Balfour Spectre, while perfectly aware that the apoplectic dragon behind him was in fact a poster, could still not shake the sensation of his curls being gradually set alight. He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably and glanced around the indoor marquee-gazebo that the Beasts Division was sharing with its Beings counterpart. The animate poster took up the entirety of the marquee's draped wall, its Ukrainian Ironbelly more bronze than slate in the glow of indignant flame.

Skylar hadn't yet arrived. He refrained from thanking the gods. Mrs Cunningham, his secretary, had reported the many memos and owls that had been coming in from the other end of the department floor.

The tent interior was arranged for there to be plenty of space in which the 'demonstrations' could move about. Not that his own division had provided many. The beasts table was mostly occupied by stacks of reading material. Balfour hadn't signed up for this. He wanted to be at the Sanctuary in Scotland at this moment, corralling the younger infected dragons. But work was work. Their Department Head had saddled him with a basket of Puffskeins, several caged pixies, and the ominous placard.

It was a mixed message. Come look at the adorable beasts, it seemed to say, but also look at all the fire!

The wizard leaned back against his table, displacing several pamphlets, and peered out of the marquee entrance to watch the first of pupils enter the Great Hall. He smiled - a practice smile to himself for the students. Just in case the poster didn't pull them in.

"Merlin's balls, Viola, you look perfectly fine. Would you stop with the bloody charms every five steps?" came the exasperated, and obviously irritated voice of the Beings Division Head. Why in the name of Morgana couldn't Spectre deal with this on his own? He was surely the star employee of the RCMC... She scowled remembering those bastard books and balances. And just what might've given them the idea that she would be a good fit among... potato heads.

Entering the tent, Skylar froze. Sweet Circe. What the bloody hell was that? "What the bloody hell is that gargantuan shite?" she asked lowly, finger pointing towards the ostentatious poster. Her companions stopped to either admire it, raise their eyebrows or grimace. "Spectre" she barked, something of a greeting and something of a demand for an answer. "It's... big" she stated the obvious with an unimpressed expression and raised eyebrow.

"Are you compensating for something?" she asked with a positively obnoxious smirk, leafing absently through Spectre's boring pamphlets. A voice cleared behind her and Sky turned with a questioning eyebrow. "Oh" she said, almost bored. "Spectre. This is Viola St. Martin" gesticulating, palm up, to the young Veela, annoyingly flipping her hair back and offering Balfour a leering smile that made Sky shiver. She did not want to be on the receiving end of that sort of attention from a Veela. Ever. That way lay madness. And possibly a sexual harassment lawsuit. "And this is Mr. Ragnok" she presented the goblin, who threw both Spectre and herself a deathly glare. Skylar's lips twitched. "And this is Tilly" she smiled at the house-elf, who bravely and stoically offered her hand to Spectre. "You may take a seat over there and I'll soon be with you, then we can go over the talks again" she offered with a charming smile, directing the three towards the area set up to accommodate them.

Then she turned her eyes back to Spectre, smile all but crushed, sour expression taking its place. With a tight-lipped face she checked Balfour's appearance curiously, only for her eyebrows to climb high up her forehead as her eyes reached his face again. "Good luck keeping the hormonal teenage girls off you" she jeered, following with a snort. She may think him an incompetent arse, but she had eyes.

He always needed a few minutes to adjust whenever Skylar entered a space.

Balfour's russet eyebrows tensed bemusedly at her disgust of the immense dragon poster dominating their visual space - it wasn't glaringly 'big', surely, but then again he was much more accustomed to dealing with life-sized dragons. Anything on print didn't quite measure up. The thought passed quickly, giving way to Skylar's less indelicate accusation. "Are you compensating for something?"

His cheeks burned and he folded one leg over the other, self-consciously.

"It isn't mine," he answered pointedly. "We have it on loan from the fellow upstairs." An oblique reference to their Head of Department, a wizard whose bias towards the Beasts Division was so transparent that even Balfour would sometimes acknowledge it. But internal politics could wait.

Not wanting to seem impolite, he stood to accept the introductions - nodding pleasantly at each of the beings regardless of their own attitudes. Well. He might have been a touch flustered by Viola. Veela communities were possibly the core reason behind his reluctance to dabble in Skylar's division. Tilly was much more approachable and he had gladly shook hands with the daring elf.

Certainly more approachable than her host. Balfour looked down at his outfit, bewildered by the comment. She was dressed in scarlet red! How was his outfit any more eye-catching than that? His obliviousness manifested in confusion, which he tried not to show. Perhaps she meant that the girls were mad about Dragon Tamers.

Alternative rock stars to the Ministry's hardy Aurors?

"Right, well I'm sure they will be much more taken by the demonstrations..." Balfour indicated the two pixie cages dangling from a marquee pole. "It isn't all dragons and Hippogrifs in our line, you know. Some of it is boring." Some.

