You Can't Miss the Bear

[James Grey]

day 8: spritehood, outwoven, proadmission

• One of the best thing about Hogwarts' castle was that it was so big. Whenever Jamie got bored, he could wander around and end up somewhere he had never even been before. It was really neat.
  
  He had done a lot of exploring over Christmas break, which Jamie had spent at the castle. He missed his little siblings but not quite enough to brave the evil dragon Mrs. Charity Chaucer. (Jamie forgot that she was technically a Grey rather often.)
  
  He wandered down a corridor with abandoned classrooms, feeling like he had a certain spritehood. Exploring by himself did sometimes cause Jamie to feel this way, like he was the chosen one or on a quest.
  
  He wondered if he had read too many fairy tales when he was little. Even if magic was real - which it obviously was - that didn't mean fantasy heroes were.
  
  Jamie found a tapestry and stared at it. The threads of it were neatly outwoven, with only a few tears here and there - on the tapestry was a dragon that seemed to be proadmission.
  
  Jamie pushed the tapestry aside on a whim and found a small passageway. Almost hesitantly, he walked inside it and started walking down it. It was a little bit dusty, poorly lit, and could have led absolutely anywhere.
  
  He couldn't help but grin.
  
  He heard someone walking towards him and froze. "Who's there?" Jamie demanded, unable to stop himself from automatically thinking monster.

  

[Kristoffer Lestrange]

• {Day 16 - January Challenge}
  
  A morning well spent, it seemed to Kristoffer.
  There had been a certain degree of tragedy about the parasite blown to bits with the remains of the rocking-chair upon which it had unsuspectingly sat, but Kris felt he was on a mission to live life by the sword. Hence his not personally feeling even the slightest bit of sorrow for whoever's pet toad that had been. He wasn't sure why the school had rocking-chairs, either, but Hogwarts could darn well survive without one. Either way, he had done the responsible thing and gathered up the mess, stuffed it all in his school satchel, and dumped that out - toad guts and all - in a small alcove off a corridor.
  
  However, as he'd kicked the splintered pieces of wood out of the way, one had rebounded against the stone wall, and suddenly, the wall of the alcove had disintegrated. Facing a dim archway, Kristoffer had not spared a glance behind him. He had just started walking, but with a dull thunk, his way in had just stopped being his way out. After a few kicks to unresponsive stone, Kristoffer continued on his way, following the winding passageway that sloped upwards, and thanking Merlin no one was around to see him panic.
  
  It felt like he was tracing the same square again and again as he marched, because every time he turned a corner, the narrow passage he saw was an exact replica of the last. There always seemed to be more than one path to choose - lucky because he'd find a way out sometime, but stupidly scary, because Kristoffer had suddenly realised he felt absolutely terrified when he was lost - but what if he was trapped in here forever? He hadn't learnt any useful magic to get him out!
  
  And then Kristoffer was jerked out of his turmoil by the sound of a voice. He couldn't see anyone, not yet, but he felt to a halt, sure that he recognised the voice. He thought it was a boy's voice, but one that must have piped up in class before or something... Still, Kristoffer buried the fear and decided the only appropriate course of action was trying to frighten them. It was perfectly logical. He stamped his feet, trying to create a banging that would echo eerily, and then tried out his best growl, straining his ears intensely in his wait for any response.
  
  Unfortunately, the dust coated the ceiling and walls particularly thickly here. He couldn't hold in a sneeze, which echoed down the walls the next minute in a not-remotely threatening way.
  
  
  I feel like I promised to start a thread for baby!supernatural boys once but never did it. >.> But this looked too fitting to resist!

  

[James Grey]

january challenge day 11! beanie's least favorite food: zuchinniiiii

• Already having sort of assumed that the thing in the hallway was nightmarish, Jamie was very quick to attribute the stomping to a horrible monster. He pulled his wand from his pocket automatically.
  
  Jamie was terrified, of course - his heart was thumping and he kind of wanted to run out of the hallway. Especially when it started growling at him. He took a step backwards before remembering that he wanted to be heroic - someone who fought dragons, not someone who vaulted away from them! And if he didn't fight the maybe-not-a-dragon-but-certainly-a-monster, who would?
  
