8 Sep 2023, 18:39
Call Phantomnation
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It was the start of the school year again, that awkward time in which the students were relearning some of the things that they had first learned the year before. Fifth year Piérre Marchonné was sitting with his head in his crossed arms as he laid on the divination table, listening to the reprise on how to perform mirror scrying and how the Troxler effect caused visions to appear warped and potentially dangerous to those who called upon it. Not that any of this was new, Piérre had always known that divination of any sorts had an unfortunate side effect of also inviting whatever just so happened to be around into your space be they good or ill. At this point he was just trying to make sure that he did just enough to get a good grade, even if he had had more than a few predictions that had somehow come true when he hadn't even tried to perform the divination properly. Cartomancy was a particular one in which this 'talent' excelled, but tasseomancy and mirror gazing was also a practice seemed to gather some positive results for him as well.
With his eyes lightly closed, the words of the Divination professor Winnipeg sort of just... washed past him and didn't really seem to properly resonate in the way that professors would have liked their words to impact their wards. It was the start of the school year, after all; what else would they be expecting at this point? Of course students weren't going to pay attention. Why should they? This was stuff that he already knew; he didn't have to hear it over and over again like it was a broken 1916 jazz record spinning on a rejected victrola.
So, instead, the boy buried his nose in his arms and breathed deeply in an attempt to relax and let himself fall asleep. He would grab the assignment for the next class from someone else when the class was dismissed; he was a 'good' student, after all. He needed the rest; life had been to hectic recently and transforming in and out of hummingbird form took a lot more energy than the kid would like to admit. A little, short, snippet snidget of a nap wasn't going to hurt anyone; it would only help him at this point.
So when it was time for the students to start looking in their mirrors with their questions or their simple observations into the future, Piérre groggily drug himself into an upright position and put his head in his hands. He couldn't seem to keep his eyes open; he just wanted to keep them shut so that he could go right back to sleep. Still, it was an in-class assignment; he had to at least try to participate and to try to get some practice that would be helpful that year for the purposes of his OWL (and potentially his NEWT) exams.
Sleepily, Piérre pulled the mirror over to himself and peered down into it, batting his eyes slowly as he yawned exhaustedly. Of course there was his reflection and there was the background above and around him. It was a mirror, after all.
Piérre focused most of his attention right on the pupil of his reflection's eye. For some reason the need to make eye contact was something that he felt that he needed to do, whether simply in the form of a reflection or in actual human interaction. Just as he usually did, Piérre caused his eyes to relax the longer he looked at the gleaming silver surface with his own face looking back at him, letting 'images' begin to overlay themselves or swirl around on the sides of his periphery. Soon, the classroom faded away out of the perimeter of the reflection, replaced instead with mist and darkness and a sharp yet also soft gleam that seemed to come from some unseen outside source. His own face, held neutral in expression and yet with an eyebrow lift of incredulousness seemed unchanging for a while other than a small wavering of the borders of the boy's face. That was natural, that was simply just the way that your eyes tricked you into seeing things that weren't actually there or that were not really there. The Troxler effect in full force, one could say.
But as he focused on the green eye and the dark pupil, the color seemed to gradually seep away from the reflection in its entirety; another possible side effect of the Troxler effect, but even then such a thing was quite extreme for just a small hyperfixating upon a mirror reflection. Just as was to be expected for mirror divination, the boy's reflection began to warp and change piecemeal by piecemeal until even Piérre had to take notice of the fact that the reflection before him was becoming too alien to even be considered his exact reflection any more.
Sure, certain details were still there; the set of the eyes, the way that the cheeks angled, the exact same piquing ears that Piérre (as well as others both friend and foe) had come to know and recognize in a heartbeat, and also the same twinkle that was set deep inside of those now-colorless eyes. For all intents and purposes, to Piérre he was simply looking at what could be his soul or his person that was simply laying within a different shell or a different body. But it was the fact that there were details that simply threw Piérre for a loop, details that were off or at least rather foreign to the boy's appraisal; a face that was more defined and mature for one thing, for another a different styling of hair that while still contained the flyaway and roguish look that today's self had seemed to evoke a sense of 'grown-up' if one would, and for another this face bore some rather respectable facial hair (that was way nicer than the scruffy, weird, this and there hairs that was showing up on Piérre's upper lip piecemeal by piecemeal). If this individual did still happen to be the boy looking down at it, he was a good deal older in the reflection than he was while looking down and scrying upon it.
Intrigued, Piérre leaned forward ever so slightly, which also caused the reflection to seemingly leer in a little closer in turn. Green eyes met the pale, almost translucent--for lack of a better word--ones. Both heads tipped at the same time, the two of them unable to look away from the other even if they wanted to. Both of them blinked at the same time, moved as one, acted like the other did in the exact same moment.
This was not the first time this sort of thing had happened before. In the past Piérre had had strange, usually under traumatic situation mirror-reflection-conversations before... but in the most notable one back then the appearance of the other party had been misty and impossible to comprehend in a 'true form' if one would. Here the form seemed quite obvious; a perfect pantomime of Piérre himself, it seemed.. It was a perfect replication of what Piérre could potentially become as he got a little bit older.
