
"Ahem… next," he picked up another small paper. "Stella Smith."
Fila turned to Stella, how was celebrating with her friends, another great support for Fila she thought. But the last one still hasn't been drawn yet.
"And the last one… Miles Ortega. Congratulations, we leave on September 31st." he said an left shortly after.
Fila made her way towards the thunderbird table and got a hug from June who still looked way more happy than she should. Miles also looked very happy, not as happy but still.
June was practically vibrating, her arms locked around Fila in a squeeze that might have actually tested Fila's new muscle definition if it had lasted any longer. "Can you believe it? The jungle, Fila! The sun! The actual, non-mythical golden temple! I already have three different types of sun-protection charms memorized."
Fila managed a small, amused huff as she was finally released. "I'm sure the Amazon is terrified of your skincare routine, June."
Miles approached them next, grinning and extending a hand for a quick high-five, which Fila returned with a solid, resonant clap. "Glad to be on the squad, Rosier. I've been reading up on the local flora. Apparently, some of the vines down there have a mind of their own. Figured you might appreciate the company."
"They'll have to be fast to keep up with me," Fila rasped, her voice carrying that light but grounded confidence.
As the excitement continued to swirl around the table, Fila vision caught onto a familiar gray little magic swirl looming a little further away. Coming from a little sad little Theo Carter.
Feeling the 'I need to talk with you' stance he had towards her, she walked to him. "Yes Theo?"
He looked at her, he seemed to have changed in the way she could feel him. Theo didn't look at her the same anymore. Maybe its regret or just sadness.
"Im sorry." He said, simple and plain.
Fila looked at him, considering his words and thinking through them while watching his worried swirl of magic mess in his body. The very thing that defied who he was and would be. Yet it seemed so fragile in this state.
She sighed. "Theo, what is it that you want?" the question was multilayered, but Fila hoped that he would understand that. She asked him if he wanted to be her friend that she had ones been, or keep following something that Fila knew he would regret in the future.
The Wampus girl who Fila had already forgotten the name of, stood silently watching them a little further away.
"I… I think I want her, but I don't want to lose our friendship Fila." He said and almost looked, scared.
Across the hall, the Wampus girl remained a silent, blurry figure. Fila didn't even tilt her head in that direction.
"Theo, she didn't like that you cared. And if that's the case than you cant be my friend, because friends care for each other. If you want to be with her than that's your decision, but don't come running back to me when she does something like that again." Fila explained the harsh truth, not holding anything back.
Fila didn't mind that he liked a girl, its just that this girl didn't care for anyone else but herself it seemed.
Theo looked at the ground now, seemingly regretting everything. "Just so you know Theo, I had feelings for you."
The words echoed like an bell in his head.
He didn't speak. He couldn't. He just stared at her, his mouth slightly open, the realization of what he had traded for a "vacation from trauma" finally hitting him with the force of a landslide.
"Past tense, Theo," Fila rasped, her voice as calm as a frozen pond. "Feelings are like the flowers I grow. If you don't water them, or if you let someone else trample them because they're 'inconvenient,' they die. It's simple biology."
She stepped back, the oversized hoodie's fabric swirling around her frame. In her vision, the Wampus girl in the distance was a flicker of stagnant, selfish magic—a sharp contrast to the raw, surging power now circulating through Fila's own veins.
"I... I didn't know," Theo finally whispered, his voice cracking. "Fila, I swear, I didn't—"
"You didn't look," she corrected him gently, a touch of that old bird-like lilt returning, though it was sharper now. "You were too busy looking for a way out of the dark. And I get it. The dark is heavy. But you left me there to hold the rope alone while you went to find someone who doesn't even like the light I give off."
She adjusted the hood of her sweatshirt, "Im going now, good luck with your girlfriend." She said and turned.
Theo stood there. The feeling of dropping something from a cliff, something you knew you could maybe never get back again.
