all eyes on me | mavis

"Je -Christ!" The sound of half-finished words came involuntarily from somewhere deep in Patrick's chest. He stumbled down the step that apparently had simply crumbled under the pure weight of him. Or something like that, he deduced. Towns let the silence of night (plus a distant god-awful snore) wash over before taking another careful step toward the common room, glancing accusatorily over his shoulder at the stone that had nearly ended him then and there.

To his dismay the steps looked perfectly in tact. Meaning, he only had himself to blame.

Towns sauntered into the dimly lit room with a confidence someone under his recent circumstance ought not to be allowed. The only movement aside from his tiptoeing was the timid flicker of a fire that had burned out; he was in the clear. And for that particular mission on that Thursday night, anonymity would be key.

It was part of a larger scheme, as usual. A long term, slow burn prank-- his specialty. Ever since second year (but, who was counting?), Towns had made it his mission to satiate the deeply personal vendetta he held against all things quidditch. Unfortunately for his peers, that meant that the Gryffindor team took the brunt of his pettiness. He couldn't remember how long he had been intermittently been forging Quidditch announcements but if he math was right (it was) it had been nearly the whole term.

"Aha..." He glanced over his shoulder before running his hand over the parchment, then his wand. It glistened an impossibly deep, dark green. A similar enchantment asthe last time Mavis had attempted to keep her mystery vandal at bay. He clicked his tongue appreciatively at work. Unfortunately for her. he'd spotted her in the library studying a particular genre of alarm spells. It didn't take a bloody Auror to find out what book she'd rented and thus work through the process of elimination, he thought smugly.

Just as he was about to reverse the spell, he heard a voice.

"Oi!" Mavis whisper-shouted from across the Gryffindor common room as she spotted him. "Of course it was you!" The whispering part of her volume was starting to wear thin, but Mavis tried to remember the time despite how angry she was. "Patrick Townsend, how dare you?" She'd spent months trying to put together little pick-up games for the Gryffindor's, and for months she'd sat alone in the pitch at the designated time thinking no one liked her. Mavis wasn't the easiest person to get along with, but she wasn't unlikeable. Not like Patrick Townsend, anyway; it wasn't as if she was hellbent on losing house points and sabotaging Gryffindor or anything.

After she'd wallowed in a moderate dose of self-pity, Mavis realized there must have been something else at play. When she'd seen the time and date misrepresented on the first time, Mavis had blamed herself. When it happened a second time, she'd grown suspicious. By the third, she taught herself new magic to keep whoever was messing with the board from ruining her plans. — Or, so Mavis had thought.

Mavis stomped across the room and snatched the paper he'd just enchanted from the bulletin board. She had half a mind to roll it up and smack him with it but instead, she looked at what he'd changed the message to read. "Why would you do this?" She asked, turning her eyes up to glare at him.

"Evening, Mavis," Patrick stuffed his wand into his front jeans pocket as he whipped around to face her, his back pressed firmly to the wall to hide his handiwork. "You're up late," He commented casually with a flicker of a grin that he hoped came across at least a fraction of innocent. She asked why he would do it and for a moment he felt a pang of guilt. He quickly recovered as she reached to pull the parchment from the wall.

He was disappointed to see that he'd only gotten about half-way through the job.

"Shh," Towns cooed. He didn't need the time, he was quick enough on his toes when it came to storytelling, however he was genuinely concerned that they might get caught after hours and he, for one, couldn't afford to lose his house anymore points. "Keep your voice don't, would ya?" Of course she wouldn't. She couldn't. Mavis was notoriously bloody loud. But he meant it good-naturedly, and his grin said as much.

"I was actually trying to fix it," He explained with a dramatic shake of his head. "Think someone's got it out for your quidditch team..." Obviously.

Narrowing her eyes at the older wizard, Mavis wondered if she shouted loud enough if Killian would check on the common room. And some vindictive hurt part of her itched to be louder. She hoped her boyfriend would rescue her and punish Towns for being an awful individual. But the mighty Gryffindor, you witch full of girl-power, took a steady breath and reminded herself that Patrick Townsend would be in need of rescuing.

"Why should I believe you?" she asked sternly and felt her ears getting warmer as he continued to lie (she assumed). "Yeah, maybe someone who never made it onto the roster?" Mavis didn't know if Towns had ever tried out for the Gryffindor team, but in the five years she'd been at Hogwarts, she'd never seen him on the pitch.

Remembering the things she did know about the wizard, Mavis brought up the house points he'd lost recently. "Maybe someone who wouldn't know what Team Work was if it hit him in the face?" Mavis had no plans to hit him, she was loud, but she wasn't savage -- unless the tickets for 3Spelled were about to go on sale, then it was every witch for herself.