glory & gore go hand in hand (that's why we're making headlines)

[OOC: It’s not the real thing, obviously. I’m aware casting it is something of an exclusive privilege. But it’s been long enough that I figured loose imitations and mini versions would have cropped up eventually.]

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A distinct air of celebration hung around the Slytherin table the week Grimmauld Place burned.

Or at least one end of the table. The end that typically began the days with sneers and scowls, dark looks on this occasion replaced by arrogant good-humour, an almost sadistic glee, lips stretched into sharp curves by word on the street.

The word being, of course, that Grimmauld Place had burned, and dark forces were on the rise (again).

Such was the optimistic view of one Pavo Hitchens and his comrades, clustered around a copy of the Prophet- borrowed from his obliging sister, who sat calmly eating her toast in the heart of the frenzy. He took no hesitation in loudly regaling his neighbours with the events outlined in the Prophet, embellishing the tale with rumours already circulating- the fire was the work of dark wizards, targeting a muggle street- and rumours consciously being put into motion- this attack was just the beginning, heralding a return to the turmoil of old, to values and forces long since suppressed.

These were the hopes being shared by the boy enclosed in the gaggle of housemates, their braying jubilance drowning out the conversations around them. Hidden when looked at from a distance, from the professor’s table, for example. Most had already left, the rest engaged in intense conversation, not sharing the triumph Pavo and his crew were so eager to indulge in.
He pulled himself out of the conversation to send the briefest smirk Lula’s way, voicing his intentions to her in that queer roundabout way they shared.

“A show, don’t you think?”

His sister raised a brow.

“Something to mark the occasion,” she replied wryly, not looking particularly impressed. Then again, she never did. She slid the newspaper back across the table and opened it up to the page she’d been reading, wiping the crumbs from her fingers to flick through. The smirk on her brother’s face only widened, taking her concession as sufficient agreement.

He didn’t stand, just lifted his hand to shouts of encouragement around him as those nearby took notice and realised his intention, and cast the spell. Watched as it rose into the air, smoky jaws opening and yawning into the vaulted ceiling. A crude imitation, of course, a student’s improvised play at warrior colours. But clear and unmistakeable. A celebration, a mark of territory, and a warning all at once. A call to arms and a declaration of allegiance.

Morsmordre.

No, her Christmas break had not been a good one.

People kept asking her that as though she could have conjured a single good thing to come out of the stay. Not only had it interrupted so many of her plans, but now the unthinkable had happened.

Unthinkable.

She used that word loosely. Because here was the thing.

Hadn't she been saying something horrible was going to happen if their guards were down?

Honestly, she was livid. She had watched as a small army of unknown aggressors had muscled their way past the wards of an incredibly affluent estate and had opened fire on a crowd for no apparent reason. She couldn't call them Death Eaters, because what sort of Death Eater targeted purebloods, but she could certainly call them dark wizards. After all was said and done, hadn't the Ministry upped security? Hadn't vigilance won out over complacency? Why hadn't their been a mobilization of Aurors to make their streets safer?

Ace was also gripped with an emotion she had spent her entire life trying to push out. Few would probably consider this feeling to be in the Longbottom's arsenal at all. But maybe if someone spared a second glance, pushed past how very insufferable she could be and remember that she was still a person, a child really, and that no one acted randomly, they might see evidence of this feeling in more than a few of her personality traits.

Because frankly friends, Ace Longbottom was scared.

She didn't know what had happened to Oliver. There was no reports of a body, no claims as to where the man had gone. This was the man that had helped her and Christian find somewhere to meet over the summer, had encouraged them on their venture. She had hoped to work with him once she was old enough to take her rightful place in The Order of the Phoenix. But there was a chance he was dead. And with him, probably the Order too. Their fate was so murky and unclear, and sometimes she felt like the only one to care.

(She knew this wasn't true. She knew she had one person she could count on to validate her concerns. But he had overslept, so what help was he right now.)

She sat alone at the breakfast table. Molly had met her eyes briefly as she went in search of a spot, but Ace couldn't pretend to care about whatever it was that Margo was going on and on about. She didn't really have... people. So she settled on a spot at the end of the Hufflepuff table and made her plate, filling it up with everything she would need to give her the energy to fight another day.

