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 Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 11:40 pm
 "It's not a dress, you're just a ******** midget," Mattie teased, eyeing him in amusement. He looked down at the gun, reluctant to let it go. He wasn't gunna lie. He was honestly considering pocketting the thing. What could he do about it, right? But then, Marquis was his only source of information. Plus, he wasn't half bad. Mattie grunted and passed the gun back reluctantly. He held onto it a few seconds longer, not at all happy to be giving it up.
"I have a better idea." Mattie said, thinking of it the moment the gun left his hands. "Teach me."
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 9:04 am
 ”M’not.” Marquis grumbled, doing up the buttons on the ridiculously large shirt. He really did look like a little boy in his father’s shirt. ”Yer just bloomin’ tall, s’all. Dunno ‘bout Veela, trya half-giant or sumthin’.”
It wasn’t meant seriously, and nothing in his tone suggested it was to be. He took the gun back, grateful the other boy wasn’t going to put up a fuss about it – he really, really couldn’t do anything about it if he did – and slid it back into his jacket pocket, repeating the move with the jacket onto his shoulders. Hes brow had knotted at Mattie’s request, unsure.
”M’not sure, mate... m’mean, it’d be expulsion for us pronto if we were caught, n’I dunno my way ‘round this place well ‘nuff ta know if there’s anywhere safe ta shoot... s’no way I want other students ‘round, after all.” How many bullets did he have, again?
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 9:13 am
Even for the hulking eleven year old he was, he still had the same puppy eyes most eleven year olds were gifted with. The Oh-please? look. Except in Mattie's case it added an unintentional oh-please-or-I'll-punch-you-in-the-face? He badly, badly wanted to shoot that gun. "I know my way." He knew he was being persistent, but he didn't care. "The Shrieking Shack. Hogsmade. The Forbidden Forest?"
"Hell, once we figure out what that thing is, we'll have enough ******** brownie points to last us until we graduate. Don't you know how things work here?" Mattie tried. "Remember that Larry Powhatever kid? He did stuff."
It was a lame excuse, comparing himself to the chosen one that defeated the dark lord a few decades back, but he figured the muggle-born had never heard of him.
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 9:26 am
Mattie pulling the puppy-eyed look was... more scary than anything else. Marquis should know, he was an expert on puppy-eyes, and right now Mattie just looked like he wanted to hurt him. Eep. What was worse was that none of these places even vaguely rang a bell to him, other than the Forbidden Forest which, funnily enough, was Forbidden. So he fixed Mattie with a most bemused look, one that roughly translated to ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, please explain’.
”Who?” Alright, now Marquis was really confused. Now that Lord Voldimort had been defeated – Marquis didn’t know about him, either, for the record – Harry Potter only occasionally made the tabloids and never for anything very serious. He was, after all, married with children and around forty, and what gossipers were really interested in that? Needless to say, Hogwarts was hardly buzzing with information about the ‘saviour of the wizarding world’, so to Marquis it was just another name.
”M’sure whatever this guy did, somthin’ else was goin’ on too, mate.” The blonde shook his head a moment, fingering his gun through his pocket. ”Well... m’not sure we’re meanta leave tha school grounds’n all... but this shrieking shack... does it actually, yanno, shriek?”
That would be good, it would cover the shots, but Marquis still wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of hanging around ghosts. Which was strange, considering where they were.
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 9:50 am
THIRDYEAR. LIBRARY. "I can't find it," A much taller Mattie complained. His eyes had gotten sharper, his shoulders were ever broader, and if possible, his hair was even more messy. It didn't seem possible that the hulking first year that used to scare even the fifth years could get any bigger, but he did. He was now a towering six-foot even, and was already showing signs of muscle he barely had to work for the build. He just had one of those builds. And next to the tiny blonde, he looked like a giant.
"What the hell was her skin tone? Green?" Mattie scrunched up his nose.
