Passive Troublemaking ((Eric))

[Jez Cuthbert]

Jez tried to pause, failed, and crashed into the wall. To look on the bright side, it had helped him to stop. Only a fraction of a second too late - it was the wall looming ahead that had made him want to stop in the first place. Rubbing his nose to ascertain that he hadn't prompted a nosebleed, Jez looked to his left, then to his right. Which way had Humph (as Jez had code-named him) gone? The corridor he had been pursuing Humph down had just become a T-junction and straight ahead, there had been the wall. Jez was lacking more than a backwards gear - he was lacking brakes. Problematic.

But working out which way Humph had gone was not problematic. It was just a matter of luck. Chance. And a bit of human predictability. Jez sifted through his memory recall. Left, right, right, right, left. He sprinted along the right fork, his hand slipping into his trouser pocket instinctively to check that his confiscated and retrieved (Filch wasn't going to be an obstacle to Jez Cuthbert) pair of artefacts were still there. They were. All was well. All was great. There were two people ahead of him - one Humph, one an idle bystander. All was fantastic.

Jez hadn't made it onto the Gryffindor Quidditch Team. He'd been considered too 'unstable'. Not on his broom though - it was just that the captain didn't like him. He could try out again now that they'd moved on, but he himself had moved on to bigger and better things. He had a reputation to maintain. But Jez' physique was strong enough for him to make a credible Quidditch player, and that showed when he was in pursuit of a target (in this case Humph). Fueled by sheer determination, he had soon regained all the ground that he had lost recovering from his encounter with the wall, and collided deliberately with the no-longer idle bystander. He pressed one of the small blocks of marble that he'd had in his pocket into the boy's hand, overtaking Humph a moment after.

"Don't drop it, whatever you do." he warned the other boy urgently, and trusting that he would do as he was told, tapped his own marble block with his wand. It shook violently in his hands as a blue light shot out of it and headed for the other block. He gripped onto it tightly, knowing that he musn't let go. That could cause problems. The blue pulse returned the other way, passing through Humph's head and then disappearing into Jez' block for good. Jez pocketed his piece of marble, and looked at the now very disorientated speciman in front of them. Humph looked back without any trace of recognition.

"Get lost, did you?" Jez asked. He received a confused nod in return. Satisfied, Jez walked over to the bystander he had burdened with the other block, and the guilt of participation. "Before you ask, he'll be fine. I don't want to get you in trouble... and he'll remember your face and blame you if we're still here in 30 seconds. My advice is... run! This direction is best." With that, Jez sprinted off down the corridor, hoping that the guy would have the sense to follow him on this occasion. He wasn't interested in another personal vendetta at present.

[Eric Caolan R6]

Eric was out of his mind with boredom. He had just come from the Library in hopes of studying (psh, right), but it was crowded with a bunch of panicky first and second years who were terrified of end of the year exams. Sighing loudly and quite dramatically he exited the Library and went in search of Mack. Maybe she was just as bored as he and could think of something interesting to do.

He had been looking for about twenty minutes, and had decided he would talk to her later. He leaned up against a wall to think about what he was going to do next. He did not know if he could stand another boring day. He longed for some excitement. He was a wild soul that could not be contained!

He barely noticed when a boy came down the hall and another right after. He was wondering if the latter was chasing the first, it seemed almost fantastic, but then something odd happened. The second boy came up to him, shoving a marble block into his hand. It was something he had never seen before, but he was interested.

"Don't drop it, whatever you do."

Eric looked mildly bewildered, but did as he was told. He watched the other boy tap his own block and a blue light shot out and into the block Eric was holding. Eric’s eyes narrowed as the block started to shake violently. He gripped it tightly and turned his glance up to this stranger.

The blue light passed through the first boy and into the second boy’s block. The disoriented boy looked around like the last couple of minutes never happened. Suddenly, the second bearer of the block came over to him saying that the boy would be fine. Eric nodded but still looked like he was not convinced.

“... and he'll remember your face and blame you if we're still here in 30 seconds. My advice is... run! This direction is best."

The boy took off down the hall and Eric did not hesitate to follow suit. HE knew this part, running from the trouble. It’s a funny thing, he was looking for excitement and boy did he get it. He smiled, “Either you’re bloody crazy or you’re a genius. What was that thing anyway?”

