From the Ashes

Who: Jon and Spencer
When: Saturday afternoon
Where: Jon's hut/pseudo-classroom
What: Fresh air! With no gossiping whatsoever. Nuh-uh.

Spencer was in a bad mood all morning. It had been his first day with the chance to sleep in properly, no classes to prepare or get up early for, and he'd ended up waking before the sun rose, a sense of danger and fear leaving his skin clammy, breathing ragged. It was the fifth nightmare in a week, and Spencer had never been one to suffer from bad dreams before. Now, he was lucky to go a night without one, and he had started having trouble falling asleep in the first place, too cautious of what might come. The urge to quote Macbeth, he thought gloomily, was probably a sure sign of madness.

That morning, though, he chewed idly on dittany leaves to clear away some of his exhaustion while he was marking the Seventh Years' homework, and then the afternoon rolled around and the clouds cleared and it was suddenly, unexpectedly, a beautiful day. Spencer felt his grumpiness dissipate easily, and before he even had a real destination in mind, he was walking out across the grounds, hands in his pockets, face tilted up to the sun.

He set off for Jon's hut, deciding to ask him how the first week of classes had been. He'd seen Jon very briefly on Wednesday night at dinner, but mostly he'd been avoiding the inside of the castle as per usual, and it would be cool to catch up with Jon again, at least find out how the baby hippogriffs were going. Spencer felt kind of attached to the idea of them.

"Hello?" he called, when he could see Jon's hut, close now. "Anyone home?"

Who: Dallon and Gerard
Where: Outside the gates to the school
When: Saturday, midnight.
What: Dallon arrives at last.

Dallon had never been this wet before in his life.

The lights of Hogwarts twinkled tantalisingly in the distance as he trudged up a particularly muddy piece of road, lurching as his trunk fell into a deep wheel rut. It was part of Dallon’s eternal torment that after a long spell of rather lovely fine weather, it had begun storming just as he had Apparated into Hogsmeade at midnight. Admittedly, crawling up the road in the middle of a Biblical deluge at ass o’clock hadn’t been one of Dallon’s more brilliant or Professorly plans, and his fucking trunk wasn’t helping, seriously. He’d tried to charm it feather-light but the wind had buffeted it like a piece of tumbleweed back down the main street and into a rather tall tree, much to Dallon’s misery and anguish. He was certain that as Arithmancy professor he was meant to be making a very grand first impression, preferably involving a monocle and quoting Pythagoras whilst twitching his non-existent moustache and puffing sternly on a pipe. Definitely not some lunatic cursing and chasing a flying trunk down the road. Dallon’s plans were genius, really. Walking. Uphill. At midnight. In a storm.

The aforementioned storm showed no signs of abating when Dallon reached the gates. He threw his trunk against them with a deafening clang, warping the whine of the wind through the cast-iron bars. Leaning against the centre, he crossed his arms and called wearily over his shoulder. “Anyone there?”