Watch Me Now

Dexter sat against a wall in the entrance hall, his brow furrowed as he examined a muggle watch. He was not sure why the watch had stopped. He had resurrected his own watch after finding it in a thrift store. But this one was not working. It had something to do with him trying to charm a small mechanical device that included a bird attached to a spring to pop out of the watch. A Coo-Coo wrist clock.

Finally, he heard a ticking after a few minutes of work. Success. Though, only partial. He began to turn over the watch, examining it. He set it for three second until one and waited. The bird's spring shot out and the bird flew off, squawking. He sighed and summoned it, reattaching it to the spring, and rubbing his eye. He did a spell to reduce the spring's momentum of release and to quiet the squawk. He tried again and the bird did not even make it out of the watch. He twitched and continued.

He would need to find a 1000 ways it did not work, before finding the way it did. That did not make him feel any better though.

Lucy watched the older boy completely absorbed in fiddling with his watch. She could see his problem from here, as it was one she'd encountered herself many times in the past. Combining magic with mechanics was a delicate task.

She wandered across the hall and sat next to the boy, before holding out a hand with the expectation of him letting her look at the treasure.

"From a guess, I'd say you're pureblood," she said. "Am I right?"

"Muggleborns usually want to apply magic in more practical ways, and this is just fanciful. Unless you intend to make a profit from it, and I suspect acquiring parts would make any profits negligible.

"There's always going to be purebloods who see what muggles do on their own and wonder how much it could be improved by applying magic to it, though. Thus, we get technomancy. Halfbloods, of course, have the best of both worlds and rarely get interested because they can go to the source."

"My grandfather is terribly fascinated with these things," she went on. "I could probably fix it for you."

Dexter did not like people, and the sound of a voice made a headache quick to form at his temple and a sense of impending exasperation quickly gripped him. He had not patience for people, not now not ever, but at present he was already so wrapped up in his task, he did not have the will to face anyone. He glanced up. Great. One of the Weasleys.

The younger girl seemed to presume a lot. That he was pureblood, that he was fixing the watch, that he could not do it. He stared critically at her for a moment, staring at her hand as her last words rang in the hall. He did not hand her the watch but looked down, continuing to tinker. "You are incorrect on many of your presumptions. I am not pureblood, this is not 'broken' in the sense of the word that it doesn't work, I am not doing this for profit, you can not finish it better than I, and your presence is not appreciated." He blinked and continued to work.

Lucy could had seen this boy get picked on in the halls before but it wasn't until he answered her that she knew why. He was horrible. She was surprised nobody had transfigured him into a toad yet as that was what she'd have done if she knew human-to-animal transfiguration, but alas, she was still only a third year and that was at least NEWT level work.

"You're incredibly rude, you know?" Lucy said.

It was possible, after all, that he'd grown up under a hedge and nobody had ever had ever told him he was doing something wrong. Especially with hair like that.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't appreciate anyone's company. Now, that's stupid, because eventually, you're going to leave Hogwarts and you're going to get a job and you'll be forced to work with real people and if you act like that to them... Well, you won't have any job for very long, no matter how good you are at it," she said.

"And I can fix your watch because you're squinting at it and casting spells like you hope they'll work, which indicates to me that you have no plan of attack, whereas I already thought up three viable solutions while I was watching you over there," Lucy pointed to where she'd been standing when she first caught sight of Dexter.

Dexter blinked at the girl. Why was it that suddenly every human being could not just get insulted and leave. Why must they pick at it. "If I had gone about the 'if you have nothing to say, don't say it at all' route, it would also be considered rude. To lie would be immoral. I have little choices left. Better honest than rude, than kind and incorrect. As for your next assumption, you are correct."

He began to move on, but it seemed she was set on continuing this conversation. He sighed and looked at her, a dull, bored expression on his face. "As I tried to tell you before, girl, the watch is not broken. I am tinkering, experimenting, inventing. Trying new things. I can program a watch to tango ever third second of every seventeen minute of every other hour, I am not so dull as to be unable to fix it. I am simply trying to figure out a way past some scientific laws to make the components of a coo coo clock fit into a wristwatch. Now, if you could excuse me-" He began to walk away. Why was he always forced to explain himself?

