In my life, both my lives, I had always struggled with caring about sport teams. I always figured it took a level of investment and identification with the players and team that I just didn't have in me. Fanatics about it always felt kind of cultish to me. Never mind my standing outside of a theater for hours to see Star Wars while dressed like a Twi'lek.

I have, however, come to have an appreciation for the sport of quafiliump itself. Each team had a "base" that was their starting point and where the enemy team scored. There were four rounds and each round the teams had three balls, colored their team colors, that they could score by getting the ball to the enemy team's base. So far, a fairly typical sport even by mundane standards. What made it a sport I had an appreciation of, though, were all the other rules.

The sport was played on foot with wand in hand in a playing field that had more in common with a obstacle course than a football field. The players had their wands and they were allowed to cast some spells. However the spells were from a list that the league allowed to be used, and each team was only allowed eight spells, which had to be declared with the referee before the match. They could cast those spells as many times as they liked, but were limited to those eight spells in the match.

That's where the game really shined. Teams tried to outthink what spells their opponents would use, try to use spells that would spoil their enemies, or even more masterfully, turn their strengths into weaknesses. It had skill, planning, and it was entertaining to watch. In comparison I'd fall asleep watching Quiddich.

So while I still hated conversations about which team was better than the other, I could talk for hours on quafiliump tactics.

"Woo! Take that ya blind pigs! Ha!" Lee yelled as the Thunderbirds scored, ignoring the fact that the Boa Boars were still in the lead due to the very fact that they kept seeing through the Thunderbird forward's Notice-Me-Not charm.

"Yeah! They're tired! Push hard Thunderbirds!" Anabelle called.

"Change up tactics!" I yelled, doing my best to be part of their excitement, when I actually wanted to just sit and tear apart their strategies. It was the last round and it was anyone's game. The Thunderbirds had an early start, but the Boa Boars had gained speed through the second and third round. The score sat at 9 to 10 in the Boars favor. The Thunderbirds would need to score with both their remaining balls to have a shot at victory.

I took a moment to look around the crowd as they went wild. Both sides were losing their minds at the intensity, from the large men with a horns that sounded exactly like a Thunderbird's cry when blown to the women on the front row in very little clothing and doing far more hopping than should come from just excitement this late in the game, to the guy selling firesnap peas and postpopedcorn that was staring at the game rather than doing his job. To the guys-

My blood ran cold as I caught sight of Quintus. The Midas Order's left hand man was lacking his usual fine tendermere suit and instead wearing a Thunderbird jersey. Probably one bought from the giftshop considering it still had the damn tags on it. He was attempting to blend into the crowd, though this seemed to be difficult for the hardened killer. He too apparently had trouble mustering the enthusiasm of his fellow standmates.

His gaunt features and seven foot height didn't do him any favors either. Knowing he was here allowed me to spot more of his cohorts in the crowd as well. My bad feeling deepened as I caught sight of Chalcedony, Quintus' usual partner in crime. The man's squat and muscled frame often reminded me a dwarf from Tolkien's works, complete with elaborate beard. He was a shrewd man that pounced on weakness almost by reflex. The two were a dangerous combination together. The five other people I managed to spot in a half circle around us were just the icing on the cake.

I barely noticed as the crowd began screaming again as the Thunderbirds scored another goal.

"You okay Aunt Sepi?" Lee asked, having noticed my sudden stillness.

I debated telling him I was fine and not to worry, but I hated lying to the kid. The last time I had, three years ago, he'd made me promise to never do so again. I tried to keep my promises.

I shot him a pained look and Annabelle caught on something was wrong as well.

"Sepi? What is it?" She asked.

"Quintus. Chalcedony." I said while giving a subtle nod to their places in the crowd.

Annabelle's eyes hardened and her hand drifted to the bag on her side. The fanny pack had been magically expanded to be able to hold her staff as well as a few other emergency items.

"We need to go. We can't-" I started.

"No." Annabelle put in, "They won't attack us in the crowd. If we get spooked and run there are probably more waiting for us in the halls. Probably at our car too. If we do anything too big right here they'll probably just have security descend on us. Our best shot is to lose them in the crowd when the game ends."

I hesitated before giving a nod. Annabelle was probably right. If we could get through the crowd and I could find a little hole to hide in for ten minutes we wouldn't have an issue, but if we leave now or I pulled out my wand and started putting up charms we'd just have security hand our asses right to them on a silver platter.