  Clearly it was up to him. (Jamie did not think of the hundreds of other, possibly more qualified people, in the castle.)
  
  He took a step forward, waving his wand threateningly just in case the monster had night vision to see him with. He would - Jamie struggled to come up with a spell - he would transfigure it into zucchini! And then eat it. Actually, no, he wouldn't eat it - it would kind of be a monster, and zucchini was a little bit gross and way too squishy. He would get someone else to eat it!
  
  Wait, I can't actually do that yet, Jamie thought. He'd just have to send sparks at the monster and hope that it got turned into a zucchini, because that was about all he could actually accomplish with his wand at the moment.
  
  Jamie was still thinking rather seriously on how to fight a monster when it sneezed. Oh, it's a person! A very rude person, to have convinced him that he or she was a man-eating stomping, growling creature, but a person nonetheless. People were not scary at all - at least, not when compared to the stepmother that he made a villain in his head.
  
  He laughed down the darkened hallway at the not-monster.
  
  "You can't scare me!" Jamie announced smugly when he was done laughing. He puffed out his chest. He was a Gryffindor, he could not be scared off so easily! He had wanted to run away from the monster, yes, but he certainly was not going to point this out to whoever else was in the secret passageway.

  

[Kristoffer Lestrange]

• He cursed himself for sneezing, but it was... so STUPID AND DUSTY! And then he heard the laughter, doubly annoyed. Who thought they could get away with laughing at him? Well, they were no monster, not even scary. Kristoffer was sure he could give the person round the corner a good kick and then be the one to laugh.
  
  You can't scare me! The vaguely familiar but otherwise unidentifiable person said. Kristoffer marched round the corner, his mouth already open to counter with a smirk, "Bet I just did." He was expecting to see the other pupil quaking in his boots despite the bravado in their voice. Kristoffer had perfected his evil growl and monster noises long ago; terrorising his sisters, after all, had always been a favourite pastime.
  
  Squinting in the dim passageway light, he recognised the boy quickly and drew his wand just as rapidly and as threateningly as he could, despite the fact they both had very limited magical skills. Grey, he was in Kris' year. But a Gryffindor. Kristoffer always hated all Gryffindors on principle, but it had not taken long to discover there was plenty more to hate them all for than just principle. Wasn't Grey a muggleborn?
  
  He barked out a laugh, imagining at the very least that he could see an inkling of fear in the other boy's eyes. Kristoffer was not sure he really looked intimidating, but anyone who underestimated him got what they deserved. "I don't care what the stupid old hat said, all you Gryffindors are little scaredy-cats," He countered, grinning, but brandishing his wand all the same.

  

[James Grey]

• Kristoffer Lestrange was a pureblood, and while Jamie wasn't entirely sure what that meant, he thought that it made Lestrange more obnoxious. Either that, or Kristoffer Lestrange was just intolerable, which Jamie had heard one of his roommates (Charlie Cardew, maybe?) complain about. Not that he had ever met the kid before this.
  
  It wasn't going well so far, though, and Jamie stuck his tongue out at his fellow first year.
  
  "Yeah? Well I bet all you Slytherins cry for your mothers all the time," Jamie said, thinking that this was a pretty good insult.
  
  Sorry Becky, he thought. His elder sister was a Slytherin, and the Best Person on the Face of the Planet, but Jamie had nothing to reply with if he did not use house rivalries, and Becky was not there to be offended by his comment. He shoved away his guilt.
  
  Surely his sister would back him up. After all, he had to say something back to Lestrange! If he didn't, the other kid won, and Jamie was a loser and would have admitted that he was a coward, which he wasn't!
  
  "At least we're not Ravenclaws, though, they just think they're better than everyone else," Jamie added, not sure if he wanted to find something they could collaborate on or just say something bad about the twins' house.

  

[Kristoffer Lestrange]

• The problem with brandishing his wand at the boy was that as first years, they hadn't learnt a whole lot of offensive magic yet, and Kristoffer wasn't quite sure what he was even planning on doing. So, Grey's choice of a stuck out tongue ended up being as good an attack as any, and Kris narrowed his eyes at it.
  
