Location Playground closed

Verla was excited as she approached the playground she just found out even existed. She found the swings and went to them. She memorized how the playground looked, how ironic for it to be of Hogwarts. 

She began to swing high and then slowed down since Oliver, her bowtruckle, was falling out of her pocket. She giggled as she held him in her hands and waited for her friend Miko, if he was even coming.

She was excited to see him again after they left the common room since they had different classes. She was excited about everything for the first time in a while. Maybe this playground was enchanted, to make kids full of happiness and energy, or there was so much of it already here, it stuck. 

She began to swing slightly as she felt Oliver move around in her hands. She swing with no hands as she waited patiently for Mikom. 

Verla smiled at the other children playing and having a fun time as she sat there on the swing and decided to walk around the little Hogwarts. She took out her sketch book and took a picture in her mind and began to sketch it down.

Solo Post

Part of camp was being outdoors, so December felt like she would not get the full camp experience if she didn’t wander outside a bit. She decided to take a look at the playground, knowing that it was newly constructed and was probably quite exciting. As she approached, she certainly thought that it lived up to the hype. The entire thing was like a baby Hogwarts model, and there was even a Quidditch pitch! There wasn’t anyone at the Quidditch pitch yet, but she reckoned it would be super fun to play a mock game there (without brooms of course) as soon as people showed up.

It was kind of hard to pick what she wanted to try first, but she settled on the monkey bars and started to make her way over to them. When December was small, her parents would take her to the park every weekend. She’d taken a liking to the monkey bars right away, which was part of the reason that her parents had signed her up for gymnastics in the first place. Her favorite thing to do was see how quickly she could make it across without falling. Sometimes, she would skip every other one, but her parents generally frowned upon that, thinking she may hurt herself. They weren’t here to stop her today, though.

December climbed up the ladder and grabbed onto the first bar tightly. She let go of the ladder and allowed her feet to dangle below her. It had been a while since she had been able to practice gymnastics and even longer since she had been on monkey bars, so her hands started to hurt fairly quickly. She swung one hand after the other, grabbing onto each successive bar as quickly as she could. When she was one bar from the end, her hands had become too slippery, and she lost her grip and fell to the ground.

”Ouch!” she exclaimed, looking around and hoping nobody saw her fall. She quickly got up and brushed herself off. ”Darn sweat,” she grumbled. She sure wished that she had some chalk to help her out in this instance. She observed the dirt on the ground for a moment, then, figuring it was the next best thing, she began to rub her hands into it. She probably looked incredibly odd to anyone passing by.

Open to interactions

When Amanda had found out about the playground, she couldn’t wait to head down to it. Now that she finally had some free time, she ran right to the playground to check it out. The many options lay before her; she could swing, play on the jungle gym, go in the monkey bars, sit in the playhouse, play Quidditch on the ground, or play basketball. Amanda opted for basketball. She had always enjoyed the sport when she played in P.E. back in elementary school. She had even played on a team once. Amanda headed over to the hoops and picked up a basketball. She grinned, this small touch of the Muggle world making her feel right at home. She tossed the ball towards the hoop. The ball missed, bouncing off of the backboard and back towards Amanda. Amanda frowned. She was getting a little rusty. I’d better practice while I have the chance, Amanda thought to herself. I wonder if this playground is open year-round or just during summer camp. She tossed the ball again, this time making it. As she ran to retrieve it, Amanda tripped and scraped her knee a bit. Amanda winced as her knee began to sting. She limped over to the fountain with the basketball tucked under her arm and splashed some water on the scrape. She shuffled back over to the court and continued shooting hoops. Gotta just ignore the pain and stay strong. No use in whining about something that’s not a huge deal. she told herself. If she wanted to be good at basketball, Amanda had to learn to persevere.

Take up and read, was the meaning of those words, repeated twice for some amount of emphasis, uttered by the Saint Augustine of Hippo. She definitely would not want to be anything of Hippo, but then again, she did not lead the Hippo Regius of North Africa. No, all she had to do right now was relax... and read.

