Happy Birthday or whatever. [Closed]

[Trent Innes]

[Reserved for Kyle Winters, but all are welcome!]
It was the second of September, the first day of classes, and Trent's eighteenth birthday… and he had a detention. He was no stranger to detentions, but it had been a record to have one so early in the term. In fact, he had earned this particular punishment before he had even arrived at Hogwarts; Trent had intervened in a fight between housemate Kyle Winters and a Slytherin bully on the Hogsmeade train platform, and the Aurors had been quick to swoop in.

Aurors weren't technically supposed to give out detentions, and when Trent saw the Head of Slytherin at breakfast this morning, he had thought that the punishment might have been reversed. No such luck, unfortunately, and he was instructed to be at the Owlery to clean ("no magic!") at seven o'clock sharp this evening.

Trent had merely shrugged in response, but when he overheard Winters, who was only a few seats away, get assigned the same task, he felt a flicker of annoyance. He didn't particularly care that Winters would be present, but he suspected that this meant all three of them would share the same detention. Trent had been unable to eavesdrop on the bully's detention to confirm his suspicions and spent the rest of the morning in a slightly bad mood at the prospect of spending his birthday with the jerk.

Thankfully, at lunchtime, he had heard the idiot complaining loudly to his friends about his detention, which was to be cleaning bedpans in the Hospital Wing. Frankly, the bully fared better than he and Winters did; there weren't likely to be many patients in the infirmary on the first day of school. The Owlery, on the other hand, was home to the school owls, who lived at the castle year-round and were sure to have left plenty of droppings and mice skeletons.

At ten to seven, Trent set off for the Owlery alone. It wasn't until he had ascended the top of the West Tower that it occurred to him that he could have waited for and walked with Winters. Trent dismissed the belated idea with very little guilt. They hadn't made arrangements to do so, and although he hadn't actually noticed Winters himself, he had recalled seeing some Slytherins dressed in their Quidditch robes at dinner; perhaps there had been a practice today?

[Kyle Winters]

The sound of rapid footsteps echoed throughout the stairwell as Kyle finally arrived at the top of the West Tower, red-faced and panting, and still in his Quidditch robes. In one hand he had a bucket with a couple of small tins of baking soda within, and in the other he held a beat-up broom with short, stiff bristles.

He took a moment to catch his breath. ”I’m not late, am I?” he asked. ”Also, I hope these would be enough,” he continued, setting down the cleaning supplies in his hands. Having scrubbed pigeon guano off his grandmother’s balcony before, Kyle was painfully aware of how difficult it would be for them to clean up the Owlery. Furthermore, they weren’t allowed to use magic, so cleaning supplies were mandatory. He had wolfed down his dinner within minutes so that he had enough time to scour the school grounds and procure all those items that they would need before Quidditch practice started.

“Couldn’t find any toilet bleach or detergent, so I guess we’ll make do with baking soda.” Thank goodness for his primary school science education; he wouldn’t have been able to figure out a substitute for toilet bleach otherwise. ”In theory, it should work just fine…” But as Kyle peeked into the Owlery, he felt less and less assured. The Owlery was an utter mess, littered with mice skeletons and splotches of fresh and not-so-fresh owl droppings. And beneath all of that lay a thick encrusted layer of dried guano that would need to be softened with water and scraped off.

“Or perhaps not.” He let out a sigh of defeat even before they had started. “We are so bloody screwed.”

[Trent Innes]

While Trent waited for Winters to arrive, he stepped into the Owlery and was pleased to see that the large, circular stone room was empty. He checked his watch – five after seven – and smiled. In his experience, only a handful of detentions were supervised, and the supervisor was never late. Knowing that this meant he was free to break the no magic rule, Trent barely registered the mess on the floor and stepped back into the corridor which now echoed with hurried footsteps.

Deciding that he should at least look as though he was doing manual labour - in case anyone came to check - Trent began pulling off his school robes. Moments later, Winters burst out of the stairwell looking flushed and out of breath. Trent's eyes narrowed slightly at the bucket and broom that Winters carried, but he otherwise showed no reaction to his housemate's appearance. When Winters asked if he was late, Trent simply answered: "No," (even though he was) and lazily tossed his robes onto the floor near the Owlery door.

