thearena | [open]

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WHO | Draco and OPEN
WHAT | Draco's escaped the Cornucopia unscathed, but for how much longer?
WHEN | the day after the Cornucopia
WHERE | Q5, and thereabouts
WARNINGS | language. This is Draco, after all.

He'd gotten away from the Cornucopia, albeit empty-handed, but with his life still intact. Judging by the look of things over there, in that initial five minute span, he was lucky that way. Swimming across what felt like half of the entire Arena - not that he had any idea how big the bloody thing was, though it certainly felt huge - had taken up most of his stamina for the evening, and he had climbed the first tree that looked secure enough to hold him, and passed out for the night.

And now it was morning; Draco had very nearly fallen out of his temporary home when he'd forgotten where he was, the danger he was in. As he recovered, he sat there still, still clinging to the tree as he tried to think of just how he got there. Portkey? The Dark Lord wasn't much above that. Which meant that this could plausibly be a method of punishing him for not doing his job fast enough. But this was just cruel and unusual.

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So the other guy had good reflexes. Useful to know. Alex wondered how far those reflexes extended, but the only way to really gauge that was to either get in a fight with the guy himself, or watch someone else get into a fight with him.

"A bit harder," he called up quietly. "And it's easier if you're hitting the rock, rather than the other way around."

"Really? Why would it even make a difference?" Draco asked, sneering a little at the coconut as if it had personally offended him by not opening easily. All the same, he flipped it around with only minor difficulties, finding that Alex was indeed correct - the coconut split slightly after an additional crack against the rock, and Draco's sneer turned to a pleased smirk.

"Physics," Alex replied glibly before taking a sip of coconut water. He watched Draco carefully, but still kept himself aware of the area around them. If he wanted to get out of this place, he had to be careful.

Physics. Muggle science. Naturally, it had no place in Draco's life. He wrinkled his nose a little, bracing the coconut as he cracked it again, grinning to himself as it opened enough for him to actually enjoy the pseudo-breakfast. Maybe he wouldn't die from starvation any time soon.

"So tell me about this physics," he states as he takes a tentative sip of it, deciding he can't complain too much. It's no worse than pumpkin juice.

That... wasn't exactly a response Alex had expected. He wasn't sure if this guy was just taking the piss with him or is he was actually serious. Judging from the green skinned horned guy he'd bumped into while leaving the Cornucopia, there were some individuals around here who weren't from home. While this guy looked relatively normal, that perhaps didn't mean he was.

"What's there to say? Physics makes the world go round."

"I don't suppose you have a better answer for me, do you?"

Draco's face suggested he didn't much like that one. And though he didn't really see any reason to learn all about physics from Muggles, it wasn't like he didn't have time on his hands. Or the inability to otherwise hole himself away from aforementioned Muggles.

Really, he was just making do with the incredibly unfortunate hand he was given.

"It's the truth," Alex replies with a shrug, "physics does make the world go round. 'Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.' When the Earth was formed, the rotation of the nebula it came from led to the Earth itself rotating. At least, that's how we say the Earth was formed where I'm from."

He raised one brow at all of that, deciding that while it made sense, it was obvious that Muggles had far too much time on their hands. Not that he didn't already know that. "And where did you learn all that, then?"

"School. It's standard stuff for the GCSEs." Alex whacked the now empty coconut against the rocks again so he could get at the meat inside. "What do they teach at your school?" The other guy looked maybe a little older than him, so still school age, right?

"Magic," Draco replied plainly, as though that much should have been obvious. This tree was starting to get very comfortable, to the point where he was almost content to just stay there the entire time he was in the Arena. Peering down at what Alex was doing now, he eyed the inside of the coconut thoughtfully before starting in on that as well.

"Magic? Like Hogwarts?" Alex's tone was a touch disbelieving, though at the same time, he couldn't help thinking of the horned green man he'd met earlier. Maybe somewhere in the universe magic was real. He rather doubted it, as that would require suspending various laws of physics and weren't the laws of physics supposed to be universal?

He just stared at Alex for a moment, narrowing his eyes a little bit as he tried to deal with that statement. Someone knew about Hogwarts. Someone he didn't recognise.

