Who, me? on Pecari Commons

Jade Owen

December 07, 2011 12:27 PM

Who, me? by Jade Owen

Jade wasn't prone to studying, but just occasionally she had to finish homework assignments to avoid bad grades, detention, or getting sent home (some of which she could tolerate better than others). On one of those rare occasions that she needed to study, Jade had thought she'd do it properly, and she'd taken a book out of the library to help with her charms homework. Then she'd smuggled it upstairs to her dormitory - she didn't really want it getting out to the rest of her House that she studied.

Unfortunately, the book she'd chosen seemed to be Evil, seeing as when Jade opened it at a random page, it had spewed out a sticky purple liquid that had gone over her assignment introduction and, more importantly, her t-shirt. At first she'd found it funny, but then the sticky stuff wouldn't come off, and Jade started to find it less funny. She’d tried just washing it off, which took away the stickiness but left her hands purple. That was okay, she could live with purple hands for a bit. Hey, she could even have purple hands forever, that wouldn’t bother her. The problem was where the stuff had got onto her clothes. Jade didn’t really have many clothes to begin with – she wasn’t the sort who cared what she wore, as long as she was sufficiently warm and comfortable – and this t-shirt had been one of her few possession that didn’t already have a stain. She liked it for that reason alone, but it also had a big gold star on the front and she’d kind of liked that about it. Now there was a big purple smear all the way across its front, even across the star.

Chewing her lip, Jade came to the conclusion it would be easier to wash if it wasn’t on her person. Running to her dormitory, tripping over unfastened shoelaces on the way, she pulled the t-shirt off and threw on the first garment she came across: her black sheep pyjama top. The star top accompanied her to the bathroom, where Jade washed it with shampoo in the shower, to no avail. Merlin, her parents weren’t going to be pleased that she’d ruined yet another t-shirt. Panicking, Jade rung the garment out, and carried it, still sodden, back into the dormitory. She laid it on her bed, soaking the blanket, while she rummaged in her bag for her charms textbook. Finding it, she searched the index for a spell that might remove stains. “Aha!” she exclaimed, opening the book wide and withdrawing her wand. Aiming at the offending stain, she took a breath, and cast the charm.

It didn’t go as planned. In fact, the stain started to smoke a little. Jade peered at it cautiously, and drew back hurriedly as the whole top burst into flame. With a surprised yelp, Jade grabbed it by a flame-free corner and flung it to the floor, where she stamped and jumped on it (thankfully she’d kept her shoes on this whole time) until the flames went out. The top was ruined, the floor was a little damaged, and the room was smokier than usual, but at least there was no more fire. As her heart rate slowed, Jade knelt on the floor and gingerly picked up the destroyed t-shirt. She didn’t have time to contemplate it further as, to her horror, the dormitory door began to open. She whipped the article behind her back, and looked up at the incomer with blue eyes wide in the most innocent expression she could muster.

0 Jade Owen Who, me? 221 Jade Owen 1 5

Theresa Carey

December 21, 2011 2:54 PM

Is there anyone else? by Theresa Carey

By the time she finally found an excuse to get away from him, Theresa was feeling more than a little annoyed with her cousin Arthur. Honestly, why did he care that he’d seen Thaddeus Pierce talking to Alicia Bauer in the library, and what did some second year she’d never heard of have to do with the Aladren first years, and by the way, how did she like Arabella Brockert? What about that foreign boy in Pecari, and how was he related to a Crotalus Chaser? And while she was there, being, of course, the most observant and clever girl in first year – no one, she thought grimly, had ever accused Art of being above flattery if he didn’t need to be; he could almost be a girl, sometimes – what did she think of Alexandra, and who was she talking to? Anyone he hadn’t noticed?