When Winters explained the purpose of the bucket and brush, Trent held back a grimace but chose not to comment for now, and continued to roll up the sleeves of his white collared shirt. He appreciated the effort that Winters went through in procuring the supplies, and he almost felt bad about not intending to use them.

Almost.

While he thought of a way to gently reject Winters' cleaning supplies, Trent unclasped his watch and placed it in his trouser pocket. His green and white striped tie had already been hanging loose around his neck, but he pulled that off too, tossing it haphazardly on the pile of robes on the floor. No longer able to delay the inevitable, Trent sighed and turned to face Winters. "Look, there's no one here. I'm just going to use magic." He paused and looked at the cleaning supplies again, an idea coming to mind. "We can enchant your supplies to do the work, and if we hear anyone coming we can use Finite Incantatem. I'll take the blame if we get caught since it was my idea."

[Kyle Winters]

Kyle had thought that he was late for sure. There had been little time for him to run around the school to collect all the various items, after a tiring Quidditch practice no less. But the fact that he had arrived before the staff member supervising the detention gave him some hope, and Trent’s confirmation all but put his mind at ease.

As Trent rolled up his sleeves and took off his tie, Kyle took his cue and shrugged off the outermost layer of his Quidditch uniform, folding it neatly before laying it down. There was no way in hell he was going to work while wearing the thick, heavy outer robes. As he did so, he glanced at the stairwell behind him, but there was no sign of any professor coming to supervise the session.

That was odd. Recently most of Kyle’s detentions were supervised, probably because nobody wanted to risk leaving Kyle and his arch nemesis to their own devices after he had almost set the brat alight during his fifth year. Maybe he got lucky this time round because they weren’t at the same detention. And he was about to speak when Trent, having already come to his own conclusion, declared that the supervisor wouldn’t be coming, and he was just going to use magic. For a second Kyle wondered if that was a good idea, but pragmatism won out at the end. “Yea, I'm with you on that,” he concurred. It had been a long day, and he really want to get this chore over and done with quick.

Trent might have noticed Kyle’s moment of hesitation, for he proposed that they could enchant the tools to clean the Owlery. If anyone else suddenly appeared, they could dispel the charms and pretend that they had abided by the rules of the detention. “Sounds perfect,” Kyle nodded. “Except for the last bit. I’ll take responsibility if we get caught – not that I think we’d be. It was my fault that you got implicated in my feud with that jerk anyway.”

“I suppose we can start off by sweeping up the mice skeletons and loose bird poop,” Kyle began, outlining his game plan for the task at hand. “Then we can soak the floor with water and baking soda for a bit, give the whole place a good scrub, and then rinse everything off. How does that sound?”

That said, Kyle took stock of the meagre cleaning supplies they had. “We’ll definitely need more brooms too,” he observed, and immediate set about rectifying the problem. Flicking his wand at the broom, he intoned, ”Geminio!” In a blink of an eye, one broom suddenly became two, four, and then eight. Quickly he completed the spell, stopping the duplication before it got out of hand.

Right then, a strange thought came to mind. “Have you seen Disney’s Fantasia by any chance?" he asked. “Specifically the segment called The Sorcerer’s Apprentice?” The thought of losing control over an army of brooms and getting caught in a massive whirlpool was as terrifying as it was far-fetched, but at that moment he could not help but feel that they were in the same position as Mickey Mouse.

[Trent Innes]

Trent had been expecting resistance about breaking the rules, and a look of surprise passed briefly across his face when Winters agreed to his idea. It wasn't completely accurate to say that Winters was at fault for the detention, and for a moment Trent had been about to object to his decision to take the blame if they were to get caught using magic. Winters did have a good point that Trent wouldn’t have gotten in trouble if hadn’t have intervened in the first place… and it was his birthday, after all. "Okay," Trent finally said, a grin breaking out as he accepted the terms. "Deal."

