Takes One to Know One PV Violence Bloodthorn

Violence was already in a very bad mood as she entered the Potions classroom. She had had a very long day with so many classes and lots of homework to complete. "Potions, Transfiguration and Charms homeworks, all such long parchments! God, Hogwarts is tiring." she scowled internally, hoping to get some peace and quiet to complete her homework and some notes on certain ingredients.

Goosebumps pricked her skin as soon as she entered, there was someone here. She could feel it, she didn't know how, but she trusted her instinct. She scanned the room with her eyes, but only found some money on the Professor's desk, "suspicious." Again, she felt someone watching her, but scolded herself, "There's no one here but you, Vi. Stop being paranoid. But what's the money doing on the desk then? Nope, no distractions. It might be the Professor's, I need to start studying and get atleast half of this done by today." After setting her book and parchments on the table, she began to read the chapter, but again heard something. This time, she removed her wand from her pocket, and faced the back of the classroom, "Who's there? I know you're here, so you might as well show yourself before this turns into something none of us will like."

Reducio

ooc note

"thoughts" ◦ "dialogue = #05578A"
interacting with: @Jack Burnett
wc: 222 words

outfit

Reducio

The fox, who had been very still under the desk, noticed the girl seemed to hesitate as soon as she entered the room. Jack wondered if it had to do with his book bag he had left near the work tables, but he couldn't be sure. Just as he was about to slink over to see if he could get to them, a floorboard creaked, causing the girl to be more on her guard than ever before as she withdrew from her pocket her wand. Sighing, the fox decided there was little point in staying a fox anymore and reverted to the young man he truly was. Behaving as though nothing unusual had happened, Jack went back over to the shelves to get the ingredients he had come there to get in the first place.

"Good afternoon," he greeted casually without turning around, his back to the girl as he gathered four Palamino hairs and replaced its container before reaching for the flying seahorses. "You here to make potions?" Examining the seahorses' butterfly wings, he remembered reading about them being Scottish and wondered if they had been caught somewhere near Hogwarts.

If they were local, he wasn't sure why they were so expensive...unless it had something to do with how difficult they were to catch. He'd also read that one generally required a broom to get one, which was interesting given how slow butterflies seemed to be with their random-seeming flight patterns. If these seahorses had the same sort of wings, why didn't they operate the same way? Magic, probably.

Out the corner of his peripheral vision, Jack managed to sneak glances at the girl, especially when he put away all the bottles and carefully relocated all his gathered ingredients onto a work table away from the shelves. Then he went to grab his bag to keep it next to him and bring out his book with potions recipes, flipping to a particular page.

But his attention, inconspicuous as he tried to keep it, was on the girl. He didn't remember seeing her around his house, so he doubted she was a Slytherin, but she had a certain demeanor to her that he liked. Certainly not friendly or sociable; at least not on first contact, but that suited Jack just fine. In fact, he preferred it.

The girl had wavy brown hair down to her shoulders that reminded Jack of melted chocolate as it was poured out into a mold. Her bright blue eyes contrasted against her darker locks, curious and intelligent. She might have acted a bit paranoid, but Jack appreciated that she had a healthy sense of self-preservation. Too few he knew of did. Surprisingly, though, she looked too young to be all that jaded. A first year, even, perhaps. Which would have explained why he hadn't seen her freckled, animated face around school up until then. Surely he would have remembered it.

Her demeanor suggested an aggression incongruous to her petite body and he wondered if she got into fights. Maybe verbal ones. She looked to be almost exactly a foot shorter than his 5'8", but it would have been difficult to tell unless he had gone to stand right next to her and he was still wary. He'd known students that had been disguised metamorphmagi and hags and even animated dolls, after all.

@Violence Bloodthorn

┏		┓
	𝓥i felt the tension in her shoulders ease slightly when the sound of movement came from the back of the room. "I knew it!" She kept her wand raised as she watched the shadows shift and the figure of a young man emerge. The moment he straightened up, her suspicions flickered to life. She had felt something from the moment she entered the room, and now that she was face to face with the culprit, it didn’t make any sense. There was something off about him—his posture, the cool, almost too-casual air he gave off. It wasn’t just that he’d been hiding under a desk. It was the way he seemed to move, like everything was calculated, controlled. She didn’t like it. "Good afternoon." His voice was too smooth and she couldn't help but grit her teeth a little. She let her wand drop to her side, but only because she knew it would be hard to seem intimidating while she was pointing it at him. "Afternoon," she replied flatly, her voice cool. "Study potions, not make them." While he fiddled with the ingredients, she crossed her arms, her gaze sharpening as she noticed the way his eyes flickered to her when he thought she wasn’t looking. It wasn’t exactly subtle, but the way he tried to make it seem like it wasn’t a big deal only made it more obvious. She looked at him, noticing his high cheekbones and hazel eyes that, just a touch slanted, gave him a mischievous vibe, like he was always on the verge of saying something funny or a little bit clever. His red hair had streaks of brown and blonde, giving him that effortlessly rumpled look. She took a step closer, not because she wanted to, but because she needed to get a better read on him. "I haven't seen you around before. What house are you from?" Her voice was more a statement than a question. "What brings you here? You don’t look like the type to care about making anything here." Vi tilted her head slightly, her eyes lighting up with a mischievous light even though her expression stayed neutral, "or are you just here to mess with people?" she added, referring to what had happened just a few minutes ago, testing his reaction. She was waiting for him to slip up, to show something that would confirm what she already suspected: he wasn’t as indifferent as he was trying to seem. Because, for all his air of casualness, she could see he was just as curious about her as she was about him.
┗		┛

"Oh? Only to study them?" he asked, making an extra effort to fight the smile that threatened to take over his face. "Couldn't you have done that anywhere, then? Why did it have to be in the potions classroom?"

