Potions Championship II Unscheduled Visit to the ICU PV Hanya Closed

threading as Johannes Sauer
speaking in english (!!) unless specified

Hogwarts probably hadn't seen such an unbalanced scoreboard since Durmstrang's last summer games. 9-0 in the span of an hour, and still they weren't finished. Did all of Greta's RNG luck get funnelled through an eyedropper, or did her bracelet somehow seek to punish her inconsistent English skills? Johannes had startled the first few times at the authoritative Swedish, but Greta’s battle with her magical grammar checker had proved less troublesome and more educational as time passed. He'd even switched to English himself to facilitate the Immersion™, even in the face of the other's pouty Russian.

On the sidelines of language learning, missing only snacks, Johannes was having a great time monopolising half of every other number in the deck of cards. At least twice in this game alone, he'd managed to fish up a book by sheer luck, much to his utter delight. If Greta regretted teaching him a card game, he didn't blame her. Quick learner though he was, this kind of success was unprecedented considering how often he had looked toward her for rule approval every turn early on. He couldn't even be accused of card manipulation, not when he let Greta shuffle the deck every time.

In such an unintentionally stacked game, Johannes had washed clean his sticky fingers and honestly had very little motivation to cheat an already disadvantaged opponent. He'd even tried to ask for numbers he already had plenty of, if only to maximize Greta's chances of fishing up a more diverse hand to quiz him on. “Is it too late to say that I have a good teacher? Beginner's luck, or something like that.” He drew a seven from the pool, prompted by Greta’s apparent lack of 5s, and leaned back against the cleared workstation. The steam simmering off the unseasoned over-boiled chicken luckily drifted away from the two, but the culinary sin was enough to make Johannes complain for the nth time in three hourglass turns. “What do we even do with the chicken afterwards? We use the water, sure, but who's eating dry, 3-hour chicken…” Hogwarts’ kept animals were the only poor bastards he could think to stomach their fowl creation, though he couldn’t recall any magical creature who preferred chicken meat (let alone pre-cooked poultry).

In some way, for all parties involved, it was better for Greta to be the one switching languages out of sheer frustration. If their positions had been reversed, multilingual eavesdroppers wouldn’t have had such a clean listening experience. Other than plain lying, was it even possible to cheat at Go-Fish? (A/N: Apparently yes, but Johannes' foulplay hasn't unlocked 'card counting' yet.) Before evidence proved otherwise, Johannes-of-an-hour-ago had been convinced that the game required a special deck as Uno did. This opened up a new world of possibilities— Namely, there was potential to teach the Quidditch team how to play Bullshit. It would be entertaining as hell, even if he doubted the quality of their poker faces. Johannes himself had perfected the artistic persona of “unpredictable, unreliable little shit”, so it would just be funnier to watch the game devolve into hardcore competitiveness (as most of the games Durmstrang played did).

Luckily for Greta, it seemed that Johannes' streak of luck was starting to run dry. Honestly, his hand was... kind of jackshit, both in size and content. For the past 5 minutes, he'd been drawing a disproportionate number of face cards and not enough ordered numbers. He'd just gotten fortunate early on. “I've got two sevens, actually. Do you have an ace?” Unless Greta had all three aces (doubtful, considering she only had two cards), he was a little screwed. The dwindling ocean of fishable cards was not looking merciful. He handed over his 7s, glancing briefly at the finishing hourglass.

“Honestly, I came for the potion-work, not the ball. Other than Durmstrang’s attendance, there’s not really much else for me at Hogwarts.” He hadn't even brought a suit this time, let alone a themed outfit to singe on danger's licking flames. “But you seem excited. Have you gotten an outfit ready, or will the cabins become a fashion wasteland again?” He teased Greta readily, ever-reminded of Crystallofolia's pre-Mistletoe state, and sat upright once more with his cards kept close. “Let's do it this way before the time runs out... All or nothing?”