Never run with scissors

Andrei had spent the last few hours in the Common Room trying to work on his latest invention. Since it was late, the room was strangely empty and he could enjoy completely privacy and silence. It was not like he could take his work to the library and try working on it there. He was sure the people there wouldn't appreciate Andrei's inventiveness as they should, especially if something went wrong. That's why the Common Room seemed like the perfect choice.

He was quickly getting tired of this and frustrated. He spend so much time trying to make it perfect that he didn't understand why didn't it work. He even took a similar model from he bought and took it apart, just to make sure he was on the right track. His version of this specific bomb would be much more detailed and complex than anything he could buy of course. That is if he ever succeeded in making it work in the first place.

Moaning at his failed efforts, Andrei was on the edge of quitting. But then somehow, everything seemed to fit together well. The only thing he needed to do know was to add the dragon's potion he had bought especially for it. Just three drops though, anything more than that would be disastrous. He counted the drops as he slowly put them in his bomb like device and when he reached the third one, it exploded in a large fashion leaving smoke trails all over the room. "Damn it! Stupid...!", started Andrei shouting as he was trying to get rid of the smoke with his hands. The smoke was almost suffocating him as he tried to think of any spells that could help him clean this place up. It wasn't like he could simply open a few windows to air it out.

Franki was considering sneaking out to go hang out with Rudy. It was easy enough for a girl to break into the boy's dorm, and she was a familiar haunt. Rudy was one of the few people that she considered to be a legitimate friend, and nights like these, where the chattering of her fellow Housemates reminded her of how different she really was from them, typically drove her o go hang out with her younger friend.

She waited though. She didn't want her dormmates to see her leave. They already loved taunting her- Rudy was a very awkward boy, and obviously, because they were friends, they had to be involved. As it was not true, Franki didn't want to deal with it. She waited for a moment when all the girl's began to pull on their pajamas and then she made a run for it.

Franki had already dressed in her pajamas, so she was very quiet as she darted, barefoot, across the dorm floor and out the door. She closed the door behind her and expelled a breath of relief, sure no one had noticed. She took a step down the spiral staircase, and immediately felt her throat close.

Smoke? Her eyes watered and she coughed as she hurried downstairs. She could vaguely see a figure among the smoke but could not make it out. "What the hell?" she said, surprised and a tad frightened. She waved her wand and the smoke thinned. She waved her hands frantically in front of her face. That was when she spotted Andrei Dolohov. "Andrei!?"

The smoke was spreading fast across the common room and that was the moment when Andrei started to panic. Waving his hands frantically in the air didn't help at all, as he soon learned. He dropped his wand on the floor and was now coughing loudly, exploring the ground with his hands trying to find his wand. After all, he couldn't do anything without it. Continuing to swear, he was now extremely desperate. The smoke wasn't getting any thinner and it was starting to get harder to breathe. He couldn't last much longer without chocking in this room. Then finally, he got a hold of his wand and with a few spells the smoke was slowly thinning down.

What he didn't expect however was Francesca Malfoy, calling his name through the smoke. But when he turned around, that's exactly what he saw. "Franki, hi! Not able to sleep?", he asked with a chuckle through the dim remains of his experiment. After a few more spells and his full concentrations, the room was now completely visible and he could finally breathe. His head turned to the round device that was placed near the couch and he sighed. It was completely black as most of it's parts were burned down completely. He just couldn't understand what he did wrong this time. Theoretically, it should have worked just perfectly. But in practice, that was another story.

He noticed Franki still staring at him and he smirked. "Sorry about that. Guess I'm not that good at these things as I used to be. Promise I wasn't trying to kill you, Malfoy. Things just go out of control a bit. What are you doing up anyway? It's quite a bit past curfew isn't it?", he asked curiously.

Andrei spoke and Franki flitted a smile at him, responding cheekily with, "Hard to sleep when I'm being suffocated with smoke." She was teasing, of course. She very well knew that Andrei had a penchant to fiddle around, and this didn't exactly come as a surprise. She hadn't exactly expected it, but once she had stumbled upon the scene, it seemed natural that it was the Dolohov boy who had started the trouble.

The two worked at clearing the room for a few more moments, and Franki sent the smoke spiraling into the fireplace and then up and out. After a moment, she stopped, watching Andrei go about clearing the room, a bit amused. Andrei was one of the few of her Housemates that didn't make her feel completely ill at ease. They had been sorted together, they had been in Dark Followers together. The sixth years had, essentially, grown up together. And if Andrei had been one of the purebloods to think her worthless now, as most did to the Malfoys.

He glanced up at her and spoke. She chuckled, saying, "It's alright. I just wanted to make sure no one was dead." She shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant about it. She rolled her eyes at his words, saying good naturedly, "There's no curfew for the common room. I just got tired of hearing all the girl talk in the dorm." She rolled her eyes. "What's this latest invention supposed to do?"

"Now I wasn't that bad, was I Francesca?", asked Andrei with a playful grin. For a guy who was so experienced in explosives and prank mechanics, he would often make a mess. It was a fact that in pranks that he was trying to develop, there was never a sure technique to make them work. You would just have to keep trying out different things. Sometimes that meant having a bomb explode in your face like today. But sometimes that meant it actually ends up working.

"They might be no curfews, but it's surely too late for a respectable girl to be up and about the place. Besides, haven't you heard? Nothing good ever happens after midnight. Case in point", he said with a teasing smirk, pointing at the small parts of the leftover smoke in the room.

"Glad you asked", said Andrei with a grin on his face. He always got so excited talking about pranks and his newest development. "See this. Well it used to be a round ball", he said pointing at the dark black remains of his experiment.

"It's a new type of bomb that could be activated by a trigger word - in this case that is 'avis'. But you could change it to anything really. And you could be anywhere in the world, but when you say that world this bomb would explode. You don't need to be next to it and it doesn't have a time limit. Perfect for making a mess without getting caught! I was trying to work on making the corridors a swamp place. With the mud, water and the whole nine yards. But - as you see, I have a minor setback it seems"