Closed It's Raining Again

[Mikael Nightray]

Mikael had never been one for studying. That isn't to say he doesn't study. Because he does. Sometimes. He just doesn't like doing it during the day. There are too many things to be done during the day for time to be wasted studying. He would usually do his schoolwork at night. Usually. These days, however, he had a boyfriend who was apparently worse at nagging than his own mother. Sure it was his OWL year, but he sincerely didn't think there was anything to worry about when it came to those exams. It was an exam. A little longer than the usual exam yes, but an exam all the same. Somehow though, Elio was turning out to be worried about Mikael's OWLs than Mikael was. And he was somehow more worried about Mikael's exams than his own exams. Which was just silly. So recently, he'd been indulging his boyfriend into having study sessions, sometimes including Hinata. Today though, Mikael was sort of putting his foot down because if he had to answer one more question about Gillyweed then he was going to be throwing his books into the lake. He and Elio were now having a sort of picnic by the lake, a basket of pastries on one end of the blanket they were currently lounging on, and a variety of books surrounding them. Elio had attempted to quiz him again but he'd promptly grabbed whatever notes his boyfriend had and Mikael ended up asking the questions so that his boyfriend could prepare for his own exams. Because his boyfriend was such an overachiever who decided to take every single class in existence. "Potions. Uses Joberknoll, scarab beetles, and lovage."​

 

[Elio Boneheart]

Joberknoll, scarab beetles, and lovage. It immediately triggered something in his mind about potions and he took a moment to think about it. The Scarab Beetles and the Lovage were a fairly common ingredient in potions. Particularly the Lovage because it tended to be used to amplify the potions properties. It generally got dropped in when trying to strengthen a potion, or help the other ingredients be more potent. The Beetles, were slightly less common, but still used for protection, often to boost resilience, and helped with regenerative properties. The Joberknoll feathers, as anyone with any kind of potions knowledge knew, were used in potions that aided truth revelation and memory recall. That was what tipped him off in the end about what potion he was looking for. "Veritaserum, but come on, at least wand, rune, potion me for it!" he said, holding his hand out in a fist towards Mikael to play him for who was going to do the quizzing. Once the game started, he immediately went for wand and held his fist out with his pointer finger up. ​

 

[Mikael Nightray]

Mikael closed the book he was looking at while Elio tried to figure out the answer to the question and then reached out for Elio's Care of Magical Creatures book. That was a little trickier, but he managed to open it all the same as he scoured the pages for what to ask his boyfriend. It was an interesting class that his mother had lamented multiple times that none of her kids had so far expressed interest in the subject. Mikael found creatures fascinating. Caring for them? Not so much. He'd finally found the chapter on hippocampus by the time Elio figured out the answer to the Potions question, and Mikael muttered a "Good job." He moved his gaze from the book though to raise an unimpressed eyebrow at the juvenile game. Still, Elio didn't seem to be deterred as he just sat there with an outstretched fist until Mikael finally gave in with a sigh and held a fist out himself. With the game on, he watched Elio closely and went for "potion" - turning his fist to point his thumb up. "I win. Care of. At what age are tadfoals considered mature?" he asked expectantly.​

 

[Elio Boneheart]

Dammit. Elio muttered under his breath as Mikael successfully beat him again. He almost asked for best of three, only he knew it wasn't going to do anything for him unfortunately. At this point Elio was in the habit of believing that Mikael was probably a seer and he just didn't tell anyone. He knew that Ai had sort of trained as one back when she was at school, and of course Bryce was actually a seer, so that probably meant something too, but it wasn't really that much of a problem. He would just have to figure out how Mikael kept cheating, because that had to be what he was doing. "Like... four years?" Care of Magical Creatures wasn't his favourite subject, though it was fascinating enough. He enjoyed being able to see the creatures even if he couldn't see them, see them, since they were almost always behind a fencing or barrier they weren't allowed through. "Can we at least do one for one?"​

 

[Mikael Nightray]

Mikael almost grinned as his boyfriend didn't seem all too happy about losing the game that he'd proposed. Elio may have been hoping that winning a game of "wand, rune, potion" would be up to chance, but his Gryffindor boyfriend had tells, so it wasn't really much of a game of chance as much as it was Mikael waiting for Elio to decide what to throw. Maybe it was a little mean, but really, they'd been playing this game for years - since they were kids. If Elio hasn't figured it out yet, it's certainly not Mikael's fault. "Good," he nodded as Elio got the right answer once again though he's not really surprised anyway. "Three questions for each loss and throw a kiss in if you get all of them right," he says instead. He didn't really know if a kiss would be motivation for his boyfriend but it was worth a short if he would just focus on answering questions rather than throwing questions at Mikael.​

