Casey did not need to be told why he was being made to come here. It could all be traced back to That Final last year that would put him on probation.[1] And returning to school was doing nothing to help his academic standing. Things had started poorly in the first week and didn't improve from there. Always in the classes that didn't use a wand. 'No no stop using a wand!' Salazar's Shiny Pate you people make me sick! The oaf Hagrid picking him up all the time because he wasn't getting it on how to handle a damn book.[2] Why would anyone make a book that acted like a rabid wolverine? And his Herbology remedial...the less said about the stinkin' subject, the better.[3]

So, since Casey obviously wasn't improving to this unwritten standard, it was off to the counselor. Maiko Something in French and Japanese. Casey didn't know what to think of the woman. He was quickly compiling a list of the professors he needed to impress and the ones he cared less about. She didn't teach anything but she may have a hand is his academic standing so he best behave.

And why wasn't it elementary to act pleasant in all of his classes, like Transfiguration with Sandusky? In those classes the wand was the point of the class. He couldn't be questioned for his methods because everyone was to learn how to use their wand.

The meeting had been scheduled for a prime spot in the Sunday afternoon where he could have been planning. Still, he was compelled to show up. Dingy had throughly pressed his outfit, as usual. He knocked and entered the office.

1.	Third Year Herbology Final
2.	COMC - Curl Up With a Good Book
3.	Herbology Rem. - Odd One Out

Maiko was writing rather fervently on a piece of parchment, and once Casey came into her office, she stopped, looked up, and smiled. She had completely forgotten about the meeting until this very moment, but he was in no way intruding. “You must be Monsieur O’Doherty. Get comfortable.” She motioned towards a rather squishy chair that looked to be quite comfortable. She motioned towards a bowl that had little round blueberries covered in chocolate. “I made these myself. Help yourself.” With her sweet tooth, she always had some sort of treat in her office for herself, or others to munch on.

The counselor was, as usual, dressed fairly professionally, but always with a bit of color. She wore a typical black pencil skirt, and a purple blouse that she tucked in. Her curly hair was managed into a fishtail braid, though strands of shorter hairs were still loose. Her black robes were hung on the back of her desk chair. She wore pantyhose, though her feet had no shoes on them. Her shoes were left by her office door.

“Now, it seems like you ‘ave quite a bit of fun ‘ere, making trouble for your professors.” Maiko grinned, leaning back in her chair. “Would you like to tell me why you were sent to my office?” Her French accent was light, though her h sounds were chronically dropped. She did not seem angry, and was in fact being friendly. Mai saw no point in being rude to someone before listening to their story. She knew why others would have wanted him to visit her, but she wanted to hear it from Casey himself.

The comforty chair and sweets. The most subtle of tortures to pump people for information. Casey strutinized both elements. The chair was plush and not made out of leather so that was a good sign. He took a few chocolates. He could handle chocolate just fine but it was the possible fillings he had to watch for. These chocolate drops were rather small, like peas, so he unassumingly chucked a few into his mouth. The strong chocolate flavor masked the renegade blueberries...

Casey could soon summarize her features. A very professionally dressed woman, though not as stern has Hagrid's American co-teacher. Yet still vauguly Asian nonetheless. She addressed the problem as if it was now problem at all, being hanged in trees or wanting desperatly to pull out a contract kill on the castle caretaker. Casey was conflicted on whether to remain disdainful or match her jovial friendliness.

A little of both. "Making touble is not my primary goal. This is Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, is it not? I'm being penalized for gross overeactions from the staff on using magic."

She raised her eyebrow, though it was most definitely not in a condescending way, but more in an inquisitive way. From what she had heard, Casey O Doherty sorely lacked a respect for his teachers. However, she wanted to learn why. Maiko didn’t push the question yet, though it was still floating around in the back of her mind. She stood up from behind her desk and walked around, sitting down in a chair next to Casey, though not behind a desk. During conversations, she despised having physical barriers between people. It didn’t feel professional, it felt alienating.

“Well,” She chuckled lightly, “If your primary goal is not to make trouble, what is it?” Not his primary goal? Then that implied that it was still a goal of his, but not his number one goal. That thought was amusing, but she managed to keep a straight, but friendly face.  To her, there was no need to be rude or condescending, and Casey had yet to do anything in her office that would warrant a punishment. Her job, unfortunately, was not to carry out punishments. She could give out detentions, but Maiko was not responsible for giving out detentions due to what happened in a co-worker’s classroom.

