Wednesday
20 October 2009
7:13 pm

It was dinner in the Great Hall.  A lively time when the school day was done, and all the students and staff of Hogwarts gathered together for a meal.  Many a work of wizarding fiction depicted this nightly event as one of idyllic community 'neath the darkening sky as performed by the enchanted ceiling.  Fresh-faced youth sat shoulder to shoulder, nodding and remarking on the days' events, sharing a joke or jest, and please-passing-the-potatoes.  And the honorable staff, they at their Head Table presided proudly over the supper, speaking of loftier topics and commenting on the state of Magical Education.

For some reason, these fond nostalgic passages and painting didn't do justice to the Great Bogey Bean Wars. 

Figaro looked over his shoulder at the Head Table, before he set a round steamed soy bean on the table propped up under his index finger, and then flicked it with his other finger into the waiting wide-open mouth of his opponent.  It flew wide and bonked into the back of a Ravenclaw who didn't seem to notice the very small projectile's impact.

Just a typical Hogwarts School dinner...



"Look at this one," Figaro, a lad of nearly 17 at Hufflepuff table,  was saying as he lifted his chin up high to reveal a thin pale scar underneath his jawline.  "Riding a broom up and down the stairs, slipped and cut my face open.  Blood everywhere."

They were comparing scars now.  Figaro had quite a few.  It was a combination of looking-without-leaping and the desire to pick at scabs and refuse all poultices.  Left him with a small array of boyhood battle scars on his pointier extremities. 

Ligeia was especially pleased with the end of today, not only for her classes but for finally finishing what had taken her nearly the month of October. Emblazoned on her chest opposite her Prefects badge were the monogrammed letters. She was thrilled with her needlework, many a meditative night had been spent at the task.

She wanted the first set of letters to be labor intensive, a sign of craftsmanship. Sewn from a whole spool of red thread, the infrequent wave of her wand and drops of blood whenever she pricked  her finger. Something she did out of fun more often than what was a required number of sewing accidents. But she wouldn't have time to repeat the same work over all of her clothes. Maybe she could make a patch and then embroider that? Or make a request of the other Mr. Morgan. That reminded her of the progress of her Halloween costume...

The idea had been sparked, in a roundabout way, from the inclusion of Salem to their school which reinvigorated Ligeia's interest in her New English literature. She could have put this off until tomorrow but she rushed her last free hours of the afternoon to get it complete on her spare uniform. Then, overjoyed, she changed into it just for dinner.

Already the others along Ravenclaw table were giving her odd looks about it, attention Ligeia craved the same as any other. Nobody had asked about the letters, exquisitely arabesque but freakishly fuzzy. And it twitched at times, moving like a living but squashed pair of bugs set above her breast, the tendrils squirming like broken insect legs. A dull crimson magically faded.

Ligeia had stood to scan the table for more gravy, perhaps another table had more leftover. Her short walk ended with wayward beans crushed under her shoe and overhearing Figaro proclaimed the scars on his body.

"Oh Figaro, you're so lucky," Ligeia stooped over the table to see, clearly interested with the scrapes the Hufflepuff had acquired. "I've never been able to keep anything to keep. But then I feel there should be an artistry to collecting scars if it's something that will be on your body for the rest of your life."

Sophie was loitering near the Hufflepuff table as well, apple in hand as she discussed an upcoming SAWS meeting with a handful of other years[1] and her cousin Cassie hovering at her elbow. She still hadn't convinced Zel that he should attend meetings... but since Ollie had left after the last full moon Sophie's steam engine of determination had slowed to a crawl. There had been classes to worry about, boys to fuss over, and she had just finally set her heart and stomach to ease in the belief that Fig was going to be able to keep his big yapper shut about their secret werewolf companion. Telling Sellaphix was a necessary evil, she hadn't relished in convincing Zee to do it but she was sure it would have been worse if Fig figured it out in his own time.

