Civilised Debate PV Avery Leveret Closed

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• A GAME OF INCHES •

“Malice seeks not, hollow spirit.”

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13th Jan | Great Hall
Avery's Hex #136b5c

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	----- Avery had been enjoying a modest breakfast as he usually did, it was no lavish feast that he had experienced at many a to-do, but it was enough to satisfy. The house elves would have been hard at work for hours preparing all this food, but that wasn't even a thought that had crossed his mind as bit into a slice of brown bread toast, coated in a thin layer of marmalade spread. Rituals were his reverence, always. Even when it was this early on a Saturday morning, he was up and ready, and in the great hall in time for the first serving of breakfast. Things were going terribly already. Typically he’d be reading the daily prophet, but the owls hadn’t yet delivered them and so the latest rendition of the amateurish Hogwarts Headliner would have to suffice. Typically he would be having strawberry jam on toast, but they were seemingly out. Typically, Avery would be sat in the same place as he always was, but he was not, after finding a coterie of upperclassmen where he preferred to sit. It was an unjustified irritation, but one he felt all the same as he disdainfully munched on breakfast. The buzz and life of the hall was the attribute he liked least. There was always someone talking about homework, or someone else talking about the love of their life, or other phatic bullshit that he simply couldn’t stomach but what stupefied him was something different entirely. Mid-munch, his ears pricked at the sound of someone on the bench and table behind him fumbled a faux pas with their proximate associates, and it would have been ignored with the rest of the drivel if not for the speaker’s direct reference to Avery’s home, to Avery’s own blood. By now Avery had come to reign in the instinctive desire to atomize any trace of the offender and their bloodline, whilst it was still ever-present, it was not immediately acted upon. This level of insolence prompted something though, as the rise up his spine had demanded. Avery dropped his toast to the plate, brushed the crumbs from the corners of his mouth and dusted his hands free of them. In a suave motion, he had swivelled on his bench to look at the offender directly. He was unphased that it was an upperclassman, not least because of the tones that carried the words but simply the way that he’d spoken them had warned him enough. His cheeks smacked his teeth as he wound up to speak, likely announcing his presence to the chump, as he picked the last remnants of bread from his teeth, beginning to formulate a line of attack. “Hah, he admonishes us about supposed inbreeding, but in the next breath fancies a feast of faeces.” He chided, cocking his head to watch Nicholas. “I knew half-bloods and muggleborns could be as thick-skulled and dim-witted as necessary to believe such salacious lies, but this beggars belief. - What is it, then? Head injury or you were just born this way? No doubt a debt your muggle mother is still repaying to your father, or whatever way ‘round it is.” Avery finished, looking to challenge the boy on the topic of blood. One punch from the upperclassman would likely do him in, but Avery was relying on his smaller frame and the clear age gap between the two, to use as a vice; to pry open the chinks in Nic’s beliefs, to lay them bare before him and ridicule them without fear. wc: 601
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Interacting with @Nicholas McCowan

Another cup of coffee, that was what Nicholas needed. Perhaps developing a caffeine addiction before his fifteenth birthday wasn’t the wisest move, but he’d not been sorted into the house of Rowena. Besides, he was dating a Ravenclaw with the intelligence of a particularly crafty raccoon, it wasn’t as if Hogwarts was particularly well-stocked in that department. So it was that his focus was on pouring that second cup when he heard the irritating sound of the clicking of teeth, an announcement by the ever too-important that they needed to be listened to. The details as to who such a person may have been did not come to Nicholas immediately. He wasn’t aware of any issues he may have had with the prefects, and it was far too early for him to be harangued by some student or another.

Still, his ears perked as words that, whilst not aimed at him, were obviously meant for him were spoken. Words that swiftly discarded any facade of being idle conversation and launched into an attack against Nicholas’s person. It was the kind of rhetoric that would have made his blood boil… Had it been tempered in a way that did not make it all so obvious what the boy’s own thoughts were.

