Pixie Perfect PV George Henry Finished

George's summoning to solve the pixie problem was not done to punish him, but rather as a sort of reward. He had always made a point to build a good relationship with the professors of subjects he actually liked. Although he had originally been a bit cold to professor Fresnel, he soon warmed up to her for her enthusiastic style, even if there were still times that he missed the old professor. This pixie problem did wonders to sway his opinion toward Fresnel, however. Never before had he been given the responsibility to clear up a problem like this, and he was eager to demonstrate his prowess to the professor and hopefully bond with whichever first year had been assigned to him.

Finnegan's sour expression was immediately mirrored by George when the young Gryffindor rounded the corner. She had to have known. There was no way Finnegan and George had been brought together by chance. The little twerp must have been mouthing off, complained about George, and the professor decided to make his detention into a bit of mischievous fun. In all reality, the older boy was quite pleased to see that the younger student was still alive. His brow knit into a concerned furrow as he studied the little lion - he still looked horribly tired.

Of course, all that concern vanished at Finnegan's words. "It looks horrid." It was like a wall of ice had sprung up between them now, and all of the brotherly concern that George had for his fellow student was replaced with contempt. "I like it," George said, trying to hide the hurt in his voice. He folded his arms over his chest, looking down at Finnegan. "I look horrid? Have you been around any mirrors lately?"

He turned up his nose at the little gremlin of a boy, turning to face the double doors and pulling his own wand out from within his robes. This would be interesting. Could the sleep deprived first year fend for himself against a gaggle of pesky pixies? "In you go," George said, holding the door open and shoving Finnegan inside, following close after and slamming the door shut behind them. The shrill sound of pixies was buzzing in the air in there, sounding like a horde of angry budgie birds.

"They aren't dangerous," George insisted, as he tugged Finnegan's sleeve to move him out of the path of one of the dive-bombing blue buggers. He let go of the other boy after ensuring he was not about to fall over on him, stepping back and swatting at one that was hovering around him - doing his best to draw their attention. He kept his wand held tight in his hand, deftly side-stepping the ones that came down to tug on his pink locks. He had no intention of helping until the situation was truly desperate. "Just be glad it ain't clapjaws!"

And, of course, in case the boy had any second thoughts...

"Colloportus," George said, pointing his wand at the double doors, which latched locked and shut. He looked down to Finnegan with a manic grin. The boy was truly insane. "Go on, show us how it's done, Finny!"

Like cattle brought to slaughter George pushed him inside the Trophy Room. After the boy's incantation a loud clicking sound near the heavy oak doors betrayed that he had locked them both inside.

Finn turned on his heel, his thin little brows furrowed into a rage, ready to pounce on the teenager and beat some sense into him. "What are you doing you stupid gi-"

His squeaky little voice was cut off by the shrill chattering of blue-skinned pixies above them, their creepy grins revealing rows of sharp, pointy teeth. The first one dove towards him with a crazy, high-pitched chuckle, reached for his ear and pulled hard at it. "Ow! Let go! Let. Go!"

For a fist sized creature the pixie possessed remarkable strength and was using all of it to rip Finn's ear right off his head. Somewhere during his blind swatting he hit the pixie and knocked it into a tailspin towards the ground. "Not dangerous? It tried to rip my bloody ear off!"

Before he could even flick his wand to try and deal with the situation, a distant clammer made him stop and turn. There, all the way over at the back wall of the room, Finn spotted a little blue cloud, pushing against a glass encasement that contained some kind of tiara. "Oh no...'

No sooner then he'd uttereted the prophetic words, the glass encasement toppled and fell to the ground with a horrible noise. Worse yet, it seemed the cloud of blue pixies had noticed them and were now fast coming their way, arming themselves with anything they could get their greedy little hands on. "There's a whole swarm of them, do something!' Finn cried out.

The first thing to be flung at George was a silver goblet that missed him by inches, but the second projectile was already underway and in a second or two George would either be hit in the face by the 1894 Quidditch Cup or a heavy golden necklace beset with colorful stones.

