InsaneJournal

It was Thursday morning, and as far as Rudolf was concerned, Friday couldn't get there soon enough. It had been an uneventful week, at least in terms of things that Rudolf would have found interesting. There had been little more than quidditch practice to keep his mind occupied while his professors piled assignment after assignment upon the young fifth years in anticipation of their upcoming OWLs. And practice had been days ago, leaving Rudolf's mind to bounce between blank and buzzing with nothing in particular as he tried in vain to focus on the Defense Against the Dark Arts class that day.

After making a valiant effort to concentrate for the better part of the period (though only by a few minutes or so), Rudolf found himself distracted by his classmate and frequent quidditch opponent, Gwen Morgan. To say that he enjoyed bothering Gwen would have constituted a grandiose understatement. During the classes they shared, Gwen was second only to quidditch in things that distracted Rudolf from his schoolwork, and he counted his ability to irritate her among his greater talents.

As such, Gwen was probably unsurprised when Rudolf folded up a piece of parchment into a compact triangle, propped it up vertically on the edge of his desk, holding it in place with his pointer finger, and proceeded to flick it at the back of her head.

Gwen was renowned for a great many things – foremost among them her obsession with Quidditch, her prominent disdain for Slytherin, and her notoriously hot temper – but a dedication to academics did not number prominently among them. She had long resented the Hogwarts curriculum for mandating so many useless classes, in no small part because it stole her time away from far worthier pursuits. Why stir cauldrons when she could duel? Why nurture plants when she could fly?

Why sew at all?

Strong as her disdain for her courseload was, it did not extend to every subject. Defence Against the Dark Arts stood apart from the rest because it was practical, intriguing, and exciting. In addition to sating the thrill-seeking Gryffindor in her, Professor Merrythought's engaging approach spared her the anguish of banging her head against the wall in protest. Essay-writing was still tragically unavoidable, but at least the subject of her writings wasn't intolerably dull. Nothing made Gwen happier than taking to the heavens on a broom, but DADA came close.

Which was why she was visibly put-out by the unwanted presence of a particularly obnoxious Slytherin. She had (mostly) forgiven Rudolf his country of origin a year ago, but she offered no such mercy for his infuriating antics. For the last two odd years, he'd been a perpetual thorn in her side. Being an unapologetically brazen half-blood attracted disapproving stares and general snobbery from most of Rudolf's house, but at least the purist idiots tended to hate her from afar. It was infinitely easier to ignore a snooty look than a projectile to the back of her head.

Wheeling around to face him, she practically glared a hole through the serial offender. Thus far, her attempts to intimidate Rudolf into dormancy had yet to succeed, but she was confident that her eyes were especially murderous this time. Prying the triangle from her hair, she pinged her assailant's forehead with it, eyes gleaming faintly with satisfaction before she returned her attention to the lesson at-hand.

Yes, Rudolf had expected Gwen to realize that he was the source of the offending paper projectile that she was just now disentangling from her long hair. The two had years - well, year, anyway - of history, and he would have been surprised and sorely disappointed if she had attributed the object to some other fifth year student sitting behind her. But his general lack of surprise was most certainly not going to prevent him from looking confused, innocent and perhaps even deeply hurt that she would accuse him of such chicanery when Gwen reeled around to glare daggers at him. But hey, if looks could kill, Rudolf would have died years ago. And if he were a ghost, he would most certainly not be attending classes.

Turning back to his notes as though no longer affected by her icy stare, Rudolf was not anticipating the triangle's return trajectory, which resulted in him being hit squarely in the center of his forehead. Looking tremendously puzzled concerning the "sudden" attack, Rudolf chanced a smug half-smile the moment Gwen's eyes turned back towards the front of the classroom. Had anyone asked him about it, Rudolf would not have been able to explain why he enjoyed screwing with Gwen so much. But if he came up with any sort of answer, it would have involved the fact that she got so cross whenever he did, and he found her spirited irritation impossibly entertaining.

In a moment of limited inspiration, he dipped his quill in the ink he had set on the corner of his desk (and used very little of during the course of the class, as he wasn't much of a note-taker,) and scrawled a brief message on one edge of the parchment triangle:

You flick paper at your classmates during the DADA classes? Shame on you, Morgan.

And with that, he proceeded to flick the parchment, once again, at the back of her head.

