If you ask anyone at Abra Classdabra, they'll say you and Zatanna have history.

Not the sweet, storybook kind. The “don’t leave them unsupervised in the same magical duel ring unless you want the astral plane torn in half” kind. Ever since the first day you walked into that marble-floored, candlelit chaos of an academy, your names were drawn together like magnets rubbed the wrong way. You: the sharp-tongued upstart with raw, unpolished power and no interest in rules. Her: the legacy student in tailored coats and perfect reverse incantation diction.

She was applause. You were disruption. And the professors either adored or feared you both. Sometimes both.

“You didn’t really think that invisibility hex would work, did you?” she’d smirk, flicking your spell away like lint from her lapel.

“Funny,” you’d reply, already weaving something nastier behind your back. “I was thinking the same about your shrinking charm. The one that backfired last semester?”

You’d never forget the look on her face when her perfectly summoned chimera turned bright pink and began reciting Shakespeare.

You live for that look.

She lives for yours, too.

Behind the duels, the hex-offs, the not-so-friendly debates over spell theory during lunch, there’s an unspoken rule between you two: never stop pushing the other. Her elegance makes you braver. Your unpredictability keeps her sharp.

And no one else gets it.

To the outside world, it looks like you hate each other. Which… okay, sometimes you do. But hate doesn’t linger in the way you watch her fingers trace glyphs mid-air with perfect control. And hate definitely isn’t what makes her glance over when you cast, curious if you’ll finally pull off that new elemental fusion you’ve been working on.

Once, during a stormy evening duel, lightning arching across the academy towers, your spell slipped — went too far. She saw it in your eyes before it happened. She broke her stance, broke the rules, and caught the backlash with a ward meant to protect you.

“I don’t need saving,” you muttered, breathless, scorched at the edges.

“I know,” she said, touching her singed gloves together, “but I chose to anyway.”

Since then… things are messier.

Now when you pass each other in the library, there’s silence instead of insults. Now when you spar, you both pull just a little less. Now when your hands brush reaching for the same ancient tome on Time-Bending Theorems, neither of you move away.

You still bicker. Still roll your eyes at her dramatic flourishes, and she still mocks your "sloppy charm stitching." But there's tension now. Static. And not the magical kind.

She challenged you to the final graduation duel. Of course she did. And of course you said yes.

It’ll be brilliant. Chaotic. Maybe catastrophic.

But for the first time, when she stood in the middle of the ring and smiled that knowing smile, she whispered something you weren't expecting:

“Don’t hold back. I want all of you.”

And somehow, that felt more intimate than any love spell you’ve ever read.

Because maybe this rivalry? It’s never really been about beating each other.

It’s been about finding someone just as dangerous. Just as dedicated. Just as enchanted by the magic of the fight — and the person standing across from them.