(1938-03-11) Leverage
Details for Leverage
Summary: Eibhlin stumbles upon Randy again, but this time the Gryffindor is troubled about her newfound interest in girl…s. Things get awkward, people get klutzy, and Medusa finds the two in another compromising position. This time, the snake gets its prey.
Date: Mon Mar 11, 1938
Location: Broom Closet
Related: Some Slytherins Play Nicer, Beating the Beaver, Flipping the Bird
Characters
RandyEibhlinMedusa

Broom Closet Hogwarts Castle


It is a winter day. The weather is freezing and snowing.


The brooms and mops are arranged neatly on hooks against the wall, with buckets on the floor below. Shelves lined with cleaners and sponges and other tricks of the cleaning trade cramp the already tiny closet even more. There's just about enough room for two people to stand really close in here, but other than that, something will have to be removed. Interesting, the fact that there is room for two people, no matter how old or what their size.

And here she is in the broom closet again, only this time it's not to get down to business, with anyone else or herself. Randy is just sitting there on the floor in the dark, her elbows propped up on her knees, head in her hands, wide awake. There are better places to go and think, but she hasn't really had her wits about her lately, and even though she's a rather intelligent girl, she's not really known to tap into those wits before doing something impulsively daft. This is not a practiced activity. Getting her wits. Pondering things. Sitting in the dark alone, with the brooms and mops. It's around the same time she had her last run in in this closet.

It's too cold to venture out of doors, especially to study. Eibhlin has a test soon for Arithmancy and needs a spot to study uninterrupted. There's no Quidditch practice this evening, so the closet should remain fairly untouched. The redhead slides in, pulling the door closed behind her with book tucked under an arm. In the dark, figuring the place is empty, she pulls out her wand and murmurs: "Lumos."

Randy blinks as the door opens and closes. For whatever reason, she's not right on revealing herself. A little slow to action. At the small glow, she sees who it is and reaches to a shelf to pull herself up, facing the Ravenclaw. "Don't worry, I'm not-" she says softly, but isn't in the mood to really finish the crassness of her own sentence. It's a little tight in there, she doesn't mean to be so close to the other girl, but there's really no choice.

"Oh thank God," Eibhlin says and for a moment, her Muggle side shows through. Sure she generally catches herself to use more Wizarding turns of phrase, but it doesn't always work that way. The Ravenclaw leans back against the door and rolls her eyes to stare at the ceiling. "You pick a spot to hide and study and it -always- ends up with another regular."

Randy grins a bit, not bothered by the Muggle term, even if she's a Pure-blood. "Sure," she says in response to the thanking. She smiles a bit at Eibhlin, her head quirking to the side. "Well, I could always…leave?" but the redhead /is/ leaning against the door. "Why do you have to hide to study? Isn't the Ravenclaw common room full of bookworms and…books? I would imagine that pretty quiet."

"You could," Eibhlin agrees, glancing down towards the door. It's an odd angle to glance at and largely has her staring at her own midsection. There's a glance back up and her lips quirk slightly. It's somewhere between a smirk and a sneer. "There's far too much drama in Ravenclaw lately to get anything of worth done in the Common Room."

Naturally, Randy's drawn to where Eibhlin's eyes are, and that means…the Gryffindor just ends up staring at the Ravenclaw's midsection too. By the time time the girl looks up at Randy, the Gryffindor is /still/ staring. She blinks, and then looks up at Eibhlin, "Huh?-Oh. Right." Oh Merlin oh Merlin oh Merlin. A lump forms in Randy's throat. She swallows, making a little noise.

She's not used to being stared at. Not by a -girl- at least. Eibhlin doesn't notice much amiss, but the stammer. The stammer does draw her attention. The Ravenclaw Prefect steps away from the door, moving to set her book aside. Wand, lit at the end, still in one hand. "Is everything alright?"

Stepping away from the door means stepping closer to Randy. The older girl is frozen to her spot. Eibhlin might notice Randy clenching and unclenching her robes nervously in the dim light. She chews on her lower lip and then finally says, her voice not matching the tenseness of her figure nor the deer in headlights look, "Oh yeah, just fine. Dandy." Convincing? Doubtful.