How intriguing that she seemed to know that pointing a wand at someone made her seem less intimidating rather than more so. He wondered if she understood why, but didn't ask. Most adults he knew didn't know that, let alone understand why. It was all so very ironic.

"I imagine you haven't seen a lot of people around before given that I haven't seen you around and I've been attending this school for the past six years," he thought aloud. Jack was clearly amused by the way his soft smile lit up his eyes to reveal all the enthusiasm and delight he had suppressed beneath the careful control of his facial features. "You're a first year, aren't you?"

Upon her asking him what house he was from, he chuckled lightly and lifted his silver-and-green-striped tie loosely knotted around his neck in indication. "I'm a Slytherin mudblood. Ironic, isn't it? It makes me grin to think of how the founder of the great, sacred Slytherin house must be turning in his grave at my mere admittance into this school, let alone his very own house."

Still forcing his smile to remain calm and cool, it was broken with an abrupt laugh at the girl's comment that he 'didn't look like the type to care about making anything there'. "Really?" the Welsh teen asked with more excitement than his previously-attempted demeanor could plausibly contain. "What makes you say that?"

Her follow-up question of if he was just there to mess with people caused what remained of his careful façade to shatter completely as his grin broadened and split to release great bubbles of laughter that erupted within the limited confines of the room, seeming to spread to each and every nook, cranny, and corner of it.

"I suppose from what I just said, you already have the answer to that question, don't you?" he chortled once his laughter had died down enough for him to catch his breath enough to speak again. "...But you know what they say. 'Takes one to know one'." He winked.

@Violence Bloodthorn

┏		┓
	"𝕺h? Only to study them? Couldn't you have done that anywhere, then? Why did it have to be in the potions classroom?" Violence frowned, she was studying potions, so she was in the potions classroom. Why did that not make sense to him? "The classroom is usually empty at this time. I just wanted a bit of peace and quiet." He seemed to be doing something with his face, was he just... controlling his smile? Violence scoffed internally. She rolled her eyes as he pointed out that Violence wouldn't have seen anyone around a lot, "Yeah, I'm a first year. I just meant I haven't really seen you around classes." She was intrigued by this person. He hadn't even introduced himself and still he was cracking a joke. She smiled, "Well, Slytherin mudblood, I'm a Ravenclaw pure-blood. I actually was hoping to be a Slytherin but the Sorting Hat chose otherwise." A smile slipped through his façade and he let out a laugh. "Hmm, let's see. Present in the classroom at a time when nobody uses it. Hiding when you hear someone. Sneaking glances while pretending to work. Seems like you're really trying to show you don't care about this, don't you think?" She put a finger up as she spoke, her demeanous also shifting to a playful one as she gave him a side-eye. And then, he laughed. A whole-hearted, explosive laugh. Vi had to join in, it was hard not to. "Oh please, I was settling in here when I heard you. I wasn't here to mess with anyone." She clutched her stomach once the laughter had died down. She'd needed that laugh, a genuine one where she could forget about everything else that was going wrong in her life. "I'm Violence, by the way. Yes. My name is Violence. Violence Bloodthorn. And just for the record, the type of blood you have doesn't define you in any way. Atleast for me." She went back to the table she'd been on as she motioned for the boy to come sit with her. They could study together if they were gonna be in the same place at the same time. "So what are you brewing?" Violence's mind wandered to the letter she'd received a few days ago. She didn't know who had sent it but the contents of the letter had taken a hold over her mind. She still hadn't processed it and this was a nice break. Socialising. Talking to people. She hoped her face hadn't revealed her mood, but just in case it did, she smiled. He wouldn't notice anything if she was smiling, right?
┗		┛

@Jack Burnett

"Wouldn't your dorm room have been a likelier bet for a quiet place since students actually attempting to make potions might be found in the potions classroom?" Jack asked, tilting his head at her and scratching it with a quizzical smile on his face. Then, however, he shrugged. "I mean, it's your choice. That's just what would have made more sense to me."

"Really? How come you wanted to be a Slytherin?" the teen inquired, unable to help himself. Her observations and following statement about him trying to seem like he didn't care about potions seemed to befuddle him, though.

"Yeah, I can see why you might think I might be trying to give off that impression. But you said I 'don't look like the type to care about making anything here'. If I'm sneaking around, wouldn't that suggest the contrary? That I care enough to not want others to know?" Maybe he had missed the point of what she had been trying to say. "Good observations, though. I can see why you're a Ravenclaw."

He was glad when he was able to get the girl to laugh along with him, pleased she seemed to be a little more at ease. Her name took him by surprise, but that surprise morphed into interest shortly after. "Violence Bloodthorn," he repeated slowly. "Very cool name. Fascinating perspective, too; particularly for a pureblood. I thought that was usually the opposite of what most pureblood families tend to believe."

The redhead bowed. "I'm Jack Burnett. 'Burnett' is just fine, though. I prefer to go by last names. Seems less...intimate to me." Following her to where she gestured for him to sit, he did just that. Then she asked him a question.

"I was looking into making a Volubilis Potion," Jack explained. "I read enough about how to make it and that it restores voices, but I don't know how it alters them, in what way, or by how much. So I thought I'd try making some to test it out. What about you?" he questioned. "Anything particular about potions you're studying, or just potions in general?"

@Violence Bloodthorn