The first feast of the new school year was digesting loudly in Leo's stomach as he slithered away from the chaos in the common room to the privacy of the dorms labeled 'Fifth Years'. Ah, home. There was a four-poster bed decorated in emerald and silver for each of him and his peers. It was easy enough for him to find his trunk because his was the one covered in scorch marks from an experiment accident during a previous year. Leo opened his trunk and began digging through his things to try to find his pajamas.

He swore in Klingon, a language known only to those of Muggle heritage. Being a Muggle-born had its advantages. Nothing could make a guy feel more accomplished than reciting a well-thought out speech in Klingon or Elvish to a bunch of elitist broomheads! Leo smirked at the recollection, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose as he leaned over to dunk his head in his trunk. Just in case, right? With all of the experimental charms he had done, Leo could never be sure if his pajamas would just one day decide to become invisible at the bottom of his trunk. He reached in, doubled over the edge, to pat and rub at the empty innards of his massive trunk. Not once did Leo consider how odd it would look if someone came in while he was doing this...

It turned out Casey was not the first to retire to the dorm room for an early night. He never ate much at feasts, there was little he could safely eat. Even though that he was discovering a lot of his prior health extremes were from the now missing amulet, but for further difficulties and...it was still too tiring to think about.

Loosening his house tie, Casey was greeted by the rear end of Eldridge bobbing in the air as it looked he was being eaten by his trunk. Leo Eldridge. Why couldn't they have pawned him off to the Ravenclaws years ago? Between O'Doherty, Clogg-Spleen, Mastiff and etc. this particular generation of Slytherin roommates got on as well as a clock with mismatched gears. Far better that each do their own thing, only working together through the metaphorical gritted gear teeth in this analogy.

Casey tried to remove a sudden thought from his head; it would take just a push, just a close of the lid and would Eldridge actually be able to climb out of his extra-large trunk? Casey sighed. No, he'd be expected at classes tomorrow, professors usually kept an eye on Eldridge to watch that he didn't turn peoples shoes into cacti or something trying to charm them clean.

Casey sat on his bed, perpendicular to Leo 'trunk diver' Eldridge, glancing out to the darkened window out to the lake. Slytherins usually prided themselves on having the exclusive views into the lake but it took some getting used to for Casey. First year had brought too many paranoid thoughts about what in the lake could be watching you change clothes.

Casey set to folding his tie. That was something he didn't do unless alone or everyone else was unconscious; change clothes in the dorm. He heard a distinctive rumbling and already his nose wrinkled from expectation.

"Please tell me you aren't going to be gaseous tonight."

The sound of the door opening and closing fell on deaf ears. Leo was far too absorbed in his thoughts to be worrying about company. He didn't even hear his roommate enter and sit down. Heaving his lost-cause sigh, Leo was in the process of climbing out of his trunk when O'Doherty spoke. The surprise of someone else being in the room caused the clumsy fifth year to jump and, of course, one little reaction led to a number of disasters: He bumped his head on the lid of his trunk, tripped over his things that littered the floor, and in the motion of falling backward his trunk lid, knocked loose from its holdings from his head-bump, clamped down on his tie at just the right moment so that, instead of continuing to fall backward, Leo was jerked forward by the momentum of the lid closing on his tie and he was thusly slammed his face into the closed side of the trunk. Once again, Leo swore in Klingon.

His hands searched for the clamps to his trunk and he finally managed to lift it off his tie. When Leo stood up, he was cupping a bleeding nose. His bright blue eyes searched his pile of belongings for a napkin or a band-aid. Finding neither, Leo picked up his Slytherin scarf and held it up to his nose before looking to his roommate.

"I didn't hear you come in." Leo often stated the obvious after such an embarrassing display. Then, without missing a beat, he picked up the conversation with a disturbingly casual tone for someone who had just probably had their nose broken by a trunk. "Gaseous, you say? No, I don't think so. I steered clear of the pumpkin juice. The nargles warned me it might give me problems."

Then, thinking on it, he added, "You didn't drink it, did you?"

