Liliana Bannister & Barnaby Pye
July 19, 2015 9:26 PM
A brush pass in the hallway by Liliana Bannister & Barnaby Pye
It was time to do some investigative journaling. Seeing as Liliana had never actually done any investigative journalism before, she didn’t really know how to begin the job, but it was a necessary precaution. She had to find Portia Dobson and befriend the older Teppenpaw before she became a part of their family. It was her duty as Joseph’s beloved, favorite (and only) female cousin. So, she set off to figure out how she might go about accidentally-on-purpose running into the sixth year. Liliana had finally concluded that this would best be done by figuring out the Advanced students class schedule and then planning her day around that accordingly. Additionally, if that failed, there was always prefect meetings and patrolling for the two to bond before they became in-laws.For someone who was normally very open and blunt, it never even occurred to Liliana to just walk up to Portia during dinner and sit down next to her. In later years, her cousin would ask her why she hadn’t done that and she would blush and stammer, at a loss for words and chiding herself for not coming up that plan herself. However, now, Liliana was pacing back and forth in the hallways as it was the accursed half hour of break in which all the students were free to do what they liked except the Advanced students who were taking Charms and as a result Liliana had a half hour of time to kill.
It was this scene that straight-laced, owlish Barnaby walked in on as he was doing some of his own Top Secret investigating himself. He had always regarded prefectship as a symbol of authority, of responsibility. But when the school had bestowed the honor of Pecari prefect to the loud, sometimes spastic Pecari Keeper, Barnaby lost a little bit of faith in the system. Whatever kind of professor wanted someone like her in charge was not the sort of professor that he thought had all their screws completely tightened and he had been tempted to place a few marbles on the desks of the professors and the headmaster with a note that said ‘thought you could use these.’ He hadn’t, however, because he liked to think of himself as a generally sensible sort of person and implying that one’s superiors’ had lost their marble was was probably not a clever way to gain respect in their eyes, no matter how much he wanted to do it.
That particular day he had been on his way to the library. He had come across a term in one of his textbooks that was particularly curious, but on his way he realized an odd sort of pattern in the floor tiles and was now walking around counting the tiles and making notes in his notebook. Unfortunately it seemed that the pattern was just an anomaly, something that didn’t really add up to anything, something that had been created and laid out on accident, and he eventually decided that his time would be best spent in the library—if he hadn’t wasted too much of his free period already, that was. Besides, he was close on the trail of his elusive roommate and was just waiting on a particular night to arrive to see if his hypothesis was correct.
Unfortunately, the frantically pacing Pecari Keeper was blocking his way. Barnaby cleared his throat once, twice, and pushed his glasses farther up his nose. Bannister didn’t appear to take any notice and so he cleared his throat a third time and pressed his investigative notebook closer to his chest. A fourth time. When Bannister finally raised her eyes, her cheeks coloured and her eyes became apologetic. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Did you need something?”
What Barnaby wanted to do was far different from what he actually did. What he wanted to say was “yes, I need you to get out of my way.” But it wouldn’t do to isolate a prefect even if he didn’t think she deserved the badge, especially a fellow Brit at a school full of Americans. It didn’t matter that Bannister was the sort who had fully immersed herself in the American lifestyle, her accent softening around the edges from spending the past five years in the country into that lazy drawl he so despised in the voices of his classmates. So, what he said instead was; “no, thank you, I just needed to get past you here.”
Her cheeks coloured again and she stepped back letting him past. “By all means,” she said, “go ahead.” He gave her a curt nod and continued on his way, resisting the urge to shake his head, frustrated with her lack of awareness.
As the strange, student Pye walked away, Liliana stared after his back. The younger Pye really was a peculiar lad, she thought to herself as she resumed her pacing.
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Liliana Bannister & Barnaby Pye
A brush pass in the hallway
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Liliana Bannister & Barnaby Pye
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