Green eyes tracked to try and discern more about the face before him, trying to distinguish traits or features that would give away small hints or clues about the nuances of the divination he was trying to perform. Those eyes continued to follow his back, a small and strange smile just barely ghosting the lips of the reflection as if it was curious of Piérre's own scrutinization of it. Piérre's eyes lingered for a moment on a cast of strange shadows that found themselves draped on the left side of the reflection; almost cracked and dustlike they traced down the side of the face all the way to the jaw, like charcoal dragged carelessly in a thick line the breadth of a finger's length. Thinner shadows, similarly cracked and dark against pale and colorless skin were visible trailing from the reflection's nose and ever so slightly from its mouth trailing to its chin and then down its neck and into the heightened and flared collar of a flamboyant outfit. So different from the natural light gradient that came from the right side, jarring enough that Piérre wondered whether these were shadows, objects that were placing themselves between him and the vision, significant blurs as his eyes was shivering just trying to maintain a constant relaxation in order to so much as view the seeming vision, or if it was something else altogether.
As these queries began to come to the boy, Piérre didn't notice until the reflection's lips moved that it had lifted its chin ever so slightly and caused its eyes to crease in mirth accompanied by a small revealing of flashing teeth. Even those were Piérre's own, he recognized his defined front teeth and the unusually slightly pointed maxillary cuspids that Muggles could easily misconstrue as belonging to their legendary vampire. He had those teeth even now, those teeth that were just a little too pointy whenever he flashed a grin or bared his teeth in teasing manners. An airy breath of wind seemed to be the place of the voice, not strangled or rasping... just very, very quiet and soft. "...mo bene, ok? ... e alright, okay?" Those hollow eyes glimmered in such a way that the captured light to the side of the misty background seemed to not be a reflection but instead an emittance of those eyes on their own. It nodded softly, less it seemed to its onlooker and more as if convincing himself. "Te lo prometto. I promise."
The eyes focused more on something just out of sight. "Staremo bene. It's going to be alright."
Unconsciously, Piérre's fingertips trailed over the shadows on the reflection, not feeling the glass beneath his fingers as he probed the curiosity. He felt nothing beneath his hand as those eyes glimmered and the reflection shifted ever so slightly. Those eyes returned to those emerald ones of its onlooker, and then Piérre watched as the pale, colorless hands rose up to the barrier between them and pressed its 'hand' to the palm of Piérre's own.
This... this couldn't be real. How in the world could this be happening? It just... It just didn't make any sense. It couldn't make any sense whatsoever!
These thoughts were prompted by the fact that a faint, transparent and silver hand now reached out of the mirror from the reflection, reaching out towards Piérre and gently grasping him by his forearm. With a sharp breath, Piérre tried to pull away but found himself paralyzed where he sat. The reflection's hollow eyes continued to pierce through him, continued to stare through him as if he were an incorporeal being that could only be sensed by sixth sense alone. A presence that couldn't quite be touched, but then why was it able to touch? Why was it able to reach out from this speculum confinement and take the boy by his arm, and then with a small tug pull him into the mirror without a heartbeat to realize what was happening?
Piérre felt himself chilled to his very core, as if his innards had turned to ice as he passed through the glass confinement... and through the reflection as it pulled itself past him. Now in some way it appeared both more real and yet nowhere near as real as it had been mere moments before. Piérre passed right through it, and it through him without so much as a small hitch. Yet, the invisible pressure remained upon the boy's arms, and the boy was well aware of this much older version of what he had now accepted as himself leaning in close and never allowing his eyes to leave the young boy's. It was the same way that Piérre himself found himself close to others whenever he needed to keep them close, to keep them beside him in an ironclad will to make them understand what he was doing or what he was going to say. The reflection had stopped smiling. There was no more mirth in its eyes. The charcoal black shadows, still strange as they seemed caught in their position no matter how the being oriented itself; Piérre could see every trace on the 'skin', realizing that the cracks and the smears as they were... they were not shadows.
The whispered voice again. "... è la fine. ...ot the end." Came the voice that willed and carried no humor to it. The rare moments of seriousness that Piérre only revealed sparingly and only when he wanted it to. "...er sempre. ...is forever."
The reflection began to slip from between Piérre's fingers, sending the boy into an uncontrolled floating sensation as the being was seemingly pulled away and lost to the mists and the shadows. Overhead the mirror's pale light shone down like filtered sunlight, a place that Piérre could not reach no matter how much he strained and attempted to 'swim' for it in the vast spaceless place of nothing. If anything, he slipped backwards and farther away, the light fading slowly as the indiscernible distance increased and increased; hopelessly out of reach as the boy was lost in the world on the other side of the looking glass like Alice in Wonderland.
Until there was no light, and Piérre himself felt hollow and transparent; as if he would also fade into the nothingness that surrounded, that offered no sensation of touch or feeling, a state of life that was not life, an existence separate from the world yet just close enough to watch it like an outsider. A stranger to the world that he was once supposed to belong to.
Now falling, and falling... and nowhere where he could hit the bottom. Doomed to fall forever... on the other side of the mirror that his own reflection that drawn him into. Trapped on the other side... inside the very mirror that he had attempted to scry into...
An untouchable, incorporeal being just as it was.
The mirror.
A mirror.
