outfit


Detention on a Friday was the icing atop the cake that was November. Mere weeks had passed since she’d sneaked out to the Ministry to berate Auror Pratt, and it had been only ten days since she’d unsuccessfully trapped Professors Woolfolk and Bombay in a spare closet in the Astronomy Tower. At least the sleepover had been a blast (bratty Slytherins aside). She was grateful to have people like Fauna and Grace around to keep her sane in their final year.

Sweeping down to the first floor with the agility of a chaser being drilled by her captain-slash-cousin, Lou forbid herself to look at her watch. Mostly because she wasn’t wearing a watch, but also because she knew better than to get upset over something like a few minutes. She met the ground floor with a spring, darting between a pair of bewildered second years, and offering only a smirk of apology as she glanced over her shoulder and continued on the path to the Transfiguration room.

“Let’s get this over with,” she muttered, slowing to a halt just outside of Professor Ramsay’s territory. The woman was clever, quick-witted, and did not put up with rubbish excuses. Granted, Emmylou had thought herself quite brilliant in her ability to weave tales as to why she might barge into class half-an-hour late.

Shrugging her shoulders and relaxing them again, she took a deep breath, swiped a strand of of hair from her face, and twisted the knob. “Evening, Professor,” she called out... and then realized the woman was nowhere in sight. Quirking a brow, she took the absence of discipline in stride, and sank casually into a desk.

Edmund was in his final year; older, wiser and still as sarcastic and mocking as ever. A quick-witted remark about not feeling the need to do homework since his general work was 'consistent and academically sound'. Professor Ramsay failed to see the charm Edmund emitted, and neither did she see the humour involved as his classmates tittered at his pure arrogance at attempting to sweet-talk a member of the staff body.

And so, he had ended up in detention. Wearing his large Wayfarer spectacles which were becoming something of a signature item, his hair was loosely quiffed and somewhat soft, his hand occasionally sweeping it back. With a white shirt underneath his Ravenclaw jumper and a pair of grey, fitted slacks, he looked like the typical academic, even if he was facing punishment for a distinct lack of academic commitment. He knew when Waker and Leon found out they'd be on his case, but it was commonplace for Edmund to offend a teacher with his sheer bravery at attempting to negotiate with them. It was just the way he was.

Walking down the corridor with both hands loosely in his pockets, he whistled a Gisella Darcy ditty absentmindedly before pushing the door open, instinctively looking around for the teacher and ready to flash his tempting smirk. It was always better to start a detention with a pleasant attitude he'd found in his experience at Hogwarts. However, Professor Ramsay was yet to arrive, and his attention was drawn to something far more attractive slumped at a desk. Giving her a nod, he granted her the smile saved for Ramsay. It was Emily Louise Carter, and had she blossomed indeed. Edmund couldn't help but be taken a bit back by her pure attractiveness.
"Carter, right?" he asked, already knowing who she was from Quidditch. Taking a few steps to the desk next to her, he sat down lightly, leaning forward a little and pushing his glasses up his nose boyishly. "You're friends with my sister, Clarissa?"

“Right,” she confirmed, echoing the single syllable right back at him, but not posed as a question. She grinned and tipped her chin down eyeing him for a moment. “Nice shades,” she added, before settling more comfortably into her seat. She predicted they had only a few brief moments before any coziness was robbed of them. If Ramsay allowed them to stay in their desks during detention, it probably meant lots of writing.

Edmund Klint was the young brother of the infamous Clarissa. Lou had always admired her ex-teammate, who knew better than almost anyone how to have a good time. It amused her, even, that such a wild child could possibly have a blood relative in Ravenclaw, let alone a brother. But then there were a few dark horses in Rowena’s tower. Lou simply wasn’t close with any of them.

“Your sister’s a legend. Nearly a saint to our house, even. I’m surprised there’s not a shrine in the common room...” She would have to add to her Things-To-Do-Instead-Of-Real-Work list. “Soooo...” Her voice became a sort of sing-song hum and she leaned over her desk a bit, lowering her tone. “Do you take after her?” Eyebrows quirked in curiosity, Emmylou smirked.