"Hah, lying isn't immoral. People lie to each other all the time, and themselves," Lucy pronounced. "You're lying to yourself right now, for example. Can't bear the thought of accepting help, why is that? Is it because you want to feel superior, or because I'm younger than you? If it's the second, you can rest easy in the knowledge that I only got where I am through obsession and fortunate genetics."

Lucy skipped to keep up as he began walking away, but then he turned around to confront her. Ha! She knew the truth now; he thought she was a rival, else he wouldn't bother correcting her so often.

"Yes, yes, I know," she waved a hand dismissively at his talk of experimentation.

Really, did he think she'd never experimented with anything, or better, been experimented on before?

"I told you I saw you playing with it earlier. Still not doing what you want it to do, though, is it? I'd use wizard space. Or an avis charm," she offered. "But you don't want to know what I'd do, do you?"

"I am not lying, I'm forming a hypothesis based on prior knowledge. No other baboon here has been able to help me with my experiments before, what about you indicates that you will be able to do anything more than they did?" He said, continuing to walk away. From the sound of her voice, it seemed she was following him, so he tucked the watch into his pocket at rolled his eyes, quickening his pace. Her words were getting to him though.

He spun around and leaned forward, sneering at her. "What do you take me for, a fool?! The very moment I decided to try and modify the watch, I expanded the internal workings. I do not need an avis charm because I already have the bird. I am currently fiddling around, trying to find the correct velocity for my bird, as well as the right sound, and the fact that the bird is three 'Coo-Coo's off. It is no matter of my not being capable, it is the matters of the time it takes, the fact that I don't have my tools presently, and the problem of people bothering me!" He stared at her for a second. "Alright?" He turned and continued walking away. "Now stop trying to 'help' me."

Lucy ignored his question and the insult implicit in it and kept up her cheerful mood just for good measure. People who were determined to rain on other people's parades really hated it when everyone else wasn't out to prove they were the best as well.

"Not a fool; just a boy with a bad superiority complex," Lucy said. "You get beat up in the halls so you want to show everyone how much more intelligent you are than them. Unfortunately you've overlooked the fact that nobody cares how clever you are or they'd have stopped beating you up. Being pleasant is more important than being smart."

She also ignored his explanation of how silly she was for thinking of the obvious things. He was more of an idiot for not trying the charm.

"Really? I thought you were trying to get past scientific laws to get your components into the watch," she repeated back what he'd said. "If it's just a matter of getting it all to work together, I'm sure you'll get there eventually."

"Oh, but I do feel compelled to tell you it's called hacking. Only amateurs "fiddle" with technomancy. I did tell you my grandad is really into this stuff. You know the magic car in the Forbidden Forest? He made that," she was already walking away as she spoke.

"Could you just.." he said through gritted teeth, turning to walk away and quickening his pace once more. His voice was a low mutter, to soft to be heard by her. It was him losing his cool. He had never had patience for anyone other than himself, and, frankly, it was annoying as hell! Why was this little girl so intent on being his annoying, talkative little shadow today. He was proud to be an only child. He wasn't used to this.

At her words about the car, though, he had to slow. He had heard the faintest of legends about the car, but he had never known the right people to hear enough about it. He slowed down. He was sure it was simple enough... the spells... But still... Any true inventor would be just a tad curious. He stopped suddenly and turned to face the girl. "Really? Your grandfather did?"

She'd already been walking away. Lucy knew the last little tidbit would be the breaking point. She'd been holding it in reserve because of that, so she wasn't the least surprised to hear his response. She twirled round and faced him again.

"Oh, so you want to talk now?" she smiled sweetly.

"It's a shame you weren't nicer to me earlier, or I might me more inclined to tell you all about it. How grandpa made it, how it got into the forest, you know, those sorts of things. He's even showed me how he repaired my uncle's flying motorcycle, but since you don't like me I wouldn't want to make you endure my presence while I explained it."

Her smile widened even further and then Lucy had turned back around to skip, literally skip, off.