How Charming PV Valerie Laurier Closed

Mentions: @Maggie Hawkins

Ah, the library. The dust, the tall shelves, the big books. Valerie hated everything about it. The dust made her sneeze. The tall shelves looked unstable. And, she hated reading. She'd much rather do it herself. But no, she had to follow rules, instructions. The books could’ve at least had pictures.

Alas, she had no other option. She had been doing her homework in her common room, which hadn’t been ending well. It seemed she always got distracted, and her grades were at an all time low. Well, to be fair, she never really had good grades. She just thought saying they were at an all time low sounded more professional.

She thought Hogwarts work would be easier. She was a pureblood. Her father had been teaching her magic since she was born. But no. It was just like muggle school. Boring, confusing, and most of all, kind of lonely. She only had her siblings and a few friends she had made either from hanging out in her common room so much or on the first day. But she didn’t mind it. She was used to it.

She walked up to one of the tall shelves, pulling out a book about potions. She walked over to a dusty table where a girl was already sitting. She had chocolate brown hair and dark brown eyes, a shade deeper than Valerie's. "Hello. Is this spot taken?"

OOC: I'm sorry for the super late reply! I've been busy lately with school and personal life but I should be able to respond now.

─────Open seats. A supposed ode to Maggie's old life as a muggle, as someone so foreign to even the idea of magic that wasn't card tricks or illusions. It seemed that here, at Hogwarts, it should be so simple to just take a seat without asking or forewarning. Incredibly easy to go and do anything you wanted because you could do magic and could simply blow someone up for saying no. Couldn't you? Wasn't that a possibility?

Of course, this girl didn't seem to be so much older than Maggie herself, and so she couldn't imagine that she'd so much as say anything negative. "Huh? Yeah, yeah, go ahead," Maggie gestured broadly to the seat beside her, crossing her ankles and running a fingertip down the center crease of her charms textbook.

"I was just doing some studying," Maggie chirped, "Charms. Pretty hard, actually."

She was getting ahead of herself, starting up her ramblings out of nowhere with this new girl. Where were her manners? Her ideals? How rude. "I'm Maggie, by the way! Maggie Hawkins," Maggie set her chin on her fist, balled up and holding her head aloft. New people. Seemed like there was just a wealth of them, here, too many people to possibly take into account or catalog. No chance whatsoever of possibly ever getting to know everybody.

That was alright! Maggie found her niche, found her friends, and she was happy to stay there.

Reducio

No worries! IRL stuff always comes first.

Interacting With: @Maggie Hawkins

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"Thanks," Valerie smiled. People tended to be friendlier when you were nice first, plus she didn't want to be rude. She set her textbooks down with a thud, the dust flying from the almost ancient book. Valerie didn't care to wonder when the last time someone opened it was. Did anyone even have the patience or reading comprehension to read them? She shook her head, dismissing her stray thoughts.

She pulled out her scroll, ready to take notes in silence before the girl interrupted, introducing herself as Maggie. Valerie smiled. She wasn't exactly the most social herself, and often she waited for others to introduce themselves, so she was quite glad that Maggie had broken the silence.

"Valerie. Valerie Laurier. A pleasure to meet you," she outstretched her hand. People didn't always shake it. In fact, Valerie had been left hanging a few times during her time at Hogwarts already, but she figured it was good manners. Plus it felt good when someone shook it. It made her feel like she had made a new acquaintance, which personally was hard for her.

"Charms, eh?" she looked over at Maggie's book, before realizing it was probably bad manners. "Sorry," she pulled away. "Anyways, I'm pretty good at charms," it was true. She was no genius, in fact, she might have even been lower than average, but charms is what she excelled at. It was the first thing her father had taught her.

─────Plenty room where Maggie was concerned. The tables themselves were quite large, with more than enough space for the two of them. Plus, studying was always more fun where there were friends involved. Acquaintances. They weren't friends just yet, and who knew if they'd even end up that way when it came down to it? Certainly not Maggie! For now, she was content to call Valerie her study buddy or something equally embarrassing. Something equally silly.

