Juliette pulled the sash of her robe, cinching it at her waist, and rounded a corner from a long, empty, dimly lit corridor. An abrupt staircase descended into the dungeons, a sort of less trafficked path than the one off the Entrance Hall. She made her way down two sets of stairs, winding ever further into the dark until the windows disappeared and were replaced by walls sconces and stony crevices. Down here the tapestries were darker, too; Juliette supposed their subjects did not so much mind the lack of sunlight.

Lighting her wand, she wound her way toward her office, where she'd forgotten a bundle of letters and order forms which needed to be owled before she slept. One eye of a slumbering madman in a portrait popped open as she passed, but elsewise the dungeons slept on.

Her descent and flurry to get to her office and back to the warmth of her quarters-- and general vexation at her own uncharacteristic forgetfulness-- caused the loose tie of Juliette's dressing gown to come loose, as they were like to do. Even magic had little regard for the age-old problem of pajamas and their disregard for public decency. It was with an abrupt stop that the sash untangled itself, and Juliette's breath caught in her throat.

She let out a hiss of disguised relief when her wand splashed over the figure of a young boy, a spritely troublemaker with a Slytherin's cunning. "Mr. Clogg-Spleen, what are you doing out of bed?" She lifted her brows, tilting her jaw just so, and dared him to feed her some fantastical but smooth excuse, as Slytherins were wont to do. She spoke as if she weren't standing there in a half-concealed negligee, her eyes still adjusting to the unexpected interruption in a barren corridor, but, rather, lightly threatening detention on any given afternoon in her classroom.

It hadn't been a perfect plan, exactly. It had been an impulse, a wild flight of fancy, and a lot of annoyance. But getting into the Hufflepuff dorms and being able to send out his little friend would have been great fun in the morning. The tiny contraption walked on four metal legs; once it found its way into any dresser, it promptly left all the clothes inside with a horrible stench, almost unremoveable by magic. The Weasleys really were genius when it came to this kind of thing...and Oliver had it coming, the fat bint.

The footsteps and wand-light were not in Billy's plan, though, and he shrank against the wall, hoping against hope that Juliette would go away. Maybe she'd pause long enough for him to find a side corridor, or she'd go down one herself, and he could -

No such luck. Her bright wand caught up with him, blinding him to her face for a few moments. He tried not to look guilty, bringing his hand up to his face. That was easy; he just replaced his expression with one of annoyance, as if it was her fault he was on the hall after curfew.

He tried to think quickly, and settled on a half-truth. "I was heading up to, um, study," he said. "With...Falkenrath. And," because he realized he was quite off the route to the Gryffindor Tower, "And Ayla. Ayla Collins. For finals." Yes. That sounded...better.

Bilius's eyes adjusted to the light, however, and he fell silent, staring in a mix of shock and...well, awe. He might be a jaded misanthrope, but there were things even he could admire...

A flare of light in the darkness, and another glowing wandtip joined the party. Unlike Juliette Landis was dressed as he had been that day, a perfectly acceptable combination of slacks and shirt and tie. His sudden appearence meant either he'd been walking in the dark or he'd learned how to get around Hogwart's anti-disapparition wards, so it was probably the former. If anyone had asked, he'd certainly have said the light of the wall sconces irregularly dotted along the dungeon walls was more than enough, but in reality he'd been following the trail of Hogwart's most recent instigator of pranks.

He'd been leaving the library for the night when he'd heard the scuff of running feet from farther down the hall. Honed by nearly a year of residency into instinctive suspicion of student mischief, Landis had automatically pursued. He turned the corner into madness and skidded to a stop in front of a corridor of slow-motion ballerina dancing from the usually stolid stone knights. Enchanted into silence, they ground their ponderous pirouettes and leapt from one place to another with an impact that, even soundless, made the ground under Landis' feet shake.