 

[Elio Boneheart]

"Wait so, for every question I get wrong, you're going to ask three? How are we going to keep track of that?" He didn't really think he would get that many wrong that often, but he didn't really trust Mikael not to ask him something really obscure on the off chance it randomly showed up on the exam. He was tricky like that. He didn't comment on the kiss because that seemed irrelevant right now until he figured out what kind of weird math this was. Was he going to mark down every wrong answer so that if he got one wrong in the first instance, he would have three, and then one more in there would be another three, but he would still have the two from the other one, which could give him six, to have to answer - yeah, no, he was confused. "Sorry can you be more clear about what you mean? So we're not doing one each because I lost the game so you get to decide, but what do you mean?"​

 

[Mikael Nightray]

It was not unusual for Mikael to forget that he needed to use full sentences and not just what he usually deemed important to be said. He should not have been surprised at the wild tangent that his boyfriend had gotten off to. Or at least Mikael thought it was a wild tangent. Or at least some weird scenario. Mikael was good at math, but he wasn't that willing to keep track of asking Elio three questions for every one he got wrong. "For every loss in Wand, Rune, Potion," he clarified. He thinks that's clarification enough anyway. Or maybe it wasn't. "One round of Wand, Rune, Potion. Three questions every time you lose." There. That wouldn't be misunderstood. He didn't want to have to play a round of the game for every question. There were only so many times before one got sick of the game. But Elio wanted to play for the privilege of asking questions - or, well, he could certainly try. Mikael was tired of having to answer questions on those bouncing bulbs and Charms.​

 

[Elio Boneheart]

That still felt unfair since they'd already established that for some reason Mikael was a lot better at that game than Elio was, despite his best efforts. He couldn't say he quite understood what it was about the game that apparently rendered him incapable of winning it within it's own statistical likelihood, since statistically he should win at least 33.3% of the time, and he just didn't. He'd never specifically been a student of averages, but it didn't seem to work out mathematically - still, Mikael really probably was that good. Or he could read his mind, whatever. "Okay that does seem more doable." He said, frowning as he tried to think about what questions he might ask if he won, which he probably wouldn't because he had ridiculously bad luck at winning any games against Mikael. "So are we starting with the game, or questions?" Probably questions since he'd already won.​

 

[Mikael Nightray]

Mikael could see the indecision in his boyfriend's face, which was a little amusing. Perhaps Elio was indecisive about the whole thing since he was quite prone to losing the game when against Mikael. It did not make it any less amusing. Especially when there were stakes like this. Still, it was silly that Elio wanted to keep on focusing on Kael's classes when Kael wasn't at all worried about them. In contrast, Elio could get quite stressed about his own studies. So, it definitely made sense that they should focus more on reviewing the Gryffindor's classes. Honestly, he blames his mother. She was such a worrywart. He'd already promised her that he would get no less than EEs in classes that involved wandwork. His Potions and Herbology, he was sure he could manage an A easily - those didn't interest him much anyway. He refused to take History. Still, his mother would fret in her letters. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd sent a letter or two Elio's way about his studies. Dragging himself out of his musings, he nodded as his boyfriend finally agreed to the terms he had set. He thought about asking two more questions instead of doing another round, but he supposed he could be lenient with his boyfriend this time - only because Elio was his boyfriend. "We could start with the terms this round," he said as he held his fist out.​

 

[Elio Boneheart]

They played another game, and of course, Elio lost, because that seemed to be the only thing he was good at doing when he played this particular game with Mikael. He grumbled under his breath, rolling his eyes and dropping his fist. "Go on then, give me another," he said, leaning back on his hands as he stared up at the sun. It was nice that they were hanging out like this, but he'd been trying to help Mikael with his studies, not the other way around and yet it continued to keep going in this direction. The exams were coming ever closer and he hated that he felt like he was drowning. There was just so much he needed to pay attention to and he wasn't sure how he was supposed to keep his focus when there was so much stuff in his head he didn't know what to do with, he barely knew what to think half of the time and honestly he was kind of terrified that he was going to completely ruin his life with exams, and it wasn't even these exams he was worried about, it was the NEWTs at the end of the year.​