"Should I know you? Is that what this is supposed to be?" Draco simply asked, giving up on his coconut for a moment. His guard was up a little bit - why shouldn't it be, when everyone was trying to kill him, and now suddenly there was someone who recognised what school he went to? - but he was giving Alex the benefit of the doubt.

And once again Alex got a response that he hadn't anticipated.

"I don't think so? I was just making a joke." Alex was puzzled. He had expected maybe a laugh and a comment about the books, or simple blank confusion. But the response he'd gotten was something else entirely. Or maybe this guy had read the books and was just trying to confuse him. If he was, it was working.

"A joke-" He echoed, sneer tugging at his mouth as an automatic defence mechanism. "What kind of joke is that? How is that funny?"

It probably didn't help matters at all that Draco was so completely out of his element here, his first instinct was to lash out at everyone around him. Even if the question had been innocent enough, now he was starting to have second thoughts, like perhaps this kid was the reason he was here instead of there.

"This is all your fault, isn't it?"

"My fault?!" Alex was starting to wonder if there was something seriously off with this guy... or maybe off with him. Maybe this was all just a massive halucination and he never really left Egypt. Maybe this is just some long protected hallucination and he's still stuck i that hellhole of a compound.

Maybe he never left it in the first place.

"How is this my fault? I didn't ask to be kidnapped let alone to have you kidnapped. I don't even know you."

"Then why in the hell are you making comments about my school, like you do?" Draco demanded, looking more like a lost puppy with a worse bark than bite than anything else. He had no intention of lashing out and trying to hurt Alex, not with himself up in the tree and without a weapon. If he'd had his wand, maybe it would have been a different story, but even then, he couldn't see where that would get him.

Barking mad. That's what this guy was. He thought he was a wizard attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Maybe it was time to go. It was the loony ones you really had to watch out for; they were more unpredictible than the others.

Alex tried to look as non-threatening as possible. "Look, mate, I didn't mean anything by it. Hogwarts is a lovely school. Would go there myself if I could."

He just glared down at Alex.

"You are such a condescending prick," he stated, not much caring if the comment got him killed. "If you can't go there, then that means you're either a Squib or a Muggle - I'm laying my bets on the second, by the looks of you - and that means you shouldn't know about the bloody place to begin with."

Draco snapped off the branch of his tree, pitching it uselessly down at Alex. "Leave me alone, will you."

Alex just stepped to the side and let the frond land next to him. "Look, I'm not the one here who thinks he goes to a fictional magic school. You really should have read some other books, mate." He shrugs as he looks up at Draco. "Either way, I don't care. I don't want to kill you, or anyone else."

"I don't go to a fictional magic school," he snapped, staring down bewildered. "And what are you playing at - books? I read plenty, and I have no idea what the hell you're talking about."

Draco shifted uncomfortably up in his tree, bracing himself on the branch as he tried to rearrange lanky limbs without falling. At least he wasn't about to die here; that was enough for him.

Alex shook his head. "I've met a lot of crazy people in my life, but you really take the cake. The Harry Potter books? Best-sellers for ten years? Every schoolchild in Britain was reading them." And the rest of the world too, but let's start small.

His eyebrows lifted disbelievingly, and Draco rolled his eyes hard enough to nearly pull something. "Please. You're telling me they wrote books about that prick? He's never done anything worth reading about, unless you count spreading pointless lies and getting himself into ridiculous amounts of trouble. It's a wonder Granger and Weasley ever made Prefect, what with all Potter's bloody carrying on."

This was starting to reach new levels of weirdness. Of course, he had somehow been kidnapped right out of a plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean and stuck into an Arena where he was supposed to try to kill everyone else. High levels of weirdness had already been reached.

"Well of course a Slytherin would think that."

It wasn't that Alex had figured out who Draco was. He'd just recognized the fact most of the other houses didn't talk about the Trio in that manner.

"Oh, sod off. How would you even know? You're a bloody Muggle. Or a Squib with good connections," he snapped, cheeks flushing slightly with annoyance. And embarrassment, but- No, it was mostly annoyance. No one talked to a Malfoy that way and got away with it.

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