What's that you've got there? PV: Henry Llewellyn Closed

Getting up was not Henry’s favorite thing in the world. He really enjoyed sleeping in when he got the chance, which wasn’t often since starting at Hogwarts. Still, he knew it was important to get up in the morning, so he did. The one thing he did look forward to in the mornings was breakfast. Hogwarts had the best food and always had such a wide array of options. He was never hungry after breakfast, though he wasn’t necessarily full. His mum called him a bottomless pit back home, but she always told him it was because he was growing. At his height, he wasn’t sure how much growing he would be doing, but there were still older boys that were taller than him. Perhaps he would grow more than he thought.

Still, breakfast was not only a time for eating, but for doing. He had pulled out a notebook to doodle with his right hand while he ate with his left. It was something he had been doing for a couple years now and had gotten the hang of. Eating with his left hand, he almost looked ambidextrous, but he wasn’t. He had never tried writing with his left hand and hadn’t found any reason to need to. Eating with his left, however, was important. Until he ate something that required both hands. Setting down his quill, he took to the task of eating and, soon, had torn a blank page from his notebook and began folding.

Henry didn’t know very many origami folds, but he definitely played around with it when he thought about it. Or, didn’t think about it. Folding paper was kind of a habit his hands had taken on without his say so. After having been taught how to fold paper stars, folding paper into varying shapes had just become a habit. His mum had gotten him an origami book for Christmas the previous year, so he knew a few different folds. What he didn’t know was that he had been joined by a girl he didn’t know. He was too focused on the task at hand to notice her there. It wasn’t until she spoke that he registered her presence, jumping slightly. “Hmm? Oh, yeah, that’s how Da-my brother did it.” Henry responded, remembering at the last second that this girl would have no clue who Daniel was. “Plus, I find it easier to remember what I meant when I draw it out. If I write it down, I might come back and be confused.” He said, putting down his paper and offering a hand. “I’m Henry. You like pranks, too?” Considering her question, the answer to this should have been obvious, but Henry figured she might have just asked.

@Anja Murtaja
color code = #5A8697

@Henry Llewellyn

Anja took the hand the boy — Henry — held out and shook it firmly. "I'm Anja. Anja Murtaja," Anja smiled at him. "I do enjoy pranks, but a rarely have the chance to set them." She cursed herself for not seeming more natural around Henry, but she was never comfortable around people for the first time. Composed, perhaps, but she wasn't even that at the moment. "I'm sorry, that was short of me. Normally I'm much more comfortable around people, but I've never met you and—" Ugh. Now she was babbling. What was wrong with her today? She was usually much more composed in normal situations. But you've never tried making friends, she thought. That's a whole new kettle of fish.

Instead of continuing to speak, she turned around and began to eat her eggs. Was she really trying to make friends, or were they to be more of acquaintances who would come in handy at some point? She had, after all been schooled into thinking like that, into thinking that to have friends is to expand your weaknesses. Her mother and absentee father had seen to it that she at least seemed to believe the things they told her, and they enjoyed presenting their 'perfect' daughter to other families. She was far from perfect though — hadn't her train of thought just proved that? Anja decided that she should begin to plan a prank, but she couldn't think of any ideas.

Anja realised that she had been staring into space for quite a while, but her meal hadn't gone cold. She was hungry, so she began to eat. She noticed that Henry was eating with his left hand, and folding the paper with his right, and thought that it was quite clever. However, she had been brought up with the proper manners, so she ate with both hands. It was like a reflex action by now. The bacon was oily, and the eggs creamy. She undid the clips on her Plots book, and looked at her last entry. That was one prank which hadn't gone so well, earning her a grounding for a week. She couldn't think of anything to write in it, though, so she twisted back around to face the boy, pointed at his doodles, and said, "What's that you've got there?"

It was always great to meet new people. Who knew that there would be so many people like him at Hogwarts? First K, now Anja. “It’s nice to meet you,” he replied, noting that she added her last name. He supposed he probably should too, especially since there were multiple Henry’s at school, but this thought left his mind as quickly as it entered it. Instead, he was now interested in hearing her response to his question. “I get that, it’s difficult to set pranks here. Especially if you might have to shovel mooncalf dung as a result,” he responded, shuddering at the memory. It had been one of his better pranks, but he hadn’t considered who would get caught in it. When it ended up being a prefect, well, needless to say it wasn’t a good result.

