Dusty Books and Cozy Nooks Errand

"Ah, I'm sure the Hospital Wing is never empty. Do you know how many boys I've seen come in and out of there?" There was a surprising lilt to Talia's voice, a mirthful chime that hadn't been there before. Armed with a twinkle in her eye and an upward quirk of the lips, it didn't take much to notice that there was a distinct change to her demeanor. Less shy, less meek, and the more comfortable she got around Bast's presence, the easier the amused expression came to her, setting easily across her face. "There's never a dull moment. One minute, you're trying to take a new potion, and the next, you're watching someone pick out slugs from their mouths and ugh. It's hilarious."

She laughed softly at the memory, brows furrowing in a mix of second-hand revulsion and humor. Oblivious to Eve's entrance, the young Ravenclaw continued with her task while listening to her friend's rebuke about being a limp noodle—which she was, all things considered. She made no hesitation to point that out with a whispered, "I am a limp noodle, more so than most... Firsties." The last word came out trampled beneath an unfamiliar tongue. Despite the reprimand, though, Bast's partial smile was enough to make Talia feel more receptive of the idea. "But sure, if you're willing to be accidentally smacked in the face by a school broom."

She was still beaming when the Slytherin boy came around. Admittedly, she thought it was weird that he had come bearing the exact same cleaning supplies they'd both mentioned they needed, but she didn't put much thought into it and offered him a grateful smile before he left. Armed with a watered-down rag, Talia quickly got to business, scrubbing down the bare, dust-laden shelves and trying not to focus on the way it made her nose itch. "Bast? You don't happen to know that Scourgify spell, do you?"

WC: 321 (1132 total) | @Bastille Aurelius, @Jack Burnett

One step after another. Her plan seemed to be going swimmingly. As far as she could tell, everyone was well engaged in their tasks and respective conversations, all with their attentions directed conveniently away from her. She edged closer, a small thrill heightening the beat of her heart. It was such a small thing, this sneaking into the errand, and yet, there was a definite edge of excitement. The broom was only mere feet away, and Evelynn dared to believe that she had actually succeeded. Hands grasped around the handle, she gently lifted it from its place of rest, and began to sneak away to the side. Then one of the boys turned his attention in her direction.

Hnggg. She groaned internally.

The gig was up. She'd been found out. There was no way that she'd be able to keep up this façade now that she had been seen by…Aurelius? Taken aback, she straightened, chin inclining slightly as gray eyes gave him a quizzical look. One that he returned with a look of amusement and a nod of his head, and…nothing more. Interesting. As he turned his attention back to his conversational partner, Evelynn scampered into an adjacent aisle and set to work.

Soon enough, she began to amass a growing pile of dust, debris, and dirt that she could only assume had been carried in on the shoes of students. Good thing they were cleaning up. The idea of books being subjected to a room of grime did not sit well with her. Straw whisked against stone. Nearby conversation filtered through the cases and she found herself wondering in agreement: it would have been much easier simply to make use of scourgify, but she supposed they had to give something to first years to keep them occupied and out of trouble.

A familiar voice spoke up quite nearby. The hairs on the back of Evelynn's neck stood on end. It was Burnett. Honestly. It was as though she ran into him at every turn ever since their encounter in the potions classroom. At least he wasn't dreadful company. Not like Gray. But there he went, asking blunt questions without any sort of social decorum. Evelynn almost cringed, a sympathetic response for the only individual she could think of that may have been the recipient of the inquiry: the Gryffindor prefect with the unusually feline appearance. Subtly, Evelynn paused in her sweeping to shuffle books around in an effort to gain a furtive glimpse into the next aisle.

It was then that she realized that there was really only one individual unfamiliar to her. There was Burnett, speaking with this "Alptraum". Although Evelynn had never met her personally, and knew little about her, she did know that she was one of the Gryffindor prefects, and the one with the cat-like eyes. Next to her was a boy, who Evelynn now recognized to be Pierre. A little ways over was Aurelius. It was the girl with whom he was speaking that Evelynn eyed curiously. She'd never seen the girl before.

Although Evelynn retained part of her attention fixed on the conversation between Burnett and the prefect, her eyes lingered like a weird stalker on the lattermost duo.

