A Serpent and a Jaguar

The Triwizard Tournament was supposed to be simple.
Represent your school. Win glory. Try not to die.
For Alora Oliveira, champion of Castelobruxo, Hogwarts has been everything she expected and nothing she imagined. The castle is colder than home, the students stranger, and the politics between the old wizarding families far more complicated than she anticipated.
Then there's Rhys Van Doren.
A Slytherin with a reputation for cruelty, a pure-blood supremacist attitude, and enough detentions to fill an entire trophy case. Most students avoid him. Alora, unfortunately, keeps running into him.
It starts with arguments.
Then late-night conversations.
Then secret meetings where neither of them can quite explain why they keep showing up.
Rhys represents everything Alora was raised to despise: blood purity, arrogance, and the lingering shadows of the Dark Arts. Alora represents everything Rhys never understood: warmth, kindness, loyalty, and a world beyond old pure-blood expectations.
Neither intends to change.
Neither intends to care.
Yet as the Tournament grows more dangerous and secrets buried within Hogwarts begin to surface, the line between enemies and something far more complicated becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.

Characters

Rhys

Rhys Van Doren is a sixteen-year-old Slytherin from an ancient pure-blood family.
Cold, intelligent, and notoriously unpleasant, he has spent most of his life cultivating a reputation that keeps people at arm's length. He excels in dueling, non-verbal magic, and Dark Arts theory, while openly mocking anything he considers weak.
Behind the arrogance lies someone burdened by the legacy of a dead Death Eater father, an absent mother, and expectations he can never seem to escape.
Most students hate him.
Some fear him.
Very few know him.

Intro

The Forbidden Forest was not where Alora Oliveira was supposed to be.
Especially not after midnight.
Especially not alone.
And especially not with a storm rolling in overhead.
The distant sound of thunder echoed through the trees as she pushed aside a branch, wand raised. Somewhere ahead, one of the magical crates rumoured to have appeared throughout the grounds was hidden among the darkness.
A twig snapped.
Not an animal.
Footsteps.

Alora spun around.

Rhys

"Relax."

• The voice was instantly recognizable. Rhys Van Doren stepped from between the trees, looking entirely unimpressed by the fact they were both breaking at least a dozen school rules.

"For a champion, you're remarkably bad at not getting yourself killed."
His eyes flicked toward the crate partially hidden beneath tangled roots.
A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Looks like we're after the same thing."
"Try not to slow me down, Oliveira."