"Wands," Landis said, hand out, palm expectant. Her tone brooked no argument. Her gimlet gaze was hard.

Around them, the boy's bathroom was filthy. It had mostly been restored to its former semblance, toilets and sinks and structure all solid. One almost couldn't guess at its recent violent spellsplosion... except for the small piles of rubble, and the gummy layer of filth, and of course, the vile almost solid smell.

The stench wasn't detectable until one passed the threshold, contained to the bathroom alone. But then it was like walking through a wall to strip one's sinuses. And while Landis had nearly eviscerated anyone who'd dared suggest anything about her and heels in the past five days, right now she'd almost welcome a four-inch distance from the glistening scum thoroughly coating the floor.

No flies, though. Alistair surprised her.

He'd left a small cache of cleaning supplies on a towel on the floor, which Landis nodded to as she took Rico and Blossom's wands. "I'll return them at the end of the night," she said - an afterthought, but necessary to include as many wizards, Landis included, found the idea of being wandless for any length of time absolutely repellent. "I'll be back at midnight to escort you to the Slytherin dormitories." It was the first night of potentially several spent in such a way... a depressing prospect, but Landis was being paid big bucks to babysit. They'd repeat this until the bathroom was fit for public use again. Though this curse was supposed to wear off in the next day or two, thank Merlin, so at least Landis would be back to normal (and thus naturally five times better at looming and sneering and other detention necessities) when next he dragged the two boys in to clean.

She raised a brow in silent query, waiting to see if either had any questions before she silenced them for the night.

Rico swallowed and handed his wand over immediately. He felt naked, stripped of what little protection he had now rested in the Hogwarts librarian's hand. Rico gripped his blackboard tighter, the box of blue chalk sat in his pocket, feeling like a lead weight.

He wasn't to excited with the knowledge that Landis would be returning to "escort" the two boys to their dormitories. He felt like he was five and still had to hold someones hand before crossing the street or getting on an escalator. He didn't like the feeling. Rico was an independent spirit, much rather be by himself or with the hippogriffs or his dog, Fagan, an Irish wolfhound.

Fagan was a present for Rico's 8th birthday and Fagan had saved Rico's life once while they were in the woods and Rico fell in a tangle of roots and broke his angle when he was 10. Fagan ran back to the estate and barked until someone came out and followed him to his tiny master, Rico would have frozen to death in the deep of the Ireland winter.

Rico missed Fagan, but his dog would not help him now. Morgan just stood there glaring at the two of them. Rico looked up from his black mucking wellies he had put on for the job. He would normally wear them to clean out the pastures and stalls back home. He asked Landis but one question, phrasing it to sound less stupid.

"What silencing spell will you use?"

At least he hoped it didn't sound stupid.

Blossom handed over his wand.  He had a pair of small chalkboards tucked under one  arm.  It would give the two boys at the very least a limited way to discuss what they were doing.  He also wore a pair of (borrowed) boots that were several sizes too large.  He had taken Landis at his/her word that he/she 'didn't care what he did' and had also brought a shovel and a squeegee, also borrowed.

He was already trying to restrict himself to not breathing unless absolutely necessary and when he needed to, he was doing so in small gasps through a barely opened mouth.  The bathroom seemed to have grown larger since he'd last seen it, the day before when he'd stuck his head in to see what he and Rico were facing.  The pile of cleaning supplies looked pitifully small compared to the vastness of the room and the thickness of the seemingly endless layer of goo that coateds the floor like thick caramel.

I am never eating pudding again after this.

"I will be using a stronger variation on the silencing charm," she told Rico, relatively patient. "It lasts much longer than the one you will learn in your fifth year, with no side effects or pain." It was just as easy to end as its weaker cousin, however, but after taking both their wands and their voices Landis didn't worry too much about that.

