Closed Nobody told me there were tentacles Open More people good

@Felix Hawthorne

She nodded at his assessment of where kids wanted to go. It was very true. She often found herself wanting to go to forbidden places. Like that forest.

"Do you ever see... creatures in the lake? Like...... what's down there?" She wondered if mermaids were real. It seemed so ridiculous but if centaurs and ghosts were real then..... But they probably wouldn't be wandering around in a landlocked lake anyways. And she didn't see any big rocks that they could sun themselves on. Although.... the mermaids in the stories always seemed kinda like jerks.... maybe if there were mermaids they wouldn't be as egotistical. But that was probably too much to hope for.

She liked the Ravenclaw tower even if it was annoying to get too. It had beautiful views of the grounds. Her dorm was also really nice. It had a big cushion pit they could see the night sky in and a tradition of making maps.

"Does Slytherin have different dorms for each gender" She was in a girls dorm and she knew that there was also a co-ed dorm and mens dorm. She guessed that anyone who was non-binary, gender fluid or any other gender could pick where they slept but she wasn't sure about that.

"I honestly haven't seen many things in the lake, just a couple of fish, once in a while something random, and obviously, the giant squid." Felix scratches at a bug bite on the back of his neck. It's annoying him, and he has caused it to bleed several times, but he doesn't really care.

He spots and small animal running across the grass. A squirrel maybe? Either way, he whips around to look at it. Unfortunately, it's already gone. Darn.

Felix addresses her second question. "Yeah, we have male, female, and gender-neutral dorms. I almost ended up joining the gender-neutral dorms at the start of last year. Then I ended up in the boys' dorms, and I've got a really nice dormmate, who is also my really good friend.". He thinks that it's really nice that there are gender-neutral dorms, and that he hasn't heard any negative jokes about having those. The people at his old school would have immediately made that into a joke about how 'there's only two genders'. Like, no, there is way more than two, suck it up and don’t be a jerk.

"The ghosts are neat. I haven't actually seen them much, but I'd like to. Ghosts are awesome."

@Felix Hawthorne

Oh. No mermaids then. She still wanted to hold out hope that they were real. And if they were real and weren't showing their faces to the Slytherins then maybe they really were nice. Or she was just being ridiculous. Who knew.

She saw Felix whip around to look at something in the grass. She follows Felix's gaze to the little animal running through the grass. She smiled. There were a lot of pets and owls here but she hadn't seen many wild animals. Then again she hadn't spent much time outside yet. In just a tiny millisecond whatever the animal was it was gone.

Oops. Not co-ed. Gender neutral. She thought it was nice that anyone could join the gender neutral dorms. Sometimes people who identified as female still didn't want to spend all their time in a girls dorm. She had never really had many friends that were boys so she didn't feel that urge but it was still nice. It was also nice how supportive everyone was about being gender-neutral.

Oh. Ghosts. Um. She smiled weakly. Given that he'd already seen her screaming at a tentacle she knew this couldn't be much more embarrassing, but still.... "umm.... well.... the first time I actually saw a ghost... well.... I might have charged it and run into a wall"

"Well, completely valid reaction, in my opinion." he's not surprising that she reacted that way to a ghost. She'd been screaming pretty hard about the giant squid, so something even stranger, like a ghost, would most definitely freak her out.
"Like I said, I haven't seen many yet, but that's mostly because I'm paying attention to other things. There's a lot of distracting things around here. I mean, there's a lot of distracting things everywhere, but particularly here, I think." there is a lot of distractions. There's always something happening somewhere. Kids goofing off, animals running around, classes happening, sounds everywhere, all sorts of things.

"So, are you heading back to the castle? You might want to soon, it's getting later by the moment." Felix isn't trying to be rude, he hopes that his tone doesn't make it sound like he wants her to go. He's just curious, really, because Silva mentioned that she should probably head back soon, yet she hadn't, so far. That's odd. Is she purposely stalling, or has she just forgotten about the time?

He sort of wants to start heading back, because he's reading Jurassic Park right now, and he's rather enjoying it. He doesn't read many books— hasn't read much at all since he was younger —as a general rule (he can't focus or sit still that long), but he's making an exception for this book.

@Felix Hawthorne

She stared at the boy like he was insane. How was charging a ghost a reasonable reaction. Just the idea of that seemed more crazy than actually doing it. She almost wanted to ask him what the heck he was thinking when she realized that he was supporting her. She had done something ridiculous and he was telling her that was fine.

She changed her stare to a small, thankful smile, and continued listening to him. There certainly were a lot of distractions. She sighed. Everywhere she went there was something going on. She wanted it all to calm down for a little while so she could catch up.

Thankfully, though the castle was hard to navigate, she was still slowly making friends and figuring out how the school worked, and it seemed alright. She missed her family already but she had friends to help her get through the loneliness and fun things to do.

"Oh uh... yeah.." She began walking again this time and hoped that Felix would follow her. She mostly stayed quiet up until she reached the castle where she turned and asked "Are you... reading any good books?" She personally loved reading. It was her favorite pastime. She did it nearly constantly. Anytime she was in her dorm she was reading.

"Yeah! I'm reading Jurassic Park right now. It's really good. I sort of hate Lex, and there's a few inaccuracies regarding some of the dinosaurs, but it' a pretty great book. My grandma didn't really want me reading it, thought it was too gory, but my dad was fine with it, so, yeah" Felix replies.

His grandma did attempt to discourage him from getting or reading the book (he found it in a thrift store), but he got it anyway. As long as his dad didn't have an issue with the book, Felix could still read it, generally. His dad had pretty low standards about stuff like that. As long as it wasn't too explicit or 'strange' in his opinion, he would let Felix read/watch it if he wanted to. Considering that his dad had wanted to introduce him to the Saw movies, it would be rather odd for him to stop Felix from reading Jurassic Park. His dad did draw the line at the Terminal Man, though.
Felix would love to talk about his book more, but he feels a bit like he's talking a bit too much, so he decides to return the question instead.

"What about you? Any neat books currently?" he's genuinely curious. As much as he doesn't read too much (usually listening to music, jump-scaring people or staring at a blank wall to pass the time instead), he likes to know what others are reading. It's always interesting to see if certain books get mentioned more than once, and if there's any good new books out.