This was it.

Sinead had signed up for dueling club as soon as she had seen the notice, keen to prove her obviously superior magical prowess against all of her contemporaries. To that end, she'd spent the last few weeks researching and practicing different spells, especially once she'd found out she'd been fighting Natalie- given they had all their classes together as housemates, it wasn't exactly difficult to guess whether or not she'd have already studied a particular spell. And any new spell would give Sinead an advantage, right?

She was so ready for this.

She didn't really feel nervous about the duel, but then she didn't tend to get nervous very easily. Anyway, it wasn't like anything about this could be dangerous, not with Hirsch standing right there; the worst that could happen was that she didn't win. And that was totally not going to happen.

She took up her position opposite Natalie with barely-checked anticipation, giving herself a final once-over just to be sure of everything: wand polished, tie tightened, robes straight and Slytherin-green trimmings proudly displayed. Okay- they were both from Slytherin, but that only gave them more of a chance to do their house proud. Once she was satisified she was ready, she gave a neat bow, eyes intent and focused as she thought about her plan. She knew she had to be adaptable- all the books she read were big on that, and to expect the unexpected- but it couldn't hurt to go in with an idea of what to start off with, could it?

As soon as Professor Hirsch signalled them to begin, Sinead tried out her dueling stance just like she'd seen in the textbooks and began casting without pause. The best defense was a good offense, right? That was going to be her model, anyway.
"Locomotor Wibbly," she muttered, under her breath. She couldn't do non-verbal spells, obviously, but all the books said you should use them in duels- so she would do the next best thing and just try to talk quietly. That was better than nothing, surely. It wasn't like it would affect her spells- all the mental intent was still there. No time to waste thinking about that, though- she needed to focus. Immobilise and then attack, was her plan, so:

"Serpensortia!" The second spell followed on the heels of the first, Sinead pausing only to draw breath in between the two. And this was literally a spell that summoned her house emblem. How could it not be one of the first she wanted to learn? She'd spent plenty of time honing it so she was triumphant but not surprised to see the snake burst from her wand and attack- just time to see how Natalie would retaliate, then.