He paused only a minute to try an experimental petrificus. As he expected, the spell bounced off their heavy stone helmets. This only reinforced his suspicion that whatever spell had been cast on them they'd been willing participants; sometimes Hogwarts' semi-sentient nature was very annoying. But he didn't have time to herd them back to their niches - while the sight of these slowly spinning knights was rather disturbing (especially given that he'd been there for the Battle of Hogwarts, which was the last time he'd seen them move) the perpentrator was getting away. As he cleared the melee, ducking a baton-wielded mace and waving impatiently away an invitation to dance, he skidded out onto the fourth floor balcony overlooking the staircases and heard the rapid slapping of feet on the stairs below.

To the dungeons, then. Either a Hufflepuff or a Slytherin. Landis laid odds on the latter, although unless the culprit had also enchanted them to carry their show around the castle it hardly seemed all that conniving of a prank. But if they got into the library, one young student's life was forfeit.

He went first down the dungeons stairs closest to the Slytherin dorms. The faint murmurs of conversation drew him farther out, and halfway to Hufflepuff he found Juliette and Clog-Spleen.

A most unlikely couple. From Juliette's presence and what he knew of the boy, he immediately pegged Clog-Spleen as upstair's errant dancemaster.

"Mr. Clog-Spleen," he said, radiating icy irritation. "Where have you been tonight?"

Now he glanced over at Juliette in acknowledgement, as if to give her one of his bland polite nods in strictly professional greeting. But his eyes were drawn unbidden to where her robe parted and lace began, and Landis raised an eyebrow so pointededly it might as well have been a remark. Something about exposing oneself to one's students, perhaps, or how he hoped he had not been interrupting.

Juliette was torn between a tone peppered with humor and narrowing her eyes. The child must have thought he was clever, looking at her as if she were the one stepping over toes. And thought she nearly had been, Juliette knew that was beyond the point. He was out of bed, past curfew, doing Merlin knew what and wandering in the direction opposite his common room-- or her eyes had been playing tricks. Dim as it was, and easy as it were to conceal one’s mischief in the lack of light, Juliette had enough potioneer’s instinct not to be blind. The truth was always near.

Whoever had said Gryffindors were the ballsy ones had not been invited to take house points from the four cornerstones of Hogwarts when the castle grew dark and sleepy. Snakes were sly where lions were brash, and one oft managed to slip past the grips of punishment with alarming frequency. Something told Juliette that was Landis’ doing. Or might have been, if he weren’t so intent on skinning students with invisible charms in an effort to protect his loveliest friends, the leatherbound collection under lock and key at this hour.

"I was heading up to, um, study [...] With...Falkenrath. And [...] And Ayla. Ayla Collins. For finals."

“I see.” Juliette lowered her wand a bit, appraising him freshly. She did not buy his story, but she wanted to hear more. Perhaps she could coax it out of him, right his wrongs with a particularly vile detention in the dungeons. He was about the age to not be too put off by cleaning cauldrons leftover from First Year pre-exams. The whole spoiled ingredient debacle had left its lingering kiss on Juliette’s store of equipment. “And were Mr. Falkenrath and Miss Collins also planning to traipse around the castle after curfew for this imperative study session?”

If he stared at her strangely, Juliette ignored it. She was too dignified to make a scene. So she was in her night clothes-- it was getting late. And she had something of a buxom figure? She was older than most of the girls Bilius palled around on a daily basis. It was dark, she was the professor, he the student. There was nothing to fret over. Tying her robe now would distract them both from the point: interrogation.

But a second glow of unmistakeable wandlight joined hers, and Juliette looked over her shoulder to see Landis approach. He, like she, demanded to know what Bilius had been up to. Landis’ words were more pointed, however, as if he already knew the answer. Juliette knitted her brows, frowned in a manner that might have more easily conveyed a pout, and waited for him to finish his overzealous moaning.

“Landis, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” She turned back to Bilius, waiting for him to answer her inquiries. She’d been here first. She could handle it. And maybe the boy could learn a thing or two, getting elbow deep into cauldrons and giving them a good scrub if he was so intent on getting messy after dark. Not that she knew what he’d been up to. Perhaps he was studying.