At least there's no looming or intimidation. Eibhlin is just a smidge shorter than Randy. It does give her a good view of the Gryffindor's face. The redhead raises her wand to try to get a closer look at the other girl's features. A small frown tugs at hers, furrowing her brow. "You don't look fine," she says lightly.

And finally there's the blush that shows Randy is plenty healthy. "I've just been thinking is all. I should probably leave you to your studying and," it all comes out in a whirlwind and the Gryffindor tries to move past Eibhlin without thinking too much about the space. She moves and bumps into Eibhlin, misjudging in the dim spell-light. "Oh!" she reaches out indiscriminately.

"Just thinking rarely leads to such worry," the redhead murmurs. Still in uniform, it's not easy to pick out specifics of Eibhlin's form just at a glance. Her uniform is clearly secondhand and ill-fitting. There's curves under there and Randy finds the underside of a breast. The Ravenclaw makes a small, strangled sound. She bumps back into a stack of brooms and starts to tumble over.

Randy's brain explodes with…all sorts of activity fit to cause mortification /and/ kick in her chivalrous side… /and/ make her a bit klutzy. She blinks, wide-eyed, and all in a moment tries to lunge forward to catch Eibhlin before she starts to tumble over, but only to trip over something and make it /really/ hard for Eibhlin to regain her balance. Smooth. Randy is certainly going down. Who knows what happens to Eibhlin's wand, or Randy's hands, or where they land.

The wand was already on its way to being knocked aside- Eibhlin wasn't clutching to it tightly. She wasn't expecting to -fall over- suddenly. It clatters across the floor and casts odd angles of light and shadow across the pair of them. Evie lets out a small cry and tries to grab onto something- it's Randy. Fortunately there's not much more groping grabs… from Randy to Evie. It's more the smaller girl's shoulders and stomach than anything else. There's a bit of a grunt as the air is knocked from her as they clatter to the ground, knocking a bucket aside.

Thank Merlin for small wonders. Randy does /not/ feel the girl up. She, "Oof," hits hard after she's pulled into the fall. Randy doesn't have much to really grab, by Evie that is. She has curves, but they just put small girls to a touch of shame, they don't really rival anything. Evie just ends up grabbing the Gryffindor's sides, about her rib cage. She groans from landing her weight on her wrist on Evie's stomach. She had collapsed/slumped immediately on the other girl, her other hand resting on Evie's shoulder and her face just buried in the girl's collarbone. Surely between the bucket being knocked aside and the two girls' descent…the groan, and Evie's small cry. Well there was quite a clatter.

Medusa has changed her shoes. This is notable in that the Slytherin isn't making any noise as she prowls languidly along the corridors, in search of gossip. Hearing a clatter from the broom closet, she glances around first to ensure no one else is watching before approaching it quickly, all but pouncing on the doorknob and yanking the door open. Her lips twitch briefly at the sight within. "My. The pair of you really must stop being discovered in such places. People will start to talk."

Once they've settled, the brooms rattle above and in reflex, Eibhlin's arms go around Randy, hands hovering above the Gryffindor's head. Nothing falls though and Evie finally opens eyes she'd squeezed closed in fear of further falling by inanimate objects. This is in time to witness Medusa's entrance and the Ravenclaw groans. It's quiet- perhaps only Randy can hear it. "And by people you mean you?"

Randy remains in place, just in a little pain. It's quite a compromising position, but it's the pain that keeps Randy's mind from wandering to terrible places. She grits her teeth and raises her head to look at the redhead, mouthing, 'Sorry,' at Medusa's veiled threat. Then suddenly, she blinks and turns white with realization. She tries to scramble off of the redhead with her un-sprained arm and pulls herself up. Then she offers Eibhlin a hand up. "Medusa, if you say anything to-" She catches herself, though Medusa might be able to detect something in Randy's demeanor that she's trying to hide…it's a different kind of fear.

Leaning against the doorframe, Medusa makes a show of examining her fingernails. "Mm. I'm more what you'd call an unreliable source, in this particular case, despite having been an eyewitness twice now. Now, if it were to come from someone with a cleaner reputation than mine…" She lets the implication hang there for the other two girls to interpret, rather than going into details.

