Faulty Goods

[Ethlinn O'Riordan]

Ethlinn wasn't an overly spoilt child, but she was certainly used to getting her own way with her mother. Living a few hundred miles away made it somewhat difficult to bend her mother's will to her own. Consequently she was running low on pocket money and was in dire need of a new outfit, depite the many in her wardrobe. It was more a emotional need than physical need. So she had struck up a plan to make money, a get rich quick scheme. She'd been selling charmed quills, charming them herself with cheat spells like auto-answering and spell corrections. She had been raking the money in on the schools black market.

There was a problem though. She had never really been any good at charms and rumours were floating around of incidents of backfiring quills exploding in peoples faces or spitting ink uncontrolably. It was time to disappear into the crowds for a while she thought. Hurrying through the corridors with a bundle of stock and her money tin in hand she headed for the dorms, dodging past a large slytherin student before he could work out she was the reason he was covered head to toe in ink. With her eyes still on his confused face she took a corner a little too quickly and skidded with a crash in a heap on the floor her money and quills raining down upon her.

"Bumholes!" she yelled as he lay on her back her arms over her head to stop the falling debri hitting her eyes.

[Seth Brusseau]

Cheating quills? To most students, the idea would be outrageous and certainly cost them and their respective house some points. However, that was the rumor floating around that Seth had gotten wind of. He received an anonymous owl from a student who wanted the budding journalist to investigate. While it was a great story idea, Seth found that having an anonymous source was a two way street. This person could very well have been a teacher looking to use Seth as a means to catch the person responsible. Or the tipster could be one of the supposed cheaters caught with a poison pen.

As Seth walked down the halls, he saw the first real evidence of a backfiring quill. One of his housemates was covered in ink and he did not look happy. Immediately, Seth walked up to him in a bit of a hurry. His housemate opened his mouth to speak, but Seth raised a hand to silence him. He grabbed the boy's arm and pulled him to the side for a moment. Seth snapped his fingers and his own quill and pad came floating out from his robe. "Clearly, the writing is on the...wall, so to speak. Where did you get one of these poison pens?" Seth asked quickly.

"I got it from some first year. He got a couple of them from someone else and was selling 'em," the Slytherin said.

Immediately, the quill started writing. Seth looked around and spoke quietly. "Don't say anything. If you haven't already gotten in trouble, I suggest you get washed up before some other meddling teacher wants to deduct house points," he urged the student. Seth did not encourage cheating, but he surely didn't want to see he house lose points as well as any face. The Slytherin nodded and turned to head to the washroom.

Seth had an interesting story on his hands. He began to dictate his thoughts to his quill and walked around the corner. "I need a headline. Questionable Quills? Not-so Innocent Ink? Hmmm..." the boy said as he strolled down the halls. Before he knew it, he lost his footing and started to trip on something on the floor. He reached out and knocked his quill out of the air. Seth hit the ground with a painful thud.

He looked up and saw a familiar girl with ribbons in her hair. "Terribly sorry. I didn't see..." Seth said but stopped. He couldn't believe what he stumbled on to.

[Ethlinn O'Riordan]

"OI Watch It!" Ethlinn yelled from her sprawled position as Seth tripped right over her.

"You big oaf." She said grumbling as she got up and started gathering her quills and money into a little pile. She stole a quick glance around the corner and was relieved to see the Slytherin had disappeared. Her relief soon faded when she took a proper glance at who fell over her.

"Oh it's you." She said with an annoyed tone. Rolling her eyes she started trying to subtley shove quills and sickles into her backpack. The last thing she needed right now was a mug shot in the school gossip pages. She was as good at glamour charms as she was at quill-tampering charms, so she'd have to start a new life far away from disgruntled Huffflepuffs and angry Slytherins. Maybe a bit over the top, but she liked melodrama.

"Have you seen all this mess some first year left lying around?" She said trying to pass it off as somebody elses, whilst still discretly shoving as many into her bag as possible .

[Seth Brusseau]

Seth looked at the girl as she got up and then around the floor. There were quills everywhere. Could he have stumbled upon the person responsible? Or was this girl another person caught up in the scandal? He didn't want to jump to conclusions, at least not right away.

"Have you seen all this mess some first year left lying around?" he heard the girl say to him.

Seth raised his eyebrow and chuckled. Did she really think he was that stupid? Then again, could the girl have been that stupid for leaving this stuff just lying on the floor? He decided to play along until he could discern the truth. "So, you tripped on this stuff just like I tripped on you?" he asked Ethlinn, picking himself up.

"Wait a moment. Where's MY quill?" Seth asked looking around at the pile.

[Fintan Brennan]

Fintan was walking down one of the third floor corridors on his way to the great hall, he could hear the sound of a boy and girl's voices talking slightly irately gradually getting louder as he progressed down the hall. He turned a corner to the sight of a flustered Ethlinn; the Irish girl he had met in the Great Hall earlier. There were a few dozen quills scattered on the floor around her.

'Hey Ethlinn, erm what happened here? Where did all these quills come from?' He asked in a confused tone and began to pick them up off the floor.

'We better move these, somebody could fall over them'

[Valentina Way]

Valentina had been running around all day because of these dumb complaints about these 'quills gone bad'. The ones that bribed her told her that they were originally bought for the purpose of cheating. Which, personally, she didn't object to, she felt that all tests should be open book, notes, whatever you need! However, who was dumb enough to buy them from a first year?!

She shook her head at the Slytherin student complaining to her.

"Well, maybe you should've made sure you bought it from the right person." She rolled her eyes.

"By the way, you still have ink on your face. Right in front of your ear. You might want to get that. It's probably going to stain." She said. She wasn't sure if it would stain, but her plan was to get this person out of her face, and it worked.

