#prompt attack

Somes Sound is, unfortunately, forever ruined for him after the Incident-Whose-Only-Positive-Result-Was-The-Dissolvement-of-the-Really-Obnoxious-Yacht-Club. He’s finally got his little Adrienne back in his arms after retrieving her from whatever suspicious emergency clinic these very suspicious men in black had swept her off to. He had not seen Levy these past few agonizingly long days. The suspicious men in black think that she had been eaten by a demon in the Unfortunate-Incident-That-Ruined-Old-Mr-Pierson’s-Fishing. Jesse is not inclined to tell them that while a demon had been eaten, it had not, in fact, been Levy.

His sweet six-year-old darling wakes up briefly to whimper out apologies for not listening to mum, and he shushes her quietly. He rearranges her to let her tuck her head against the side of his neck, assures her that she is not delicious, and glares at the suspicious men in black, who have moved on from talking about wife-eating-demons and are now talking about--

“New York City,” Jesse says flatly. “You want us to move to New York City.”

Jesse Irvine’s demon wife induced problems are these: he can no longer think of Somes Sound without seeing pretentiously-dressed yacht owners be washed to shore amid roiling waves, his daughter had been temporarily kidnapped by non-medical personnel for medical treatment, and he was now being forced to move to New York City.

Most importantly, though, Jess Irvine is now a widower (probably) and a single father (definitely), and he honestly has no idea what to do.

(He distinctly feels, however, that moving to New York City is not the answer to his problems.)

---

“Maybe those were the wrong seahorses,” Jared says, sounding astonished even to his own ears as he eyes the fiery marvel in front of him. Belatedly he realizes that it couldn’t possibly have been the wrong seahorses--Astrid had sent him back to the cupboard twice to exchange ingredients before they had even started. Must have been the stirring then. Or the heat. Or both--those were tricky parts. He turns his eyes away from the still-going model volcano to tell this to Astrid.

Considering that it’s this early in the term and the entire class is looking at their disaster, it’s predictable that Astrid looks ready to throw him into a real volcano. Given the way that she’s clutching her wand, knuckles pressed firmly against the tabletop, she might also be contemplating practicing the shrinking charm so that she can throw him into the model volcano. Whichever was easier.

She does not shrink him, and she does not hex him into next week. Instead, she sucks in an audible breath through her teeth, killing their model volcano with a wave of her wand and a murmur of “Glacius.” It’s a new charm that they’d just started working on last week, so what is conjured is more cold slush than ice, and Astrid’s face pinches up like she had come across an earthworm flavored Bertie Bott’s bean.

“Would it hurt you, Upton,” she says, looking pained, “to at least look a little bit sorry?”

“I think I’d be more sorry if our cauldron had just started emitting orange and green smoke like Ledi’s table over there,” Jared says pleasantly, nodding to the classmates in question. They scramble to salvage their cauldron before the overcooked concoction in it can explode. “I think what we had qualified more as a happy accident.”

"You are going to cost us points,” she hisses, and she’s right. Slughorn deducts 5 points from Ravenclaw for the two of them and their volcano disrupting class, but it’s significantly less than the ten each from Ledi’s table after their cauldron finally does the inevitable and explodes in a shower of green sparks and some suspicious orange sponge substance. Jared thanks the sputtering mess that was once the model volcano and before that, Astrid’s cauldron.

“We’re going to have to stay after to redo the potion that was assigned as review,” she sighs, and she’s right. They’re told to stay after class next Tuesday so that they can make a proper Girding Potion like they had been taught at the end of Second Year. Jared looks vaguely sorry at this, because it messes up his plans to push off his History of Magic homework to the last possible moment.

“You need to stop threatening my grades so early in the term!” Astrid laments after they’re let out and moving on to Charms.