Word Count: 536 | Total Count: 1113

Hopefully Piérre, could take a hint. It wasn't that she disliked the boy, she just found that he was a bit too energetic, to deal with this early. She pushed some books around, peering through them, to see if she could find Jack- or whoever else was trying to talk to her. "Oh I agree." She said, as she observed him through the space between the shelves. "And yes, it doesn't make much sssense. I sssuppose it just happened to fit right in with the lesson. The professor most likely taught it, for the sake of convenience at that time."

She shrugged. She thought most of the professors who, taught at this school, were rather odd. Like Griffith- especially Griffith. The Care of Magical Creatures professor, was such a strange man. She did not much care for him, and found him rather frustrating to work with, mostly due to the fact that she could not understand him for the life of her. Actually, most of the professors were okay, when compared to the Flying and CoMC professor. Olphie- the flying professor, genuinely scared the young metamorph. Olphie was...Olphie was something. Thats for sure.

The prefect traced a small smiley face, with a gloved pinkie finger, before wiping it away with a dust rag. Jacks next question was no shock to her. His curiosity was harmless. She surprisingly didn't get asked about her appearance very much; and maybe that was for the best. Xailah didn't understand why she was, the way she was. All she knew was that she was different. And people didn't like her for that. Her parents never really talked to the little metamorph about her appearance. "Pardon? This is just the way I was born." She continued to rub at a spot, before looking down at Jack. She glossed over the auburn-haired child, with an iridescent gaze. Her lips curled back into a snarl, revealing a delicate row, of sharp pearly whites.

She was no Parselmouth, and strangely enough she lacked an accent, despite being raised in London all her life. So was it an impediment? She never considered it one, since it didn't really impair her. "Its because of my teeth. My mother said that I will grow into them one day." The kid was a dental nightmare. She had fangs, lots of fangs. They were fairly new too, most of them were just coming in. She didn't always have a lisp, in her first year she was missing some teeth, so she lacked the lisp. In the middle of her second year, some of her teeth were finally starting to come in; that was when the slurring started.

"Jack. What did you mean by 'wear'?" People couldn't wear eyes. Or could they? She thought Jack could have been referring to glasses- but that didn't seem right. "Is wearing eyes, a muggle thing?" The Gryffindor figured, that if she didn't know about it, then it was probably something muggles did. The pureblood couldn't imagine how eyes could be worn. It was a weird thing to even think about. In her peripheral vision, she spied a small mop of red. She turned slightly, to find a small ginger looking at the Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw duo. Wasn't that the girl who had the tea poured on her, at the tea party? Poor thing. What was her name again? Eve? It was something with an E. Or at least thats what she remembered, from her quick glance at the errand sign-up sheet. "You know her? She keeps ssstaring at the Ravenclaw, and that other Gryffindor boy." She asked Jack, making a small gesture towards the ginger.

@Jack Burnett & @Xailah Alptraum (aka. Asking for trouble...)

Well, that certainly hadn’t gone completely as planned. While he was small and sometimes considered rather innocuous by some, perhaps he had gone a little far in pleading with the Prefect that he knew to be a stickler/firm in her position, to let him help her dust higher on the shelves. The comment about breaking his neck, however had done nothing to phase him, and he merely shrugged, as if taking the comment as another argumentative point. Yes, it was a risk, but still, not a great reason to not let him climb like he knew he could, in a similar fashion to how he would climb the olive trees in the groves of Italy.

It was, in fact, the comment that if he got hurt another person would be blamed for his actions that caused Piérre to drop the concept. He didn’t want another person to be blamed, especially if it was Gryffindor’s other Prefect. He had been in errands with Gris before, and she seemed to be a kind spirit. He certainly agreed with Xailah that he didn’t want to harm another person’s feeling or reputation because of his own foolhardiness.

”I guess you’re right... Sor_”

But it was too late, Xailah had already scurried up the ladder to flee from the boy and his words. Piérre got the feeling that he was not really liked by her, but even as he recognized that, he was twice as determined to succeed in becoming a good acquaintance, at least. He wasn’t a brown-noser, but he was a person who was more than eager to please. He wanted to please the Prefect. She seemed cold and unattached, and if there was anything that Piérre knew about people, it was that they didn’t act a certain way without a reason. He liked to believe there was good in everyone, even those who wanted to be bad.