Finn wasn't spared the attention from what had to be a hive of at least two dozen pixies. Four excited pixies were preparing to fling a silver platter at his head while another three or more closed in on his hair and the sleeves of his gray school sweater. As he whipped out his wand he could only be glad that none of the blue devils had yet thought about strangling him with his Gryffindor tie.

While he knew a few spells but he had no illusions about dealing with this many pixies all at once. And not even all of them had come yet, almost half seemed more interested in toppling every single pedestal in the room. They were going to die. Both of them. Slain by a beehive of very not-dangerous eight inch tall pixies.

"DO SOMETHING YOU BLITHERING IDIOT!" Finnegan roared.

George's impish grin turned into a grimace as he saw the exact quantity of pixies they were expected to deal with. Perhaps Professor Fresnel had underestimated the problem, or they had simply been multiplying in the time before the duo arrived. In either case, this was a number of pixies that bordered on unmanageable. Of course, they were only pixies... but he had no doubt that it would take perhaps four pixies to overpower Finnegan, and that meant eight for him. A troublesome quantity indeed.

"Oh dear," George said, understating his worry. He didn't think ferula would cut it if the pixies ripped off Finnegan's ears, although the asymmetry would be well deserved after the comment on George's pink hair. The poor boy was panicking, and George did not have the presence of mind to coldly enjoy his suffering, instead joining him in panic. "Hold on!"

He raised his wand to point at the pixies surrounding Finnegan, not noticing the glass case that was approaching its doom. "ImmobuOAAAAH!!" George screamed, jumping away from the shattered glass as the tiara was left inelegantly scattered among the glittering shards. The interrupted incantation had no effect, leaving the fully mobile pixies free to fling baubles into the boy's face.

"I've never seen this many pixies in my entire life!" George said. He was somehow marveling at the quantity of pixies even as they were actively trying to tear apart him and his 'friend'. Of course, the beauty of nature was interrupted by its brutality. George grunted and reached up to clutch his nose as a Quidditch award bounced off of his face and clattered to the floor. The two pixies who had cooperated to toss it high-fived in a display of solidarity which far outclassed anything the wizards had done.

It seemed that Finnegan was the victim for the moment, considering he was coping with about seven pixies, while George could only feel two that were gripping his bright pink hair and attempting to ride him around like a horse. Well, one was doing that. The other was slapping him on the face repeatedly as it flew back and forth, making it very difficult for him to focus on incantations. "I'M- GOING- TO- DO- SOMETHING!"

Despite the rude comment on his hair color, he guessed he did not want the smaller boy getting hurt under his watch. Steeling himself, he timed his strike on the next slap, grabbing the pixie and pitching it hard at the wall where the tiara case had stood, leaving it stunned there before he moved on to his specialty - wand work.

"RELASHIO!" George said, sweeping his wand around Finnegan. Lately, George had unlocked a peculiar talent for broadening his spells, which came in handy when one found themselves trapped in a room with a dozen pixies. The three pixies that were trying to tear apart Finnegan's hair and sweater found they lost their grip as the spell took effect. That did not stop the platter flying straight toward Finnegan - although it did make it significantly easier for the other boy to dodge.

"MOVE!" George shouted, running to try and intercept the platter with his body only to be clotheslined by the return of the pixie he threw at the wall, who gave him a good whomp in the head with the tiara. The Hufflepuff lost his balance nad fel backward, landing on his back with a grunt. "Ow..."

Hold on? The only things that were holding on were pixies!

In a staggering display of incompetence, George failed to even incant his spell. While he had the wits to jump away, he seemed woefully unaware just how dire their situation was. "STOP GAWKING START ACTIN- AH!" One of the pixies yanked his robes so hard that he tripped over his own feet and barely managed to keep upright.

Except...

Oh no.

A sudden feeling of weightlessness overcame him. The combined strength of seven pixies was more than enough to lift him off the ground by his robes. Cackling like hags, the pixies moved him toward a tall trophy cabinet intending on depositing him on top of it. Four of them had grabbed him by the shoulders, two on each side, while three others grabbed little fistsful of his hair and one of them started to tie a knot in it.

