It was back to school, then. Bugger. Georgiana liked summer - she really really did. It gave her a chance to get away from this school and its annoying inhabitants, away from her brother and his annoyingly accurate guesses in regards to how well she'd done her homework, and above all it let her lounge on the couch and call people rude things over the internet.

The tournament was an interesting point, though. She wasn't sure, yet, if she was going to enter; but she was growing increasingly surprised by her growing desire to. There was a draw there she couldn't describe - a sensation like her future was going to change drastically this year.

Hmm. Maybe she shouldn't have dropped Divination, but that new professor just wasn't anything approaching eye candy. Also, snore.

She sat by the lake, boots propped up on a rock as she sat on another, her sketchbook on her legs. Her pencil danced across the page, scrawling out varius curves and dark shapes, which were gradually coming together to form into a pretty woman. All around her on the page were dark curls, and in the dark, she'd started to draw eyes -

A loud burst of tweeting erupted from a nearly tree as some bird decided to scream its presence to the world. Her line went wild, scratching a deep groove in the paper. She stared at it in annoyance, tossing her long hair over her shoulder, and then glared death at the tree.

"Shut up!" she yelled. This only earned her a momentary reprieve; right as she touched pencil back to paper the bird went off again.

She sighed, put her pencil on her sketchbook and reached down, pulling her crystal wand from her boot. Nature and its goddamn noise -

"Goddamn! I warned you!" she said, and when the bird seemed to get louder, she raised her wand at the tree. "Incendio!"

The tree burst into flame, and the tweets vanished as the bird fled. Pleased with her work, Georgiana replaced her wand and picked up her pencil. The fire made a lovely dance of color on the water, actually - she watched it a moment, and then started rummaging for her colored pencils.

Deus was not, despite all appearances, prepping for another year of slacking off. His class load was…light, but he had, in fact, taken the pre-class break time to filch a textbook on Ancient Runes from one of his classmates actually enrolled in the class, safely presuming its absence would not be detected with everyone otherwise occupied by pre-school shenanigans. He was, most disturbingly perhaps, studying. Before class even began. For a class he didn't even take. Which was why he was up in a tree—had a reputation to maintain.

So when the branch he was perched comfortably on exploded into flames, Deus had about half a second to wonder which restless deity of laziness he had mortally offended with his diligence, before launching off the branch into a surprisingly well executed dive that turned into a somersault when his hands—the damaged one still holding the filched tome—hit the ground, slapping it again with his arms to absorb the impact as he finished the loop and came to a rest, unharmed but smoking a bit, on his back.

This was not the first time Deus had needed to quickly evacuate an explosive height.

It occurred to him to wonder what that said about his life.

The 'borrowed' text disappeared unobtrusively into his robes. "Oy! Warn a bloke, will ye?" Deus shook his hair out his eyes and started to sit up until he saw just which pretty who had seen fit to try and blow him to bits.

That was another thing that seemed to happen a lot in his life.

It occurred to him that maybe he needed to work on his people skills.

Flopping his upper half back down onto the ground with loud, melodramatic wheeze of agony, belied by the quick flash of a cheshire cat grin, Deus gasped pathetically, "Oh! Oh! I'm down!  I'm dying! Dying! Wounded! Help! I need mouth-to-mouth!"

Deus flew from the tree, and Georgiana jumped in surprise. As she watched him fall, she couldn't help it - her pencil scratched across the page, doodling out his dark form against the flames so she could remember it. Of course - kind of to her disappointment - he wasn't on fire. Oh well, that'd keep her out of trouble - though maybe she should have checked the tree for idiots before she set it ablaze. Not that she was really worried - it was Deus, after all. He wasn't exactly unexpendable.

Well - he sort of was. God knows the Slytherins would be boring without him, and if there was one thing Georgiana hated, it was boredom. Deus was entertaining, which put him leagues ahead of half their super-serious whiny classmates. Especially when he was winding up said super-serious whiny classmates.

She sighed and closed her sketchbook, leaving it on the rocks and walking over as Deus rolled around and cried out theatrically. She restrained a smile, but when she was in proper earshot she ran to his side, herbrow knitted in confused concern.

"Oh no, Deus!" She said, her voice full of utterly fake concern, dark hair forming a kind of curtain as she knelt over him. "I'm so sorry! Here, let me help!" And with than she fell fully to her knees, folded her hands together, and hit him in the solar plexus repeatedly.

"Oops," she said, after a moment, tucking her hair behind her ear. "That's too low, isn't it?"

