Arthur sat in the stands on the quidditch pitch, the single place he could study in the center of the venn diagram labeled "Places quiet and with fresh air" and "Places Ariadne wants Arthur to be while she's practicing" Which was pretty much anywhere she could see him from the quidditch pitch. where she was practicing with the rest of her team.

It wasn't bad, per se, only the tiniest bit distracting when the shouting from the pitch would distract him from whatever he was reading at the time. He'd already gone through the two chapters for his potions class and his advanced charms class, and had decided to take a break with a bit of light reading, when someone soared up to where he was sitting in the Ravenclaw decorated stands.

"Hey, Ari, are you almost ready to-" He stopped short when he looked up to see that it was, in fact, not Ariadne who was hovering in front of him, but Eames. "Oh, what the hell."

"I can't help but think that you're here to see me." Eames cooed, only one hand gripped toon the handle of his broom.

"I'm waiting for Ari. She likes to pretend that I'm watching her practice. What are you doing here?"

"Ravenclaw captain wanted us to scrimmage with them. We're way tougher than Hufflepuff-

"-If you do say so yourself."

"-So if your house can beat us over here in Slytherin, you should be good this Saturday."

Arthur decided to go back to his book and ignore Eames completely. It didn't work last time, but perhaps it would work this time.

It didn't.

"Tell me something, Arthur." Eames mused. "Why's Ariadne in Ravenclaw, anyway? She's got plenty of bravery and cunning, and is Loyal to the bone. Not that she isn't smart and all, but I've been getting to know her, and I feel like at least one of her other qualities would have stood out more than just her smarts."

"If you were paying any attention the year she was sorted, you'd know that the Sorting Hat took a whole 13 minutes with her." Arthur said in a falsetto, so it was clear he was annoyed with the question and Eames' presence in general.

"That was three years ago, Arthur. Bit hard to remember that long ago."

"She broke the record for longest sorting by thirty seconds, she was quite the to-do amongst the teachers."

"Suppose no one bothered to tell me." Eames shrugged. "Listen, Arthur, I'd love to continue our talk over a nice warm glass of butterbeer after the quidditch match on Saturday. There's a hogsmeade trip a few hours after."

"No." Arthur said flatly.

"Alright." Eames rolled the rejection off his back easily. "In that case, I am going to have to take my leave of you."

"Trust me, Mr. Eames, there is nothing else that you can take from me that I would more willingly part with-all."

Eames blinked at him, entirely confused.

"Goddamn, Eames, it's from Hamlet. Pick up a fucking book every once in awhile, would you?"