He could hardly hear George's incantation over the sound of his own screams, but he could hear the bang that accompanied it. A flash later he dropped a feet before he was caught in an uneasy hover. The hair-pulling pixies had been blasted aside and though he wasn't heavy, he could tell by their shrill yelps that the remaining pixies were struggling.

"Get off!" Finnegan exclaimed, blindly swatting at his right shoulder. "I'm going to boil you alive, I'm going to crush you into a paste, I'm going to-"

Whatever else he was going to do was rudely interrupted by a platter flying at his face like a frisbee. George attempted a heroic dive to save him but was yanked backward before he could take the proverbial bullet. Finnegan ducked just in time to hear the silverware strike the stone wall behind him. His sudden movement proved to be the rug pull that was needed for the screeching pixies to finally drop him.

He fell almost twice his own height, landed with a crack of his knees on the stone floor and scrambled to his feet, wincing. At once he flourished his wand at one of the four remaining pixies. "Verdimillious!"

A small jet of green sparks shot out of his wand and for a split second, Finnegan was rather disappointed at the results. A firecracker was more exciting. But what his spell lacked in raw power, it made up for in accuracy. The pixie was struck in the chest by the sparks and sent sailing through the air until it knocked against a wall and fell unconscious.

With George flailing like a beetle that had been flipepd onto its back the roles were suddenly reversed. The very same pixie that had downed George now jumped onto his face and grabbed his nose with a devilish grin.

Finnegan grit his teeth at the lancinating pain in his knees. "Hold still, I'll get it!" Without thinking he made the candle-like movement that he'd practiced a dozen times over took aim. "Incendio!"

Professor Irons would've found his wild wand-waving barely acceptable, but it got the job done, and how! The nose-grabbing pixie was struck clean off like a baseball being hit with a perfect swing. It caught on fire mid-air and had turned to ash by the time it started to descent.

Finnegan, leapt forward and offered a hand to help pull George back up to his feet. "I can't believe you hit three of them," he said breathlessly, sounding mightily impressed. There was no time for further compliments. The remaining pixies, including the swarm that had so far preoccupied itself with the utter destruction of the trophy room now all set their beedy little eyes on the boys. Like a swarm of angry bees they surrounded them on all sides, brandishing trinkets and bits of broken glass and wood. Pressing his back against George's, Finnegan tried to pick a target for his next spell, but there were just too many of them...

"Right about now would be a good time for a grand spell..."

Spells

George watched from the floor, still recovering from the hard blow to his back from hitting the ground. He shifted his grip on his wand, crawling backward to avoid any more falling silverware that might ricochet and strike him. An impressive cast of green sparks by the young student was near blinding for George to stare at, but watching the pixie fly to its untimely wall-smacking was more than enough reward. Hopefully professor Fresnel didn't want them all back in mint condition.

George's enjoyment was ruined by a follow-up attack from his tormentor, a little blue demon descending to him to start grabbing and pulling at his nose with its horrible claws. He had nearly reached up to grab it, but froze despite the pain when he heard that infernal incantation. Incendio was a flame-making spell, but the utterance of the incantation was enough to make George's blood run cold. This bloody idiot did not take anything George had said about fire safety into consideration.

Rage numbed the pain until it was exchanged with shock as the pixie flew off of his nose and burned up like a piece of burning paper. George was petrified - the scent of smoke and the feeling of heat so close to his face was something he hadn't dealt with in a long while. It was if Finnegan had transfigured his eyes to glass balls, staring vacantly up where the pixie had been, where there was now only a dissipating puff of smoke.

He blinked and brought his gaze to Finnegan's hand as it reached out to him, George's hand swinging out to meet it and pull himself upright with the assistance of the little lion. "Th- thank you," he said, at least maintaining good manners in his shocked state of half-awareness. His feet could barely keep themselves on the floor as he paced in half-steps after Finnegan, bumping his back into the other boy's. And then, the suggestion of a grand spell. "O-oh, uh..."

