Inkwell Catastrophe PV Valencia Deathstout Closed

All throughout his two years at Hogwarts, Gerald had religiously completed homework within the day of it being assigned, begun studying for exams months in advance. Many times he'd scoffed at his classmates, desperately trying to write entire rolls of parchment the night before they were due, thinking to himself that nothing deserving above an A could be produced in such a hurry. Leaving things for last minute was something he quite simply was not capable of. That is, until today.

How it had happened, he did not know. Perhaps it was end of term exhaustion–the fact that he had been cutting down on his sleep hours because of a Potions project–, but the truth is he had forgotten altogether about the History of Magic essay he was meant to hand in the next day. And so there he was, sitting in the Study Room, textbook cracked open before him on chapter twelve: International Warlock Convention of 1289, an impending sense of doom taking over his thoughts.

During the afternoon, he'd found it uncharacteristically hard to focus and, reached four o'clock, he had only just started a second paragraph. His tiredness, in combination with the utter tedium that were international warlock conventions, had slowed his pace–it was the occasional rush of an overwhelming dread for failure that kept him working at intervals. He pictured himself getting back an A grade, and that was enough to make him shudder.

By half past five, he'd managed to fill the parchment. Reading it over, he realized he'd been referring to the Sardinian sorcerers involved in the convention as 'Sardonic sorcerers' consistently throughout the essay. He picked up his quill again, concerns about his mental decline occupying the forefront of his mind. Once every 'sardonic' had been crossed out and corrected, he considered himself content with the end result. Maybe not an O, but a solid E, nonetheless.

Finally done.

So caught up in his own satisfaction, he didn't register the clink of glass against wood or the distant gasp that followed it. It was only when a stream of thick, black ink flooded his parchment that he realized what had happened. In a panic, he attempted to rescue his essay from the table, but in his frenzy, tore it apart instead: one chunk in his hand, the other left pressed to the ink-swamped surface.

Shock gave way to horror, which quickly morphed into rage. Sheer, primal rage. Still clutching half a parchment in his left hand, he slowly raised his eyes to meet the sorry soul responsible for this catastrophe.

@Valencia Deathstout