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WHO: Tony and the Students and Faculty of Hogwarts!
TONE: B - For badass facial wounds
RATING: PG-13 for potential language
WHEN: 26th Monday, morning after the match.
WHERE: THe great Hall
WHAT: Breakfast time and Tony's showing off his bruises and scratches
STATUS: ONGOING

After his most agonising defeat at the hands of those damn pufflehuffs. Even though it was a good game, that's not the point. Tony comes into the great hall in the morning looking rather clean and refreshed despite the massive bruising on his face and scratches that are only just starting to scab over again, as he knocked them open in his sleep.

It's obvious as he heads to Ravenclaw's table that he hasn't had is injuries seen too. They don't bother him all that much, they only sting when they're touched and he just really is in the mood for waffles so bad he doesn't even notice or care if people could be staring at him.

All in all he doesn't fell that bad that his team didn't win, though he does count it as he wasn't good enough as a captain. He made the decision the second the snitch was caught that he would be a better captain for the next match.

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"Sorry for not having the courtship habits of geese. And let's ignore the fact that this does in fact make me look more dangerous to girls and that they like that. It's only a really fun side effect to the fact I don't enjoy getting poked and prodded when I don't need to be. With or without wands. And besides. I can't fix it on my own, I've never bothered learning the spells."

"That is abundantly clear. I suppose I'll wish you luck in snogging all the girls who want dangerous idiots with mucked up faces," Herbert sniffed.

Tony grins.

"Could it be jealousy that makes you so hostle to me? You know I mean I get all this couch time and you're here sulking over your scrambled eggs because couch time will be doubled for me? If that's all it is I can teach you how to get girls. But then, you would be getting an advice from someone so much younger than you. Guess we're never going to live that down if it's accepted."

He can't help himself, Herbert tends t just make him feel antagonised all the time.

"Couch time?" Herbert asked, then shook his head. "Forget it, I don't want to know what you do on couches with girls."

His gaze was cold, when he added, "And I don't like girls, Stark. I'm hardly going to take your advice on pulling blokes, either, since I think you're disgusting and I'm not interested in 'couch time' with anyone."

He still felt humiliated by that journal post he'd made when he was under the influence of the wild wish magic, but he wasn't going to deny he'd made it. It wasn't as though what kind of person he liked was going to ever matter, anyway.

"Disgusting? Well, I know you don't want my advise or anything. But I don't think guys think that's flattering. So maybe you could use my advice?"

One of Tony's few redeeming features is that someone's sexuality is about as important as their hair colour. So Herbert 'accidentally' coming out was really not a big deal to the other boy.

"And also, I'm talking about making out. People can walk in on you where couches are kept."

He gives him a bit of a smirk.

"I don't want to make out with anyone, either!" Herbert exclaims loudly, going red in the face. "Or see you doing it! Bugger off, Stark!"

As though he hadn't started this whole conversation with his snide remarks.

Putting his elbow on the table, Tony rests his head on his palm with a lazy smile.

"You know, getting this defensive means you do, but don't want to share. My being me aside, if you need advise I can give it you know."

He shrugs dismissively.

"And for the record, I'm not always fond of people watching me make out, so it all works."

"The only thing it means is I find the whole idea distasteful," Herbert shot back, still blushing, and added nastily, "And even if I didn't, I wouldn't take advice from you, since you seem to be incapable of any significant romantic relationships with anyone who's even vaguely like a peer. Probably because anyone worth anything recognizes what a wanker you are."

Tony's face becomes impassive when it's brought up once again that he's incapable of romantic relationships. This was starting to get annoying.

After Herbert stops insulting him, Tony stays quiet, popping a few blueberries into his mouth and eats them.

"Just because I'm not waiting for the one to be significant with, doesn't mean I'm incapable of it. Let's just remember that. And I've never hurt or really upset any girl I've ever been with. So that doesn't make me a 'wanker'. Because I only act like that to people who give be a reason to, Herbert."

He looks at him, in a moment of vague seriousness.

"I just enjoy life, instead of hiding from it."

If the 'hiding from life' was supposed to be a comment aimed at Herbert, it bounces off him. The comment about him fancying someone and not admitting it, that had struck home, but the small boy never thought much about whether he was living his life or not. He loved learning and the experiments he did, and probably unknown to most people, he had a great gusto for certain things. Just ... not things involving other people, really.

