welcome to chimera!

[Jonathon Dawlish]

It was not often Dawlish allowed anyone to catch him in moments of embarrassment or awkwardness and those unfortunate enough to stumble upon them often paid dearly and in blood. He didn't like it, it gave other people a reason to take him less seriously, to laugh at him and absolutely nothing got under his skin quicker. He wasn't often the kind to just let something roll off his back.

Which was why he kept casting bordering on nervous glances at the door of the classroom. He'd snuck in for a smoke and had taken up the almost fidgety habit of stabbing the space between his fingers with a knife in such a deft way it was undoubtedly impressive. A cat that had apparently escaped a common room and shot out from under the desk surprised him and he'd apparently put too much weight into the stab and now his knife was so firmly lodged in the desk it was proving impossible to pull out.

He liked the knife, it was sharp, well-balanced, one of the most expensive things he owned. He was not relinquishing it to a fucking desk. Pulling on the hilt proved fruitless and he was too concerned about destroying it to use any kind of destructive magic. So he took a seat at the desk, trying to think and giving a half-hearted tug every once in a while with all the disappointment of a Camelot hopeful who had not, in the end, been Arthur.

[Ivor Dillonsby]

There were times when the library and the Ravenclaw common room were both unbearable places in which to exist, and it was during times like that in which Ivor just gave up and left. Damocles and Miranda were being impossibly... impossible (it was rare that Ivor couldn't find a word appropriate to the situation, but he'd gone through his dictionaries and thesauruses in various languages and hadn't found anything better than 'impossible' except, perhaps, 'unbelievable'), Grugwyn kept asking him for blood samples, and the library was full of Gryffindors.

Merlin.

So he was on the hunt for a classroom in which he could read without being terribly disturbed by other people. For some reason, so many of them seemed to be occupied, either with couples carrying on shamelessly, people already studying, some girl singing, and other such things that Ivor hardly considered beyond the fact that they were inconveniences to his quest for solitude and quiet, things that were surprisingly difficult to find in a castle as large as Hogwarts.

Normally he would have glanced into the classroom and moved on when he saw that it was occupied, but then again most classrooms weren't occupied like this: a boy with a lit cigarette pulling fruitlessly at a knife stabbed into the desktop. For all his creativity when it came to his subjects of choice, Ivor had trouble imagining how this could have come around. Why, in Merlin's name, would somebody stab a desk? It startled a laugh out of him when the Hufflepuff (identifiable by his loose tie, in direct contrast to Ivor's rather composed appearance) gave up in apparent disappointment and he stopped in the doorway, curious.

"Having difficulties, then?" he asked dryly, hitching at his book bag on his shoulder.

[Jonathon Dawlish]

The very first impulse when Dawlish realized he was being laughed at was to chuck his knife towards the asshole who'd risked it. Of course, this impulse was negated by the fact that his knife was still tangled in the wood. So instead he turned slowly, with all the confidence and menace of someone who know who really had the upper hand in the situation and raised his eyebrows at Ivor, "Only figuring out whether you're a boy or a girl. You're wearing pants, but I don't think I see a single hair on that baby-face."

Dawlish was lucky as far as young men went; if he didn't shave for a month he developed this patchy, bristly peach-fuzz that was highly unattractive but still proof of his manhood. "What the fuck you want?"

[Ivor Dillonsby]

Ivor's amusement faded just about instantly when the Hufflepuff responded. Scowling, he plucked again at the strap on his bag to give himself time while he hunted for something to say. It wasn't often that someone responded so virulently - or accurately; Ivor rarely thought of it, but he hardly ever had to shave - to a relatively harmless comment. Perhaps it had been the laugh.

Regardless of what had set him off, the Hufflepuff certainly looked intimidating enough that Ivor took a step back, although he remained staunchly - and, possibly, stupidly - in the doorway. "I'm just looking for an empty classroom," he said coolly. "And wondering how-- why the hell you've got a knife stuck in a desk. Need help getting it out?"

[Jonathon Dawlish]

"See, I was picturing your face and just got carried away,' he spat even though it didn't make a whole load of sense, considering he didn't even know the other boy's name. It was still laced with promised physical pain. The truth that he'd tried to grievously injure a cat was too petty to voice out loud.

boy forward, "Really like the knife, otherwise I would've blasted the desk. If you can get it out for me, I won't smash your face in." It probably didn't sound like the most alluring of deals, but Jon was used to it working none the less.

[Ivor Dillonsby]

Well, didn't that sound ridiculous. Feeling stupidly safe in the doorway as if the other boy was anchored to the classroom by the knife in the desk, Ivor regained some measure of his usual condescension for the rest of the world, even in the face of the threat of pain. His particular group of friends wasn't really inclined to get involved in anything messy; he didn't really believe that the Hufflepuff would actually hit him, despite the tales of horror he'd heard from other students.

"What an offer," he said sarcastically, stepping forward slightly, although still mostly lingering near the door as if ready to bolt. "I can't imagine it's that difficult to get out. What've you tried, then? Besides brute force, I mean." He couldn't help it. It was in his nature to solve problems that other people couldn't solve simply so that he could establish that he was, in fact, better at something than someone else.

[Jonathon Dawlish]

Dawlish didn't mind letting the boy's slightly uppity attitude slide in favor of getting his knife out unharmed. He just grinned, shrugged, and nodded his head towards his knife. "Shut up and have a go, will you? The reason you never get under a girl's sweater is partly because you talk way too much."