He removed the green and silver scarf from his nose and stared, transfixed, at the blood stains. A finger tenderly reached towards his nose to test if it was still bleeding; it wasn't. He tossed the scarf in to his trunk and started tossing things back in helter-skelter. Then he paused at a book, looked around, and sat down among his things to pile each of his books into separate stacks.

"Did you see Desrosiers' shiny badge? He'll be up here before long, bossing us into bed. How am I supposed to get any of my work done with him being a Prefect?" A thought suddenly occurred to Leo and he looked up at Casey, as though in that moment he realized he was in the room. "Did you know you have the shadow of a doxy?"

The grimace on Casey's face became so wrinkled that by the time Edlridge's extended pratfall was over the grimace has shriveled out of existence. If clowns were supposed to be funny all of the bunkmate's manner failed to entertain. He could learn to swear in languages spoken by actual magical creatures and not muggle actors in rubber makeup, as Casey had picked up on with this guttural language thing.

Casey stiffled a sneeze, a bit of empathetic pain at the sight of the bloody nose. "I drink water," Casey replied, wishing to not entertain the notion that a running joke from the Quibbler could detect a specific batch of pumpkin juice being defunct.

As Eldridge discarded his no bloodied scarf Casey followed the path of its tossing with his eyes. Why couldn't it be put somewhere the house elves would actually be able to find and clean it? This could be the fostering of a new magical bug in the making, Eldritch Eldrigius, and the outbreak would begin in Leo's trunk if Casey didn't get Dingy to go and wash it.

"Oh please," Casey unfastened only the first button of his shirt, "even when it gets past curfew he can't order us sleep when we're still in Slytherin House."

Contrasting thoughts played in Casey's head. Who to side with? Desrosiers the now Prefect so they could finally put a stop to Eldridge's antics? Or sit back watch Desrosiers' new duty fall to shambles against the magus of chaos himself, Leo Eldridge? Surprisingly, though Casey aimed for many an achievement Casey never bothered with thinking about a prefect position, even if the responsibility meant he'd be elevated above his peers.

After all, they only elected one pair of male and female Prefects each year so...

A disgusted look suddenly came across Casey's face, bringing about his trademark sneer. "Doxy's shadow, yes, obviously I'm fairy offspring but grew too huge, lost my wings and the ability to lay poisonous eggs. Please don't reinvent the doxycide in my presence."

"Doxy's shadow, yes, obviously I'm fairy offspring but grew too huge, lost my wings and the ability to lay poisonous eggs. Please don't reinvent the doxycide in my presence."

The sneer on Casey's face was a dead giveaway that he was being sarcastic, but Leo did not pick up on such things.

"Really?" He suddenly became very interested in Casey, ignoring his organization of books for a time. "Say, do you still have your wings? I had a collection once. Lost it entirely." And then he looked all around (the windows, the door, under the beds) before lowering his voice to a whisper, "I suspect it was the former Minister of Magic."

And then Leo remembered he had been doing something important and went back to organizing his books.

"If you want to change, mind, I won't look. Attractive as you are, mate, you're not my type."

He said this with mind-boggling casualty, his focus entirely on the book in his hand. He opened it to skim through a few pages before setting it atop a pile of books which was growing precariously tall. After a time, he sighed and smoothed his white hair back before looking up to his roommate again.

"What did you do during your summer holidays?"

Further inward cringes were added to Casey's pile in the back of his mind. This was what happened when you indulged in Eldridge's maniac thought patterns. The were fifth years now, facing OWLs at the end of the year that tested their entire wizarding knowledge to that point, and he still gullibly at things up like a freshie muggleborn first year.

And yet...

Maybe it was merely being the first night back, the old routines of school not yet fully resumed compared to the limited but distinct summer freedoms. Rather distinctive summer activities Casey had been trying. Or the simultaneous disgust yet challenge that crept up into Casey's focus as Eldridge continued to peer about and sort books in his odd fashion.

"I can't tell you where my wings are," Casey lied simply. "Not even the nubs on my back that used to connect my wings. And you're only saying that now that I've revealed my diminished fairy heritage."

