Never Trust the Irish

"Well, if that's not the icing on the proverbial cake," Dean said, and Seamus swore that he detected a slight hint of amusement in his former best friend's voice.

After a brief meeting with Theodore Nott, Seamus and Blaise had gone their separate ways in order to assemble their teams. Fifteen minutes later they had flooed to the rural Scottish home of Oliver Wood.

Oliver had been most gracious in the face of an entire team of Ministry employees, half of which were Aurors, popping unceremoniously out of his fireplace. Seamus supposed that someone had owled ahead to inform him of their arrival, but that wasn't something he generally had to deal with firsthand. That was what the little desk moles were for.

After bidding a goodbye to Puddlemere United's star Keeper, the entire team had apparate as far north as they could without hitting water. Off the coast, visible only to the eyes of wizards and witches, was the infamous Isle of Drear.

Somewhere around them lurked as many as a dozen quintapeds. It was not a happy thought.

The rest of the day was spent locating a suitable place to set up base. All twelve of them trooped around for hours before finding a place that had a nearby water supply, adequate protection from the elements, and a space flat enough and large enough for twelve one-man tents.

Apparently, aside from being extremely hairy, having five legs, and causing general mayhem, quintapeds were very sensitive to the presence of magic. Since it wouldn't very well do to have the murderous beasts bearing down on their camp, the teams had elected to make like muggles for the duration of the op.

This meant that there would be no magical enlargement of said one-man tents. It would be cramped and uncomfortable, but they could make do. They were the Ministry's finest, after all.

Only things didn't turn out nearly as well as they'd hoped. Upon unloading his always-packed duffle bag, Seamus had found that someone with a serious death wish had borrowed his tent.

"Indeed, Dean," Seamus said, staring down at his duffle bag as if a tent would magically appear. "If we don't want the quintapeds to find us, we can't use magic. So it would be a trifle unintelligent to conjure myself a tent."

"Look on the bright side," a girl he believed was called Lisa Turpin said. "At least you have your sleeping bag."

"Just pray it doesn't rain," Orla Quirke drawled.

"Oh, that's helpful," Seamus said sardonically. "I'm going to kill the bastard that decided it would be a good idea to take his boss's tent."

"Not all the way from Scotland you aren't, Finnigan," Blaise said, already in the process of setting up her own tent. "At least you'll get to see the stars."

"Do you want to trade, Zabini?" Seamus asked wryly. "Then you can see the stars, and I can sleep."

"Not on your life," Blaise said brightly. "I'm not stupid."

"Well, I'd already surmised that for myself, thanks," Seamus shot back. "A bit bad at speaking in general, but not stupid."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Blaise said, disentangling herself from the mess that was her tent to glare at him. The effect was ruined by her flushed face, half-hidden smile, and bright eyes.

"Don't you always stutter uncontrollably in meetings?" Seamus asked, already guessing the answer. "Or am I just special?"

"It's all you, Finnigan," Blaise said in a monotone. "I want you, I need you, oh baby, oh baby. You rock my world, I want your body, etcetera, etcetera..."

Everyone laughed, and Tracey Davis piped up, "It must be something you ate, Blaise. Don't worry, it'll probably wear off soon."

"Oh, you think you're so funny," Seamus said amiably. "It makes me wish our teams hated each other after all."

Surprisingly, the two teams had meshed like they'd been working together for years. It seemed that Seamus and Blaise were better at organizing teams than they'd thought.

"Have fun outside, Seamus," Williamson said. "If no one feels like lighting a fire and telling ghost stories and secrets until the wee hours, I'm turning in."

"Tomorrow's going to be a long day," Euan Abercrombie agreed. "We should all hit the sack."

"Say hello to all the little forest creatures for me, Seamus," Hannah Abbot quipped.

"I'm laughing on the inside, Hannah," Seamus replied. "I really am."

Everyone climbed into their tents and zipped the flaps. All except Blaise, who hadn't quite gotten hers to stand up on it's own.

"You're a pureblood, aren't you?" Seamus asked, watching her efforts from inside his sleeping bag.

"How could you tell?" Blaise asked, pausing with her hands full of tent.

"You've never been camping before, I can see," Seamus answered, slithering out of his sleeping bag and walking the half a dozen steps to her tent. "Let me help."

Seamus's dad had taken him camping often as a child. His poor muggle father, bless him, hadn't known what he was getting into when he'd married a witch. To be honest, he hadn't known she was a witch when they'd exchanged vows. It was only afterwards that Kathleen Measles Finnigan had told her husband about her magical abilities.

Patrick Finnigan had taken it well, in Seamus's opinion. He'd raised his only child as he saw fit, giving him all the muggle experiences he could handle. Seamus, as a result, was a muggle relations genius. If only he hadn't had that wee temper problem, he would have been excellent in the muggle liaison field.

Seamus knew about loads of muggle things, from Star Wars to mechanics. Somewhere amid that knowledge lay the amazing ability to pitch a tent.

