After dinner, before curfew


Leo was feeling particularly temperamental and restless today. He had done well in his task—his team had won, though Beauxbatons was still behind. He’d eaten breakfast, written letters to his mother, and gone to classes with those… Idiotic Salemites, uptight Durmstrangers, and obnoxious Hogwartians. The only thing that was keeping him from figuratively ripping everybody’s heads off was the fact that he got to prank some of the students from other houses. His current favorite was spiderboy.

They were subtle pranks though, nothing that could be traced directly to him.

Spiders being sent to Erin via owl was one of them. That had been fun, but disappointing. Erin hadn’t responded the way he’d hoped. It seemed that Leonardo needed to up his game. He had expected him to throw another one of those hilarious hissy fits, but alas, the spiders did not trigger one.

So here he was, walking through the hallways with the sole intention of finding this boy and harassing him. Part of it was due to boredom, and part of it was because he was in the mood to pick a fight. It didn’t take too long to find him. Leo swerved a bit and made a point to bump shoulders.

“Ah, je suis désolé!” He paused, “Ah, or—Perdón? I am so very, very, sorry.” Leo scowled, “Next time, it is best to stay out of my way. Entiendes?” Leo hoped that by switching languages around, he'd confuse Erin enough to make him frustrated.

If Leo'd been taking the piss with him, Erin hadn't noticed. He was skulking about hating everyone equally at the moment, and one smarmy French boy didn't make no difference from the rest. 'Course, what happened at a distance stood a very good chance of Erin not noticing. He was a bit thick, but not thick enough to miss when someone deliberately knocked into him up close.

He'd lunged at others for less in the past week. And the foreign students, well, he didn't know them at all. They were easy prey. It felt right to dislike them, especially the Beauxbatons students, who kept smirking at him because of whatever filth they'd heard from Razzy. They didn't fit in at all and they didn't try either. Case in point, the suicidal bloke who'd bumped into him.

“Ah, je suis désolé! Ah, or—Perdón? I am so very, very, sorry. Next time, it is best to stay out of my way. Entiendes?”

Erin stared at him for a long moment with a flat blue gaze. It was if he'd considered being confused but decided to skip straight to hostility. Possibly, he knew Leo's game. Or maybe he just hated being spoken to in French. Spanish. Whatever.

"Or," he said. "Next time you go about bumping shoulders I'll just have to bash your face in. Yeah?"

Well. Leo couldn’t turn down that opportunity. He, very deliberately, bumped Erin’s shoulder tauntingly, raising his eyebrows in a silent challenge. Either Erin would keep his word, or he was all talk. Either way, Leonardo couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. It seemed that his case of severe ennui would be remedied soon, thanks to the temper of an angry blonde boy. This day was looking up!

He put his hand in his pocket, wrapping his fingers around the hilt of his wand just in case.

A good fight would help with his restlessness. If it came to wandwork, he had no doubt that he could take the Hogwarts champion.

“Oh, non! Did I do it again? So sorry. Perdón. I am so clumsy, oui?” His lips curled up into the smuggest of smirks. “Are you hurt? You poor thing. We must take you to the school healer.” His concern was about as real as  crumple-horned snorkacks.

It was such a relief when the Beauxbatons boy actually obliged. Erin didn't mind if Leo had a death wish. The boy didn't even have a good chance to finish his sentence when Erin lunged.

It'd have been clever if Erin moved so quickly and in lieu of a reply in order to get the jump on Leo before the other could pull out his wand. In reality, he was just angry. He was always angry these days, like a mad dog straining at the end of its leash. Still, this was familiar to him, so very old hat. He'd been getting into fights with other magical students his whole life and before that, his brother, so how stupid did this prat think he was that he didn't notice Leo's hand slipping into his pocket? The first thing he did was shove at that arm, twisting his hand around Leo's wrist and digging his fingers into the pulse point to make him drop his wand.

Wands weren't good enough for the kind of anger Erin was carrying. He needed the physicality of flesh under fist. He needed intimacy. He needed blood.

And the second thing he intended to do was punch that smug smirk off the slimy git's face.