When Anja apologized for being short, Henry tilted his head slightly. “No need to apologize, I hadn’t even noticed,” he responded honestly. Her response seemed proper to him. Though he wasn’t well versed in proper conversation, having been raised in a rather chaotic household, he didn’t see her response as ‘short’. A response was a response. Besides, she seemed friendly as she said it, whether there wasn’t much content to it was no problem. Henry often talked enough for everyone when he had a conversation, but he was still kind of eating, so he wasn’t as able to talk as usual.

Doing things one handed had become a skill, especially at his house. One could never know what would come their way at the dinner table. It was habit to always have a free hand ready for anything, though it wasn’t as necessary at Hogwarts. This meant that Henry often did two things at once during meals. Now that Anja was here, though, he finished up the folding and put it aside. Someone to talk to was more important than folding paper. When she asked what he had, he pulled his notebook to the forefront of everything, brushing off the spare paper to show it. “I’ve been recording things I’ve done back home and here. I filled my mum’s cupboards with paper stars, once, so I’ve been working out a way to do that here.” He said, indicating the top drawing, which was of the cupboards opening and tons of stars falling out. The bottom drawings were mostly scribbled out versions of the top drawing, using various different openings that he could flood with origami stars. His most recent thoughts, not scribbled out, were to fill a bookshelf or two with the stars behind the books, so when someone removed one, they would be attacked by stars. It was still a work in progress.

@Anja Murtaja
color code = #5A8697

@Henry Llewellyn

Anja laughed when Henry mentioned mooncalf dung. “Well, I can’t say that I’ve ever had to shovel dung as a result of my pranks. I’ve only been caught once, actually. I set the prank rather sloppily, and it ended up smashing one of the house’s antique vases. I don’t think it was that which got me grounded, though — it was probably because when my mother started trying to scoop it back together with her hands, I said ‘You’re a witch, why don’t you use magic to fix it?’” She smiled sheepishly. Happy times. “That got me grounded for a week.” Anja didn’t mention the last prank she’d played, however. That was one she hadn’t so much been caught on as one she had quite blatantly pulled in front of both her mother and father. In a prison, no less. That one had got her put practically under house arrest. She hadn’t even written it in her book, and she wasn’t about to mention it to someone she had just met.

“Those stars are actually kind of sweet,” Anja cocked her head to the side, covering the tracks of her thoughts. “Do you have lots of siblings? You mentioned a brother — I’m just interested in where you come from. I come from Finland myself, so I haven’t met many people who aren’t from a few Pureblood families.” Her parents had been stifling, to say the least. Schooled in pureblood society, she had tried hard to open her mind to other aspects of the world as she prepared to enter Hogwarts. She shut her book, and put it alongside her quill and ink back into her bag. A scrunched piece of parchment fluttered out as she pulled her hand out, and she bent to pick it up. Smoothing it out, she saw a drawing on the piece of paper. It moved, animated by magic, and on it were scrawls of what looked like three sheep. Each one seemed to be labeled with the wonky numbers 1, 2, and 4. Anja vaguely remembered having pestered her father again and again to cast the charm which would animate the sheep, and she smiled at the memory.

Straightening up and placing the paper on the table, Anja said, “It seems that I did once draw my pranks.” A smirk spread across her face as she imagined a teacher running around, looking for a sheep labeled ‘3’. Of course, there would only be three sheep, but even the thought of something so hilarious sparked the mischief up in her eyes. “Henry,” she wheezed, controlling silent laughter, “would you like to play a prank?”

Listening to Anja’s story, Henry couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s really funny. My mum definitely would have grounded me for talking to her like that.” He grinned, recalling how close he had come to being grounded with a few of his pranks. “I got detention for pranking a prefect.” He admitted, shrugging sheepishly. “It was a classic toilet prank, but I wasn’t thinking about who would use the toilet next.” There had never been a prank he had pulled which had gotten him into too much trouble. The detention one was badly planned, on his part. If he had considered who might walk in next, it might have not been so bad. Most of the pranks him and his siblings played on their parents got them clean up duty, but no usually anything worse. Besides, his parents had a lot to do, remembering which child had been grounded for what and for how long was a lot to.

