Crooked Grins, Sly Hands, and One Dangerous Voice.

The classroom off the Gunhilda of Groomer corridor on the third floor of the Castle had been the trio’s meeting spot since...was it second or first year? Third? It seemed their entire existence through Hogwarts had been flanked by Eden and Orly. He didn’t know why if their current conversation flirtation or whatever was an indication of the future. A future where the two of them sucked face and he got left on the sidelines. Not that it mattered. They weren’t getting rid of him. That’d take too much effort. He’d make sure of that.

Rolling his eyes at their chatter, Kennedy focused back on the matter at hand. Literally. He’d spent the past few weeks of the school year reading. Like actually reading. For fun? For a fun, unfortunately educational, sick trick. Incendio was a child’s spell. He just wanted to be able to cast it wandlessly. Just a snap of his fingers, boom. Fire. He could light his cigarette and never have to worry about getting his wand out again. 

Kennedy had been getting it but the flame was weak and sad or too big to hold onto for more than a few minutes. He snapped a few times before holding one of his first consistent flames. “сука блять.” Ken muttered under his breath, damn impressed with himself. He was holding onto it and it wasn’t burning him. Just dancing at the tip of his fingers with ease. Kennedy snapped again, intent on clearing the flame from existence, except that didn’t happened. It danced more and grew brighter and larger. “Uh..” was the only warning before it moved from his hand to the floor, jumping and skipping until it found something to latch onto. Orlando’s robes.

“Can’t, already have detention then.” It was a small miracle he didn’t have detention planned for the whole of the upcoming month, too. Maybe his teachers were starting to give up? “What’s it matter to you given that you’ll make me clean them again anyway?” A contemptuous smile wormed its way to Ira’s mouth before he let out a low whistle. “Wow, I had no idea the Ancient Runes teach wasn’t the only one hitting on students. Should I tell your girlfriend or is she in the know?”

“Two weeks. Three weeks. Doesn’t matter. You’re coming back.” He wasn’t going to tell Ira to learn some fucking respect. That’d never happen. “Listen, kid, if you actually fucking cleaned them we wouldn’t have this interaction every week and I’d give you another piss-poor job.” He leaned back from Ira, smirking all the while. “Sit down. You have a quarter ‘til.”

Colleen had made an agreement with the pixies that they shouldn’t lift the students up in the air as long as she was the professor handling them. So far, so good. Which gave her time to spend with Kennedy. She gave him a small smile as he approached and gave her head a kiss. She still had her eyes on her student, she didn’t want to be reprimanded by having the kids in trouble because she was distracted. “Hmm, pixies.” She replied, tilting her head, “They’re just really mischievous, I had to bare my fangs at them for them to promise me no mischief during my class.” She chuckled afterwards, then she faced him, “What have you been up to the past hour?”

“Pixies?” He made a small scoff before tightening his hold on her. Why not just bring in fucking doxies if she was going for small, annoying gnats? Or first years? “You’re completely mad. I’m sure you could have charmed them with a grin just as well, Babe.” Though he didn’t mind being reminded of her fangs. “You wanna show me those fangs in a bit? Mmm, me? Making sure the idiots don’t splinch themselves. You wouldn’t believe the fucking questions they’re asking this year. Trying to apparate with their electronics and shit. ‘Can I bring my vape?’ Ridiculous.”

Colleen was in the midst of discussing a small creature that belonged outside of the castle. Of course, the most logical thing to do was take the students outside of the castle to better see the creature in their natural habitat. And she knew, somehow, that these students needed to get their butts out of the castle - the days grew on with less people going out because laziness had been a number one epidemic in the school, she scoff at that, cursing the word millenials. 

The class still had half an hour to go and it usually ended up with her asking the students to interact with the creature - with caution usually, she tried her best not to bare her fangs to rowdy students but her students knew that if they made a mess, it wouldn’t be just her fangs they needed to worry about. 

She was expecting a visitor during these last few minutes they had in their class, it was usually the routine now. He always ended up finishing his class earlier than expected - making students love his class for getting out early - and going to her the minute he dismisses them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him walking towards their direction. Knowing that he was arriving, she told the students to finally go and interact with the creatures and that they had thirty minutes to do so.  And as she did, she waited for him to approach her - just not to let her students think she was bailing on them for her boyfriend.

With all the children finally occupied with whatever it was she had brought out, Kennedy knew he could approach her. He spared the creature a glance, entirely more captivated by her presence. When was he not? Colleen was fucking gorgeous as always but there was something extra captivating about her educational side. Wrapping an arm around her waist, Kennedy pressed a kiss onto the top of her head, the few hours they had spent apart too much. Who the fuck cared about professionalism? “What are you showing them now? Is it dangerous?”