Thankfully, neither Randy nor Eibhlin are very big, so one falling on the other… the Gryffindor's wrist may be the worst of their injuries, beyond some bruises. Evie does make a bit of a face as she stands, accepting Randy's help to her feet. Hands, free, go to her rear and rub absently. That'll smart. Eyes drift to Medusa and her lips twitch in concern. "Is… that how you get the rumours going? You… bribe people to spread them for you?"

"Who?" Randy's flustered, and when she's paranoid, her noggin don't work too good. After helping Eibhlin up, she steps closer to Medusa, getting up into her face, that anger from her first couple of years boiling up, but there's also an unsettled look on her face, like a stomach in knots look.

"You can't honestly expect me to give away trade secrets on how gossip starts around here, Shine." Medusa rolls her eyes, still lounging against the doorframe, at least until Randy gets in her face and attempts to intimidate her. Then she draws herself up slowly, the bored expression turning into something colder and far, far more dangerous. Those steely eyes glitter and narrow: the much-rumored 'death glare' that Medusa was so very aptly named for. "Back off, Macmillan." The words are clipped, and there's a vague note of malice in her tone.

Though it takes effort, Eibhlin decides to leave this one for the moment. She's not sure what else she can do- everything was innocent and in her mind, /clearly/ so. She doesn't get the interest in Medusa. Or Randy's rise to respond. So the Ravenclaw is just trying to squeeze by Randy to retrieve her wand.

That doesn't make it easy for Randy to retreat, but it's not like she intends to move a millimeter. It's her pride. Stupid lions. There's a moment where the look in Randy's eyes is pure, unadulterated rage. Her hand forms into a fist, her whole form rigid until Medusa flares up at her. It takes a /lot/ to scare the Gryffindor and now it's fight or flight. In the past, she'd just sock the living daylights out of the person. She then takes the only route of aggression left to her and reaches up to pull grab the Slytherin by the face and kiss her. "Is that what you want?!" she explodes. She's…lost it.

For someone whose general demeanor is that of a lazy feline, Medusa's switch to cold, calculating and angry reptile may come as quite the surprise. That Eibhlin is escaping doesn't escape her notice, but fortunately the Ravenclaw girl isn't her target at the moment. She stares Randy down, and there's a flicker of triumph across her expression when she Gryffindor reaches for her; she knows, without a doubt, that she's provoked a fear response, and she does nothing at all to stop the kiss, which she enjoys a little more than she really ought to. When Randy explodes at her afterward, Medusa steps back, taking a moment to straighten her tie and resume her air of boredom. "It'll do, for now. That's two favors owed."

Randy is breathing heavily by now, and since she's lost it, thankfully she doesn't respond to Medusa's tallying of the favors. However, she really has lost it and is unable to control herself from saying what she's really afraid of, because that's how things go and that's how much terrifying power Medusa has over her right now. "If you breathe one word of this to Helene…" Wow, does the little Gryffindor actually have…feelings? This is, quite new. Randy's likely to have graced Medusa's gossip ring many a time with her trysts, but never seemed to give a /flip/ about it before. In fact, she always seemed to revel or be relieved that the secrets would get out, and she finally had a reason to race to do the dumping. Well, there /is/ no relationship here, right?

"You'll what?" Medusa looks thoroughly unimpressed, and one hand rests on her hip. "You're forgetting which of us is in control here, Macmillan, and it certainly isn't you."

That throws a switch in the Gryffindor, all the adrenaline sucked out of her. Randy steps back, leaning against something and then slides to the floor, her head falling into her hands, knees up, elbows propped. She looks like a person who is utterly fucked, which she is. She's quiet, her face hidden in shadow, hidden from Medusa. "What do you want?….I'll do it," she says, sounding utterly defeated, different from the defiance Medusa has gotten before from her in those words. This time, she really means it. Medusa earned it. "You win."

"Of course I win." Medusa steps in closer, leaning down, and murmurs, "I always win." Then she straightens again, looking down at the defeated Gryffindor. "What I choose to tell Helene is none of your business. I do think I'm going to have a chat with her before I decide what to do with you, however." She turns her back on the other girl, heading toward the dungeons. "Ta, Macmillan."

Randy can only hold herself together until Medusa has exited the broom closet, but that doesn't mean the Slytherin can't hear her. She lets out a sob and then just starts to cry in the dark, alone. What a wuss.

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