"You're not a wanker because of how you treat girls, though if I was a girl I would avoid you like the bubonic plague. You're a wanker because you think you're better than everyone and you don't take anything seriously."

What Herbert really means is, I'm jealous of you, and you take everything you have for granted, and you LAUGHED at me and you always seem to be laughing at me, and that is unforgivable. But he isn't going to say that, even if he had been self aware enough to put his bitter jealousy and dislike into words.

Edited 2012-12-11 09:21 (UTC)

"Actually, when people prove they're capable of me not thinking I'm better than them. I don't act like I'm better than Sherlock or Bruce if you pay attention. You being a whiny jealous girl isn't really inspiring me to take you seriously."

Just gives him a vague look to suggest he might want to work on that.

Herbert's face twisted - he hadn't yet gotten the knack of hiding his feelings very much, and it was written all over his face that that blow had struck home. Her jerked to his feet, and started shoving books into his bag.

"You don't take me seriously because you don't have any vision. All you care about are your stupid machines, and not what's really going to make a difference. No one understands, no one, but in ten years, you'll see, and then you won't be able to laugh at me any more!" Herbert spit. "You can't even see past the nose on your bloody face at what's around you, do you know that? And the stupid thing, the really maddening thing is you were given everything on a silver platter, and you can't even see what you have!"

He yanked his bookbag over his shoulder, so he could storm off, defeated. Again.

Yeah, some of his claims about Tony actually managed to get under his skin. Deep under.

"Back up the linkin park a second, here. I don't have any vision? Me and my stupid machines are trying to make a difference. But I'm 14, I'm limited by magical restrictions and the fact I can only try to get my fathers company to look at my designs.

And you know what? You're in Ravenclaw, you're in my room. I want you to prove you're not worth me laughing at. Because then I know the hat is right. Because all I see is good grades and someone whining about how hard their life is.

Sure, okay. Yeah, I was fed with the figurative silver spoon, but that has a cost. When ever I'm in the US I have to wonder about paparazzi snapping photo's of me trying to be with friends, I live in the shadow of a man who never thought I'd accomplish anything. And hey, let's ignore the dead parent angle, because in order for that to be relevant they'd actually would have had to participate in my life."

Rubbing his neck, Tony leant back from the table a little, feeling a little bad for using a harsh tone with the other boy whom he knew he had actually worked up, into saying this. Staying silent for a moment he collected his thoughts.

"Want to be taken seriously? Stop looking to be big in the future, and be big now. People only see what you do now. Not what you will do."

Herbert gaped at him. Actually gaped, though he thought later that he shouldn't have been surprised that Tony would try to play poor little rich boy. "You're ... trying to tell me that life is tough for you because the same bloody things that happen to regular people ALL the time happened to you, too? Do you know how many people here have dead parents? Do you know how many people have families who don't care about them, or think they're freaks? None of them have money falling out their ears! Essentially, you're saying the only price you pay for being obscenely wealthy is that when you go to another country, one you're not in the majority of the year, by the way, people take pictures of you?"

He shook his head, unable to believe the turn this conversation had taken. He did not whine about how hard his life was! Yes, all right, maybe he did like to complain pretty much constantly how most people were idiots and got in the way of his ideas and his work, but that was different! There wasn't a single person in the school who knew anything about his home life, how his father had left, how his mother never talked to him, how his brother had taken to beating him up ever since he started Hogwarts and proved he was weirder than they'd ever thought. He never even said anything when he came back to the dorms with bloody noses or black eyes - he just quietly fixed the injuries, and if someone happened to catch him at it, he'd explain it away with some generic comment about the moron quotient in the general populace, or simply changed the subject. Herbert had far too much pride to ever talk about those things, and Tony was trying to say he whined?

"But you know what, Stark? I WASN'T EVEN TALKING ABOUT YOUR STUPID MONEY!" He yelled the last, absolutely furious that the other boy would be so blind, even though that had been exactly what Herbert was accusing him of. His shoulders hunched in, shaking, and he was red in the face, and now half the students in the Great Hall were staring at him. "And I don't want to hear your moronic platitudes! PISS OFF!"