“Yeah, my brother taught me how to make them,” he replied, smiling down at the drawing. “That’s cool. I was born in Wales, but we moved to London not long after. I have six older siblings, though I’m the only wizard. All my family are muggles.” Henry responded, not realizing how crazy having six older siblings might be to someone who wasn’t used to the concept of a large family. “I’ve met a few pureblood students here,” he added, “it’s kind of weird how wizards like knowing someone’s bloodline.” Henry had run into someone who was very elitist in the sense of bloodline. Every interaction he had with that boy was confusing, but it was mostly because he didn’t understand pureblood life. He supposed he and Aja probably had completely different thoughts on what was confusing, if she had only ever interacted with purebloods and he had never interacted with purebloods.

Looking down at the paper as Anja smoothed it out, Henry couldn’t help but grin at how cute it was that the sheep moved. He had never gotten to make his drawings move, so it was kind of cool to see it. That would be extremely useful in doodling his pranks out. Maybe he’d see if he could learn that spell sometime soon. Henry laughed a little bit as Anja did, finding laughter rather contagious. When she asked if he wanted to play a prank, he looked up at her and grinned. “What do you have in mind?”

@Anja Murtaja
color code = #5A8697

@Henry Llewellyn

Anja was surprised at how many siblings Henry had. “Wow. That must have been really chaotic — the closest I got to having siblings were a few house elves and a couple of the staff members. I mean, I have a brother, but—" Anja stopped, then continued, "but we're distanced. I was never even very close with my parents, but I don’t think a lot of Pureblood families are.” It was true. The strange family dynamics around most Purebloods definitely hadn’t helped during times of crisis, and Anja felt that many families had drifted apart.

In response to his comment about bloodline, Anja said, “Yeah. I think what drives that is probably the need to know whether you can marry off your offspring into another Pureblooded family. Personally, I just like to know things. It means that I have more control over situations when they come up.” She didn’t lie — who was it that said knowledge was power? “Perhaps I should have been a Ravenclaw after all!”

Anja played with the worn corner of the doodle, and said, “Alright Henry, imagine this: we find three sheep or what ever — something that moves, or we can levitate or suchlike,” she shuddered slightly at her formal use of suchlike. “Anyway, we label these things one, two, and four — but not three.” Her smile became wider and more genuine. “Then, we release them into an area full of people who like order. Teachers, maybe? Then, we watch from the sidelines as the chaos unfolds and said people scamper around, looking for the third thing. I’m not quite sure how exactly it will turn out, but it’ll be fun anyway. Who knows, maybe we’ll even establish a sort of black-market reputation.” Anja thought that Henry might be a little confused by what she meant, so clarified, “I mean, not like a real black market, but we’ll have a reputation within the closer student body, under the teacher’s noses. Maybe they won’t even know for sure, but that will just add to a sense of mystery.” She waggled her eyebrows. That was her Slytherin side — ambitious, keen to garner a name for herself.

She looked expectantly back at Henry, but then dipped her head down again, looking at the sheep prancing across the paper. Sheep probably wouldn’t work at Hogwarts, though. “I don’t think sheep will work for this,” she added, “maybe we should get something like rats.” Rats would be just as fun as well, if not more. Smaller, easier to conceal, and by far more disgusting than sheep.

Henry nodded along, listening to Anja talk. Life had been very chaotic growing up, but Henry wouldn’t trade it for anything. He thought it was a little odd that Anja mentioned her actual brother last among all the relations that could have been like siblings to her. It seemed a topic she didn’t want to discuss further, so Henry didn’t pry. He was a bit curious, though. “Yeah, my mum had her hands full after I was born. My eldest brother is twenty-one, now. Him and my oldest sister are both out of the house.” It was easier on their mum, now that she had three less children living at home year-round.

Henry’s lip curled slightly at the idea of marrying based on bloodline. He knew that wouldn’t be a problem for him, only partly because he was muggleborn. He was planning on adopting with his spouse. Henry blinked a couple of times at the absolute clarity of this thought and then shivered at it. That was way ahead in the future, he did not want to think about it. “It’s still weird. I don’t think there’s an advantage to maintaining bloodlines.” He remained silent about her reason for wanting to know. Being in control of a situation was nice, but he wasn’t sure how relevant knowing one’s bloodline was to maintaining control over a situation. He grinned at her last comment, though. “And I feel like I should’ve been in Hufflepuff,” he laughed.

