Off your feet with the crumbs she throws you

There was something manic in that smile. It was the smile, more than the words that made Angelique guess what Elijah was thinking of.

"You can't do that," she said quietly, truthfully.

Right now, Elijah was grieving for somebody he loved even though he was trying very hard not to, and it was making him irrational. In fact, it shed some light on some of his more peculiar personality traits. There was no way he could take revenge on anyone, least of all a man like Barker.

It wasn't like she could say that to him, though.

"He's already had a trial. He's already in Azkaban," she said. "If you did it, you'd be just as much a criminal as he is."

It was a pathetic argument and Angelique knew it.

Angelique did have a point. Elijah wasn't a criminal - not even a little bit. His heart was pure; or as pure it could possibly be in the state it was now. He couldn't kill someone. He didn't have the stomach for it. Well, that was a lie wasn't it? He could remember the glee he'd felt the night Alice had died. He could remember how his magic lashed out on the men, tearing them up from the inside out. And he'd been glad. He'd been happy to see them die. He was content knowing that he'd caused that: that he'd avenged her. He had it in him but just not consciously.

Which was why he nodded thoughtfully when Angelique said so.

"Perhaps I would be," Elijah allowed, turning to look at her properly. "But it would be just."

Um, no.

Angelique might be slightly abnormal, but she was also entirely rational. She understood what Elijah meant, of course, but his perceptions were simply not grounded in reality.

She wondered if telling him so was a wise course of action. Elijah was incredibly egotistical, and moreover had a host of... okay, not friends so much as girls vying for his attention. It was something Angelique could not fathom, because he was clearly a player. He played with one until he got bored with her and then moved on to the next but never stopped stringing any of them along. It was never really over when you fell in love with Elijah Krum. Angelique considered herself lucky that to her current knowledge, she was incapable of falling in love with anybody.

However, the fact remained that those girls probably thought he was friends with them and would probably take his side in, say, a fight if she told him that he was being stupid.

Besides, since when had Angelique cared if Krum was an idiot? It wasn't like he'd suddenly become an idiot at the beginning of the year or something. He'd been an idiot for as long as she'd known him. Was she getting soft, or was it just... Barker.

It was the Barker connection. She couldn't deny the man intreigued her approximately the same amount as he revolted her. So technically justice had already been served, so what? Since when had Angelique let the truth get in the way of what she wanted?

"What you need is someone who's already a criminal to do your dirty work for you," she said.