Trent's smile quickly faded, however, as Winters went on to outline his ideas on tackling the mess. He was appreciative that Winters actually had an action plan beyond Trent's "use magic", but what he described still sounded like more work than Trent was willing to do. His attention to Winters weaved in and out as he tried to think of ways to supplement the plan, but came up short. To be honest, Trent didn't have much experience in cleaning beyond picking up after himself and hadn't bothered to pay much attention to the cleaning charms they had been taught in school.

Trent had been trying to remember the difference between the Wiping Spell and the Scouring Charm when the sound of magic being performed snapped him back into focus. Though he was momentarily confused by what Winters was doing, he caught on quickly, impressed. While Winters took care of duplicating the broom, Trent did the same with the baking soda until they had an abundance of cleaning supplies in front of them.

As Winters continued speaking, Trent realized it had been a while since he had actually heard a word that had been said. Not wanting to be rude, he forced himself to pay attention. What Winters was saying, however, didn't make any sense at all... and not just because Trent missed the beginning part of the conversation. "'Disney's Fantasia'?" he repeated blankly. "No, what is that?" It sounded like Winters was describing a series of paintings, but to his knowledge, Trent had never seen them – were they at Hogwarts?

Trent stepped tentatively into the Owlery, his feet trying to find the cleanest patches of the floor with little success, and looked around to find the best place to put their enchanted items to work. He had only walked a few paces when Tia'a, his Pharaoh eagle-owl swooped down from the rafters to perch on his shoulder. "Not now," he murmured to the owl, stroking her feathers. He dipped his shoulder, trying to gently coax her off of him, but she dug her talons in deeper instead of flying away. "Okay, okay," he acquiesced. He turned to look at Winters and raised his arms in a sort of half-shrug. "I just got her this summer in Egypt. We, er… haven't really been apart, until now." He looked back at Tia'a, her amber eyes glowering at him. "Don't you like the Owlery?" he asked her gently, to which she snapped her beak reproachfully.

[Kyle Winters]

Kyle returned Trent’s grin with a crooked smile of his own, glad that they had reached an agreement without much fuss. Not that he was expecting Trent to fight with him over who should take responsibility for breaking the rules of the detention, but that was one thing out of the way for now.

As he laid out his plan to tackle the task at hand, he was so focused on assessing the extent of the mess in the Owlery and plotting out a suitable course of action that he failed to notice how he had lost Trent halfway through his speech. Neither did the oblivious Muggle-born pick up on anything unusual when Trent swiftly took his cue and duplicated the supply of baking soda that they had.

He hadn’t counted on Trent not knowing what Disney’s Fantasia was. Even if Trent wasn’t familiar with the film, surely the word Disney should have rang a bell? “It’s… um…” he began haltingly, suddenly unsure if wizarding folk even knew what cartoons were. “Simply put, it’s a animated film set to classical music. In one of the segments, the apprentice of a sorcerer enchanted a broom to carry buckets of water for him.” He had decided to omit some of the superfluous details, such as the fact that said apprentice was a talking anthropomorphic mouse, to avoid further confusion. “But he soon lost control of the spell, and ended up with an army of brooms that kept pouring water into an overflowing cauldron and flooding the whole room. Yup, that’s the gist of it.” His brief introduction to an iconic and classic Muggle film thus concluded, he paused to let Trent digest the deluge of information.

A brown blur at the edge of his vision caught his attention, and Kyle spun around in time to see an owl settling on Trent’s shoulder. “Yours?” he asked instinctively, although it was pretty much a rhetorical question in light of how Trent was stroking her feathers. “I didn’t know owls could get so clingy.” Not that Kyle knew a great deal about owls, having never owned one before, but he had always seen them as independent, mysterious creatures. “Maybe it’s the stress of being alone in an unfamiliar place?” he hazarded a guess. “Or maybe she just doesn't like the Owlery in its present state? I highly doubt anybody would, for that matter.”

