After lessons. Old Hospital Hut, bedroom. Rated M for scenes of a sexual nature.


Virgil Carstairs reclined against the headboard in one of the hut's bedrooms, lanky legs crossed as he bowed his head to light a fresh joint of gillyweed. It had been some time since ill and injured had begun frequenting their castle's hospital wing rather than the one out here by the forest - the place became a bit of a haunt for older students who were up to less virtuous behaviour.

Virtue had limited charm, as it was.

A window had been propped open to let in some chilly late afternoon air, and he had turned on the old wireless set in the room. In the past it had entertained feverish peers but today it provided only a light, background music to Virgil's high. A sensation of clouds behind his eyes.

Some of the other seventh years knew he was here - he had casually mentioned coming down to the hut; since the blood lake of doom it seemed a good precaution before going anywhere on the grounds alone.

He exhaled curls of smoke and coughed gently, feeling the gillyweed set in like his mind was cooly observing itself from the outside. Footsteps fell somewhere in the hut. Creaking. Virgil exercised his Legilimency to loosely gleam the presence of this other visitor.

"Flickwick!" he called in a soft voice that managed to travel past the corridor outside: actor's lungs. "Follow that sorry excuse of a nose."

Sophie had been a bit adrift since the happenings of February. The more she tried to get in touch with her inner eye the further away her ability felt and in turn the more anxious she was. She just wanted to clear her head a little, or a lottle, whichever. There were several people she could have gone to, chiefly Marco or Eli when she felt this sort of aching for numbness but instead she'd ventured out of the castle hoping to outrun the feeling.

She found herself at the hospital hut, remembering the last time she'd ventured out here it'd been Zel carrying her after the Great Hall Brawl in which Nicky was stabbed in the leg - something he still flashed every so often when he wanted to guilt Sophie for his own amusement. It was funny how far away that night seemed, how empty the hut was in comparison.

Her ears had just picked up the faintest sound of music when her name carried languidly through the corridor. Virgil, her lips ticked up a little as she shook her head and followed the sounds to a not so far off doorway. The pair didn't spend much time together, but she did find him amusing, and more than a little attractive (who didn't, really, besides Winnie).

She leaned casually against the frame pulling her dark hair over one shoulder as her eyes traveled from the toe of his boot, to the top of his head, "You bellowed, Carstairs?"

The other Seer stood at the threshold of the room, in full view of Virgil - she was a small witch and not without her strengths. Anyone who could tolerate being in the same house as Bevans was to be commended. And she wasn't about to tattle to anyone that a prefect was lighting up in school.

"Bellow, Sophie?" he smiled, an indolent angel. "You've mistaken me for one of those creatures you call a housemate - they must wake you in the night." A leisurely hand gesture may or may not have followed to indicate the self-pleasuring habits of youth, Virgil's pale fingers tracing an invisible shaft.

His arm dropped back to the gingham sheets and he laughed to himself, though it came out as more of a giggle. "Here-" the Slytherin extended his left hand with the joint trailing a wisp of smoke. "- rolled a strong one, careful."

It was some of the strong stuff that Indi had acquired from her mother, which gave him more of an active high than the sort of gillyweed that would put him to sleep.

Virgil raised his pale eyebrows and pushed out his lower lip to give Sophie a skeptical look. "Unless you're here for something else?"

Sophie covered her face with one hand, trying to stifle a laugh but failing miserably, "Don't you know that's what sound proof bed curtains are for. Not that I want to think about any of my housemates and what they get up to behind those curtains." she crinkled her nose, cheeks flushing softly though one would have to look rather closely given her complexion.

She wandered from the doorway to the edge of the bed, slender fingers brushing his with the barest of touches as she took the gillyweed from him and inhaled deeply. She was still pretty new to the whole experience and the way it burned in her lungs felt different than any of the joints Marco had ever given her on their rooftop adventures.

She held it in for as long as she could possibly stand before slowly exhaling and crawling into the narrow bed beside the lanky Slytherin, "What else could I possibly be looking for all the way out here?" She leaned in a little closer, one hand braced on the other side of his hip as she placed the joint between his lips again, "I might be open to suggestions."

Moth to a flame, the way a well rolled joint drew in just about anyone whose mind was open enough. Virgil watched with the curious indifference typical to him and dragged his gaze away from the smoke Sophie expelled in time to meet her in the eye as she returned the gillyweed to his red mouth.

            "I might be open to suggestions."

A chime of interest rang from somewhere inside his now hazy mind; an eager sound echoing his obsession with the kitchens[1] and other recreational distractions[2] that helped to keep the thought of Mortimer Gamp at bay. Sophie hadn't been there in the dungeon. She was as far from the Department of Mysteries as anyone right now, and on some intellectual level it made sense for him to be pulled into her natural sphere of influence.

