From the Ashes

Who: Gabe and Adam
When: Wednesday evening
What: Hey, nice wolf, wanna collaborate in a potions experiment?
Where: Where Adam is. Where is Adam? Is Adam in his room? (Maybe this should go under "what".)

Sure, Gabe enjoyed chaos as much as the next guy, and there was an inherent hilarity to seeing his lynx carrying a turtle in her mouth even as Gabe dragged one of his third-years along by his collar for a talking-to, but it was still kind of a relief when the extended-by-issues dinnerhour was over.

Tricky to say, but Gabe thought he probably had somewhere between half an hour and a full one before he needed to be back in Slytherin, putting out fires (possibly literally; one of the sixth years had a magical salamander, and boy was she smug about it). Now that the virus was dealt with, there was another potions project Gabe had been neglecting that he should really get back to. Because who knew when another emergency would crop up and eat what passed for spare time around here.

With that in mind, he set off from the Great Hall with full intent to locate Professor Lazzara. In private, preferably.

Moširêlêtši.

In Sesotho sa Leboa it means 'protector; defender; guardian.' I was originally thinking of something more along the lines of 'sentinel', but this seems appropriate, don't you think?

Now stop giving me a hard time about it not having a name. Hippie.

I'm closing an hour early tonight, since the NEWT students can't study inside anyway. Let's hide out hang out. Just the two of us. We can catch up.

- Bill

The mongoose emits a high pitched noise, commonly known as giggling, when it mates. The giggling is also a form of courtship when this animal is choosing a mate.

I love books.

p.

[owl to Ryland]

I would just like you to know that, contrary to William's beliefs, I am absolutely interested in shagging you. Trying to explain romance to Ravenclaws can be so difficult sometimes.

Who: Joe and anyone who wants to join
Where: The grounds
When: Wednesday
What: Fun with patronii (which sounded better in my head)

As soon as Joe dismissed his last class, which included a memorable instance of a pair of former best friends' ostrich and hamster chasing each other around the room for ten chaotic minutes, Joe decided to fuck off being responsible and spend the rest of the daylight hours outside with his gorilla. He didn't know if it was normal to give the tangible manifestation of your soul's representation a name; it was weird calling the gorilla gorilla and weird calling him patronus, so Joe went with Gori.

He found a spot by the lake underneath a couple trees and plopped down. The lake was pretty in the afternoon sunlight and every now and then a long tentacle broke the surface of the water and startled his gorilla into running back to Joe, jumping into his lap and pressing his face into Joe's chest.

"It's okay, little dude," Joe said, ruffling it's hair.

Who: Mikey and Spencer
Where: Mikey's Office
When: Wednesday
What: Whatever the plural of Patronus is

Mikey turned over another essay, rolling his shoulders and stretching his arms out behind him with a yawn. Ordinarily marking essays was pretty dull but after the previous week he was almost glad to be back to the grind. It helped that he had a warm bundle of fur keeping his feet warm too, even if that warm bundle of fur seemed to insist on no shoes.

He peered down at the little bobcat curled under his desk and it blinked up at him sleepily as if to say 'what's the problem?' or possibly 'get back to work, you lazy human'. Mikey wasn't really sure which. He reached a hand down and stroked it gently anyway. After he'd gotten over the initial shock of finding an overgrown cat sitting by the door to his quarters, he'd gotten kind of fond of it. It had definitely made the morning's lessons more interesting at least. Even if he had had to field ten variants on 'if I become an Animagus will I turn into my Patronus?'

A knock at the door had them both looking up.

"Come in," he said as the bobcat yawned and stood up, shifting to wrap itself round his left leg and peer out from the space between his knees.

Who: All, sundry and their furry soulmates
When: Dinner on Wednesday
Where: Great Hall, whether the teachers' high table or elsewhere as needed
What: Soul manifestation mayhem, duh

The Great Hall was barely half-full for dinner when Gabe stalked in, his feline companion almost matching his gait half a step behind him. And she was gorgeous, ok? She was the most beautiful Iberian Lynx he'd ever seen, possibly because she was the first one who'd ever been inclined to sit still to be admired.

So hanging out with her all day had not precisely been hard. Sure, classes had been a little more full of distraction than usual, and his lynx seemed to spent half of every class padding quietly between the benches and cuffing other tumbling animals, but whatever, it wasn't like a little light relief wasn't totally welcome this week.

Threading his way up to the end of the hall, Gabe climbed up to the high table - from where the Hall really did look like a menagerie gone beserk. He paused for a moment just to admire it before his lynx butted at his thigh and he moved on to find his seat.

who: pete and ryland
when: lunch
where: by the lake!
what: totally not gay picnic

Ryland thought this was very possibly the most insane day of his life. And it wasn't even lunch yet. A school full of children plus the sudden addition of furry, in the flesh, corporeal Partronii was, to put it mildly, a complete cluster fuck.

All of that added up to Ryland being extremely pleased to receive an owled invitation to lunch from Pete. There were no students at the lake. Only Pete, Ryland, Ryand's greyhound, and Pete's lion, which Ryland was dearly hoping was just as large as the students had described it.

"I believe we're going on a picnic, Reginald," he told his very large, very well groomed Patronus, as he scribbled a reply and tied it to the owl's leg. Reginald blinked from where he was sitting by Ryland's feet and shifted around minutely, offering Ryland his ears to scratch behind. Ryland obliged. "How do you feel about lions?"

who: Pete & William
what: furries!
where: Pete's quarters
when: wednesday, a few minutes before first period

Pete was accustomed to sleeping in late when he had first period free (for all values of late where late equals "four hours after he fell asleep"), so he was still putting the finishing touches on his newly regrown hair when he felt a weird sort of...not a tingle, really, and certainly not a physical twitch, but more of a mental click. And then, when he turned around, there was an enormous lion sitting placidly behind him.

Enormous. Lion.

Seated as it was, its shoulders were almost as high as Pete's.

"Well," Pete said, blinking at it. He wasn't exactly used to enormous and non-geographically-appropriate animals showing up mysteriously in his quarters, but this one seemed non-threatening enough, so. Almost familiar, even. He tilted his head at the lion, and the lion tilted his head right back, mirroring it.

He did what any good Gryffindor would do, after he adjusted his stance and his grip on his wand and waited a good five minutes for the lion to attack him. He owled a Ravenclaw.

More specifically, he groped for a bit of paper and scribbled william I have a bit of a situation. make haste, and then sent it off with his oddly unruffled owl.