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 10:00 am
”Why’re we even botherin’ ta look’it up now?” Marquis complained. The blonde hadn’t changed all that much; his face was somewhat leaner and if anything, he was more angular than before with the loss of baby-fat. Compared to Mattie, however, he was something of a stick-insect. Narrow, long limbs and nose, he would have classified as bony were it not for the huge portions dolled out at Hogwarts. Any muscle on him was toned and lean, hardly defined if there at all. He barely came up to Mattie’s shoulder in height, having halted in first year and never grown another inch. It was a constant source of frustration for him, but it did give him the edge on the Quidditch pitch when it came to playing seeker. His goggles, previously science ones, had been replaced with the quidditch version and stayed permanently snuggled into his still-long hair. Marquis still claimed the game was no soccer, but now that he could get his brooms to behave themselves, he was much happier in the air than he had been in first year.
And they were still wearing those gay-a** bracelets. They’d vanished during the Christmas break of their first year, and both boys were glad to be rid of them and thought their ‘ordeal’ to be over. The defeat was shocking when, first step off the train and back to school, the bracelets snapped back into place, as if happy to be causing them so much torment. So they were stuck together, and while nothing much happened for the rest of their first year, and all of second, the ratio both boys managed to injure themselves to did keep them close. Hanging out together to avoid the separation ache became a habit more than a chore, and despite the inter-house rivalry blooming around them, both boys seemed to get along well enough most of the time.
”Mate, I was way too busy runnin’ tha hell away ta really take a good look.” The blonde continued. His voice had broken the year before, smoothing itself into a respectable tenor after a month or so. The accent, however, remained strong. He was lounging in one of the library chairs, heels on the table despite the librarian’s nasty glares. ”Cried black, though, if it says n’thin’ ‘bout that. Certainly wasn’t a ghost.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 11:44 am
While Marquis played seeker, Mattie was a proud Beater. He could hit bludgers harder and faster than anyone in Slytherin. Hell, it wa where he hit them that was the problem. A few people in the stands had complained that he'd purposefully hit them at some enemies, but the team captain refused to remove his best Beater from the team. Mattie's playing habits remained an enigma.
"I don't know, Marq." Mattie shrugged. "Can't think of anything better to do." Besides, he really wanted to track that thing down again someday. He wasn't happy that he'd run away. Black tears, black tears... There were black noses, black hair, black auras... Black tears. A whole freaking index.
"Didn't she, uh, it, have white hair? It looked human, right?" Mattie reasoned. Well. Human-ish. Did that count as humanoid?
"D-Did it have b-blue s-skin and b-black eyes?" A weak girl's voice stuttered. A tiny girl, a little smaller than Marquis was huddled in front of their table, totally engulfed in her Ravenclaw scarf. Her light grey eyes blinked up at Mattie as if watching a predator for movement. She could've been shorter than Marquis, but Mattie was pretty sure it was just her size in general that made her smaller. Her hair was horribly frizzy and a dishwater shade of blonde. Mattie nodded to her.
"Yeah." His eyes narrowed a little on her. She squeaked. "Who are you?"
"N-N-Nikkel Tr-Tribb. Prefect." She stuttered. "Her hands darted forward and she flipped through the huge textbook to find a single page and pointed at an image of a male version of the thing they'd seen three years back. "Is it a djinni?"
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 6:10 pm
There was a long, fruitful life ahead of him, Marquis was sure, but it could be lived without knowing what had tried to slit his throat. The scar the scissors had left was nothing more than a silk-worm of lighter coloured skin on his neck, hardly noticeable, and the memory was getting slightly hazy too. Two years is a long time when you’re fifteen, and the incident hadn’t been traumatic enough to leave a firm impression on Marquis’ mind. Then again, we’ve never found out what Marquis counts as traumatic. In all honesty, the memory had completely slipped his mind except for a few nightmares, so Mattie’s bringing it up had surprised him. Even more so when the larger boy decided he wanted to do research about it. You guessed it; neither were really the researching type, unless the topic was devastatingly interesting.
He’d helped, at first. Leafed through a few books while racking his brain for any helpful memories, yet the library was proving incredibly unhelpful. If they had a name, it was un-doubtable they’d find something here, but that was just the problem. Mattie refused to ask for teacher’s help, so here they were, stuck on a fruitless search. Marquis lent back further into his chair and sighed. ”Well, human ‘nuff for us ta have a good chinwag, yeah.”
He was still feeling a little stupid for not noticing. As a third voice piped up, Marquis glanced at the girl lazily. Huh... he’d seen her around, but had no idea who she was. In Zach’s house, if he remembered correctly. ”Mate, be nice.”