Georgiana Trishna was a 40's pinup dreamgirl. She was difficult to nail down sometimes, pretty easy to read on others—not that Deus would ever tell her that—and she was, unequivocally, brutal. This was a fact Deus knew, accepted, and usually took a bit of possibly masochistic amusement from. And there was something of that, all of that, in the light in her eyes as the first fake notes from her pretty lips. A resigned sigh started in his throat right alongside a wry, muted chuckle. This was not going to end well.

Not that he really thought he'd mind.

He had a horrified second to brace at the let me help, and took the jabbing philosophically.

"Ye…" Deus wheezed out, "Are a cruel woman." He looked up at her in an expression that was a little bit like a glare but mostly like a kicked puppy dog; big, wide, wounded eyes that were just a little watery—for effect, of course. Not too watery of an effect. It was that look again. Gigi sometimes had that look in her eye that made Deus highly suspicious regarding whether or not she'd sock someone crying. He rather thought she might. It was one of the reasons he liked her.

"Aye-ya. A wee bit low yes." He managed to croak. And then because she had already hit him—and was possibly going to continue that course of action in the near future—he reached a hand up as though to redirect hers to the proper place to pound, and instead gave a hearty forward yank to drag her down instead, other arm going for her waist in attempt to roll and pin her before she could do any further damage to his internal organs. He had never believed in that nonsense about going easy on girls when it came to physical tussles. Especially not when they started it.

"So. Why's a pretty lass blowin' up school property?"

Georgiana just smirked, knowing full well he'd live. Deus couldn't have been Deus if the occasional beating did him in, after all - otherwise someone would've have drowned him years ago. Or Gracie would have skinned him.

She hardly had time to respond to him before she was hauled forward. She stuck her hands out automatically, her palms scraping on the rocks of the lake shore before Deus's arm went 'round her waist and her back hit the ground. Her breath hissed between grit teeth, pain that she promptly ignored shooting up and down her back. She brought a knee up between them, her leg forming a barrier.

Still, she just smirked, turning her head to the side. "Better question is, why were you in the school property I chose to blow up? Didn't think you're the sort to pretend to be a bird," she said, bringing her other leg up. Instead of kicking him, though, she just hooked it around his waist.

OOC: Armiiiiece. I don't know what this post is. I'm sorry XD

All in all, Deus didn’t really mind taking a beating now and again that he knew he could handle. For one, it left people comfortable in their superiority, and Deus was infinitely more comfortable being underestimated. It went hand in hand with his general laziness—if you surprised people in a fight, you usually got to end it a little quicker. His pride was a slippery thing, but notably not dependent in the least on the opinions of others. His political playground of choice was slightly lower in the strata than Hogwarts. And hey, well, it toughened you up a bit, he rather thought. The boy could take a serious punch these days.

He’d been keeping a keen eye on her knees—dangerous weapons, Georgiana Trishna’s knees—and while he didn’t quite jerk away when she brought it up, he did wince ever so slightly in an automatic reaction to anything being in quite that close a vicinity to some rather delicate real estate he was partial to. He turned the wince into an easy smirk, though he kept his one knee angled as a defense just in case.

“Nae, darlin. That ainnae better question at all.” The hazel eyed boy clucked in disappointment, shaking his head so brown waves of hair swung slightly. “Ah donnae seem the type tae be pretendin’ tae be a bird?” Deus snorted and let a languid smile spread on his face that was belied by the easy readiness of his muscles and the wary eye he still kept on her various (dangerous) limbs. Not that the wariness wasn’t mixed with a healthy bit of pure appreciation.

Gigi had some fabulous limbs.

He raised an eyebrow as one of them wrapped around his waist, but kept his tone easy as though he hadn’t noticed.

Though really, you’d have to be an inferi not to. Why she covered up so much of them up with those boots that must have weighed a ton was beyond him. Shame. He sighed for it. “Ye mean Ah donnae remind ye o’ a wee tweetin’ ball o’ feathers?” Still keeping his hands in place to keep her in place—his grip wasn’t forceful at the moment, but it was hard to say with Deus just when he was going to be a gentleman and when he’d keep you trapped just because he could—he flapped his elbows like a chicken. “It’s me voice, innit? Just too deep and manly fer ye tae be thinkin’ o’ me as a liltin’ soprano gull.” And then, because he was a firm believer in never answering a direct question with an actual, useful answer, he nodded decisively as though he had, and changed the subject.

 “And then what about ye? Playin’ dragonfire?” His eyes sparkled, but he let the expected joke about things getting hot stay behind his lips. Hardly any fun to do the expected. “Or did the poor auld woods just offend ye?” He pretended to imagine it. “Aye, its leaves were a bit garishly green. Cannae be allowin’ that. Mucks up th’ whole look o’ the place.”

“Some trees,” he sighed, “Just have no class.”