From Eden PV Hazel Caelum

Hazel often found the library a place of solace, and gentle tranquility; it was quiet, soft, and ached to be touched. As grand as they were, there was such comfort between their worn wooden shelves and leather-bound books. At least, that was how the libraries at home were. Here, at Hogwarts, the libraries felt...alive. The rows of books seemed infinite; the wooden shelves ever warmer than her own skin. Novels rattled in their bindings, begging for the attention of an avid reader. Hazel had to pause momentarily, at a loss for the vivacity of such a quiet room.

Though, this time her curiosity an awe failed to get the better of her. Instead of slipping into a daydream, the young girl's furrowed brow betrayed her troubled state of mind. Six days had passed since her arrival to a new life and a new world, and six days had passed since she'd been dubbed "Hazel Caelum" instead of "Hazel Elise." There were many things more stressful than a name, but for a girl who came from nothing but a name, this hit top priority on her list.

She wondered if Mother knew; if she had been told on the day Hazel had been adopted. Not that Hazel remembered that day - she had been two when the adoption papers were signed. But never once had Mother cared to answer why their last names were different. And soon, Hazel was taught to stop asking about it all together. In her lack of an answer, she had taken up a certain amount of pride in her name. It was hers, it was unique, it was beautiful, and it was her only link to her family. When Hogwarts stripped that away, it burned a bridge inside of her. She couldn't place a finger to describe it exactly, but it irritated her in a way that itched for days.

So surely, she would get to her history of magic homework at some point today; if she didn't get lost in the spirals of her family history. Because this school was magic, and magic schools had to have magical track records of her entire extended family tree. Right?

Hazel started down an isle that looked...like a good start. Actually, she had just chosen a random isle and was going to start browsing until she found something. And in her focus of reading every single title on the leather book spines (was every book copy hardback?), she failed to notice the (very tall) boy entering the same isle she was about to exit. Naturally, she turned promptly on her heel to start down the next row of shelves, and ran headlong into a solid body.

"Ow!" She exclaimed, stumbling over herself. In her blunder, her satchel slipped off her shoulder, spilling her quills and parchment all over the floor. "I'm - sorry, I'm really sorry, I didn't see you there. Hope I didn't hurt you?" Hazel apologized, crouching down to collect her things.

Bastille had always found himself drawn towards history; at some point he had exhausted the majority of the library's tomes while growing up — those that were actually of any interest to him, at least — and had moved on to asking his mum to visit the bookshops in London. He'd even ventured into the old antique stores in the Muggle areas of Kent a few times as a child, hoarding intriguing Muggle tales such as Alice in Wonderland and the Brothers Grimm on the bookshelves tucked away in his room. Perhaps they weren't quite historic, but he liked to consider them an important part of Muggle literary history (or so the shopkeep had convinced him).

It'd been some time since he ventured into history, however: Maman had never kept anything contemporary in the library, no doubt on account of their questionable family history in the Wizarding Wars, and Bast had lost all interest in anything close to nonfiction after he discovered the truth about his father. Now, however, he found himself drifting down the history aisles out of habit, itching with an undeniable curiosity to see what Hogwarts might have — no doubt significantly more than the family library, and in a significantly wider range of topics. 

He drifted for a while, head tilted slightly to scan the titles etched along spines, and paused to slide one tome on historic accounts of dragons from the shelf before he moved on. He was just turning a corner, down the next line of books, when he found himself holding more than just his book; someone stepped right into his arms, colliding face-first with his shoulder, and he stumbled back a step in surprise. 

"Oh, shi—" he started, catching himself at last minute as the girl and her stuff ended up at his feet. Bast blinked, bewildered, attention catching on the array of golden curls as he tried to register if he knew her or not before it occurred to him it didn't matter. With a wince he crouched swiftly across from her to help gather her quills, already shaking his head to dismiss the rush of words tumbling out of her mouth. 

"S'fine, I wasn't looking," he said, glancing up into her face and blinking as he tried to place her. He didn't recognize her from the Sorting Ceremony, but then again his name had come up fairly early and he'd spent the majority after his own time afterwards being utterly shellshocked. His gaze flickered down to her yellow tie, and then he was glancing back up at her words. 