Edited 2012-12-11 12:51 (UTC)

Rolling his eyes, Tony gives off an exasperated sigh.

"I said I wasn't counting their death. How much of what I say actually goes into your head? And I will be living there when I finish here, not to mention it's not just pictures, it's articles, speculations and other crap like that. And no, I'm not saying my life is harder. Because if it was I wouldn't act like I d- actually. No. I'm not going to have this."

Tony throws up his hands as a sign of giving up.

"Sure, I'm the spoilt rich kid who gets everything he wants. Okay, whatever. But it wasn't a platitude. I am challenging you. I dare you to create something equal to or better to what I can make. Even if it's just theoretical. You want me to piss off? Give me a reason to."

And just like that, Herbert was trumped.

Tony was an inventor, a prodigy, someone who had been born with the kind of brains Mensa members had wet dreams about. Herbert was simply a very smart boy with a lot of nerve and ambition and a disturbing lack of ethical sense. His one big dream, the way he was going to change the world was not something he could whip up overnight for a pissing contest between two schoolboys, even theoretically. Herbert was, in essence, a specialist. One day he would make an excellent doctor and healer, and he knew a hell of a lot about medical science and anatomy for a 16 year old boy, but he wasn't epic levels of brilliant and he wasn't the kind of person who could come up with amazing ideas in days, or even weeks. And on top of all that, most of his private research would be considered a little Dark, by most wizards' standards.

But he was also an adolescent boy that had been called out in front of the entire school. Were he an adult, he would have brushed it off. After all, did he honestly care about Tony's good opinion of him? Not really - even if he hadn't hated the other Ravenclaw, medicine wasn't the wealthy boy's interest and he couldn't offer a peer's insight. It would have been a simple matter to excuse himself from a farce of a competition. But he was a teenage boy, with all the attendant hormones, all the need to prove himself, and all simmering aggression, even if it didn't take a physical form. He couldn't win, there was no way, but he also couldn't back down.

God, but he hated Tony Stark.

"Fine," he said, his expression crumpled and twisted and angry and frustrated and despairing all at once, a truly ugly looking mishmash of feelings. If he were a different kind of boy, he might have cried, but instead he just hunched in and scowled. "Fine. Who's to judge it, then?"

Tony watches him, not saying a word but he had to admit, Herbert's facial expressions were, wow. And he thought he was expressive, but then he doesn't think he could look that constipated and angry at the same time.

Tony had a habit of having a run down on all the Ravenclaws. Any that particularly stood out he took not of. Even if he didn't remember their names right away. As he spent most of his time with those in his dorm he knew that Sherlock had a grim fascination with death, Tony figures he'd end up in some form of forensic or crime solving, Bruce was scientific, and would definitely end up in high profile research institutes for sure, Herbert was medical and Tony thought if he pulled a finger out he'd easily become a doctor.

"Sherlock and Bruce. Then know enough about us and our interests to make the call. we'll take it to Mercer for a tie break if we need to."

Tony stands and holds out his hand, waiting for Herbert to shake it.

Herbert didn't take it, just shook his head, look obdurate. "Not Bruce. Just Sherlock."

Bruce might actually be more likely to credit Herbert, since he knew more about the medical side of things, but he didn't want one of the few boys he liked and admired to see him when he lost. That would make everything ten times worse, to hear Bruce say, in his pleasant, apologetic way, that Tony's work was superior.

Tony tilts his head, but keeps his hand out.

"Shake it, or the result means nothing. You sure you just want Sherlock? One is hardly a useful voting system. But hey, your call I guess, if you want to narrow the judging, we can narrow the field."

Really, Tony could care less about who won this challenge. He just wants to see effort.

"That's bollocks. You can't force me to touch you by making up rules," Herbert said coldly, drawing himself up to his full height ... which was still pretty damn short. "And just Sherlock. Now is there anything else you want? Only I have better things to do than continue this farce of a conversation."

"What? Like trying to figure out how you're going to lose to me?"

He smirks as he pockets his hands, looking anything but intimidated by Herbert.

Very few people really were. Possibly first years. "I'm going to go watch the shrivelfigs grow. It seems more worthwhile."

And this time Herbert really did stalk off, chin held high, trying to ignore the queasy feeling in his stomach.

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