5 April 2012
2pm on Thursday
Sellaphix Home
34 Upper Montague Street
Marylebone, London

"You're such a dick!" Frank shouted down the stairs after his nineteen-year-old brother Figaro. "Diagnosed moron!"

Thirteen-year-old Frank was home from Hogwarts for the spring holiday. Figaro was home to do his laundry. Their parents were at work. Figaro had spent the last thirty minutes needling Frank. Frank had made some remark about Figaro's adult independence, so Figaro had decided to set the brotherly power dynamic back where it belonged. From downstairs, Figaro shouted back up grinning, as he stirred the laundry pot which was kept in the hallway closet.

"Aw, so angry! Are you this uptight at school? Miss a point on an essay?"

"At least I didn't flunk Potions because I was too busy being shit at Quidditch!"

Figaro sniffed. "Oh, ouch, not academics, Francis! Cutting me deeply!"

"Don't call me that!"

Frank left the landing and stomped down the stairs. In the hallway by the door was Figaro's bag. Without a word, Frank quickly rifled through it until he found Figaro's iPhone. Once he had it, he stormed past Figaro at the closet into the kitchen and out the back door.

"Hey! What did you take!" Figaro yelled after Frank and began to follow.  Frank picked up his pace, running to the far end of the back garden where the phone would work. He hurredly opened up the messaging app and began sending texts as rapidly as possible.

To: Group
2:08pm, 5 Apr 2012 - I am in love with Fuana. I never told you. pls marry me
2:08pm, 5 Apr 2012 - Help I got my head stuck in the stairs
2:09pm, 5 Apr 2012 -

Figaro followed quickly, wand out, but he didn't seem all that perturbed - he was still significantly bigger than Frank so getting his phone back would be easy.

Frank held it away, but was up against the fence so didn't have far to go. As Figaro come upon him grabbing for the phone, Frank set his jaw and held the phone away. Without the advantage of reach, Frank then pulled the phone close to his chest, clamping down.

"No! You don't get it back until you apologize!"

Figaro dug his fingers under Frank's hands, working to pry the phone away. Frank's grip on the phone was stronger than he expected so he changed tactics. With brotherly practice, he stuck his fingers in Frank's armpit and tickled him. Frank cried out, flailed, and knocked Figaro in the mouth with his elbow.

"Ngh!" Figaro pulled back, grimacing. His lip stung mightily and he touched it gingerly. Now he was angry. "I'm bleeding, you little shit!"

Frank's eyes were wide, but he kept his angry face on. "You deserve it!" he said, despite the initial urge to apologize.

Figaro grabbed at Frank again, who scurried away. He held up the phone triumphantly having never had the upper hand on Figaro quite like this and he wasn't going to just let that momentum drop. So he doubled down and ran back through the house then out through the front door yelling as he want.

"Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!" he gloated.

Once out on the street, Frank jogged half a block down and proceeded with texting all of Figaro's friends.

To: Group
2:10pm, 5 Apr 2012 - Its really stuck and I have butter all over my head.
2:11pm, 5 Apr 2012 - call the Aurors ineed an adult
2:11pm, 5 Apr 2012 - my mum tucks me in at night

Figaro followed, but at a walk, tending to his lip. He went inside to check it out in the downstairs bathroom mirror. He'd cut his lower lip on his teeth and it was beginning to swell. It wasn't serious, and the bleeding wasn't bad, but he didn't know any healing spells. "Fucking hell."

It'd need ice, but first there was the matter of his iPhone and pesky brother's likely identity theft. He came out of the bathroom and shouted upstairs. "Frank!"

There was no reply. "Frank! I'm sorry, just give me back the iPhone!"

There was no response, so Figaro went up only to find their bedroom empty. He went back out onto the landing and adjusted his wand in his hand.

"Accio iPhone!"

Outside, the phone flopped out of Frank's hand and clattered to the pavement.

"No!" Frank gasped and dove for it, but it scuttled away back towards the house, through the mailslot then zipped up the stairs. Figaro caught it and gasped indignantly. An array of cracks spiderwebbed out from the upperleft corner.

"What the hell!"

Frank stood at the bottom of the stairs, feeling all at once horrified, ashamed, embarrassed, and indignant.

"It's your own fault," he said crossing his arms. He opted to blame Figaro rather than fess up that none of this would have happened if he hadn't stolen the mobile. Figaro ignored him and came down the stairs to head to the back garden once again. The screen was going haywire, but that was typical for muggle electronics when inside the veil of the Sellaphix home's enchantments.

Frank followed at a distance. "Is it broken?" There was a concerned note in his voice now. Figaro continued to ignore him as he approached the fence. Frank kept well out of reach. Figaro and Frank's conflicts had very rarely come to violence, but it had been a long time since Frank had pushed him this far. And in fairness to Frank, the opposite was also true.

The mobile's screen settled down and began to respond to Figaro's taps and swipes. He already had several responses to Frank's messages to the group chat.

There was a photo response from Abby Reid, Anton Schafer and Sasha thought he was drunk at 2pm, and both Sasha and Gris offered advice.[1]

2:12pm, 5 Apr 2012 - Anton
You need help, bro?  Are you really stuck or just drunk?

2:13pm, 5 Apr 2012 - Gris
Lmao. Try Mayo

2:13pm - 5 Apr 2012 - Sasha
Just use a wand to break the railings.
But, are you drunk?  If so, maybe don’t cast by your head
2:13pm - 5 Apr 2012 - Sasha
Do you need me to come over

Fig scrolled up to see what they were all talking about. Typical Frank, utterly incapable of actual nastiness. Fig typed out a quick response.

2:16pm, 5 Apr 2012 - no. frank stole my phone. best he coudl come up with

"Is it broken?" Frank asked again.

Figaro held it up so Frank could see the cracked screen.

"You shouldn't have been such a loser," Frank insisted. "Mirror of Erised revelations are actually really personal and it's not funny to speculate on what someone else saw."

Figaro sighed, irritated by his brother's indignation and headed past Frank back inside. "Merlin, you're sensitive. Why are you so embarrassed about it?"

He was unrepentant, honestly unable to imagine what Frank saw that he'd be so protective about. Figaro was an open book and almost completely shameless.

"I'm not embarrassed, it's just private!" Frank insisted, following.

"Same thing!"

"No, it's not!"

The back door slammed behind Frank who stood behind Figaro who was back at the laundry closet. Figaro sighed again - Frank wasn't going to drop it.

"Look," he began again, to make some attempt at brotherly advice. "I don't know what you saw, but if it's true to you, just bloody own it. If you don't make a big deal about it, no one else will."

Frank frowned and crossed his arms. "That's easy for you to say. No one expects anything out of you. People expect things from me."

Figaro looked over his shoulder at his little brother. His voice had broken over the fall and had shot up a few inches. He wasn't a little kid anymore but Figaro couldn't imagine what pressure he could be under. He sniffed.

"It's true!" Frank insisted. "You can mess up and nobody cares! I have to be perfect because you're a fuck-up! Actually, who cares? Make fun of me all you want, I don't care anymore."

With that Frank stormed off, back up the stairs to their room where he grabbed his things. Presently he stomped back down the stairs to head out the front door.

Figaro called at his back. "Hey! Where are you going?"

"None of your business! And stay out of my room forever!"

1.	Texts provided by the characters' respective writers in the #group_texts channel in Discord.