Perhaps unicorns were in collaboration with a new legion of dark lords.

The look she threw back at Landis might just have well have been a seamless ignoring of his own judgmental facial articulation. She wore silk after hours? She had breasts? Who knew? Certainly not he.

“I think I’m quite capable of handling Mr. Clogg-Spleen. You can return to your tomes,” she explained, as if he’d been boringly ravishing some cherished parchment lover only five minutes in the past.

Merlin! Had he just been born with bad luck? Did anything go right? He wasn't that bad! Karma couldn't account for this crap! Why couldn't he get found by...Storm something? The old man was reasonable, he'd just wallop him around the head and be done with it. He didn't stand there in a nelee-egie or whatever and act all snooty!

Merlin. That was a mental image he didn't need.

Bilius had opened his mouth to reply to Juliette, and then started to say something to Landis, and then Juliette pressed him again. He looked between the two, then his eyes fell back to Juliet's...eyes. Yes. Her eyes. She won, because Landis did not have eyes. That were that big.

"Niko was," he said, which was actually true. Except Niko wasn't out and about tonight. "We were going to meet at...at the Hufflepuff Common room." He shuffled his feet. "And ask Miss Collin's help." Ayla, if questioned, wouldn't know and wouldn't get in trouble.

He looked at his Head of House for a moment before his daze returned to Juliette. "I was out of bed when I shouldn't have been, ma'am. I'll admit to that."

A study date. What a cute excuse. Bilius wasn't a terrible student, but neither was he the sort to pursue academics so fiercely that he skirted the rules, and he had a history of sharp-tongued insolence and a disregard for school rules. He was also a bit of a loner, another score against his story of studying with friends; he was definitely headed to Hufflepuff, that much was obvious, but if it was really exams that called him out so late at night Landis would eat his own tie. Probably he'd wanted to go pull some more tricks. Hufflepuffs could be an easy bunch to startle.

“Landis, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

"Not a ghost," Landis corrected mildly. "A prankster." The fact that he didn't look away from Bilius confirmed just who he thought this prankster was. He was mildly gratified that Bilius looked properly apprehensive and scowly about them both, although he noted Juliette's attire was proving more distracting than threats of professorly justice. He couldn't really blame the lad. Girls his own age were hardly that...that.

“I think I’m quite capable of handling Mr. Clogg-Spleen. You can return to your tomes.”

Such a blatant dismissal could hardly be obeyed. Landis did not move.

"The fourth floor is not someplace I particularly care to return to considering its current condition. But given that I pursued a student, most likely this one, from there to here, I have my own interest in questioning him. Even if not, he is in my House, Juliette. Any punishment you might dream up for breaking school rules would still need to be discussed with me."

He turned to Bilius. "Mr. Clog-Spleen, may I see your wand?"

If Juliette had been alone in wanting to get to the bottom of his story, she might have drilled him more pointedly. As it were, Landis showed up and gave Bilius a proper audience. He seemed to think the Slytherin responsible for some prior misdeed or vandalism-- and thus believed him to be his charge. Ah, but what a cold tongued, hotheaded man. Juliette knew she couldn’t side with him, lest their pretty head of Salazar’s brood think the potions mistress was likely to step down whenever he intervened.

If there was wrath in her decision, or a woman’s vitality for revenge, Juliette held her head as gracefully as she might on any other evening. In a dark corridor, with her night things half exposed.

It had been days, maybe even a week, since she’d last thrown acidic words in his direction, cursed him in French, or set her dog loose in his library. Quickly as she’d grown weary of trying to get under his skin, to make him regret humiliating her, she was prompted again. A tiny, almost unconscious part of her had missed this. But neither Landis nor Bilius Clogg-Spleen needed to know that.

“We’re already sorting this out,” she insisted. She waved her hand in the boy’s direction, locking eyes with him for a moment, nodding with a straight face at his (probably deceitful) attempt to be honest. She turned back to Landis. “As a professor, I have as much authority as you have to punish him as I see fit.”

