Juliette could have acted in a million ways, and none of them would have been quite right. For all her confidence and self-assuredness, for all her determination to be the one who dealt with the boy who had just dealt the blow, all she could do was turn around and stare for a moment-- not unlike Landis, it would seem, until the librarian’s predator smile graced his lips and zapped the corridor of heat.

“Bilius,” she began, her voice soft but edged with equal parts wariness and reproach. She held her wand up to study him in the dungeon’s dimness. If she had not allowed herself to be overly aware of what transpired in his expressions moment ago (when she had been more concerned with etching annoyance into Landis’ own face), she was well aware now what the accusation in his words suggested.

But before she could say anything further-- that it wasn’t appropriate to comment on a teacher’s relations, that it wasn’t true, that he ought to be quiet and let her handle this, that she was touched, but that he should apologize to his Head of House-- Landis spoke.

Heartless. She remembered what Darian had told her, and her eyes peeled reluctantly from Bilius Clogg-Spleen to the man side her. The grown man fighting fire with... lethal, pointy chunks of ice, it would seem. If it had not been a student whom he was so openly threatening, Juliette would have admired him for it; and if they had not been in such a sore duel, a whirlwind of lovers’ accusations and steel-guarded egos, in which Juliette came out feeling the wounded loser, she might even have chastised him playfully. But that hour was past.

“It is highly inappropriate to speculate on the nature of your professors’ relationships, Bilius. And not particularly stealth to comment about it where they can hear you.” She tilted her head, eyes boring into him. “Twenty points from Slytherin.” And, to reinforce it: “There will be no word of--” She waved wand between herself and Landis, catching his eye for the briefest moment. “Us.” She nearly winced, but too sensible to do so. There was damage enough for the night. And yet...

"Forgive Mr. Morgan, he gets overly excited. He and I will come to an agreement on the full extent of your punishment. Much to his dismay, it will not involve gutting."

Reinforcing the reason why she might linger in the dark with Landis (his murderous charm) was no way to repair Bilius' esteem. Still, Juliette did not move.

A teacher threatened him! They weren't allowed to do that. Not for real.

But there was a glint in Landis's eyes. An icy cold, inhuman glint; a glint that froze part of Bilius solid with fear. Landis meant it, as much as Billy might rage that it wasn't allowed;  he got a sense that Landis, in that moment, did not care about it being against the rules.

For once in his life, Bilius took the smart option. He shut up.

Juliette's docking of points and gentle - at least in comparison to Landis - reprimands were met with a nod, his eyes not moving from the blonde Librarian.

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Over excited. I'm sure that's what it was." Right. Sure. Women. What did they see in men nlike Morgan? He did look like something the cat had drug in. He was thin, reedy, his hair greasy if you caught him early in the mornings. He never looked like he'd slept well, either. He reminded Bilius of his sister Ima after she'd gone down on a  narcotics binge.

Bilius might not have been in a position to throw stones, no. But he had to look ugly in the face every time he looked in a mirror and any time girls looked at him and he saw their faces. He was, he felt, something of an authority on the subject.

"I'll just meander back to the common room, shall I?" he asked, unable, even on the brink of gutting, to keep the sarcasm from his tone. "Leave you two to work out your differences in the dark with Vaillancourt in a neglileeie?"

Juliette spoke, some soft-voiced tone of flimsy command, but Landis had caught Bilius' attention now and the boy didn't look away. Neither did Landis. Perhaps getting into a pissing contest with a prepubescent boy wasn't all that professional, but Landis was tired of playing nice to little buggers with smart mouths and a lack of fear. There was so much disrespect at Hogwarts, too much brash confidence and easy trust that what was said and done could have no ill effect. Children stole into his library late at night, children gossiped about his private life and now insulted him to his face. It ate away at his patience and niggled like adders under his skin, and he was sure that Ignan Storm felt a similar pain. But a Hogwarts staff member would never hurt a student. Oh, no. It was not allowed. It was completely idiotic. Landis believed that by letting children do as they pleased, they'd be released into the world with foolish expectations. In the real world, one's words had consequences. In the real world there was danger, not patience, and if one poked a sleeping dragon one was damned well going to be reduced to charred bones and bits of ash.

Not that Landis was a dragon. His anger was better compared to the brutal creeping chill of a nuclear winter than to heat - but the metaphor still stood, Bilius believed him, and the flicker of uncertainty in the boy's eyes was so satisfying. Yes. Certainly. He was over-excited.

"I'll just meander back to the common room, shall I? Leave you two to work out your differences in the dark with Vaillancourt in a neglileeie?"