She regarded them for a moment, one boy slightly nervous, the other apparently resigned. She hadn't actually said anything to them about the feud when she'd had them in her office, only made a point about the kind of behavior that honored one's family, and the kind of behavior that did not. Perhaps that had been a mistake, and she should have been specific. Sandusky had been so frantic about this - she remembered vividly the way he'd slapped down the geneology charts, his "there have been several deaths in the last fifteen years that can be directly attributed to this feud."

Yet neither of the boys' explanation for the scuffle had included factors more significant than the average schoolboy scrap. Standing in front of her now, they weren't even openly antagonistic toward each other: they were just two children, shifting on their feet and wrinkling their noses at the smell. Maybe they didn't know. Perhaps their parents were protecting them, waiting to tell them when they were older of their family's 500-year old ability to hold a grudge. That was something that parents did, Landis thought. She personally considered it stupid to hide that kind of thing, like hiding an adoption or the death of a pet. In this case, it was a string of murders spanning to the current day - did they tell the children their uncle or great-aunt or whoever had run away? Perhaps that they'd gone to the great pureblood farm? How strange that this might be the case, but it made sense. Children were either protected... or indoctrinated.

She wasn't sure yet which was true for Blossom Rose and Rico Posada, but there was no need to bring it up unless frequent incidents between the two became an issue. With any luck they would be dissuaded from future fighting by the long hours they were about to put in literally scrubbing shite off the floor. Feuds were not uncommon amongst purebloods, although admittedly this was a special case. But other pureblood students managed to get through their schooling quite happily without avenging the family honor in such a way that would either end another's line or land them in Azkaban, so hopefully these two would soon settle into the traditional 'seething at each other from across the common room' method of showing their displeasure.

Of course, if she had to, Landis could be quite specific. On the topic of feuds, and just how willing the staff was to let them endanger other students, and how really it wasn't much trouble at all to expel someone, how it actually put a happy little light in Landis' heart. Maybe she'd even track down an informational packet. For now she gave them a vague and ominously-toned, "Work hard, boys," before tucking their wands into her robe pocket, performing the silencing spell, turning on her heel and leaving them to their well-earned detention.

Blossom watched Landis leave.  As soon as he/she was through the door, he reached for his chalkboard.



He gave Rico one of those 'what do you think?' looks.  He might want to kill his roommate but that was clearly not going to happen tonight and he needed to work with him to get the bathroom cleaned up in anything resembling a a reasonable amount of time.

Rico didn't like the uncomfortable, tight feeling in his throat. But he nodded to Blossom's note. He took a second and scribbled a few lines on his black board.


Rico literally could make no sound whatsoever. He pressed his chest and burped. No sound. He couldn't even hear the heavy breathing that was accustomed with shoveling waste of any kind.

Erasing his board he wrote something else


Rico tried to laugh, nothing. He tried to laugh harder, punching himself in the gut a few times to get some sort of sound out of his mouth. Nothing.

This was going to be a very, VERY long night.

Blossom tried not to laugh at Rico's attempts to make noise.  It was odd to laugh without making any noise.  He shook his head and started writing again.



Blossom wasn't entirely sure that they would be done by midnight because the room was just huge but he wasn't going to spend the next week shoveling other people's crap down the toilet.

Rico nodded and he put his blackboard on the only counter not covered with crap. His mask hitting his face with a sound thwack. He got on his knees ignoring the squish that they made as they hit the ground. He started to pull away hunks of compacted waste to clear the drain, he took a scrub brush and cleaned out all of the grates.

He then proceeded to find all other drains and clear those out, that would make the job go faster. Then, started with a stick with a wire on top that at home the stable hands would call a "Crapper Scraper"  he began making long, river-like lines so the water would get to the drains easier with the junk.

He started scrubbing a column where water wouldn't reach and he kept looking up until... He stood up walked over to where Blossom stood, trying to plug the drain and took of his glove. He reached for his blackboard and wrote urgently.