Biting into a freshly polished apple, she almost barked with laughter as Fig started going on about his scars, "Oy, Figgs, why don't you tell them about that little gem Envy left you with last summer. Your tooth still wiggle mate"? It was all said in good cheer as she wandered down the row of Hufflepuffs to muss his hair, "It was a thing of beauty, that night. I wish Olls and I had got it on film. Though considering your skin is a bit like a Victorian Lady shut-in's and marks up so easy it's hardly something to brag about. Why if you stubbed your wee little toe I bet you'd think it needed amputation," this was their relationship, finally back to normal. They picked on one another mercilessly but it was better than the weird not speaking at all. They were proper friends again, and she was very glad of that. She'd never tell him, but she'd missed the wanker quite a bit when they'd been fighting.

1.	feel free to have one of your students be included in this little gab session

Ayla had been finishing up her Dinner when Sophie had moseyed on over to the Hufflepuff table. As she spoke of the next SAWS meeting Ayla assured her that while she had walked out of the last one she'd still be attending the next one. She had finally heard from Lexus - albeit in a roundabout way - and was feeling a little bit better about the whole situation. Hopefully the next meeting wouldn't be as eventful as the last.

Ayla chuckled at Figaro, "That's nothing, ever see a Yeti claw mark? Right nasty things." She glanced at the albino Ravenclaw, "Bet you've seen one Ligeia." Ayla wasn't about to show off, not in the Great Hall. She may have bared her clawed belly during a Care of Magical Creatures class the previous year but she had been frightened and upset with Professor O'Morain at the time and wasn't exactly thinking about who might be peeking.

"Growing up Muggle with a brother like Erik, I've got more scars than I can count."

Figaro grinned as more of his friends joined in on the parade of scars, and as Ligiea congratulated him - she was certainly the type to appreciate this.  Suddenly many people were poking in, rolling up sleeves and pant-legs to show off their own peculiar markings, each with its own tale.

It was strange having the discussion without Olivia Foley who had the best scars.  It was probably better that she wasn't here right now though - Figaro might have said something offensive about her being a werewolf and pissed everyone off.  Not that he would have meant to. 

Speaking of Ollie, Sophie had swung around to dangle in front of everyone that embarassing night at Spellpunk where he'd drank too much Weasley's Logorrhea and told Envy Katakura that he wanted to tongue-kiss her, and she'd hit him in the mouth.  It had been an enchanted evening. 

"You're a poet, Flickwick," he said to Sophie after her ever-eloquent tear-down about his complexion.  He couldn't help but smile though - Sophie was damn good. 

"That was a magical night and I expect Envy will be getting back to me any day now about my offer.  Don't be jealous now."  Sophie wouldn't be, of course.  She was lip-locked with that crazy cur Deus Deres. 

Little Ayla with the Big Personality was up next, telling tales of Yeti scars.  The next bit just all came out at once.

"Speaking of pale and gnarly scars,"  he stood up in his seat a little to try and see where he was at...

"Zel Trumble's got the absolute best I've ever seen.  They are absolutely sick," he said as he mimed over his own back and mid-section.  "They go all up here, deep and gashy.  Werewolf bites just don't bloody heal, you know?  I mean, blows for Zel getting gnawed on by a werewolf, but hell I'd do it get badass super villain scars like th-"

Someone cut him off.  And he immediately realized his mistake. 

Josh was alos near the Hufflepuff table, chatting with Sophie about the next SAWS meeting.  He was looking forward to it. 

"Trust me, I've a few scars you'd be shocked to see. Jaw cut open? Try knee cut open. Fell onto someone's broken wand when I was five, when Harcroft Manor was attacked," Josh called over to Fig, who was nearby.  This meant he heard Fig's statement, and whirled around, noticing out of the corner of his eye he wasn't the only one.

"Shut up Fig!" He hissed.  He only hoped most people hadn't heard what Fig said clearly. If people had... it was dinnertime. The Hogwarts rumor mill was fast enough without making it completely redundant.