He had Blaise's tent up in a trice, causing her to eye him suspiciously. "How did you do that?"

"Me dad taught me," Seamus explained.

"Muggle?" Blaise enquired curiously.

"Yeah," Seamus answered shortly.

"That explains it," Blaise said musingly.

"Explains what?" Seamus asked.

"Why you weren't in Slytherin," Blaise answered. She laughed at his outraged look. "Come off it, Finnigan. You're cunning, ambitious, clever and just a shade pure evil. You'd have done famously in Slytherin."

"How can I argue when you say such nice things about me?" Seamus asked dryly.

"Another reason you weren't in Slytherin," Blaise added. "I was complimenting you, you prat."

"Oh," Seamus said enthusiastically. "In that case, I'm glad I put up your tent. Goodnight, Zabini."

"Goodnight, Finnigan," Blaise replied, crawling in her tent.

Seamus couldn't resist a parting shot. "I'd give you a Gryffindor compliment and call you daring and good-hearted, but you'd probably hurt me."

"Goodnight, Finnigan," Blaise said with finality, zipping the flaps of her tent shut. However, she couldn't control her smile.

*

If Blaise had felt like moving, she could have checked her watch and found that it was one o'clock in the morning. As it was, she was too tired to make the effort. It had been a very long day, and she was dead tired.

Keeping her from sleep, however, were the incessant noises coming from the general area of Seamus Finnigan. Apparently he couldn't sleep, either.

As she listened, his sleeping bag rustled for what had to be the thousandth time. Giving in to the inevitable, she said in a quiet voice, "Can't sleep, Finnigan?"

The noises stopped, and Seamus didn't reply for a moment. Eventually, though, his answer floated through the air so softly that she almost missed it.

"I'm sleeping in the open air, it's cloudy and I'm afraid it's going to rain on me, there are approximately forty-seven rocks digging through my sleeping bag, and you want to know if I'm sleeping well?"

Blaise heaved a great sigh. "Come on."

"What?" Seamus asked incredulously.

"Get your bum in here," Blaise said. When her command was met with silence, she added, "I don't want you to get wet. If you get wet, you'll get grouchy. I've heard stories about what happens when the Irish get grouchy."

"Damn straight," Seamus said. She heard an especially loud rustling and assumed that he was getting up. Sure enough, her tent flaps began to unzip moments later.

"Are you sure?" Seamus asked. "This is a one-man tent. It's going to be a wee bit crowded."

"Just as long as you don't try any funny business," Blaise warned.

"I wouldn't dream of getting fresh with you, Zabini," Seamus said, and Blaise could hear the amusement in his voice. "After all, I like my head still attached to my body."

"Damn straight," she mimicked, scooting over to make room for him. He was right, it was a tight fit. When he laid down, she could feel his lean muscles pressed against her. Ignoring the slightly lightheaded feeling this was giving her, she glared at him through the darkness.

He successfully stopped any tirade she was thinking about giving by pulling her into his arms, her back to his front.

"I thought you weren't going to get fresh," she accused.

"It'll be more comfortable this way," he said softly, his breath tickling her neck and making her think all sorts of unwholesome things.

"Goodnight, Finnigan," she said firmly, making a conscious effort not to notice the way his strong arms felt wrapped around her.

"Goodnight, Zabini," he whispered, already half asleep. Damn him, how could he sleep? Wasn't he feeling even half as breathless as she was? If he was, he was doing a bang up job of disguising it.

She didn't get to sleep for a very long time.

*

"Well, isn't this an interesting development," came Dean's amused voice the next morning. Blaise's heart started beating extremely fast, because she knew that finding the two leaders of the joint team in a compromising position would be highly awkward.

To her surprise, Seamus's answer floated through the tent material. "The little beast seems to have attached itself to me."

Damn Seamus Finnigan, he was always one step ahead of her. She hadn't even felt him leave.

She groused around for a moment, making sure she was decent before poking her head out of the tent. "What's going on?" she asked sleepily.

"Something you might like to see, Zabini," Seamus replied, looking up at her from his position sitting up half out of his sleeping bag. His cursory glance revealed nothing of the night before, and he went back to staring down at his lap, leaving her feeling decidedly slighted.

"What?" she snapped.

"Come here," Seamus said, fixing his bright blue gaze on her once more as he reached out a hand to beckon her.

She did so, feeling a vague sense of unease at his ordering her around. The sight that met her eyes vanished all such thoughts from her mind.

A tiny quintaped, no larger than a soccer ball, had lodged itself firmly in Seamus's lap, with no apparent intentions of leaving. It stared up at her beadily, assessing her and evidently deciding that she was no threat.

"Where is it's mother?" Blaise breathed, looking around her half expecting to see a rabid, overprotective mother burst from the underbrush.

"Dunno," Seamus said, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't know what to do with it, quite frankly."