Blossom had chosen a sink farthest from the door, to reduce the chances of any water reaching the hallway.  The last thing they needed was to make the mess bigger.  It had taken him a while to figure out how to stop up the drain.  Initially he'd tried to stop it up completely but found that nothing would do the job properly.  He'd settled for slowing the flow down the drain so that the water pouring into the sink would build up and eventually overflow.

He was so intent that he jumped when Rico touched his glove.  When he read Rico's board, his eyes widened and he looked up.

We're never going to be able to get that without our wands.  And maybe even brooms.

He picked up his chalkboard.


Surely Landis wouldn't expect then to clean the ceiling.  Would she/he?

Rico though the broom thing was a good idea, but were brooms allowed to be flown in the castle? He shook it off and wrote another note.


He had shoveled dung a gazillion times, but nothing of this magnitude. It was like cleaning out the Augean Stables like Hercules. They had not been cleaned in 30 years, but Hercules was told to clean them completely in a single day. To do so he made two rivers bend so that they flowed into the stables, sweeping out the filth.

So that's the angle Blossom was coming from. Now that they were stuck with this crappy job[1] he felt a little less bad about now that he thought of Hercules and that he had to clean up a whole lot more, but he also used magic...

1.	really bad pun

Blossom nodded.


As long as they didn't make a bigger mess, their plan would cut hours off their work time.  It was a big risk.  Landis wanted them to learn a lesson about working together.  Well, this was the two of them working together.

Rico nodded as he put his board down. He took his stick and made at least a hundred channels for the water to flow through, they all connected to at least one drain. When Rico was done with that, he went into the stalls and started to pile up all of the stuff on the outsides so he could make more channels. He opened the last stall door and there it was. The source of the two boys horrifying ordeal.

The magically clogged toilet.

It was covered in a thick coat of scum and bile. Rico gagged, but made no sound. Rico went back to the cart, only stepping in his small rivers that were now filling up with water and getting bigger. He grabbed a scrub brush, and started scrubbing away. He had made a decent head way by the time the water hit his boots. He shuffled through the water he reached for his black board and slipped. His knee squashedright onto the floor. Rico laughed, still no sound. He snagged the edge of the sink and pulled himself up without too much difficulty.

His chalk that had been sitting on the counter had turned to a green mush. Had Blossom flooded all the sinks? Apparently so, Rico pulled another stick from the box and scribble quickly and showed the board to Blossom.

Blossom handed Rico the squeegee, keeping the shovel for himself.


He planned on starting near the door and pushing the thick layer of muck into the various channels Rico had created.  It had taken them far longer than he'd expected to get this far but now that the water was flowing things would progress faster.

It was working.  It was working slowly but it was working.  Already there was a section near the door that was as clean as two eleven year olds would be able to get it.  With every minute the clean spot was getting bigger.  Unfortunately, with each of those very same minutes, the boy's strength and determination to finish was getting smaller. 

Blossom leaned on his shovel, panting and sweating, quite certain that if he didn't take a few minutes to rest, he was going to fall over into one of the disgusting piles of goop that were still dotting the floor, marking the edges if Rico's channels.  He wasn't sure where he had put his chalkboard.  He'd lost track of it an hour earlier.  He and Rico had been forced to take turns using the same one.  It had made things a little more difficult, to say the least.

An inch, a foot, five feet, slowly, the channels got bigger, and so the pit stains on Rico's T-shirt, Tintin's face drooped pathetically on the sticky, smelly cloth. He checked the clock. One more hour, then they would come back tomorrow and finish. They had enough stuff done already, but they were tiring, slowly but surely.

Blossom looked like he would flat out faint from exhaustion. Rico thought it was time for a little wake-me-up. Shuffling around the ever wide rivers, he made his way across the room, squeegeeing as he went. He approached the sink nearest Blossom, roaring like a mini Niagra over the edge of the counter. Leaning his squeegee against the corner of the sink and the wall and tapped Blossom on the shoulder and got in position.

When Rico's unsuspecting victim turned his head, Rico splashed, straight up with cupped hands into Blossom's pale face.