23 January 2012
Monday at 7pm, after dinner
Doomed Lovers' Nook in a first floor hallway

Frank had passed a note down Ravenclaw table at supper to Eirene Antonopoulos. They'd been avoiding each other by tacit agreement since last week, when things had gone disastrously between them.[1] The rumor in the Daily Prophet about them liking each other had loosed a Pandora's box of insecurities between them, leaving only Awkward behind. But Frank felt like he had to do something. He missed her, which was a confusing feeling in itself. Eirene was a bit much. She was snippy and bossy and stuck up and didn't seem to really like him, which made sense. Frank himself was a know-it-all and a little pedantic and talked too much. He was also a year younger and must seem like a pest. But they'd become friends anyway and he missed her.

He'd made the questionable choice of reaching out to his older brother and serial boyfriend Figaro by owl over the last few days and in the end he'd actually had something useful to say.[2]

The note said to meet him back at the Doomed Lovers' Nook, an alcove traditionally designated for couples to meet. After dinner the corridor would be deserted and it felt like it would be best to clear the air where it had gone all foggy.

Frank waited there sitting on the stone bench dedicated some such alumnus. Outside it was dark and windy. The window panes rattled in their pane. He had a book open on his lap - Runes - but he wasn't really reading it, so much as staring at Centaur.

1.	20 Jan 2012 - A Friend in a Hand is Sweeter
2.	21 Jan 2012 - I Really Hate to Ask

In the Great Hall, as the dishes disappeared into thin air and students began to meander out after supper, Eirene stood at the mostly empty Ravenclaw table and let out a horrified squeal.

The chatter around her paused for a moment, then started up again. No doubt the remaining students assumed she was upset over magical measles being called magical measles.

It wasn't the measles. And it wasn't the note burning a hole in her pocket. It was this morning's edition of the Daily Prophet, right there in her hand.

Eirene held the article away from her, her arm outstretched as far as it would go, blinking at the animated portrait with wide eyes.

"Another flier?" A curious Ravenclaw asked.

She shook her head, glancing around quickly. Eirene looked to the staff table first, but for once in her life she did not want to run and tell an adult. For once in her life, she hadn't told an adult when she perhaps should have earlier.

"Frank?" Eirene scanned the Ravenclaw table. Frank had left earlier. Frank was waiting in the dreaded lover's nook. Frank had given her a note to meet him at 7pm. It was 6:55. She couldn't be late! She'd run and tell Frank!

Her dark braided hair flouncing behind her, Eirene hurried out, dashing up the stairs and down the torch-lit corridors until she spotted Frank's familiar blond head and the book he was reading. Was that Runes?

Not important! Did he know? Had he seen?

"Frank!" She whispered, waving the paper in the air.

Eirene stopped in front of him, catching her breath. "It's-"

She glanced behind her. No one had followed.

"Urgent and emergent."

With a shaky hand, she showed him the paper, pointing at the article titled 'Ollivander's Robbed...'[1]

Beneath the title was the photo of the wizard they'd run into in Slandermouth. It was him, wasn't it?

1.	Ollivanders Robbed, Thief in Custody

Frank had not expected for Eirene to meet him with such enthusiasm. They hadn't spoken in a few days, but now she was abuzz. It took Frank a moment to match her; he had to sort of reset. The butterflies in his stomach weren't sure what to do with themselves.

"Um, hi," he said a little flustered.

She was flapping a paper out to him. His first thought was the next Hogwarts Howler! His face fell, dreading another life-complicating rumor. He set his book aside and took the paper in hand. It was the Daily Prophet. He focused where Eirene was pointing.

"Ollivanders robbed," he read aloud and glanced up at Eirene to confirm what he was in the right spot. Only when he looked down again did he take in the photo. He immediately recognized the intense eyes, crooked nose, and gaunt cheeks. The photo squinted and worked its jaw at the reader, looking just as shifty as when he'd been leering at Frank and Eirene on the windswept Slandermouth beach.  It was unmistakable! It was the jarvey-swinging, word-slurring, man from Finland!

