[PV] Scared Half to Death

[Devon Fondatore]

【 devon fondatore 】
—1 september, 2026— @Augustus Graves —x

Devon was starving. Not literally, but it sure felt like it. Dinner had been ages ago. Then there had been the Sorting Ceremony, which ended around 11 pm, then a little bit of getting to know new housemates, showing them around, and by the time Devon had actually gotten into bed his stomach had decided that none of the food he had eaten earlier counted anymore.

He had tried ignoring it.

Five minutes.

Then ten.

He rolled over.

His stomach growled.

“Shut up,” he muttered into his pillow.

It did not shut up.

As a second year, Devon had learned a lot about life at Penwick. One: you actually could live on less sleep than the professors tell you. Two: the castle was much easier to navigate when there weren’t hundreds of students charging through it. Three: there were kitchens in the subterranean.

That third piece of information was currently the important one.

So, sometime after he was reasonably sure everyone else in the dorm had settled, Devon slipped out of bed, shoved his feet into trainers, and quietly left. He didn’t bother changing out of what he was sleeping in. Loose sweats, old shirt, hoodie thrown over top. Good enough. He wasn’t going anywhere important. He didn't even bother to put his coloured contacts back in.

He quickly navigated out of the common room, and opting to use the stairs to get down instead of the portiport, as he had learned Four: People don't like patrolling the stairs because they are a pain in the ass to climb up and down.

Devon stopped at the bottom of the stone staircase and stared down the corridor ahead. Alchemy classroom wasn't too far from here, and the Modron common room was... somewhere here, and the kitchens were... Somewhere else. No problem.

He looked left.

Then right.

Nope.

Absolutely no idea.

“Brilliant...” How big could this part of the castle be? He'd run into the kitchens eventually, he figured, deciding to just walk in a direction and stick to it.

It was kind of spooky downstairs, the same feeling he'd gotten in his grandma's basement when he was younger. Pipes gave the occasional hollow creak. His footsteps bounced back at him from the walls, sounding like someone was walking several paces behind him if he thought about it too much.

So he didn’t.

Eventually, Devon thought he smelled something... Wet rock. Herbs. And then, ever so faintly... Jam?

Devon stopped and sniffed again. Definitely jam.

His face lit up as he realized he was close to his midnight snack. He followed the corridor into the cellars, where barrels lined the walls in long rows, and the shelves had been packed with jars and tins of food as far as the eye could see. Devon briefly wondered why he had ever bothered trying to find the kitchens at all. This was much better.

He walked farther inside, reading labels as he went.

Preserves, beans, pickled onions, more preserves, something labelled flobberworm mucus.

Devon recoiled and moved away from that shelf immediately.

There were several large wheels of cheese farther down, but Devon couldn't exactly just take a bite out of those.

Eventually he found a small jar of something that looked like strawberry jam and, nearby, a baguette wrapped in cloth.

Wicked.

He pulled the bread closer, grateful that whoever had baked it had seemingly charmed it to never go stale, when his stomach dropped.

Something moved behind him.

Something had definitely moved.

His grip tightened around the baguette. For several seconds he stayed completely still. After a few moments of silence, he slowly turned his head toward the rows of barrels behind him. It was dark (duh, it's nighttime underground), and Devon narrowed his eyes to try and make out something in the shadows before he had a realization.

He was almost thirteen years old now. He had been at Penwick for an entire year. He had been in actual fights. He had been knocked flat by spells. He was not about to get scared because some barrel made a noise.

Another sound.

Devon shot upright. Never mind. He was terrified. He was going to die tonight.

He raised the baugette, clutched in both hands like an extremely ineffective weapon. Devon took one cautious step between the barrels. Then another. He leaned around the edge of the nearest shelf-

And nearly walked straight into someone.

[Augustus Graves]

1 September, 2026
@Devon Fondatore

Augustus' intuition grants him agility for the time being

A stifled yawn escaped from the exhausted Modron boy as he shuffled, zombie-like, to nowhere in particular. His blue-striped pajama bottoms kept catching under his heel, making him pause every few steps to hitch them up. Normally, the fifth-year wouldn’t be caught dead being awake at such an ungodly hour, but apparently greater powers had deemed Gus unworthy of slipping into the land of dreams. He had just been lying on his bed, gazing into the void of darkness that swirled and twisted more the longer he had stared. The teenager would have been entirely content to continue to watch nothing; however, the delicate tugging at the silvery thread embedded in his sternum had forced him to shift his focus away from the stupor of his dreams.


Gus trudged on through the darkness, looking like he had just sucked on a lemon. Oh, Merlin, why had he decided to follow to what essentially boils down to a glorified gut feeling? Every step was followed by the soft ‘Thwap’ of slippers against his heels. As sleeplessness tugged at his eyelids, the cure for his restless eyes came to him as suddenly as an acorn falling from a mighty oak.



…Coffee… rich, warm, and with a splash of cream. He needed a cuppa.



You would have thought the boy had just devised a masterful scheme by the way his lips coiled into a fiendish grin. It was probably the sleep deprivation causing the boy to lose a screw or two. Thankfully, even in his half-awake state, Auggie knew exactly where to grab such a delicacy.