The call of the Phantomnation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Green eyes flashed around the room for a few moments before they landed on the scrying mirror that lay on the table in front of him and his partner. Before anyone could do anything to stop him, his hands had snatched and his fingers curled around the silvery border of the mirror's frame. In a similarly swift motion that was hardly dramatic or flashy in the slightest, the mirror was raised around a foot to a foot and a half over the table before being brought harshly down at an angle. With a sharp *Ka-Kringkash!* and the subsequent tinkling of glass as if fell away from what remained of the looking mirror, in Piérre's hands there were only the remains of the silver border and its back: the once pristine and flawless glass of the mirror itself was now cracked and shattered, scattered across the table and the dust of it on Piérre's and his partner's lap. The glass was safely distributed and sequestered on and to the table; unless anyone did something stupid there was no risk of anyone being needlessly cut.
Piérre himself only stared at the broken glass, the images flashing through his mind of what he had--or what he thought he had--seen. There was no denying it; in some way, shape, or form that thing that he had seen in that mirror... it had to have been him. It was too eerily similar not to be. So different looking, so strange and odd to perceive as the features were milky and distorted over his own. Still, there had been something so off-putting about it, something jarring and unnatural and... foreboding.
Dropping the mirror's remains, Piérre clasped his hands to his arms and tightened both his jaw and his fingers. "Nello specchio... Perché ero allo specchio? In the mirror... Why was I in the mirror?" But that was a little deceptive, of course he would have seen his own reflection in the mirror; that was how mirrors worked. "Certo che mi vedo allo specchio... ma perche 'cosi'? Of course I see myself in the mirror... but why like that?" He murmured to himself, his eyes focused on the splinters of the glass that remained.
What felt like hundreds of his green eyes reflected in the largest shards of glass that permitted a reflection still, blinking back at him as he did; fixing him with the same look as he was giving it. Still, in the boy's mind's eye he could not see anything else there other than that mature, pale, hollow yet lively, grey eye that Piérre knew--deep down--was supposed to be green. Green as his own; bright as his own.
"Ero allo specchio. Per questo ho dovuto romperlo. Dovevo andarmene... e ora sono fuori, giusto? Ora sono nel mondo reale... I was in the mirror. That's why I had to break it. I had to get out... and now I'm out, right? I'm in the real world now..." His words were fast and disordered, to anyone not familiar with the fact that he was more fluent in his Mother tongue as opposed to learned English, one may have likely thought that he was speaking in tongues.
A screaming headache throbbed in what felt to be the deepest recesses of the left side of Piérre's brain. So persistent, so needy... it hurt to think. It hurt to even so much as attempt to form words...
Open to Interactions
Jesters do oft prove prophets. 𓀚
I am the brother account to Romeo Marchonné & Zyva Hel Fae Skógrwight
28 Nov 2023, 17:49
Call Phantomnation
Hex Colour:
#8C94E9
✿✿✿
Aly Salinger had quite come to enjoy Divination over her time taking the course (even though six months of it had been self-taught at home in hopes of passing her fourth-year exam upon her return to Hogwarts the previous May). Sure, there were some who would call it a soft option, or silly, or useless for any who weren't Seers, but the young Ravenclaw's future had thrown so many curveballs at her lately that it felt right to try to predict the uncertainty.
Still, that didn't mean that Divination class was all sunshine and rainbows all the time. In fact, it most often brought a pervading sense of doom and gloom that many other classes did not; there had been more dramatic predictions of death, unexpected shouts of future fortuities, faintings, and the like in this small room than Aly had seen in all of her other courses combined. Perhaps it was something about the closed-in walls covered in heaps of jingling multicoloured tapestries and draperies, or the heavily perfumed air, or the precariously balanced stacks of teacups and abandoned textbooks on the shelves. If Aly had to guess, she would likely have attested the common presence of histrionics to the fragrances of incense and herbs lingering in the air, strongly present with each intake of breath. There was something about sachet that made people go bonkers.
So to say that she was surprised, really, when the boy sitting across from her in class during the first full week of lessons startled out of his chair and then began to smash the mirror on the table, sending shards of glass and clouds of silvery dust flying all over her... well, surprised might not have been the right word. She was startled at the sudden movement, for sure, but Aly had come to expect theatrics in this class.
She had not, however, come to expect being covered in mirror debris, or pieces of the dust sticking to her lip gloss to form a gritty film of danger over her mouth; the sweater and black pants of her uniform (minus the chains) were covered in a fine silver sheen. Groaning in frustration, as vain and lovely of a creature as she was, Aly tried to brush the dust from her lap and pulled a handkerchief from her satchel to wipe the ruined gloss from her lips. At least it hadn't gotten in her hair, she realised as her partner babbled on in a frustrated foreign language that she did not understand (also not something that was particularly surprising, as many Hogwarts students seemed to speak other languages and dialects that Aly, who had grown up in Welwyn, did not). Merlin, that would have been bad. Good thing I pulled it back this morning.
Her tablemate finished his scattered rambling, and Aly took a good look at him for the first time all of class. There had been really no reason to glance his way before, as he'd just been leaning on the table with his head in his arms, no particularly interesting thing going on. Plus, Aly had been trying, at least, to pay attention to the professor and not let her mind wander - and lastly, she didn't know him very well. He was a Gryffindor, she was pretty sure, but despite four years in classes together (three and a half, technically, considering Aly's absence the previous spring), the teenage Ravenclaw had never bothered to learn his name. She'd not needed it. And she still didn't need it now, as her mind vascillated between frustration and concern for him.