Suddenly feeling like a third wheel, Kyle began enchanting the brooms before easing past Trent and his owl, gingerly stepping around the ickiest areas until he found a reasonably clean spot for himself. “I think I should just start first,” he said to nobody in particular, giving his friend some time and space to attend to his owl in the meantime. With a few flicks of his wand, the brooms filed into the Owlery and began the hard work of scrubbing and sweeping. Before long, mice bones and dried droppings began to accumulate in neat little piles that could easily be Vanished.

[Trent Innes]

Distracted by the arrival of his owl, Trent barely had a chance to process Winters' explanation of what he meant by Disney's Fantasia. When Winters commented on Tia'a's overly dependent nature, Trent looked up, eyes widening. "She is rather clingy, isn't she?" he asked, a hint of relief in his voice as Winters' confirmed his belief that her behaviour was abnormal. "I've never had an owl, and I didn't think it would be like this when I brought her home." The only other owl he had known was the family owl Lavinia, but even then their interactions were sparse. Coincidentally, his most recent exchange with Lavinia was just this morning, when she had delivered a birthday card from his parents and pecked at his hands until Trent begrudgingly wrote a hasty letter to be sent back.

With Tia'a still perched on his shoulder, Trent walked towards one of the glassless windows, while Winters went ahead and got started on their task. Tia'a had been much more independent when they had been in Egypt, and he felt comforted by Winters' suggestion that she was simply stressed due to being somewhere unfamiliar. He sat on the ledge of the window and looked out at the courtyard while stroking Tia'a's feathers and taking the quiet moment to ponder what Winters had said about Disney's Fantasia.

Trent only had a vague understanding of what a film was; he had never seen one personally but had heard about them from the Half-bloods and Muggleborns he dated in the past. Frankly, the one that Winters described sounded a hell of a lot more interesting than the one he had been told about a 30-something Muggle woman and her diary. It amused Trent to think that Muggles were able to create a film about magic when they didn't know it existed; perhaps Disney was not a Muggle at all. "I think I’d like to see that film you were talking about sometimes," he called out to Winters. He wasn’t sure how he would accomplish that though; it was his understanding that electronics didn’t work at Hogwarts.

It was only a few minutes later that Tia'a, sufficiently comforted by her owner, took flight through the open window. Trent watched as she disappeared into the night, before going to check on Winters. The enchanted brooms seemed to work well, and Trent was impressed by the progress that had been made in such a short amount of time. That being said, there was still the other side of the room, not to mention the stains on the floor that the Vanishing Spell did not touch.

Thinking back to his original idea of using some cleaning spells to augment the brooms, he asked "What's the Scouring Charm again? I can't remember the incantation." Before Winters could answer, Trent pointed his wand at a particularly soiled patch of stone and said, "Defodio!" The floor remained just as filthy as ever as it cracked and broke apart where the spell hit. "Shit." Knowing that the damage would be quite easy to repair (they had learned the Mending Charm in the first year), Trent laughed in earnest. "I think that was the Gouging Spell we learned last year in Charms."

[Kyle Winters]

“Not ‘rather’, but ‘very’ clingy,” Kyle corrected teasingly. And although this was the first time he was seeing Trent’s owl, he was dead certain that she did not behave in this way up till today. Not in front of Trent, anyway. “Are you sure you got yourself an owl, and not a transfigured puppy or summat? Not that I have experience with puppies either, but anyway.”

Despite delivering his summary of Fantasia as briefly as he could, Kyle wondered how much of it Trent actually understood. There were still things he didn’t know about the wizarding world or hadn’t gotten used to yet, so it would stand to reason that Trent knew little about certain aspects of Muggle culture. And he didn’t think Trent would be interested in the film until the latter expressed that he’d like to see it. “We could go to an internet café,” he replied, although it would be kinda weird watching a cartoon film when everyone else there would be playing games. Never mind that for now; they’d cross that bridge when they got to it.