"How helpful," Landis said, his unsettling stare quite unaffected by Juliette's quips or Bilius' sarcasm. "Why don't you do that." So Clogg-Spleen was feeling bitter, suspicious and upstaged. Landis rather thought Juliette's ploy of the 'defensive' embrace had backfired to produce such hormone-fueled loyalty. Cute. He had a little crush. Landis' lips, still lit with the reminder of that smile, curved again. "Don't fret, Mr.Clogg-Spleen," he said, and laid one hand languidly, mockingly, over his heart. "I won't touch your lady."

And I'll deal with you tomorrow.

Juliette had thought it quite settled until Bilius chanced to make his opinion known. Again. Her lips parted and she breathed audibly her impatience. “For Merlin’s sake, half the adult population has them. You have seen them before and you will see them again.” Appropriate or not, it had to be said. It was the elephant in the room-- or twin elephants, it would appear. And now it was said and done, and they could move on, Juliette and the pint-sized teenaged boy and the librarian intent on skinning him.

It was thus not out of humiliation so much as a strange dignity (the flip side of the dignity she’d shown in not paying any mind to the stares) that she did not ignore the diligent note-taking of her open robe. She pulled it shut, swiftly and to the point, every bit the impatient and disillusioned professor. She folded her arms one over the other to keep it that way. One day Bilius Clogg-Spleen’s female housemates would tire of wearing cotton hotpants with “Slytherin” written on the backside to bed, and hideous matching velour jumpers, and fluffy slippers. Apparently, that day had not come.

"Don't fret, Mr.Clogg-Spleen, I won't touch your lady."

It was an annoying sting. Juliette did not look to Landis. She didn’t flinch, but she wanted to. That, or hex his tongue. Shame about the child standing there, mocking them.

“No one will touch me.” She wasn’t Landis-- she wasn’t ice-- but she was disciplined enough in her professorial role (mention of her chest notwithstanding) not to add I am quite content touching myself. There would be rumor enough to go around come breakfast time. “Go back to your common room, now, Mr. Clogg-Spleen.” This time there was no gentle or patient edge to her voice. She was forceful, and to the point, threatening, even. “No more smart little comments, or you will lose another twenty points to keep the first twenty company in the dark, as you would say.” Suddenly, she did not feel quite so bad for Bilius as she had a moment ago when Landis threatened to tear into him like laboratory stock.

Unsurprisingly, Bilius glowered darkly at Landis for his comments, but with Juliette's change in attitude, it was clearly time to leave. The fun - well, for a given definition of 'fun' - was more or less over, and Juliette was making that abundantly clear.

He also didn't really feel like losing more points for his house. It wasn't really from a sense of House solidarity; but the more points he lost, the more likely he was going to get beaten up - and the more likely the boobies involved would seem like a cover up.

And he hardly intended for his greatest achievement to go and be call fraudulent.

"Very well," he said, all official-like. "Good night, Professor." He couldn't resist saying it only to her. Then he turned sharply on his heel and marched away towards the Slytherin common rooms, his wand unlighted. He soon vanished into the dark, though a distant snicker might very well have been him...

Now Juliette turned on the boy as well, her patience apparently wearing short. Bilius disappeared into the darkness and Landis leashed his glare.

Which left him, he realized a beat too late, alone with Juliette. Clogg-Spleen's commentary - his dryly accurate description of what would happen when he left - had not really sunken in except to stoke the man's impatient wrath. On the whole, Landis would have preferred the situation if the only risk was a spot of light shagging. But given their current attitude towards one another, sex was the least likely thing to happen when left in the dark with Juliette Vaillancourt. She'd folded her arms over her now-covered chest, and Landis was pretty certain both actions did not bode well.

It was precisely the type of situation he'd been trying to avoid all month, and so it was precisely the sort of situation she'd take advantage of if he didn't soon slip away. It hadn't mattered so much in the first couple of weeks, when all he'd had to face was her fury; that was predictable, the kind of reaction he wanted and could understand, and most importantly her fits of French rage meant she had take his words but not their reasons to heart. That was fine. But now she'd moved into some stranger mood, calmer, more thoughtful, less prone to little acts of retribution. She did not change his tea into piss coffee at breakfast, and she no longer let her pup roam free until he corralled it against a bookcase. This would be the perfect time for her to find another interest and move on, but she had not, and he didn't like the mind that worked and wondered behind her weighty stare. He feared she was becoming nostalgic. He knew she was starting to ask questions. Neither boded well for his self-control and his cover story of a family emergency.