Listening to Anja’s plan, Henry’s smile slowly grew just a little bigger the more she spoke. This plan was brilliant! There were a myriad of objects they could use for something like this, but he considered what would consistently continue to move long enough to annoy people. With his fake permission slip, he was sure he could find something at Hogsmeade that could work, though he hadn’t been yet, so he wasn’t sure if it would work. “I wonder if we could find something that makes a lot of noise or smells really bad. Make people really panic about where the final one is!” He exclaimed, absolutely loving her idea. It was a brilliant way to create a bit of chaos. It would be fascinating to see what would happen in the Ravenclaw common room specifically, but Henry knew Anja probably wanted to watch the chaos unfold, too.

Her explanation about being black market famous was a little lost on Henry. He nodded along to what she said, but he really didn’t get it. Just knowing the mass chaos it would cause was enough for him. “Oooh, rats are perfect! Where do we get three rats, though?” There were probably rats in the dungeons, he thought after he spoke. They would have to trap them, though. Henry began to think about possible ways to trap rats with the skills they possessed between the two of them.

@Anja Murtaja
color code = #5A8697

@Henry Llewellyn

Anja smirked, relieved that Henry agreed with her rat theory. “I suppose we could get some from the dungeons. We could use those things Muggles have to trap rats — I’m sorry, I don’t know then name… you know, those ones with the spring thingy.” Anja considered this for a moment, but then backtracked. “Although, I’ve heard they sometimes kill the rat?” There were other options, however. “If that’s not a good idea, I can ask Mother to owl over some of my old pond-dipping nets. We could scout out some rats in the dungeons and close in on them. Maybe if we used a pincer movement…” she trailed off, and began sketching absentmindedly in her book.

At this rate, it would become as messy as her relationships with family. Her tidy notes! Her perfectly margined, spaced and flat lines of writing! Not a single spelling mistake or crossing out! Argh. She quickly finished up her drawing with two stick people holding nets, and a quick note that a third person may be necessary. She couldn’t say that she was much of an artist, for sure — she had simply drawn a common military tactic which could help in capturing the rat. She and Henry would each hold a net, then close in around it, in a pincer movement. Planning such pristine details always helped her to figure out what could go wrong.

She spun her notebook over to Henry, and said, “This is a pincer movement. I’m sure you’ve heard of it before,” she looked at the drawing again. “Often there’s a third person here,” she pointed at the gap between the two stick figures, “but since our attack isn’t against a Roman Army, we should be fine.”

Now that getting the rats was a problem that had been semi-solved, Anja wanted to move onto the details of how they would set the prank. “I think now we should probably pick a place to set the prank. I think a good place might be where there are loads of order-loving people. So not near Slytherin, for sure.” She sniggered.

“What about teachers?” she said, putting the option back into to the conversation. “That might prove problematic, though — where would there be a high concentration of teachers, except in a staff meeting or the staffroom? Do you have any better ideas?”

Reducio

Reference:

Listening to Anja’s explanation, Henry tilted his head in curiosity. “Mouse traps? Yeah, those kill sometimes. It could break the rat’s neck.” He replied, thinking that it would be difficult to come across a rat trap anyway. His mum would be really suspicious if he suddenly asked for some rat traps. There were limits to what his mum would send him and he would have to be clever about it. “That could work. We could make makeshift nets out of shirts or something,” Henry commented. “Maybe ones that are already dirty?” He didn’t mind using a shirt for rat catching. They could tie a little bag out of it to make it easier to use and then just have it washed like usual.

Henry watched with a grin as Anja sketched in her notebook. Her writing was definitely different from his, but it was interesting to watch her work in progress. Her drawing was about as good as his usually got, so it wasn’t bad. Usually, it was much simpler to make doodles that were clear, rather than try for good detail and fancy drawings. When she turned the page toward him, he looked it over.

The name of the attack was unknown to him, but he did understand the tactic. Now that he had a name to it, he supposed he could use that instead. Sometimes he could get long winded trying to explain what he meant. “If we think we need a third person, I know the perfect person.” Henry suggested, thinking immediately of K. He was sure his friend would love this prank, but if they didn’t need a third person, that was alright, too.

Laughing with Anja, Henry nodded in agreement. “Professors might be great, but you’re right, getting to a lot of them at once will be hard. If we can’t come up with anything for professors, I bet we could use a Ravenclaw study group or the library.” Rats in the library would definitely draw someone’s attention. It would likely be harder to get a large group of people in the library, but there was a chance someone would be having a study group in there. If not, Ravenclaw’s occasionally held study groups outside of the common room, so they could potentially use something like that for the prank.

@Anja Murtaja
color code = #5A8697