George couldn't resist glancing back at the ashes of the pixie that had been on his face only a second ago. His hand flew up to his face, making sure his eyebrows were still present (and pink). Still, he couldn't think of anything. Not a single spell camp to mind, even as the pixies began closing in with more fancy silver trinkets. Compensating for his lack of magic, he reached back with his free hand, trying to get between Finnegan and his assailants. "Uhh-uh..."

His brain was caught on the wrong track, and he had to force it off. These were just pixies. Nobody was going to get hurt this time. Not if he could help it. With confidence, he raised his wand for another sweeping cast, like he was trying to catch them in a net. "Descendo!" It was the first spell he thought of that could bring them down, and despite his poor focus, it seemed to have worked. Three of the pixies were caught, all three of them being sent down to the ground as if George had hit them over the top with a tennis racket. Well - better instincts this time.

"Aaaargh!" Unfortunately, George's choice to get close to Finn and focus on only half of the swarm left them vulnerable to a surprise attack from above. One clever pixie had fluttered above the two and came down in a swooping attack. A clawed little hand grabbed a fistful of pink hair and tugged it down toward Finnegan, where the creature of mischief grabbed a fistful of Finnegan's and united them in an uncomfortable knot. "AAH! My hair!"

Well, their cool back-to-back pose looked a lot less strategic when George was bending over backward to keep from ripping out his beautiful pink locks. "ALRIGHT, YOU CAST SOMETHING NOW, IF YOU'RE SUCH A GOOD PIXIE WRANGLER!" he said, pulling his wand up to try and aim at the offending knot. What was he going to do, diffindo? He'd cut off their heads! "Aaah, stop moving so much!"

Beyond briefly thinking that George looked pale, Finnegan was too focused on dealing with the pixies to notice the mechanical stiffness of the badgers' movements. It wasn't until after George had downed three more of the little monsters and Finnegan managed to incinerate another one that the battle turned sharply against them.

He cried out in pain when George, a good head taller than him, tried to move and pulled at fistfuls of his hair. The older boy was already bending over backwards to accommodate him; it took a bit more painful shuffling around until Finnegan realised that their hair had been tied together like shoelaces. The pixie response grinned and chirped devilishly above them, zipping this way and that. "Periculum! AHH! Georg- AHH, stand still-"

The jet of red sparks disoriented a handful of the pixies long enough to keep them from pelting things at them momentarily, but it wouldn't last. Worse, the very thing the red sparks spell had been designed to do - alert others - would not work here because someone had stupidly locked the door.

"Just sit down- agh," Finnegan hissed through gritted teeth, "sink through your knees and-" He winced and tried not to give his blue tormentors the pleasure of seeing him cry while he pressed his back into George's and lowered himself down until they were both sitting. "You cast, I'll untie us," he said hastily.

It was easier said than done. The sprites, having seen some of their kind incinerated or otherwise killed, were not playing around anymore. Everything they could get their hands on was being haphazardly thrown at the boys. Plates, cups, trophies, tapestries pulled from the wall, bits of glass and broken wood, a priceless replica of the very first golden snitch. A fearless one came swooping down through the barrage and sunk his teeth into Finnegan's wand hand before flying out of reach and beating the young lion repeatedly on the side of the head with a candle holder.

George would hardly fare any better while Finnegan's hands worked to untie them. The brunt of the barrage of objects was aimed directly at him, and for every pixie, he knocked out of the air, two more things would come flying his way. Finnegan had barely succeeded in untying them when the remaining pixies regrouped around a large oak cabinet and began rocking it back and forth with the intent of crushing the two young wizards underneath it.

Finnegan, facing away from the cabinet and too dazed and preoccupied with feeling the warm, sticky liquid on one side of his head, overlooked the immediate danger. The pixies chattered excitedly when the cabinet swayed dangerously back and forth. One more push and the entire thing would surely topple and crash down onto the battle-hardened students below.

