From the Ashes

Who: Nate and Gerard
Where: the Great Hall
When: midway through lunch in late September (blast from the past!)
What: A mutually beneficial exchange of information (ie, Hogwarts is way better than any soap opera)

William looked fine, sure. He was lounging against the staff table and gesticulating wildly with half a sandwich -- probably Pete had started another debate on the Muggle Romantic poets, again. Either he never learned or he liked watching William flail. Probably the latter. Anyway, William was the picture of librarian health -- good color, indignant expression, decent coordination. Gerard sipped his coffee and leaned against the wall, frowning. Probably he was making a fuss over nothing -- the head nurse had pronounced William healed and released him from the hospital a few days ago -- but he'd seen the man get stabbed with what looked like a really fucking nasty cursed knife, and Gerard was damned well going to keep an eye on him until he was sure no surprise malevolent aftereffects were going to pop up.

In between surreptitiously watching over William, monitoring the student population for further signs of magical illness, and figuring out what the fuck Mikey was doing with all those puffskeins in his room, Gerard hadn't had a lot of time to keep up with his favorite romantic dramas and so was taken by surprise when Peaches the Heartless Siren threw a platter of potatoes at Oblivious McGryffindor. Gerard reared backwards, narrowly missing being splattered with starchy detritus. He only just managed to keep from sloshing his coffee over his shoes. 

"What the fuck!" Gerard said indignantly, glaring at the couple, who were clearly getting ready to launch into another epic shouting match over who forgot their fifth anniversary of their first detention for snogging in the broomshed, or whatever. Gerard'd thought they were still on their lovey-gooey-terrible-nickname stage, but clearly they'd somehow already bypassed that and were heading for another breakup. Fuck, if Gerard had realized that, he'd have picked a safer spot for lurking in.