Eventually, it split the difference. "Merlin, what was that for?" she demanded, only halfway succeeding in brushing the dust from her lap and sweater; the particularly soft cerulean material of the latter acted as a fantastic trap for dust and hair, which she knew all too well due to her oft-unruly lion's mane. "What did that mirror do to you? And, er - you all right, there? That was..." Aly coughed into her sleeve, unsure if it was due to the awkwardness or the dust still dancing in the air, cutting through what few rays of sunlight were let in from the mostly-covered windowpanes. "Certainly something."
✿ @Piérre Marchonné ✿
gen1 Aly Salinger || gen1 iNPC Manu Macedo || gen2 Kahira Valerian || staff Aulis Vorozheykin
22 Jan 2024, 21:17
Call Phantomnation
House Colors: Slytherin
 |
 |
 |
Thin fingers threaded into chestnut hair in a mixture of nervousness and distress, the Britalian felt his fingers shaking as he relinquished the mirror frame and tried to massage his temples in an attempt to temper the throbbing in his mind. It was as if he had been struck in the head with something, or that he had hit his head on something very, very hard; something hard enough, at least, to give a concussion maybe. Squeezing his eyes shut, the boy tried to collect scattered thoughts, to recall what he had seen and what it could possibly mean. Visions in divination, especially in response to a question or when they came unprompted, had meaning. Whatever he had seen, whatever he had just experienced, surely it had a meaning. But... he couldn't put his finger on it, or the strange appearance and the fact that its face was so akin to his own, or the reason why it had come in the first place.
"I'm... still at Hogwarts, right?" He asked stupidly, a simple question in an attempt to get his bearings and to regain his control of speech again. "I'm not... anywhere... else?" He murmured aloud. "I..."
Green eyes opened slowly, and Piérre swore he could feel his pupils dilating small and large as they coped with the pain that was continuing to breach like an icepick through his skull. The world before him swayed ever so slightly, and it was a good thing there was a chair right there for him to catch himself in and ensure he didn't topple directly to the ground. He needed that chair, needed it right now, anyways. "I was never anywhere else, correct?" Another stupid question on his part. Of course he hadn't been anywhere else... but he simply... he simply had to make sure that this world was in reality, that he was in reality and not floating somewhere else in that bottomless void where bottom was top and top could be bottom or side to side... he really ultimately just had no way of knowing outside of the tests he had already done: tugging a curl of his hair and detecting pain, seeing his solid reflection in the many pieces of glass on the ground and table, and trying to query a student and hoping for a coherent response like he would get in reality.
"I-I think I'm okay... ach! Questo terribile mal di testa! This terrible headache!" English slipped away from him unintentionally as another surge of a migraine-like throbbing overtook him again. "I was... in the mirror. Did I fall asleep?"
Probably. The imprint of the silvery image continued to echo in the blackness of his mind. "I didn't mean to... I didn't hurt you at all, did I?" He was trying to speak silently now, trying to not draw attention to himself as he rapidly fluttered into action with careful hands and the use of the tablecloth to sweep and consolidate the fragments. They would have to be disposed of later. "I don't suppose a Reparo would work very well on all these pieces..."
It was at least worth a shot, though, as he swished the bone white yew wood wand over the fragments and the mirror itself. "Reparo."
There was a second where everything was still, and then the pieces shivered a bit and began to slip themselves back into place once more. The largest pieces sealed together, the dust of the mirror attempted to reincorporate itself again... but one part of the mirror had been so reduced to dust that it left an ugly spiderweb-shaped crack that refracted tens of Piérre's green eyes in them. He had almost been able to restore it... almost but not quite. He could have sworn that for a moment, just as a flicker, there had been a pale silhouette... but it vanished as soon as it came.
"It must have been just a dream... surely..." He murmured again, putting his head in his hands, closing his eyes, and massaging his temples in a meagre attempt to dull the pain.
@Aly Salinger
Jesters do oft prove prophets. 𓀚
I am the brother account to Romeo Marchonné & Zyva Hel Fae Skógrwight
22 Mar 2024, 22:12
Call Phantomnation
✿✿✿
The mirror-shattering boy seemed... out of it, to say the least, Aly noted as he blinked apparently back into the present day. Perhaps it had been the shock of the broken mirror that snapped him out of his stupor, or maybe it had been her less-than-kind instinctive retort; either way, his slurred speech and slow blinks indicated that wherever his mind had been, it had been somewhere other than here. Aly raised an eyebrow at him, partway between confused and annoyed, though she tried not to let the latter show. "Of course you're still here. You've been here the whole time," she said, wondering only internally where the bloody hell else he could have been.
In the mirror? Aly's analytical mind, and her years of wanting to become a Healer/of experience as an intern in the Hospital Wing, jumped to explain the nonsense the boy was babbling: he had only started out of his chair, not fallen, so he couldn't have hit his head - but maybe he'd hit it before class, and the symptoms of a concussion were just now starting to present themselves - or maybe he was under the effects of some kind of curse, like a Confundus Charm, or - or - or. The presence of a second language, something she didn't recognise but that sounded somewhat similar to if he'd been babbling spell names so probably something Latin-based, only confused her further. Aly did not speak any other languages, and the commonality of her classmates being bilingual only ever brought forth a minute sense of jealousy that they could do something which she could not.