That seemed to be the case with a boy that he had met before, who had seemed cold and kind of stuck up when Piérre had first met him. He thought that he remembered the name as Jack, Jack Burnett, like the famous comedian that Piérre liked to watch, Carol Burnett.

He wondered if they were related...

Up to that point, Piérre had focused upon the shelves that he could reach, that being the first two, just as the Prefect instructed. Though he was chaotic, he was not reckless or disobedient, especially to a power that he knew he couldn’t tangle with, and so, he did know when to stop. He was humming to himself, a sort of composition that he had just come up with on the spot, based in the minor chord and the melody comprising of triplet notes with sprinkled in sixteenth and quarters for good measure. This, then, became the major key, lining up and resolving any discordant notes in the pleasant way that only music could pull off.

This was what he was doing when Jack asked about Xailah’s catlike appearance. Form his position on the farther side of the shelves, Piérre piqued elflike ears, curious as to how the Prefect would answer. Truth be told, he had noticed the peculiarness of the Prefect, but he had brushed by it almost instantly, since he recognized an oddity when he saw it, having known that his own ears were a source of strangeness. When Xailah gave her answer, Piérre puzzled over it. Born like that? Like he had been born with piqued ears, Piérre supposed.

”I think that your eyes are pretty.” He piped up from the side, looking up at the Prefect shyly. ”They catch the light and look like they glow... and those teeth have to be helpful when eating steak...” He smiled in a way that caused his eyes to sparkle, even if a little duller this usual. ”I think the lisp is kind of cool, don’t you?” Piérre looked to Jack, tipping his head in curiosity and trying to subdue the stuffiness he felt.

”I don’t really think we met properly. I’m Piérre!” Piérre ventured closer to Jack, playing with the feather duster he held. ”I would shake, but I’m kind of sick right now. It’s nice to meet you, though!”

713 words

Bast smirked slightly at Talia's remark and nodded, snorting an amused, "I'll bet." 

Hogwarts seemed to be one of the more accident-prone places in the Wizarding world, really; from every school-wide event ending in chaos to the small detail of the War that had ravaged its halls in the past, he wasn't really surprised to hear that the Ravenclaw got a show while she was resting in the Hospital Ward. He was surprised to hear the mirth that had appeared in Talia's voice, though, and found himself laughing lightly at the mental image she'd provided. She didn't strike him as the type to laugh at others' misfortunes (and their slugs), but he wasn't complaining. 

He shifted aside another stack of tomes, inspecting a few of their spines as he set them down, and then glanced back up at Talia with a grin when she confirmed her willingness to practice with him. He hadn't really expected her to protest much, but it was nice being proven right. Before he could carry on chatting about Quidditch, though, his attention was flickering up to Jack as he appeared out of seemingly nowhere. Merlin, where'd he come from?

"Uh, right, cheers," he said, nodding with slight confusion as Jack then turned away and headed off again. It wasn't that he had anything against the guy, really, but it seemed like every interaction with him — or around him — left Bast feeling just slightly baffled. Like Jack was having a silent conversation in his head that Bast was supposed to understand but wasn't actually privy to, or something. Whatever. 

He shook his head slightly and shot a glance at Talia with a smirk, as if to silently point out that that was slightly weird, before he turned back to the task at hand. As the Ravenclaw focused on clearing off their main shelf, he shifted to the right a bit and started to remove the books from the shelf one over in an orderly fashion again. 

"Can't use it, anyhow," he commented idly in response, looking up at a spine that had distracted him and pulling down another stack of books. He blinked when he found himself peering back across the shelf at Eve and then grinned crookedly at her in amusement. "Hey, super-spy, come to help finally?"  He snickered and set the books down, before turning back to Talia with a nod at Eve, "You know our resident swot?"

408 words (1268 total) & interacting with @Natalia Draig & @Evelynn Decipio, mentions @Jack Burnett.

