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The only thing that sucks more than the Scholomance is not going to the Scholomance
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"I thought it was a hydra!" he says, defensive.

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He frowns then looks at Yvette and back at Scorpius, pointedly.

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Which moment of distraction the mal uses to try to swipe at them again, and Scorpius lifts a quick and fragile shield to halt its momentum, the kind that can't take a beating but can be cast in a fraction of a second which is the important part.

"And you're sure your spell isn't going to bring about the next ice age or—"

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"Just trust her," Alexei says, impatiently. "Give her mana and buy her time to cast."

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"—right." He offers Yvette his hand, watching the grogler from the corner of his eyes to make sure it's not about to go after them again. Thankfully(?) it seems content to try to squeeze more of itself up the stairs for the moment.

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Scorpius continues to not be at his best right now, so she will try her best to not be offended at his hesitation. Even though she's... definitely a little hurt. It's not about her, she reminds herself. He's just exhausted and regressing to only trusting himself, like he had been before. But they kind of have been hunting mals together regularly, now, and that was sure a lot of hesitating before accepting her judgement after she just proved his was flawed.

Ugh, go away, dumb feelings, she has things to kill. Fortunately, incantations are very distracting. Yvette takes his hand and accepts the mana and begins murmuring the same phase change spell she'd just been practicing. The copper gnawers were good practice, actually, because she needs to freeze all of the grogler at once, and since it is a many-tentacled writhing beast thing, well. She takes longer to incant this than she did then, to give herself time to do this properly, instead of just quickly. And she'll trust that she'll be kept safe while she does it.

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Yeah, she will. He manages to light his light saber up and gets to hacking away at tentacles at the same time he casts binding spells to try to hold the (once again very aggressive) mal in place.

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Alexei would help, but... well, for one, Scorpius is a weapon and Alexei isn't, but most importantly, he doesn't know Yvette's athame very well and doesn't know if it would be offended by that so instead he'll just pay attention to it.

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Her athame seems content to wait in his hands, for now. Though it does like the attention.

Meanwhile, its usual holder is busy. It'd be wasteful to turn all of the nitrogen in the air to its frozen state, especially with the grogler so big and gangly. Where she can, she imagines the nitrogen instead as a solid shell, like frozen shrink-wrap around the mal. And then she finishes her incantation, and her will becomes reality. As spells go, it's not her most dramatic, but it is quite effective. The skin of the grogler frosts over, and then cracks and breaks open, all at once. The half-liquid guts release like a tidal wave, sucked down the stairway drain in a tidy whirlpool. All that remains is the core tentacle of the creature; an iridescent jelly around a pink vein, poking up through the hole in the wall.

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Oh no you don't. Alexei has an athame and he will stab the little tentacle with it and offer it to Yvette so that it won't become a shiny new grogler.

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And Scorpius leaps after the remains of the mal so that he can fill the (teeny tiny little) hole it'd come through with some putty he had in his pocket and chant a make and mend to solidify it.

Then he slumps onto the wall and slides down to the floor, which is only slightly damp thanks to this school's omnipresent drains and the small enchantments encouraging particulates to go down them.

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Yvette beams at Alexei, then freezes the little tentacle, too. What an excellent alliance mate, and an excellent boyfriend, he is great and she is so glad he was here.

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Then she reclaims her athame and looks seriously at Scorpius as she cleans it of all grogler related gunk.

"You haven't been sleeping. Have you."

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"Yes I have! I slept last—"

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"Lake if you want people to trust you and to make friends you need to fucking stop this thing you're doing, it's getting on my fucking nerves."

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That does stop Scorpius short. Scorpius's instincts are still to not-technically-lie but...

...

...but Alexei is right. He looks down at the floor. "Not very much. Not through the night, mostly."

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"Why."

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Then he sighs and walks over to Scorpius and lowers down to look at Scorpius's face.

...and pauses. "Are you wearing makeup?"

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Scorpius laughs weakly. "Yeah. Didn't want people to notice."

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"And you couldn't do something like ask anyone for help, because that would be too sensible," sighs Yvette, irritated. "Aren't you actually trying to befriend some members of your enclave, now??"

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"...none of them would come. And—they wouldn't be safe. Patrolling at night. I've done this before, just... not twice in a row."

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"How do you know they would not have come?"

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"I just do."

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"And you could not have asked Yvette? ...or me?"

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"...after what happened on Sunday I didn't, really, want to... I mean..." He looks at Yvette. "Quayle was right. Graduation mals are, actually, making their way here."

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