He hadn’t liked it when she told him bluntly that she couldn’t care a knut for who Alexandra talked to, and that she didn’t know anything about Crotalus Chasers and prefects and what their various relatives did and didn’t care about that, either, but at the moment, she didn’t really care if Arthur liked things or not. He was no better than she was to duck around doors and work out little charms to listen in on conversations if he really wanted to know so much, and she had enough to do in getting used to school and new lessons and such very strange people as inhabited Sonora without acting as his agent.

Really, she knew she would eventually compose herself and tell him what he wanted to know in the expectation that he would do her a favor in return someday, that was the way they had always done it. That was how they managed, more often than not, to get what they wanted and the adults never even realize it had been done: doing each other favors, then extracting a return favor each in his or her own time. And she was almost sure he didn’t have similar arrangements with her brothers, too. But at the moment, she was just frustrated by how very pointless the things he was interested in were, and didn’t feel like trying to frame things she didn’t really know into answers any longer. It wouldn’t do him any harm to wait.

For now, she needed to work on her Potions homework, because as much as she didn’t feel any enthusiasm about the assignment, she had learned better than to ask as one of her favors that Arthur do very much of her homework. He didn’t like that; it struck on some fussy Aladren nerve, she supposed. She swung open the door to her dorm and immediately stepped back as she smelled smoke.

“Oh, no,” she said, then looked over and saw her roommate Jade Owen standing there, her eyes all wide and her hands behind her back. She did not appear to be dead, dying, or on fire, but Theresa didn’t take that as evidence that it was a good idea to enter yet. Other people really were astonishingly stupid sometimes, not just in getting themselves into situations, but then not getting themselves out; Mother used to say it was only the luck of the very devil that Arnold and Brandon weren’t dead ten times a day before breakfast, and she still said it about Brandon sometimes, or when details of the long, detailed accounts of Quidditch matches Arnold sent home in letters to his parents got leaked to the rest of the family. “Jade? What’s going on?”

0 Theresa Carey Is there anyone else? 219 Theresa Carey 0 5

Jade

December 27, 2011 8:39 AM

There's you now. by Jade

It was just one of her roomates who'd opened the door, not their Head of House (or an older student, which would have been less likely, but still possible). Theresa didn't come into the room, though, she just stood in the corridor with the door open like an idiot, potentially letting the smoke seep out into the hallway. She asked the fateful question, 'What's going on?', to which Jade gave her immediate and instictive response, "Nothing." Then, when she realized that this answer was obviously not true, and that Theresa Carey was not her mother, Jade knew she needed to come up with a better story.

She eyed Theresa suspiciously. Could she be trusted? Though the other girl had seemed okay from their interactions so far, she still had the potential to go tell a teacher that Jade had been setting fire to the dorm room. Of course if jade didn't explain herself truthfully, then Theresa might draw that conclusion, anyway. After a short pause, during which Jade had decided that sharing her story with Theresa would be a good way to test if the other girl could be trusted, she slowly withdrew her ruined t-shirt from behind her back, and said woefully, "I was just trying to get rid of a stain and it all went wrong."

She looked sadly at the t-shirt, and then back at Theresa, chewing her lower lip to portray concern, while her eyes were still wide with wistful innocence. There weren't many areas in which Jade would claim to be especially skilled, but getting herself out of trouble was something at which she'd become an expert out of necessity. "It sort of set on fire, but only for a second. That's where the smoke came from. It's safe, now," she added the last statement as a means of reassurance, and she flung the charred remains of her t-shirt to the ground between them to corroborate her story. The fact that she was also wearing her pyjama top in the afternoon might add some credence to her tale.

"My mom's gonna kill me," she muttered, finally dropping the innocent bystander part of her defense and moving on to claim the sympathy vote. "We can't afford any more clothes until the summer." Not strictly true, but it wasn't like there was much money to be shared around the three Owen children. Then again, Jade had been accidentally destroying things her entire life; she was sure her parents had come to expect this of her by now. Plus she was the youngest, and as such could get away with more (not to mention she was in posession of more hand-me-downs).

0 Jade There's you now. 0 Jade 0 5