When he demanded the forfeiture of a wand and Juliette’s jurisdiction, she placed her hands on her hips, wand clasped at one rather impatiently. She parted her lips and narrowed her eyes, waiting for Landis to do his little test. Her head was tilted up just enough to lock her gaze on his. He was already infuriating, standing there in his perfect dress shirt, with his perfect hair, and his perfect cheekbones.

Okay. Yes, something was going on here. If his arse hadn't been on the line, he might even have been amused by it. But it was clear that these two were unlikely to agree on much, so he had to pick sides.

So...who, in the end, would he rather be punished by? Who was less likely to kill him hex his large nose until it switch places with his panhandle? Who was less likely to flay him alive with their mind or make him read law books out loud?

As of he had had to ask.

Bilius's large eyes found Juliette's and he gave her a look very much like a young dog that Landis had just kicked, for no good reason whatsoever, of course. A bulldog who'd been bludgeoned with the ugly tree, maybe, but still a dog. He unsheathed his large, spiraled wand and looked at Landis nervously, handing it over...

Exactly between the two, making it easy for Juliette to grab and unclear who he was handing it to.

“As a professor, I have as much authority as you have to punish him as I see fit.”

"Not," Landis repeated, holding stoically onto his patience with both metaphorical white-knuckled hands, "As much as his Head of House."

Bilius hesitantly extended his wand, after an obviously pleading look at Juliette, exactly between the two of them. While Landis appreciated that he had earned his students' caution, he was less than thrilled at the boy's belief that Juliette could save him - the implication that she could make Landis stand down. With a barely-restrained roll of his eyes, he appropriated Bilius' wand before she could. Given her recent and rather understandable dislike, he was surprised she hadn't tried to stop him from doing this in the first place. Perhaps after this she'd stop with her posturing. It was getting on his nerves, which was exactly - he suspected - why she was doing it.

"Prior Incantato," he said in a low, clear voice, and Bilius' wand burst forth with a weak, ghostly replay of a basic lumos. Landis sighed, flipping the wand over in his fingers in irritation before cutting the spell. "Helpful," he said dryly, and handed the wand back to Bilius. Of course, things would not be that easy. "Juliette, there's no need for you to stand around in the..." Once more, his eyes flicked to the front of her robe with a deliberate disdain her assets certainly did not deserve. "Cold. I'll take Mr. Clog-Spleen back to where he belongs." The after I'm done with him was heavily implied. Landis did not intend anything more than a rigorous round of questioning, if the boy was innocent, but it never hurt to keep Bilius nervous and willing to talk if he thought there were worse things ahead.

"Not [...] As much as his Head of House."

Juliette’s lips pursed together and the wand at her hip looked particularly pointy in the dim light.

She saw the appeal in the teenager’s eyes, and her own flickered only momentarily to Landis before returning to Bilius. As with politics, economics, and sport, an enemy of one’s enemy was a friend. And Juliette was feeling particularly territorial in her silky pajamas.

She had half the mind to snatch up the wand before her colleague could, but stopped herself, instead deciding that if Landis found something incriminating, she would simply press him to let her find an appropriate way to handle it. Clearly the student favored her opinion, anyway... or at least assumed her brand of discipline wouldn’t end in permanent scars.

And if Landis found nothing...

“Oh, look at that. Lumos,” she murmured, but not in a way that might re-light her own wand or anyone else’s.

Stepping closer to Bilius, she placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder and eyed Landis as if he were a viper perpared to steal her dinner or her young. She would have none of it. The power struggle between the pair of them was obvious by now, and rather than let it die down, Juliette poured all of her energy into its boiling cauldron. Better that Landis Bilius recognized her authority than think her some silly, submissive woman in a nightgown who couldn’t be relied upon when the Big Bad Librarian glided into the frame all hissy and paralyzing.

