| Details for Sickly Meanie |
| Summary: | Alphard comes across Andromena feeling 'ill' and decides to help. Douglas chimes in! |
| Date: | 1938-10-26 |
| Location: | Hogwarts Great Hall |
| Related: | — |
| Characters |
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Douglas is just finishing up his dinner, over at the Gryffindor table, and relaying an ever less believable story to his housemates all the while, insisting with every fresh anecdote that every revelation is true.
For once, Andromena left her books behind and was not attempting to find more time to study while she ate dinner. Instead, she was seated across from a younger student, her brother, who was regaling her with a tale of his own exploits! Her expression was amused as the youth's hands flapped about his head, features animated.
"I'm telling you, it was the wildest thing I ever saw!" Carolus nodded his head in a serious manner, causing Andromena to laugh. "Don't laugh," he groaned, clearly pained. "I nearly DIED." He gave a long suffering sigh, as if his sister was just about the cruelest thing ever done to him.
Andromena attempted to placate him, patting the air before her gently. "But you," snicker. "Survived. You'll have to write home to mother abo-" "No!" Carolus interrupted. "If I tell her, she'll never let me play the game again!"
"Meanie? Are.. Are you sick?" Alphard's voice arrived from somewhere just behind Andromena's left ear. It was very serious, and drenched in both sympathy and concern. Soon after it was joined by a hand, trying to paw against the Ravenclaw girl's forhead, as if testing her temperature. "Are you burning up? Feverish? Do you feel like your brain is about to explode like a grenade, showering the whole table with blood, goo and bone fragments?" Thump went his ass down onto the bench next to her, indiffernt to the fact it shoved another Ravenclaw out of the way. Alphard was immune to the scowls that move earned him, too. Who cared what lessers thought? "Is there someway I can help?"
Douglas pulls himself to his feet, thumping the shoulder of the student beside him and giving an amiable grin before stooping to pick up an apple and extricate himself from the bench. "Helping, Black?" he asks, as he passes the Ravenclaw table. "First time for you?"
"Huh? Wha-?" That voice, full of mock seriousness and concern for her well-being, registered within Andromena as none other than Alphard's own, followed by his hand. Once he sat down beside her she directed a worried look his way. "I feel fine. Why do you ask?" Did she look ill? Andromena glanced to her brother, who offered a shrug. Following the arrival of Douglas, Andromena could not help but look to him as well. Did he see something wrong wih her, too?
"That's rich coming from you, MacMillan." Alphard replied with a snort and an eyeroll in the direction of the older student. "Do you ever offer anyone help that doesn't include some variation of 'help you out of your panties'?" His attentions refocused on Andromena, slowly pulling his hand away from where it had been laid against her forhead. He gazed into her with his dark eyes full of fake concern. "Well.." he began, deadpan. "You're.. you know. Talking to people.. During dinner.. wasting precious moments where you could have your nose buried in a book about some obscure subject that has zero to do with anything any normal person would ever need to know."
Douglas tucks his thumbs into his belt, grinning cheerfully. "Well, sure. But you should always stick to what you're good at, Black. I'm good with the ladies. You're good with… uh… wait… it'll come to me." He pauses, looking up as though for inspiration. "You're good with… well, I'm sure you'll find something eventually. Just hang on in there, champ."
Calista enters the Great Hall silently heading without pause for the Slytherin table. Taking her seat she glances around and begins to help herself to some roast chicken and salad. Eating her warm brown eyes sweep the room studying each person with a calulating look as she eats her meal. Alphard gets a incline of her head and a faint smile as she takes a sip of juice from her cup.
She found herself between two males attempting to prove each was the superior, as well as…oh. How disappointing. Her face showed just how unamused she was by Alphard's 'prognosis.' With a sniff, she turned away from the young Black and turned her attention back to her meal. "Alphard, this is my brother, Carolus." Said coolly. The younger boy smiled distractedly, he was already engrossed with his own friends now that his sister had been distracted. "I don't *always* have my nose buried in a book," she argued glumly.
"Oh, stop it, MacMillan." Alphard's voice dripped sugary sweet faux sympathy. "Watching you actually trying to think is agonizing. Besides, nobody would expect you to know, anyway. Because, you know, that would necessitate actually attending school." With a dismissive snort he flicked Douglas off, and instead gave Andromena's brother a casual glance. "Hey." He said without any real enthusiasm, more than happy to let the youngster return to his friends. "Oh come on, Meanie. I was just joking. Mostly. Here, have a tart. It'll make you feel better." When Calista looked in his direction he gave her a casual nod in return.
"So like a man" she huffed. "Just give a girl a sweet and think that will make her feel all better." Andromena took the tart anyway, because it had been on /her/ plate. If there was a way to take a bite of something like a tart in an angry manner, then the Rowle girl pulled it off. After chewing, and mulling over his apology - if that was indeed what you could call it - Andromena let go of the hurt air she had been exuding. "So what's up?"
"I actually went to every single one of my classes this week," Douglas points out, more than a little surprised in himself, even. He wrinkles his brow, admitting, "It was pretty dull. Good luck, pal," he adds more quietly to Alphard, before nodding once and ambling over towards the Slytherin table, a table at which he's becoming a more common sight these days.
"He knows," Alphard felt the need to tell Meanie, even if his eyes followed Douglas towards the Slytherin table. "He knows exactly what I'm great at." Because obviously the whole school knew what a peerless wizard-in-the-making that Alphard was. "Just a bit sore that I bloodied his nose." With a huff he reached over to steal the second tart from Andromena's plate. "Are you saying lots of men give you sweets? You'll have to tell me about them." Grin.
She rolled her eyes at Alphard, likely at him in general as opposed to any one thing he said. "That's hardly the point," Andromena says in a voice that more easily reads as: not your business! "It's just common knowledge that's what guys do. It's going to be one of three things," and she ticks them off on pointe, middle, and ring finger. "Flowers, sweets, or some sort of gift. Now, don't get me wrong, there are girls out there that live for that sort of material thing." She eyed him critically, deciding after a moment that Alphard was not the type to go out of his way to shower a girl with gifts.
"Not getting off the hook that easily." Like the predator he was, Alphard scented blood in the air and refused to let go that easily. "So which was it? A sweet, some flowers.. some pretty little trinket? All three? Did it make you feel special, so you forgave whatever reason you were angry with him in the first place, only to realize after the third time it happened that he was just playing with you?" His hand very gently settled on Meanie's shoulder, squeezing with sympathy for as long as he managed to hold that seirous expression. Then it cracked, all at once, and the floodgates of laughter poured out. "Merlin's beard. Yeah.. no. You read about it in a book, didn't you?"
His laughter was her blessing, sad as that actually was, for while Alphard cracked up it gave her time to compose herself. Andromena hurriedly dashed one eye with the back of her and took a deep breath. He didn't know what he was talking about…and she was content to let things remain that way. Andromena joined in Alphard's laughter (he isn't the only person capable of acting)!
"Basically," she admitted in a self-aggrandizing tone. "I /do/ talk to other girls, you know, and some even them have even had boyfriends themselves!" If she had any experience herself, Andromena was grossly unwilling to share it with Alphard Pollux Black.