Xavier left after Potions Class with an unsettled feeling. He was on his way back to the common room to drop off his book bag before going back upstairs for dinner. He couldn't shake the feeling he had. An itch he couldn't scratch, a memory nagging at the back of his mind that he couldn't recall. He had claimed that the test quill had been faulty but there was a weird twisting in his gut that spoke otherwise. None of it made sense. Perhaps he'd nip off to the showers before dinner and try and wash the feeling away.

He pulled his bag high up his shoulder and ran a hand through his tousled brown hair. He kept replaying the class over and over in his head. There wasn't anything all that wrong with it, other than having been paired up with an old rival. They were supposed to be testing out an antidote to Veritaserum. As far as he knew his had actually worked, though when he tried to answer truthfully the charmed quill marked it as a lie.

How many siblings do you have?

He knew it was just one of the lame questions from the list of those the quill was charmed to recognize but why in the world had it been marked as a lie. Professor Vaillancourt's response hadn't made him feel any better. She had dismissed his concerns unable to accept that the quill may be faulty. It was easier for her to accept that he somehow had siblings he knew nothing about. How would the quill know better than him? How was it even possible? His father had been missing, presumed dead, since he was eight and no one knew where his mother was. The only good thing the Professor had said was that they had both managed to successfully create an antidote, a little surprising on the Ravenclaws part to be honest.

"Oi! Wait up!"

Xavier's brow furrowed as he turned to the voice that called out to him.

Peyton packed up his things from class, hanging back to let other students file out. He wasn't exactly looking forward to the long trek back up to the Ravenclaw towers before heading back down to dinner. It had been a long day and he knew it was nowhere near over. He was hoping to manage a Practice session after dinner if he could pry his team mates away from their studies. OWLs and NEWTs made it hard to keep them focused or even energized for Quidditch but they had a match coming up in less than a week. Hufflepuff may have a weaker team but that wasn't an excuse to be slacking off.

He exited the Potions Dungeon and was ready to head to the main staircase when he caught sight of his partner. He hesitated. He had been hoping to question the Slytherin in private. The other teen's reaction to the lie detecting test had confused the heck out of him. He wanted some answers but he also didn't want to get punched in the face. It had been over two years since the two had last come to blows but he was still nervous. After five years of constant clashing the last two years of near complete avoidance made him more weary than comforted.

The Slytherin stopped and turned to him as he called out. Peyton caught up to him and almost backed down under the annoyed look he had received.

"Wha' ye want Wen'worh."

Peyton swallowed hard, "Look I just wanted to talk about what happened back there. The whole 'broken quill' thing." He looked the teen over, really looking this time and finding it hard not to see the family resemblance. The brooding Slytherin looked so much like their father, "I don't get it. What are you playing at?" This was a conversation they likely should have had two years ago but he could never bring himself to bring it up. After the bruises had healed, he spent a lot of time angry and confused. Not wanting to talk about it. He had spent even longer avoiding his father. The longer he waited the less important it seemed to talk about. But now, the other teen acted as though the whole ordeal had never happened.

Above all things Xavier simply looked tired. He didn't want to be here, he didn't want to be having this conversation. Whatever this conversation was supposed to be. Was the Ravenclaw angry that he had given a truthful answer to the quill? One that the bloody thing had decided was a lie. Why should he even care? The assignment was completed, time to get on with the day. The other teens query wasn't helping the uneasy feeling in his stomach either. It only served to make that nagging itch at the back of his head intensify and his desire to leave grow greater.

"Ye kno, jus cuz I 'aven't punch'd ye in a few years doesnea mean I cannea' do it agin."

He let out a long sigh visibly agitated. He wondered if the Ravenclaw would follow him if he decided to just leave. He wasn't really eager to find out. The annoying teen was persistent, he knew that much about him. It was something to do with the competitive spirit most Quidditch players had. They needed to see every move through no matter how annoying or ridiculous.

"Look mate, I need'd a control queshun, make sure it was workin'. I told thee truth, it said it was a lie, it was brok'n end o' story, yeah?" He turned to leave hoping he could exit the situation without any further word from the other teen. He wasn't so lucky.

"The truth?" Peyton was even more confused than he had been during class. He didn't think the other teen had heard him. He hadn't really said it all that loud. He had simply reacted. How could the Slytherin think he was telling the truth? He had seen the younger teen lie more times than he could count, far more than he had seen him tell the truth. There was a small part of him that believed what he said. He had been telling the truth, or at least his version of the truth. How was that even possible though? Had he simply blocked it all out like a bad dream? Peyton barely went a day without thinking about it. The sight of the other teen was a constant reminder. He still felt the sting of betrayal from his father and in all honesty their relationship hadn't really been the same ever since.

As Xavier turned to leave he was almost ready to let him. That was until he thought back to the idle threat the Slytherin had made. A strange thought crossed his mind. If he didn't remember what happened, he wouldn't have remembered the fight they had right before the big reveal.

Peyton picked up his step and came to the other teen's side, ignoring the groan he received in return. He wasn't ready to let this go. Not now. It had taken him this long to finally try and talk about it. He wasn't sure he'd ever get another chance. They'd be graduating in a few months and were likely to never see each other again. Unless they somehow ran into each other at a family function. Which also wasn't likely. Of his extended family on the Wentworth side, he really only visited Uncle Kevin and his kids and Aunt Scarlet, as far as he knew Xavier didn't do anything with anyone outside their Grandfather and the Bulstrodes.