  His eyebrows rose a little at the comment about Slytherins crying for their mothers, thinking quite matter-of-factly that that wasn't true at all, or at least, Kristoffer did not especially care. He had never tended to run off to his mother unless there was an opportunity to shout at her to get him something, or to get his sisters in trouble. Otherwise, his mother was useless, really. "Well we'll see who'll be crying first," He answered tetchily, sure that James Grey was as pathetic and weak as those detestable Hufflepuffs.
  
  Rather than brainstorming ways to provoke the Gryffindor into crying, though, Kris was distracted by the boy's next words. Insulting Ravenclaw... as much as he wanted to mock his classmate, there was some truth in that. "You're right, Ravenclaws are nearly as ridiculous as your lot," He agreed, sounding offhand now. Kris didn't respect anyone but Slytherins, and even some of them had only precarious admiration from him, but he'd yet to meet any Ravenclaws quite as loathsome as the Gryffindors. Naturally, Kristoffer hated books and anyone that liked them, but it made the scholarly bunch pretty simple to terrorize.
  
  "And what are you doing down here?" He demanded abruptly, suddenly suspicious. Maybe the boy had been trying to distract him with House-talk and get Kris to go so he could carry on whatever secretive thing he'd been up to - if so, no chance. It took the eleven-year-old a minute or two more to remember why he'd ended up here, himself. And that was because he was still trying to find a way out of this secret passageway, and he'd had no luck. "You're not lost, are you?" He suggested, his tone just a little malicious, hoping the boy was either at as much a disadvantage as he, or that he could find the way out without having to ask for help from a stupid Gryffindor.

  

[James Grey]

• Jamie snorted. "I never cry," he said, which was of course hokum because everyone cried sometimes. Even people who weren't crybabies - and Jamie was certain that he wasn't a crybaby. He also vowed internally that he certainly wasn't going to let Lestrange see him cry. That was just asking for trouble. He would be known as 'that fellow who cried in a tunnel because some Slytherin was a little mean to him' until the end of time, and would end up dropping out before his OWLs to avoid the shame. The idea that he was taking this too seriously did not occur to him.
  
  At least they both disliked Ravenclaws. Jamie nodded fervently at Lestrange's agreement, even if he didn't like Gryffindors being called 'ridiculous.' Gryffindors were great! Obviously. That was why he was one, and why most of his male cousins were, too.
  
  "I'm exploring," he said, straightening proudly because of this accomplishment. Exploring was very noble, at least as far as Jamie was concerned - and now that he was at Hogwarts, he could do it whenever he wanted to! Except he couldn't go in Hogsmeade, or the Forbidden Forest.
  
  Well, he could visit Hogsmeade once he was a third year. And the Forest? Maybe someday he'd risk it, when he knew more magic and could destroy the monsters in more than just his thoughts.
  
  "Why? Are you lost?" Jamie asked with a grin. Oh, he hoped that Lestrange was! That would be funny, especially since Jamie technically knew the way out of the tunnel. Probably.
  
  He was pretty certain he had just walked in a straight line, at least. It wouldn't be that hard. And since exploring lent itself so often to getting lost, Jamie was unconcerned.

  

[Kristoffer Lestrange]

• He only raised his eyebrows at the claim that James Grey didn't ever cry. Kristoffer never cried (the angry moisture that occasionally leaked from his eyes when his face transformed into a giant red quaffle when things had not gone his way didn't count) but most people were weak.
  
  His eyes narrowed once again at the sound of 'exploring'. "How very... Gryffindor of you." He voiced this as an insult, for lack of any creativity at all. "And you thought you'd found a great big monster," He fell about laughing.
  
  He wasn't pleased when Grey sprung his own question back on him. Lost? "Of course not," Kristoffer sneered, forcing a similar grin onto his face to compete with Grey's stupid expression. He was a brilliant liar, this much was obvious. "Which way did you come from?" The eleven-year-old added rapidly, and it was perfectly clear that he was only vaguely curious, not that he had an overwhelming need to find out where another exit was to this neverending passageway before he got trapped for good and inhaled too much dust and died.
  
  "Because I saw some bones on my way," Kristoffer covered his anxious tracks - expertly, obviously - with something he could boast about, complete lie that it was. How was that for exploring?
  