"Nice to meet you," ordinarily, Maggie would be more vocal, louder, much less focused on her homework than she presently was. However, a desire to do good in this class was the driving force behind the awkward silence she so normally detested.

It wasn't that Maggie was bad at charms. In fact, it was her best subject at the moment! See, though, she really liked the teacher, was the issue. Which meant that obviously, she had to be an absolute gem, a bright and shining star. And Maggie wasn't daft, either! She was good at school and always had been. But she was ordinarily one of those kids who got their work done, then started yammering on and on and on. Effectively distracted the other students, earned herself detentions, and all-around did not take the favor of her teachers.

That needed to change, at least for charms.

Maggie took Valerie's hand only for a moment before she dropped it, almost floppy, and turned back to her book. "Charms are fun, I suppose. I'm just not the best at," she gestured broadly to her materials, splayed out on the table, "Studying."

Interacting With: @Maggie Hawkins

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"Ah, I see. I could say the same." Valerie shrugged. Valerie wasn't exactly unintelligent. Heck, she might've been smarter than most kids, top of her class if she actually made the effort. See, her problem was focus. Dedication and concentration were her worst enemies. She absolutely hated big projects, and although it probably would've been easy, the thought of working on a project all day instead of reading or enjoying her free time was wretched.

The whole reason she was in the library in the first place was her inability to study. If she had kept studying in the common room she probably would've been kicked out of Hogwarts. Was that even possible? Would a student be kicked out and sent back to a muggle school if they had low grades. Surely not. Or at least, Valerie hoped not. She couldn't imagine what would happen if she showed up back home as a Hogwarts dropout. She was already failing muggle school.

"I'm doing potions homework. Honestly, I'm not that bad but like you said, studying's pretty hard. If only I could skip all the notes and reading and just.. do." she said, gesturing forward with her hands. It probably didn't make sense, but Valerie tended to blabber. It wasn't exactly the best aspect about her but occasionally, it helped when socializing.

─────Grades, and things such like them, had never been something that Maggie had considered particularly of the essence. Of necessity. Of course, her parents were more concerned with them than she was, and that bled over into her own perception of what was important and what was not. Anything your parents liked was considered uncool, lame, and Maggie was no exception to the new strain of teenage rebellion that swept nations and toppled long-standing empires.

So to speak.

Valerie Laurier, on the other hand, seemed much more likely to care much for those constraints and responsibilities. Just based upon Maggie's limited knowledge of the girl, that is. What she could see with her own two eyes could never truly be trusted when held up against good faith and truth. Maggie wasn't known for being observant and she accepted that.

It wasn't as if caring for grades was a bad thing, because it certainly was not; how could it be, when it won house points and victories unseen within this strange school?

Still, though, Maggie would be wary. Where there were avid homework-completers, there were teachers' pets.

"Potions. I outta give my professor a piece of my mind for the potions assignments, I'm telling you," Maggie grumbled, hunched her shoulders over to pledge her frustration at the subject. Potions was a disease on the back of common-minded wizards, a sore that Maggie so wished would go away with a little ointment and some good luck.

Alas. Required classes would be the death of her. "Far as I'm concerned, potions were created as a medieval torture device. If I had to guess, I'd say the mid-1700s?" Maggie tapped a finger against Valerie's potions textbook. "I assume they figured it was the quickest way to poison students with the god-awful fumes. Hey, let's put the class where we make deadly serums in the dungeons where the smell can permeate and hot box someone! With luck, we'll kill a student or two!"

All jokes. All sarcasm. Sarcasm born out of genuine hatred for potions class.

Still, the snarky remarks might not be appreciated by someone like Valerie, who Maggie had already pegged as something of a teacher's pet. She eyed her suspiciously, awaiting a response.