A sudden tug on his Dark Blue robe pulled him out of his thinking. "Hey, lets go." She said while pulling Theo along. He looked back towards his friends who stood around talking about the coming trip.
The girl, the Wampus whose name Fila had already deleted from her memory, didn't seem to notice his distress. Or if she did, she didn't care. She was already talking about what they should do tonight, her voice a sharp, high-pitched contrast to Fila's raspy, melodic weight.
"Theo, come on," she said, her grip on his sleeve tightening. "It's just a trip. You'll have a much better time here anyway without all that... intensity."
Fila and June walked around the school corridors, the gathering had continued late into the night. Students had gone over their curfew by a lot. But it's the weekend the professor usually don't bother.
The two girls had decided to just look around, even after being a student here for almost three years they still found places undiscovered by them. even finding the Pukwudgie entrence for the first time.
"You know, after all the time I've walked here. I never thought their entrance was just… this." Fila said, ahead of the laid a plain regular door.
June beside her also looked at the unsuspecting door that could be confused with a bedroom door, or even leading to the bathroom. "They really didn't get the cool factor that we and horned serpent got."
They both looked as a Pukwudgie student walked out. He stopped and also looked at the door. "We know." He said and kept walking.
Fila and June looked at the boy and than at each other. "Who was that?"
Fila shook her head and just kept walking, June falling into a steady step beside her.
"You really dropped the 'feelings' bomb and just walked away, didn't you?" June whispered, leaning in close as they reached the tower stairs. Her pink aura was pulsing with a mix of shock and a weird kind of respect. "I think you actually broke his brain, Ophelia."
"His brain was already broken, June," Fila rasped, her voice light and airy. "He was trying to solve an equation using variables that don't exist anymore. I just gave him the answer so he could stop guessing."
"It was brutal," Miles added, June jumped at the sound of the boys voice coming from just behind them.
And she punched his shoulder. "Don't, do that!"
Miles hissed, rubbing his arm with a grin. "Relax, June. For a delicate bird, you've got a mean swing. Must be hanging around Fila's new gym too much."
June looked a bit of proud and offended at the same time.
"Im just saying that maybe you could've gone easier on him. I think he's just, confused." Miles said, and was immediately started down by the two girls. "No, yeah you did the right thing, went easy on him even." He tried to backtrack.
Fila stopped and touched a flower, poured some magic into it. These guys scattered across every hallway and room in the school, not placed by Fila. Just normal flower planted by the school. And they were extremely useful in listening on conversations of bypassing students or even professors. This way, Fila could have endless gossip about legit everything going on in school.
So maintaining them, and rewarding the flowers for their great and honest work was a given.
"He will learn, maybe." Fila said and walked slowly again. "Or he wont, time will tell."
Honestly at this point everyone who knew Theos and Filas relationship thought she would be, furious or even worse. And even she thought so. But life has a way of surprising even yourself. Going through things and being traumatized for life does something to the brain.
Feeling a renewed energy spike hitting during the late night she excused herself from June and Miles.
"Going to run some midnight drills?" Miles asked, though the answer was written in the way Fila's posture shifted. "Just don't pull the tower down."
Fila didn't answer, only giving a small, sharp wave over her shoulder as she vanished into the shadows of the corridor. The rhythmic click-clack of Hugin and Munin followed her, their wooden joints sounding louder in the empty silence of the late night.
The real reason for going of had been something else totally.
Stepping into the Old training ground, that now could only be described as a gym bro's wet dream of made racks and weights.
And by it stood the Headmaster.
Flower had told her about his presence long ago, but for some reason he had stood there for the better part of an hour now.
"It's quite a transformation, Ophelia," Fontaine said, his voice soft but carrying easily in the night air. He didn't turn around, his gaze fixed on a massive boulder suspended by a thick, pulsing emerald vine. "Most students use their magic to make life easier. You seem to be using yours to make life... harder."
Fila shrugged. "Change isn't always easy nor beautiful."