"So the fun stuff is over, huh?" Lee asked. I looked down to see the boy slowly drawing his new wand out of his pocket.

I lightly slapped the back of his head. "Oh put that away. You don't even know what you'd be doing with that thing." I chided.

He reluctantly complied.

"When everyone begins to file out, we could use a distraction." Annabelle said as here eyes darted to and fro. I glanced over at her paint covered form and sighed as a plan came to me.

"Yeah, I got one." I said with a shake of my head. "But we'll need to go to that exit." I pointed to an exit that had a group of enthusiastic Boa Boar fans that were very drunk on Rocker Rum.

"Alright. We'll head that way when the match is up and-"

The crowd went wild as the Thunderbirds scored again just as they managed to destroy the Boa Boar's last active ball. The game was over.

We were out of of time.

The next few minutes passed by in a blur as I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I'd faced down plenty of bad situations in life before, many worse than this one. It still didn't make it any easier to handle. I was bad at fighting. I hated it. Which was why my greatest skill was making fighting me such a pain in the ass that the other person just walked away. Getting them to the point of walking away was always a bitch though.

The Thunderbirds won and the Boa Boars were left sore and angry and I was about to use that to my advantage. As the crowd closed in around us and we neared the drunken Boar fans I took out my wand and muttered a spell. In moments the body paint on the three of us changed to the red of the Boars.

Lee frowned as he looked down at his apparent betrayal of his team.

I slipped between one of the Boars fans and one of the Thunderbirds and raised my voice. "You fucking pigeons cheated, just like you fucking always do!"

"Excuse me? We cheat?" The Thunderbird fan said, affronted. "Who is that always tries to sneak in extra spells when they think the ref can't see? You stiff necked little-"

I punched him in the nose.

The crowd, rightfully, began to close in to stop me. The drunk Boar fans just registered a bunch of people rushing at a couple of girls and a kid in their team's colors. The riot started seconds later.

Annabelle drew her staff and I muttered a quick cleaning spell to get the paint off all of us as we huddled together and tried to sneak through the rain of thrown fits, shouted spells, and weaponized food.

"I should have known better than to let you do that dang distraction!" Annabelle shouted, her southern accent pouring out stronger than usual as someone's Smell Tar spell splashed against her back.

"Less talk more walk!" I ordered as I glanced behind me to see Quintus and Chalcedony start demolishing their way through the people between us, stunning spells firing off in pairs every second as they got closer at the rate of a horror movie villain.

"It's this easy to start a riot?" Lee yelled in wonder, not near as afraid as a child being hunted down in the middle of violent crowd should be.

"Yes."/"Only when Sepi's around." Annabelle and I said at the same time. I didn't waste my energy glaring at her.

Annabelle pushed forward through the front as I walked backward from the rear, keeping an eye on the chaos behind us. Lee was crammed between us and occasionally had his hand smacked as he tried to draw his wand.

I'd managed to block two Iron Foot hexes and blocked some suspicious Big Mouth Taffy from beaning me in the head when I noticed us speeding up. The crowd was thinning, meaning we'd be moving faster.

It also meant we were going to be getting less meat shields between the Midas Order and us.

"Sepi! I've got incoming!" Annabelle shouted from behind me. I cursed but didn't turn around. I trusted her and I would be stupid to take my eyes off Quintus and Chalcedony.

I looked left and right, trying to see something in my periphery that could help us, we were starting to come up short on options.

"Broom closet! Your right!" I called as I had to begin slapping down stunning spells from Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. I wasn't the greatest duelist, but I could backpeddle while blocking with the best of them.

I heard Annabelle begin casting spells behind me, meaning she was going to be busy, and her staff used two hands. I groped for the door handle and cursed when I couldn't twist the handle.

"Locked!" I yelled.

"Then unlock it!" Annabelle yelled back, the sound of her staff cutting through the air in intricate patterns behind me audible even over the chaos around us.

"I'm a bit fucking busy!" I yelled back as I frantically foiled spell after spell. "Why don't you-"

"Alohomora!" Lee's voice proclaimed followed by the door clicking open.

Little shit had been practicing with a wand without permission. Annabelle wouldn't teach him that and I damn sure didn't give him something that would let him access my Special Time drawer that he was annoyingly curious about.

"Annabelle, cover me in three! Lee, we will be having words!" I yelled.

I got a laughing "You got it Sepi!" and a sullen "Yes ma'am."

"One! Two!" I dove into the closet just as Annabelle did a half turn to place herself in the mouth of the door.