If Skylar's face turned to an impish, yet completely satisfied expression at seeing Spectre's reaction to her jab... Well, she was only human. And if her eyes stayed for a moment longer—actually, she had no excuse this time. Her lips thinned, as she cleared her throat.

The fellow upstairs. Sky rolled her eyes so hard she suddenly wondered if her younger sister wasn't rubbing off on her a bit too much. "Of course] you do" she said with the sweetest of smiles, shaking her head nervously. That complete bloody knob. She was going to dance on his grave, when he finally kicked the curb. She only hoped that if their next Department Head was going to play favorites, it would be her next. Payback was best served cold, after all.

She scowled at his face and waved her hand about him, with a face stuck between appreciative and pained. She was sure it came out more as constipated, than anything else. "Merlin... It's the trousers, Spectre. They're practically painted on" she managed, although she was sure the temperature of the room had more to do with her current shade than anything related to Spectre. Anything.

She snorted, taken aback by her own reaction, because, "Yes, I'm sure the demonstrations with pixies will surely prove much more of a fascination than—" she deadpanned, gesticulating wildly at him, eventually just waving it off and turning to make for her side of the marquee. "You can have the grand opening" she said mockingly. "I'm supposed to socialize first" she muttered with a groan, raising her arms to the sky in defeat and exasperation.

Alex doubted that the career fair, which gave rise to wholly unrealistic expectations about the professions advertised, was necessarily the best way for a student to decide between professions. Fortunately, she was not so indecisive as to be unsure of her career path, and she had been efficient enough to do something about it, so for Alex the career fair represented a rare opportunity to meet adults during term time.

Of course she planned to visit Rick, but he ranked lower on her list of priorities than her Godfather.

As she neared the tent, there was the definite sound of voices raised in somewhat less than civil conversation. Unfortunately, they were too muffled to pick up on what they were saying, but Alex slipped inside in time to catch the end of her cousin’s sentence, and her despairing remark. She entirely understood, the society to be had at Hogwarts was mostly abysmal.

“Sky?” she asked, somewhat incredulous. She hadn’t expected her favourite cousin (which was hardly saying much, her blood relatives were an intolerable bunch at the best of times, and frankly Alex would rather battle dragons than suffer dinner with them when her Aunts were in a foul mood) to be at the career fair, much less considering that Balfour was already there and there was surely no need for another representative from the department of magical creatures. Perhaps it would be viewed as favouritism if it were just one of them, but the two heads of department were hardly amicable and the combination was perhaps not ideal.

Especially since Alex had hoped that her early arrival would give her a chance to talk to Balfour without others present. Even if she did like her cousin, it was not quite the same, and Alex had questions she needed answers for which she had no intention of asking in the presence of her cousin. She was happy to see her, of course, and she would still be able to talk to Balfour, which was better than nothing.

But Sky was entirely correct about Balfour’s trousers, even if admitting it was a little painful. No matter, she was sure that she would be able to divert attention onto Rick. Having no more than glanced at them, Alex’s gaze returned to her cousin, “well, at least he doesn’t look as though he’s trying to out-dress a veela.” Not entirely true, since veela didn’t need to dress in ornate clothing to be beautiful, but the sentiment remained.

“Hello Balfour,” she added, “it’s so good to see you.”

Balfour, who had always thought his dress sense to be quite practical, glared at his peer incredulously.

"Odin's beard!" he resisted the urge to examine his trousers once more; a man can only glance down at his own crotch so many times in an hour. "They don't look  sprayed on, this is wha--" The protest slammed straight into a wall, cut off by the appearance of a more benevolent creature in the marquee. It was dangerously easy to forget that Skylar was also a Carstairs - especially when he was so very fond of Alex.

The surname was synonymous to 'formidable woman'. Balfour's brow cleared up, fatherly affection making him wilfully unmindful of the Ravenclaw's catty remarks to her cousin. Where wit was concerned the two ladies were in a realm apart from his. Drunken jabs at Ricky's slovenly sex appeal were not the pinnacle of acumen.

"And to see you!" The wizard hardly needed further invitation, swooping down to his god-child's minute height and lifting her into a single hearty embrace. He was all smiles when he let her down. "Oof. I suspect that you've grown since I last picked you up. Excellent."

Anything that made her more difficult to be displaced by a dragon was certainly an improvement.

"Your timing is as impeccable as your cousin's." Balfour smiled at Alex,  and then more dryly at the elder Carstairs. "The grand opening is mine for the taking, apparently. I was considering setting the pixies free." The little blue imps may yet be the best impetus for Skylar to socialise with actual human beings outside their exhibit.