Who would want to be Eldridge's type anyways? Probably someone brain addled by a jellyfish sting. Or the jellyfish.

"But that's why no one can see me undressed and see those wing nubs. Imagine a level of doxy pox that makes spattergroit look like a pleasant fungal garden. That fate is inflicted on all that see the nubs."

"Otherwise over the summer I," and there was an element here Casey was not ready to present. Because it involved an entire summer coming to terms with realizing a close associate--friend was now fully aware of Casey's true nature.[1] "Besides the annual wing airing out summer was...bland, I suppose. The next objective becomes only waiting for school to resume."

1.	Eventually to be liked once we get a flashback scene set up

"Blimey," he said as an awed response to the Doxy pox. He took immediate action to searching through his trunk once more for a pen, ink, anything! Doxy pox was something he really needed to look up in the library. "I'll wager a galleon I can turn the nubs invisible so you don't spread anything, mate. Unless..." Leo turned back to push his glasses up on his nose. "Unless that is your devious plan?"

He rather hoped not. He did not wish to be stricken with something that made spattergroit look like a pleasant fungal garden, as his roommate had so delicately described. No, Leo wanted to keep his body free of all wizarding diseases--especially ones that may not have a cure.

"Besides the annual wing airing out summer was...bland, I suppose. The next objective becomes only waiting for school to resume."

A muggle pen had been discovered among his trunk of lost things. He clicked it once and began scribbling down notes of wing nubs, doxy pox, and cures. Was there a cure? Or would he need to build up an immunity to it, like with the flu? Of course, he did not have an immunity to the muggle flu. Nor the common cold. And it was a dreadful thing to get the flu or a cold! He imagined doxy pox would be twice as bad...

"Yes," he mused aloud to his roommate, "I suppose that is the next logical step. Say, O'Doherty, what are O.W.L.s? I overheard some of our peers discussing it on the train this afternoon and I was wondering what they were?"

He fished out a bag of Cauldron Cakes he had bought on the train and opened them. They tasted a little stale. Perhaps he had purchased them last year? Oh well. They weren't rotten. He offered one to Casey and brought out a small batch of Chocolate Frogs as well. He had got his fill of dinner, but Leo seemed to have another stomach designed purely for dessert.

Casey had never been strong with fishing metaphors, as what passed for fishing as a pusedo-hobby from the O'Doherty elders still left the sport as an alien concept to the fifth year. However, the sense of baiting Eldridge on a hook and leading him around with a line was becoming satisfactory as Casey noted the dormmate assimilate this tale. Already the metaphorical steam was billowing out of Eldridge's years as he began to think.

"Is it my plan to bring about the next major contagion of our times?" Casey mused. "I'm not sure what I would get out of a worsened Doxy pox." As much as Casey despised disease outbreaks and health screenings, like the Dragon Pox scare from last year that required seeing unknown strangers in the healers tasked to diagnose possibly outbreaks at the school...he wasn't as if he wished illness on anyone in particular. At least not currently of this exact moment. Some of Casey's early years at school, yes, there were often wishes that Casey could fend off one illness and inflict it on a rival.

"Therein lies the rub, doesn't it," Casey continued. "Suppose you could turn the nubs invisible and thus prevent the outbreak, you would only get yourself sick because you would have to see them yourself before they turn invisible." Actually, now that Casey gave it some more thought it might be dangerous suggesting to Eldridge that he try casting invisibility spells without looking at Casey or worse, surprising Casey in a partial state of undress.

"Better to not trigger things at all if you don't have a 'cure' yet." Casey bit his lip to not say 'how daft are you' when Eldridge revealed he didn't know what O.W.L.s were.

"Ordinary Wizarding Levels," Casey said as he took the offered cauldron cake, regarding it as if it had been petrified into a lump of charcoal. "It's the first of the graduate level exams that both determine your state of magical aptitude and prospects you may have after Hogwarts. Ministry tests our education of the past years. There's both written and practical exams."