  He didn't want to loiter with this mudblood, but he didn't want to wander off and get forever lost, either. So, he took a few sauntering steps forward, making like he was ready to push past Grey and be on his way. But Kristoffer was not exploring, and he had nowhere to really go.

  

[James Grey]

• "I came in that way," Jamie said, gesturing vaguely behind him with a careless wave of his hand. "Found a door behind the dragon tapestry." After a semester at Hogwarts, Jamie had learned that doors in odd places were not to be unexpected. Nor were patches of wall pretending to be doors, or doors that vanished when they didn't want to be doors, or places that only unlocked when you said something specific. And sometimes the staircases took you to places you didn't particularly want to go, but that wasn't supposed to be worrying, either.
  
  At first this had all scared him, but he really did like the magical world. And it was much easier to explore here than it was at Mrs. Charity Chaucer's house.
  
  He moved to the side of the tunnel; if Lestrange wanted to wander off, Jamie believed that he could do just that. Jamie mostly just didn't want to get shoved or pushed or elbowed or anything violent.
  
  "What sort of bones?" he couldn't help but ask. He hoped that they were the exciting sort, and not just... gross. It was a shame, Jamie thought, that he probably would not be able to get Lestrange to lead him there.

  

[Kristoffer Lestrange]

• Kristoffer concealed his sigh of relief that he now had a potential way out. Because he certainly didn't remember coming in via a dragon tapestry. As long as that exit was still there when Kris went looking for it. (What if the moron was trying to trick him? He wondered, clenching the fist that was not already locked around his wand. He'd regret it if he was.)
  
  The Gryffindummy moved out of the way - just as well, Kristoffer had already made to barge off - but the question stopped him his tracks. He turned towards Grey again, a grin on his face, despite the fact the bones had been a lie. "Big ones," He commented, grin growing more ferocious by the second. "Maybe even dragon bones," He added, the idea only occurring because Grey had mentioned a dragon tapestry. Kristoffer then considered the plausibility of such a claim - they were in a small passageway in the castle, would a dragon really fit in here?
  
  Before James could shatter his statement, he continued dismissively, "Well, maybe not that big. They might've been human. I bet they're the other students that have gotten lost in here and then been eaten." Kris' eyes had narrowed in that delight that can only be obtained through trying to scare people. He offered a gulp to add to the effect; thinking that it was good he knew they're weren't any bones around. At least, he didn't think so...

  

[James Grey]

Dragons! Jaime loved nothing as much as he loved dragons, and would have been quite happy to tear off down the hallway right then. Unfortunately, that would have been dreadfully rude - and even though he didn't really like Kristoffer Lestrange, he couldn't very well break the rules of politeness. Especially not when he was turning his back on someone in a very dark secret passageway! What if Kristoffer decided to murder him? They'd never find his body in here, and Becky would probably cry.

Jamie decided almost immediately after these thoughts occurred to him that Lestrange probably wasn't a murderer, even if he was sort of annoying.

"Well," he said, "If I get eaten by a monster, you should tell people where I went. I don't want my sister thinking I've gone and run away."

He almost hoped there were monsters. He was certain that he could fight them off if there were, and if he did he'd probably get an automatic O in all of his classes for killing something that had been eating students.

If there's something eating students, Jaime thought, wouldn't they have noticed?

Regardless of that, he moved to head down the hallway. Worst case scenario, he found nothing, and would just have to go ahead and get revenge on Kristoffer at some point in the future.

  

[Kristoffer Lestrange]

• "One less Gryffindor in the school, I shouldn't think anyone much would care." Kristoffer countered smugly, for it was the truth. (Wasn't the Grey girl in Slytherin, for starters?) And if a mudblood Gryffindor got killed, no one ought to care. If a Lestrange did - well - that'd be another matter.
  
  But Kristoffer wasn't going to get killed, because unlike the idiot across from him, he wasn't going to stick around and wander deeper into this stupid passageway. Stupid Gryffindors and their stupid ideas about being heroes. Hiding in passageways wasn't the way to go about that.
  
  He pushed roughly past James, marching away in the direction he'd been told was the exit. An exit. Finally.
  
  Kristoffer was getting out.