And then she stared at it.

Merlin, she was just one person. She couldn't even use magic to defend herself if she was attacked outside these walls (though if then Ministry thought she'd just take whatever came at her, then they had another thing coming) and she was more or less dependent on her brother to get anywhere. She and Christian had exams to study for, grades to maintain, family secrets to guard. They were in no position to try and save the world.

But no one else was going to do it.

A flicker of movement caught her eyes and she lifted her head. The Ravenclaw table was especially sparse this morning, giving her a clear view of the Slytherin table, and she could see that prat in her year, Paco or something or other (yes she knew his name but ugh he hardly deserved anyone's attention), smirking and grinning along with his friends. Their voices raised and their was a clamor of excitement, a push and pull as the group jostled each other, and the kid was raising a hand and-

Oh, f-ck no.

She was out of her seat without even willing herself into action, her heartbeat pounding behind her ears, palms numb with rage and her eyes locked on that stupid, smirking idiot. Her wand was gripped in her own hand as she reached the table. Her arm lifted and her determined face folded in concentration as she flicked her wand, banishing the disgusting icon from their sacred hall.

She dropped her hand and stopped in her tracks, now across from the fool who had caused it.

"Hey," she said, eyes ablaze and brows lowered. "We haven't met. I don't know where you went off to and lost your bleeding mind, but here, that's unacceptable. And, frankly, more than a little idiotic, but I'm not in the business of policing intelligence. I am nice enough to warn someone when they've crossed a line and you just crossed a line. Do it again, and I'll kick your ass."

That good old Hogwarts welcome back.

Never in her wildest nightmares would Clytemnestra have dreamed she'd ever, ever have agreed with Alice Longbottom about anything.

Except possibly about something very trivial like what the correct ingredients in a shrinking solution were, and maybe not even then.

"See, that's where you go wrong, Alice," she said, looking up from her breakfast specifically so the other girl could see her emphatic eyeroll.

"If you're so not in the business of policing intelligence, at least let them get on with being morons."

She raised a hand to wave Alice away like she was dismissing a servant.

"And we don't need you to kick their arses, either. I assure you, the rest of us in Slytherin don't take kindly to this kind of foolishness."

[@Jackles- possible godmod warning, but as always, can edit.]


Pavo wasn’t ignorant of the risks of displaying his allegiances so openly among the misguided population of this excuse for a school. Well, he wouldn’t term them ‘risks’, more like ‘the unfortunate side-effects of other people’s ignorance’. So having a stroppy Hufflepuff, of all things, take it upon herself to lecture him wasn’t quite the last thing he’d been expecting, but it was somewhere in that vicinity.

Having a completely irrelevant stranger jump in unprompted, on the other hand, was neither expected nor appreciated.

He paused, as if to ascertain that this irrelevant Seventh Year was actually of the delusion that her interference was at all necessary or acceptable, an eyebrow raising in mocking disbelief. Once it became apparent that her opinion was wrong- well, he didn’t actually pay any mind to the drivel coming out of her mouth beyond shooting Walter Mulciber opposite him a closed lip smirk, conveying his silent amusement that was no doubt shared by the rest of the Slytherins in his little gang. Did Clucks or whatever her name was think she was sat at the Hufflepuff table instead, or was she really that impossibly blind to her surroundings?

Speaking of Hufflepuffs-

The slow, amused curve of his lips only widened as he stared at the sorry excuse for a witch before him. His brows creased, head lowering in an almost thoughtful nod, but the haughtiness never left his tone.

“Perhaps it is about time I shared my enlightenment rather than seeking it elsewhere. But no need to fret- fortunately, there’s more than enough to go round.”

The faux-agreement was quickly revealed for the mockery it was when he lifted his wand yet again, and with an almost careless flick shot out a cloud of thick black smoke that curled its tendrils around her face. He’d been working on getting it to more closely resemble a nest of snakes, but no matter. It would do the job. If the snickers around them were any indication, it already was.