Ignoring Spectre's bemoaning, Sky was just going to see to her guests and have as little contact as possible with the knob. But she stopped in her tracks at hearing her name called in the voice of her darling cousin had Skylar turning around with a bright smile on hr face. "Alex, darling" she beamed, approaching the young girl to squeeze her shoulder awkwardly, obviously uncomfortable in doing so. Looking between Spectre and her cousin she frowned. Oh... She'd forgotten about that unfortunate family connection with her colleague.

Her eyebrow arched at the girl's commentary, but she smiled fondly nonetheless. "Yes, well... someone has to in this family" she replied with a perfectly polite smile, even if her glare was not quite as polite as that. She watched the more affectionate greeting between her cousin and her godfather and took a reluctant step back. Ugh, touching. She glowered at Balfour's comment and arched her eyebrow in challenge. The glare intensified at the idea of releasing the pixies.

"If you do, you can have the pleasure of dealing with McGonagall when she finds out her little cubs are in danger" she dead-panned, nose twitching at the memory of the woman. She had never been able to stand her. "Anyway, I'll show my guests around while you... deal with your nonsense" she waved her hand at the scene and his side of the set-up. "Alex, darling, it was lovely to see you" she smiled fondly at her cousin and made to gesture to hr guests. "Oh and if you see my sister, please let her know I'm looking for her."

Alex smiled at her cousin, but it was clearly insincere, just as her cousin’s gaze belied her smile. The minimal physical contact suited her perfectly, although she would be even happier if there had been none whatsoever. She supposed that was supposed to be insulting, but it was a pathetic attempt.

“This is hardly dignified,” Alex protested weakly. She wasn’t sure she had grown, but if Balfour wanted to believe she had she wasn’t about to contradict him. Being diminutive did have advantages, but they were slim and she was somewhat envious of those of greater stature, which amounted to almost everyone.

“Thank you,” she said with minimal sincerity and considerable grumpiness when she was placed on the floor, adjusting her clothes carefully. Even if Balfour was… Balfour, being lifted up as though she were a child was embarrassing. Particularly because it had happened in front of her cousin, whose gaze she studiously avoided.

"The grand opening is mine for the taking, apparently. I was considering setting the pixies free."

Alex suspected Balfour had not thought overly about what he was going to do for the fair. She still didn’t agree with Sky, since the prevailing attitude towards student safety was lax, but it probably wouldn’t end well and that would be unfortunate. But Sky was leaving, so perhaps he wasn’t entirely off the mark.

“Of course I’ll tell her,” Alex promised, smiling a little. She would try to talk to her cousin later, if there was time, but in the meanwhile she was glad to have the opportunity to talk to Balfour without an audience.

“Perhaps you might want something slightly more reliable to start with?” She suggested. She didn’t think that releasing a swarm of pixies could be called grand either. “And maybe wait until there are some more people, you wouldn’t want to lose the dramatic effect.” The suggestion was entirely self-motivated, and she smiled at Balfour hopefully as she made it.

Balfour wisely kept his lips sealed as he watched - perhaps too carefully - his colleague's figure withdrawing from the marquee in typical Skylar fashion.

And then he could finally breathe. Alex, being the infinitely less provocative Carstairs, suggested that pixies were not a good opening demonstration for the fair. In all honesty, they were never a good anything and seemed to serve no further purpose than bothering his office desk with complaints of their presence in untoward locations.

"Quite right." Balfour agreed, a very Slytherinesque angle to the pull of his smile. "I believe the pixies have more than served their purpose this morning." It was heartening to have a quiet moment with his god-child in the middle of term time. Letters were adequate but right now, here, he could see with his own two eyes how much she had grown.

On a day-to-day basis, you could never tell. It was easier to notice such changes after large gaps of time: a particular mannerism, or a different turn of phrase. A new willfulness or apprehension. Balfour fixed the little Ravenclaw with a thoughtful look and then moved around his table to the other side.

"Hold on. I'll bring out the dragon egg shells for display," he busied himself with a crate and heaved it up on to the surface in a single motion. At the urging of a wand, the crate sides began to unhinge to reveal three separate spheres nestled in dry forage; broken shells but bonded together once more so that only the finest cracks were visible.[1]

The eggs, enchanted prior to the fair, needed only the slightest indication. A tap: and then they began to float in a slow, winding pattern around one another. Not as attractive as the large poster but it reinforced the theme.

Balfour paused to consider the tent before glancing at Alex again. "I should have worn my Dragon Tamer robes~" he mused remorsefully, and then checked to ensure there was nobody harassing their marquee entrance quite yet. "But now that we have that - and your cousin - out of the way, might I ask after your well being?"

1.	The eggs of the Chinese Fireball (crimson, flecked with gold), Ukranian Ironbelly (mother-of-pearl sheen, the largest egg) and Hebridean Black (completely matte surface).