He took a seat on a nearby desk and waited with all the leisure of someone who knew, either way, he'd get some satisfaction. Either Ivor would get the knife out and they'd all go on their merry ways or Ivor would continue with that ill-advised attitude, not get the knife out, and magically he'd leave the room a lot bloodier than he came in.

[Ivor Dillonsby]

"And I'm sure you're an expert in the subject," Ivor shot back, approaching the desk, although he was still clearly exercising caution. He went the long way around the desk, standing where he hoped was out of the other boy's reach, peering down at the knife while, again, he pulled at the strap to his book bag. It was a nervous habit that he'd never been able to break, and it tended to show most when he was thinking.

Not, he supposed, that the Hufflepuff even knew what thinking was. Allowing himself a self-satisfied (read: smug) smile, he set his book bag down on the ground and wrapped a hand around the hilt of the knife, figuring he might as well give it a yank before getting out his wand. His attempt failed, of course, and so he removed his wand from a pocket in his robes and said, not sounding terribly interested in the process (although he was in fact concentrating rather intently on the blade), "Accio knife."

[Jonathon Dawlish]

"I am, that,' he replied easily. Unfortunately for the male population, Dawlish was often up to his knees in those girls who simply fawned for a bad boy and oscillating between Betty, May, and others meant he was never without sweaters to get under. He liked to pretend he'd gone farther than he had, but in all honesty doing much more than what'd he'd already done with girls scared him - a secret he'd take to his grave.

He watched Ivor try to summon the knife and snorted, for the knife began to wriggle and twitch, causing the whole desk to do the same. The poor knife was clearly struggling to get free, but was more likely to pull the desk off the ground after it than it was to manage to escape the wood. "I tried that already, moron."

[Ivor Dillonsby]

"Poor girls," he scoffed, disappointed that a simple Accio hadn't worked like he'd hoped it would.

He really should have supposed that if the knife was stuck deeply enough in the desk that if you couldn't pull it out by hand, a Summoning Charm would have brought the desk along with the knife. The situation made him curious, though; although Ivor had never been as inclined to magical experimentation as Minerva or Damocles or Miranda or even Grugwyn, but he still had his moments of curiosity.

"Let me try this," he said, still sounding generally amiable underneath the condescension. Raising his wand again, he cast a Banishing Charm on the desk, concentrating on its outline, its weight, the way it sounded when it scraped across the floor, and smiled when the desk itself disappeared. Where things went when they were Banished, Ivor had no idea, but surely Hogwarts had enough desks to deal with the loss of one. He stepped forward when the knife clattered to the ground, and his smile faded when it was clear that the bottom three or four inches of the blade had been Banished along with the desk.

Well. He'd never been as good at charms as Miranda, had he?

[Jonathon Dawlish]

He watched the whole spectacle calmly, even if by the end of it he was anything but. Honestly, the knife he could cope with, the loss wasn't all that dire and he'd be over it. It was more an excuse, one of the many he loved to take advantage of. He swung around and glared at Ivor. "Well that just about fucking does it."

Reaching out, he gripped the boy's collar and pulled him forward so as to meet Ivor's face to his other fist.

[Ivor Dillonsby]

Ivor tried to make a break for the door when the Hufflepuff started coming at him, he really did, but not even a height advantage or the advantage of longer legs could make up for the fact that he'd bent to grab his book bag before trying to run away. He'd never really been a runner, more of a casual saunterer, and if there was anything that might have convinced him to give up his smoking habit in an attempt to quell his asthma and be able to run faster, this situation was probably it. Now that the Hufflepuff had him by the collar, he couldn't even get his hands up to try and defend himself. All he could really do was close his eyes and be grateful that he didn't wear spectacles.

He'd never been punched in the face before, and now that he had been introduced to the experience, he never wanted to repeat it again. "What the bloody hell!" he said, voice muffled as his fingers flew to his nose and were met with blood. The Hufflepuff still had him by the collar, though, and for all that he tried, he couldn't yank out of the other boy's grasp.

[Jonathon Dawlish]

Dawlish appreciated variety, so while Ivor protected his nose, he went for the wanker's gut, and hard. There was something too pleased about the smile on his face as he shook him by the collar after the gut-punch was delivered. "You messed up my favorite knife, you poofter."

And that would not go unanswered for. Even he knew things banished did not come back - although fitting the hilt with a new blade would not be impossible it certainly would be difficult and would likely have to wait till summer.

[Ivor Dillonsby]

He supposed there was an art to getting beat up by the school bully, and it was clear when the Hufflepuf's fist went into his stomach that he had not mastered it, not in the slightest. But instinct was impossible to deny, and so Ivor wrapped his arms around his midriff, although he couldn't double up like he wanted to, with the boy's grip on his collar.

"Maybe you shouldn't have stabbed it into a desk then, you idiot," he pointed out, gasping, eyes watering. Merlin, he hoped his nose wasn't broken. It was already bleeding embarrassingly, probably ruining his shirt, and it hurt. He guessed, vaguely, that he should probably be taking mental notes for Grugwyn.

[Jonathon Dawlish]

He'd been about ready to let the boy drop before Ivor had for some reason decided it was a good idea to further insult him. Punching him in the face again, and then again, he growled angrily. "Who the fuck do you think you're calling an idiot? Oi, I'll make mince-meat out of your face if you don't take it back."

Being defied riled Dawlish like nothing else. His power came from his physical threats, of course - like any typical bully. His ability and willingness to follow through only added to that. When it refused to yield the results he wanted - cowed Ivor, for example - he simply kept going harder until something else stopped him.