Poor thing was shaking in her shoes already. The word prefect instantly caused Marquis to jerk his feet off the table, glancing about furtively as if Nikkel was hiding some teachers just around the corner to catch him in the act, but even he scooted over as she flipped through the textbook with expert fingers. ”Djinni, huh?” He murmured, taking a good, long look at the picture. ”Looks pretty much like it, Do they ‘ave an’ aversion ta metal?”
Perhaps a strange question to ask, but for the creature to go down so completely just by a slug in the shoulder led Marquis to this strange conclusion. He sent Mattie a look over Nikkel’s head, one that clearly said ‘I told you we shoulda asked Zach’.
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 11:02 pm
Mattie had kept his eyes on the tiny girl and hadn't moved them since she'd said the word 'prefect'. He didn't know what she was getting at by introducing herself like that, but Mattie wasn't going to just let her boss him around. No freakin' way. She was ******** tiny! He could probably sneeze on her and she'd blow across the room. And she looked like she was well aware of this.
"M-Metal? Y-Yes, very m-much so." Nikkel nodded rapidly. "Th-They g-get s-seriously w-wounded b-b-by it."
Oh. Marquis was asking because of the gunshot. It clicked in Mattie's mind. Yeah, that was a bit strange for a powerful creture to just disappear like that from a muggle weapon. They must get completely incinerated by magic. Mattie asked, to make sure. "Then how about Magic?"
Nikkel shook her head. "Oh, n-no. Th-they're essentially composed of it." She took a deep breath. "Think of magic like w-water. If they were c-composed entirely of water, th-they could meld it into whatever form they w-wanted, and give and t-take it as they pleased. W-which means they need to literally s-suck energy out of living c-creatures to maintain th-their own energy. So using m-magic on them is just adding energy."
Mattie blinked. Lots of information. Huh. Essentially, don't use magic. Got it. "Well. what the hell are they good for?"
Most magical creatures were known for some type of talent. Or threat. Either way, Mattie wanted to know what he'd eventually face.Nikkel thought for a minute. "Myth's s-say that i-if you g-get th-they're n-name, th-they're forced into l-loyalty to you. B-But usually n-no one wants a djinni th-that c-close an o-orers th-them to l-leave."
Mattie was staring fixedly at his bracelet. A powerful djinni under his command, eh? And he just had to get it's name. Hn. Mattie returned Marq's look with a smug smirk. He'd found a new project.
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 11:10 pm
TIt was starting to strike Marquis as very peculiar that Nikkel wasn’t asking awkward questions; why they were looking up about djinni, for example, or where the hell they met one. Still, it was stupid to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he decided to press a little more for information. He’d completely missed what Mattie’s smirk really meant, and was starting to think the larger boy just wanted control of the djinni to cause havoc. It wouldn’t be past Mattie, after all.
”Huh. Do they, like, grant wishes’n all that junk, like in tha muggle stories?” There was a slight frown on Marquis’ brow, mostly because he was trying to compare the image of the djinni they’d met to the Disney version in Aladdin. It just wasn’t working, although he could definitely see that blue-skinned girl doing some crazy stuff if she wanted to.
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 11:16 pm
Nikkel gave Marquis a pained expression. "Loyalty, not s-servitude." She closed the book and tucked the thing (it was almost as big as she was) under her arm. "N-Now would you p-please leave the library?"
Mattie looked around the library and noticed that no one else would sit at any of the tables near him. Oh. Right. He wasn't a charismatic public figure. Whatever. Mattie stood up and didn't bother to slide his chair in. He didn't bother saying thank you, either. Marquis was usually better about manners, anyways.
"I bet we could find her, it, whatever, again if we looked." Mattie said, once he'd reached the edge of the library.
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Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 11:33 pm
Marquis stared right back at Nikkel, a puzzled expression sitting on his nose. It was a fair enough question, in his mind: The only djinni he’d heard of were the wish-granting sort, and it wasn’t as if he’d made a study of them!
”S’nothing ‘bout wishes, though.” He grumbled, giving the girl a dirty look before he stood. Mattie had already stalked off towards the library door, so Marquis pushed in both their chairs with a sigh before he turned back to the Ravenclaw girl. He had a feeling that the girl thought him somewhat stupid, and that was niggling at him. There was no specific reasoning for it, after all, she hadn’t outright said anything, but girls were weird like that and rarely said what they meant, expecting you to catch some narrowing of the eye or tone of the voice to interpret what they were saying. It was nuts, and he was sure, were he female, he’d be picking up on some of that stuff right now.