"I am standing still! Stop- stop moving!" George shouted. Anyone who passed by the trophy room would be truly perplexed by the sound of what was going on inside. He shut his eyes, unable to stop looking up at the fireworks show when their new hairdo was forcing him to limbo backward, eyes pointed to the ceiling. As Finnegan sat down, he tried his best to lower himself down at the same pace, grabbing the wall for stability until he landed on his butt with a grunt. "Alright, alright, okay!"

The smell of smoke from the pixies who had been reduced to ash was still tickling his nose, bringing flashbacks to the heat so close to his face. The air felt cold on his skin, and he felt the urge to do something he'd never, ever done in his life. It was like he was watching the scene through a foot of glass. He was there but somehow distant. The sound of one of the pixies bullying his friend behind him prompted him to reach back over his shoulder and grab on tight to the pixie.

"ENOUGH OF THAT!" George said, throwing it into the upturned tiara case, where it bonked against the metal stand and spun around it a few times before gracefully pirouetting into a sprawl on the floor. Its candle holder flew out of its grip, smashing a window on one of the other display cases before tumbling to the floor as well. There was still the crowd of them, now united in their desire to crush them under a cabinet. Uh oh. That looked sort of lethal. "OH GOD, FINN, MOVE!"

George felt his fingers settle into the grooves on the handle of his wand, clutching it tight in his hand. He wasn't sure Finn could move - he didn't want to try and ruin their chances by tugging on his hair. The pixies had finally pushed the cabinet past its tipping point, letting it go to let gravity to the rest of the work and finish off the irritating pair of wizards.

"Depulso!" he shouted, thrusting his wand upward and sweeping it to the side. Perhaps not the wisest spell for the situation, it still did the trick, sending the cabinet flipping down the length of the trophy room with a series of deafening crashes and smashes. George blinked, amazed that he had actually managed to do that much damage with the banishing charm. In his head, it felt like he knew exactly what he was doing - guided by his intuition and trusting his gut, how could he do any wrong?

George rose to his feat unsteadily, hesitant at first, until he felt his pink locks slip away from Finnegan's own. The tossing of the cabinet had dazed the pixies briefly, but they were fast to regroup, now working on toppling a suit of knight's armor down onto his little lion friend. Before they could get it moving too far, however, George did what he felt the urge to. Something he never thought he would do.

"INCENDIO!" he screamed, sweeping his wand vertically up the suit of armor, wreathing it in flames. The pixies disappeared from sight, replaced with puffs of smoke as the flames faded away. Steam rose from the suit of armor, the room feeling like a sauna, now, after the heat from the blast of flame had dispersed.

George collapsed to his knees, exhausted, his thick robes protecting him from the scattered shards of glass and shrapnel that now littered the trophy room. All of this for pixies? He groaned and fell backward onto his butt, looking back over his shoulder at Finnegan. "Are you alright...?"

Finnegan swayed dangerously on the floor; his wand had slipped from his fingers and lay uselessly beside him. He heard George shout something, but none of the words registered in his mind. It was all just meaningless noise that went in one ear and out the other. He blinked at the sticky red on his hand with which he'd touched his temple.

Blood. His blood. But there wasn't any pain.

George shouted something again. Move? That word sounded familiar, but he had no idea what it meant. He just wished he could lie down for a moment to think about it in peace. That was a good idea. He should tell George he was going to nap for a moment.

A deafening noise tore him from his daze. The shockwave that blasted the cabinet across the room rippled and billowed his robes, but the banging and clattering brought back the pain. A loud, irritating ringing noise drilled into his ears, and he instinctively covered them with his hands to shut it out. The ringing didn't stop.

Bile rose to his throat, and a feeling of creeping dread grew inside him. He desperately didn't want to throw up, did not want to pass out on the floor while his awareness flickered in and out of existence like a dying fire.

And then there was light. Light and warmth, unlike anything he'd ever seen before. For the briefest moment, he was sure the flames inside the armor were a beautiful, roaring blue. He didn't know how or when he got turned around, but he felt relieved to see it was there. Heat washed over him and wrapped around him like a warm blanket.