After a few uses of the Vanishment Charm, the Owlery was starting to look a little better, though the stubborn stains on the ground were still there. Kyle was about to clean up the far side of the Owlery when Trent asked him what the incantation of the Scouring Charm was. The answer eluded him for a second, and before he could say anything he heard Trent utter the incantation for a completely different spell. Too late. A sharp crack like the sound of a smashed plate rang out as Trent’s spell impacted the ground, and Kyle flinched at the noise. Out of nowhere he was reminded of a particular day many years ago, a memory he thought he had long shunted away. But he could see it clearly now, the shards of a broken white plate on the kitchen floor, the deep red stains on the jagged edges…

Trent’s laughter snapped Kyle back to the present, and he realised he had been staring in stunned silence at the stone chips that had been ripped from the patch of ground. Already the enchanted brooms were on it, sweeping away the debris to reveal a patch of cleaner stone beneath.

“Hey, that worked,” Kyle said jokingly, hoping Trent hadn’t noticed anything unusual about his behaviour yet. Still, the magical mishap had to be fixed, so he aimed his wand at the same spot wordlessly, and the broken floor began to heal, like an open wound knitting together and closing up. A few moments later, there was nothing left of the little accident that had, as though the damage hadn’t even occurred in the first place. Thanks to how often he had to repair his prosthesis, Kyle had become extremely proficient with the Mending Charm. But alas, some things couldn’t be fixed easily, even with magic. “All patched up.” Trying to suppress his feelings, he instead overcompensated and his words came out a little too brightly.

In an attempt to keep himself occupied so that his mind wouldn’t wander again, he quickly moved on to the next task: scrubbing the stains off the ground. “Scourgify!” he intoned, and pointed his wand at another dirty patch on the ground. A ray of magic burst forth, and the guano and grime that was caked onto the ground melted away and vanished without a trace, leaving behind a clean and pristine surface. Much too clean, in fact, but at this stage Kyle honestly could not care less.

What he could – and should – care less about, however, was now weighing more and more heavily on his mind. His still-unresolved resentment against his father had resurfaced, brought back to mind by a bad memory from his childhood. The night before he came back to Hogwarts, his mother had advised him not to dwell too much on the past, but it wasn’t something he could control. Not yet, anyway.

Out of the blue he felt an intense urge to ask a favour of Trent. There was something that he had tried to bear with since four years ago, and now that he could stomach it no longer, it had to come out. “Hey,” he started, and almost immediately lost the nerve to continue. It was a very private matter after all, and a topic that he hadn’t broached to anyone before.

He took a deep breath to calm himself down, before speaking again. “Do you mind if we call each other by our first names instead?” He had blurted that out a little too awkwardly and too bluntly, but at least he had voiced out his request. “I’ll not be using Winters as my last name soon, hopefully within the year.” By now he was certain he was sharing way too much information and burdening Trent with his own personal problems, but he had already started halfway and couldn't stop. “But if you’re more comfortable with last names, you can call me Everett. It’s my mum’s maiden name, and my middle name besides.”

[Trent Innes]

"Where would we find an Internet café?" Trent asked. "I don't know what that is, but I'm guessing it's probably not in Hogsmeade." He said the words lightly but was incredibly frustrated by their lack of options; students were not allowed off school grounds unless to go to Hogsmeade on certain weekends. It wasn't likely that they would be able to watch the film in the all-wizarding village, and unless they broke the rules (again), Trent would have to wait until Christmas break.

Trent hadn’t noticed anything unusual in Winters' behaviour and simply thanked him for his swift use of the Mending Charm. His grin faded slightly and his eyes narrowed at Winters' falsely cheerful voice, but he nodded and did not comment further. He offered one last smile when Winters demonstrated the correct incantation for the Scouring Charm and joined him in the cleaning. As they worked, however, Trent watched Winters out of the corner of his eye, concerned that something was wrong.

The Owlery was becoming far too clean; the Scouring Charm was much too powerful for them to be able to pass off as manual labour. Trent had been about to ask if Winters knew of any lesser cleaning spells when he heard Winters call out. "What's up?" he called back, and when Winters did not immediately speak, Trent closed the distance between them so they would not have to yell back and forth.