But the Ravenclaw's worries about a possible brain bleed faded away moments later when the Gryffindor - she was pretty sure that he was a Gryffindor, after all - cast Reparo on her. Though she had already taken off her ruined, mirror-dust-covered lip gloss, it was still a strange sensation to feel the fine sheen of dust lift from her dusky blue sweater and the fine black cloth covering her legs, almost pulling the fabrics with them for a fraction of a second - some of the freer curls in her messy bun doing the same - before the particles swirled into a wholly repaired mirror. Well, his cognitive function seems to be doing just fine, she thought. Still, she decided in that moment to keep an eye on him for the rest of the course - partially to calm her Healer's mind, and partially for her own safety, because who knew if he would up and decide to break a mirror again?
"Looks like it worked just fine to me," Aly murmured, pulling the fabric of her sweater away from her chest for a moment just to confirm that no more glittering silver had embedded itself into the carefully woven fibers. Upon being satisfied with the boy's repair job, she let the fabric go and glanced back up to him, green eyes meeting green. "And no, I'm not injured, just - startled, I suppose. That was sort of out of nowhere." Her gaze softening, the corners of her eyes crinkling slightly, she couldn't help but give the boy a wry smile and add a semi-humorous quip. "Are you sure you're all right - or, better question, what happened? I don't think we're doing dream journals til next year, so whatever you're talking about, can't have been a dream, yeah?"
✿ @Piérre Marchonné ✿
gen1 Aly Salinger || gen1 iNPC Manu Macedo || gen2 Kahira Valerian || staff Aulis Vorozheykin
4 Apr 2024, 17:53
Call Phantomnation
House Colors: Slytherin
|
|
|
Ah... ah okay... okay, okay. So, it most likely was a dream. That would... that would make sense, wouldn't it. By now the worst of the moment had passed, thing were starting to calm themselves as his heart began to slow to a regular rhythm again. Piérre tried to do damage control, tried to salvage the disaster of a situation he had plunged himself into with this poor classmate of his. "Whole time? Ah yes, good." He nodded, a smile beginning to cross his face again. His voice was lowered again, trying to recover from the outburst and the stares he had garnered from the smashing of the mirror in the first place. "I'm s-sorry. Really sorry, I didn't know what to do but that was definitely not the right thing to do, oh gosh..." He apologized over and over again. "I mean, if you had a dream about being pulled into a mirror by a weird thing, you'd probably try to break the mirror too when you woke up, right?"
He tried to reason with the thought. "Lucid nightmares and the like..." Lucid nightmares were not foreign to the boy, he had always had a rather imaginative mind particularly as a child. Nightmares always faded away, even if the memories of the individual moments seemed to sear themselves into the shadows of the mind to reappear when remembered at the least opportune time--this was simply one of them. It must have been nothing. It should be nothing.
"Good." He replied to the girl's assessment of the effectiveness of his Reparo spell. He smiled a bit broader, causing his eyes to glitter with mirth. "And I am sorry."
What had happened? "It was a bit confusing... I was here, but when I looked in the mirror I saw..." What was a good description for the thing that he had seen anyways? "Some man. Younger guy." Looked like himself... "Really... nice moustache." Despite himself Piérre bit his tongue with laughter as he pinched his fingers in Italian pride. "But he had no color." And at this, Piérre's face fell ever so slightly as the confusion returned to him like a small wave. "He reached through the mirror after he said something, and then he pulled me into the mirror with him. And then I felt..."
The vacuous sensation chilled him again. "I felt nothing. Like I couldn't touch or remember what anything felt like anymore." His brow creased. "... I should tell the professor." This wasn't the first time something weird had happened to him when he had been practicing Divination. Small strange happenings just seemed to jump out at him for no reason, and many of them had had negative connotations in Divination lore. "Dream journals..." His thoughts meandered. "And I had a headache, like I got hit with a bludger or something." He pressed a hand to his temple, the left side, lightly: he checked his hand for blood after drawing it away too, but he found nothing. "The man had a marking... here, there, I think... it was black, though." He tapped his temple there once before tracing his fingers along his hairline. He omitted the parts about similar black and crusted markings at the nose, the lips. He didn't want to guess what it was, though he had a gruesomely good idea of what it could be.
Why a mirror, though? Why in the mirror? Why show a reflection of someone that wasn't him? Unless...
"You're right. It's probably nothing. Serves me right for falling asleep in class. Won't happen again." Piérre concluded, rubbing his eyes again and yawning. "Especially if something ridiculous like this happens again because of it. At least nobody actually got hurt."
@Aly Salinger
Jesters do oft prove prophets. 𓀚
I am the brother account to Romeo Marchonné & Zyva Hel Fae Skógrwight
9 Apr 2024, 03:41
Call Phantomnation
✿✿✿
The boy quieted down and their nosy classmates' interest in the sudden outburst quickly waned, most of them turning back to the lessons or to their own shimmering hand-mirrors, leaving Aly to heave a sigh of relief in the relative lack of a spotlight. There had been enough whispering lately to satisfy a lifetime, or so her anxious ears believed, and so the peace and semi-quiet was more than welcome.
