Head Scratching

[Archelaus Abney]

open to someone that has already been infected with lice

It was a quiet evening for Archelaus as he settled into the common room to work on an essay that he had due for Herbology. He seemed to not be the only one with this idea in mind as there were a handful of other students around with their books and quills, one of whom he was now sitting across from. Archelaus didn't pay them much mind as he read up on the plant he was supposed to be writing about.

Taking a break from his writing, he looked up in time to see the person that he was sitting with scratch their head. And something fell out and moved. Archelaus had never seen lice before - to his knowledge, anyway - so he had no idea what it was. Dandruff? He'd never known it to move, though.

"Is something wrong with your hair?" He asked since the head scratching coming from the other Slytherin was getting a little irritating. What's more was that he was feeling a bit of an itch himself now.

  

[Zadie Pine]

Zadie was working on the last Magical Theory assignment of the term - or, at least, had been intending to when she had laid out her work. Mostly, she'd been scrunching up small balls of paper or chewing vigorously on the end of her quill to keep her fingers distracted from what they really wanted to do.

She'd heard a whisper or two about lice going round. She'd had lice before, when she was younger - playing with the kids in the London streets did do that, sometimes. Her grandfather had scolded like nothing else for it, and it had certainly given the old washerwoman next door a headache trying to get rid of them. She had supposed the burning itch on her head was evidence she had 'em, now, but as of yet she hadn't done anything about it, supposing they might crawl off on their own.

But a housemate had taken note of - well, something.

"No," Zadie shot back brusquely, though despite her defensiveness her hand had leapt right back to where it had been, digging into her hair at the roots in a spot where she must have already scratched her scalp raw. She narrowed her eyes at the boy across from her, wondering why he was bothering to ask. "What's it to you?"

  

[Archelaus Abney]

Archelaus rose an eyebrow at the attitude. She was clearly poor and she was a girl, what did she have to be snooty about? "It's irritating to hear the noise of scratching when the rest of us are trying to study," he explained before looking down at the white ... thing. It must be some sort of poor person thing. He poked at it with his quill, his nose wrinkling a little.

"Besides, I think what you have is contagious." He frowned slightly as he scratched at an increasingly itchy part of his scalp. "Maybe you should see a healer or the matron?" He was not as cruel as he might have been were she in some other house. Really, this was him being 'nice'.

  

[Zadie Pine]

“Maybe what you have is contagious,” Zadie challenged, watching him start to scratch with an intent eye. Admittedly, she didn’t much believe that, since she’d been itching for a good long while, and her hair, even in a plait, was longer than his, must be easier for the lice to infiltrate.

That the sound of it was irritating was the least of her problems, to be honest, so she didn’t spare much energy being apologetic. She appraised him again at his next suggestion, which was, in all probability, a sensible suggestion. “Maybe,” Zadie mused. She watched him poking at the thing with his quill, and a hopeful thought crossed her mind. “Maybe it was just the one.”

@'Archelaus Abney'