"Joan of Arc?"
Hearing Tom address her that way, the girl only grew more confused. "You must have mistaken me for someone else."
"It's not a mistake." Tom's expression turned complicated. "That's simply your name pronounced through English, with the surname shortened a little. It's still the same name, Jeanne d'Arc, underneath it all."
"I see..."
Joan nodded, looking dazed, as though she understood, but in truth all she'd really caught was that "Joan" referred to her. Everything else about pronunciation and shortening had gone straight past her, utterly incomprehensible.
Fair enough, honestly. How could she be expected to follow that?
"Saint Joan of Arc?!" Ariana caught up a beat behind everyone else.
Jeanne d'Arc, she might not have recognized. But Joan of Arc? Of course she knew that name.
The girl's fame stretched across both England and France in equal measure. More than a few of the books Ariana had read growing up mentioned Joan somewhere within their pages, opinions on her ranging wildly from one book to the next.
Though generally, the harsher takes tended to come from books written by the English.
A simple country girl from Orléans had come within a hair of overturning the entire course of the Hundred Years' War. It made perfect sense that certain readers across the Channel might struggle to stomach that.
On the religious side, Joan's legend had only grown more exalted over the centuries, until in 1920, Pope Benedict XV formally canonized her, giving rise to the title Saint Joan of Arc and cementing her image and standing for good.
Ravenclaw aside, who'd spent every waking moment since her own summoning buried in absorbing the modern magical system and being worked half to death by Tom besides, leaving her no time at all for casual reading, the other two present had at least heard something of Joan's story.
Grindelwald rubbed his chin, studying the visibly nervous girl before breaking into a grin.
"The Pope's own saint, and she turns out to be a witch? One at the level of the age's great masters, no less?"
"I, I am not a witch!"
The moment she heard Grindelwald call her a witch, let alone one of that legendary tier, the country girl forgot all her nervousness entirely, her braid whipping back and forth as she shook her head furiously.
"I am the Lord's most devoted servant. It was His revelation that granted me the power to act in His name. This is not witchcraft. Not witchcraft at all."
Ariana pushed back. "Only wizards can appear here, and powerful ones at that. Didn't you just receive that same information yourself a moment ago?"
That left Joan speechless.
The briefing that had settled into her mind upon arrival had, indeed, named her a witch outright... it had come through with a weight beyond even divine revelation, something absolute, leaving no room to argue. She'd all but been assigned the role directly.
Could she really be a witch, then?
Joan had lived in the thirteenth century, during one of the fiercest periods of conflict between wizards and the Church. The very charge that had condemned her to death rested on the court's ruling that her so-called divine visions were, in truth, the whispers of demons, branding her a witch in the process.
Even facing the stake, Joan had never once doubted herself, certain in her own innocence. She was not a witch.
And now, "God" himself, in some sense, was telling her exactly the opposite.
The blow that landed was easy enough to imagine.
At the thought, the girl's braid drooped, her mouth pressing into a thin, unhappy line, and for the briefest flash, something like fire sparked in her eyes, gone almost before it appeared, too fast for anyone but Ravenclaw and Tom to catch. Even Grindelwald and Andros missed it entirely.
"Joan, whether you're a witch or not is still very much an open question. Even we're only guessing here. Don't get too worked up."
Tom's words pulled the country girl back from the edge just in time.
"Witch or not, you clearly possess formidable transcendent ability, that much isn't in question at all, is it?"
Joan's situation differed from Ariana's own. Ariana's "teacher," drawn from that first Titan Lottery ticket, had earned her tier through the raw, quiet potential of the Obscurus building within her, an incredible gift on its own, which was exactly why it had come marked purple-and-gold rather than solid gold.
Joan, by contrast, had cost Tom a full thousand Achievement Points, real currency, honestly spent. Whatever her strength or her potential, she had to sit at the level of the age's greatest masters, or the system itself would have been outright fraudulent.
Which meant Tom genuinely wanted to see exactly where that strength lay, and exactly how deep it ran.
This time, Joan didn't hesitate. She pressed both hands together in prayer against her chest, her voice full of devotion. "The Lord granted me certain gifts so that I might save France. I give thanks for His mercy."
A holy light spread outward from the girl's whole body, radiant enough that no one in the group would have blinked if a pair of wings had sprouted from her back the very next moment.
"Would you mind demonstrating? You already understand the role you've been brought here to fill, teaching me whatever it is you've mastered."
Joan nodded. She treated the information that had settled into her mind as divine revelation itself, and would never think to defy anything Tom asked of her on that basis.
"Allow me to serve as her opponent." Grindelwald stepped forward of his own accord.
He remembered now that Joan had died at only sixteen or seventeen. A world-class master, and an underage one at that, straight out of the Church itself? He couldn't resist the temptation.
Joan glanced toward Tom, and seeing him nod slightly, turned and offered Grindelwald a small bow. "Sir, I will take care not to injure you."
The amused smile froze on Grindelwald's face.
Tom and the others fell back, stifling laughter, clearing plenty of room for the two of them to fight.
Grindelwald let out a cold huff and struck first with barely more than a nod of greeting, genuinely provoked now. Otherwise he'd have surely let Joan open the exchange herself.