“Give me the ‘onest answer. You have nothing to prove, ‘ere.” If students came in on the defense, how could she possibly learn more about them, about their motives, and help their teachers better understand them?

What was his primary goal? Casey had it down short of an actual written manifesto, because he hadn't bothered to dictate it to Dingy. Casey's expression became more exuberant and relaxed as he talked.

"Simple, I need to be a great and powerful wizard. To master all possible spells and have the might of my magic propel my name to equal status amongst the likes of Dumbledore, Grindlewald, even Salazar himself." As he worked up fame equal to the historical figures of old, he might even attempt to be on par with Merlin.

Although Casey had never actually spoken out his great mission to anyone else before, at least in terms were everything was stated altogether. He should do this more often, people rarely had any ideas of what they wanted to do in life and his was so clear cut and simple yet achieved a depth that truly made it a worthwhile venture.

...And as Casey talked, a blue splotch manifested on his nose, the color spreading out under his eyes as if his cheeks burned pink from cold wind...

“You’re very ambitious.” Maiko noted, and gave Casey a respectful nod. He was ambitious. He felt a need to prove himself, to show that he was good at magic. He needed to show that he was powerful, although his body was tiny and weak. He reminded her vaguely of a famous muggle from history Napoleon Bonaparte. She remembered that her grandfather had mentioned that some of their ancestors were in fact, very ardent Bonapartists. But, that didn’t matter, and she felt like comparing Casey to a muggle would have been rather insulting.  “If you work at it, you will be great. Just be careful, I don’t want you to dive into megalomania.” She said kindly.

When his nose turned blue, she immediately grew concerned. “Monsieur O’Doherty. Your nose is blue.” She raised her eyebrows. “Is there something wrong?” She tried to run through all the different scenarios in her head. Did he have an autoimmune disease? Did someone hex him? Did he have allergies? Afflictions in magical beings could show up in strange ways. To be safe, Maiko grabbed the bowl of chocolate blueberries, and set them behind her. Then, she glanced around the room, looking for other possible stressors.

“Are you feeling alright?” She inquired with concern evident in her tone.

"You're very ambitious." Goodness, he'd only seen this level of stating the obvious in Transfiguration before Naomi Foley had stormed out of class. It was like saying merpeople lived underwater. Ambition was only one of the founding principles in the house of Slytherin. "I will ensure that any megalomania is justly earned on my part before exercising it."

His nose was blue? Salazar's Shiny Pate! He touched his nose, a stupid motion because you couldn't feel what a different color felt like. He hated it when this happened, HATED IT...and there it was again, like his brain sighed and decided to give up on being angry. There must be something wrong with him, something broken since last year if he wasn't able to use rage as a motivator anymore.

"It is an allergy," Casey said contritely, as if uninvited guests had shown up for dinner. "There must have been blueberries in those." He pointed to the chocolates in suspect that she was moving. "Nothing's wrong, I'm not going to die or anything...but it is wrong that whenever I eat blueberries my skin turns blue and splotchy!"

Casey wasn't one to ramble but he continued to mumble as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Dozens of them, so annoying..."

“My apologies.  Je suis désolée.”  Maiko said earnestly. There were blueberries in it, and she put some of the blame on herself. After all, she didn’t ask him if he had any food allergies. Being allergic to blueberries was such a vague and unusual allergy, that it didn’t even cross her mind to ask. She felt guilty, but at the same time was relieved that it wasn’t something deadly. He seemed to be doing fine, though he was also quite annoyed. “Does it take long for it to go away?” Maiko inquired. She didn’t want him to get teased because his nose was blue and splotchy. “And are there other allergies I should be more careful with?”

Maiko wanted to be sure that nothing like this ever happened to him again while he was in her office. She was going to ask him several more questions about his education, his life goals and whatnot, but she wanted to first wait for him to get over the annoyance of having a blue nose. If the annoyance didn’t go away soon, though, Maiko planned on carrying on as if it never happened, until he became less uncomfortable with it.

"I only had three," Casey said. "Had it been concentrated like juice or sorbet, I would have been blue toe to forehead." He could talk with a blue nose he had half a conversation with with Kelvin Watkins while he was blue once.[1] This room was thankfully private, unlike Diagon outside of Fortesque's. "It will fade in a few hours."