It was only a short walk before he could begin the somewhat easy process of brewing that chocolate-colored elixir of life. Like a whip, the boy lazily flourished his wand in several languid gestures. Utensils were plucked from hooks and cabinets by invisible hands, and a mug landed unceremoniously in front of Augustus. Just as he had on so many mornings before, amid the familiar chaos of his family, the boy quietly began his ritual. A swarm of coffee grounds were wrapped in a paper filter before it was placed over the beaker-like glass pot. A second flick of the alder wood wand produced water and instantly brought the once-tepid water to a boil. It rained down on the coffee grounds, and soon enough the boy was able to pour himself a well-earned joe.



The light behind his green eyes sparked brightly as the warm liquid flowed down his gullet, and he came to life. A delighted smile drifted to his lips. Gus used to despise the taste of the earthy brew, but the addiction to caffeine had made him grow to love it. Now, with cup in hand and wand in the other, Augustus Graves stepped free from the tiled floor of the kitchens and back into the long, chilly corridors. Only then did the faint, blurry movement register in his now-alert vision. Was somebody headed towards the cellars? Why in the hell would somebody willingly bring themselves to that dusty-ass room at this time of night?

Obviously, this was where his instincts had brought him, so ignoring the strain on his thread would probably be a disservice. With a small shake of his head, Gus slinked after the spectre of movement. Turning the corner, the boy nearly ran headlong into a long shelf of jars and phials. The labelled jar that sat in front of his face patronisingly read ‘Armadillow Bile’, as the boy wrinkled his nose at the putrid smell coming from the bottle. An involuntary ‘bleh’ escaped as he attempted to stop himself from retching. With backpedalling steps, he swung away in an attempt to save his nosehairs from wasting away against the stench of the alchemical ingredient, only to scuff his slipper against the ground, causing the investigative teenager to freeze in place and cringe to himself. Quickly enough, the shattered silence mended itself, and the stillness returned to the room. Finally, he continued past the first row of shelves. Slowly inching himself around the edge of the first shelf, a presence made itself known.

The flailing of a baguette nearly caught Gus across the jaw as the stranger raised the doughy weapon at him. Yelping in surprise, Augustus instinctively flicked his wand up in front of his assailant’s face before effectively flashbanging the red-eyed boy with an unspoken ‘lumos solem’ that erupted from the tip of the Alder and Basilisk Horn core wand.

For a moment everything went white, and Gus could feel himself wheeling away from the other loaf-wielding maniac. The solid thump sounded as Auggie backed away blindly into another nearby shelf, making several loud bangs and clinks as the jars and bottles loudly rapped against themselves.

Blinking away the last of the stars, the Modron looked back up at the other boy to give him an incredulous look before spouting out in the most irate stage whisper, “ A baguette? Are you fucking serious?" The hand with the half empty cup of coffee rose to his eyes in attempt to rub away the remaining blotches of color in his vision, "What the fuck.”

[Devon Fondatore]

【 devon fondatore 】
—1 september, 2026— @Augustus Graves —x

The stranger’s wand came up. Devon just had enough time to think, Uh oh, before the cellar exploded into sunlight.

“Aaaah!” He staggered backward, throwing one arm across his eyes while the baguette swung uselessly through the air in his other hand. Bright white burned through his eyelids. His heel caught against the bottom of a barrel, and he slammed one hand into it to stop himself from falling.

For one terrible second, Devon thought he had gone blind.

A head flashed across his face and raised arm, like sticking his arm into an oven. His skin prickled beneath it, then began to burn with the familiar sting of too much sun arriving far too quickly. The charm had lasted barely a moment, but that was more than enough. Being in the sun on a clear day made his skin burn much easier, but that was one thing. This was direct, intense exposure to sunlight.

Devon hissed through his teeth in pain as the cellar filled with the sound of clinking glass as the stranger backed into a shelf. Devon stayed where he was, blinking hard against the white haze swimming across his vision. Blue and violet shapes slowly began to form within it. Finally, he was able to make out some shelves. Barrels. A person.

“A baguette? Are you fucking serious?” Devon stared at him as best he could through the spots drifting across his vision. Older boy. Pajamas. Slippers. Mug in one hand. Not a professor, thankfully.

“You snuck up on me,” Devon shot back in the same furious whisper. “What was I meant to do, ask if you had some butter?”

His heart was still pounding painfully against his ribs. Now that he could actually see what had frightened him, the fear began to collapse into embarrassment and irritation.

He lowered the bread slightly. “And what the hell was that, man? Can't a guy sneak around in peace these days? Now I've gotta worry about people trying to blind me!” Devon rubbed beneath one eye, then pulled his hand away with a sharp wince. His cheeks felt hot. So did the bridge of his nose and the forearm he had thrown across his face. He looked down at the exposed skin and found it already flushed pink. “Oh, brilliant," he muttered, inspecting the damage with growing frustration.

Finally, he glanced back up at his assailant. The boy looked exhausted. His pajama bottoms were too long, his slippers hardly suited covert cellar exploration, and his expression suggested that getting attacked by baked goods had not been part of his evening plans either. Whatever this was, it clearly wasn’t a prefect patrol. Unless Penwick had started issuing slippers to their best and brightest.

“Well,” Devon said, still rubbing carefully at his burning forearm, “you’re wandering around after curfew too, so you can’t tell on me without explaining why you were down here trying to cook people.” He tore off a piece of the baguette with his teeth, contemplating his next moves as he chewed. "So that means you probably won't tell, right?"