Interacting With: @Maggie Hawkins

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Valerie snorted. "I know, right? And in a dungeon, too. It's like something straight out of a horror movie. It's always so dark and sad and scary," she shuddered. "They really could've picked anywhere else in the school and they decided to do the dungeon. At this point, I think they did it on purpose. They were scared all the students would have too much fun with all these magic classes and decided to make potions, the unlikeable class," she said, deepening her voice for effect.

"Honestly, I might just drop out of Hogwarts I have to do potions for five straight years," she groaned, staring up at the ceiling, then back at Maggie with a grin. From what she had observed so far, she seemed pretty nice. She seemed to share the same sarcastic sense of humor as Valerie.

"Anyways, it's such a pain, I don't understand any of it. So many ingredients and steps and blah, blah, blah," she rolled her eyes. Valerie wasn't a visual learner. Or an auditory one. To be honest, she didn't really like learning at all. In her previous experiences, she found learning from actually doing things and making mistakes worked better for her. She may have shown back up at home with bruises and scratches but it worked for her, and as long as it did she was quite content with her learning method.

Although it didn't really work with potions. It almost did. In fact, potions would've been smooth sailing if she was just allowed to toss some ingredients in a cauldron and see what happens. That would've been cool. That would've been a fun class. But no. Valerie was ordered to read books and memorize recipes, over and over and over again until it was the only thing she could remember. What a shame.

─────"Oh, you have no idea," Maggie scoffed. Valerie wanted to complain about the dark and dismal dungeon conditions of the potions classroom? Did she? "Try being in Slytherin. Dark dungeons all day, every day. I sleep down there and it's like, hey, c'mon, I'm basically dying down here."

Still, Maggie did love Slytherin. Loved it a lot. She hadn't come into this world with many preconceived notions of any of the houses. The only opinions she held of any house, the only odd thoughts and feelings she may have, came from Tristan Wolfe, a boy she had met on the boat over the Great Lake.

He had made an offhanded comment following Maggie's own question, wondering what house was the most desirable. Said that he heard stuff about Slytherins being evil or something, whatever, whatever.

Aside from that, she held no ill will towards any house.

So Maggie did love Slytherin, really. But dark dungeons really got to you sometimes! Really, it was tough to wake up every morning in a dungeon and actually find the motivation to do things. Didn't matter in the end, though, because Slytherin had given her friends that she may have otherwise not even considered.

"Really, though, these classes are so close to making me drop out. Can you drop out of Hogwarts?" Maggie shifted her position, pushing her books up the table and observing Valerie with arms crossed over the wood. "I dunno. Whatever. I'm dropping out, I don't care."

Interacting With: @Maggie Hawkins | Mentions: N/A

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"Awh yeah, I forgot about that. That must suck. How do you even know what time it is down there?" She wondered, squinting. Valerie always wondered what it would be like to sleep in the dungeon. She didn't know any Slytherins before meeting Maggie. She was quite content with the Gryffindor common room, but there was the looming thought of whether or not it would simply collapse one day. Other than that, it was okay.

To be honest, Valerie had never had time to build her perceptions of the other houses. She had really only hung out around fellow Gryffindors, her Ravenclaw siblings, and her best friend Lani, who was a Ravenclaw. She really had nothing to go off of other than what she had heard, and her history books. She had heard that Slytherins were evil and mysterious, which kind was kind of supported by their common room was in a dark, scary dungeon, but from the ones she had met, they didn't seem all that bad. Besides, history books were old and dumb. Gossip was too.

"Why did they think it was a good idea to put a common room down there in the first place? A class, even! Heck, why do we even have a dungeon? I would've been quite content with potions being on the main floors like everything else," she paused. "Gosh, this layout is so confusing."

"Genuinely though, I wonder if you can. I don't think anybody's considered it. I mean, magic classes are cool and all but honestly I would be content with a muggle school. Math and science and practical stuff, you know? It seems so much easier now that I've been faced with whatever this is," she tapped her finger on the potions book.

WC: 368 Words