[Jez Cuthbert]

Jez could run, but stopping was very hard. When there was adrenaline pumping through his blood, his legs didn't want to stop. His mind didn't stay in one place long enough to do the job for him. Funny, that. Where did it go when it wasn't in his skull? His shoulders? The floor? (It did sometimes feel as though it was being stampeded, after all). The wall that he'd just slammed into and was now crumpled against? From the way that his head was currently spinning, it could well be in the wall.

"I'm not the latter", Jez replied emphatically, as though the question had only just been asked. He picked himself up and was horrified to find that he was now suffering from a nosebleed. "You know, this didn't happen last time," he told his companion as he tried to stop the blood going everywhere with one hand and muttered 'Episkey' to halt the blood flow. Standing up, he pondered the boy's other question. "It's... it's um... I'm Jez Cuthbert," he said, plumping for an introduction rather than an explanation. He held out his right hand, only to find that it was covered in still-drying blood. "Oh great..." he said, proffering his left one to shake instead. "Yes, I know that's an insult; if you take it as an insult, you need to find something better to do with your time than observing etiquette," he said as he used 'Scourgify' to cleanse himself and the surrounding area of his escapee blood.

"You do deserve to know my name, considering that I just forced you into some passive troublemaking," he said once slightly more presentable. His name was actually fairly well known amongst his own year - he had got into a lot of trouble over that thing concerning returning borrowed gloves in (or rather into) the middle of a Quidditch match. Still, he was alive, and he had kept his promise. He always kept his promises.
"Who're you?" Jez asked, expecting an exchange of names. He didn't do anything as a one-way thing. "You're in my year, right? 5th year?" He took his marble block out of his pocket again and prepared to take the plunge of explaining it.

"It's... hum, I can't take the easy way out this time." Jez paused, took a deep gulp, and then started again. "It's a targeting device for memory charms. Obliviators use them when they have large crowds of Muggles who've been in the area of some magical accident. Some of the people in the crowd will have noticed it and some won't... but it would take far too much time to perform a Memory Charm on them all. They need watching too much, because people can go a bit strange when they haven't got any short term memory... anyway, it helps with Mass Memory Charms. You cast a charm on the marble so that it targets just specific memories - when it's used for its proper purpose, that would be the memories of strange stuff happening. Muggles can't see that blue light... they just feel it as a sudden breeze. It doesn't work as well as an individual charm - so sometimes then people have hazy memories of something odd having gone on... someone wrote a book about that, I think... but the Ministry do use them because they don't always have the time to modify people's memories one by one."

Jez' face held a slight expression of surprise once he'd finished his rendition. It was surprise at himself. He wasn't used to showing such fervent enthusiasm about anything other than his honour outside of Charms Club (and the enthusiasm for maintaining his honour manifested itself in a rather different way). But still, he smiled suddenly and looked at the other boy with a hint of a challenge in his face.
"I suppose that still doesn't tell you what I was doing with it, though. You get to guess that."

[Eric Caolan R6]

Eric looked at his companion with a quizzical expression. He knew nothing wbout this guy, but something about him intrigued him. Maybe it was the fact that he shared his lust for adventure, for mischief. Eric smirked to himself, he could only imagine what Tierney would say if he befriended this new boy. It would send him through the roof. Perfect.

Eric watched him repair his nosebleed with no squeamish-ness. He was used to blood, playing Quidditch, you kind of had to be. He was however, rather impress that this trickster managed to fix it flawlessly. Something he was not capable of, for sure. If anything he could have made it worse. He was no dunce when it came to magic, but healing Charms and such were not his thing. He was a more action-type person, how to repel boggarts and defend against dementors were things that held his interest. “Jez, hm? My name is Eric. Eric Caolan. Fifth year Raven. Don’t worry about the blood, I guess it doesn’t bother me the way it would someone else. And believe me, etiquette is not one of my strong points.” He laughed, his grandmother had been drilling etiquette into his brain since he could talk and walk, but he hated being prim and proper. It drove her nuts.

“Now, that I hear your name, I’m afraid your reputation precedes you there,” he narrowed his eyes and gave him a smirk. “I would only expect to be involved in something tricky with you. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining by any means. Makes life interesting.” He took a pause. “Speaking of interesting, the marble block. That’s bloody brilliant. Must remember that when the time comes. So that bloke back there…he see you do something and was running off to snitch?”

Eric leaned on the wall, now that the coast was clear, he could get to know this Jez a little. “You weren’t careless in pulling a prank were you?” He had been in the same sticky situation, but never thought of using a little block to make his problems go away. It was brilliant. Dangerous, sure…but brilliant.