It was a nice dinner, though he attempted to ignore most of the talk about scars-- the only scars he would feel comfortable talking about were on his hands, and that was only because his mom had a rather temperamental owl that liked to bite every time it delivered a package to him. The owl was long dead, having died in Zel’s second year-- but he still had small scars where the owl broke skin. He, of course, was sitting at the Hufflepuff table, slowly eating his meal. He had just started getting comfortable eating full meals again, and was feeling relieved that he had a select few people to talk to about his werewolf problems-- Figaro and Sophie.

Now, he wasn’t ready to join SAWS. He didn’t quite trust the club as a whole, but he felt that he could for sure trust Sophie, her loud-mouthed friend, and of course Seto. Telling his roommates had been necessary, since it was only a matter of time before they realized that he was gone every full moon. It was better to tell them, and have them keep it quiet-- instead of talking to others about their suspicions. He had even grown comfortable enough to start changing in his dorm again, revealing the scars he had obtained from the attack. He was bitten twice; once on his shoulder, and once on his side. There were claw marks on his torso and arms as well.

As Zel vaguely listened to his fellow students, he thought he heard someone say his name. Figaro?

“Yeah, mate?” Zel asked, looking over the heads of the other Hufflepuffs so he could see the loud-mouthed boy wonder. “What is it--”

Then he heard it.

“I mean, blows for Zel getting gnawed on by a werewolf”

All he could do was hope that nobody else had heard him. Though, that was unlikely. Immediately, he became overwhelmed with emotion; Zel couldn't tell if he was angry, sad, frustrated, or embarrassed. Zel dropped his eating utensils, and they clattered noisily onto his plate. His heart was pounding, threatening to burst out of his chest. His large hands were trembling-- and soon he settled on an emotion. Zel absolutely knew exactly what he was feeling.

Betrayed. Completely, wholly, totally betrayed.

He had trusted Sophie’s arguably high opinion of Figaro, and had trusted that he would keep his mouth shut. If he had know that this was going to happen, he would have kept his mouth shut and gone to great lengths to explain why he was gone every full moon. ”I could have just lied and said that my sister needed moral support after every full moon.” He thought, ”I never should have told anybody in the first place.”

“Figaro.” Zel said loudly, with an uncharacteristically dark tone to his voice. There was absolutely no hint of nervousness, and no stutter. It almost did not even sound like Zel.

“Did you just say what I think you said?” His face looked, if possible, even paler than usual. There was no hint of color in his cheeks-- behind his light eyes, you could see flames. Cold, angry, bitter flames that barely masked a deep feeling of hurt.

Sometimes Ligeia thought of crafting her own scars but that would be incredibly messy. Still, no one at school yet had anything worse than the monuments to injured flesh that she had seen at St. Mungo's over the summer, both pre and post the WBA attack. She found herself addressed by one of the younger Hufflepuffs, Ayla. "Oh yes. Uncle Griffon has collected so many from when he was in Tibet." Having a half brother that worked amongst creatures was a conversation piece. "He doesn't know I know, but I once caught sight of him just out of the bathroom and there's a mark from a yeti swipe that does all the way to his--"

The location was cut off as Ligeia heard tell the most unbelievable phrase from Figaro's mouth. No, it couldn't possibly be so. There were only two werewolves at Hogwarts. One. Ollie had left, the other was just a first year attacked over the summer. What a thing for Figaro to suggest...

Then Joshua was quick to tell Figaro to shut it. Ligeia thought the Gryffindor prefect might have taken an arrow from his huntsman's quiver and jabbed it through Figaro's tongue with the ferocity of the order.

Ligeia, who always had some kind of grin across her face no matter how gruesome things got, wasn't smiling anymore. Her face could have been marble or bleached limestone.

Zel had to deny this, of course. But he didn't. Ligeia could see that his soul burned as if it was set to snap in two, to spill out of him. The demeanor, the unusual phrasing, the fact that his first words were not ones of no...it confirmed it.

Was Zel Trumble a werewolf?

