Bathory's silent applause brought a dark color to Alvis's cheeks, which burned red as a glass of wine. He swallowed heavily and pressed his lips together to hold in his first reaction, which was a babbling string of apologies. He wasn't actually sorry for what he'd written down. It'd be dishonest to pretend otherwise, even if it did smooth things over. He just had to reap the results of what he'd sown and get it over with.

"This isn't something I'd joke about, Professor," he muttered, barely moving his lips to do so. He nodded when ordered to stay after class and moved his schoolbag into his lap to pack up. He relaxed, ever so slightly, when that intense monocular gaze moved to Amara. The Professor's kindness sounded forced, no doubt strained by his anger, but Alvis got the feeling it was well-intentioned nonetheless.

Around him, the class began to back up, some eager to escape into the halls while others lingered, apparently eager to witness whatever Kesali had in store for him. And, of course, there was the matter of the rocks to deal with. Alvis nudged the few that had managed to slide under his desk out in the open with his foot, keeping his gaze down and pointedly away from Ambrose.

The flutter of falling paper drew his attention, right to an animated sketch that lay abandoned. The charm was well-placed and the art style was familiar, as he'd seen a glimpse of it during their runes projects last semester. The subject, or at least one of them, was even more so. And what he and his partner were doing...

The flush got darker. Alvis quickly turned away cleared his throat, hiding the name "Addison," in his cough. He jerked his head once towards the fallen sketch and hoped she'd get the message. Last thing Ravenclaw needed now was more points sacked or another fourth-year in detention.

'This isn't something I'd joke about, Professor,'

"I would hope not, Alvis." His voice was so direct but a bit more quiet than normal, "Because it's not funny." Gale turned to the rest of the class, "I hope that you understand why I use personal information about you by now. I want you to be a bit more passionate about learning the charm, and relating it to yourself is the easiest way. The real world, the likely chance that you are going to be silencing a bird just out of annoyance is slim to none, but put in it's place a rumor that can ruin you--you will work harder at I'm sure. It's a big tough world out there guys, and after this year you have a big set of demands. You may still be children, but you certainly are not babies. I would hope that when 5th year comes around we will be ready to tackle this again.'

'To each student I will give you all 5 points, and thank you for your time today. Regular lessons will resume tomorrow so I expect you all to be ready. You will have a quiz on the lesson from last week and I think maybe an essay the following. Prepare for that." With a big breath he looked at his pocket watch, "All of you can go. Save for you Mr. Norling. I expect you to sit right there. And bring me that bit of paper?" He extended his hand for whatever it was Alvis had now.

"Take it easy Pepper-" The Professor's advice was lost on the irritated teenager who flailed his wand at the mechanical bird in an effort to knock it out and stop it talking.

Amidst the confusion the bird croaked something about someone's father and the bird was rattled back into a cage. Suddenly, the Professor wasn't angry about Ambrose's incorrect spell, but who had written something.

Landing his backside back down onto his chair beside Zeta, Ambrose scowled around the classroom, everything nearby dusted in sand-like debris.

Norling admitted to whatever the professor was annoyed about, much to Ambrose's surprise. The two boys had grown up with families who socialised with each other, and Norling generally kept his nose clean.

"… Mister Pepper.. please clean up the rocks…"

Ambrose had been too busy staring at Norling and wondering what the heck he'd done to react at first until he saw Zeta shoot him a look.

"Oh right, yeah." On his feet, tongue sticking out, he attempted evanesco which took a couple of goes to even work half-heartedly. Truth be told, he was furiously eavesdropping on Norling and Kesali. Whatever Alvis had done, it was either because he'd been an idiot (which was an opportunity too good to miss out on), or because he was trying to get attention from Kesali in an unconventional way.

By unconventional, Ambrose meant, not bursting into tears in a lesson or after, or on Kesali's office doorstep, all of which were bona fide ways of achieving his mother-goose act and some sort of bakery product.

As the rest of the class filed out, Ambrose ducked down beneath the desk level out of sight, still slowly cleaning up his mess, but with no great haste.

"All of you can go. Save for you Mr. Norling. I expect you to sit right there. And bring me that bit of paper?"

