18 February 2010
7:45 pm, Thursday
It has been snowing for a couple of days and
so the courtyard is snowy and slushy.  There
are few pristine spots left due to all the student
foot traffic.

It was the time of year that came for many students in one way or another. You could feel it.  The long stretch of doldrums when it was soppy and gross outside, dark all the time, and it seemed it'd be ages before summer holiday.  All the thrill and restfulness of Christmas was long gone leaving a certain testiness, anxiety and cabin fever running its course through the castle.

Even our bright, blythe Figaro was not immune to it.  His symptoms included a fresh punchiness, a red hot ember of wanting to make something explode.  And for these times, he liked the arcade.  The covered archways that ran along the big courtyard with the fountain.  In the winter they were dry but dark, and the summer shady.

He was sitting with a couple of his friends, shooting the breeze and fiddling around.  Figaro had a billywig sting between his teeth and in his hands he was deftly working away at his smokebombs.  He had his own recipe, built off Weasleys'. [1]  One after another he carefully pinched ingredients onto a small square of thin parchment and then twisted them up into little packets.

"And so I'm saying, how's he supposed to know what goes on in there? Not a Seer is he?" he said, the billywig sting bobbing in lips like a cigarette.

"Stupid git.  Hell, even I think he should learn to keep his mouth shut, and that's saying something."

1.	Recipe here.

Nicholas had long since given up on getting anything done that day, which was why he was sitting outside with Figaro and others since the only thing worse than being outside in February was being cooped up inside.  The annoyance with Valentine's day had worn off early in the week and just left Nicholas feeling generally bleak.  And not even gillyweed or Fig's stings could help.

Well maybe a billywig sting or two could help.  But last time he'd had a few, he'd floated around the dorm for longer than he cared to admit.  He'd been hard-pressed to find a non-embarrassing explanation for his bruised tailbone.  And he didn't particularly care to float off while outside.   So instead he was 'kicking' a rock down the arcade with different spells before summoning it back and starting again.  And if a certain Slytherin or Ravenclaw happened to walk by and accidently get beaned in the head with a rock, all the better.

"He wasn't wrong, was he? " Nicholas said with a laugh.  "Be careful with that dungwort, that stuff is rank."  Not that the smoke bombs weren't worse, but the smoke at least gave you warning what was coming.

Bevans' rock clattered down the stone walkway and back again, making a racket.  Figaro hardly cared.  He was just happy to be done with classes and settling in to not care about anything else for a good few weeks either.

He echoed Nick's laugh, "No, not wrong if the detention he got for it's any proof.  I think the Prof dost detent too much..."

It was like a reflex for Figaro, to immediately react in the most contrary mode possible, to find the joke in anything as soon as it hit his ears.  So soon as Nick warned him to be careful of the dungwort, Figaro immediately crushed a leaf between his fingers and flicked it deftly at Nick.  Breaking a dungwort leaf released its heinously stinky properties. 

The effect was instantaneous.  The strong odor leeched from the bruised wad of leaf and even in the open air, the smell was heavy.

Figaro laughed and asked, "Sorry what? I should be careful? Golly, thank you, Nicholas!"

"Bloody hell,"  Nicholas groaned as the smell hit him and he quickly covered his nose with his scarf. The rock he'd summoned dropping with a clatter half-way back to him as his concentration had slipped.

"Fig, what the hell?  Not okay."  Nicholas was not laughing with the Hufflepuff.  "I'm going to smell that stuff all night."  Not a pleasant thought, and the one time he'd truly accidently crushed a dungwort leaf, it had left him and his clothes pungent the rest of the day.  None of their dorm mates were going to appreciate the smell.  For that matter he didn't appreciate the smell in the least.

"Ugh.  When Sophie complains about the smell in the common room, I'm telling her it's your fault."  Okay maybe it was low to threaten to tell a guy's girlfriend like that, but she was his friend too, and he wasn't about to take the blame for his clothes making the Gryffindor common room smell like dungwort.

Figaro had no choice but to cover his nose and mouth too.  Even in the open air, the stench was heavy.  But it was what Nick said about Sophie Flickwick that made him stop laughing.

"What is that supposed to mean?" 

Figaro and Sophie had split a few days ago, just in advance of Gracie Slant's big Valentine's Day birthday party.  They'd had a fight and it ended with ultimatums and condemnations.  Figaro just assumed that it would have gotten around by now - especially around Gryffindor.  He was still pretty sore about it.

"You think you're funny, Bevans? I know what you're doing."

His care and attention to his crafts project was now stilted and split - he was more occupied with glowering at Nick.

Nicholas was trying not to gag on the smell when Figaro started turned on him.  "Oh yeah, that."  He'd forgotten about the fact that Sophie and Fig, well not really, but it had slipped his mind.  Mostly cause at least to him it had been inevitable.  He liked the hufflepuff boy but Nicholas wasn't about to throw a parade in his honor.

"I'm not taking the blame for the smell.  All of Gryffindor is going to know it was you."  It got cold up in the the tower when no one would speak to you.  Something Nicholas didn't really want to repeat again.  Once was more than enough for him.  Not that it had been just once.

"I'm not doing anything, you did all that on your own."    Nicholas had kept his mouth mostly shut.  Though his silence was probably as bad as not saying anything. "You two were all," he faked a gag that nearly turned into a real one with the smell in the air, "you just couldn't stop being your irritating self."  Or something like that, he'd done his best to not remember what Sophie said about Fig from one time to the next.

Figaro was, if anything else, a provocateur.  A young man who lashed out in both fun and fury.  The sort to seek and find the rising spirit in his fellow travelers.  When his jibes and jabs were come from fun, they were short on charm but long on love.  But when they came from the yellow humors of his pancreas, that acidic, bilious place ... they came cruelly.

He'd done all he could to save face in the wake of his final argument with Sophie Flickwick, where they'd both done all they could to give each other a good reason to end it. They'd both said some nasty things, some true things.  But he missed her because where was he now? Already, he was probably ill equipped to handle the thought of Sophie having chummy chums that weren't him at the moment, but Nick's mime of an out-turned stomach had crossed a line.

Figaro nearly caused another explosion of stank as he rose up from his perch to close the distance between him and Nick.  The normally cheerful lad looked grim as hell. 

"I've got my shit sorted, Bevans.  You're the idiot who got himself kicked down to beginner in Dueling Club and then quit.  You're all talk."

Something inside Fig was already regretting getting pissy with his friend, but he was a down dog lately and sick of swallowing his pride when everyone seemed to know everything about stuff that wasn't their business.

Nicholas stood quickly as the other boy moved toward him.  Nicholas wasn't generally one to get into a fight with friends, but it had been known to happen.  It was bound to happen given his short temper.  And even though it had been a month, he was still mad about the whole dueling club incident.  He stared daggers at Theo whenever he saw the Slytherin who had docked Gryffindor points for a fight the arrogant prefect had started. 

Mostly he was tired of hearing about it.   From Gryffindor's who had been either mad about the loss of points or friends who gave him shit for how it had happened.  Or the smart arses from dueling club who snickered when they saw him not headed to dueling club.

"You don't know what the hell you are talking about.  And from what Sophie said," Nicholas laughed, knowing it would push buttons and he actually couldn't remember anything she said.  And she'd probably break his nose if he actually could remember what she'd said and repeated it.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he shouldn't push Figaro's buttons, but after a month of wanting to hex someone, anyone, the Hufflepuff was as good target for his temper as anyone else.  "You know there were bets about whether she'd punch you again.  I lost a galleon."  He said with a cruel laugh that was unusual for the Gryffindor.