And now he had been so focused on student harassment he'd quite forgotten that Bilius was also their chaperone. Whoops. Landis prepared to slither out and beat a strategic retreat upstairs, where the knights might try to dance with him but would certainly not expect him to love them in the morning.

"What do you know," he said in a lifeless deadpan, without the slightest attempt to conceal his intentions because he knew it annoyed Juliette. "I am urgently required elsewhere. I think your twenty points count as your half of the punishment; I will administer mine tomorrow. Good night, Juliette."

As he dismissed himself, Juliette watched his back for all of a fleeting moment. Then she was moving after him, silent and graceful as a shadow, her arms untangling themselves lithely from the front of her robe. She came to his side, brushed his arm with her fingertips, and spoke. “Landis.”

No one would touch her this evening, she’d claimed-- but the opposite was not so true.

He might have been quick to escape, but that only made Juliette more curious. She was annoyed-- perhaps a little angry-- that he’d tried to belittle her discipline, but that did not mean she wasn’t going to take the opportunity now that Bilius was gone and she was left alone with the librarian for the first night in many. For as often as she’d turned down the chance to harass him of late, she had also harbored a desire to approach him; her energy might have been drained, but her curiosity was not.

She cut him off from going any further, withdrawing her hand slowly and looking up at him again. This time her eyes were softer, but it might have been the dim glow of the stony corridor.

“I would like to see exactly what happened to the fourth floor. Let me join you.” She could come back for the letters. But the pretense was just that, and she did not attempt to make it anything else. Four flights of stairs were enough for a start. And Juliette had so many questions.

He made it about a meter before she reached out and brushed fingers across his sleeve, her step quickening to catch up with his.

Damn. He should have expected her to do that. Well, actually, he had. As such, his response flowed easily from unsmiling, lying lips.

"That's not necessary. One of us might as well get some sleep, and I do not have lesson plans for the exams to write this weekend as you do."

His manner implied all sorts of unhelpful and untrue things, like how he quite believed her workload was heavier than his and that a disturbance on the fourth floor was even more under his jurisdiction than a Slytherin, given how it was nearly in the library itself. It did not reveal that he knew these excuses - both of theirs - were more farce than anything sincere. It was quite a beautiful game of pretend they had, but he'd have no problem telling her flatly and directly not to accompany him should she persist. Landis was a man who put much stock in politeness, but he also pulled off rudeness quite well. After all, it wasn't as though he was concerned about hurting her feelings.

"That's not necessary. One of us might as well get some sleep, and I do not have lesson plans for the exams to write this weekend as you do."

Juliette’s hair fell over her shoulder as she tilted her head in consideration of his words. Her brow rose just so; whether it was surprise, disbelief, or a replacement for words was hardly decipherable.

Their entanglement of bickering and false pleasantries had made up the landmarks of the best few weeks. Juliette’s recent quiescence did not mean she didn’t think about him. Some of the sting of his words had subsided, and that initial, overwhelming desire to stay away from him for eternity. For half a heartbeat, she wanted so badly to kiss him, and never mind if he put up a struggle, her wintry, stubborn librarian. Perhaps that would solve this, perhaps it would trap him there long enough for her to drag the truth from his lips. But it passed. Not the feeling, so much as the inability to control it. The feeling never quite went away, even when she was angry (it was part of the attraction, his ability to fluster her and remain so unyielding); it merely dulled, became easier to ignore. Her eyes became more heavily lidded, less emboldened, more jaded-- more like Landis’.

“I was not going to bed, anyway,” she said calmly, seamlessly, after a moment’s reflection and staring at him. It was another game, mirroring his placidity. “And whatever you believe Mr. Clogg-Spleen did, it sounds as if it could use more than one wand. However skillful yours might be.” She pressed her lips together in the tiniest smile, and brought her jaw up just a little, settling into a graceful stance. Her wand was in a steady hand, its tip pointed toward the Landis, the edges of its glow cast upon his face.

And then, because she knew they could very well stand here all night (and that she would not mind too terribly if they did), she moved a half step toward him and added: “We should talk, Landis. I don’t think we ever finished discussing certain... details. How is your cousin? Is he still dealing with his predicament?” She asked, in a way which hinted she knew he’d lied to her. She had no desire to hear about Darian. The other name on her tongue she bit back; it would ensnare him to ask if Dazmond was resting well, to speak aloud of Runespoor and its lasting effects. He might have told her it was none of her business, but he shouldn’t have lied to her if he wanted to keep it that way. It only served to make her more determined to know the truth. There were things Landis had not told her, and reasons... what were the reasons? Did she want to know? Would she regret trying to drag them past his lips?

