WHO: Seamus Finnigan, Morag MacDougal, a brief appearance by Anthony Goldstein, who is obviously to blame for all of this. WHEN: After Charms class, on the way to lunch, Thursday afternoon WHERE: Hogwarts hallways? SUMMARY: It's more of these two not knowing how to last a full conversation without hurting each other. RATING: PG-13 for swears and insults about naughty bits. STATUS: Complete
Slinging his bag over his shoulder, Seamus pilfered a few invisible marbles from the dish on his desk and followed his friends out of the Charms classroom. He spotted Morag a few yards in front of them and elbowed Anthony, holding up what looked like empty air between his fingers, nodding, and then tossing the invisible glass ball at her back. Immediately, he stared aghast at Anthony, as though he had been the perpetrator.
"What?" Anthony spluttered. "I didn't -"
Morag felt a slight, sharp pressure just beneath her right shoulder blade, and rounded with flaming cheeks and a knitted brow.
“What the hell?” She hissed, eyes darting from Anthony to Seamus, not in the least fooled by the expression on the face of the latter. But her eyes narrowed in something nearer to amusement when she realized the culprit was the Gryffindor, and not somebody else.
“Couldn’t manage a head shot, Finnigan? Your aim’s shite. Good thing you made Keeper, I guess.”
That was as near to a “congratulations” as she intended to get.
"I can't hit you in the head Morag," Seamus retorted. "They'll kick you out of Ravenclaw if I damage your brain."
It was a crap insult, but he didn't want to talk about Paige besting him for Seeker and Rachel netting Chaser. Seamus stopped walking and fished his wand out of his pocket to summon the marble back to him so as not to send an unsuspecting someone flying in a comedic display of epic proportions after their foot found the invisible trip hazard. He also made note that this would be a good plan to use on Crabbe and Goyle, someday.
Anthony wisely removed himself from between Morag and Seamus, and she hung back a little, hitching her heavily mended bag more securely onto her shoulder.
“Excuses, excuses,” she drawled, only beginning to move again once Seamus had caught up with her. She wasn’t waiting for him, not exactly. “If you want to win against Ravenclaw you’d better get used to the idea of hitting me in the head, and with something bigger than a marble.”
Seamus frowned and made an intentionally slow attempt at clocking her in the head with his fist.
Morag intercepted Seamus’ fist easily, closing her fingers around his hand and giving him a little shove.
“So slow,” she groaned, grinning. “I’m going to let Samson know we won’t even need to practice before our match against Gryffindor.”
He accepted his shove and kept the distance between them, finding it more comfortable. It was lunch hour, and they would both be going toward the Great Hall, at least he imagined they were. He could point out that hitting targets was what a Keeper was supposed to prevent. He could point out that the only way Snape would suffer Gryffindor winning the cup again would be if he was dead, and that it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for him to not let even death stand in his way on that score. He could point out that he didn't hit girls, unless it was with food or spitballs or things of that sort. Instead, he said
"Maybe I'm just being nice to you,"
and felt like an idiot. So he shrugged, and walked a little faster.
Morag’s brows crept toward the sweep of hair that fell across her forehead, and she stopped walking only just long enough to find herself looking at the back of Seamus’ head instead of into his face. And a good thing, too, given the uncertainty and the little color that touched her cheeks. She opened her mouth to retort that maybe he was the one who’d taken a Bludger to the head, but closed it again with a frown. One insult grew into another and another and another, and then into something else all together, namely, Morag reflecting that she didn’t think of herself as somebody anybody ought to be nice to.
And she certainly wasn’t going to admit that.
She fell back into step with him after a moment, hand skating down the rail as they descended a flight of stairs.
“Wonder if Flitwick will let us work Invisibility Charms on something a little bit bigger,” Morag said, expression cooled, willfully refusing to comment on Seamus’ last. Her dark eyes weren’t as glib as her words and she cast a quick, furtive glance at Seamus, as though observing the cut of his jaw, the angle of his shoulders, for the first time. “Not having to look at Goyle’s ugly mug would be an improvement, though I suppose there’s nothing to be done about him talking.”
"Silencio?" Seamus suggested, following her cue and letting the conversation shift. "Kind of dangerous to let him be invisible and silent though. Think of what he'd do with that kind of creeping power." He refrained from directing her mind toward the quidditch changing rooms, which was where the minds of at least half the male seventh years would have immediately darted. Why the Slytherins didn't let girls on their team, Seamus didn't know, but he planned to mock them for not wanting to watch women undress all the same.
Seamus’ chivalrous lapse of judgment seeming to have successfully dodged comment, Morag’s expression relaxed into a familiar smirk.
