Approximately 5:00 PM


Needless to say, Maiko had not expected Landis Harper Morgan to approach her. It seemed incredibly out of character for him to be concerned about a student enough to send one over to her office. They had been politely friendly during Hogwarts, and she had yet to do anything (to her knowledge) to give the librarian any reason to hate her, so she assumed that either the student had offended Landis in some way, or the student was a Slytherin who actually was having severe control issues. In short, Mai didn’t really know what to expect, other than a student arriving in her office around 5:00, before dinner.

While waiting, she made two cups of cocoa, placing them in panda-head shaped mugs. On a small plate, Mai had a few spice cupcakes with a sweet cream cheese frosting. The owls on the plate rushed  to the edges to glare at each other around the dessert. After all the necessary preparations were made, she took one of the mugs and leaned back in one of the squishy, comfortable chairs in her office. Across from her was another comfortable chair, identical in shape, size, and color. There was a third one in the back of the office that she would have pulled forward if a third person decided to spend time in her office.

The walls of her office were full of bookshelves. Most of the books were about the magical mind, though there were a few fiction books as well as a few muggle psychology books. On her desk, there were a few framed pictures. One of her sitting on her not-so-little brother’s shoulders, and the other a wedding picture of her parents. Both pictures were not moving. Maiko glanced up at the clock—he should be coming in at any moment, if he showed up at all.

Landis was a hags-cursed limp-wristed little bitch, and Erin hated him and he could die, cheers.

But as it turned out, he was pretty good at extortion.

"Way to get a bloke by the short hairs," Erin muttered as he dragged his feet down the corridor to the counselor's office. It was not a place he would have gone voluntarily under any circumstances, but Landis had told him to go and by "told him to go" actually told him that he wouldn't have a Quidditch captain with such outstanding control issues, which was the worst way in the whole bloody world of covering up his real motive: to piss Erin off. Or maybe it was punishment for doing so poorly in the First Task, like none of the spells Professor Vaillancourt had taught him were enough to prevent Erin's prime operative from taking over i.e. beating up every single one of those acromantulas in what may have not been the most time-effective strategy but sure was fun. Or maybe it was just... regular punishment, because Landis hated him too and Erin didn't pretend to understand his motives. The threat of pulling him as a captain was low, though, really low, because Erin had been so good this year and hadn't gotten into any fights at all. He hadn't even slipped a swarm of doxies into the library yet this year and that? That was control. (Definitely not bollocks-shrinking terror after what Landis did to him last time, no, no, control.)

Whatever. He'd go to this counselor and sit out the half-hour length of time it'd take for her to figure out he didn't want to talk. Then if his Head of House made him go again he'd feed her some sob stories about the time Landis had practiced his schoolboy curses on him,  or the time he'd broken two of Erin's fingers after Erin flooded his room, or how any attack on the library now was more or less taking his life into his own hands and there were only so many places in the castle to hide (but of course he wasn't just going to bloody stop.) He'd tell her earnestly how all this brotherly aggression'd really stunted his development and growth, and then let her (hopefully) give his brother hell about it in the staff room for being a bloody monster who should in no way be allowed to hold an authority position, hated children, and also totally had just as many control issues as Erin.

So there.

So anyways, yeah, he just had to tough this out, no problem, and Erin shouldered this sullen sentiment right up until he marched into Maiko's office and was confronted by two panda mugs and cupcakes.

He stopped. He gave the ridiculous girly mugs a long, skeptical look, refusing to soften his scorn just because they happened to be right next to a plate of delicious-looking cupcakes. Then he turned the look on her, shoulders tense, hands curled in wariness and the slightest frustration. He didn't say anything, but something about his expression seemed to project, well?

Maiko raised her eyebrows when Erin Harper walked in. She knew his face, and she had heard tidbits about him and his history of conflicts. He hadn’t been involved in any fights this year, and had been on good behavior as far as she knew. That was a sign of self-control, especially compared to what she’d heard. “Well, this is a nice surprise.” Then she flicked her purple wand to close the door behind the student, and motioned for him to take a seat. “Your brother told me you were coming,” She paused, “But ‘e did not tell me that it was ‘is brother.” She picked up a cupcake and tore off a small piece. The counselor raised her eyebrows towards the treats, silently offering them to him. Or rather, silently demanding him to accept them.