Fontaine nodded. "Couldn't have said it better myself." He looked to the moon sky. "How are you feeling towards the trip?"
Two chairs magically appeared close to the headmaster. Fila had made them from flowers and vines. The headmaster didn't wait long and also sat down.
"I'm excited, yet also curious. The jungle could show me ways I didn't think of before, or it could eat me alive. So to say." Fila answered, not really giving him a straight answer as to what she even meant by that.
He let out s soft chuckled as if he understood anyway. "I thought the same when they told us about the changed." He paused, Fila knew this meant something serious was coming. Either telling her to lose the tournament by choice or something in the way of 'stay hidden'.
"I know that you have some incredible magic Ophelia, and have grown even stronger during the summer than anyone can understand. But please go easy on the other students." The words that came out, actually didn't make her upset. She turned to him, and felt confused.
Fila knew she had grown a lot, but go easy on them? "What do you mean? Are the other schools not… strong enough?" she asked.
He laughed. "Oh, trust me they are plenty strong. But compared to you, I think not even an experienced aurorers would have a chance."
Fila felt a strange, cold prickle at the back of her neck. To be told she was strong by her friends was one thing, but to have the Headmaster of Ilvermorny - a man who had seen generations of powerful witches and wizards, compare her to a seasoned Auror was a weight heavier than any boulder in her yard.
"You're exaggerating," Fila rasped, her head tilting as she tried to gauge the sincerity in his golden aura. "I'm just a student. I've just... had to learn things others haven't."
"That is exactly the point, Ophelia," Fontaine said, his voice dropping to a serious, grounded tone. "Most students learn magic through textbooks and controlled practice. You learned it through survival. You've bridged the gap between intent and execution in a way that usually takes decades. Your magic doesn't just flow; it reacts with the same ferocity as the trauma that forced it to wake up."
He looked at Hugin and Munin, who were currently prowling the perimeter of the stone racks.
"Those panthers aren't just constructs. They are hungry," Fontaine noted. "And the jungle is a place of primal energy. It will call to that hunger. I am not asking you to lose, Fila. I am asking you to remain the master of your own landslide."
Fontaine didn't actually tell her to hide, or lose. He just wanted her not to kill the others.
And that, was probably the best thing she had heard him say. "I can tone it down." She said.
The headmaster looked pleased. "Thank you, I know its not really the standard in a fight that might resolve in death. But I think you will manage." He said in a low steady voice he usually had when not talking like a headmaster.
After talking about that, the say silently. The owls surrounding the school made beautiful ambient sound during the night.
The stillness between them was comfortable, a rare moment where the hierarchy of Headmaster and student dissolved into two magical beings simply existing under the moon.
"You know," Fontaine said, his eyes still fixed on the stars, "Castelobruxo has a way of testing more than just your dueling. The jungle reflects what you carry inside. For some, it's a paradise. For others, it's a mirror."
Fila tilted her head, the white streak in her hair shimmering. "And what do you think it will show me, Headmaster?"
"I think it will show you that you aren't as alone as you've convinced yourself to be," he replied softly. He stood up, the chair of vines behind him unraveling back into the earth as if it had never been. "Strength is a solitary path, Ophelia. But even the tallest tree needs the soil around it to stay upright."
He began to walk toward the exit of the yard, his golden aura trailing behind him like a fading sunset. "And Fila? Try to enjoy the sun. You've spent enough time in the shadows."
Fila sat still in the gym long after Fontaine had left. Playing with her own thoughts and mind. The two panthers laying on the grass reminded her of how guarded she had been this whole time. as if she wouldn't be able to defend herself anymore.
Scared that someone might sneak up on her. Mostly they had been used as a pair of eyes for her, since trees made her see best out of any flowers. But…
The two panthers sank into the ground. Leaving her to her own.
Fila stood up, alone for the first time in a little more than two months she was alone again. and it didn't feel scary.