"It's him!" Frank gasped. He scooted to the edge of the bench and hunched over the paper reading aloud.

"Norman Shuffle-- Shufflebottom." Frank drew back with a little frown and kept reading. "Shufflebottom is known to Magical Law Enforcement and is suspected in a string of other similar crimes."

He looked up at Eirene. "What's it mean? Should we tell someone?"

"I know," Eirene nodded, sitting next to Frank with a sigh of relief. How nice it felt to be understood in such dire times!

He looked to her first, as he often did, and she looked up to the ceiling of the lover's nook, thinking.

"It means that he's a dodgy person, but we already knew that. It means we should-" she paused, crossing her legs and turning a little more towards him. The note in her pocket made a very slight crinkling sound.

"Should we tell someone? Let's review. He's already been arrested," she pointed a finger in the air. "His crime is theft-related, not jarvey-related. However! He is a jarvey murderer. That must count for animal cruelty. Also, the article does say crimes, plural, meaning he's been involved in a history of crimes, and whatever he was doing on that beach could be relevant to some other crime. Couldn't it?"

She paused for breath, belatedly noticing the chill of the windowpane behind them, and the cold bench beneath them, and Frank kind and familiar beside her. Absently, she reached over, placed one of her spare hair ribbons between the pages of the Runes book, and shut it, saving his place for later.

"A string of similar crimes," she repeated, pointing to the sentence. "What could be similar on the beach?"

Eirene broke down the situation into its individual alchemical reagents. The man had been so creepy and menacing, it felt good to put him in a little box with other facts. His name was Norman Shufflebottom, he was a thief, and he'd been captured. Captured like Frank's father. No, Frank! Do not go there. He straightened up and looked at Eirene a little too long. She was pretty, and sitting here, this was when he'd be supposed to want to kiss her. He swallowed hard, imagining it, and then found that no, actually. He didn't want to.

It was only for a second or two, then he snapped out of it. Eirene marked his place in his book. It was just the kind of thing she did.

"It could, actually," he agreed. Their encounter with Norman Shufflebottom in Slandermouth could be connected. He looked down and squinted at the floor thinking.

"Slandermouth could be his base of operations. That outhouse could be his stash, where he stores things he stole until he can sell them. If he robbed Ollivanders that probably means he was arrested in London, so the Aurors might not know to look in Slandermouth for more evidence."

He looked up, his eyebrows lifted. "It all makes sense! That's why he was so menacing! We almost discovered an orgy of evidence!"[1]

1.	Frank probably overheard too many police procedures on the WWN...

Frank was looking at her. Eirene glanced back at him, almost losing her train of thought. Why was he staring? She hadn't checked her face before running off after supper to see him. He did have really nice eyes, actually. She wished she had long lashes like he did, but boys always seemed to get them instead. Eirene quickly looked away.

"Ew," she protested in a whisper at the mention of the smelly outhouse.

"Ew," she said with more feeling at the mention of an.... oh boy.

"But correct! You're correct! It could very possibly be his base of operations," she smiled, glad that she'd found Frank and that he'd been with her in Slandermouth in the first place.

"Which means," she patted his arm. "We should tell someone? Yes, I think we should."

Eirene paused, mentally going over the staff table in her mind. She missed her original planner with all the professor's portraits displayed! She didn't need it, of course, but it was just a nice thing to have.

"The Headmaster has had plenty to contend with this month, Professor Storm still frightens me after four years, and Professor Aldridge might get that displeased look on her face if we disturb her at this hour about anything other than Runes."

Then who! Her heart fluttered. Oh, she knew who! She turned to look at Frank, her eyes twinkling, smile coy.

Professor...

Frank nodded resolutely. He and Eirene were more than capable of handling this. They'd been wretched, sniffling, magic-less urchins but they'd been observant and survived and made it to school. This was lemonade from lemons. He watched Eirene's mind rifle through their options of which they had quite a few. It had to be someone they knew, it had to be someone who wouldn't throw a fuss, someone -

Eirene had landed somewhere. Oh no, he knew that face. It was that doofy face people got over the strange-but-handsome Professor Onuris.