Bast arched a brow, attention drifting back down to her petite frame — she was so short — before a crooked half-smile appeared. His voice was mildly tinged with amusement as he set his book aside, picked up a stack of parchment, and said, "No, you didn't. You're okay?"

It was, after all, more likely that he hurt her in their collision, much to his chagrin. His mum would likely lecture him for a solid hour if he managed to hurt some stranger in his first week, but the Hufflepuff looked okay, if a little frazzled. He added, as an after thought, "'m Bast, by the way.'

@Hazel Caelum

Hazel wasn't sure if this came as a surprise to her; she was aware that she wasn't the most graceful of students. She marvelled at the other children who walked with perfect ease under the weight of their robes, balancing supplies and homework and sporting a conversation with a friend while weaving amongst the crowd.

If only she could be so lucky.

Hazel had gone from wearing dungarees every day to a pressed school uniform with a billowing cloak; a misbalance she was most unaccustomed to. It was beginning to show, too. Some of the people she had talked to in her classes had guessed that this might be her first interaction in the wizarding world, and it only got more embarrassing every time someone mentioned it.

The boy was kind enough to join her on the floor in picking up her things; even talking over her apology to tell her it might have even been his fault. Funny thing that would be - even at first glance, this boy seemed to be more put together and at ease than most first year boys she had encountered so far. Which, speaking of interactions, he sounded an awful lot like a Slytherin or a Ravenclaw: nonchalant; lost in thought.

"Pardon? Oh -" Hazel interrupted the boy's introduction, and she frowned at herself for it. "Sorry, I cut you off - pleased to meet you, Bast." She said sheepishly, smile matching her manner as she shoved the last of her things into her satchel. Grateful for his assistance, she stood, offering her hand in greeting. "I'm Hazel Elise - er, Hazel Caelum. I'm not sure." God, she was truly horrid at small talk.

In the small moment they had of observance, Hazel noted that he was tall, and the red tie dangling from his neck seemed...out of place. Clumsily tied, rather. Something Hazel couldn't quite think to picture if she heard his voice. He seemed to have so much pride, so much comfort in this atmosphere thick with magic. Yet his shoulders dropped just a bit, his hair was a mop, and he had a lackadaisical look in his eye that seemed bored. Hazel barely bit back the words "That's not very Gryffindor of you," as she registered that he hadn't actually said anything.

Bastille liked to claim that he wasn't a particularly judgmental person — it seemed like a bad thing to be, after all, something Maman often tsked at — but the fact was that he and everyone else in his family knew that he was. It was a reflex, really; he tended to take in details quickly, efficiently, and to make immediate judgments based on them. Not necessarily bad ones, per se, but he supposed one could claim they were bad... Like, for instance, it took him a few sentences exchanged with this girl to decide that she was Muggle-born. 

It wasn't that she exactly stood out. It was just that there was something about her posture, something distinctly uncomfortable about the set of her shoulders. Her uniform was perfectly arranged, tie exact and neat, but it seemed... forced, almost. Like she'd practiced in the mirror for hours to make sure that it was perfect, as opposed to the Pureblood students who had grown up wearing ties and tied them with quick precision born of habit. And she didn't speak like she'd been forced to grow up under the rigid conformity of stuffy Pureblood manners and niceties. (Neither did he, he supposed, but... well, it just sounded different.)

It wasn't bad, really. His mum had raised her children with the strict understanding that there was no such thing as blood superiority, that Muggles were fine, etcetera etcetera. Bast didn't care if she was Muggle-born. If anything, that made her slightly more interesting that their more "pure" peers — she had seen a whole different world than the rest of them, had a new perspective on magic. It was intriguing. It's just that he noticed and then felt mildly guilty for noticing, as if he'd silently committed some offense for judging her and making assumptions. 

Except. Well, that wasn't a Muggle-born name, now was it? 