“What in the world did you do to make ‘im mad this time?” She shook her head and put her wand away, “Nevermind. Don’t answer that. I don’t care what Landis thinks.” It was true—someone’s worried opinion would get a student through the door, but it didn’t mean that Mai would take their words to heart. She wanted to assess the situation herself, to learn who the students were without the opinions of others clouding her perceptions. Sometimes, input was important, but she didn’t want it unless she was asking for it. This was especially important in this case, as she knew that the siblings did not get along.

Really, what was Landis thinking. If he only was doing this to aggravate Erin, he lost quite a few respect points from the counselor. Mai doubted he’d care about that, though. “Go on, drink the cocoa. It’s not poisoned.” She wasn’t one to lace her treats with potions or poisons. "The pandas might whine, but that's normal."

Well, all right. Cautiously, Erin eased into the big chair across from her. He leaned forward and grabbed a cupcake, turning it over in his hands before taking a huge bite. He guessed if he had to sit in a room with someone who wanted to make him talk about his feelings, at least he had food. They were pretty good cakes, too.

“What in the world did you do to make ‘im mad this time? Nevermind. Don’t answer that. I don’t care what Landis thinks.”

Erin grinned a little and bit his lip, pleased with this assessment. "Nothing," he said, turning on Maiko his biggest, saddest pair of baby blues. He'd grown some over the summer, gotten taller, narrow face and boyish features sharpening slowly into manhood. His countenance no longer protested his innocence quite so well as when he'd been slender and short, a scruffy blonde lad with long lashes and a smooth face, but he still had the it's-not-my-fault expression down pat and he turned it on her now. Clearly, he was a martyr and a saint. And an angel, and an innocent, suffering from the pangs and narrows of brotherly rivalry that he probably never even wished for or perpetuated in any fashion. "I've been really good this year," he added, shading the tone of his voice from earnest to plaintive.

She urged him to drink but he hesitated, still unwilling to drink out of a mug that looked like... that. The door was closed, yeah, but... pandas? They were kind of cutesy, yeah? He stuffed the rest of the cake into his mouth and regarded his mug critically, poking it first with one tan finger to see if it'd really whine.

She raised her eyebrows. His innocent mannerisms seemed a bit forced and fake, though she couldn’t tell if it would be obvious to others, or if it was because of her years of experience studying people. There was a little bit of truth to his words-- he had not gotten into trouble this year. That was true. But Maiko was positive that he had done something to annoy Landis. She honestly didn’t care what it was that Erin did, because Erin probably angered Landis just by existing, and there’s not much anybody could do about that.

“Don’t look at me like that, you’re not trying to sell me anything.” She laughed. She remembered her own little brother giving her puppy dog eyes, and how it had worked so many times until she realized that he was manipulating her with cuteness. Kohaku still tried it now, but Maiko knew better than to fall for his tricks. Plus, her brother was a teenager now, and the puppy dog eyes had a tendency to come off as as creepy once someone got old enough.

The panda mug began to squeak and whine, and Maiko jumped. “If it growls, it might bite, so you should keep your fingers away from ‘is mouth.” She said with a serious expression, though she wasn’t actually serious. Yes, the panda might growl, but it was incapable of biting anybody. Even though her deadpan expression wouldn’t give it away, the mischievous glint in her eyes did. As Erin ate, Maiko couldn’t help but smile-- he was eating her food. That was a good sign, right? However, he had yet to drink the cocoa. Did the panda bears really disturb him so much?

“Do you enjoy quidditch?” she asked, “I’ve never been good at it. I can barely even get the broom off the ground. In my first year I crashed into another student, broke a couple ribs.” Maiko felt like her childhood had more broken bones than necessary due to plain bad luck, bad circumstances, and stupid situations she got herself into. Like the broom crash.

Well yeah, actually he WAS trying to sell her something, and that something was innocence. Guess he needed more practice. Or more charm. Either way Erin quit with the puppy eyes and settled into the chair. Slowly, almost idly, he snaked his hand out for another cupcake.

"If it growls, it might bite, so you should keep your fingers away from ‘is mouth.”

Well, Erin didn't see that as anything but a challenge. He got his hands free by way of devouring his second cupcake in three huge bites, then swooped on the mug. Tap tap tap went his eager nails on the panda's painted smile. It squirmed and squealed but showed no evidence of teeth. Erin raised one blonde brow at Maiko in an expression too elegantly cultivated to belong to a teenage boy, but finally drank.