Another visible cringe from Alvis. As the rest of the class began to shuffle out with a varying range of interest, he stayed where he'd been ordered. He spotted Ambrose pretending to clean up and made a point of not looking his way. This whole situation was bad enough without the gloating of his former playmate.

Shooting Addison an apologetic glance, Alvis leaned down to pick up the drawing...and then thought better of it, once he'd thought over the professor's exact words. He picked up his bag instead, lay it on the desk, and folded his hands over it before clearing his throat.

"I...I'm afraid that's a contradiction, sir. I can't sit 'right here' and bring you anything. I can only do one or the other."

Merlin's pants, where was all this coming from? He liked Kesali! He'd always tried to do good in Charms. And yet here he was, mouthing off. Alvis supposed it must be his own fault. St. Laurence had gotten under his skin, and now he'd gone and attached that same feeling of unease to his kindly (if eccentric) son.

He squirmed a bit as the classroom emptied out, finding himself unable to look Professor Kesali in the eye. He stared at the grain of his desk instead, waiting until they were (nearly) alone to start talking. "I didn't lie, sir. And I didn't write that just to upset you. I just thought you aught to know, so long as we were sharing secrets."

Avoiding continuously awkward classroom moments were always a plus for Casey, having been through a few incidents himself. Especially as the professor such has Kesali got a kick for trying to worm secrets out of everyone, just for fodder to practice silence casting.

Just to get the students impassioned about casting the spell correctly? There were less intrusive ways of casting.

Although Casey's own dislike of the current classroom practical was largely glossed over...but because the source of the disturbance had come from Alvis Norling! Who had somehow gotten under the Professor's skin. It felt like an idiom to the effect of 'don't mess with others private affairs if you don't want your own found out' should apply here, though Casey was largely thankful for class being let out a few minutes early.

But he did slow in his packing, as the Professor dismissed everyone but Alvis. From that unfortunate day in November Casey had swapped bodies with Alvis, his suspicions of Norling's Legilimens-ic sense had been confirmed. Had they gotten to a point where Alvis had found out something about Kesali through that skill?

Curiosity was piqued but what could Casey do? There would be no point of getting involved, of suggesting that he was possibly aware of what Norling knew (which he didn't) or was familiar himself with the subtleties of mental defense and penetration.

So Casey left with everyone else. Perhaps with more to ponder than the rest of them put together.

After her last possession was packed up in her bag, Addison turned on her heel quickly with the intention to immediately leave the room. She hadn't even taken a step yet when she heard what she thought was Alvis saying her name. "Yes Alv-" stopping after noticing his rather odd head gesture.

"Are you alright Alvis? You don't have to worry about potentially losing points," she sympathized with him. Addison didn't follow Alvis's message, and didn't even know that her sketch fell. She was just about to leave again, when Professor Kesali asked Alvis for a paper. Paper…? It took her a moment to realize that a piece of paper was on the ground.

Suddenly, Addison couldn't help but to wonder if she tucked her artwork of Professor Kesali and Chaz in her bag. The paper did look familiar … Oh no. Was that her drawing? She looked up at Alvis, just as he began talking to Professor Kesali. Swearing under her breath, she honestly had no idea what to do. Alvis was talking back to the Professor and her drawing was being requested by Professor Kesali. This didn't bode well for Ravenclaw's house points.

It wouldn't do now to snatch the paper up. Professor Kesali already noticed it. He would probably yell at her. Actually, he would yell at her if he saw the paper anyway. It was a lose-lose situation. Perhaps it would simply be forgotten if she could just sneak out of the room. Slowly, she began to back up towards the door.

Despite his slow clean up, it was clear he wasn't going to get much out of lingering, despite his curiosity. Kesali would spot him in no time and chuck him out regardless. So siphoning off the rest as best he could, which wasn't fantastic, given Ambrose's dodgy wandwork he grasped his stuff and made it out of the classroom a little while after the rest of his classmates, leaving the classroom atmosphere very toxic indeed.

Even if he hadn't gleaned anything else, Zeta, Juni, Winnie, Addison and the other girls were very good at keeping him in gossip, either directly or indirectly. They were like spies, those girls.



Exit Ambrose