And then, cold eyes on hers, he shifted his aim a few inches higher and cast the original spell again. Because of course he did.

Lula hadn’t been paying any attention to the uninteresting lecture until the little dig at their company’s intelligence came out. Her head had snapped up from the newspaper, brows creasing briefly as she quickly placed the uppity Hufflepuff. Alice Longbottom. Well. Had it been someone of consequence it might have given her intended insult more weight. As it was, coming from a Hufflepuff…

Hah.

The Slytherin’s comment was more interesting to her. Ignoring her brother’s response to the presumptuous Hufflepuff, she turned to study the older girl instead, head tilted curiously. Bemusement flit across her features, but she made no sign of irritation or discomfort. An eagle often enclosed in a pit of snakes, she’d never felt more gratified in her superior house placement than at that moment. Her Ravenclaw tie, she thought, spoke for itself. So when her brother turned his wand from humiliating the Hufflepuff to silencing the Slytherin, she placed a hand over his wrist to still it.

No, let them hear what else the Misses Superiority had to say. There were few things as amusing as a jester playing a scholar. And with a little further prompting, these two could probably put on quite the show.

Oh my god, she hated his voice.

Had she really not noticed the condescension that dripped from his tongue, or was he careful not to use that in front of a professor who might be willing to call him out for being a poncy little brat. Somehow, as bold as he was surrounded by all his little friends, Ace suspected he'd be the sort to shut his mouth when he knew he was going to be rightfully called out.

Then again, he has just put up a Dark Mark to celebrate the deaths of innocent people. So she couldn't exactly trust him to follow any sort of sense.

Lux spoke, and Ace wished she could feel above the gesture. But sometimes Ace wondered... when her grandparents were tortured until they were no longer themselves, had there been a dark mark? They had disappeared, become shells of the great people they had been before, basically dead to the world. Had there been a Dark Mark?

So, no. It wasn't something she could chalk up to the boy just being an idiot. The people who had destroyed her grandparents were not idiots. The people who had tortured her parents hadn't been morons.

They were assholes.

They were evil.

And if Ace could face them now, she wasn't sure how well she'd be able to dodge the temptation to turn their harmful spells right back at them. Moral high ground be damned.

"No offense," she said, barely flicking her eyes towards Lux, seemingly incapable of tearing her eyes away from that self-satisfied smirk. "But I'm not here to mend someone else's offense anyway."

He raised his wand at her and she whipped her wand towards him, but smoke was clouding her vision. She stepped back in confusion and soon the tendrils began to sort themselves out. Most were unidentifiable, just smoke, meant to disorient and embarrass her. But one, curling in on itself, took shape, and a tongue flicked out-

Ace swatted the air in front of her, waving the smoke away, and in one swift motion forced herself between two of the Slytherins before her, leaning forward with her wand pointed in Hitchen's face, other hand landing heavily on the table.

"I'm not kidding," Ace said, eyes on him. "I won't tolerate it. I will not. Don't. do. it. again."

Clytemnestra responded with a long suffering sigh. Between dealing with people like Alice, who really was bright enough to figure this out for herself if she could stop being indignant for long enough to actually think, and people like Pavo who took far too much pleasure in dragging their house's name through the muck, she thought she was entitled to feel put out once in a while.

"Because that's not obvious at all," she replied.

She watched with interest as Pavo attacked Alice and the girl launched herself forward, wand tip ending up inches from his face.

"You have to curse him now," she advised Alice. "It doesn't matter what he does now. You can still give him a chance, but like, give him a little sting. Something to remember you by."

The stroppy Hufflepuff was either impressively foolish or carried an actual death wish, because as she quite literally dived into the pit of snakes, she either failed to notice the wands being drawn around her, or mistakenly assumed these bites would carry no venom. Blind Hufflepuff optimism or sheer stupidity, most times Pavo thought of them as interchangeable. This was definitely one of those times.

Now his eyes narrowed, any unimpressive pretense quickly dropped. His wand, still in attack position, was pushed down by the force of her approach, tangled in the hideous tie that drooped to the table. If she'd looked down perhaps she might have noticed her robes trailing in the untouched coffee, hand flattening a stray colony of crumbs. All had apparently been ignored in her single-minded determination to offer herself as victim-on-a-platter.