He let out a laugh at her next words, barely more than a puff of surprised air escaping his lips. "Well, yeah," he said. "It's brilliant. That's half the fun, getting good enough not to do stuff like that." He didn't mention his Quidditch captaincy, or the win against Hufflepuff last year when he'd raced Sellaphix to the snitch. He'd assumed - well he guess he'd assumed she'd know, because the concept of not liking Quidditch was a foreign one to him. He'd gotten bruises and broken bones and concussions, all sorts of shite, but he regarded them like trophies, like war wounds, and so didn't mind. But if she didn't know, he didn't want to brag. His captain spot was still novel to him, kind of wonderful and new, and he was wary of letting anyone know how much he enjoyed it for fear it'd... disappear, maybe, his dream popped like a soap bubble. Telling people still seemed too bizarre to be the truth. But he did look sympathetic to her once-plight - broken ribs were the worst, he knew that from experience. Well, except for a broken collarbone.

Of course he liked quidditch, he was the quidditch captain. Maiko wasn’t one to follow sports, not even at a local, school level. She had no idea which students were on the team unless the students themselves told her (or made some hint). But, his name was familiar, and she thought she had heard others talking about his spot as the captain.  only sport she really paid attention to was ballet, and there wre those who would argue that ballet wasn’t a sport as much as it was an art form. She doubted that a teenaged boy would have too much interest in her fascination with the dance.

She finished up her own cupcake, and looked at the plate. He hadn’t been in here five minutes and her cake supply was getting smaller. No worries-- Maiko stood up and took a bag of truffles dusted with cocoa powder out of one of her desk drawers. She then dumped the truffles onto the plate with the remaining cupcakes. She made a mental note to make a meal or two for the Slytherin. Sure, Hogwarts gave students plenty of food, but there were many students who went hungry between meals due to insanely fast metabolisms or different eating schedules.

“Well, congratulations on your new position!” Mai clapped her hands together, probably excited enough for the both of them. It meant that he was good at quidditch, right? Mai knew she needed to pay more attention to the teams at the school, that way she wouldn’t look like she didn’t care about the sport. Yes, she didn’t care, but if students figured that out, some of them might shut down. She was genuinely excited for Erin, because to him that was a good thing. Also, keeping his captaincy was a good reason for him to keep behaving, in case the title was taken from him as a punishment.

Maiko believed that there was another Harper at the school, this one a girl. She hadn’t met her yet, but it seemed like neither one of her brothers held a grudge against her. “Does your sister play quidditch too?” Mai asked, not necessarily meaning for the team, but in general.

More chocolate? More chocolate to go with the... hot chocolate. Well, Erin wasn't complaining. His eyes widened when Maiko pulled out of nowhere more food. Erin had found the kitchens early on in his school years, a necessity for any growing boy. The house elves were kind to a whip-thin live-wire active teen who needed five square meals a day, thereby winning his love forever. If she kept this up, Maiko would have it too.

She cheered for him, clapping her hands together, and for an authority figure it was actually kind of cute. The barest of smiles graced Erin's lips, tugging him reluctantly into good humor. "Thanks," he said, cupping his hands around the mug. Not that he'd been in a bad humor to begin with - even annoyed with Landis' ploy, Erin hadn't thought sitting through a half hour of light conversation was much to get angry about, and Maiko hadn't done anything really obviously counselor-y yet to make him sullen. He'd been in a good mood this year so far, anyways, what with his captaincy. It made everything else more bearable.

"Hannah? Nah. She's all... girly." She was a tough little bit - or at least, annoying - and Erin wasn't innocent of the occasional sibling roughhousing. It was more adorable than painful when her tiny fists hit his shoulder, and she squealed like a pig when he mussed her hair. Not exactly Quidditch material. "She doesn't like to sweat." He'd never tell her that, 'cos she was so stubborn she'd want to disprove him. Erin wasn't actually okay with his little sister being pummeled by bludgers

“De rien.” She said politely, relieved that things with Erin were going so smoothly. Maiko didn’t care if they talked about his problems, or even really what they talked about. She wanted to build trust with Erin, so that in the even that he did have an issue, he could comfortably go to her. And get fed. Mai wouldn’t even mind if the only reason he came to her office was to get fed—she loved mothering people and showering them with attention, she genuinely enjoyed mothering and spoiling others. Mai thought that she would have been the type of old lady who gave cookies and treats to the neighborhood children who worked on her lawn.