"Oh, thanks," Edmund said, taken aback a little at the compliment, giving her a smile that was neither coy nor charming, but warm. He pushed his spectacles back up his nose once more and ran a hand through his hair, the Ravenclaw beater's eyes admiring her stealthily as he glanced around the room. It seemed even a good situation could arise out of a detention with Ramsay.

Edmund chuckled as Carter admired his sister; although the wild child had amounted to very little, she had indeed left her mark upon Hogwarts for years, possibly even decades, to come. It was only the most sensible of Gryffindors (which was a rare find) that thought Clarissa was a little crass, but her sheer recklessness and nonchalance was a rather admired trait amongst the gold and scarlet house oh Hogwarts.
"She's not changed much," Edmund said, shrugging and giving the Gryffindor girl a smile. "My parents get a little peeved at her lounging around the house all the time, but I think she's quite content doing nothing during the days and going out at night to get completely battered." If there was one thing Clarissa knew how to do, it was party.

Edmund grinned as Carter posed her final question; out of all the Klint siblings, Clarissa and Edmund were indeed the most similar. Jasper was far too strait-laced for his own good, whilst Felix was shy, reluctant and relatively unassuming. It was probably the reason they were both bearers of the Hufflepuff flag.
"I'd say so," he finally answered, rolling his eyes. "We both play Quidditch, even if it is different positions, and we both know how to have a good time. Unlike Clarissa however, I know where to draw the line." His Ravenclaw side was emerging momentarily until he flashed Emmylou another of his signature, charming smirks. "I hope you'll be visiting Clarissa at ours over the summer then?"

Morrigan was in no mood to play.  She had certainly had not considered when her week began that she might not only be spending Tuesday and Wednesday in detentions but also her Friday evening.  She had better things to do really, but sometimes the students left her with little other choice.  If she had her choice she would be back in her chambers with Kendall and their dogs, not babysitting seventh years that should know better.

Entering the classroom she raised an eyebrow slightly at the pair of students who were serving their detentions that night.  She was running a few minutes behind, which was unusual for her but wasn’t so terribly late.  The dogs had of course decided that playing together in her chambers like they were a pair of wrestlers was a good idea, leaving her to once again repair her favorite lamp.

“Alright, social hour is over,” she said moving to the front of the room.  “Please move up to the seats where I’ve set out the parchment and quills.”  She had done that before leaving the room after class for the sake of an easy transition.   With a slight sigh she added, “And Mr. Klint, please remove the glasses.  It is nighttime and we are inside.  As you are not working on getting a tan, there is no need for shades.”

It was going to be a long evening, she just had that feeling.

Grinning, Lou tilted her head a bit. “The legend’s having a rest before she goes off to start a brilliant career?” She mused aloud. “Although partying is harder than it looks...” She heaved a nostalgic sigh, thinking fleetingly of the summer, or of past years, when N.E.W.T.s and graduation were less of a reality.

“I’ll have to write to her,” she confided. “And I’d love to visit. I hope you don’t retract the invitation when Gryffindor wins the cup.” She said it casually, leisurely, as if it were a given. She kept her face straight, but pleasant, inviting protest from her new detention friend.

“You know,” she added, innocently enough, “You and I could play a little one on one before the season st--”

And in walked the Decider of Fates.

At Ramsay’s direction, Emmylou shut her mouth and straightened up. She tried to catch Edmund’s eye in her peripheral, but she kept her attention trained (mostly) on the no-nonsense professor. She followed the woman’s voice to the seats where the fresh quills awaited them, and bit her tongue to stop herself from groaning, sighing, or protesting. Emmy had a hunch that Professor Ramsay did not give two owl droppings about her imaginary carpal tunnel syndrome. Nevermind that there was no proof frequent writing caused such ailments, or that magic could cure them in a wand’s wave.

Standing up, she gathered her bag and moved swiftly to the front, taking the desk of her choice. She snorted when Ramsay reprimanded Edmund for his fashion sense, but quickly tried to cover it with a practiced sneeze. “It’s a bit stuffy in here,” she mentioned. “Can we open the windows, Professor?”