"Juliette," he said calmly, half-lit and half-shadow in her wand's blueish light. "I have very little desire to put up with you tonight. If you're so eager to find out what prank was pulled on the fourth floor, go on and do so - but then I will retire, and let you handle it alone."

She looked as placid and stone-faced as any cemetery angel as she moved a half-step closer, undeterred by his sharpish words. Landis had liked her fearlessness once, found her impertinentence pleasing; now it needled him that of all the woman he could have chosen to share his bed, he'd picked the one who'd had to get her potioneer's fingers into every crook and cranny of his mind, who never ever gave up. In her eyes he seemed the most curious mystery, and she was doing her damnedest to take him apart. Well, let her try. A woman wasn't going to be his undoing.

All right. Time to be nasty. If it'd inflame her anger again, or merely get her off his tail, Landis was willing and able.

His expression twisted, darkened, and turned grim. "Darian has other problems to worry about now." Such as the retribution of his cousin whom he'd so wronged in flapping his lips to the first pretty woman to come along. "I've said all on this matter that I wished to say, and there is nothing more to discuss. Don't you understand when you're not wanted? My God, I hadn't thought you so dim as to still be after me nearly a month later."

"Juliette, I have very little desire to put up with you tonight."

A ghost of a smile touched her lips and left again. It would have been more amusing if he hadn’t used that word-- desire. Whether he still desired her or not, she could not say; she had been sure, and then she hadn’t been. She was not used it, not knowing. It was always written so plainly across men’s faces. What she had known when watching him react to Bilius she no longer knew. But her own desire was not what she anticipated Landis’ to be. Rather, there were other things she wondered after, things for which he’d cut her loose, surely as she’d cut a ribbon of red up his cheek.

Her offer to accompany him was a distraction as much as an excuse; he demolished it easily as she suggested it. She could expect no less of Landis, but it still annoyed her. Keeping him here in the dark-- merely talking-- would not be so seamless as interrogating him on the stairwell while she interspersed recommendations of punishment with questions about his personal life. Landis was too clear-headed, too careful, and Juliette too longing.

Not intent on hearing tales of her fellow redhead, Juliette merely nodded, polite interest taking momentary residency of her face. That, too, was smoothed over with a mere handful of words.

"I've said all on this matter that I wished to say, and there is nothing more to discuss. Don't you understand when you're not wanted? My God, I hadn't thought you so dim as to still be after me nearly a month later."

She mightn’t have expected anything different, but it did not mean the words weren’t acid; acid like the burns on her flesh he tended and dressed one night in the dungeons so many months ago. They had been alone then, too, but the air had not been so charged as it was now, tempestuous cauldrons considered. And even then, she had tried to arrest him, to stand him still in a way that Landis Morgan, for all his stoic composure, refused to do for anyone. He would not be looked upon, he would not be deciphered.

She could have named him for the viper he was in a flurry of furious French, but she didn’t. She lowered her wand a fraction, head pounding to the rhythm of her heart, which-- though she knew better, having become so masterful of the human sense-- she suspected he might hear if she weren’t careful now. She was grateful for the dimness of their wand light, the low glow of the wall sconces. Her cheeks never took color so discreetly.

He was doing it on purpose; he had to be. If she didn’t tell herself as much, she would be destroyed. By a sharp-tongued librarian in a stony knot of castle. Instead, she double her efforts-- at nodding. Or shaking her head, or both. “I only thought you might want a colleague’s help,” she said finally, sticking to her original excuse; flimsy as it was, she wore it well, determined to remain as coldly unbothered as Landis. “A mistake.” Had she looked so pathetic, so disposable? Her voice was not sour, not angry, but not weak, either. Straightforward. It was what he seemed to want. But not too much, never too much.

She stood in place, but looked elsewhere, eyes stony and focused on some distant thing on the ground or where the wall sloped away from them. “Louis should be anxious by now.”


A dog was not a man, and this dog was not a replacement-- though the timing said as much. A convenience. A cute turn of events. She would not let herself believe that she needed Landis or anyone else to share her bed; the dog would have stolen her heart either way. Still, Juliette had been grateful for the puppy’s company post-break-up, for his distraction, for his lack of judgement... and, yes, for his penchant for sniffing around the library and growling at the man standing before her. Louis was not a replacement, but he was a soft, calming presence, someone whom Juliette could love unconditionally without worrying about having to hex him later.