The book held in her hands was an old one, a classic Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's novel.  Pride and Prejudice might have been better known, Emma might have been a more interesting read, but that was all she could get her hands on for now, and she was perfectly content in rereading it here. "I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way," she whispered out loud under her breath, mimicking the words of Elinor Dashwood. It was her favorite quote from the book, and she smiled as the wonderfully written words flowed like water from her mind to her mouth to the air-- Jane Austen really was a true genius.

Her own Sense and Sensibility might, however, have been seen as nonexistent by the passerby or anyone else-- for instead of sitting or standing or even lying down like most would, Celynne was not in a position regarded as comfortable by most. No, she was not sitting on the steps of the jungle gym, sprawled in the middle of the field, or settled on a curb.



All right, it was not quite so dramatic as that. She was not, per se, hanging from the monkey bars, nor was she upside down on them-- Cel had her knees hooked over one bar, her back supported by the adjacent one, so her body was bent in a kind of three segment zig-zag formation. To her, it was a perfectly sensible way to read a book, and she held her bookmark between her teeth-- it was metal, at least-- as she read, comfortable enough with the mild weather. Her robes hung down from the top of the bars, revealing her denim shorts and the hem of the light short-sleeved hoodie she wore, its hood pulled over her dark and uncombed hair. 

Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication which strong family affection would naturally dictate;–and among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands. Those were the parting words penned by her hand in Sense and Sensibility, and as she finished the book, Cel sighed in exasperation at the book's cursed short length and snapped it closed with a small thump. Really, it was not one of the best closings in literature. Her other books had far better, less infuriating endings, and this one was quite the topic to debate-- but that, of course, was not important at the moment. What was important was getting something else to entertain herself in her free time.

Carefully the girl dropped to the ground, book tucked beneath one arm, only to find a girl with light-colored everything scrubbing her hands on the ground on the set of monkey bars adjacent to the one that she had just been reclining on. How interesting? a voice in her head chirped, and inquisitive note trailing the thought off.

"Why might you be dirtying your hands?" Cel queried bluntly, curiously. The tone of her voice was pointedly neither kind nor unkind, simply thoughtfully wondering as she ran a gaze toward the monkey bars, then to the girl. Frustration wove through her thoughts like a lick of flame as she failed to puzzle the pieces out on a whim.

Walking towards the park, Mia's head pounded. She had what some would call an acute attack of meaningless anxiety that took over every part of her life. In other words, Mia was stressed. Stressed because of Rachel-no news had come since the last day of school-and stressed because she was getting dumber and dumber.

One might laugh at that statement. Dumber and dumber? How? But it was true. Since winter break she had not had one regularly scheduled day (8 hours to sleep, 2 hours to eat, 4 hours to be tutored, 8 hours to practice her instruments, 2 hours for ‘free time’-meaning more practicing, or an acting/singing/educational class), and she felt her previous air of sophistication slipping. In school, while never the amazingly smart one, she was always near the top, and always, always, always, the best at most of her instruments.

Shaking her head, Mia tried to remove the thought from her head. She was a witch, not a musician. That was a second string career, one for junkies and hippies. Certainly not for someone of her status. Plus, this school was the most important thing. She needed to do fairly well, graduate, get a good-or at least respectable-job at the ministry, and become the head of the Alexander Family. It was a lot, but Mia had her sights on a fantastic life. She wasn't even close to giving up on her dreams.

Sitting down, her back to the fountain, Mia held her book to her chest and then opened it carefully. It was one she was almost-but not completely-finished with, and she was sure that this jungle gym was the right place to do so.



Shutting the book, Mia glanced around. The sun was glaring down, and she was getting an ever bigger headache. Applause, a horrendous song, was stuck in her head, and she tugged at a strand of her auburn hair, wishing that all would be calm.



She was suddenly able to focus, as if someone had blocked out all of the stress in her brain. Her posture became more relaxed, and her outfit, which had seemed so fitting, suddenly seemed so out of place. Smiling, Mia looked up at the sky.





Outfit