Taco purred contently on Rico's chest. Rico was splayed out in the middle of the floor, his appendages stretched out. He had opened all the windows to get the sun in. He had a basic white tank on and just below knee length khaki shorts. His eyes were closed. He breathed in, letting the sweet Indian Summer air flood his lungs.

The breeze was a refresher from the past few days. The late summer vesper replaced the air from bile filled bathrooms and the musty, dank smell of the class room. Taco stretched and dug his claws into Rico's chest. Rico winced and opened his eyes. "What do you want?" He asked "A treat?"

Taco's ears perked at the mention  of a snack. Rico groaned and he got up to give Taco a Chunky Chunk pellet. Rico held his hand out with the treat in it above his head while he put the box away. He lowered his hand as he closed his trunk. Taco jumped from his place on the floor and bit Rico's hand, missing the pellet completely. Rico tossed the pellet across the room. Taco went running after it. "Stupid cat..." Rico washed off his hand with an alcohol wipe and stuck a tiny waterproof bandage onto the teeth marks.

He went back to laying on the floor. A few minutes later he heard the quiet stomping of Blossom's feet coming up the stairs. For a kid so little, he sure made a lot of noise. The door hinges squeaked and the floorboards creaked as Blossom entered the room. "Hey hombre" Rico said, not bothering to open his eyes. "I gotcha something from la bibliothèque, some book about plants and their medicinal value. I put it on your desk."

He pointed to where he thought Blossom's desk was, but still didn't open his eyes, so he just pointed justly at the ceiling.

Blossom looked at the book, then did a double take.  He immediately crossed to his desk and caressed the cover for a moment before opening the book and looking at the coverleaf.

"This is a Del Falco fifth addition,"  he exclaimed.  "My father used to say this was the greatest book ever written.  He-"  Blossom stopped.  He didn't want to admit that his father had had to sell the prized book to pay some of the family debts.  "Where did you find this?  I thought I'd found all the herbology books in the library."

"We'll... uh.. It wasn't in the herbology section, it was in the medicine. Makes sense I guess." Rico didn't wasnt to let on that it wasn't actually a library book and that he had mailed his father and asked him to send it to his son at Hogwarts to give to his roommate.

Rico sat up. Rolling over onto his elbow so he could face Blossom. "I gotta talk to you about something, something really important. 'Cause I guess we're not so hostile to each other anymore I thought I'd ask. Why didn't we like each other in the first place. It was like some sort of un-spoken disagreement. And when we didn't speak, it just disappeared. You know what I'm talking about? Corregir?"

Rico had been thinking about it for a while now and he finally had the guts to say it.

Blossom went still, pretending to examine the book cover.  It was a question he had been dreading.  Now his hated enemy would know why he was hated.  But Blossom didn't want to hate Rico.  He actually sort of liked him.  Sure, he was overbearing and pushy but most energetic kids were.  It was a dilemma.  He wasn't even sure he'd be able to lie convincingly enough to get Rico to drop the subject, which left him with only one option.

He had to tell Rico the truth.

"How much do you know about your family history?"  he asked.  "I'm talking about five hundred years ago.  One of your ancestors eloped with one of mine.  It caused an alliance with the Fudges to collapse because she was betrothed to one of them.  In retaliation, the Roses went to war with the Posadas.  Our families have been feuding for five hundred years, Rico.  A curse cast by your family is why mine has been withering like a blighted vine.  We have nothing left because of something your family did.  I've been raised all my life to believe that the Posadas are more evil than Voldemort.  When I met you, everything I've ever been told said I should hate you.  I tried.  I can't hate you, though Rico.  I like you too much.  I can't say the same thing about your sister because she's a little prat but I like you.  I don't want to have to kill you but the only way I can save my family is to wipe yours out."

It was a hell of a revelation to drop on an eleven year old, especially when it came from the lips of another eleven year old.

Their was no positive outlook for Rico here.

Rico blinked once. twice. "Is that all?" He laughed nervously. He quickly became terrified of Blossom and himself in the same room together. He got off the floor and stood facing his possible assailant. It was hard to imagine Blossom pulling out a wand and killing him and his sister on the spot. Green flashing before his eyes and a tunnel closed on Blossom's eyes, grey and cold.