In an instant, the pixies were reduced to a mere sound. Their irritating little voices perished into a sharp hiss, like a splash of water hitting hot oil. Then they were gone. Ash seeped like sand through the cracks in the armor and piled up at its feet. It was over.

Finnegan stared blankly at George as the Hufflepuff dropped to his knees beside him. He'd never seen George look that tired before. It took him a while to make sense of what George was asking; he saw his lips move and heard the words, but somehow, his mind was slow to translate it into anything meaningful.

"My head's ringing," he said, reaching to touch the side of his head again where he'd been pummeled with the candle holder. "That was very brave." He hardly recognized his own voice.

An odd smile cracked his lips while he teeter-tottered from side to side as though he were trying to rock himself to sleep. He was starting to feel light-headed. Someone must've slipped a drowsiness potion into his orange juice that morning. Aye, that made sense. When he looked back up to George, he smiled again. "Heh. There's two of you."

The last he remembered seeing was George's two, pale faces and pink haircuts sliding diagonally across his field of view before everything turned dark and quiet.

George blinked at Finnegan, the younger boy taking longer than usual to respond to his query. "Finnegan!" he shouted, assuming that he was just not paying attention, distracted by the apocalyptic scene of ash, smoke, and ruined riches they had created in the trophy room. But when the boy called him brave, he knew that something was terribly, terribly wrong. "Finnegan?"

Suddenly, the exhaustion that had accumulated in his legs disappeared, his heart once again racing as he scrambled across the floor to the teetering Finnegan. "Finnegan?!" he shouted, reaching out to grab him by the shoulders just in time to watch him drop out of consciousness, his head falling limp to the side. "Oh my god, Finnegan! Nononono!"

He touched the side of Finnegan's head, feeling the warmth of the blood in the boy's hair. "Oh god- oh, no, no... it's okay, it's okay!" he assured Finnegan, although he was sure that the boy wasn't listening anymore. He glanced down at himself, reaching for his own wand and noticing Finnegan's on the floor. The last thing he needed now was to lose his wand as well as his life. He grabbed the Gryffindor's wand and slipped it into his pocket for safekeeping.

"Ferula," he whispered, pointing his wand to the boy's head and watching as bandages spun out of nowhere and secured themselves tightly to the wound. But that didn't fix anything else, nor did it wake the poor boy up. Was this his fault? He was meant to be the responsible one, taking Finnegan on a day trip to catch pixies. It wasn't supposed to end up like this. "It's okay, you're okay."

With his wand safely stowed next to Finnegan's, George turned the boy over onto his side, trying to find the grip that gave him the most leverage. Wasn't George meant to be the fat one? After that fall onto his back onto shattered glass, it was misery to lift Finnegan up, but obviously it was nothing compared to what the other boy suffered. He slung Finnegan's limp arm up over his shoulders and groaned with effort as he rose to his feet, staggering toward the door and pushing it with his shoulder to make his exit.

But of course, he had locked it, hadn't he. "Whyyy am I so much of an idiot?!" George groaned, thumping his pink-haired head against the indifferent doors. He turned around slowly, careful not to bang Finnegan's dangling head on anything as he leaned back on the wall and struggled to retrieve his wand from his pocket. With great effort, he turned it in his fingers, pointing the wand at the door. "Alohomora."

Another self-made problem solved. He could see a bit of red soaking through his hasty bandage job. He wasn't sure Finnegan could hear him - but maybe he would, and maybe he would forgive him when he woke up, but he suspected not. "I'm so so so sorry Finnegan, I'm so sorry! You'll be okay..."

He kicked his leg up and smacked the door handle with the sole of his shoe, unlatching the door for long enough to push it open with his heel. Turning around to push through with his back, he held Finnegan close to his chest, his weak, tired arms struggling under the weight of his little friend. A few people stopped in the corridor - surprised when the Hufflepuff emerged holding an injured first-year after the sounds they heard from inside the trophy room. There was no point in explaining - George ran off toward the hospital wing, murmuring quiet assurances to Finnegan.