Plus, he apologised. That much was enough to quirk up Aly's ears. Maybe it was her relative dislike of Hogwarts fifth-year boys, save a very special few (who were mostly all Ravenclaws anyway), due to... well... the last few years, to say the least - but it had been a while since Aly had heard a boy her age apologise. Inclining her head in a silent appreciation of his words, the Ravenclaw waved him off. "Believe me, you're forgiven," she assured him, wondering not for the first time in the last couple of minutes if her newfound potential ... acquaintance, at least, was quite all right in the head. There had been a decent amount of people sent to the Hospital Wing in Aly's years here at Hogwarts for hallucinations, right? Oh, no, wait, or was that hags? I can never keep them straight. Aly examined him, for a moment, and then shrugged. Who wasn't some sort of loony these days? She continued, "We've all done our odd things. Hell, I tried to matchmake some professors, and I got sucker-punched in the middle of the Great Hall last June - by my best mate." After thinking twice of her statement, she added, "Unrelated events, by the way."
Listening to the boy's somewhat batty, and definitely worrisome, description of the vision he'd had, Aly tried to imagine this... sight. A younger man, with a moustache? What kind of person younger than fourteen had facial hair so fine, so pristine, that a hallucinating fifth-year kid just had to comment on that above anything else? Or... wait, had he meant a man that was young, rather than an old man? Perhaps it was just a hallucination and, therefore, completely from the boy's imagination? Oh, yes, and the weird black smudge on his dreamt-up hairline and the Gryffindor's matching real-life headache were both odd too.
Starting shockingly back into the real world, electricity running up her spine and out her fingertips as she did so, Aly realised that she'd let the boy in front of her ramble on and she'd completely zoned out and lost any of what he might have said. She coughed politely into her elbow, trying to pretend like it wasn't because a very awkward lump had quite suddenly formed in her throat. "Er, yes, terribly so," she mumbled into said elbow, trying to put her muffled voice at the perfect volume and level of muffle-ness so that the boy would understand what she'd meant if that seemed like the proper thing to say as a response, or that he would just think it an odd burble if it would not have been the proper thing at all. Her mind raced to figure out where to go from here. Though Aly had a million questions, she also, somehow, at the same time, simply could not have cared. There had been enough drama and oddness in the past year. She was ready for some down time for once.
There was, then, one most logical segue, no matter what the boy had just said. "So," she said, removing her face from her arm, "remind me of your name again? Sorry, I must've forgotten."
✿ @Piérre Marchonné ✿
gen1 Aly Salinger || gen1 iNPC Manu Macedo || gen2 Kahira Valerian || staff Aulis Vorozheykin
30 Apr 2024, 19:33
Call Phantomnation
House Colors: Slytherin
|
|
|
Tapping his temple, his eyes widened slightly at the girl's words. "Suckerpunched?! I've been suckerpunched for matchmaking before--I wonder what the delineation is supposed to be... People'll throw punches for any reason nowadays, I guess." He murmured off.
Perhaps it was better to distract from the worrying sights and to instead focus on the formalities that should have come first anyways. She asked for his name as she lifted her head from her arm. Piérre's eyes locked with hers and for a moment he was quiet, the swirls of disordered and nebulous thought behind his eyes considering and assessing the situation--considering the best way to speak, what was the best thing to say. His feet had to carefully tread nowadays--he had learned that he could not let his guard fall down too far lest a rug be swept out from beneath his feet let him crash unceremoniously to the ground. But, as he looked into her eyes with a soul-piercing gaze, seeming caught on the edge of trust and deception...
... he chose trust.
"Piérre." He finally said softly, extending tenuously the luxury of his trust so sparse. He extended a hand to her, a hand with thin fingers and faint impressions of white scars upon the palm. "Piérre." He said again, deciding at the last moment to withhold his last name. Nerves and experience had taught him to resist revealing his entire hand so far, to keep in his deck some ace or another that he could swap in for one of the cards that he had in his hand--it was a game of looking in the eyes, distracting the eyes of the other, ensuring that there was always a bargaining chip remaining. A first name would be more than enough. "Don't worry if you forget it--sometimes things like that are better to be left forgotten."
Even the words themselves were spoken with a lighthearted manner, a manner that only succeeded in chilling Piérre to the core.
And he did happen to know a little bit about this girl too, recognized the face that was emblazoned in the Ravenclaw team poster. "And you're a Ravenclaw Quidditch player. One of the Chasers. The brunette--you sub in when one of the other girls of many hair colors go down." It was a light jest, an allusion to the quartet of female chasers that team Ravenclaw was in possession of--a blonde, a redhead, a noire, and this one the brunette. His green eyes blinked owlishly, still gleaning what he could seemingly directly from the soul of the curious girl. "Which one of their names is yours?"
He tipped his head with a slight smile. "It's funny... how many classmates I have, and how few of them I know--or remember. I feel I must have seen you so often, in the halls or on the pitch during games... and yet have never brought myself to meet you--or anyone else for that matter." His face fell as he reminded himself the reason why. "But I still know that all of you exist. I see all of you, watch all of you every day. Remember names like fleeting fragments... wonder what is happening in your lives." His brow creased again in thought, his eyes never leaving hers. "Like I'm trying to make sure none of you go missing."
Because, as he knew... as he well knew... they had... oh so frequently in the past... they had...