He cocked his head to the side, gaze flickering back up to focus on hers as she stood, and after a moment he gathered his books to stand as well. He didn't remember the Caelums having a daughter, and she did seem a bit confused... But he'd never heard of missing Pureblood children.  Did that really happen to anyone other than Harry Potter? Maybe. 

"Caelum?" he echoed, arching a brow at her, before he smiled crookedly at her in amusement. "You're not sure? Well, that must be confusing. I hope my name is actually Bast; I'm not too sure what else Maman might call me, but it sure would be awkward to discover otherwise." There was a pause wherein it occurred to him he might sound insensitive if there really was some drama going on in her family, and he cleared his throat as he added a bit belatedly, "Ah— Why the, uh, uncertainty?"

Or maybe it was rude to pry. Well, in fairness, she did offer the information in the first place — Bast rather thought he ought to have a right to ask her about it accordingly.

@Hazel Caelum.

Hazel glanced, rightfully curious, at his expression, and then farther towards his eyes: an icy glaze, they were nearly like peering out the windowpane at a frozen winterscape. Hazel wasn't sure she liked the feel of those eyes trained on her thoughts; wasn't sure she liked it at all. But as she observed, as she cautiously met his gaze, she noticed a meticulous sort of ticking. A continuous train of thought, following its rail lines; a clock with its cogs and its gears. She could watch as he registered something odd about what she'd said - she could watch as his thoughts slid from one unintelligible thing to the next.

Hazel wouldn't pretend she could actively understand what he was thinking, but she could pick apart some of it. She could note he was taking in her appearance by the way his eyes flickered up and down; how he was likely observing her character or something to that degree. She couldn't say it was a particularly comfortable situation; if muggles she'd just met looked at her in that way, she'd be ten meters in the other direction by now. But it was fascinating - possibly because she felt like an idiot here, in her odd uniform and uncomfortably heavy cloak - out of place and very far past her known world - and possibly because she couldn't break eye contact, but watching someone her age think in that manner was utterly brilliant.

She lowered her hand in her absent mindedness, completely lost to the fact that he hadn't accepted her greeting. Her fingers curled around the strap of her satchel, thumb rubbing against the leather. She felt the corners of her own mouth twitch as his face bloomed into a sort of grin; a mirror of the behavior and a reaction to it. It was nice to know that he might want to sit and talk instead of parting ways.

A true smile - cheesy and full of teeth - danced on her lips at his joke. It wasn't terribly funny, but it was a wonderful break of their age, almost. Because yes, they were in a school on their own with classes and homework and responsibility, but they were still eleven. (Well, Hazel was twelve.) Awful jokes were invent purely for her age range's humor. A little laugh even escaped her tongue: a soft puff of air through the nose accompanied by a small giggle from the roof of her mouth. Because it was a little ridiculous to not know your own name.

"I can imagine." Hazel said, practically beaming at his very insignificant quip. There was nothing quite like the feeling of being joked with; a nod to the unsaid courtesy of I like you enough to share a piece of humor with. And it wasn't that she thought all of these things, but Hazel knew it made her warm and happy inside to be just another student here.

At his hesitant question, her smile was overshadowed by a cloud of confusion and turbulence. "I mean..." She bit her lip, wondering. It was a complicated concept and something she didn't generally express to strangers, not to mention that she'd never talked about it before with someone. There was very little reason to bore him with the details. Hazel picked at her own fingers. "Well...Caelum wasn't the last name I was given in foster care. It was Elise." She tugged on a curl. "But I was told that there's a magical...register? And that it's never wrong. So I'm a little confused about my family history right now. Just trying to find a book on it."

It wasn't until Hazel's gaze dropped down and away from his own that he realized that he had been staring, and even then it didn't occur to him that there was an issue with this until he caught the aborted gesture of her hand as they stood up and realized all at once that he'd inadvertently ignored her greeting with all of his blatant staring and internal judging. A subtle flush descended upon him, no doubt a trained response to mum's brainwashing that being rude was the equivalent of publicly insulting the Minister and perhaps exposing all of Wizarding-kind to the Muggle population in the same well coordinated spectacle. It was too late to return her handshake now, and so he would simply have to live with the knowledge that Maman was off somewhere in their countryside home feeling an acute sense of disappointment in his firstborn son without knowing why.