"Oh the allergies are endless." Sardonically not caring. "There's no reason to it. You've avoided leather furniture, so that helps. Otherwise for sweets avoid marshmallows and...it's only certain nuts, but it's smarter to avoid them all. My house elf knows the entire nutritional knowledge of what I can digest."

"They're annoying obstacles but I've worked past most of them. Excluding Her--" He stopped. Perhaps he despised Herbology so much because there was never, not once, a session where his nose had become stuffy or runny, his breathing laboring, his skin prickling or his eyes watering just from entering a greenhouse.

1.

A Day Out

She nodded, noting the allergies so that in the future, she did not make him turn strange colors again. Maiko was thankful that it wouldn’t last long, so it would be gone by the end of the day. “So, let’s get back to why you are in ‘ere in the first place.” She smiled, “From my understanding, you were told not to use magic, but you did anyway. As a result, you put your classmates in danger.” The counselor did not say any of this in a condescending, judgmental, or rude tone. She just put the words out there as casually as she would have if she were talking about the weather.

“I understand that you want to be a great wizard, and you will be. I must say though, that you are still in school. Like it or not, you generally need to respect your professors. Using magic when they tell you not to, will in no way make you great. It will not make others recognize you for your talent, either.” She started playing with one of her curls that hung loose around her bangs, “It is, ‘owever, disruptive to the learning environment, and makes your professors rather brassed off.” Maiko gave the young Slytherin a smile, “I’m doing all the talking, sorry. Why exactly did you feel the need to go against your teacher’s wishes?”

One could argue that the notice to not use magic was only written on the board, never stated aloud, or said during a time past lesson with the plant in question that could be easily forgotten. All arguments that weren't really worth it, being easily deflected. Her smile was something Casey could not readily analyze. Was she finding his misadventures cute? Although talking to her was very much like talking to Vulpes.[1] Only this was something she was paid to do and Casey was not emotionally withdrawn like last time.

He would have to watch how much he said.

"I had finally gotten my wand back." He held it gingerly between two index fingers. "I mean, it should be my wand because its allegiance is to me. But it is a family heirloom and the head of the family is supposed to 'own' it. Whenever my grandfather faces a minor crisis he demands the wand back because of how powerful it is. Such an event occurred halfway along finals."[2]

"So I was, naturally, overjoyed to finally get it back before the end of the year and perhaps a tad overzealous about being able to wield magic with it again. But if I put the class in danger, I conversely also rescued it. From the threat of magically enraged baybarb." Casey himself had been the only casualty of the incident. Collateral damage if you included the plant and the corner of the greenhouse he was stationed in.

Why did so many people reflect on one mistake? Yes, Casey had been wrong, but for the O'Doherty method of self improvement you didn't look at past mistake when getting to perfection or you would never get there. Blazes, he was a changed student, leaving third and entering fourth year. Wasn't he? He had a mother who was in a much better position so the guilt didn't afflict his heart...and ostensibly inner fury wasn't working in his favor anymore, though that just may be from getting soft.

1.	Traitor to His Own Kind
2.	Charms Final '09

“Okay. Do you understand that you made a mistake?” Maiko asked, knowing that it wouldn’t really do anything for him if he was punished. After all, she felt like he was harassed enough; people simply were not nice to him. The only way to make Casey behave, she believed, is if he respected you. She felt like he did not respect his teachers, and therefore their words did not matter. She also believed that respect should be a mutual thing. If Casey did not feel respected and understood by his professors, why should be show respect to him? Maiko did not think that Casey should be expected to respect his professors, if they do not respect him from his point of view.

Maiko sighed, “Casey. You do understand. You’re not stupid.” She said, “I’m not going to punish you. It won’t do you any good. All I can do is ask you to look at your mistakes, and try to learn from them.” She leaned back in her chair and gave the Slytherin a little smile—it was very much real, just tiny. “You deserve respect, but in order to get respect, you must first show it. Try showing your teachers some respect, and you will probably get some in return.” Maiko paused, “I will also tell your teachers this. This ridiculous cycle needs to end at some point, and it’s not ‘ealthy for anyone involved.”

She truly believed that Casey was not the sole cause; his professors also needed to learn how to deal with him. He had not once been rude or disrespectful to her, but then again Maiko had yet to belittle Casey.

"Yes," he said out of obligation, "a mistake I'm not going to make again in the future." Easy enough to do: don't use magic on magically aggravated plants. Well, during class. Otherwise they made rather challenging quarry. Once Casey had not been caught off guard to suffer broken bones.

