Thanks- I Hate It Pv Closed

@Elsian Cox

Opeila was having a quite fine morning. Being back at Hogwarts was just... amazing. Finland had been more terrifying than ever this year. Yes, summer camp had been alright but with the prophecy and everything, Opeila had begun to miss the semi-privacy of her shared dorm room with Cash. Being in her large room in Finland often felt lonely. Sharing a tent with almost a dozen people was getting too much after a few weeks. The Slytherin rooms felt like home, after her childhood home in Cambridge was lost.

The relief of being back was probably part of the reason why the first nights had left her well rested. The daily jogs with Flash had done their part to lift her mood as well. Her mood and her appetite too. It was no different this morning, when Opeila entered the Great Hall, feeling refreshed and wide awake. She walked straight over to the Slytherin table and found herself a spot on one of the benches, pulling a plate of scrambled egg over to her.

After the first few forks full, the fourth year allowed her attention to wander away from her own plate, watch the other students, but there was no one near she knew except for passing briefly in corridors or common room. Only when she turned her face to the door, her fork stopped in the air, halfway between her plate and mouth.

A boy had caught her attention, a Gryffindor that just entered the Great Hall with a rather... peculiar hairstyle. Hairstyle in this case meaning that there was something seemingly stuck on his head, something that resembled... well, was that the handle of a hairbrush? Opeila watched Elsian walk to the Gryffindor table and sit down, then reach out and eye... a butterknife?

Opeila put her fork down and got off her bench, then hurried over to the Gryffindor table. Hesitantly she approached the boy. "Elsian? Do you want some help with... that?"

The butterknife was taken to his hair. Or, it would have, surely a fine idea that definitely would have worked and had zero consequences if a certain someone hadn’t dragged his attention away. The butterknife was half-heartedly put back down onto the table.

“Hi Opeila.” He grumbled, obviously not having a good time of it. He’d say good morning but then he would be branded a liar and the teen was feeling particularly petty with the universe today.

He swung a leg over the bench, sitting backwards just to face her and looking quite miserable peering up at her. Of course, that grumpy misery softened a bit at her offer. Not needing to hunt his friend down for those stupid scissors or struggle through fixing this himself? Oh, yes please. He would like that very much.

“Yes.” He whined. Elsian could cry tears of joy if he wasn’t so damn tired because oh thank god it was someone else’s problem now.


“I don’t even care if you cut it out at this point.” He shamelessly admitted, happy to abandon his spot and go wherever she needed if it meant the uncomfortable feeling of the broken brush no longer oddly tugging at the base of his skull. The odd feeling of a constant pull, while not flat out painful, was gradually becoming worse as time went on. It would be no surprise if soon it did become painful after too long, in which case the boy really would get someone, if not himself, to just cut the stupid thing out. No care about how it looked.

It’d grow back soon enough anyways. There was plenty of time before the holidays.

@Elsian Cox

Opeila didn't need to know the Gryffindor to understand that he was not in a particularly good mood, but given his situation, who was she to blame him? As a person with long hair, she was only too familiar with the struggle of tangled hair. However... she had never managed to get a hairbrush stuck in it. And- wait, was it broken?

Her eyes widened. Yes, when she approached him, the hairbrush definitely appeared to be broken. "How did you-?" Opeila stopped. Actually, she didn't want to know, she could feel his pain only through looking at it.
When Elsian accepted her help, the Slytherin would get behind him and kneel on the bench to be able to look on top of his head.

"Well- there will be no need for a butterknife, what do we learn magic for?" Well, maybe not for situations quite as unusual as this, but still, her point stood.
Right... A little unsure she raised her hands, not sure where to begin. How long had Elsian not brushed his hair for it to become like this?

She chose not to make a comment and thought for a moment instead. "I have an idea!", she finally called out, and pointed her wand at the hairbrush, carefully moving strands of his hair to the side. "Spongify"
Satisfied she watched the tip of her wand light up, then she carefully poked the hairbrush, which suddenly appeared to be very bendy. "That should make things easier."

Slowly she began to untangle the brush, freeing bristle by bristle.

It was a hypothetical. He knew it was a hypothetical. But that didn’t stop Elsian from grumbling out a pained answer.

“For scissor stealing friends?” Sure as heck wasn’t for this! They both knew that much, Opeila was too smart to think otherwise surely. Impatient he ran a hand against the top of his head, fingers going to the base of his skull where he could feel the weird sensation of hair pulled back in a constant tugging sensation. “Or maybe for-” A hiss; a small pull of his hair had him dropping his hand with a pained whine.

Definitely not for this. If there were any spells meant for bad hair days to this extent, then that was a lesson he must have slept through.

Which, honestly would be his luck wouldn’t it?

Opeila though, wonderful, wonderful Opeila had made this her problem. Which meant he didn’t have to worry anymore, so luck was no longer an issue here. At least his luck wasn’t an issue. Hers? Well, yes her luck could very much be an issue if it was bad but at this point Elsian accepted his fate and continued to try and convince himself that he totally wasn’t worried a single bit. Which was a lie. Just not for the reason other people likely would be, because while he didn’t give a single thought to how his hair might look after this, he was however very aware of how much that stupid broken brush could hurt.

“I hope your idea doesn’t involve brute force. I’d much prefer the butter knife.” He said dryly.