After countless months of senseless harassment, the prospect of a second – or third, or fourth – assault was not lost on Gwen. Persistence and perseverance were generally qualities she prized in others; with a few notable exceptions, her contempt for indecision and defeatism led her to association with individuals who knew what they wanted and how to get it. It was thus a great shame that Rudolf insisted on using an otherwise admirable trait for ill, undaunted by her vehement protest or the threat implicit in her vicious stares. If there was one thing that aggravated her more than an insidious Slytherin, it was a relentless one.

As such, she initially refused to give him the pleasure of more than an instinctive flinch when she felt the impact of the parchment. It was only after she'd untangled it from her hair and glimpsed the smear of ink that she entertained a more serious reaction. Unfolding the triangle, she stared at the maddening words. Disbelief gradually bowed to anger, until his unmitigated gall inspired fury too great to be ignored. Acting purely on impulse, she rounded on him and, in one seamless motion, plucked the inkwell from the corner of the desk and unceremoniously poured it over his head.

"Miss Morgan!" Came Professor Merrythought's astonished voice from the front of the classroom, much to Gwen's dismay. As was often the case when she was faced with severe provocation, she had utterly neglected to consider the consequences of her actions.

"He started-" She began adamantly, but her words were cut short by the instructor's stern tone.

"I have no time to entertain your excuses, Miss Morgan!" Given the source, the words cut more deeply than Gwen would have liked. "Since you and Mister Brand cannot conduct yourself in an appropriate manner, you will leave my classroom at once."

For a fleeting instant, Gwen considered arguing her case, but ultimately obeyed her command and stuffed her books and parchment into her bag. Head held high, she did not spare Rudolf a glance as she marched out of the classroom, ignoring the conspicuous glances she garnered. It was all she could do not to scream when she emerged in the corridor, intensely frustrated with both herself and her provocateur for the spectacle she'd unwittingly caused.

Rudolf was surprised, to say the least, that he had managed to get her goat so quickly, though he did have a great deal more difficulty coming up with the last part of that expression than he did believing that Gwen poured his inkwell on his head. Black ink dripped down the side of his face as he looked at Gwen in amused disbelief, barely cognisant of Professor Merrythought's admonishment until he saw Gwen begin to gather her things. If the punishment had been more severe, or Rudolf hadn't known that there were several witnesses who would have been able to attest to Gwen's version of the story, he might have attempted to argue that her attack was unprovoked. But faced with the not-entirely-unpleasant prospect of getting to leave class early (even if it was among his favorites,) Rudolf chose to accept the consequences of his actions. Besides, he thought Gwen might have actually strangled him if he tried to blame the whole mess on her.

He attempted to wipe a trailing drop of ink form his cheek, which served only to smear it across the length of his cheekbone. Even at its winter darkest, his hair was still a ruddy golden brown, and Rudolf wondered absently as to how much of the ink he would be able to remove from his hair, and how much of his hair would have a faintly greenish-grayish hue until the ink gradually faded. As for the several drops of black ink on his shirt, about which he imagined his mother would be very cross, he wasn't really sure how to progress. Scourgify was a cleaning spell, not really an ink-removing spell. Ink had the propensity to stain.

"Do you think it will work to banish the ink," he asked Gwen casually, as if he hadn't just gotten them both kicked out of a class they both enjoyed and were generally pretty good at, holding out the ink-stained section of his shirt, "Or will that banish the shirt, also?"

In marked contrast to Rudolf's cavalier tone and body language, Gwen radiated scorn. The mere sound of his endlessly infuriating voice made her long to strangle him alive, and oh if she couldn't imagine how exquisite it would feel! Ever the strategist, she seldom resorted to physical violence off the Quidditch Pitch, but that didn't mean she was immune to the occasional lure of malicious fantasies. She was quite certain that his smug expression would perish beneath the grip of her taut fingers, much like the light in his eyes and his dying breath. It was a morbid image, to be sure, but in the absence of any real intent to wound him, she took solace in idly picturing his demise.

"I think you look better this way." Miraculously, she managed to turn fire into ice by determination alone, tempering the rage simmering inside her with a healthy dose of sharp derision. Hands silently balling into tight fists at her sides, Gwen made a show of looking him up and down to confirm her disparaging conclusion.

"No one will ever mistake you for a human being if you look like the demon you are." Her deliberate, matter-of-fact tone was undermined by the unadulterated venom in her eyes, exposing the truth depth of her hostility.