And he was a boy. Small and skinny, almost certainly a couple of years Nicholas’s junior. Ironically, their base appearances were utterly similar, lanky, pale-skinned, dark-haired, and angular. Yet, Nicholas had two years of development on the interloper, and those two years had been spent on the broom racing course.

Sharp eyes turned from the cup of coffee and to the boy, scanning him up and down as a greyhound would a particularly nimble rabbit. Arrogance seeped off of the younger student like a miasma.

It would be easy to simply talk with his fists. To lay him out and return to his breakfast, but part of him felt that would be giving him the easy victory. He was not Hugh Lowe. Dealing with this sort was a game, one that he would need to play.

“Mother,” Nicholas answered, a false smile upon his face, as he turned his body to face the boy, “Muggleborn, I should say. You can use that information for free, if you’d like.”

Nicholas drummed his free hand idly as he continued to speak, “And no lie about the inbreeding, lad. Spend thirty seconds walking the halls of Hogwarts and you’ll realise half the thin-blooded, purist pricks here are engaged to a cousin. Why, I daresay there’s proof enough of inbreeding before us. Look at yourself, mate, no doubt your genetic illness is due to your mam fuckin’ her brother, no? I do hope they find a cure, terrible thing watching a little bugger like yourself waste away…”

He feigned a sigh, “Ya even got that classic pureblood jaw. Such a shame.”

@Avery Leveret

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• A GAME OF INCHES •

“Malice seeks not, hollow spirit.”

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13th Jan | Great Hall
Avery's Hex #136b5c

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	----- Avery couldn't help but size up Nich completely, and in a second he'd completed his estimation. Nich wasn't someone who Avery would ever mesh well with, even if his unruly tongue had not spewed the insults he had. Covers were important features of books, and nobody spoke about how almost everybody judged a book by its cover when they were deciding which to purchase; not completely, of course, but it was an important part of the process. Nicholas was a meat-head, and by his own admission he was a muggleborn meathead. In the hierarchy of Wizarding Society, Muggleborn were the bottomfeeders, the scavengers clutching at the coattails of real wizarding successes. Whilst Nicholas was larger than he, and could undoubtedly roll Avery out into a pancake, there was a reservation in his eyes. He wanted to toe-to-toe on an even field and Avery could at least respect that, up until the dolt opened his coffee stained maw. "Thin-blooded? You who happened upon magic. - A happy little accident to the world; the most exceptional thing to happen to the generations of cave-dwellers before you, an accident. Please." Avery mused, the thought having humoured him as he swallowed the last crumbs of toast. "You speak of our vaunted privilege? Odd considering that your very presence here is an insult to the hundreds of exceptional, trueblooded, wixen that studied here. If there was any sense in these walls, the lot of you would vanish, or fall prey to the Chamber of Secrets. - Perhaps then we’d have a return to some semblance of accomplishment and acclaim within the student body. - What is it you do anyway? Not seen you on the duelling circuit, can I assume your pig-head finds itself bashing other brutes on the pitch? Too many bludgers to the head? - That might explain the drooling gurn and deep-set desire to have your head dash your own skull against the flagstones.” The viper bit back, acerbic and venomous. The implied culling was a bit too far, he thought, but Nichalos had crossed the line first. What happened next was likely deserved, but it didn’t mean that he was going to roll over on his belly and take it. Avery reached up to scratch his chin with his left hand, using the motion to discreetly push the hilt of his wand a centimetre from his hidden sleeve-sheathe. He wasn’t going to move first, but he would sure be ready for if the lumbering ogre decided that’s how he wanted things to go; all the while Avery played on Nic’s own quips to cover for his sneaky preparation. Nothing more interesting seemed to be coming from this interaction, and a part of Avery just wanted the bastard to bite the bait. "I'm trying so hard to pity your mother, all things considered--" He said, finding a softer tone; coiling. "- but if she's anything like you then it's hard to imagine her doing anything other than grunting and being amazed by fire. Is it not humane to let you all be with your own kind?" He said, drawing similarities between muggles, muggleborns and animals. wc: 538
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Interacting with @Nicholas McCowan

Nicholas was tall, Nicholas was broad, and Nicholas spoke like a ruffian from the wrong side of Belfast. But Nicholas was not stupid, not inherently. His grades had slipped, but that had been more due to delinquency and teenage rebellion than any sort of proper lack of intelligence. He understood that this skinny English git was baiting him, intellectually he knew that the words being cast his way were an attempt to draw him to respond, to make a foolish mistake and to open himself up to being the aggressor. The simple fact of the matter was Nicholas did not care. But he stayed his hand for the moment.