A conspiratorial smile graced Alex’s face as she realised what Balfour was implying. It was easy to forget that, kind though he might be, Balfour could also be devious in pursuing his ends. His other suggestion was much better, and clearly had involved some prior thought – but the pixies’ effect had been calculated more exactly than she’d initially assumed.

The dragon eggs were entrancing, and Alex took a step closer to them, admiring the different hues of their shells. She was sure that Theo would be able to identify them, and she could guess that one was the Hebridean Black (the clue was in the name) but she’d never found Care of Magical Creatures to be the most interesting subject.

At his question, a corner of Alex's mouth lifted, “you may always ask after my wellbeing,” but she would not always give a truthful answer. Since they were alone, however, there was no need to be dishonest, although she did make sure that she was quiet when she spoke, lest someone outside could overhear her, “I’m fine. There haven’t been any accidents recently either, which is something of a relief.” Only at Hogwarts could no accidents be considered a relief.

She should really ask how he was, but she wanted to ask her questions in person, and wouldn’t do so if another person was present. “I have – a question, though,” she admitted, wondering how best to phrase it. It would be easier if she named all parties involved, but she didn’t want to. Since Balfour knew the relevant party, particularly. “Phillip used to like someone, which I knew when we started dating, and – I don’t think he’s moved on, not entirely.” She paused, uncertain of how to continue, or even if she should continue.

“Because now that person, the one he likes, is dating, and he’s being – ugh. It’s silly, don’t worry about it. I’d rather hear about how you are?” this was entirely true, there were any number of topics Alex would rather discuss than this one, and the proposed alternative was even one that she enjoyed. The smile that accompanied her finishing question was not as firm as she’d like, but she forced it to remain in place, even if it wavered slightly.

She shouldn’t have asked. Spoken aloud, her concerns seemed foolish, and she wished that she had never voiced them. Simply trusting Phillip would be far easier, and it shouldn’t have taken such a dire attempt at asking for advice to decide that she never should have. She knew that. Phillip wouldn’t hurt her. Not deliberately. And she rarely got to see Balfour during term time, she shouldn’t have burdened their meeting so.

No accidents sounded miraculous coming from within the castle walls.

Balfour leaned back against one of the crates that the Puffskeins had travelled in, hands splayed on either side as he braced himself for whatever 'question' dear Alex was intent on asking. Courtship was natural at her age but he was - like any father figure - vaguely concerned for the state of his god child's heart. You felt everything so much more keenly in youth.

"You don't think he's moved on?" he echoed. Already his brow wrinkled with worry... but no, she was back pedalling the query and trying to seal it with a smile. Trying and failing. Balfour sighed. "Oh, Alex darling. Come here," he gestured and pulled her on to the crate next to him, an arm over the petite Ravenclaw.

The dragon poster behind them had yet to draw anyone else into the marquee so he paused a moment, to consider what to say.

"I'm not... very good at this sort of thing, you know. But I don't think people truly move on." Balfour glanced at Alex and then at his shoes, thoughtfully. He ignored her asking after his well being altogether. "It isn't a bad thing. And feelings evolve. Love becomes fondness, or hatred, or something - something else. It doesn't mean that everything afterwards is ruined. Besides, I think you've already made up your mind eh?"

He looked up, raising a quizzical brow at Alex. "But it's not silly for you to ask. I'll always listen." Balfour kissed her temples affectionately, "You do whatever you think is best. And if you need me to set a dragon on Phillip, simply say so my dear."

It was only a half-joking offer.

She wasn’t surprised that her attempt at changing the topic of conversation had failed, and since she had asked, it made sense to receive advice. Otherwise, her outburst would have been in vain. She stiffened under the arm, but didn’t move away, staring at her feet instead.

Balfour underestimated himself, at least in Alex’s opinion. It was true that in this area there were a limited number of people she would even consider asking, but Balfour was by no means the best of a bad lot. Well, he was, but that was because of the others in the pool rather than because he fell short. His advice, while not what Alex wanted to hear, made sense.

It accounted for Phillip’s jealousy, at least, although it seemed foolish to Alex. But Phillip was often foolish – and clearly she was too, where he was concerned. Perhaps, to him, the jealousy of the new demand on the affections of whatever it was that Rick was to him was unavoidable. She wasn’t entirely convinced, but she at least had something more. Lost in thought, she remained still through the display of affection.

The final comment was much more to her liking, although Alex dreaded to think what would happen if Phillip was faced with a dragon; he spent far too much time in the hospital hut without facing such a challenge. “Is the offer limited to Phillip?” she asked in the most innocent of tones, not moving away for the moment. There were plenty of people at Hogwarts whose character could only be improved by facing a dragon – particularly if there was little left of them after the encounter.

“And really, how have you been?” Her concerns had been more than adequately addressed, and she would welcome a shift in the focus of the conversation.