@Aly Salinger
Jesters do oft prove prophets. 𓀚
I am the brother account to Romeo Marchonné & Zyva Hel Fae Skógrwight
12 May 2024, 17:06
Call Phantomnation
✿✿✿
So the boy's name was Pierre. Or was it Piérre? Aly decided gingerly upon the latter, having met many a foreign-born student here at Hogwarts - or even some born here in the United Kingdom, but whose parents had decided to grace them with a differently spelled moniker. The boy's lilting speech, both in other languages and in English, and the slight uptick of his tone upon saying his name made Aly tend toward the idea that perhaps it was spelled with an accent of some sort. Still, his statement that names could be best forgotten seemed like a challenge to the young eagle, and she filed away the knowledge in her brain, repeating it to herself and studying the crooks of his face so that she could bind the two together in her mind. Piérre. Curly brown hair, like her own. Piérre. Emerald green eyes, also like her own. Piérre. A bit of a taller frame than her, though. Piérre. Arched eyebrows. Piérre. Slightly pointed ears. "Piérre," she repeated. "Pleasure to meet you."
It struck her, suddenly, that with that hair and those eyes, he could have been a Salinger. What an interesting observation.
She quirked an eyebrow at his observation, whilst they were on the topic of those, about her: "Aren't you an observant one," sounding more like a statement than a question. "I've only been a Chaser for 'bout a week - haven't even played a match yet. Played Keeper before that, but not since... last fall..." Aly's voice trailed off for a moment, mind flashing back to the six months she'd spent locked in her family home, Rapunzel in a tower, if she would have known what that Muggle fairy-tale was, anyway. Shaking her head slightly to clear it, she reached out and shook the boy's hand in a soft, but kind, greeting. "I'm Aly. Aly Salinger. But yes, you got it right, it's Ravenclaw for me." Letting go of her grip on Piérre's hand, Aly leaned back in her chair and eyed the boy up and down, just now noticing that he was clad in the brilliant emerald green of a snake, rather than the red of a lion like she had anticipated. Her lips, feeling dry without their tell-tale gloss, pursed into a confused frown. "And you're a... Slytherin? Odd, I thought I'd seen you around as a Gryffindor before. D'you have a twin or something?"
There were other, more pressing things, though, to which Aly needed to attend. The boy in front of her was waxing poetic again, this time about never having met her, and Aly pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle her giggle. Perhaps she shouldn't have been laughing at that, but seriously? How many of her classmates were angst-ridden fools, far too preoccupied with the more mystical, deadly, and downright out-of-their-league ways of the world to care about the people around them? She gave him a tight-lipped smile. "Well, Piérre, perhaps you ought to meet more of us, then - I promise we don't bite," the Ravenclaw ribbed, as gently as one could poke fun. "Sounds awfully lonely to just watch us all the time. And sort of creepy, too," as an add-on afterwards.
Speaking of creepy, his eyes were drilling holes into hers; she had to look away, grasping at straws for a different line of conversation that didn't have to do with classmates vanishing, because who in the world was thinking about that just a week into a new school year? "Anyway... er... tell me about your mustache man. You're not a Seer, right?" she asked, suddenly realising that that could have been an actual, legitimate vision rather than a silly schoolboy's daydream. "Just... making sure." Making sure, that is, that she didn't have anything to worry about, and that the boy - Piérre, Piérre, I mustn't forget his name - was just spouting utter nonsense.
✿ @Piérre Marchonné ✿
gen1 Aly Salinger || gen1 iNPC Manu Macedo || gen2 Kahira Valerian || staff Aulis Vorozheykin
18 Jun 2024, 20:09
Call Phantomnation
House Colors: Slytherin
|
|
|
"Yes. Saw you last summer at your game against Durmstrang. Noticed a roster change." He said softly. Had been watching his brother, but that hadn't mean he hadn't been keeping an eye on other people in the game as well. "Gryffindor? Slytherin? Ravenclaw? Hufflepuff?" He rolled each name around on his tongue a bit in consideration. It wasn't the first time he was asked this question, and he doubted it would be the last, and yet he stiff found himself endlessly amused as to how he would reply to the question every time. As if he wasn't entirely sure but still felt some sort of voice welling up in him that was telling him some way of seeing it that wasn't always his own way. "Why would it matter, I wonder..." He chewed his cheek in consideration. "I like wearing different colors to cleanse the palate. Too much of anything is bad for anyone, right?" He mused aloud. He smiled. "I do have a twin. He's not around here, though."
And as for meeting the rest of his classmates... "I should. I think I did once. Don't think I fit in really well, though." Ah, there it was again--that aching feeling of loneliness that he shoved away quickly and locked back into its little box where it would be promptly ignored. "I think I annoy people." He didn't like annoying people, but it sure seemed to just happen. Sometimes he liked being the ghost on the edge of the perimeter--being those extra pair of eyes looking out and watching over. He liked to listen, to watch, and to talk (though the latter he felt would be ignored more often than not). He liked to just... be around people. Yet, he somehow got the distinct feeling that that like of his was not really easily reciprocated by others towards him. "And besides, everyone has all their friends already. I'd be intruding. I'd..." With all those that he knew having disappeared slowly over time or seeming to become entirely reclused... An essence that followed him around, he didn't want the same to happen to anyone else, to anyone else's friends. "Oh I don't know: it's not like I'm just staring or stalking for no reason. An extra pair of eyes never hurt anyone. Who knows, sometimes I get lucky and get invited along as well. I just like... being around."
The mirror continued to reflect tens of his eyes in its silvery surface. "Not as far as I know." He said truthfully in response to Aly's query on his being a Seer. "If I am a Seer, I'm probably the worst one you'll ever run across. Unluckiest one too, probably." He didn't know his family tree, let alone what magical abilities--if any--that they possessed. That being said... "I'm just... good at Divination for some reason. Weird things just happen and I'm... good at interpreting them." There was no reason to bring up the 15th arcana accompanied by the 0th and 13th that liked to show itself to the boy on a regular basis. "One of my better classes."