But it wasn't like Pavo noticed either. His eyes refused to falter in their cold appraisal of her own, suspended in that half-second between attack and defense. Or attack and attack, as it were.

Lula was not so easily distracted. She wrinkled her nose at Longbottom's blundering belligerence, attention quickly diverted from the other interfering busybody once it became apparent her contributions were neither valuable nor measured. But if she wanted a sting...

“Alarte Ascendere!”

Two things happened at once: with a precise jerk, Pavo wrenched his wand out of the folds of Longbottom's tie and simultaneously snapped out a different spell, this time, not even pausing to adjust his aim in his haste to eject the Hufflepuff from his sights. His sister's actions were far more subtle and delivered in silence: a Stinging Hex shot under the table at Clytemnestra, wand tucked conveniently out of sight.

Of course, neither had properly anticipated the myriad tiny factors that could go wrong in such a crowded space as the Great Hall. And Lula certainly hadn’t anticipated Pavo abandoning any element of surprise, even if it was only a Hufflepuff. So while her own actions were measured and deliberate, his were not, and she at least was astute enough to recognise the disadvantage he'd given them both. Too late, though.

Spoiler:

Ace was bristling. She felt waves of energy jolting through her skeleton, reaching into every nerve, setting her on edge and preparing her for whatever she needed. Ace had always fancied herself a girl of action. When she was young, head full of ideals that had gone untested and the world full of opportunity she had not challenged, knowledge had ruled her heart. Looking into the future, she had imagined an older version of herself that clambered into the comfort of books and discovered holes in truth and connections within confusion. With Luna Scamander and Hermione Granger as her role models, she had decided she would be a clever girl.

But the world had other plans. Being sorted as a Hufflepuff shouldn't have changed anything, but despite her parents assertions that the badgers were an underrated type of person, she had subscribed to the general Weasley prejudice that Hufflepuffs were a softer sort. Bland. An extra in the background, never a leading character. And as she tried to assert herself, prove that she was anything but extra, the more her classmates pushed her to the background. It was a steady progression of disdain and disappointment that had transformed her into the person she was.

And this person wasn't going to stand down to anyone.

The tricky thing about being Ace Longbottom, besides the general difficulty of having to live with such a bold personality, was that she did not always have the ability to back her spirited claims. It was a nice thought, that she alone could stop Pavo Hitchens and his cronies, but the math was against her. Even with Lux as a reluctant ally, she had little chance. Still, he was moving and an Expelliarmus tumbled from her lips but there was already a spell bursting from his spell and even though she yanked herself away, it still hit her shoulder-

It projected her up and backwards, but the angle made it so the spell sent her flying towards the neighboring table. Fortunately, the students there had been watching the argument unfold and managed to scramble away as Ace was flung backwards, turning over in the air, before landing painfully against the table.

The edge of the bench bit across her shoulder and she knew there would be a long bruise to mark the point of contact. But worse, her head had connected as well. Her tooth tore open her lip, and her nose banged painfully, causing an immediate leak of blood to trickle out her nose and an ugly cut to start to form.

But she was already shoving herself from the table, wand pointed at Pavo. "Tarantallegra!"

Spoiler:

The children's argument had not gone unnoticed by the staff. Well, how could they expect it to? The boy had conjured a rather pathetic imitation of the Dark Mark.

By some strange, silent agreement, the professors had kept out of it while it had only been a matter of tempers and illusions. However, they couldn't ignore a girl being flung halfway across the Great Hall.

Destrey rose from her seat and made her way down toward the Slytherin table. Conveniently giving Ace plenty of time to fire off her own spell. It was only fair.

"Hitchens," Destrey smiled down at the boy, and then noticed that the other Hitchens was sitting right there.

"Hitchens," she nodded to the girl.

"I'm sure you both understand that we can't simply allow you to go about attacking other students, yes? So I'm going to have to take thirty points from Ravenclaw for not keeping your brother in check."