"Yes!" he hissed, then took it back. "No! No, not him. I mean, yes, alright, he's nice, actually, but. Fine, okay. Tonight? Now? I mean, I guess."

Wait. His face dropped and he ceased his flustered rambling. He'd just remembered something his mother Zelda had told him many times, directions that he'd never expected to have to follow. It seemed to be something he could never quite forget. Never talk to Aurors.

"What if he owls the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, though? We might have to, you know, answer questions."

Frank didn't imagine there were any grown-ups who wouldn't report the incident. "We could an anonymous letter...?" He suggested.

Frank's enthusiastic hiss made her draw back in surprise. Well ok! They'd go to Professor Onuris! Don't twist her arm.

Eirene might have hesitated if she were alone, but around Frank she felt confident that they could handle it together. Tonight, now. Time was of the essence! The Daily Prophet had arrived this morning, and it was already the evening. Anything could have happened in those hours.

"Anonymous? No, an anonymous letter could be ignored," Eirene shook her head. "I hate to be ignored."

She gave him a look, half in warning, half smirking.

Eirene folded up the paper neatly, matching where the creases had been. She thought she understood Frank's concern. Once they told a professor, it could turn into a thing. A thing that went over their heads and above their heads and blew up into an issue that went beyond them.

She hopped up from the bench, caught between dread and excitement. What would Aurors even ask? Besides wanting to know where the outhouse was.

Follow the smell, Aurors. Walk along the beach. Find her luggage in the sea.

Could they? Her face fell. No. No, likely not.

"Professor Onuris could tell them on our behalf," she nodded, liking that idea. That's what professors were for! Students had class to worry about.

Frank set is jaw and gazed in the distance. Eirene really did hate to be ignored. Merlin and magic help the professor who let her hand hang in the air overlong. He didn't say it, but she also would want credit for a job well done. They wouldn't get kudos for an anonymous letter. Kudos, of course, that Frank would happily pass on in favor of anonymity.

But maybe it was okay to talk to Aurors when you were trying to do the right thing. He and Eirene hadn't done anything wrong and there was nothing that would reflect back on the family. Part of him knew, though, that Zelda wasn't usually game for negotiating unless it was over scarab carapices or tonics of moonwort.

Eirene didn't seem worried at all. Not anymore. It was honestly more like she'd got to pick her own topic and partner for a group project. Frank watched her get up from the bench. She really did want to do this now.

"We should at least get our stories straight," he said, reluctant but going along with it. "Are we going to tell him how we got to the beach in the first place? Technically we committed a misdemeanor. I broke, you entered. That's both boxes ticked, you know."

Not so loud! She'd completely forgotten about that little misdemeanor. She glanced at Frank, thought it over, and shook her head.

"Technically," Eirene rebutted with a little too much enthusiasm. "Technically, we were attempting to enter a public place connected to the floo network. We would have entered through the front door, if not for our," she turned to look at him with a smug smile, "extenuating circumstances."

Wasn't that what her lawyer father would say? Eirene would very much like to think so.

"Besides, they're not going to care how we got to the beach. They'll want to know what Shufflebottom was doing on it."

Eirene took a closer look at Frank, wondering at his worry. What else was she forgetting?

Frank looked at Eirene with unveiled skepticism. She was playing fast and seemed excited to take the risk. Frank didn't disapprove, of course. Being clever with the facts was a very Ravenclaw thing to do, and Frank had always been better than Figaro at talking his way out of things. However, this was serious. It was Aurors. It was career criminal master thief Shufflebottoms.

"I think they're going to ca-are," he said in a sing-song voice and sat back against the wall.