Yes, Rudolf realized that he was probably only aggravating Gwen further with his general lack of concern regarding their current situation and her considerably fury. However, he just couldn't quite bring himself to a state of visible irritation. After all, if you looked at the big picture, the whole thing was pretty funny. Honestly, Rudolf was the one covered in black ink and doing little more than to rub it into his cheeks as he attempted to remove it. Rudolf was the one whose hair might be stained black and red for the next several weeks. Rudolf was also the one who generally got into more trouble in Professor Merrythought's class, so he was the one who would receive harsher punishments for future negative behaviour. And with all of those things considered, if Rudolf still found the whole thing funny, there was really no good reason why anyone else wouldn't be able to see the humour.

Rudolf attempted to stifle the sort of self-satisfied smile that might be worn by the creator of the universe (were he particularly mischievous) upon observing an amusing and unexpected behavior from one of his creations, but resistance was futile. "Covered in ink? I think my resemblance is greater to the giant squid," Rudolf posited simply, crossing his arms over his chest in a posture of defiance. "But when you are all red of the face like that, a person might think that you look like one."

Rudolf's logic was, needless to say, lost on his unwilling companion. His indefatigable sense of humor only rubbed salt in her wounds, magnifying her immeasurable frustration with his behavior and how thoughtlessly she'd reacted to the provocation. Her remorse was not directed at the so-called "victim" of her impulsivity; rather, she regretted embarrassing herself in front of one of the teachers she respected most. The last thing she wanted to do was lower Professor Merrythought's favorable opinion of her on account of an antagonizing Slytherin. To do so was to play perfectly into hands, and as much as she refused to admit it aloud, it galled her to privately acknowledge that he'd gotten his way.

"Either way you cut it, you're still slime," Gwen answered mockingly in kind, arms folding proudly over her chest. She couldn't stand his presence, but she was too stubborn to walk away, lest he get the impression that he'd succeeded in getting the best of her. Defeat was not an option, no matter how deeply her cheeks resembled tomatoes.

"Don't flatter yourself." Once again, her dismissive attitude stood in opposition to the tension in her frame. "The color of my cheeks has nothing to do with you."

"Oh, for certain," Rudolf replied, as if he believed that her explanation for these events provided an entirely plausible alternative to his original supposition that he could have upset her in some way, "So I am supposing that you were just suddenly starting to run a very high fever at the moment when we were exiting the classroom, then? Will you like for me to escort you to the hospital wing so you can have this trouble examined by the nurse? The sudden changes in temperature like this can be the signs of very dangerous illnesses, you see. I would hate for you to be going without the attentions of a healer if you are developing dragon pox."

With this, he offered Gwen the most sincere look of friendly concern that he could manage, though it was not without considerable twitching at the corners of his mouth and the slight, mischievous narrowing of his eyes, which both served as clear indicators of his amusement. It was fortunate that Rudolf had always been far too involved with sports to turn to gambling as a an alternative form of entertainment. The kid had no poker face.

Rudolf was talking circles around her – and not just because it was difficult to make sense of his phrasing. Gwen was a woman of few words in the best of circumstances, eschewing eloquence and extravagance in the name of being succinct and straightforward. Why use forty words when you could just as easily make your point in five? It was tremendously less time-consuming, not to mention considerably less exhausting to listen to. She knew what he was insinuating five seconds in and resented him for every word that followed. Exacerbated by her growing frustration, the fury that she'd struggled so mightily to contain finally bubbled irrevocably to the surface.

Gripping him by the collar, she impulsively shoved him against the wall and looked him dead in the eye. "If you don't shut your mouth," Gwen warned him sharply, cheeks hot with anger, "Catching dragon pox'll be the least of your problems."

Several parts of Rudolf's brain were now rendering signs of imminent danger if he continued down his current path. And usually, Rudolf didn't like to put himself in gratuitously dangerous situations that didn't seem to have the possibility of yielding a highly positive outcome. He liked his share of rule-breaking and stupid stunts, but he had never really been one to tickle sleeping dragons, or point out to purebloods that their parents were second cousins. Unfortunately, he seemed to have a sizable danger blind spot when it came to bothering Gwen, which he found so endlessly amusing that he sometimes just couldn't bring himself to stop doing it. In fact, he had to work very hard to stifle a laugh, born from some combination of nervousness and entertainment, that was attempting to surface in his voice. To combat this incongruous desire, he spoke a bit more slowly and quietly when he responded.