Crossing her hands over her desk like a kindergartner on the first day of class, Emmylou awaited further instruction. She could only hope they would be grading papers. Preferably a batch from the dumber of classes. Those were always vaguely humorous in an I-have-nothing-better-to-do way.

"Gryffindor isn't winning anything this year, I can assure you," Edmund said with a smirk, biting his bottom lip a little as he casually leant forward, a hand moving to ruffle his quiff a little. "It's fine, I'll let you party with us when the trophy is in the Ravenclaw common room." Edmund loved banter amongst the Quidditch teams; it was when his true competitive streak really reared it's ugly head. Giving her another glance, he couldn't help but feel instantly attracted, even if she was on the Gryffindor team.

Edmund's eyes widened and he couldn't help but grin as she begun her sentence - a one on one with Carter? Ready to give a flirtatiously charming reply, his attention was diverted as the woman who landed him in this heavenly mess walked through the door. Getting up and moving to the allocated desk, he sheepishly removed his glasses at her request and couldn't help but feel a tinge of embarrassment - why on earth did Ramsay choose to admonish him in front of an absolute babe? Obviously she didn't understand what it meant to be a somewhat handsome and cocky seventeen year old boy.
"Sorry Professor..." he muttered, sliding them into his trouser pocket reluctantly and hoping he'd be able to shake off the bright crimson colour his cheeks had decided to wear.

Tapping a quill against a table, he glanced Emmylou out of the corner of his eye and looked instantly back to the front, keen to retain his ice-cool persona that he loved to employ around hot girls. Looking down at the desk and ruffling his hair once more, his eyes wandered to the figure on the table nearby and he couldn't help but give her a coy grin.

Morrigan was in no mood for excuses, but when was she ever?  The snort that was followed by coughing was not missed, but she refrained from further comment.  Nor was the coloring of Edmund’s cheeks.  She was glad to see both students do as they were instructed and move to the front of the room.  At least it didn’t seem she’d have too many problems from them.

She could remember what it was like to be a seventh year, the end of school in sight.  Her sister who had no magical abilities and therefore attended a regular Muggle high school had referred to it a ‘senioritis.’  The reasons that accompanied bouts of the ‘disease’ had always managed to not amuse the redheaded teacher.  After all her years of teaching she wasn’t about to start letting students begin to think that simply because they were in their last year of school that they could expect preferential treatment.

She opened the window as requested, glad she had thought to grab a sweater when she left her quarters.  The night air was crisp and she was glad for the warmth from the fireplace.  She was trying to see this as an opportunity to catch up on the reading and personal studying she had been unable to do over the past few weeks.

“I’d like two hundred lines from each of you,” she said, settling into the chair at her desk.  “We’ll keep this relatively simple…Miss Carter you will write ‘I will not be late to class’ and Mr. Klint yours will be ‘I will do my homework between classes.’  I don’t think this requires too much explanation.”

Lou would have loved nothing more than to sit there and banter with Edmund Klint about the fate of the Hogwarts quidditch trophy. But she knew better than to disobey a direct order after having landed herself in this very predicament for... well... disobeying a (more or less) direct order. Something about arriving to class on time...

Haivng found herself obediently making way to the front of the room and sitting down in front of the parchment and quill, Lou nevertheless did everything in her power to stall without earning more punishment. From the request to open the window, to the sidelong glances and smirks in Edmund’s direction, Lou was determined to do just about everything but actually subject the muscles in her hands to the cruel and unusual punishment of lines.

Quickly counting the number of characters per line, Lou squashed the idea of complaining about fairness. Technically, she was being subjected to a few less letters than Edmund. She kept her mouth shut on this topic, and began to write in a painstakingly slow manner, making sure the first few lines were neat and legible, like something George’s girlfriend might write to sexually excite herself. One never knew with those Ravenclaws. They had some strange kinks...