And as for the figure... "I-I don't know." Another truth. "He had no color--like I was looking at a black and white film--so I couldn't tell what colors his hair or eyes were supposed to be, but he looked... faded? On the edges. Him in white starkly against the black." Piérre's brow creased again as a wonderous look crossed his face, a silly smile that was so enthralled with the image again but so incapable of wording it for the ears of others. "He wore performance clothes, he was smiling but his eyes were so sad. He spoke Italian. 'bene, ok? Te lo prometto. Staremo bene... è la fine. Per sempere... 'Alright, okay? I promise. It's going to be alright.' And then the other... '... is the end?' but then 'Is forever?'" He glanced down at the mirror, at his eyes. "It was like he was trying to talk to someone. A reassurance. I don't... I don't want to think about why because the markings he had on his face looked..."
He closed his eyes and saw the cracks of the black markings, as if they could be peeled away with just a light touch. They were cracks because they were dried--once a liquid and now a dried layer... "Bloody."
His eyes opened again, the impression of the face flashing behind his eyelids once before vanishing. "Vivid dream. Weird things... Haha, I didn't like how much he looked like me." Bright twinkling eyes looked back to Aly. "What about you? Are you a Seer?"
@Aly Salinger
Jesters do oft prove prophets. 𓀚
I am the brother account to Romeo Marchonné & Zyva Hel Fae Skógrwight
17 Jul 2024, 14:13
Call Phantomnation
Hex Colour:
#8C94E9
✿✿✿
If Aly hadn't already thought this Pierre lad was quite the odd bird, she definitely would have by this point. Who ever heard of someone dressing in another House's colours? The young eaglet herself would never have been caught dead in Gryffindor scarlet, Slytherin emerald, or Hufflepuff sunshine instead of her beloved Ravenclaw sapphire; not only was blue one of her favourite colours, only recently becoming narrowly beaten out by purple and perhaps a bit of pink, but she had also grown so attached to it since her Sorting four years before. Let no one say that badgers were the only ones called loyal. And here was - well, someone, originally thought to be a Gryffindor, though who could tell at this point - who so carelessly threw away the ties of his House. Perhaps that could be called bravery, then, in and of itself. Or stupidity. But then again, those two were so often tied.
The statement that he had watched her play before made her wince; what a horrible game that had been, an entire team of Eagles picked from the skies one by one. Aly could hardly remember it, really, she'd blocked it so deeply from her memories. "That match was... maybe not the best representation of the Ravenclaw team," she admitted with a wry laugh that bubbled out of her almost before she could finish her sentence. "Slaughtered the rest of the Hogwarts teams, then went and got absolutely whacked by the international students. I'll tell you what - come to the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw game in the spring, and we'll show you what we can really do." The second-string Chaser filed that offer away in her mind, noting that now they'd have to win that game come May - couldn't go offering the promise of great playing and then lose horrifically again.
The boy had already moved on to throwing himself a fantastical pity party, and Aly's glossless lips twisted into a somewhat commiserating frown. She could understand feeling alone, having been somewhat friendless herself back in June, but one thing she couldn't quite stand was people who didn't pick themselves back up and get back into it. Her best mate had punched her in the face when she herself had done that, but hey, it had worked in the end, hadn't it? Aly and Dee were closer than ever, back to their side-by-side upper bunks in Ravenclaw Tower, and all it had taken was for Aly to stop throwing her own pity party and move on with her life. "Ah, I'm sure you don't annoy people," she said, somewhat dismissively. "Just need to be respectful of them, and kind, you know? You're-" she bit back the word odd- "not seeming annoying to me. Just-" again, biting back perhaps a bit loony, she didn't want to offend him- "in your head too much, I think."
How this had turned into Aly comforting the lad, she had no idea, but she shrugged across the table at Piérre. "Anyway. Merlin, imagine me with prophetic visions! Ha! No, I'm no Seer either, but I do like this class, too." The Ravenclaw listened to her table companion's translation of Italian, grateful that not only did the boy speak Italian, but also that he had translated it for her - the poor girl had never been one to learn languages, and now, at fifteen, it seemed almost too late. Most of her classmates who spoke more than one language had been doing so since before Hogwarts, and it wasn't like they taught anything like French or Gobbledegook here. At the end of his sentence, Piérre called it a dream, and Aly leveled a finger across the table at him. "There. See? Just a dream." Leaning back in her chair, her attention was briefly drawn to the beginnings of their fellow students packing up around them, chairs screeching against the floor as they were pushed back and chatter beginning to rise into the soft, quiet air around the pair. Somehow, class had come to an end without either of them noticing. Still, Aly looked back to her partner and shrugged once more. "And honestly, whether that was a dream or some kind of weird vision, it sounds like it was a good one. Weird that the bloke had a bloody face, but you said he said it's going to be all right forever, right?" She waved a hand haphazardly in the air, as if she were waving away a particularly calm bug, before leaning down to stack her books into her satchel in preparation to head to her next class. "Sounds pretty reassuring to me."
✿ @Piérre Marchonné ✿
gen1 Aly Salinger || gen1 iNPC Manu Macedo || gen2 Kahira Valerian || staff Aulis Vorozheykin