“You’re too chivalrous, Landis. But I’m not the least bit cold, and I think I would have an easier time seeing Mr. Clogg-Spleen returned to his dormitory so that we can all get back to bed. There is no need for an interrogation. He’s admitted he was on his way to study, and I’ll deal with the broken curfew.”

She understood the implication in his Landis’ voice, and wrapped her arms around the boy as if he were a first year. Juliette knew he wasn't innocent and knew he didn't need to be coddled. She did not often hug the children of Hogwarts, but for all intents and purposes he might have been Landis’ baby sister as Juliette pulled him to her chest. If he happened to be of height with her softer bits, Juliette pretended as if she did not notice the too-convenient coincidence (she did, and used it to her advantage). He wasn't getting away, not her dominion. “Surely you’re tired, yes?” She asked, knowing the answer even as her eyes studied the boy in her arms. Her voice suggested that it was Landis who was responsible for this. Her eyes, as they returned to Landis, painted him as nothing short of a child-snatching villain.

“So if we’re quite done here,” she added, throwing back words that, to any other ears, would mean nothing more than they sounded. “I will handle this.”

Merlin's pants! He needed to break curfew more often.

That was, truly, the only real thought in his mind that hadn't been swept away like so much paper in a flood with the sudden presence of Juliette, or the fact she was hugging him - and given his height, his face had wound up right between her...her....big, soft...eyes, right. He was sure that even thinking the word breasts would alert her to his moment of sheer joy.

Oh, Morgan could go boil his bottom. Whatever the two were saying didn't matter, so long as Vaillancourt won.

He regained some of his wits moments later, enough to try to give her what he hoped was a respectfully grateful look. Oh, Niko was going to hear about this. Anyone who looked down on him was going to hear about this. He'd gone and been places no student had dared go.

"I am pretty tired," he admitted, in what he hoped was a suitably sincere voice. "So, um..."

Predictably, she gloated. Well, the wand didn't prove that he wasn't the culprit, either. At the vicous faux-nonchalance in her voice Landis thought something very nasty that was not school-appropriate but nevertheless seemed fitting for an evening like this.

“You’re too chivalrous, Landis. But I’m not the least bit cold, and I think I would have an easier time seeing Mr. Clogg-Spleen returned to his dormitory so that we can all get back to bed."

"Oh no," he said, eyes shuttered as though to look Juliette straight on was to strike her basilisk-dead. "Allow me." The words echoed her chivalrous label, but his tone was edged and dangerously low. It was obvious now that neither of them would back down, and equally obvious that one of them would have to.  He could let her have her way - could let her escort Clog-Spleen back to the dorm, while he went upstairs to disarm the dancing knights and then eventually to bed (alone). She might coddle him now but Juliette could not have the boy follow at her heels like a secondary puppy; Landis could wait and talk to him later. But no. Landis wanted to pursue this now. It was unprofessional to bicker so in front of a student, but he wouldn't allow the blow to his pride that would be backing down to an angry Juliette. It was a challenge, another in a long line from the past few weeks for him to confront or appease or ignore. Generally he tended to ignore her, from her tantrums to her thrice-damned pup, but disparaging him on a personal level was very different from disparaging his authority as a Head of House.  This could not be allowed to play out to her liking.

Juliette gathered the boy to her chest and looked at him like he was king of the goblins come to snatch Bilius back to his people. It was an interesting method of protection. Landis could barely see the child around her... her.

Which was apparently, if the look of stunned bliss emanating from Clog-Spleen's forehead (the only part currently visible), was A-OK with him.

Tired! Landis had been a teenage boy once; no matter that the Slytherin was only just out of puberty(if he'd even hit it yet), Landis knew exactly what Bilius was thinking and gave the boy a look of such cold fury it was a surprise frost didn't form along the path of his glare. Juliette's last jab was pathetically transparent and confirmed the ulterior motive of her embrace, which hardly softened his hoarfrost gaze as it bored into Bilius Clog-Spleen.