But then she picked up speed; like a true athlete making it past the warmup, Lou began to race across the page, wondering if she could possibly get out of here before dinner. She would have liked to wander down to the dungeons and intercept Fauna, offering an autumn picnic in lieu of a simple Friday night meal at their respective house tables. And then they would collect a few others, Grace, and perhaps Mysti, and...

Emmylou set down her quill after fifteen lines and leaned back for a moment, interlacing her fingers and stretching her palms. She looked again toward Edmund, catching his eye before smiling in the direction of the window, as if she hadn’t been looking at him at all. After one quick glance in Ramsay’s direction, she promptly and treacherously pushed her quill over the edge of the desk. It landed nearer Edmund’s side of the aisle. Whoops!

Edmund twisted his mouth and let out an almost silent sigh as he heard the detention orders, grabbing his quill wearily. He rested his chin on his hand whilst the other began the laborious process of beginning each sentence in his small yet overtly neat handwriting. Reaching the third line, he couldn't help but flick his eyes over to Lou's desk infrequently, his head low as he watched her elegantly put quill to parchment. As she looked up to smile out the window, he immediately put his head back down, but couldn't help but try to find out whether it was him she grinned about.

Edmund couldn't help but let out a quiet, dreamy breath of air, dying to meet up with the girl after detention. With most attractive girls around Hogwarts, Edmund was nonchalant, collected and irresistably charming, operating in a smooth and effective manner; with this girl however, he couldn't help but secretly stare and admire. After a moment of self-reflection, he shook his head slightly, continuing with work. You're making a fool out of yourself, man!

As he continued down the page, he tried to keep all concentration on the tiresome task Ramsay had instigated, his legs stretched out underneath the desk. The classroom was delicately silent, and Edmund couldn't help but drift off and think about hanging with the Quidditch team in the common room; why was social life in Ravenclaw so much more appealing than that of the academic? As he pondered over the complexities of a scholastic lifestyle, Edmund heard the soft flutter of a quill land near to his desk and he immediately flicked his eyes down, glancing back up as he instanteously realised it was her's. He stooped down slowly, gripping the quill lightly and flashing Lou a pre-meditated signature smirk, holding it out for her teasingly.
"Sorry Professor Ramsay," Edmund spoke quietly, still looking coyly in Lou's direction. "She dropped her quill."

Reading glasses in place, much to her continued dismay at the symbol of growing older, Morrigan settled into her desk chair with a book from a former colleague.  Quills softly scratching away at parchment provided the perfect ‘white noise’ for concentration and she easily lost herself in the writing on the page.  Who would have thought after all of these years her old housemate would write a memoir of her escapes from her days as captain of Sedona’s professional Quidditch team.  She tried not to think about the fact that she herself had never managed to actually write an entire book, only a few academic articles here and there.  However, her life had been dedicated to the classroom not research in her field as Kendall and Isaac’s had been before Hogwarts.

The sound of a quill hitting the floor brought her attention back to the two students in the room and her eyes moved away from her reading.  She gave a slightly nod at Edmund’s statement her eyes not lingering on the students very long as she looked back down in almost a lazy manner.  However she didn’t return to reading just yet keeping her ears trained for sound of whispers.

“How very chivalrous of you to retrieve it for her,” she commented dryly.

Testing her luck like a punch-drunk acrobat, Emmylou slid her eyes to the side, and then stretched out to accept the quill from the flirtatious figure beside her. She noted the apology, its mismatched sincerity and the expression on Edmund’s face. She turned her cheek away and coughed out a laugh, setting the quill down atop her parchment. She offered no apology, lest she burst into laughter.

It was hard not to be more obvious. Edmund’s profile was a magnet for Emily’s attention, and the professor’s sardonic sense of humor inspired less-than-bookish behavior. It were as if the castle itself had schemed to tease Lou, to tempt her bold nature, to inspire the very spirit which had landed her in this room, at this hour, adjacent a fellow classroom criminal.

Lifting her quill again after a moment, she continued the task at hand, looping together each letter, willing the words to somehow be different than ones on the line above it. But they were the same: what was an obsessive compulsive’s dream scenario was enough to bore Lou to tears. After five more lines, she couldn’t take the monotony any longer. Small doses... she would have to go about it in increments.