Brilliant. 

Despite his internalized embarrassment, however, it was hard to stop looking at her as she tucked away her quills and neatly went about recovering herself. She was actually — happy. Glowingly happy. Bright and... sunshine-y and radiant, which was so... odd. He knew plenty of happy students, a fair few of Gryffindors with far too much excitement and energy, but Hazel wasn't bouncing off the walls and professing a sugar high that would carry her through mania for hours. No, she was just... bright. He might even say she was glowing from within with this quiet happiness and genuine delight if such a thought didn't run a risk of sounding like some of the nonsense Maman liked to spout about her novels.

Still, though, Bast found himself smiling crookedly back at her in response to her grin, the positivity rolling off of her rather infectious. Merlin, did it feel like he had been Imperio'd; he just couldn't help be grinning as she continued to grin and feeling an outlandish sort of comfort, like her girlish giddiness had somehow infected him through proximity. Was that possible? 

Just as he found himself mirroring her happiness, though, a wash of reality hit him as her smile dimmed. Oh, right; he had already insulted her by teasing her about her confusion and — it seemed — may have brought up bad memories by asking about it. Aces, mate. Aces. His gaze flickered down to her fingers as she twiddled with them before rising back to her face and after a moment of watching her, he cleared his throat. 

"Well, I recognize the name. Sort of. Maman had us study a little bit of history, at some point..." He trailed off, contemplating whether or not that were precisely true (Maman had taught them some Wizarding history, but Bastille had done the majority of his obsessive reading as a side project once he started to suspect that Maman was hiding things). After a beat he rocked back on his heels and added, "The Caelums I know of are purebloods, though, but I reckon if you're adopted, that might make sense. Do you, ah, want help looking? I know a few tomes that might be helpful, for family history and all."

Was that pretentious? He felt like he might sound like a bit of a tosser, but he was trying to be helpful in an effort to silently apologize for being a git and maybe to make her smile again. Bast just felt singularly responsible for murdering that easy happiness, that was all; he might as well try to help.

& @Hazel Caelum.

Hazel had turned to continue to browse through the books, hand raised for her fingers to skim the leather bindings. Her fingertips traced the letters, but her mind did not, as it had clouded with other darker subjects - foggy moments from earlier in her life; suspicious things that she had long since forgotten. Moments of time where her mum had said something questionable in a time of lacking sobriety; the nicknames she was mocked with occasionally. The strange was her mum used to watch her do certain things.

There was a question that had burned in the back of her brain ever since the sorting ceremony: did mum know? And that was always the concern, the paranoia. Did mum know? Did she know about the supplies she had bought? Did she know where she hid her art supplies? Did she know where the books were? Had a neighbor told her about the strangely-dressed person that had shown up to take Hazel shopping for a magical school? Did she know about her parents? Hazel and her mum weren't close, and though Hazel trusted her not to kick her onto the streets, there could have been anything else she had hid. And who was Hazel to go looking? She knew what happened if she crossed those lines.

Subconsciously, she'd zoned, and her hands fell to skim her arms beneath the heavy sleeves of her cloak. Eyes dark with something she couldn't place - confusion, loneliness, a twisted sensation of hurt - Hazel picked at the seams of her cloak, restless. Her mum could have withheld her entire past; her mother could have burned every piece of her parents that remained and Hazel would be none the wiser. Her childhood could have been codswallop; it could have been entirely ridiculous. What if she had more family?

Her chest tightened at the thought. What if she wasn't alone? What if she had blood relatives somewhere in the wizarding world?

A frown tightened her lips; a fist bit into the palm of her hands. Anger flushed over her momentarily, a wash of disgust and loathing for the woman who raised her - a rush of emotion she was used to, and guarded rather well, as it only showed in the flash of her eyes and pressure between her teeth. Because there was no reason for her mum to withhold that kind of information; she had no right to rob Hazel of her identity and self like that.