"You may be tired," he said, steel in his voice, steel straightening his backbone, "But you will come with me." It was not entirely directed at Bilius, as the child's cooperation was not required but Juliette's unwinding of her willowy arms was. Lest she decide to keep her arms and other body parts where they were: "He's not a Hogwarts souvenir, Juliette; you can't keep him."

"I am pretty tired [...] So, um..."

Juliette stared at Landis as if to say, see? Her lips were nearly a smile, though they weren’t.

"Oh no. Allow me."

He wasn’t backing down. The sarcasm swathed in dignity and courtesy, smooth and soft as if were he were holding a door open. Where it led was another matter.

She stood there, staring at him, quiet as a cat, as he seethed at the boy. Juliette neither tilted her head nor raised a brow at the look he was giving him. And for all her awareness, she could not say she’d ever been a teenaged boy, and thus did not know its full extent-- though she had a fair idea, having made the conscious decision to armor Bilius with... herself. It seemed to be working better than she could; Juliette had the fleeting desire to take up Legilimency.

“He will--”

"He's not a Hogwarts souvenir, Juliette; you can't keep him."

Juliette stopped before she could get the word not past her lips. He will not go with you. She laughed, ringing and authentic. Her arms loosened, hand slipping to Bilius’ shoulder for all of a languid moment before she stepped away from her charge, closer to Landis. Too close for a pair of colleagues engaged in cordial parley over matters if discipline. Where her figure might have been pressed comfortingly to Clogg-Spleen a moment ago, it was now on display for Landis, and Landis alone. Wand fallen to her side but not forgotten-- not by Juliette, and likely not by Landis, either, whose own wand promised equal aptitude, held there most casually in his hand-- she raised her eyes enough to look up at him, unblinking. “You haven’t made me laugh in such a long time,” she admitted softly.

And then: “I apprehended him." Her tone implied what she needn't add: first. "I know how to handle naughty boys as well as you-- better, I hope. Have faith, I won’t disappoint your precious Slytherin mascot.”

On the contrary, she was welcome to keep him. For as long as she wanted. Maybe she could even find a way to fix his, his...his everything. Potions might have made it worse, but she wasn't his father, so maybe she could actually make him normal and not him.

She pulled away and the look that Bilius shot Landis, had it been capable of killing, would have turned Landis into a red mist. The rat bastard! And she was thrusting her...her at him, now! They weren't even arguing, they were...

The soft words were the real indicator, and his brain finally clicked on what he'd been subtly detecting this entire time.

"You two - you're-" His mouth was open, and sounds were coming out independent of his brain. "You two really are - you're - you've." He got his mouth under control, but all that did was make him finish his sentence. "You've been having a bit of how's your father, haven't you? That's bleedin' disgustin'!" He looked at Juliette. "He looks like something the cat drug in! He doesn't deserve a lady like...like you!"

“You haven’t made me laugh in such a long time.”

This close, something flickered behind Landis' eyes, although nothing affected his impassive expression. It was not how he had expected her to react. Her words were too gentle, and her laughter held a note of true affection that made him want to recoil until he could reassess the situation. Apparently, inadvertently, he had pleased her.

He was not the only one to have noticed her brief slip. Bilius exploded into a diatribe of disbelief and vulgar euphemisms that drew Landis' attention back from whence it'd strayed rather forcibly. Just like that, the boy's continued existence was put sharply in doubt.

After a moment of apparently puzzled consideration, Landis smiled. It was not an expression students saw on his face often, and for good reason; there was some predatory, reptilian gleam in the faint flash of narrow teeth that skipped straight past the veneer of civilization to set off warning bells in the hindbrain. It was a smile that the dormant caveman recognized, albeit from a different mouth, and while it was not quite fitting for a school librarian it suited the criminal very well.

"And you think that you're in a position to throw stones?" he asked softly, his eyes raking over Bilius' features in pointed amusement. "Scarper, Mr. Clog-Spleen, before I gut you like a potions toad."