"Are you saying that you are going to give me your dragon pox?" Rudolf asked, attempting to mask the fact that he was being intentionally thick with a rather unconvincing look of polite puzzlement. "Perhaps it is your sudden fever that is making you very delirious, because you know, I do not think that any of these means of transmitting the dragon pox from one person onto the other person will be considered 'appropriate behaviour' for the hallways of the school."

Incensed and in no imminent danger of losing her nerve, Gwen would have been quite content to pin Rudolf against the wall until he relented and repented for his crimes. They still had a half of an aborted class period to dawdle, after all, and she could think of few better ways to spend it than to express her mounting frustration with her loathsome stalker. The possibility of being caught in a threatening position simply didn't occur to her; in the midst of a truly passionate rage, Gwen was all but oblivious to sense and consequence. She prided herself on doctoring Moody's schemes with a much-needed dose of logic when she had a cool head, but there was little chance of glimpsing reason once she was lost to her temper.

Sadly, her plans of indefinite torment were derailed by the implication of his final sentence – or at least the implication she took from it. Flustered and aghast, Gwen released him immediately, lest he misinterpret her continued proximity as some sort of endorsement of whatever twisted intimacy he was alluding to. "What-" She sputtered, recoiling as though scalded by the ink on his collar. "I'd never," Back pressed against the opposite wall, she vainly strived to rub her fingers clean of the stains, as though she were afflicted with the untenable plight of Lady Macbeth herself. "You're demented."

"I am demented? You are the person who is going about pressing people into the walls of the castle," Rudolf countered, raising his hands in front of him with his fingers splayed in what was undoubtedly a defensive posture, though of course it was his own fault that he needed to demonstrate one, "And then you are talking about giving people illnesses, and making the accusation about distracting during classes, and you are pouring things on my head. I will begin to think you are making the..." Rudolf paused, attempting to pick the right word for what he wanted to say, "... the plot for my attentions. It is very unresponsible for you."

"What?" Aghast, appalled, incensed – Gwen couldn't settle on one emotion, so she elected to embody all of them. Horror tainted her fury a sickly shade of red, scarlet cheeks bright enough to burst at any given moment with the sheer depth of the emotion that this... this.. creature evoked. His inference was as offensive an inference as she could possibly conceive. Was he mad? Did he have any decency at all? How could he even stand there and suggest that she...

"I'd sooner stroll off a cliff than seek your attentions," Gwen replied sharply, futilely struggling to contain the hurricane of fury and embarrassment and discontent that swirled in her stomach. Never mind the fact that her proclamation made her sound like Augusta; in the unlikely event that a worthless, deplorable, irredeemably aggravating Slytherin implied that you sought his affections, a little theatrical exaggeration was called for.

Yes, Rudolf knew well that Gwen's intentions had been entirely innocent when she shoved him up against the walls of the castle. He knew that this wasn't the most innocent of actions, certainly, but he also knew that Gwen was probably the last person to have the full train of thought that might allow this insight to reach her. But Rudolf, who was first a boy and second a boy with an older brother, couldn't let this opportunity to give her a hard time about the potentially sensual implications of her actions slide. Perhaps it was a character flaw. But it was a fun character flaw.

"You are able to be continuing in saying that, but… what is this expression," Rudolf paused to think for a moment in the middle of his sentence, as this saved him the trouble of having to think things out beforehand. After all, forethought was the sort of thing that might have prevented him from speaking from time to time, and Rudolf's reputation just couldn't have weathered that lack of lexical negligence. "'The heart is desiring that which it is desiring?' Are you being excited by the social… violations of fraternizing with Slytherins? Is this because you are finding me dangerous?" He asked, leaning in a little bit closer and looking positively conspiratorial in Gwen's direction.

Under calmer circumstances, the preposterous assertion that Gwen harbored interest in the insolent boy would have evoked a scoff chased with an incredulous look. There were a dozen errors to be found in the span of his insinuation – and not just of the linguistic variety. First and foremost, her single-minded aggression was not commonly associated with ulterior longings, nor was there any clear evidence that distinguished the assault as an exception to the rule. Second, her historical precedence of romantic abstinence severely diminished the likelihood of the compulsion Rudolf described. Third, the mere pretense that said affliction could be motivated by danger was completely undermined by how low Rudolf ranked on the Slytherin ladder of evil, however intolerable she deemed his harassment. Fourth...

