Nov 27, 2009
Afternoon
Aboard the great Durmstrang ship, which is moored in the lake.  It normally sits empty now that the cold weather has set in, but Durmstrang still uses it from time to time.

Ylva escorted young Heinrich Faust away from the Armor Gallery.  But instead of heading to the lower levels towards the rooms aloted by Hogwarts for Durmstrang's habitations, Ylva Maras led them outside.  It was nearly freezing outside and wanting to rain.  But professor Maras marched out in it without a coat, without worry for Heinrich's comfort.  She led the way with single purpose down the path, down the stairs, across the field without looking back.

She was taking them to the ship.  It had been there since August and mostly unoccupied now that they'd moved into the castle.  But it was still there and that was where Maras knew her Headmaster was to be found.  And this would require his attention, all the worse for Heinrich.

Her boots tramped down the dock, then up the gangplank that extended to meet them.  She came aboard the ship crossed the deck aft, towards the cabin.

She rapped on the door, only then checking back on Heinrich.

"Professor Eisenberg.  It's Maras."

Auberon didn't mind the cold - though he wasn't fond of it, in truth. To his family and professors he frequently claimed to find it bracing or otherwise pleasantly unpleasant, but after a long day of having to sit on his arse, it was just cold. But he often preferred the ship to the school, cold and all - no one fussed much if he shot his crossbow on the ship, unlike inside the castle.

He sat in his office-cabin-lounge, feet up on the desk, crossbow on his lap. His daily hunt had left his precious crossbow with a nasty dent in the main shaft, which he was now repairing with great care. The knocking made him look up, annoyed at the interruption.

He made no move to open the door. "Yes? What is it?" He asked, ire obvious as he put his repair supplies and wand aside. Of course it was Maras; she was one of the few professors who knocked first. "Come in, then," he said, sighing. He shoved a few things out of the way on his desk, but it was most since he was seeking his pipe. It had been not be a bloody student, he decided.

Ylva set her hand to the latch and led the way in, leaving the door open behind her for Heinrich to follow.  She approached  Eisenberg at the desk and took a stance before him, arms crossed.  Beneath them, the great ship rocked steadily, gently.  She stood aside so that Heinrich was in full view. 

The Headmaster looked and sounded like this was an unwelcome interruption, but Ylva didn't care.  All the better to have this handled swiftly and with proper importance.  Heinrich was one of their best students - to have him causing such a shameful incident was dreadful and embarrassing for the Institute.  He was a Champion, for Merlin's sake.

"Good afternoon, Headmaster," Maras greeted tersely.  "It's a shame we must disturb you, but this cannot wait."

He had undone some of the damage but the evidence of the fight were clear on Heinrich's face, as well as the missing buttons on his shirt collar.  He had followed Ylva Maras resolutely.  The cold actually felt nice against the places that were swelling.  He knew she was unimpressed by the physical nature of his confrontation with Rohan.  It stank of Muggle.  Still, Heinrich was certain that he had properly defended his honour using the terms his opponent had chosen.

His resolve weakened somewhat when he came face to face with his Headmaster.  Only Heinrich's father had a greater ability to make him feel shame.

Dueling is permitted, if not specifically encourage.  it's not the fighting that would be unforgivable, it would be losing.  This fight isn't over and the second half is going to be fought properly.

Heinrich contemplated greeting the Headmaster as well but realized that this was one of those moments where he needed to shut his cakehole and only speak when spoken to.

It was a student. Blast! And a Champion, at that! Faust had not been Auberon's immediate pick as a Champion, but the boy had done well - raising the headmaster's opinion of him considerably. Now he stood here with Maras, looking rather chastised. Oh, dear; this was going to be an incident, wasn't it?

He looked between the both of them, brows furrowed. Leaning back in his chair, he didn't seem particularly pleased with this turn of events, especially when Faust remained silent.

"Well?" He asked, rather sharply. "What is it, then? Someone pushed Mademoiselle Bisclavret in the lake? Dragons in the towers again?"

Ylva glanced at Heinrich who was now seeing fit to be silent. He'd not been so silent before when she'd found the boys locked in brutal combat.  She raised an eyebrow and answered the Headmaster herself.

"I found Mr. Faust in the act of strangling a Hogwarts boy.  They were fighting.  There was an audience.  It was a duel, apparently, but not a wand in sight," she said. The description itself was enough to bring a distinct twinge of disappointment to her voice.  A sharp edge of disgust was hard to mistake.  A duel with no wands? A thunderstorm with no clouds!

"It's a preposterous embarrassment."

"He chose the format of the duel and elected Muggle fighting.  I had no choice.  It was either face him on his terms or back down on a challenge that I had issued,"  Heinrich said, standing stiffly at attention with his eyes fixed on the far wall.  "The matter is currently unresolved and we have agreed the final chapter will be written with wands." 

His eyes dropped at that point to the headmaster's face.  "I have no doubts as to how that encounter will end."  The last time he had met the headmaster's eye, had been before the Tetrawizard challenge.  He'd made the man a silent promise at that moment.  He made another now.

Auberon looked between the two of them, scowling. Dueling was not something he approved of... officially. Unofficially, he didn't care, and indeed rather encouraged it between the young men. However, brawling...was not acceptable, if they got caught.

Unlike Maras, Auberon had only one real concern with this situation, and the look on Faust's face was enough to make him not really want to know the answer. "Unsettled, is it? Then you didn't win?" He sounded annoyed, and was indeed a tad disgusted. To lose to a Hogwarts student! The very idea set him on edge.

Thankfully - he hoped the boy hadn't lost. The humiliation of that got out....He sat back, rubbing his chin. "Dare I ask how this duel came to be, Faust?"