She flinched, subtly, when Bastille spoke again, somehow forgetting she was in the presence of someone she didn't know very well. Quickly, her anger was forgotten for something like horror as she realized he had been speaking the entire time and she'd missed almost all of it. Nitwit, Hazel chided herself, burning red from head to toe as she contemplated asking him to repeat what he'd said or respond with something vague.

Instead she merely stared at him with a vacant, slightly haunted expression, mortified the longer she kept her mouth shut. Eventually, she just sputtered: "I'm - I'm so sorry, I didn't catch any of that. I was - I got - um..." She what? Hazel's words fell off the tip of her tongue, dying where they hovered. "I don't know what I was doing. Bit lost in my head." She mumbled eventually, wishing she could crawl in a hole and bury herself alive.

Bastille spent a few rather unpleasant moments of silence coming to the conclusion that perhaps his offer had been pretentious. Or, at the very least, unwarranted and not exactly sought after. Perhaps she was taking this time to figure out how to polite tell him to bugger off, given that she didn't need some poncy tosser lecturing her on pureblood society and so forth, thank you very much.

As he watched her expression blank out, gaze drifting away from him, he had all the more time to internally contemplate just how bad the damage was. There was something about her that felt sad, and distant, and like he'd single-handed ruined her whole day. Bast was already refining his apology and exit from this horrid situation when she suddenly turned her attention towards him again; he blinked, surprised by the intensity of having her full attention again, and braced for the inevitably very, very awkward impact.

And then he paused, taken aback by the lack of a scathing dismissal, and blinked at her again. Right. Okay.

"That's fine," he said after a moment, raking his fingers through his messy curls briefly before he offered her a slight shrug. "I, uh— I just said that I could help you look for information, if you wanted. I know a few tomes that might be helpful for history." He cleared his throat, rocking back on his heels as he glanced away from her eyes, and added, "Not that you need help."

Recovery? Not quite. Close enough. At least she might get the idea that he wasn't trying to rub her lack of information in her face. Maybe.

@Hazel Caelum

Though a bit out of her head, Hazel searched his appearance in lackadaisical manner, eyes roaming his curly hair and freckles with about as much interest as she found in the far wall and bookshelf. Zoning out was her specialty and long time friend - poorly hidden in the gloss that covered her eyes. Despite asking him to repeat himself, the fog had already re-entered her mind, and she only half heard what he said.

"Help?" She echoed, squinting to force her focus onto his face. What did she need help with? Her brain fired on three pistons instead of four for a second, whirling to catch up in a dazed state. A nap sounded better than whatever she was doing here...

Her hand drifted down, falling against the stick of wood that poked out of her satchel. The tapered end of her wand jarred her, and she glanced down, then back to the bookshelf that her other hand rested on. "Help...help! Yes, I'd love it if you'd helped me find some books about my family. That's what I was doing." Hazel finally remembered what their conversation had been about before she zoned into another dimension.

Briefly, she paused, a thought passing through her mind: she didn't know this kid. They were about to go searching for her family's history and secrets - what was his motive? Why did he want to help her? Why did he even care? Hazel chewed on the inside of her lip, wondering if she should trust him enough to let him discover her entire identity at the same time she did.

It didn't take long for her to come to the conclusion that he seemed nice enough; that he didn't seem to have a bad intention or means of harm toward her. In other words...he seemed alright.

"So...how do you know about this stuff?" Hazel asked, moments after they began their search. "I mean. Family history is a bit of an odd fascination. I can understand animals and lore, but...did your mum tell you about magical families?" Suddenly, the words kept coming, and she was rambling without pretense. "Or are they super important here in magical culture? I don't know how big the magical world is - how many witches and wizards there are. Humans don't have important families, except for royal families. The Queen is getting on in years, though. I loved reading about them in the paper - their lives sounded so fancy. Do important families in the magical world live fancy lives? Or do they live in regular houses like the rest of us?" Hazel could really go on and on with her list of questions, undoubtedly referring to the wizarding world as the "magical world" at every chance she got. Not consciously, of course. She wondered how many wizards and witches there were - if they were only in England or if they were all over the world. If it was a small population, that would make it very easy for a couple big families to control. If not, then it seemed very difficult.