Maiko laughed lightheartedly at the description of young Hannah Harper. “You could say the same about my brother.” Kohaku was indeed girly, and he didn’t like to sweat. He did enjoy running, but it didn’t mean he enjoyed the sweaty part of it.  She was clearly pleased about the fact that Erin was so accepting of the food. Some of the students and even some of the other staff members had been a bit more hesitant to try her food. Maiko suspected that either they didn’t trust her cooking, they weren’t hungry, or, as Leopold and Atash would have said, they wanted to avoid any chances of experiencing the ‘gastronomic ecstasy’ that went along with ingesting her homemade treats.

“It sounds like you and your sister 'ave a good relationship.” She said softly, picking up one of the truffles off of the plate and popping it in her mouth. She took a sip of her own cocoa, and immediately regretted that decision. Cocoa and chocolate truffles combined was a bit overwhelming. Still, she was just stubborn enough to insist, eve n to herself, that there was no such thing as too much chocolate. “I’ve been asking all the questions, sorry. Is there anything you’re curious about?”

Erin smiled, an uncertain twitch of lips, recognizing the parallels that Maiko saw between their kid siblings and acknowledging that with the manners he did have buried deep in his rebellious little soul. She was trying, he could tell - so sure, he smiled at her. Professors with personal lives were weird to think about. Even weirder was the French - he'd noticed the accent, but if she started replying to everything in that language he was gonna have to leave. He wasn't the kind of idiot who'd lump all French people together, but it was too jarring being reminded of Razzy like that. Talking French to Erin had been kind of their thing. Walking through a school suddenly filled with Beauxbatons students was weird enough; he kept getting twitchy, thinking someone was talking about him.

It was a learned thing, being suspicious of a language that when dropped from Razzy's mouth contained insults or innuendo in equal measure. He'd unlearn it again eventually.

Oh, here came the counselor bit. Erin simply gave a little nod and a shrug, the simultaneous actions muddling each other a bit, and busied himself with the truffles.

She asked him if he had any questions but no, he didn't. Erin hadn't realized that he could ask questions. Maybe if he'd been prepared for it he could've done something to incriminate Landis, imply that he was a really huge bastard and oh, miss, did all big brothers act like that? But Erin was no good at improvisation, really; he had the great big googly eyes to charm his way out of trouble and that was it, and even those didn't work half the time. So revenge plans would have to wait.

"Not really," he said, relaxing back into the chair. He crossed his arms over his for something to do with them that wasn't eating - his fingers had chocolate on them, but he wasn't gonna lick it off in front of Maiko. She wasn't such a stick-in-the-mud that he felt called to be actively obnoxious. "Unless - yeah - why do we have a counselor now? Hogwarts never had one before." That he knew of. So probably yeah, they'd had a counselor. Maybe they'd just been kept them really well hidden - Erin'd never been sent here before.

He didn’t really have questions? Maiko raised her eyebrows at the response-- humans almost always had questions, but whether or not they knew how to articulate it was an entirely different story. But then, just a moment later, he asked a question-- and she realized she did not have an answer for him. The counselor smiled and leaned forward, eyes sparkling almost deviously. “I ‘ave a secret.” She said in a stage whisper, “I don’t always ‘ave answers.” Mai leaned back in her chair and crossed her ankles. She was not above admitting that she didn’t have all the answers, that she didn’t know everything.

“I do not know why there is a counselor here.” Mai replied, “I do know that there was one last year, but the position opened over the summer. I applied for the job, and got it.” She swished her cocoa around in it’s cup thoughtfully, “My best guess is, some students need guidance, and some of them have problems that need to be kept private, and they need an adult to talk to who is trained in how to help them learn how to deal with their problems. It is not my job to solve their issues for them.” Maiko took a sip of her cocoa, and the panda mug squeaked as if it was being tickled. “I also ‘elp with conflict resolution, and I can also ‘elp students pick and choose what classes they need to take to prepare for future careers.”

She gave Erin an apologetic smile, “I’m sorry I can’t give you a better answer.” she said softly.