"Nebulamora!" Annabelle yelled as a thick mist began to pour from the geode on top her staff, slowly filling the hallway with fog even as she continued to cast shield spells to block the incoming attacks.

I cast a quick spell to keep the fog out before reaching into my pocket and pulling out my keys. I ripped the heart shaped keychain off the ring and released the shrinking charm on it. Then I placed it on the ground and pulled a piece of chalk out of my pocket.

Never left home without it.

The heart, when at its natural size, was about half a foot tall and made of an epoxy material. At its full size, the network of runes inside the heart were more visible. Dozens and dozens of runes sat inside different layers for various spells and effects, waiting just that last bit of work to make their potential come to life.

"Fight or flight?" I called as my hands drew complex rune arrays in chalk on the door frame. In seconds I complete work that would take most other people hours and with a popping sound a veil of dull orange energy filled the doorway. It wouldn't stop anything physical, but someone would hard pressed to get a spell through it now.

"Dealers choice!" Annabelle called as she twisted, whirled, and danced between spells, staff smacking into oncoming spells and popping them like soap bubbles. Wordlessly casting grounding and shielding spells and even getting off a few attack spells through the gaps. "I can keep this up for a bit longer!"

There was a reason she'd won every dueling competition she'd ever been in.

"Flight!" I called back and reached into my pocket and pulled out one of the other things I rarely left home without. An attunement reader. A lame name, but I wasn't great with names. It read the magical energies of a place and gave what was essentially it's magical GPS coordinates. That was oversimplified, as in the case of moving buildings and the like the location followed the building, however should the building turn from, say, a school into an office building the signature might change. How the place was thought of, its history, and the sorts of spells cast there were all things that effected a location's attunement. It used to take days of research to get a place's attunement.

I made a handheld device that could do it in seconds. You just had to not mind carrying a dousing rod with dials on it in your pants.

"Lee! Take this, read me the numbers from right to left!" I ordered as I began making a...well equation was the best example, if math used musical notes and moon phases in addition to numbers.

Ordinarily, Annabelle and I would have just grabbed Lee and apparated away but the Coliseum Maxima had one of the best anti-teleportation wards placed on it to stop anyone from sneaking in without a ticket. It was near impossible to teleport out or into the place. I would know, I placed the runes myself.

It was thankfully only nearly impossible.

"501, 69, 4, 19, 1, 6." Lee read off the numbers. I scratched them down and began to do an equation on the floor.

"Turn the red dial twice, press the button, then tell me the numbers again." I ordered as I began doing what I could with the information I had, pausing only a moment to start give a few taps to the heart with my wand.

I fell into something resembling a trance, as I ignored everything but the numbers Lee was giving me and my calculation.

A port key was useful, but it could only be used to get someone from one preset location to another preset location. If you moved the portkey to another location, it wouldn't work. After all, the location attunement changed.

Which was why I always kept a half completed port key on me.

Lee finished reading the numbers off to me, and in a few more seconds I had the answer. I used a few muttered spells and carved runes into the epoxy, then I was finished.

"Done!" I yelled. "Activating in five!"

"Mons Impetu!" Annabelle yelled as a wave of pure power flashed through the hall, scattering her fog away from her but also throwing everyone else off their feet, the spell even cracked my barrier on the door.

I picked up the heart and turned towards the door, holding it out. "Lee, grab hold of it and don't let go."

Lee's hand pressed against the heart as Annabelle stumbled into the room, with frizzy hair and several bloody scratches, but looked to be whole and healthy. She practically tripped into placing a hand on the heart.

Then the timer ticked over and we were abruptly pulled away with the familiar rush of port key travel.

In moments the three of us were deposited on top of the king sized bed in my room. We all collapsed into a heap. We just sat there for a moment in utter silence. Relishing in the simple fact the three of us had managed to once again get away.

I took a deep inhale that turned into wracking coughs.

"Annabelle! You're getting Smell Tar all over my bed!" I yelled.

Fury crossed the red-head's face as she growled out, "Well. God. Bless. Your. Heart."

I wisely backed down. I knew what that meant in Southern.

"Fine. I guess we can leave a little earlier than we planned." I stated instead.

"No shit." Lee groused, before letting out a cry of pain as Annabelle smacked his arm. "Heeey!"

"No cursing." Annabelle stated. Then she smacked my arm.

"What was that for!?"

"You taught it to him."

I was her boss, right? That's not my imagination? If this was the amount of respect I get, I might have some problems with my students at Hogwarts.

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