"When was the last time you punched me?"

Xavier growled in frustration and rounded on the older teen. There was just no getting rid of him. Why was he being so incessant and annoying? All Xavier wanted was to get back to his dorm and take a shower or a nap or really anything that would stop his brain from itching and his skin from crawling. Any other time he likely would have just kept walking but he somehow knew that if he left now there would be no end to this. Peyton wasn't going to let up until he got whatever he wanted. In the end Xavier was simply tired. He was tired of their rivalry and while he wasn't ready to become buddies he simply didn't care anymore. He had used the older Ravenclaw as a punching bag for the better part of six years. He was working to better himself, to actually be the person he wanted everyone else to see him as. Part of that was letting go of his anger and his pointless rivalries. Over the last year and a half it had simply become easier to ignore the other teen than to antagonize him.

"Are ye bloody kiddin' me?" He ran a hand through his tousled brown hair, "Ah really couldnae tell ye." He closed his eyes for a moment and shrugged, "Las' scuffle ah remember was afta a quidditch match. Ah was playin' Keeper ye were Chaser. There was a goal, bad call from Madame Hooch an I took it out on ye afta thee match." He narrowed his cold blue eyes trying to figure out why in the world he wanted to know something so trivial and what it had to do with the Potions class they had just had.

"Ye lookin' fer some kinda apology?"

Peyton absently touched his chin as Xavier so nonchalantly talked about the last time he remembered them fighting, "Yeah I remember that." It had been almost two years ago and months before their Christmas run in. While there had been countless times their hatred for each other had come to blows, more than Peyton could really count or even remember he knew for certain that Quidditch match had been before the Holidays. It certainly wasn't the last time they had fought which really only confused him more. Xavier was a natural liar, he was a snake, a well deserved Slytherin but there was nothing to gain from pretending none of this had actually happened.

"But that's not-" Peyton cut himself off and shook his head. He tried to think about why the younger teen would be acting like this. The more they talked the more he felt this had been a mistake. Maybe he was approaching this from the wrong angle, maybe he should have just come out right from the start and confronted him when their Grandfather had brought him back to school.

A spark ignited in Peyton and his face warped into a grim realization. Xavier had avoided him when they had come back from school but he was obviously being affected by what had happened. He showed up in class disheveled, underslept and with broken hands. He was punishing himself, or at least that's how Peyton had always seen it. It had come to a head when he ran away from school. In the two weeks he had been gone Peyton had been visited by their Grandfather for the first time in his life. The man was powerful, rich and well respected. Peyton didn't bother asking about the rift between him and his father. He didn't think he could stomach more of his father's sins. Arathorn had been looking for Xavier, Peyton had been a last resort option. Then suddenly the Slytherin had returned to school - escorted by their Grandfather - a changed man, one who had not been too guarded about the fact that he couldn't remember anything about the two weeks he had been missing.

The only thing Peyton's father had ever mentioned about his parents was that they were both Obliviators for the Ministry.

The sad truth finally came to light, "Arathorn you feckin' bastard." Peyton shook his head before looking back to the younger teen, suddenly regretting having ever approached him in the first place, "Xavier I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry." He turned and walked away.

Xavier's eyes narrowed and the hair on the back of his neck bristled. A lump formed in his throat at the mention of his Grandfather's name and that itch in the back of his mind become a deep throb. To say that Xavier liked his Grandfather was probably being generous. The older man was distant, powerful and determined. Xavier had accepted his 'destiny' and had decided that being a Wentworth wasn't the end of the world so long as Arathorn was the one he was following. Under the old man's care he wanted for nothing, everything was at his fingertips and he had reveled in the new found freedom and power. He did his best to ignore the fact that he couldn't remember how the two had met or what had happened after he had run away from school. He had a feeling his Grandfather was somehow responsible but he never pursued it. Clearly he was better off without those memories right? Did he want to know why he and Bella had broken up? Or why he was no longer friends with Callum? He was better off walking away from the toxic people in his life rather than pursuing what had really happened.

This, however, made his stomach turn. There was obviously something the Ravenclaw wanted out of him, something he felt Xavier should know or say. Something in that Potions class had dug deep under the other teen's skin and he felt Xavier had the answer to it. So way back off now? And why mention his Grandfather's name?

Xavier wasn't a complete idiot when it came to genealogy. He was a pureblood, which meant there was a very good chance that he was somehow related to nearly all other purebloods at school, though many rather distantly. It wasn't really something the purebloods liked to talk about, it wasn't exactly the best turn on as a teenage boy to have to wonder how many times removed the hot girl in class was from your family. Based on his last name Xavier knew there was likely some kind of relation between him and the Ravenclaw, it had been the main reason he had instigated their rivalry. However now that the other teen had mentioned his grandfather by name he was worried they weren't as far removed from each other as he original thought.

The other teen looked pained, which made Xavier even more confused. Then simply apologized and walked away, "Wha' thee fuck Wenworth?!" He yelled after the older teen but he simply kept walking. Xavier growled again and punched the nearest object, which happened to be a suit of armor. He shook out the pain from his fist, "Bloody mental." He grumbled to himself. He desperately needed that shower and nap. He no longer had any appetite for dinner. Maybe he could drown his confusion in some whiskey or Merlin forbid, some studying. Anything to help him forget this ridiculous exchange had ever happened.