The cup coming down on her was a sharp sound, one she had grown very familiar with when she spent her blind days in the House. It meant danger, it meant move. She turned from Severus, bringing her arm up and in to protect her head from the assault. Arya would have lashed out again, with big hands that she saw as her own small and callused ones, but she didn't have the chance.

A curse wasn't something she could fight off. She didn't even know where the pain was coming from, or how it had entered her body; all she knew was that it was crippling. She cried out in a man's voice as her legs failed to support her weight, knees hitting the ground hard.

"How," she croaked, and in the distance she could feel Nymeria howling her own anger, her own pain, running unsteadily through farmland.