Virgil resisted the urge to give his classmate a shotgun kiss, picking up from the surface of her thoughts that she was new to smoking. It would have only ended in coughs.

"We're in a bedroom, if you haven't noticed..." he trailed off, taking in one last hit of the joint before pinching the end to extinguish it; his fingertips burned lightly. "Or are Gryffindors more adventurous?" smoke escaped as Virgil spoke, drifting between them with its herbal fragrance.

He licked his bottom lip and carefully touched Sophie's cheek, not quite intimate but hardly objective. "There's a library somewhere here. Or a porch if you're feeling frisky, Flickwick."

Frisky Flickwick. Virgil liked that alliteration.

1.	My Face is Hungry - Feb 19th
2.	'Til You Run Out of Cake - March 19th

Sophie's head was starting to fuzz around the edge in the most pleasant of ways. The constant background static of impending doom and failure dulled as the effects of gillyweed wound themselves through her body. Brown eyes were drawn to the movement of his lips, teeth pressing into the pale flesh of her own as she swallowed back a vaguely nervous giggle.

Her heart beat a little faster and her limbs felt a little shaky though there was no visible tremor. Figaro had never made her feel this way, all anxious and nervous but also excited by the prospect of not knowing what would come next. Deus had made her feel something a little similar but a part of both of him had always held back, like he hated himself for wanting to touch her.

Virgil didn't seem to have that problem, finger tips finding her cheek easily, though her eyes flicked away from his face to the door as he mentioned there being a library and porch if she were feeling adventurously frisky. Turning her head she placed a small kiss against his wrist and slid into his lap, red flannel falling from her shoulder as she ran a nail along his jaw, lips twitching with a playful sort of grin, "It's still early, maybe we'll make time for all three."

Virgil laughed lightly as the Gryffindor slid on to his lip, and he steadied her by sliding both hands against her sides - Sophie might have been minute but he was a slender wizard by most standards. It was mostly in height that he held an advantage and that wasn't a concern at this point.

He went through the motions. Shadows of previous interactions overlaying this moment as he suspected it would other instants with other witches;  his hands smoothed the inside band of Sophie's skirt and he wondered about sex. Virgil's inebriated mind drifted to places that others might not.

To the notion of what it mean to recreationally enjoy what was meant to procreate, to the biological history of man that made the physical urge almost necessary.

"All three?" Virgil replied to Sophie's bluster, his own words calm and patient and distinctly grounding. "Should I be asking if anyone else wants to join?" he smirked before gliding a hand beneath her tank top to rest against her ribs. She was not soft in the way Indi was - or as marvellously toned as Gracie - but touchable in her own way.

Definitely, thought Virgil, less hairy than Eli. He smiled at her sleepily and squeezed her hip. "Or maybe it's you we're overestimating."

Sophie was, vaguely, aware of his history (at least in so far as this wasn't nearly close to his first time) but maybe it was better that way. Maybe the first time was something to just get out of the way because it was going to be terrible anyway. If it were just a physical thing it couldn't hurt her as much. That was sound logic, at least in her fuzzy brain.

She shifted on his lap, body slithering along his just long enough for her knees to find themselves on either side of his hips, dark hair framing her features as she smirked down at him, "I'm feeling just a little to greedy to share," she did away with the final flimsy buttons of her over shirt[1] before completely shrugging it off and tossing it to the foot of the bed.

Tiny shivers ran through her nerves as his fingers explored bare patches of skin, her eyes focused on his face, he seemed off somewhere else, but she knew his mind was prone to wandering. When he asked if she were overestimating herself she gave a nonchalant shrug, cupping his face between her hands as she brushed the tip of his nose with her own, "I guess we'll just have to wait and see Dahl. I'm game if you are."

1.

polyvore

"I'm feeling just a little too greedy to share."

He couldn't understand that feeling, a foreign notion to someone whose only sexual relations had come through open friendship or hurt - Virgil wanted no one person exclusively to himself, identifying Sophie's 'greed' in the same way he would wish to keep a sinful tray of brownies all to himself.

An indulgence.

Did she just call him Dahl? Roald Dahl? Lentil daal? The Slytherin was too high to care which, mouth pressing against the witch's bared shoulder as the borders of his mind wavered; her thoughts streamed past, as did those of various creatures passing by the exterior of the hut. Images, instincts.

"I don't see why not," Virgil replied in a slow voice - he could sense now that she'd never done this before but was ready to get the rite of passage out of the way. His left hand found her thigh, the bare skin above her socks, and hitched up her skirt delicately. He made a mental note to retrieve the condom in his back pocket before they began in earnest.