“He’s a mouth breather. He’ll be powerless. And besides,” she mused, joining the queue of students filing into the Great Hall. “He’d probably just lurk in the Prefect’s bathroom, waiting for Padma or Parvati to bathe.”
With a wince on behalf of the Patils, Seamus shook his head. "Is it too horrible if I say that I'm glad that you chose them as the victims, not me?"
Morag narrowed her eyes in amusement, glancing at Seamus.
“I know they can take care of themselves. Well, Padma, at least,” she reasoned, but looked away from Seamus. Talk of Prefect’s bathrooms and bathing and people being nice for no reason dulled her wits. “Besides, I think it’s safe to assume you aren’t his type.”
"I bathe," Seamus protested, taking the insult with genuine affront for once. He wasn't going to tell anyone, but the Prefect's bathroom and the relative privacy if offered was one of the nicer perks that came with his new badge. "Not that I want Goyle to be there watching, but you know what I mean. I bathe," he repeated, stubbornness on display.
“I wasn’t suggesting you didn’t, you git,” Morag hissed quietly, flustered at Seamus’ insistence and irritated, too, over feeling flustered. Of course he bathed. He probably even used soap. Why were they still talking about it?
Her next was a far cry from her usually well crafted insult. “Just… shut up.”
"Are you blushing?"
Seamus laughed. He watched her as intently as one watched a car wreck that had been holding up traffic, and couldn't stop laughing. Whatever this was, it was equal parts hilarious and adorable, regardless of how hard she was going to hit him or hex him. Morag MacDougal didn't want him to talk about bathing and - it buoyed his spirits higher than they had been in months - didn't want to think about him naked, and not because the thought was disgusting.
"What the fuck MacDougal?" He couldn't stop grinning. Everything was shit except for this one brilliant thing, even though he knew she was more likely to disparage his bits now that he was calling her out. "Should I look out for invisible you, in the bath?"
It was a lucky thing Morag didn’t keep her Beater’s bat in her bag. She only just managed to keep from breaking Seamus’ nose or kneeing him in the groin, mostly by imagining doing both of those things.
“You wish,” she said, tone as frosty as if she’d cast a freezing Charm. “If I wanted to see your tiny knob I’d just ask one of the brainless bints you’ve shagged to draw me a picture.”
Never before had Seamus borne greater resemblance to Peter Pan, trapping a hearty crow in the well of his throat. "You don't know anyone I've shagged," he said smugly, though somewhere in the back of his mind was a niggling voice that sounded like Dean's, suggesting he ought to work harder to keep it that way, lest Morag spot the similarities between herself and Roisin.
He wanted to carry on prodding at her and making her consider his knob, regardless of unflattering remarks toward the size. The only thing that made him pull up short was noticing that she wasn't staring him down or glaring daggers, but avoiding looking at him entirely. Morag was actually embarrassed, and Seamus didn't know what to say.
He threw a marble at her instead.
This time the marble caught Morag in the neck, bared where her hair was combed to one side in a loose braid. It bounced and was lost, which was a blessing, because if it had slipped down her school robes she would’ve murdered Seamus on the spot. Her skin stung a bit where the marble had made contact, but she ignored it.
“You infant,” Morag hissed derisively, finally meeting Seamus’ eyes. To her they seemed to shift in color, like the sky deepening moments before a storm. She refused to look away this time, but she couldn’t think of anything more to say, either. Walking away seemed like the wisest course of action, but Morag stubbornly stood her ground, as though storming off to the Ravenclaw table was allowing Seamus to win at whatever ridiculous game they were playing.
How had he managed to ruin it this fast? The smile slid off his face like stinksap oozing from so many deranged teddy bears that had been made to live in jars. Everything he owned smelled like shit, why shouldn't it all be a little shitty, too? He shifted his weight and looked down at his feet rather than endure her scornful stare. The rest of the stragglers to the lunch crowd were passing them by.
He'd said he was being nice to her, hadn't he? But she hadn't wanted to hear it the first time, and Seamus felt sure that she wouldn't respond well to any comments about not minding the idea of her in a bath either. He was an expert at making Morag angry, but hadn't yet figured out how to unwind her once he was done twisting. With a chastened shrug that was the closest he ever really came to apologizing to her, Seamus hesitated and then turned toward the hall himself. She'd be over it in a week or so, hopefully.
Morag watched Seamus walk away, but instead of the triumphant thrill she expected, she felt inexplicably lousy. A better friend, a better person, would’ve shouted or waved him down and made light of the situation, but Morag turned and marched sullenly over to the Ravenclaw table and dumped her bag onto an empty bench. She wasn’t a good person.