Then Ligeia realized. She should have guessed, there were signs she knew to look for. The evidence from every odd minute partnered in classes, from study sessions in the library[1] or other moments catching up. The wasted look around his eyes, the skeletal frailness, the rue of his skin that made it look dead instead of just lacking pigment like her own. That gaunt, haunted look. Ghaunted. She had found it charming. And most of all the books Zel had been reading, books on Defense or Dark Creatures that covered werewolves in detail.

She should have known, because she might have been able to do something to keep the secret safe...

1.	The Suddenness of a Paper Cut

The ripple at the Hufflepuff table was visible from the head table.  Leopold liked to keep an eye on his students during dinner.  It allowed him to spot certain trends before they developed into something troublesome.  From what Leopold could see, someone had said something inappropriate.  It happened all the time.  They were dealing with teenagers after all.  There would be a few words exchanged, possibly a little shoving but classmates would intervene and friendship would prevail.  Things would settle down again. 

"Yes, I'm quite worried that Envy is going to smother you in kisses and drive me insanely jealous, you wanker," she lightly punched his shoulder, all in good humor until that moment when it wasn't funny anymore. The moment she had feared coming since she had convinced Zel there was no choice but to tell lest Fig figure it out and bring it up over breakfast. She went pale and felt as though her stomach might heave up all it's bile. She was caught somewhere between panic and rage when she hefted her apple at the Hufflepuff's head hard, voice ringing out over the top of the din of dinner, "FIGARO SELLAPHIX, YOU USELESS BIG MOUTHED TWAT"!

Then she heard Zel's voice and her blood ran cold and she wanted to cry. This was all her fault, she never should have told Zel to tell Fig. She should have been with him, she should have spelled it out in small simple easy to understand words one would most likely use with toddlers. That was apparently when his brain had stopped maturing. "How could you Fig? Merlin knows you've got a mouth and a half but we're not twelve anymore! You can't just go flapping your bloody gums whenever the notion strikes you," not satisfied with the damaged her apple may have done to his head she cuffed him upside the ear roughly, "You are the most scatterbrained selfish human being I've ever met," her brown eyes bored holes into the side of his skull as she waited for him to try and defend himself. She was going to kill him, or as close as she could get without being sent to Azkaban.

Zel said his name, and just that single word was enough to sink his heart straight into his gut.  Figaro only had a second to absorb what he'd just done before everyone started shouting.

Joshua told him to shut up, and someone from over at Ravenclaw table had echoed the announcement.  "What? Zel's a werewolf!?"  And now Sophie was laying into him like it was her job.  Apples, fists and shouting and Figaro was on his feet to defend himself.

"Ow! Stoppit! I'm SORRY!" he shouted at Sophie at everyone, his hands up.  In this moment, he was motivated less by penitence than by the embarrassment of totally banjaxing Zel's wholelife.

Now up on his feet, like many people around him, he tried to explain.  With indignant shouting.  "I don't care that Zel's a werewolf!  It's no big deal, is it? He's still him! Ollie was my best mate!  Lay off!"

As far as dinners in the Great Hall went, there was nothing out of the ordinary this evening. Raine had eaten very quickly and was just passing by the Hufflepuff table on her way out-- when Maurice, eternally shadowing her, gave off a sudden yowl. The prefect turned to look at the cat and lifted her gaze just in time to catch a glimpse of Sophie Flickwick's outburst.

"FIGARO SELLAPHIX, YOU USELESS BIG MOUTHED TWAT!"

Merlin's beard, she was loud. But the apple was a nice touch. Only... Raine stopped to stare. Sophie didn't appear to be alone in her displeasure. There wasn't a single face surrounding Figaro who didn't look like they were either surprised or angry; and it didn't take further conjecture to catch the wave of exclamations resonating across the Hall.

Trumble, a werewolf. Raine gravitated towards the table with a crease between her fiery eyebrows, watching Figaro jump to his own defence but standing closer to Zel's side of the table. The logic clicked into place; why her swimming buddy insisted on doing laps in his clothes, his self-conscious stance. To her: it didn't change anything, what he was, but observing the crowd of students around the incident... the same clearly couldn't be said for many others.