Gillyweed was no excuse for forgetting protection. Virgil leaned away from her shoulder and kissed her cheek lightly just then, with deliberation. It felt good to do things with his body, to be in charge of it rather than subject to someone else's whim or cruelty.

He tuned out of his mindscape to enjoy this self-emancipation.

***

Half-dressed and finishing off the rest of his joint, Virgil Carstairs shut the window in the bedroom before glancing back to the  bed where Sophie lounged across the gingham sheets they had happily profaned. The late afternoon was falling into night and it was getting cold.

"Better." He alit on the edge of the bed with a shiver, fag between his red lips, and patted down the stuck up strands of blonde hair from their sport. "Pass me my sweater, won't you?"

Sleepy eyes dragged across the floor but couldn't catch sight of where they'd thrown his boots in their eagerness - Virgil had left his socks on of course.

It had been nice, more than nice really - not that she had much to compare it to. She didn't feel different though. She thought she'd feel different. She was still just Sophie, though it had drowned out the constant nagging buzz of doom in the back of her brain for a little while. He limbs still felt a little shaky, jumpy almost as she slowly propped herself up on her elbows and let her gaze travel the length of his spine. Maybe if she'd been in love with him...

It was a silly thought. She didn't want to be in love with him or anyone else for that matter. She'd wanted to get it over with and she had. At least Virgil had seemed intent on her enjoying herself. She'd heard stories about other witches who weren't nearly so lucky. A strange sort of wispy smile formed on her lips as she pulled her flannel back on but made no move for her skirt or shoes. The not talking didn't feel strange, because really what could they have to say to one another?

As he dropped back onto the bed there was a vague impulse to touch him again as she handed over his sweater, fingers trailing over his pale skin as she placed a string of kisses along his shoulder and the back of his neck, resting her forehead against the back of his for a moment. There was a closeness she was craving, but then maybe that came later too, when you were with someone who mattered down to your bones and not just a very pretty face.

Raking her fingers through her hair she chewed her bottom lip, "So. We should maybe, you know, not tell people about this? I mean not that you inherently would, or anything. I just, you know. People talk and it's really none of their business." she was searching for her shoes now, suddenly feeling like she couldn't really be still, "and you don't have to worry. I know what this was. i have no illusions of grand romance or whatever." Merlin someone needed to shut her up.

In the undercurrent of his mindscape, Virgil picked up on Sophie's intention to touch him - he was still as she did and considered the momentary sensation of her breath against the sensitive skin of his back. A faint, wry smile tugged at his lips. How romanticised of her...not just a very pretty face.

Considering where his cock had just been, the Slytherin didn't hold reservations about letting himself glean the odd thought.

He turned to accept the sweater, gaze dropping down to her dipping cleavage for a moment and then her face as she rattled on about what other people would think. Fair, if you were the breed of person who cared for such things. An effeminate shrug as he pulled on the beige sweater and the chill was locked out from his bones.

"I doubt it would be of interest," he laid back down on the bed languidly and stretched; his hands grazed the headboard. Virgil took care not to dislodge the joint from his mouth. "Either way I won't tell on you and your knickers, Flickwick."

Sophie had gotten something she wanted from their liaison and, considering they were hardly friends, he didn't expect her to keep up a pretence of intimacy. People were selfish about things like grand romances and sex. They want and want and want: hungry for something but never sure of what they were willing to give.

He was convinced that if he just laid there like a corpse, Flickwick would nestle up like a young bird to its nest of emotional unavailability. Virgil plucked the joint from his lips, which parted to release a cloud of smoke. Mm. "I might write it in my diary?" he laughed to himself, obviously glib.

"Dear Diary, I'll say." The Slytherin stared dreamily at the criss cross of ceiling beams and spoke without filter. "Today I fucked Sophie Flickwick in the old Hospital Hut. Contrary to expectation, she did not sound like a chipmunk."

"Maybe not, but there is a bit of a double standard when you're not the one with a dick," her voice was a little bit dry, but not without morbid amusement. The thing was it wasn't that she cared what people thought, well maybe a little, but it was more what it might open up people to think about her. This was a thing that had just happened and she wasn't ashamed and she didn't regret it... but if anything ever happened to her, with someone else, something she didn't want, this was the kind of thing people levied against witches to discredit them.

At the mention of her knickers she spotted the cartoon decorated cotton in a heap on the floor and snatched it up, wiggling into them, "If I'd had any idea, I'd have dressed for the occasion," she stuck her tongue out at him then, but the the corners of her mouth ticked up as she slid back into the bed, shoes forgotten as she let her eyes wander over his face for a moment. There was something about his tone that put her more at ease, the casualness of it all.