“There you go.”

The toothbrush clanked against the wooden surface of the desk, laying there like an athlete after a marathon they hadn’t prepared for. Ira stared at Stone’s face, openly disdainful and every bit the brat he had been put on this Earth to be. He could get another detention for his attitude, and really he was tired of having all his spare time taken away from him, but he couldn’t help it.

“Toothbrush all used up, now it’ll be good and soft on your teeth. Polish should smell better than cigarettes anyway, right?”

“See ya next week for that mouth. You really clean them this time or are you gonna have to fucking do it over again?” Kennedy looked up from the dismal papers on why so and so wanted to learn how to apparate to level Ira with a glare. He knew to keep his tone low. No need for the other students to hear him mouthing off to the little lion. Kennedy might have hated Ira but he truly enjoyed putting this kid in his place. “You ever fucking going to learn or do you really like spending all your nights here? You startin’ to miss me?”

Classes went on forever. Why did Colleen have to achieve her dreams of becoming a real professor? Couldn’t she teach a bullshit course like him and simply substitute and do detention watch instead of making full coursework and lessons and plans? His class finished early, as it often did, and he found himself leaving the castle in search of the ragtag group of wixen hanging on to her every word. 

Sure enough, there was the unusual group sitting much too close to the edge of the Forest if they hadn’t had his monstrous girlfriend with them. He joined them, slinking closer before sitting in the back of the group, ready to hang onto her every word about whatever creature she decided to showcase today. He shot a few students who had the nerve to give him looks a menacing glare. He was a professor. He could sit in whatever classes he wanted.

“Hell no”, was Nikolai’s reply to both Ken’s question and the mark he was exhibiting proudly. Well, he looked proud now, or was it smug, but the Romanian wouldn’t feel the same way about it until he knew the other guy had gotten a mark, too. “You know I don’t pay attention to others enough to figure out stuff like that.” He had intended to frown, but instead a full-on bitch face took over his features. What kind of bastard…? “Please tell me you kicked him off his high horse. So glad I’ve hardly ever seen the guy. Can’t even tell you for sure I’d recognise him if you threw a dozen dudes in a suit in the same room with him. Does he have any receipts of times you didn’t do your fucking job?”

“You know that’s too fucking good to be true. I’m the best.” Kennedy was a hard worker. He just didn’t like letting it show. He’d completed everything fucking thing Basil and Cole had asked of him. But maybe this was just another sign he wasn’t met to work with an organization. Kennedy had half a mind to ask Nikolai to steal him away but the thought of being so far away from Colleen was enough to damper that thought. “You think I’d let someone get away with that shit and not do anything?”

One step and he was back in Kennedy’s space. It wasn’t that he wanted to be close to the taller man – the likes of him grated on his nerves if nothing else –, but the itch to grab him by the hair and bring him to his knees was too strong for Basil to idly stand by. Instead he glared at him, all the way from six inches closer to the ground, before huffing softly. “How indispensable do you think you are, exactly? People like you we could find easily, so maybe I should do everyone a service and bend you until you break?”

An eyeroll, a scoff, or a raise of the eyebrow would have been somewhat of a better reaction. But Kennedy wasn’t know for the best reactions. Only action. It would have been much better than the violence Kennedy usually defaulted to. Right now, he defaulted to a right hook into Basil’s jaw. Personal space was a hot ticket item. It was made rarer when you considered how often it was violated by non-idle threats. “Fucking do it or leave.”

“Now that’s what I call true love,” Nik cackled along, patting his friend’s cheek. It was good to hear the man who was basically his brother had been leading a life that satisfied him. Colleen wasn’t half bad either, although she paled when compared to Vera. That was nothing but Nikolai’s biased opinion. “Thanks for that. I’ll keep an eye on your cub once you get one,” he promised, a glint in his eye. “I’ve had this beef with some Italians, said I couldn’t buy a piece of land that was rightfully theirs. Told them I had no idea they were Native. That thick guy managed to bruise my shoulder, can you believe that?” He was smirking until something Kennedy had said finally registered. “What about your new mark, where did you get it?”

Kennedy proudly looked up to the celling, showing off the still pink scorch marking his lovely pale neck. “You know something about Colleen I don’t? I like playing Uncle. Let’s keep it that way.” With a smirk, he glanced back to Nikolai, lowering his head from it’s raised position. “Basil’s on a power trip and I’m...” What were the words he used? “Consistency in mediocrity!”