"Orla," Blaise snapped, and said girl poked her messy black-topped head out of her tent. "Check this out and tell me what kind of Containment Spell you could use on it."

Orla crawled out of the tent, studied the quintaped for a moment with no comment, and made a thoughtful noise in her throat. "I could use a basic one, but I'm not sure the effect it might have on a growing beast."

"Is there anything we can do to keep it from running amok?" Blaise asked in exasperation.

"It's not running amok," Seamus pointed out, in Blaise's opinion a little protectively. "It's just sitting here."

"A bit attached, are we?" Blaise said, raising her eyebrows. "Finnigan, I didn't know you had it in you."

"If you're implying what I think you're implying..." Seamus warned.

"Are you going to take it home and keep it for a pet?" Blaise asked, more and more amused with each passing second.

Seamus put a protective hand on the back of the small quintaped, glaring at Blaise in indignation. "I have no idea what you mean, Zabini. I am not the slightest bit attached to this little monster."

The quintaped eyed him indignantly before biting his hand.

"I don't think it likes you insulting it," Blaise remarked, as Seamus examined the bite. "Does anyone know if quintaped bites are poisonous?"

"I sure hope not," Seamus said casually.

"If you die on me, Finnigan," Blaise said sternly, "I'll bring you back to life and kick your bum."

"That threat is enough to keep me clinging to this world, thanks," Seamus answered.

"I don't think they're poisonous," Hannah offered. "There would have been something about it in the Venomous Bites and Stings section of the Healer's Handbook."

"Could you do something for it, just in case?" Blaise asked.

"I don't know what all the fuss is about," Seamus said. "I'm perfectly fine."

"Have you ever seen what a slow-acting poison can do to someone?" Hannah asked casually, already digging in her bag for whatever potion or cream she needed. Blaise herself was a mess at healing, and couldn't tell a sleeping potion from an energy potion,

Seamus looked a trifle worried at Hannah's question, and didn't protest when she took out one of her many creams and a bandage and proceeded to wrap his hand. When she had finished, he eyed the neatly wrapped gauze curiously.

"So do Healers take classes in bandage wrapping?" Seamus asked. "Or are you just naturally this neat and perfect?"

"It's natural," Kevin put in. "She's a neat freak."

"I am not a neat freak," Hannah replied, glaring at Kevin. "Kevin, you have a piece of lint on your sleeve. It's very unbecoming."

"Like I said," Kevin sighed, picking the lint off and flicking it away. "Neat freak."

"Pigpen," Hannah shot back.

"Enough," Blaise said. "We need to get to work."

"Excuse me, boss lady," Seamus inquired. "What exactly are we going to do with Larry?"

"Who's Larry?" Blaise asked in confusion. Seamus pointed to the quintaped sitting in his lap, the one she had forgotten about. What were they going to do with it? Then it hit her...

"You named the quintaped Larry?"

"Why not?" Seamus asked indignantly. "Larry is a perfectly good name."

"What happened to not being attached?" Blaise asked. "If you think I'm sharing my tent with a hairy little animal, you've got another thing coming."

"Why would Seamus's quintaped be in your tent?" Lisa asked, raising her eyebrows at Blaise.

Bugger.

"Um...it might be cold," Blaise said weakly.

"I'd shove it in there to be mean," Seamus said, grinning what Blaise had come to recognize as his it's-a-good-thing-for-you-I'm-so-ace smirk. It wasn't the same as his whatever-are-you-looking-at-and-could-it-be-moi smirk, and a slight variation from the classic don't-you-love-me smirk.

"Uh huh," Lisa said, giving Blaise a look that made her sure she'd be doing some explaining later.

"What in the name of Godric Gryffindor is going on here?" Ginny asked, poking her head out of the tent and glowering indiscriminatingly at them all.

"Work, Gin," Seamus said. "Surely you recognize the term?"

After informing Seamus that he could go copulate vigorously with himself, Ginny ducked back into her tent. They heard a great deal of rustling and, half a minute later, she emerged fully dressed.

"This is working?" Ginny asked, looking around at them skeptically. "We need to do this more often."

"For your information, Mistress I-Know-Everything, we are trying to decide what to do with Larry," Seamus told her.

Ginny took one look at the quintaped in Seamus's lap, ducked down into her tent, dug around in her duffle bag and reemerged with a length of rope. She did something with the rope so fast that Blaise's eyes couldn't follow her movement, and suddenly there was a loop at one end of it. She put this loop around the quintaped's neck and presented it to Seamus.

"Happy birthday," she quipped. "You're in charge. I expect you to walk it, feed it, and clean up after it. I am not going to take care of your pet, young man."

Everyone laughed. Blaise shook herself and told everyone to get their gear together. She told them the plan, and they all headed out.

Ginny fell into step beside Blaise, and they both watched Seamus for a minute. He was walking along in front of them, with the rope leash tied around one of his belt loops.

Ginny leaned over and said in a low voice to Blaise, "Please tell me he didn't name that thing Larry."