And what Figaro had just done was monumentally imbecilic, regardless.

Josh watched as things exploded. Zel had apparently heard, and started grilling Fig, which rather impressed Josh, since he could practically feel the fury coming from the (apparently) werewolf. it's always the quiet ones Josh thought, since he had lats seen such fury the time Scirey had been kidnapped. Josh was barely holding in his own fury at Fig being so stupid Apparently, Sophie didn't bother.[1] Josh thought for a minute, then couldn;t help but snort at Fig trying to defend himself. "FIG. Are you trying to spread it as quickly as possible. SHUT UP AND THINK BEFORE YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH AGAIN YOU STUPID IDIOT" He yelled, his voice shaking with fury. It hadn't bene that long ago that werewolf students were expelled, and Fig was blabbing about one?  Stupid idiot.

1.	nice throw. She might make a good archer if her aim's this good

He took a few deep breaths as an attempt to calm himself, to no avail. This was too much, and it had been so unexpected. What was he going to do?  How was he even going to face people that he considered to be fairly good friends? Ligeia and Raine—they were sure to look at him differently. Perhaps Ligeia would think it was pretty cool in her usual morbid way, but Raine… Zel didn’t know how she would react to such a thing. He didn’t even want to think about how he would tell Sasha; it was the last thing that the werewolf wanted to do. Quickly, he tried to think of a few positive outcomes that this situation could bring him.

The only positive one was he no longer had to swim in clothes, and that did not even get close enough to balance out the possible detrimental outcomes. It wasn’t enough. Zel did not take his eyes off of Figaro. He was surprised that people were so quick to get on his case, to tell him to shut up. Sophie in particular was physically assaulting him for letting the secret slip out.

Zel stood up sharply. He wanted to hurt Figaro, throw something at him, beat him with a goblet. He also felt like being violent was a way to only further perpetuate the myth that werewolves were out of control, angry creatures. He looked over at Raine and shook his head. It was comforting to have a friend near, but at the same time he was worried about how she would view him. Well, even if he didn’t have Raine, he’d have Maurice.

He walked up to Figaro slowly, unsure of what exactly to say. The dorms were going to be awkward tonight. Zel looked from Sophie, to Figaro, and back again. “I thought the point of SAWS,” He said, “Was to support and protect werewolves, not out them.”

Church had more or less been keeping to himself at Revenclaw all dinner. Somewhere along the line he had noticed some commotion, however, yelling and the like at Hufflepuff. Never really a good sign, Church lifted his head from his meal to see what was going on.  Quite a group of non Puffs had gathered. Which certainly explained things, it was usually different houses going at it. With a sigh Church stood and quickly began making his way over to the table. He didn't really care what the argument was about. He simply wanted to defuse it as best as possible. They didn't need students shouting at each other in the middle of dinner. That, after all, reflected poorly on the school.

He was about half way there when he heard Harcroft. Was he serious? Did he honestly just say that? "HARCROFT!" Church shouted, now half sprinting to the table. Unbelievable! He was a prefect for Christ's sake. When was it ever appropriate for him to talk to students as such. Up until now Church had been more or less neutral with the boy. But after that, his view certainly darkened.

"Harcroft!" Church repeated reaching the table. "Do. Not. EVER, insult a student like that again." His voice was steady yet the rage behind it was obvious. Church shook slightly as he did his best to contain it. "You are a prefect. Unless thay are about to get themselves or someone else severely injured, which I doubt is the case here, you do not go around berating the other students. And you certainly do not do it like an ape so the entire hall can hear! I do not care what Sellaphix said or did, you do not handle it in such a grossly inappropriate manner. Are. We. Clear?"

Church glared the boy down before slowly exhaling. Turning now, he faced Trumble and the others. "Now," He continued, voice oddly clam for the harsh reprimand he had just given. "What on Earth is going on here?"