"Rohan Hawkins beat, stole from and threatened a young woman.  None of the Hogwart's boys seemed man enough to step up and punish him, so I took the opportunity to challenge him to a duel.  He chose hand to hand combat, likely thinking that I would be easier prey in that arena."  Heinrich tried not to let a smirk cross his lips.  "I have six older brothers.  When he realized that he wasn't going to win a fair fight, he cheated.  Professor Maras interrupted us around that point.  Had she been a minute or so later, he would have been lying unconscious on the floor." 

Assuming he wasn't lying dead on the floor.  I  really lost my temper back there.  Heinrich wisely kept that thought to himself.  His headmaster had to understand.  He wasn't going to reveal that the girl in question was his girlfriend, unless that question was specifically asked.  He wouldn't lie but he'd learned better than to volunteer information that might make things worse for him.

Man enough, indeed!  Ylva didn't even attempt to hide her scoff.  There was nothing inherently masculine about bravery.  Doing right and being powerful was not the sole purview of men.  She and countless witches before her had stood on the deck of this ship as proof of that. 

The old-fashioned essentialism didn't do much to ameliorate Ylva to Heinrich's cause, but she'd expected no different from the stoic young man.  No matter what the reason, a duel with fists was no duel at all.  They might as well have used the shattered ends of up-turned bottles!

"You should have never accepted such terms!" she snapped.  "A wand or words, Mr. Faust." 

But she said no more.  It would be Headmaster Eisenberg who'd have the say here. 

Mmm. Well, he couldn't argue much there - any man who beat a woman deserved a good beating himself.  Auberon found the admission surprising enough his eyebrows rose and he sat back with a 'hrm'. Rough boys they had here, then! No doubt the account was somewhat exaggerated, of course.

He glanced at Maras, but her comment was largely ignored by the Headmaster. He had never held himself to strict use of a wand - the crossbow that sat before him was testament to that - and had had plenty of fist fights in school himself. Nothing quite mustered up the blood just a punch to the jaw, after all! But he wasn't about to publicly approve of it, either.

But - "I suppose that reporting his actions to the staff of Hogwarts never occurred to you then, Faust?" He asked, rather sharply, though he knew himself he wouldn't have done it. Best to lay the blame for that squarely in his student's court, if it came up. "Or was this on the scene? Are they even aware they have such a student within their walls?" He looked at Maras again, his question addressed to the both of them.

"I did not witness the events themselves, only the aftermath,"  Heinrich confessed.  "The incident was unreported because the villain in question stole the young lady's journal and was threatening to make it public if she informed anyone.  She wouldn't even visit the school healer."  Heinrich could feel his temper rising as he remember the way he'd found Chloe.

"If you are wondering whether the young lady made up the story to get back at him for some imagined slight, he admitted his crimes when I confronted him with them.  He seemed even proud of them.  I might have expected such behaviour from Slytherin, although the execution was sloppy.  He's from Ravenclaw, a house with a reputation for intellect, which he seems to be displaying a singular lacking of."

He turned to face Ylva.  "I issued the challenge, professor Maras," he said carefully, making certain his tone was respectful.  "What was I supposed to do, retract it when he chose terms I didn't like?  What would be the point of issuing a challenge, if I withdraw it at the first sign that victory will not be handed to me on a silver platter?"

"If he's suggested you duel upon elephants wielding umbrellas for lances, would you have agreed as well?" she demanded at his impudent hypothetical. 

"A duel with those terms is no duel at all.  You might just as well have agreed to arm wrestle for all the good it would do!  What I walked in on was not  a duel.  No matter your challenge, the minute you accepted his preposterous terms, any semblance of a proper duel vanished and no good was done for anyone's honor.  Certainly not your own."

Her opining done for the moment she returned a reply to Eisenberg's question about the other lout.  "I sent Graham to his Head of House, the professor in charge of the Ravenclaw students.  And I plan to ensure things are settled later."

Ylva was never really sure what to expect from Auberon Eisenberg.  He was not always predictable and she knew that they didn't always agree.  Frankly, he seemed at this time more annoyed at being bothered away from his privacy than by the degrading behavior of a promising student.

Auberon looked at Ylva somewhat incredulously. No matter what the witch had intended with that example, he couldn’t help but feel that that would be a quite valid form of dueling. Just replace the umbrellas with levitated lions and it would be quite the experience! He ought to challenge someone to that, he decided.

Never the less…”Fearing to report wrong doing simply because one fears the tittering of classmates is rather suspect, Faust. Should you encounter this young lady again, I should impress upon her the virtue of courage, hmm? Unless, of course, the young lady’s diary contains far more interesting information than some recording of teenaged passions.” The best kinds of women, in his mind, were the ones that would have told such a man to stuff it. He had to wonder, admittedly, just what was in such a diary that she was willing to protect it to that extent. Had not the Dark Lord attempted resurrection via a diary?

He looked back to Ylva. “Retention of honor is not what we are here to establish, Maras,” he said. “Such a subjective concept will have us here all night, I fear. Faust,” he looked back to the boy. “Do tell me – this follow up. How do you plan to execute this, hmm?” 

Heinrich's face went red when Chloe's diary was brought up.  "I... may figure somewhat prominently in some of those diary entries, although I can't be certain what else is in there," he admitted.  "As far as the resolution to this matter, I assure you it will take place in a far more private venue and will be settled in a manner that reflects both my actions and the education I received in a very positive light.  I may even take professor Mara's suggestion and conjure an elephant with an umbrella a few inches above his head."

It was a risky statement but if he could just get Eisenberg to laugh or even smile for that matter, he would be out of the woods.