Just Stop! PV Jack Burnett ReOpen

Jack was sifting through his favorite history section of the library, looking through history books and mentally noting down their authors, when he thought he saw something change all of a sudden out the corner of his eye. Was someone using magic?

He glanced over to see a girl's hair just barely visible beyond the back of one of the library's chairs. Had it been that color before? He couldn't recall. He hadn't been paying enough attention to the girl it belonged to when he had wandered by a little bit ago. Curious, he watched her for a bit longer and noticed he looking left and right, as if to check for other people who might have been around.

This behavior only roused Jack's curiosity even more. What was she up to that made her want to be alone to do it? Surely it had to be magic of some kind; the sort they weren't really allowed to practice outside of class. The girl must not have seen him since he was directly behind her, so Jack carefully put the book in his hands back on the shelf and moved to get a little closer.

He had seen in the Transfiguration Class Syllabus that they were due to learn a hair-color-changing spell, but that wasn't for a few years and this girl seemed to be in the same year as him. He could have been wrong about that, but what he did notice was there was no wand in sight; the girl's hands were empty except for a hairbrush. Jack had also heard of magic so advanced that neither words nor wands were required to work it, but at their age? No way would it have been possible.

What had happened, then? Had he seen something else move or change and just assumed it was her hair? Confused but unwilling to give up solving the mystery just yet, Jack crouched behind the chair in silence, watching what he could see of the girl's hair in case it happened to do something once more.

@Saoirse Dwight

The redhead began to feel unsettled, like someone was watching her but at this time it wasn't that possible. Besides nobody would've been around to see her use her powers...right? It was what she was hoping for, slowly she sat up, there was no sound, no way somebody would have seen her, she was just being overly paranoid.

Trying to take off her unsettled mood she picked up her book brushing over its cover and practically peeled the book's cover open, careful not rip any of the yellowing pages. Browsing through the pages before the feeling echoed again, however she kept denying but egged her on, she was worried as could be that somebody had seen her, seen what she had done and she didn't have the time nor energy to have somebody confront her today. "Hello...?"

It was strange, as soft-spoken and quiet as she was even trying to whisper her voice still echoed throughout the library, it really brought out the feeling of emptiness, she wasn't the only student in there but even then only three or four others were in there at the time so chances weren't likely that she would be seen much less that someone witnessed the use of her powers but it wouldn't hurt to check right.

Had she...seen him? If she was asking whether or not anyone was there, then she was, at the very least, paranoid about something. Jack doubted the girl would repeat whatever she had done while in such a state of worry, so he sighed and stood to confront her directly, appearing from behind her chair to address her face-to-face.

"Hey," he greeted casually. There was more than one way to find out what he wanted to know, after all. "I could have sworn I saw you earlier...but was your hair a different color, or am I imagining things?" the boy wondered aloud.

Speaking of colors, his hazel eyes happened to fall upon a black and yellow tie at her neck which caused him to instinctively take a step back. A Hufflepuff?! the Slytherin thought, trying to keep from allowing his sudden panic to show on his face by maintaining a neutral expression. Luckily, he was pretty adept at that. Why, of all houses, did she have to be a Hufflepuff?

Maybe, if he was lucky, the fact that she apparently had something to hide would mean she was warier about making friends than others of her house. Better yet, if she ended up threatening him with friendship like a few other badgers he had met in the past had done, perhaps he could use the knowledge that she had done something to her hair as a threat in return - even if he still had yet to figure out what, exactly, it was that she had done.

"Are you practicing magic you shouldn't be? You seem pretty suspicious," he told her, doubtfully eyeing her hairbrush as if he thought it might have been her wand in disguise.

@Saoirse Dwight

Saoirse watched as the boy popped out of his hiding spot, which spawned several questions. Who was he? Why was he there? How long had he been there? Had he seen her? Worst case scenario, yes, he saw her and would likely begin to ask her questions or call out what she had done. Maybe she would get lucky, that he didn’t see her, that he was just some weird kid doing…something.

Unfortunately he did and slyly pointed out her putting her metamorphmagus abilities to use, it seemed it was meant to be a thought he had spoken, however, he was slick enough to make sure the Hufflepuff knew it was question, not a statement. A question he’d likely badger her about if she didn’t answer it, either that or he’d tell someone. Not that him doing so was horrible threat, Saoirse just didn’t want it to get out there, yet if he threatened her with it maybe she could play along with it. She’d spent so long cooped up, acting like a sad puppy, she needed to have some fun and get back into everything, what a perfect way to do so.