She heard a collision down the hall soon, and saw a bunch of quills on the floor. Oh, the job of a prefect is never done. She hurried over.

"What is going on here?" Val said as she approached, and then noticed Seth, Fintan, and also the first year who randomly appeared and told Mallory who Lucas had cheated on Nikki with that day in the great hall.

[Ethlinn O'Riordan]

"Of course I did. Why else would I be lying amongst a bunch of quills?" She replied to Seth with a casual shrug of her shoulders.

"Your quill? I dunno, but I know where you can buy a cheap new one." SHe muttered the last bit under her breath as she started to search the quills for one she didn't recognise. They all looked so different though and none stood out to her. She looked up with a smile at Fintan as he joined them.

"Hey there, oh me and Seth just tripped over these abandoned quills here." She answered to try and distance herself from the incriminating evidence. They looked harmless enough, bt she knew if someone started using one then they wouldn't look harmless for long. She cursed in her head when Val joined the scene, wasn't she the Slytherin prefect? A quick scan of her jumper confirmed this with the shiny badge pinned proudly there.

"Oh we're just cleaning away these abandoned, and probably broken quills. I'll just go throw them in the bin. No use to anyone." She tried gathering up armfuls and snatched the ones out of Fintan's hands.

"Let me take those for you." She said smiling sweetly and as innocently as she could muster, something she could pull off pretty well with the girly bows in her hair.

[Fintan Brennan]

Fintan chuckled, Ethlinn and apparently Seth too had both done what he had just said could happen.

'I guess I was right than. Somebody could trip over them, only issue is that person was you and it's already happened.' He laughed and gathered up a bundle of quills into his arm.
'So what are we going to do with these? Have you got a bag?'

He could see Val making her way down the corridor, it was funny how he always seemed to bump into her. He glanced at Ethlinn who looked unusually flustered, raised an eyebrow and then looked back towards Val. She asked her question to which Ethlinn retorted.

'A great danger you know!' Fintan joked 'Quills, biggest cause of deaths in Ireland!' he was craning his neck to look over the collection of quills in his arms.

[Valentina Way]

Valentina looked at the quills on the floor, and one or two of them definitely looked like the ones that were reported to her. She looked suspiciously at Ethlinn as she attempted to pick up every single one of them.

"So, these 'abandoned, and probably broken quills' as you say, they were just lying here?" Val asked looking at Ethlinn looking very flustered. She could definitely feel that someone here was up to no good. Since, so many times, she had been in that same position. But practice takes perfect, and she's almost perfected a skill of pretending like she's not doing something wrong when she is.

When Fintan joked that the quills were a great danger, Valentina shifted her attention over to Fintan. What did he know about the whole situation?

"How are these quills a great danger?" She asked seriously, not realizing that Fintan was joking. He definitely seemed like the harmless type to Val, but she had been found at the crime, er, well, the scene in which all the evidence was lying.

[Seth Brusseau]

"Well, well, well. Prefect Way is the case," Seth said in a flirtatious tone. "You and I have something in common. Figuring out what's going on here." Seth said looking over the quills for his own. He was starting to wish his was more pronounced than the others on the ground.

"I stumbled upon little Ethlinn here and she tripped on all these quills," Seth said kneeling down and looking through the pile. He had a glimmer of hope when he saw his parchment on the ground. However, there were two quills lying on the paper. "Hmmm," Seth said to himself picking up his notes and the two quills.

"I guess one of these is mine. Though I'm hoping these aren't the quills that I've been hearing about," he said directing his word towards Valentina. "You know, the cheating quills?"

Seth took out his wand and gave a quick cast on one of the quills. It floated up in the air with his parchment and resumed it's writing stance. "Now we'll see if that is the case or not with one of these," he said looking down at the young girl. He had his suspicions, but he couldn't prove anything. The quill he was taking his reporting notes with would have to do something unusual.

[Fintan Brennan]

Fintan dropped the bundle of quills onto an aged oak table at the side of the corridor, examining the feathered nibs curiously. It was whilst he was looking at the quills that Val turned on him, demanding why the quills were dangerous.

'How are these quills a great danger?' she asked.

'Um, they're really not Val. They may run the risk of poking somebody's eye out every now and again, but what I said was a joke Val. Calm down!' Fintan exclaimed but reconsidered his statement.
'Actually Val, there's something off about these quills, they just, I don't know, feel strange?' he asked himself.

Seth had begun his 'journalism' routine with some kind of smooth talking to Val, Fintan just raised an eyebrow and moved to help Ethlinn with the rest of the quills. Seth's constant search for a story had begun to become tedious and slightly irritating, it seemed you could never be in the same room as him without there being some drama he had to follow up.

Fintan turned to Ethlinn as they scooped up the last of the quills.
'You got any idea what we're gonna do with these quills?' he asked.

[Valentina Way]

Valentina looked around and in her mind made a mental note that Ethlinn was definitely Slytherin material if she was selling the cheating quills. However, the girl still had a lot to learn.

She watched as Seth started using one of the quills. Everything seemed fine, so either this whole batch of quills were okay... or Seth was extremely lucky and grabbed the right one.

Valentina felt a little bad for accusing Fintan of being the one to sell the quills when he told her to relax. Obviously, somneone like Fintan would never do such a thing. But she was not about to show that she felt bad, she just ignored the fact.

"Well, we can test the quills... but then I also don't want any crazy things to be going on, and have you guys get hurt.... Hmm... should I turn these in to one of the teachers?" She wondered, but if Ethlinn really was the one selling it, she really didn't feel like getting her in trouble.