Gus grinned at the other but didn’t respond to him; he couldn’t imagine teaching his seventh years to duel properly. They’d gang up on him and that was a situation he wanted to avoid entirely. (The thought of winding up explaining himself to Headmaster Black passed through his mind and Gus shuddered. He much preferred to not execute daft ideas that seemed good at the time.) If he saw the grimace that quickly passed across the other’s face he didn’t say anything about that, either.

It was curious to think that Mason had traveled; he didn’t know the man well enough, but he didn’t seem like the type to go out for some big, grand adventure but then again, Gus wasn’t going to pass a judgment on him. He’d grown up on adventure stories and no one had been surprised to hear he was following in his father’s footsteps with his career path. “You surprise me, Skeeter. But in the best kind of way.” His grin widened. Maybe this summer he could convince him to go somewhere exciting. He filed the thought in the back of his mind.

Then he huffed his own laugh and shook his head. “It’s silly, really. I ah… I spent a lot of time focusing on being a curse breaker that I kind of let a lot of my relationships here wither.” A broken heart, whatever. He’d been more focused on getting out and forgetting about London that everything else had taken a backseat. “And then I just woke up one morning and I was homesick. I felt like if I didn’t come home I’d regret it. But I certainly couldn’t do a ministry job. I’d combust if I had to sit behind a desk and fill out paperwork all day.” At least here he got to do spells and grade. He just hated the grading part. "It was a whim. I'm not too great at thinking things through sometimes." Jump first, consequences later was something Gus tended to live by.

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