Leaning over she took the joint from between his fingers, face looming over his for a moment, "So, what you're saying is, you've spent a fair amount of time wondering how I'd sound if you fucked me," the last word was tinted with a laugh as she leaned back against the headboard and placed the joint between full lips. As smoke filled her lungs again curiosity got the better of her and she found herself looking down at him from the corner of her eye.

 "A chipmunk though? Really? It's the cheeks isn't it," she gave a dramatic sigh expelling smoke from her lungs before rolling onto her hip, to look down at him again, "You know there's still the porch and the library."

Virgil laughed, appropriately disappointed that his classmate hadn't latched on to the idea that he might keep a diary - he did, of course, though not for transactions such as this. He closed his eyes to the hut bedroom as she took the joint, and smiled sleepily to himself in the self-satisfied haze of sexual release.

"Not me specifically, but..." the prefect conjured a memory in his mind's eye of other conversations of this vein; pillow talk. "You know how it is. Flickwick sounds like a chipmunk. Bevans is a grunter, Grimstone a screamer. Five knuts says that all Kinley does is keen like a kitten into her pillow."

But Flickwick's lacking experience with either gillyweed or sex indicated that she didn't sit around speculating as Virgil and his friends might. She wasn't part of their circle; the same circle that would incontestably mock him for this 'conquest'. He opened one eye at mention of the porch and library.

"Once not enough?" a soft sigh escaped while he propped himself up on his elbows, ignoring the self-deprecation of her cheeks; it seemed self-explanatory that Sophie looked a bit like a chipmunk. "More isn't necessarily better. And-" he glanced down at his watch, which he'd also forgotten to remove, frowning at its white face. "- I need food."

The gillyweed was giving him a typical lust for snacks rather than sex. He'd trade her for a well-baked cherry pie at this point; perhaps bit of a whipped cream drizzled in amaretto. Heavy on the flavour but he wouldn't mind until the smoke wore off hours later. Virgil sat up like it was a chore.

"Lots of food," he amended and reached under the bed where he now remembered he had left his boots.

Sophie arched an eyebrow at him, lips pursed. No she didn't know how it was. And she didn't particularly want to know what Nick sounded like while having sex. She supposed up to this point she'd been rather conventional about the whole thing. She'd thought about Deus but more abstractly than that, more like what it'd be like to be with him than the mechanics and sounds of it all. She didn't quite know what to think about the whole thing. And what did he mean 'not me specifically'? Did he mean then it was other people he knew? Who did he spend time with, people like Theo? People like Eli? Gracie? People she considered friends? Was everyone just sitting around having a jolly time pondering how ridiculous she'd be in bed? Chipmunks were not sexy.

She didn't actually want to think about it and she completely dismissed the idea of Zinnia because felt kind of icky actually, it sounded so mocking the way he said it. Whatever, it was done now. Maybe he wouldn't even remember, and maybe that was better since he certainly didn't seem to be interested in trying to make her sound like a chipmunk in the various other places he'd mentioned earlier.

At least she wasn't going to be walking funny, she realized as she rolled away from him and moved for her skirt and shoes. That was a relief she decided. She pulled the soft material of her skirt over her hips, chewing her bottom lip. The less obvious the change was probably better. If she really had looked different she'd have had to talk to someone about it... and she got the distinct feeling this wasn't a thing Virgil would want a repeat of...which was also fine. She hadn't really let herself think about whether or not she actually really would.

Pulling on her boots she glanced over her shoulder at him, not really sure what to say now... but maybe it was better to say nothing.

Then, a voice rang out throughout the hut, low but loud and completely dripping in sarcasm: “If you guys are fucking done yet…”

Or rather, done fucking; long, angry strides soon found Rick at the bedroom’s door, sharp eyes lidded and lip curled in disgust—a look that twisted further as he took in the scene before him: two half-dressed students, rumpled bed sheets, and the ever pungent smell of sex and gillyweed. His gaze swept from the sheets to Sophie, then Virgil, then back to the sheets again, like he couldn’t decide which was worse.

One was a smartass that reminded Rick unpleasantly of a cat. A fat, lazy, noisy cat that liked to push things off of desks. By himself, Virgil Carstairs was not completely unbearable—but this, Rick was sure, was largely due to the fact that they did not usually cross paths outside of class. Otherwise he was nearly as annoying as his cousin, who had a rare knack for making Rick regress into a crabby teenager. Sophie Flickwick, on the other hand…

She wasn’t nearly as annoying as Carstairs, but that wasn’t saying much. And now here she was, part of a tableau that was rapidly, horribly becoming a common sight for the werewolf during patrols. Not exactly, thank God, but. If Rick obliviated himself for every time he had walked in on something like this…

Well, he didn’t. Although it was quickly becoming apparent that should change.

“Outside,” he said, glaring at the both of them. And in case that wasn’t clear enough, “Now.”