“Lots of pretty words there, mate, but brevity is the soul of wit,” Nicholas responded, his smile widening into one that was positively wolfish, “And just ‘cos your grandpappy fucked his daughter then raised the bastard using dictionaries, don’t mean you’re any better than me.”

The flash of the wand was clearly another attempt to bait, another attempt to escalate the situation, to prove his point that those that this little git thought were of lesser breeding were prone to violence. Would Nicholas really allow himself to fall for such an obvious trap?

He was more than tempted to leave the bugger be, to deny him the satisfaction of drawing out any further response. But he just had to go and mention Nicholas’s mother, didn’t he? Of course, Nicholas had brought up the younger boy’s family first, but that had been justified.

Rolling his neck, Nicholas did not bother with flashing wands when it came to making it clear that he was ready to fight. Could he draw it? Yes, almost certainly. But why bother? His hands could be around this shit’s arms before he knew what hit him.

“You know, my mother raised me to be polite to the less fortunate, so I’ll give you a chance to apologise, simple as. You won’t even need to kiss any rings.”

@Avery Leveret

· · ─▪───────────── ·· ─────────────▪─ · ·

• A GAME OF INCHES •

“Malice seeks not, hollow spirit.”

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13th Jan | Great Hall
Avery's Hex #136b5c

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	----- 𝕻urchase. Just like that, Avery had laid the bait and this furry baboon had landed in the quicksand. For a moment, Avery thought he could see the limited intelligence behind Nicholas's eyes weighing his options; erring on the side of wisdom, especially for an upperclassman. It would have landed him in a terrible position if that was the tack Nich was going to take, but now, now he'd been gifted with the option to go in many directions. Now, Nicholas looked exactly as Avery was asserting; and he looked ten times more foolish because he was allowing an ickle second year to rile him so. "She did, did she? All on her lonesome whilst dad- what's it your lot say..." Avery hummed in thought. "Ah- went out to get milk!" Avery chuckled to himself them, openly goading and taunting him further. This was all part of it too, he had used his laughter to buy a moment to turn and face Nicholas fully; though there was still a whole aisle between them. His eyes calculated that he'd have a moment or two before the brute could make it to him; enough to draw his wand and cast if he was quick enough. "Go on then. I'll say it in fewer words if you like?" He challenged. "Or what?" wc: 238
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Interacting with @Nicholas McCowan

The tension left Nicholas’s shoulders, as any hesitation faded from his mind. Words, it seemed would do little to teach the little git a lesson. He could see the joy behind the second year’s eyes, he could see the satisfaction in which his deluded self thought that he was winning the confrontation. No doubt striking out would only confirm that thought in the child’s mind, but that hardly mattered did it? He had little reason to care what this little shit thought of him, but he had plenty of reason to derive his own satisfaction by driving his fist into the boy’s teeth.

Nicholas sighed, his posture shifting to that of a particularly relaxed cat, the muscles loosening.

“You know,” He said, “I feel sorry for you. This isn’t your fault, I know how incest fucks with genes and mental capacity.”

Offering a broad grin, he added, a simple response to his question as to what Nicholas was threatening, “But you can’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.”

He lashed out quickly, his hand forming into a fist as he struck outward. A simple jab, its intention to break a nose with a swift strike. Part of him was aware that this would likely see him subject to something in the way of retaliation, but god he just wanted to see the kid bloodied.

@Avery Leveret