With mock timidness, she leaned forward, eying the commander in chief. “Mmm, professor?” She asked softly, offering a kind smile, which turned into a vaguely guilty one. “Actually, it’s a bit cold now. Can I close the window?”

Edmund leant back onto his desk, smirking a little at Professor Ramsay's dryly amusing comment, his hand continuing the next sentence. He'd noted how Miss Carter had smiled back at him, and he couldn't help but predict that she liked the look of him also. The past few years, Edmund had moved from girl to girl, sticking within Ravenclaw mostly. His most prolific fling was that with Waker Nolan a few years ago, and even though Edmund was a little bitter she dropped him over that youthful summer, they still remained friends and both had moved onto pastures new. For some reason, however, Edmund had never really crossed paths with Emmylou aside from Quidditch; he was literally kicking himself for discovering this gem in his final year at Hogwarts. The term 'absolute babe' was endlessly applicable.

Edmund's neat handwriting became a little less formal as he hurried to get the lines finished; he was new tactic was to write each individual word on each line in an attempt to get the job done quickly. So far, he had a page full of 'I's, 'will's and 'do's, and continued to etch in each word down the parchment. This detention wasn't so bad; he'd thought up a new tactic, and as he glanced again at Emmylou, he couldn't help but admire her sheer good looks.

Edmund raised his head as she spoke, asking for the window to be closed; he threw Emmylou a glance with a hidden smile, just hoping that it was long enough for her to catch it and brief enough to keep Professor Ramsay off his trail. He looked up at the Professor, just waiting for her reply.

As it became clear the only noise for the moment would be the scratching of quills, Morrigan started to read once more.  Her always analytical mind was already making notes on facilitating a discussion about the work.  This was what she loved, getting lost in an academic text and learning something new.  So, she tried not to look annoyed when once again a voice broke her concentration bringing her eyes quickly back to the female student sitting not far from her desk.

“Actually, it’s a bit cold now. Can I close the window?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Morrigan said.  “But do try to be comfortable with the temperature after you do so.  The more interruptions there are tonight the longer those lines will take and you’re not bothering me really by dragging this process out.”

She could sit there reading all night in her classroom just as well as she could in her chambers.  Really she’d probably get more accomplished during the detention as there were fewer distractions.  There were no large dogs tearing through the sitting room, and no Kendall to draw her attention from whatever she was working on.  Not that she particularly minded the later, she just wasn’t really about to admit to that.

So, eye focused back on her reading again she repeated the processes of listening for any whispered conversation before returning to reading.

The brief bit of victory Emmylou had felt at managing to be let out of her seat was cut short by the time she was halfway there. The professor’s words sunk in and the girl frowned to herself, back to both of them while she quickly closed the window. She floated back to her seat just a bit more slowly, and sank into it with an inaudible sigh.

Picking up her quill, Lou resumed her lines in relative peace, sneaking glances Ramsay now and again, and slightly longer ones at Edmund. But by the time she’d passed the halfway mark, the Gryffindor was becoming restless. She much preferred work that involved chatter. Practical spell work was more intriguing than writing-- unless she was writing an opinion piece. Emmylou Carter was all over that.

Supposing Ramsay had provided the quills and parchment for a reason, Lou knew she couldn’t chance a silent charm on Edmund’s parchment... a little message, like words appearing on the bewitched pages of an infamous diary, was simply out of the question.

But perhaps there were other ways to get the job done...

Wand in her lap, despite her wand hand busying itself with the quill, Lou gave her desk the teeniest, tiniest tap, using a very old charm she and George used to cast in random spots around the castle. It was temporary graffiti, easily reversed with a wave. The lines spread out near the corner of the desk like a small cobweb, until they formed a sort of diamond, meant to be three dimensional in appearance, but perfectly flat on the desk. It was numbered: a muggle fortune teller, wizard style.

She glanced toward Edmund, urging him to look over. She shot her eyebrows down at the fortune teller, back to Edmund, and down again. If he got the gist, he could mouth a color, red, blue, yellow, or green.