Blazes, of course he knew he wasn't stupid. Just like Vulpes, a sucker for a story told in the right way. Sucker or not, she did her job well for listening. Had that been what he was missing, an outlet where someone listened? That required more thought.

"Although good luck with Grey, he's not even a teacher." The caretaker overseeing his Herbology remedial was still on the lowest of Casey's rating of the staff. "Unless it's become a standard that all castle caretakers hate children. I don't believe I was that prudish during our first session but he hates everything about me." Casey wasn't complaining but the vigor in his voice could match Grey's default distain. Although given his family's reputation being an O'Doherty could be an instant obstacle to those that didn't give a fig about the Irish clan.

"It's a wonder how he was hired. I mean, just look at 'him'!" There was an involuntary shudder from Casey. However Grey had come to Hogwarts, Mr. Morgan seemed to be interested in his business. They must have been in school together.

She shook her head. There was not much she could do. She wasn’t exactly in a position of authority, and if the problems with Casey escalated, she would have to talk to Herschel. There were many who were skeptical of psychology in the magic community, so she felt like she may not have been taken seriously. However, it was common sense that in order to gain respect, one must show it. And if a student felt like he was not being respected, it was definitely an issue that the staff needed to face. “If ‘e continues to be a problem,” She said, “Let me know. I’ll arrange a meeting with ‘eadmaster Reid.” Maiko truly felt like students had every right to feel comfortable at school. After all, Casey had three more years left year, there was no point in making them miserable.

Maiko wondered if there were any other concerns revolving around Landis Morgan. She hadn’t personally talked to him, but he did have an eerie vibe that radiated from him. She didn’t particularly like or dislike him. Chances are, if Casey had problems with him, then other students probably had problems with him. If more students stepped forward and talked to her about Morgan, she would do her best to talk to Herschel about it. If it was a simple relationship issue between Casey and Morgan, than it wouldn’t warrant a meeting unless it got serious. If he was creeping out more than one student though, she would raise her concerns.

“Is there anything else you’d like to talk to me about while you’re ‘ere?” She asked, leaning back in her chair casually. She didn’t want him to feel rushed—especially since Maiko did not have any plans for the day. However, Maiko didn’t want to keep him longer than he needed or wanted to be there.

Casey contemplated the reasons to make another appeal to the headmaster. He was on thin ice himself with the way Herbology was going so if the counselor was making special claims for Casey's benefit...but the headmaster would listen to the words of a staff member. Casey had resolve, though, and stubbornly clung to his ways of handling things. At the simplest, he could shut up and shoulder the brunt of Grey's remedials. To a point, after which Casey would have to be very clever on how he usurped the crotchety girlish looking man.

There was nothing else Casey thought of to influence her opinions as she was clearly genuine in her concern. He heckled false pity. Pity of any kind, really, and she had yet to suggest in any way that he was weak even though one of the many embarrassing allergies had cropped up.

So, his demeanor elevated into a slightly more amused one. He relaxed somewhat, now taking the time to observe in full the qualities of Counselor Biladeau-Yukawa instead of his first impression, objective based analysis. He came back again to her appearance. Feminine elegance but a fraction of her personality. Not gaudily brandished like Aunt Maeve or all the superficial girls at school that annoyingly went on about makeup and fashion. While she was dressed this way Casey wasn't quick to label her a woman. Of course she was a woman, a witch, but not one that insofar used any of those 'feminine wiles' he heard so much about. Although a quick glance towards her feet, nylons without shoes, would bring up several opinions from Grandmother Neasa should she witness it. Probably many opinions with the state of several of the lady legs of Hogwarts, shunning the likes of Foley kickboxing a Monster book or that fishy first second year running around in nothing but a swimsuit. Only the Canterbury student -- the albino, not the model -- would match the elderly witch's conventions of dress. But then you didn't talk about the Canterbury's either because they were scattershot on the 'purist' agenda and they were all freaks!

And that is why I wear trousers. Beyond the fact mine look like chicken legs that could be snapped like wood splinters.

"Tell me something." Casey steepled his fingers as if the action let him take control of the space, owning the chair and office. "Why do you think people are never straightforward? Why they create all these unwritten codes to govern people's behavior, never stating the code until its deemed fit that the code has been broken?"

Stated as if this was an elaborate satirical joke only the truly clever people could understand. Well, it was funny every time Uncle Torna needed it explained to him.