He shooed the thought of his head and tried to focus on the issue. "Is their any other way to reverse the curse? If not, I'm not  writing the letter to my parent telling them I was killed by my distant cousin."

Now that was a thought, a sick twisted thought of a cousin killing his own blood.

"Or we need to go talk to a teacher now "

"I don't know," Blossom admitted.  "I only know as much as my father told me.  When it started.  Who cast the curse.  It was the girl from my family, the one that eloped.  She cast it on her own father.   So, we know the starting point.  If you really want to help me end the curse so we don't have to try  and kill each other at some point, maybe you should write that letter.  It seems to me like your family has forgotten about the feud, so maybe there is something stashed away in an old musty attic.  The problem is, if your family finds out they've forgotten the feud, they might start things back up again from your side and frankly, my family can't take much more.  We've lost, Rico.  I surrender.  All my life I've been told that the Posadas were evil and you're not.  I wonder what else my father has told me that was a lie."

"Uno segundo por favor."

Rico was panicking now. He shoved his head under the bed looking for his stationary and a quill. He started scribbling a letter. He crossed it out, crumpled up the paper and threw it. It landed on a window seat, where Taco groomed himself. "Sorry, I'm just sort of... ummm... a little on edge... is that normal?" He pulled at his hair.

"I don't know what to say! I was never a good writer and I'm really not good a asking important questions.... I-I-I" Rico slammed his fist on the wall and kept pounding until his knees collapsed underneath him and he slid into the corner. "Oh this is really bad, I mean, is it really that bad? It's a little hard to handle since I've never heard about any of this before."

He looked at Blossom from his huddled position and saw no family resemblance. No fine, Spanish build. "Ho-how is this even possible?" He pulled at his hair more until it lost it's gelled spikiness.

Blossom watched Rico have his fit of explosive panic.  He couldn't blame him.  It wasn't every day you found out that you and your roommate were supposed to be trying to kill each other over something that happened five hundred years ago.  Put that  way, it even sounded ridiculous to Blossom, despite the fact that he'd been raised to believe that it was his job to defend the family honour.

"Keep that up and you'll ruin your hair,"  Blossom said.  "I guess your family lost interest a few hundred years ago, when the Roses stopped putting up any decent kind of a fight.  There might have been a few things happen between now and then but mostly it was just us hating you and you not noticing.  Maybe your family wants to end the feud as much as you and I do.  Grab your parchment.  We'll figure out what to write to your father.  At this point we don't know what your father's opinion of the feud is, so we have to figure that out first and if he's still as into it as my father is...."  Blossom looked grim.  "In that case, we're on out own.  Somebody has to do something to end this and if we can do it ourselves, I say we do it ourselves.  Which of the professors do you think would be best with breaking curses?"

"Okay, that makes sense." Rico dived for his nightstand, still on edge. His hair was poofy and was splayed out all across his head. He grabbed his hair gel and styled it back to it's normal spikiness.

"Well, if the Posada's forgot while ago, then maybe my father doesn't know..." Rico finally had his heart rate back to normal and he walked calmly to his desk and sat down. "But I wouldn't go to Landis, he/she gives me the creeps, but he is the librarian and would know a lot about a lot of things. She's also a pureblood, so she might have some idea of how to break your curse. If we don't want to talk to her I think Sandusky or Storm would be the next best thing."

The blank piece of parchment stared at him. He popped the cork out of an inkwell and dipped in his hippogriff feather quill and started to write. "Do you think it would be easier to ask if I told him I had to do a family tree for a project and that we needed to go back at least five hundred years ago? Do you think he'd buy it?"

"I think it would work," Blossom answered, rubbing his chin.  "Is there a family historian in your family?  A crazy aunt who keeps track of everything or a great grandfather who knows all the answers?"  He looked down at the floor for a moment.  "All I have is my father and we already know what his opinion of things is.  He'd help with the family tree I'm sure but there would be little notations all over it that read 'killed by a Posada' or at least that is the impression I get."

Blossom didn't want to see his father as the villain in the piece; after all it was his father.  The stories he had heard about the feud had always portrayed the Posadas in a negative light but what if there was fault on both sides?  What if there was only fault on his side?  What if the whole five hundred year old feud was due to his family being stubborn, unforgiving and stupid?