He couldn’t stop the wince when fingers gently pulled at his hair. It luckily didn’t hurt, not exactly. But it did feel uncomfortable and was nigh impossible to ignore paranoia that it would suddenly hurt like hell the moment she tried to so much as tug the brush free, spongified or not.

“Really?” He asked with a laugh, “did that actually make it easie- ow, ow, ow!” OK THAT WAS NOT HELPING.

Or, ok, it was. It decidedly hurt way less than other methods but wow, that tangle she got free had hurt like hell. “Please tell me it’s actually working, even if it's not. Like, just lie to my face. I think i might die inside otherwise.”

@Elsian Cox

Opeila felt with the Gryffindor, oh yes, she did. Well, she had never been in a situation where her hair was so hopelessly tangled that she couldn't brush it without breaking the brush, but... There was a memory of a scent of of some kind of herb, of fingers holding and tugging on her hair while she desperately tried not to drop her cat out of reflex.

Elsian's pained cry brought her back, she winced. How did one even get their hair this tangled?
While the spongifying of the brush certainly made things easier for her, it didn't seem to help Elsian too much, as evidenced by more cries. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I swear it's working, I'm not even lying. I try to be as careful as I can, okay?"

After a few more minutes during which Opeila truly tried to be as careful as possible, she placed one piece of the broken hairbrush on the table next to him. "See, we're getting there- you can play around with that if you want, it should still be squishy." An improvised toy to battle nervousness- maybe it worked?

Whether Elsian did what she suggested or not, Opeila turned back to the task at hand, which was freeing the last part of the hairbrush. "We're almost there." Okay, maybe that was a bit of a lie, but if it gave Elsian a bit of comfort... Patiently Opeila continued what she had done before, pulling on his hair as little as possible, apologizing whenever Elsian would make a sound. Until finally also the rest of the brush was on the table.

"Right, that's the brush... I don't know what to do with your hair though. How did you even manage to do that?" The fourth year shook her head at the hopelessly tangled mess on the boy's head. "You know what, I have this hair conditioner, you can borrow it if you want. I always find it pretty awesome. Maybe that helps?"

The boy simply whined and hissed in reply, fingers digging painfully into the wood of the long table when another tangle of hair got loosened and untangled. But at what cost?

There was no hesitation when the ruined, newly squishy brush was offered, hands unlatched from the table to snatch the broken thing from the hair within seconds of the words leaving Ophelia's lips. The brush promptly being pulled at and twisted as he finally began to relax after suffering through the horrible, mind numbing pain that’d been getting the brush free.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, voice tired but very obviously thankful. The other had likely single handedly, with a little help of his brush thief of a friend too he supposed, saved his hair. There was little doubt that the scissors, let alone magic or butterknife would have ended tragically. Likely ending with his scissor privileges being taken away.

There was still quite a bit of hissing and general wordless complaints as the work continued but that was…sadly expected. The brush hadn’t just magically broken after all. The monstrosity of a bad hair day that was his life had almost led the boy to hair murder via butterknife. “Well…” he began, trying to remember what had led up to this point, “it got really tangled after all the glittery slime and confetti…” A whole bucket had fallen on him. “But I washed it out obviously,” he added with a small nod, as if he had done the smartest thing ever, “but then I fell asleep without brushing it out after.” Not his best moment.

He’d been tired though!

“And then I tried brushing it out after I woke up, but that didn’t work. And so my friend tried, but we broke the brush after 3 tries.” That had been painful.

“I tried to cut it out with scissors.” He admitted, sounding less bothered at the fact he’d been about to ruin his hair and more annoyed at how he’d been stopped, “but my friend took the scissors and my wand and ran when I tried. The jerk is still hiding until class.” He finished darkly, looking around the room bitterly.

As for what they could do…

“It’s never too late to cut it all off.” The words were spoken as if they were the wisest thing in the world. Then again…Elsian hummed, tilting his head this way and that as he thought over the offer. It couldn’t hurt.

“Yes please, I think I prefer that over getting yelled at for getting a bad haircut.” Then, as if an afterthought. “If it doesn't work THEN I’ll chop it all off.” Consequences be damned.

@Elsian Cox

Glittery slime and confetti??? Opeila had a million questions. "I see.", was all she said however, pensively looking at the mess of tangled hair on his head. "I'm not sure how much the conditioner will help, to be honest. It is pretty good but it's not... you know, magical."

The worst Opeila had was a little accident in crafts class back in elementary school, where some kid made a whole mess with a bottle of glue and got it into her hair as well as a few of her classmates. She still remembered keeping her head low on the school bus home, too embarrassed to look at any of the other kids around her, and then bursting into tears when her grandmother opened the door.

It hadn't been all that bad in the end. By her dad's rules, there was no using magic unless absolutely necessary in the house, but nail polish remover had done the trick. But Elsian had said that this had happened because he fell asleep with wet hair without brushing it out- sure that was always annoying, but Opeila had never seen it result in something like... well, this.

One glance at the clock told her that there was no time to help him right now. "You know, I have to go to class now, but I'll bring that conditioner at lunch later... And a pair of scissors, just in case.", she added with a half-smile.
Then she grabbed her bag and left the hall.

Opeila left the Thread.