"And a detention with me, I think," she added to Pavo. Destrey did not much want to spend any time with a sullen teenager but she could hardly let it look like she'd let him get away without a punishment.

Spoiler:

Let the record reflect, Reader, that Pavo had not a single doubt as to the superiority of his abilities, lineage, and alignments in relation to the Hufflepuff before him. Let it also reflect that he was loathe to balk at a fair (tenuously defined, at best) fight, but it did appear to him that for all her blustering, this Hufflepuff seemed not to recognise that disarming your opponent was not, in fact, fair.

Not that he was complaining or anything.

Her brother’s silent whining aside- which she could hear just as clearly in her head as if he’d voiced it in her ear- Lula watched as his wand hurtled out of his hand with the abject certainty that whatever Longbottom had hoped to achieve with her impudent intervention, what Pavo was instead going to deliver would be as far from peace and goodwill as she could anticipate.

Longbottom, meanwhile, had risen from her ungainly landing spot and gained on them like a kraken rising from the depths, radiating rage and retribution. Lula had no doubt Pavo would be basking in savage satisfaction at the sight of the scarlet dripping from the Hufflepuff’s mouth and nose.

Indeed he was, or would have been, had he not immediately gone to retrieve his wand and thus committed a really quite embarrassingly elementary mistake. He’d already stood up in anticipation of a counter attack, but in the second it took to bend over and close his fingers around his discarded wand another spell was hurtling towards him, missing the targeted legs only because his arm was conveniently placed to bear the brunt of it, and then it was jerking alarmingly, moving, shaking-

Dancing?

Trust the Hufflepuff to go for harmless over harrowing. Harmless and humiliating.

Instantly one of his useless lackeys had hurriedly cast the counter charm, but the damage was done and that miniscule not-defeat had engraved itself in Pavo’s mind alongside all the hostility now associated with the Longbottom female. Another part of his cohort was passing over a wand only to be completely ignored as Pavo’s own smoothly picked itself up off the floor and into his sister’s waiting palm on the waves of a summoning charm, snatched back by the senior Hitchens just as Ashcroft arrived on the scene.

One important but oft-overlooked distinction between the Hitchens two: for as much significance as Pavo attached to the colours of his robes and the legacy they bore, his sister placed none. Thus though the professor’s barefaced bias didn’t escape her, it came as less of a disappointment and more of a juvenile but unsurprising curiosity. She looked on dispassionately with the placid bemusement with which she treated most people, long enough to indicate that Professor Ashcroft’s words had been heard, processed, and accepted, before folding her newspaper and curling it under her arm as she rose. If she noticed her hex hitting its target- or even recalled it at all- no indication was given. With an obliging nod and nary a word more she was weaving her way through the gathering crowd of onlookers and to her first class, already moving on to more pressing matters, a minor player with no enthusiasm for post-performance pandering.

The glitz and glamour of infamy was her brother’s forte, the attention his to bask in. But for all his foibles, Pavo was a student and a teenage boy, and tattling on playground disputes was to him, as to most others, utterly unthinkable. So he simply fixed Longbottom with an icy look and straightened up haughtily and with a barely contained rage, brushing off his sleeve and gripping his wand tightly. It is a testament to his arrogance- and instinctive underestimation of Ace- that he didn't even think to question Destrey's preferential treatment. Subconsciously he recognised that if punishment were a marker of threat, then the scrawny, self-important Hufflepuff was too pathetic to warrant an equal dose of it (also conveniently overlooking that it was actually Lula, not himself, who'd borne the brunt of it).

But a detention in any circumstance was no small price to pay for a boy so scornful of authority and direction, and on this occasion Pavo felt especially that he had not gotten his money’s worth.

He nodded curtly at Professor Ashcroft but his eyes remained trained on his new adversary. In the cold grey gaze was calculation, contempt, but also promise. Something more than a threat; there was a note of inevitability in this unspoken vow, an assurance that matters would not be allowed to lie unfinished. Yet no real challenge- not yet.

He would have the last word, be it now or later. But let the record show, Reader, that a Hufflepuff could be a great many pitiful things.

They could never be a serious contender.

OOC: