The one thing Ronnie really disliked about living in a dorm was the complete lack of privacy. There was no single place that she could dependably be alone. And a lady of poise like Veronica needed time to herself to... maintain. And to do things that would be tasteless and embarrassing to do in front of other people.

Things like trying to work out the glacius charm without the prying eyes of her classmates.

Veronica felt, on all accounts, that stumbling through one's failures in front of unnecessary onlookers was a gross habit akin to rambling on about one's personal problems. None of anyone's business except hers. Which was why, on a day when she'd much rather be hanging around with her friends, she was sitting cross-legged on a blanket in an obscured location in the courtyard, opposite a pitcher of water which was perspiring down its glass sides.

"Glacius," she repeated slowly, flicking her wand delicately and precisely. The water trembled and she saw more beads of sweat drop down the glass, but it remained steadfastly liquid.

She glared at the pitcher, fighting valiantly the urge to put her ballet flat straight through it.

There was always the option to ask her bonehead brother for help, but admitting she needed Huxley's help with anything seemed a fate far worse than a 'troll' on her exams. She was always the one getting him out of jams, and rightfully so- Huxley was a dope and Veronica was bloody brilliant.

"If you don't do exactly what I tell you, you're gonna be well sorry, you little bastard," she hissed to the water, which of course gave no reply other than to sit merrily in the hot sun. She was even starting to sound like her brother. Ugh.

Casey was rarely a sight seen outdoors, excluding Herbology and COMC. There was a joke that he must be a vampire if he looked nearly dead...and Casey could grin in such a way that even without pointed teeth it made them rethink that suggestion. However, free from tests and brooding over the loss of the family wand, Casey had done the unusual thing for him and toured the grounds. The edge of the Forbidden Forest made him pause. The wildest of notions entered his head, a plan beginning to particulate. Nothing he would attempt until he had his regular wand back.

Maybe he could catch Foley unawares and snipe her with a good Twitchy Ears. However, slunking into a courtyard, he discovered a different Slytherin girl off to a corner. Stealthily, he watched. Veronica Ward was attempting to freeze a pitcher of water. Odd. Their Charms Final had been on the Third, back when Casey had gotten the ill news of the forced wand replacement. Maybe Veronica thought perfecting her magic would in some way retroactively ensure her grades. Maybe she was getting ahead for next year. Or maybe she was prepping for Transfiguration tomorrow, in case Tawse had them change states of matter besides turning the inanimate into life.

She seemed rather angry at the water jug. Obviously having trouble with the spell. Hmm... Casey pulled out the withered stick (the only way he thought of his father's wand) and timed it with her next attempt, muttering the spell in the lowest of whispers. What would she think when it worked this time?

She felt silly, having dressed nicely to come outside and hide from everyone, but the annoyance she was feeling at being such a dunce was far outweighing her minimal sense of irony. Her blindingly white and clean halter top was a good choice, at least, as it kept her back and shoulders breezy and cool. It was about the only thing she'd been able to do right that day.

She huffed and aimed her wand bitterly at the pitcher. "Glacius," she snapped.

To her great surprise, the water flushed with clouds of foggy-looking patches, and finally churned to a halt as a mass of ice. Her jaw dropped. No way.

Veronica hadn't been able to do the rather simple charm at all. All year. And she had seriously doubted any degree of success on this occasion, but lo and behold, there sat the pitcher in question, frozen solid. People like Veronica didn't struggle in class. They did their expected work and performed with graceful success.

They didn't struggle and struggle and finally nearly cry when they did it. Which is how she felt at that moment.

But there was also a surge of disbelief. She looked around with cold and discerning eyes, trying to spot the x-factor which had spurred her success.

Casey watched Veronica stare in bewilderment at the ice overflowing the pitcher. He ducked out of the way in time before her head swivled this direction. Why? he suddenly thought, since he'd never gone out of his way to help someone or mess if them unless they were slated for one of his revenge plots. Still, playing Veronica a bit might be entertaining.

Stooping, although he didn't need to bend much farther, Casey skirted the low wall until he had traced the corner to another entrance. Then he made a show of entering the courtyard anew, recognizing her at the last moment.

"Huh," Casey said, surveying the scene. "Typically, Ward, when someone's looking for ice in their drinks, they don't freeze the whole drink."

Ronnie thought she saw something rustling around in her general vicinity, but shrugged it off as a breeze or something- there was a rather nice one, actually. She pulled out a bit of parchment and tried to scrawl down what she'd done differently, but when Casey's voice sounded beside her she jumped a mile and left a long black streak across the paper. "Oh, God, O'Doherty,  can you not ever just walk up and talk to somebody like a normal-bloody-person?" she snapped, stuffing the ruined parchment back into her bag. Her back was still to him. "Always skulkin' around like a great creepin' Jesus."

But, when she turned around, there was a small smile on her face, though her tone had been acidy. "Who says I wasn't tryin' to freeze the whole thing? Ladies need their cold drinks cold."

Veronica had a pretty mellow relationship with the boy generally, occasionally finding the need to tell him off or yell at him for being supremely weird. Which he was, after all.

"I could see you drink a slush, but a block of ice? You couldn't even fit that in your mouth." Her un-lady-like language also came to mind but this was nothing new to the girls of Slytherin House. Especially those that associated with Huck.

"And skulking about? Really. It's slight curvature of the spine, I can't help it if you were born perfect."

He pointed his wand at the pitcher and performed a spell to melt the ice back to water. "Well, Miss Perfect, let's see if you can do it again without creating a popsicle."

She flattened his gaze on him intently. "A lot of people are surprised by what I can fit in my mouth," she said wickedly, channeling her older brother. "But you wouldn't know anything about that." Stretching out in the sun, she looked over her shoulder at the boy.

"Surely a tiny curvature doesn't actually cause you to walk like a tyrannosaurus rex, O'Doherty?" she cocked an eyebrow. "Or is that part just for fun?"

Fairly sure she wouldn't be able to do it again, she tried to dodge his insistence. "I'd just as soon not, really," she said passively, leaning back on her elbows, "It's soooo warm, and I'm just knackered."

"I thought Huxley claimed he had a charming little sister. It seems 'charming' is loosing battle with other things that run in the family." Although Casey was one to talk given the O'Doherty stigma.

He was starting to recognize what she was doing, something like Aunt Maeve when she stretched the ball and chain from Uncle Torna. The sudden realization also came that Veronica was rather pretty. Probably the prettiest in the third year. And pretty was not a term that penetrated Casey's consciousness on a regular basis. Were these romantic thoughts? Damn, they were distracting.

"Walking like a T-Rex, as you put it, was supposed to add a predatory vibe. Works wonders on the second years." He crumpled into a sitting position on a corner of her blanket by her feet. "As you don't feel to up to it," with the wand he performed a flurry of magic, refreezing the and separating it from the pitcher until the oblong cylinder of ice floated before him, "the weather being too warm for you, as you put it, we could always cool you off by cramming this down your shirt."

She grinned a little at him. "I'm ninety-nine percent sure my brother has never used that word. It's so..." she thought for a moment, her finger tapped to her lips, "...poncy. That's the word." Her sweetness was the variety of well-calculated niceness that all girls used to thinly veil their harshness.

A giggle escaped her, but it was genuine. "Are you sure they're afraid of you because you're predatory and not because they don't want to catch your rabies? I know that's why I'm afraid."

She had been looking away lazily, but his last words made her turn her head quickly to look at him in slight disbelief. "Mmm, that's interesting, Casey," she said slowly, though she had to realize it had been the first time she'd ever called him by his first name. It sounded a little awkward. "Been hard at work coming up with ideas of what you could stick down my shirt?"

Her eyes were wide and evilly innocent.

"It's something more complex than rabies but luckily for them I don't think its contagious."

The block of ice nearly fell to the ground to splinter. While making every effort to maintain the levitation, Casey glanced at her with a tilt of his head. Did he just hear that correctly? She batted her eyelashes in such a way to feign sweetness.

"Not at all," Casey replied truthfully. With grand schemes, occlumency requests, battle armor and repressed memories the thought had never entered his mind on what you did when alone with a girl and a block of ice. However, the very question prompted the need for answers and his mind made a dangerous swerve into uncharted territory, pulling several unrelated ideas with it.

"Although now that you mention it, if we were talking torture there's several things that could get someone spilling their secrets quicker than Veritserum. Such as a Mackled Malaclaw, a Lobalug, a Streeler or a Fire Slug. Those creatures that get incredibly nasty."

"Not that I would expect you to keep much in the way of secrets, Veronica." Wait! Ward, he meant to say Ward, she was only Veronica when both Wards were in the common room!

Veronica's face fell gradually from fabricated piousness to genuine, though nearly unbelieving, amusement. If he had been off-put by her comments he was very good at hiding it, and for such a little guy he was very ballsy. She shook her head gently to shake the hair out of her face and off her shoulder. "Well, that's just... a weird thing to say," she laughed a little. "What would a girl like me have to hide?"

To her, working hard and partying hard were not mutually exclusive. There were simply appropriate times to do each. Namely, when one was not predisposed to work, partying was fully acceptable. And as such, there were few things that Veronica had done that weren't entirely public knowledge.

"I suppose we're on a first name basis, after three years," she said slightly sarcastically. "I'll alert the news media. So, how long were you standing around there before you interrupted my nice afternoon?"

Casey paused. Veronica was usually straight forward on her mood of the moment and while at times frolic she rarely broke any rules...in public. "Maybe not you speicifically, but maybe for your brother. Like the size of his scorebook, it being thinner I'd imagine than what he claims."

The ice spun lazily in the air. "I suppose we are, Miss Ward," just to shake her up a bit, "though I only arrived minutes ago. I don't think you were having such a pleasant day if you can't get one Freezing spell to work properly. "

Veronica snorted idly. She wasn't of the mind that her brother's promiscuity was anything for him to be thrilled about, but she at least knew that he had been around the block more times than O'Doherty had. "I'm frankly surprised that you know what big boys and big girls do when they're alone, shrimp," she said, not altogether in an unfriendly way.

At his last words, her face sank into mild surprise mixed with irritability. "I knew it," she spat. "You were spying on me, you little snake in the grass bastard!"

Casey smirked. "Oh yes, as if that's a big mystery. Foreplay leads to reproduction. Although many say they will kept it platonic without going all the way. I do have promiscuous relatives, you know." Mainly Aunt Maeve but supposedly Aunt Sunach was also wild before she became a depressive drunk.

At her accusation Casey replayed his last words in his head. He hadn't thought he had revealed much in those words but it was enough for her at any rate. "My apologies, Miss Ward. I did catch sight of one of your failed attempts and since you weren't interested in a public display a minute ago, frankly I see that as a pattern suggesting you haven't gotten the spell down yet."

And for good measure "I'll have you know that my parents actually were set in the bonds of matrimony before they had me, and neither of them had relations with serpents or graminoids." Of all the times for herbology information to enter his head.

Oh God he was a weird little guy. She could hardly believe he was giving her information about the romantic lives of his family members. She wrinkled her nose and gave him a look that girls of her caliber were very well versed in- her eyebrows were raised in disbelief and her mouth was contorted in slight disgust. And his explanation of sex... well...

She giggled a little bit, but it was less friendly. "Who gave you that talk?" she asked sarcastically, thinking in the back of her head that she was very excited to tell Naomi about this. "The way you talk about it you'd think you were raised by a dictionary."

"So what if I haven't?" she scowled. "I'm gonna get it. I can't just let it go. We're gonna build on this stuff next year and I don't want to miss foundation material. It's stupid."

Ronnie lazily trailed one seafoam-green-painted nail up and down her leg and shook her hair over her shoulder again. It was a repetitive motion that, along with constant gum-snapping, made teachers furious.

"Haven't you got anything better to be doing than skulking about the garden like a right zombie?"