To his surprise, Kyle asked to be called by his first name. "Oh," Trent said, raising his eyes in surprise. "Of course," he replied at once. He had been about to apologize for any unintended disrespect when Kyle continued, explaining the reason behind his request. Trent nodded and said, "Oh, okay. Well, first names are fine. Sorry about that, Kyle." The indirect comment about Kyle's father did not go unnoticed, but it was a touchy subject and Trent wasn't sure if he was meant to pry. Not uncaring, Trent turned to address Kyle again before he returned to work. "Hey, are you hungry? If we hurry, there might be enough time to get down to the kitchens before -" his voice tightened slightly "- curfew."

[Kyle Winters]

Maybe the internet café hadn’t been a good idea after all. “It’s definitely not in Hogsmeade,” Kyle shook his head, realising that it was a pretty dumb idea after all. “We’d either have to spin an excuse to go to a Muggle town or city, or wait till the next school holidays.”

After abruptly blurting out his strange request out of the blue without any context whatsoever, Kyle had absolutely no idea how Trent would respond, least of all that he would just accede to it without any questions. But that was exactly what Trent did, and Kyle felt that he owed Trent some kind of explanation. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to go into detail, so he ended up only alluding to how his parents might be splitting up in the near future.

It felt a little strange to hear Trent addressing him by his first name for the first time since they met all those years ago. But it was a good kind of strange. “No, it’s not your fault,” he replied, “it’s just me and my truckload of issues.” He shrugged and gave a mirthless smile that gave way to a resigned sigh. “Thanks, Trent. I probably should tell you what’s going on one of these days, maybe after things are all done and dusted.” Likewise he wasn't accustomed to addressing his friend by his first name, but that was something he would like to get used to.

At Trent’s mention of food, Kyle’s stomach answered on his behalf with an embarrassingly loud growl. “I’m chuffing famished,” he added sheepishly and somewhat redundantly, as though that hadn’t been abundantly obvious. “Let’s wrap this up then.”

The duplicated brooms were still scrubbing diligently away even though the floor couldn’t get any cleaner already. “Finite Incantatem!” Kyle intoned as he pointed his wand at the brooms. Immediately they froze in place, and the duplicates began merging back into the original until just one mundane broom was left, which clattered to the ground. “Thank goodness that worked,” Kyle said as he picked up the broom. “Otherwise we’d end up in a live-action version of Fantasia, and that wouldn’t be a pretty sight.” Gathering the rest of the cleaning supplies as well as his Quidditch robes, he paused to check if Trent was ready to go. “Shall we?”

[Trent Innes]

Trent wasn't opposed to sneaking off to a Muggle town during the term and grinned when Kyle had been the one to bring it up. He hadn't wanted to be a bad influence on Kyle, but it seemed as though Kyle had the same penchant for rule-breaking as he did. The holidays would work well for Trent, who usually spent them alone, but he had no idea what Kyle did during the school breaks and didn't want to impose on any of his plans. In any case, they had plenty of time to figure it out, so for now Trent simply said "I'm good with whatever."

Trent felt slightly uneasy at the idea of Kyle one day sharing the reason behind his name change and said nothing in response. No one had ever confided in him before, and while he wanted to support Kyle the best he could, he sincerely doubted his ability to do so. After a moment's hesitation, he nodded resolutely; he would do his best, however unqualified he may be.

As Kyle reversed the duplication and animation spells, Trent took one last look around the Owlery. It was plainly obvious that they had used magic rather than manual labour to clean, and Trent wondered if they would get in further trouble. "Yeah, let's go," he agreed, deciding to let the chips fall where they may. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out his watch, checking the time as he clasped it onto his wrist.

There was still an hour left before curfew, and if he hurried, Trent could make it down to the dungeons to drop off his robes and freshen up before bed. He quickly scooped up his bundle of robes on the floor and shoved his tie in his pocket. "I'm gonna hit the showers first," he said, opening up the door to the stairwell and holding it open for Kyle. "I'll meet you down in the basement in about fifteen minutes!" he said then hurried past Kyle, taking the stairs two at a time.