Sadly, none of the logical flaws of his suggestion saw the light of day. Rational and analytical thought had already perished in the fire of her outrage, rendering her powerless to think before she acted. It didn't matter that addressing Rudolf's implication gave it merit; all that mattered was the blood that boiled in her veins and set her cheeks ablaze.

"I wouldn't... fraternize with you if you were the the last human on earth." Her bitter tone and sharp emphasis betrayed her skepticism of his inclusion. "Mankind could die off for all I cared, as long as it took you with it." That Rudolf had done nothing to deserve death seemed to elude her in the thick of her desire to be rid of his nuisance. Suffice it to say, she spared nary a thought for the possibility that she might miss the aggravation if he disappeared off the face of the planet.

If Rudolf's proficiency with the English language had been greater, perhaps if he had enough English romantic poetry at his command for a proper parody, this would have been the time at which he proposed that her cheeks were not ablaze with fury, but flushed crimson with the depth of her desire. That her apocalyptic threats were just her way of trying desperately (and failing) to conceal her desire to be alone with him, perhaps even to "repopulate the earth," so to speak, in mankind's absence. And that really, she shouldn't try so hard to fight her feelings for him, because it was that sort of self-denial and conscious rejection of deeply held desires that led to a death alone surrounded by cats. But it was not, and he did not, so in the face of these obstacles, Rudolf was forced to forge his own path.

"You will be missing me if I was gone," Rudolf posited with a certain smug assurance, raising an eyebrow at Gwen. "Who will be there for you to be throwing your ink on? You will begin to go mad when you are having so little to do with your energy. What I am doing is... it is in your interests."

Somehow, it would have been better if he'd rhapsodized on the power of her purported longing – at least from the perspective of his scorned schoolmate. As deeply as his insinuations infuriated her, Gwen could only sustain her indignant rage for so long before the sheer absurdity rendered them laughable. Surely a Shakespearean shrew would be hard-pressed to remain livid in the face of sweeping tales of an unspoken love! No; Gwen would profess her distaste for Rudolf until her dying day, but even she inevitably succumbed to the hilarity of a truly epic farce.

Unfortunately, the language barrier denied her such an agreeable out. Instead of resorting to grandeur, Rudolf settled for the simplicity of a much less preposterous accusation – and much to Gwen's unfathomable chagrin, it was impossible to thoughtlessly refute. Her open-mouthed disbelief and aborted retorts would have been permissible for normal girls, but not Gwen. If ever there were a practical benefit to Rudolf's certifiable obsession with her, it was the ability to distinguish a normal reaction from a peculiar one. Her failure to swiftly obliterate his claim was a telling departure – and worst of all, she knew that he knew it.

"I loathe you," She finally seethed, cheeks redder for the chord his final theory struck. In a flash, she spun on her heel and marched off in the opposite direction, heedless of her implicit defeat. Come nightfall, the truth of his words would be neatly entombed in the untouched recesses of her mind, but for now, it was too present to bear.

While Rudolf could never be entirely certain with Gwen, who was well known to him for being interesting and unpredictable in both her general behavior and (perhaps especially) in her interactions with him, he was pretty sure from the the cut of her jib that he had won this round. While his comment was not supported so much by actual evidence as a general feeling he had gotten from the way that she reacted when he made it his mission to bother her, her borderline-unresponsive anger coupled with a decision to walk away was all the support he really needed for this idea.

To his credit, Rudolf only looked somewhat smug when Gwen turned on her heel to storm off, red-faced and agitated, an act which required a considerable portion of his admittedly sparse self-control. Taking a step back in order to give her space to storm off - Rudolf was loathe to ruin a good dramatic exit - he paused for a brief moment to allow her to gain a bit of distance before he made an attempt to reply.

"If that is what you are wanting to tell to yourself," Rudolf called after her, with such a ridiculously self-satisfied grin on his face that you could almost hear it. And, hoping to make the option of turning around to hit him in the face as unattractive as possible, quickly started off down the hall to his left.

Purposeful though her strides were, they did not succeed in spiriting Gwen away from the scene of crime quickly enough to avoid his final riposte. Much to her unenviable frustration, she was decidedly within shouting distance when his words carried across the hall. Her fists reflexively tightened at her sides, blood boiling anew at the parting jab. It was too late to turn back without bolstering his triumph, but Rudolf could rest assured that his aggravation would not go unavenged. He may have won this battle, but the war was hers for the taking.