She continued to wait, for what she was unsure, probably more questions. Ones she’d have to answer, whatever she’d just have to tell the boy something and be on her way, or she could just tell him she was a metamorph. Not that it would make much of a difference, it would only depend who she thought she was in the end, and she certainly wasn’t a liar.

However, she didn’t trust him though. Already she had seen that he had been hiding close by her chair watching her, and if that wasn’t enough he was a Slytherin she didn’t even have to look at his robes to tell that, the mischievous look on his face told her everything she needed to know about him. Saoirse felt as though she was staring in the face of trouble, or maybe it was really him who was doing just that. She didn’t have the greatest track record, and an enemy, frenemy? It seemed they were trying to put up with each-other, still enduring existing in the same room with someone and being friends with them are two different things.

As the Hufflepuff expected, she was drawn out of her thoughts when the boy asked another question. One she expected, and to top it off he was staring at her hairbrush, yeah she did try to sneak it, but it wasn’t for malicious reasons, messing around with her powers was a nice distraction and the library was one of her favorite places to be. She thought she could slip away without anybody noticing, so much for that idea though. “No, you must be seeing things, I’m not that kind of person.” Probably shouldn’t have said that, just made her look more suspicious. “Although I’d like to point out that if anybody’s doing something they shouldn’t be, it’d be the one spying on someone else.”

"You're not...what kind of person?" Jack tried to clarify upon hearing the girl's response, his forehead creasing slightly in puzzlement. A crooked smile crossed his features. "The sort that practices magic you shouldn't? The suspicious sort? Or the sort that had a different hair color before?"

Though he glanced between the girl and her hairbrush, his focus seemed to rest on the latter for longer periods of time even while he spoke. Something was strange about it...or, rather, what was caught in it.

"Who said I was spying?" he asked her, smirking with a renewed confidence as he planted his hands on his hips. "I was just minding my own business over there when I thought I saw something change out the corner of my eye. I thought it was your hair. But, if you think I was mistaken, whatever could it have been?"

He leaned over from his standing position to look at his seated schoolmate more carefully. Then, his slyly smirking countenance a few meager centimeters away from hers, their noses almost touching, he attempted to pluck the brush from her grasp without even shifting his attention off her face.

"This isn't a magic hairbrush, is it? How peculiar..." Straightening back up, he attempted to turn it over, examining it in his hand if he had been successful at its obtainment.

@Saoirse Dwight

Saoirse often went against using harsh words towards another person, but this one was really getting on her nerves. He obviously wouldn’t just let anything about what he had seen go, no matter what she said or did. That’s just the kind of person he seemed to be, it wasn’t the first time she had dealt with them, however. Unfortunately, they like to be everywhere, so she assumed her best bet would be to stay calm and collected and get him off her back.

After hearing the boy’s response, she felt like rolling her eyes into her head, instead she just lightly shook her head. If she could keep her rambling on long enough, she might have a chance to get out before she lost her sanity, or her temper.

However, she couldn’t help but feel enraged after he stuck his face right in front of hers and snatched up the hairbrush, looking to get a hint of whatever it was that had led him to doing what he was doing now. Saoirse didn’t stop him though, he had nothing to go off of except for a hair or two stuck in the brush. Even so, she could surely find an excuse for it, like girls brush their friend’s hair or something like that.

Though upon hearing his remark, she smirked and simply responded, “No, why would it be?”

@Jack Burnett

"Because I saw you brushing your hair for sure," Jack answered, more serious than before, "but there isn't a single hair on this brush that's the same color as your hair now, which makes no sense." He nodded toward her strawberry blonde hair.

"I'll bet if you brushed your hair now, at least one hair would get caught in the brush. So it makes no sense that just now, when you were brushing it, none got stuck here." Jack waved the borrowed brush in the air emphatically.

"I also asked a lot of questions, but you aren't answering any of them; just asking some of your own. Seems pretty suspicious to me," he told her, thick brows narrowing. "Why don't you tell me what's going on before I decide to go ask a teacher for an explanation instead?"

Of course, there was always the possibility that the teacher wouldn't know either or give him an explanation other than the truth, but something was definitely going on here and at the very least, perhaps his threat could have scared a proper answer out of the girl. He was already trying to convince himself not to reach over and simply pluck a hair straight from her head just to see if he could match it with the ones already caught in the brush.

@Saoirse Dwight