There'd be no dissuading Eirene and Frank would follow her into it happily, he realized. Gazing down and to the left, he widened his eyes to himself realizing he'd imagined them running down the hill to the hut holding hands. He lingered too long on the thought. Eirene didn't seem to be thinking at all about their bizarre, fumbling adolescent cauldron fire of a conversation from the other day. She didn't seem put off or reluctant to go on another caper. Maybe they were fine? Maybe they could just ignore it forever!

"Alright," he said after a moment and looked at Eirene with a little more positivity. Professor Onuris already knew some of the story, so maybe he'd give them the benefit of the doubt about the window. Then he added, "if we go down for this, at least we'll go down together."

Whatever that meant!

Frank only sang when he was losing a debate. Eirene scoffed and sighed and huffed. Come on! It would be fine! She didn't know how she knew it would be fine, but she'd felt fine ever since showing the newspaper to Frank, so it must be true.

"I will not allow any such downfall," she said confidently, and giggled. She giggled just once, and strode down the hall towards the stairs, expecting Frank to keep up.

As she walked, the note in her pocket made a rustle, and Eirene paused, remembering why he'd asked to meet her at the dreaded lover's nook. She assumed he wanted to continue their discussion from a few days ago. He was braver than her, sending her that note. Was there a particular reason why he'd picked the dreaded lover's nook? To discuss its etymology and offer possible theories as to why it was so dreadful?

Or, to talk as if they'd never been foiled by class and classmates? Though of course, they had. They'd gone two whole days not talking, and in that time, all Eirene could think about was how much she missed talking to him. She hadn't reached any magical, Merlin-sent conclusions, despite her meeting with Ra in the Room of Requirement.

The first step was figuring out how she felt.

The next step was talking to Frank. They were already talking! Well, they were walking. Actually, they were skipping steps, and putting steps into the wrong order, and dealing with another newspaper article, and they were at the bottom of the stairs now. Off the stairs now. In the entrance hall, in front of the grand, imposing doors.

She had not figured out the first step.

Eirene pushed open the door, and shivered back a bit at the damp wind. She had not brought a coat.

Eirene casted Lumos, waving her wand at the darkness.

"It's cold!" She declared the obvious, glancing at Frank out of the corner of her eye.

"Do you want to hold hands?"

A funny little smile twitched on her face, and she remembered then to hold out a hand, and though she'd understand completely if he scoffed and sighed and huffed and stormed off, just like she had a million times before, she hoped he wouldn't.

She'd like to figure out that first step.

Frank did follow Eirene and was able to keep up with her speedy clip. She was clearly serious that they had to do this now. When they didn't veer off to go back to Ravenclaw commonroom for coats, that intent was unmistakable. Eirene was nothing if not driven. Driven to madness, he thought. But when she got going, her excitement was hard to ignore and well, he liked following her.

Once outside, they were assaulted by the wind and wet and darkness. He took out his wand and cast 'Lumos' as well. Their faces lit by dual wands, Frank was startled at her question.  She'd stopped, announced a weather report, then asked to hold hands.

He furrowed his brows, but not in anger.

"Don't make fun of me," he said. He was embarrassed about that.

Eirene gave a surprised shiver.

Make fun of him! Eirene would never. She didn't make fun of her friends. Sure, she bossed her friends, she pestered her friends, she tried to fix the problems of friends, and she was absolutely certain that she drove her friends crazy. But she did not make. fun.

"What?" Eirene's hand fell a little, but she stood her ground. Cold, cold, cold. Didn't he know it was cold? It made more sense to hold hands.

"I'm not."

Frank shifted uncomfortably and crossed his arms. Then uncrossed them. Then put them in his pockets. He looked around, but of course they were the only weirdos standing outside in the cold evening. His heart started beating hard.

"Really? Last time you didn't want me to."

That was just back during The Trainwreck.[1]

He hadn't meant to, but it had become this awkward impulse that had never really gone that well, unless Eirene was dragging him somewhere. He sighed. Was this her way of making up? He realized this is how she must have felt at his empty offer to be her boyfriend. He only wanted to hold hands - as friends - if she wanted to.


 

1.	20 Jan 2012 - A Friend in the Hand is Sweeter