But he wasn’t – in case you’d forgotten – so he simply eyed her for a few moments before saying thank you, she ha helped them after all, and scurrying out after the Medici boy. ”M’not sure I really wanna look f’her, mate.” The blonde grumbled, one hand coming up to itch at the barely there scar. M’mean, I dun think she’s gunna be all that forgivin’ after I shot ‘er, n’all. N’how the ‘ell are we gunna find out’her name? S’that question that made ‘er flip out last time!”
Really, he was curious to, but he rather liked his neck.
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Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 7:54 pm
Oh, come on, Marquis. Seriously? How do you pry a name from someone who doesn't want to give it? Hmmmm. Lets look at our resources. A short human wizard who has a gun. No, blackmail won't to. He's had to be artillery. A Veela. Oh, hey. They're good at getting information out of people. Hell, legends have told of people sacrifice limbs to screw Veela. Getting names should be nothing more than a bloody bar trick. Mattie eyes Marquis apathetically. He didn't very well want to announce his 'unique quality' to the world, but he was rather hoping the blonde would catch on.
... ... ... Ugh. Bloody Gryffindork.
Mattie shuffled close to him and stared him down, purposefully invading his bubble. His charm had gotten considerably stronger over the years, and he knew very well that it affected the blonde. That should be enough to get the message across. "You get it?" He asked calmly. "Or do I need to be closer?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 8:08 pm
It was unlikely that Marquis’ mind would ever fully adapt to the wizarding world; it just wasn’t the way he thought, constantly linking everyone and their magical properties to whatever he was working with. He’d actually got it in his mind that he wasn’t going to stay in the world of magic after school finished, he was going to go back to being ‘normal’ and use his magic when he needed it, if he needed it. It was just so much simpler that way... but he hadn’t actually mentioned that to Mattie yet. Of course, he didn’t think the other boy would really mind, so it was more an omission of forgetting rather than one of worry.
So overall, he hadn’t quite worked it out that Mattie’s Veela ‘thing’ might very well work on a djinni. It probably would have never occurred to him, had the Slytherin not stepped into his way and locked eyes with him. Marquis’ mind, in the split-second it was given before the Veela charm kicked in, was thinking something along the lines of oh bugger. After two and a half years of knowing the other boy, he was quite aware of how this Veela charm of his worked on him, and over the last few months it was an increasingly worrying reaction. Before he’d just felt sleepy, now the charm left his mouth dry, his breathing shallow and his stomach full of those metaphorical butterflies. He was starting to cotton on to what all that meant, too, and it worried him more than anything when he was starting to feel them outside of the charm radius.
So with all that going on, Marquis couldn’t help but stare back, despite knowing exactly what was going on here. He was sure he looked like an idiot, starting up at Mattie with wide eyes and lips ever so slightly parted, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
”Yes.” Came a very soft reply to Mattie’s closer question, before something flicked on in Marquis’ mind. ”Er... no, I mean, m’gettin’ it... mate, seriously, move back would’ya?” If he kept doing this for more than five minute periods, Marquis just knew he was going to do something stupid like try and jump the other man. His reply was slightly stammered and drawn out, and he could swear he heard some Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw girls giggling at him somewhere in the corridor. Bloody hell.
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Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 8:32 pm
Mattie raised an eyebrow at Marquis' immediate response, and hovered where he was a bit longer than necessary. He didn't think his charm was that strong. Weird. He stepped back, smirking a little. It was nice to know he had that effect on people. Even if he hated most of them. Marquis was an exception. Hell, Marquis was an exception to just about everything.
Speaking of which. "Do you still have your gun?"
They were going to need it to fight her. Or at least subdue her. Easy enough. All they needed was metal. Hmph. Any idiot with a crowbar could fight a bloody djinni. This was ridiculous. He couldn't see what the fuss was about. There was no need to inform anyone about it's presence. "There's no need to tell anyone it's here." Mattie shook his head. "It's ******** C class."
Oh, if only Mattie knew.
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