Better run, better run, outrun my wand

Destrey didn't usually give out detentions. She far preferred to take house points. Partly, it was because she wanted to see if she could put any of the houses into negative points. Mostly, it was because she didn't want to spend any more time around the children than she absolutely had to.

Today, she was making an exception. Pavo Hitchens really thought he was something, which would usually be fine by Destrey. Alice Longbottom thought she was something, too, and probably deserved to be taken down a few pegs. But conjuring The Dark Mark? Even an imitation Dark Mark? That was something Destrey couldn't overlook. So this afternoon, Pavo would be serving a very special detention.

When Pavo had let slip the location of his detention with Ashcroft to his sister, she'd said the most curious thing. "A good learning opportunity," Lula had mused, gaze shrewd, brows furrowed. Pavo hadn't had time to quiz her on it but a small, growing inkling was quickly pushing its way to the forefront of his mind the more he considered Ashcroft's track record and Lula's skewed perception of what actually a constituted a "learning opportunity".

Her cryptic words echoed in his ears as he stepped into the room, stopping a few paces in to slip his wand out of his pocket. One thing he did share with his sister was a low opinion of Ashcroft's attitude if not abilities. Her mercurial moods and complete disregard for anything other than her own amusement might have elicited a subtle semi-respect from his sister, when it seemed to push boundaries the younger Hitchens considered unnecessary and arbitrary. But for Pavo it only spoke of a failure in direction and duty. It wasn't particularly difficult to ease out some form of resentment from the wayward Slytherin, and the hands-on approach of Ashcroft's lessons sometimes seemed -there was that word again- unfair.

Don't mistake him, Reader. It was fair just as far as he was able to observe others suffering the consequences. When the wand turned on him, however, all enjoyment- and potential interest- was forgotten. A shame, considering there was potentially much to be learnt from someone with such an admirable disregard for academic rules and convention- as no doubt Lula would say. But Pavo was neither wise nor patient and potential couldn't override pride.

He'd had enough experience defying his grandfather to know when it was best to keep scorn private in the absence of an upper hand against its target. So he simply stood silently, fingering his wand and waiting to see what fresh hell the DADA Professor would see fit to call discipline this time.

Destrey wasn't sure whether she ought to be amused or concerned by Hitchens' behaviour. Probably concerned. Thorfinn would probably be concerned by it, and the boy's whole attitude enraged her. It was Destrey's observation that most things she got angry about made other people worried.

His behaviour right now - wand out like she was going to attack him - that was amusing no matter who you were. If there was one thing you couldn't say about Destrey it was that she was stupid. She would never attack a student without warning.

So she smiled at him like a fox who'd not only gotten into the henhouse but had managed to convince the hens she only had their best interests at heart, and stalked over him.

"Pavo Hitchens," she drew out his name so the syllables knocked together, and it could have been a song if she'd put a bit of melody in her tone.

"Before we begin, I have to know, what did you hope to accomplish?"

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sorry this took so long! I had a bit of writer's block.

[No worries!]

---

Pavo didn't ease up the alert- not defensive, never defensive- stance as Ashcroft took her time elongating her vowels. It was surely a mockery, the way she teased out the syllables as if they were hers to efface. If he'd been a lesser man, he'd have flinched. But he wasn't. So he didn't.

"I was hoping to finish a pleasant breakfast." The clipped, dispassionate voice paused a fraction longer than necessary before tacking on the obligatory "Professor."

Truth be told, he hadn't consciously aimed for disrespect. And perhaps he hadn't achieved it. But such disregard for authority came naturally to him, often seeping through at the most inopportune of moments. His face, at least, betrayed no sentiment, be it positive or negative. Just that characteristic arrogant conviction that her challenge to all his values and ideals question had only exacerbated.

But the grip on his wand was no less tight for it.

Oh, so it was going to be like this, was it? Destrey hadn't thought Pavo was this sophisticated. And maybe he wasn't. Doubtless his little sister had told him what to say. It would be so unfortunate if anything were to happen to her.

"And who can really blame you for that?" she filled in.

"But since you find dark magic so pleasant," Destrey turned on her toe and began to walk back toward the centre of the room, "I assume you have no objection to practising against someone who knows what they're doing."

And now she drew her own wand.

Pavo was no scholar, no disciple of knowledge who would disregard danger and his own well-being in favour of new discoveries and ill-begotten "learning opportunities". He was not a Gryffindor, an aspiring hero with his own safety and security secondary to... everything, really. He was not Lula. He was not his grandfather.

What shrewdness he had was just enough to get away with skinned knuckles where others might forfeit an arm... only to then lose his head over the next real or imagined affront to his self-esteem.

Somehow, he suspected Ashcroft wouldn't stop at a limb if the fancy took her.

He swallowed his protests, his resentment, his... not fear as he followed the professor to the centre of the arena. His stride, his face almost as resolute as the grip on his wand.

He liked to think he knew what he was doing. But now, suddenly wondering with more than a tinge of perplexity just how practiced the DADA teacher was in real dark magic, his own desire for more experience seemed both more pressing and more unfulfilled than ever. His sister's fascinations, his uncle's books, his own obsessive research... all amounted to an impressive, but ultimately theoretical, library of the unsanctioned. Applying it on snivelling First Years, subservient cronies, clumsy Hufflepuffs... it was sport. A breeze.

In a duel, on equal standing, against someone possibly less bothered with people's opinions and goodwill than even he was...

She called it practice. But not for the first time, he couldn't tell if she actually meant to educate, or if she'd purposely missed out "target".