11:47 am
Right after the ceremony



After the speeches were made and the applause gotten over with, Bai Li—Salem’s own Miss Prim and Proper, and one of the most straight-laced members of its staff—was only all too glad that, by extension, so was the ceremony itself.

Normally she didn’t mind the pomp and circumstance. It was a special occasion, and one that didn’t occur every year at that. She herself had a quiet appreciation for functions such as this; it lent gravitas to the occasion, honoring both it and the people for whom it was for, and now, unlike previous, exclusively European times before, Salem’s delegation were among the latter. A ceremony was. . . fitting, to say the least. It was only to be expected.

But, when it came right down to it, she had been in the dirigible far too long. By no means had the trip been boring—students would find a way to get into trouble, even when they were thousands of feet in the air—but most of the things she would have done to amuse herself on a boat, couldn’t be done while she had been so far up.

For one, she had to leave most of her animals at the Institute. Some of them simply couldn’t be brought (they were either too frail, too large, too aggressive, or, in some cases, all three). Those she could, and did, had to be left in their cages and containers stored away in her trunk, which was a beastly, ornery creature all by itself and liked having its contents removed almost as much as an aquaphobic enjoyed taking a swim. The only one that had been allowed to roam free was her imp, and after an incident involving some bagpipes and a noisy old woman, it refused to leave her shoulder afterwards. It was all she could do to keep it from tipping off the hats of passersby, or lobbing flecks of dried mucus at the unwary as they sat through the speeches.

Fortunately, now, it was over. As people began heading back into town, Bai, too, got ready to leave. Smoothing out her robes and adjusting her pauldron, she ignored the imp’s agitated hissing as she calmly surveyed her school’s competition and lifted the imp’s Disillusionment Charm with a tap of her wand. Durmstrang, she noted a group of Oberteils, would have a taste for the ostentatious, wouldn’t they. . .

When she inadvertently bumped into her absolutely favorite colleague, she was quick to give him a once-over, eventually meeting his eyes with a sweet, sweet smile. “Already trying to scare the children, are you, Jimmy?”

Jimmy Hart was who he was. He hadn't been intimidated by the introductions from the other headmasters, even the guy from Durmstrang who had come off like a total James Bond villain, at least accent-wise. And he had been heartened by the very terse words of his own boss, who could say more with the twinkle in his eye than the rest of the bunch could say in years of speeches, as far as Jimmy was concerned.

It was for that reason that he stretched his legs after the ceremony and walked tall, rooster-like, around the to-do and shouted things through cupped hands at students and faculty alike. He met with as many people as he could and introduced himself perfectly pleasantly, with a handshake and a toothy smile and a repetitive but still genuine "howya doin' there?"

He got the distinct impression that some of them weren't fond of him, even though he hadn't said anything of a dickish nature and he hadn't gotten a nasty temper with anybody. But it occurred to him that it might just be a cultural divide, and decided to chalk it up to that. On some of the colder-acting professors he used his secret weapon- a picture of his daughter in which she was eating a fluffernutter- but even that seemed to gain him no ground.

He scanned the crowd, hoping to introduce himself to the headmaster of Hogwarts, who seemed like a pretty chill guy in comparison to some of the crazies he'd come across. Catching sight of one of the freshmen from Salem on the trip, who was well-known as a class clown in the tradition of Mace Steinbeck although not nearly at Mace's level of controlled crazy, he squinted. The kid, Drew DiAntonio, was clearly squirreling something away in his shirt. It bulged out in an awkward lump right above his heart. And he was moving around looking like the cat that ate the canary. And while Jimmy didn't exactly know what it was, he was sure it wasn't anything good.

Taking a few purposeful steps forward, Jimmy barked, "Hey, DiAntonio! D'ja grow one boob durin' those speeches or what? I swear to God when I find--"

But his words were cut short as he thumped into a little lady that seemed barely half his size. "Oh, jeez, I--" he started, but lost his train of thought again. Bai wasn't exactly Jimmy's best friend on the staff. Or his friend. Or even friendly acquaintance. They had fought bitterly in the past, and he was a hundred percent sure they'd do it again. "Oh, hey," he said with less of a nice facade on his face.

"Already trying to scare the children, are you, Jimmy?"

He made a face and scoffed. "No, that's... I'm not even..." he stuttered, then finally managed to get his thoughts straight by making a fervent hand gesture. "That little shit's smugglin' contraband around in his clothes and I was tryin' to intercept him before he lit up a buncha whizbangs under some poor unsuspecting Jerry. And you ruined it."

In the face of such barefaced swearing, Bai barely refrained from rolling her eyes. Even now, in a foreign country where they, as senior representatives of the Salem delegation, were expected to uphold the rules and integrity of their school, her colleague still spoke like the most basic of cretins. “Hardly,” she sniffed, unimpressed by the accusation. She was not nearly so thoughtless as to sneer in public. “You were doing just fine on your own, braying at the boy like that.”

From her shoulder the imp made a face at the man and cackled rudely.

Unfortunately, what other jibes he had to offer aside, the man did have a point; Fizzing Whizbangs were cause for concern. She shuddered to think what would happen if DiAntonio succeeded—a stink, perhaps, if the freshman’s victim (and perhaps even his or her headmaster) was offended enough, or worse: retaliation. Drew had always been quite the troublemaker for her year (in fact, she scarcely had enough fingers to count the ones she could from the top of her head), and Bai didn’t doubt that one way or another, payback from his end would follow.

Inter-school rivalry was all well and good—expected, even—but any petty feud that could potentially embarrass the school was not. And if the headmaster didn’t care, well, she would.

“Let’s go, then,” she said, releasing a resigned sigh that spoke volumes of her favor for the idea—as well as the idiot she was so very tempted to tag at the end of that sentence, “before your excessively vocal fears are proven right.” She was already turning away as she spoke, the hem of her purple robes fluttering about her ankles as she turned in the direction the boy had disappeared to. If Jimmy was just as annoyed as he claimed to be (some people were entirely too fond of exaggeration), then it would be for the best she accompanied him, if only to prevent him from giving the boy a public basting, which would effectively broadcast the unruliness Salem so often indulged.

And it was because of more than a few years’ of experience that she nearly didn’t see the imp flick a particularly large booger at a passing Hogwarts student’s eye.

Erik was usually full of surprises, schemes, and various other ways to misbehave, but not today. Today, he was just wandering around and observing--quite a fete of patience for the young Gryffindor. The boy scratched his brunette head, as he absent minded-ly surveyed the crowd and tried to muss up his hair.

Of course that was a mistake, because his world suddenly jerked and jumped as he hit the ground. Fizzing Whizzbangs scattered around him and Erik's drowsy and dull gaze met that of another student, climbing onto his knees.

 "Ah--oops, sorry!" the kid said as he gathered up his things.

American. Salem. Whizzbangs--it didn't take a Ravenclaw to deduce what those three things added up to in the young Hogwartsian's brain with an all too mischievous smile pulling across Erik's face. "Ah no worries, accidents happen!" Erik said in his most caring drawl as he quickly jumped up to gather the other boy's things. "All set then? Right! See you off then!" With a quick pat on the Salem student's back and an extra skip in his step, Erik started to wonder off in the opposite direction of the troublemaker... the other troublemaker.

"And..." Erik began humming softly to himself, "on the second day of the tourney, Salem gave to me--" splot, "Yuck!" He looked up to see an imp sitting on some lady's shoulder and wasted no time in his quirky upbeat greetings, "Hey, hi, sorry! But do you know you've got a nasty snot-launcher sitting on your shoulder there?" Erik pointed to the imp with one eye shut and a smile still plastered on his face.

Of course, for Erik, even though it was gross, it was a fantastic way to distract himself from what happened a second later: as ton of Whizzbangs suddenly went off beneath the clothes of a very confused Salem student in a colorful and brilliant light show. Erik thought it was brilliant, anyway, because his ideas always were. Duh.

Jimmy's face was immediately- immediately a self-assured grin. It wasn't every day that he was able to get Bai to go along with anything he said, so even a grudging acceptance was cause for razzing. "Oh, what?" he asked sarcastically, holding his hand up to his ear. "What's that? You... you wanna help me? Jeez, Bai, are you feelin' okay?"

He laughed a little and waved a hand at her. "Nah, nah, I'm kidding. Let's get that little jackass before he lights up one 'a these eggheads-"

Just as he was about to turn heel and walk towards the boy, he saw the hank of spit fly past his face and nail some kid right in the eye. His first reaction- and the one which escaped him- was to laugh.

Lips pursed and eyes narrowing a fraction, Bai shot him a look over the boy’s head, annoyance visible in her expression—as usual—whenever she had suffer the insufferable irritation that was Salem’s Athletics Director, Jimmy Hart. He was positively dreadful, that man. Even worse, he had hardly changed since their schooldays, back when they had been in the same year and shared the same classes; even long after they had graduated, he was just as rude as ever. Really, a better person, a gentleman, wouldn’t have laughed at a lady’s expense. But, unfortunately, she had long since come to the conclusion that the boor was just that: a boor.

A terrible, vulgar, churlish boor, with a penchant for making her give into unseemly displays of anger. And it was that that she disliked about him the most.

Her visible displeasure did, however, vanish when she looked back at the boy. “My apologies,” she began, still frowning slightly. After enough years spent handling troublemakers Salem liked to indulge (as well as the creature that sat upon her shoulder), Bai was experienced enough to know that something was. . . off—and the feeling was cinched only by the child’s persistent expression of innocence when something did set off.

Several somethings.

Amidst the sudden burst of panicked yells,  Bai’s eyes narrowed even further. Without warning a hand snaked out and caught a small, bony shoulder in a deceptively gentle grip, and any struggle that met it would find those slight fingers tightening into a vise. Briefly she shot Jimmy a flat, pointed look and, looking down again, a perfectly shaped brow rose. “Your doing, I suppose?”

Her tone wasn’t angry, but it wasn’t amused, either.

   

Erik was quite chipper about getting an apology from the lady with an imp, "Yeah, yeah no problem," he even added on an extra laugh to join the man who was with her, although is was painfully lazy.

Rubbing his eye he began to turn away and walk off amidst the mayhem, but the woman suddenly had a change in heart by reaching down and holding the shorter boy from walking away. Of course this woman's height made him feel more like a normal kid with a normal height, making him feel more physically awkward about how he'd been changing or growing up.

But from the stunts he still pulled it still made one wonder, "Well it wasn't as if he was going to do anything productive with them," Erik scratched the spiky tuft of fuzz on the top of his head as he gave a mischievous chortle, "Am I right?" His creeping eyebrows rose up on his head as his smile became rather cheeky.