Interacting with @Bastille Aurelius and @Natalia Draig
Mentioning @Xailah Alptraum, @Jack Burnett, and @Piérre Marchonné

Evelynn's gaze had snapped away from Aurelius and the unfamiliar Ravenclaw back over to the trio. It wasn't just the fact that Burnett — in classic Burnett fashion — had demonstrated clear lack of propriety or social decorum (for which she still hadn't quite figured out if he did that on purpose, or was just clueless) that had redirected her attention, but also the nature of his question. She hadn't really considered the hissing speech of the girl as anything really unusual before. It wasn't as though it was a particularly uncommon phenomenon; many children struggled with formulating sounds. Evelynn's own mother had been nine or so before she could even manage an 's' sound at all; it always came out 'z'.

But for Burnett to associate it with her possibly being a Parselmouth was something else entirely. That was rare. And also an incredibly audacious thing to ask. Naturally, she was horribly curious to hear the answer, almost hoping that it was a positive one for the mere significance that would bring. Not to mention the irony of a descendent of Salazar to be in Gryffindor. She may not know much about the wizarding world, but she was pretty certain that would be something unheard of.

Unfortunately, Evelynn would be disappointed. Well…somewhat. The prefect hadn't technically answered his question, and so it was possible that she might still be a Parselmouth, but the implied answer was 'no'. And when she began to talk about her teeth, and Pierre began his little complimentary speech, Evelynn slowly lost interest. Instead, her attention turned back to the original case study. Or would have. Just as she was attempting to subtly retreat from her little spying spot to get some actual sweeping done, the incriminating sentence spoken by the prefect cascaded over her like the frigid waters of an ice bucket challenge.

She hunched, tensing. The gig was up. She was caught. The prefect had seen her. What was worse, she had pointed her out to Burnett. Evelynn could already envision him making his way to the end of their aisle to come around and into her own with a look of haughty delight on his face. "That's just extra mega stalker level." Hadn't he said something like that to her that one time. She groaned internally, all instincts flaring with the desire to flee. She wouldn't, though. She would stand her ground and feign ignorance.

Only…that was when she saw dark eyes peering back at her through the bookshelf.

"Oh shut up…" Evelynn huffed, pursing her lips.

If chiding her for her tardiness wasn't bad enough, he'd given her the mocking moniker of super-spy. Lovely. Add that to the plethora of other less-than-savory nicknames. Yes. Like swot.

"I'm not a swot," she retorted defensively, taking only a little bit of issue with being introduced in such a way to a stranger. Great first impression. Thank you Aurelius. Not. Thus, wanting to correct that little misnomer poste-haste, Evelynn cast Aurelius one last side-eyed glare for good measure and flicked her gaze to Talia.

"I'm Decipio," she introduced herself, tone significantly more demure with this introduction. "Evelynn Decipio." She paused, fishing around for something else to say, feeling very much as though her name alone was insufficient. "Did I hear you saying something about practising for Quidditch earlier? Are you on a team?"

Pleased that the prefect agreed with him on the point of the cleaning spell, Jack picked up a feather duster and got to work, moving to start near Xailah so as to converse with her better while doing his best to keep an eye on the other head of ginger hair nearby. "The way you were born?" he repeated, glancing over briefly at the girl with inhuman features once more. "...Huh. May I ask if you're part non-human, then? Seems like a magic-related thing to me."

When she explained that she spoke with slurred 's' due to her teeth, he nodded in acknowledgement, though was still curious. No other student, muggle or not, had teeth like those as far as he knew. Not Erin who was part veela, Quinn who was part giant, Arlo who was part goblin, or even Nico who was part vampire. And werewolves couldn't have had teeth like that all the time, right? What, then, could have caused Xailah to be born with teeth like those? A spell or potion gone wrong, perhaps? A curse? He didn't remember reading about parselmouths having such teeth, either.

"Jack. What did you mean by 'wear'?"

The sound of his first name startled him out of his thoughts and absent-minded book-dusting. Looking back at the prefect, her genuine curiosity caused him to smile. It reminded him of when Arlo hadn't known what he meant, either, but Jack had just assumed that had been part of Arlo's...peculiarities in how he had been raised.

"I meant contact lenses," he explained. "I guess it's more of a muggle thing, but a pureblood I know - my dorm mate, Selim Faust - wears some. They're like glasses in that they're sometimes worn to correct vision, but you put them on your actual eyeballs. It's dangerous to sleep with them in, though, so they have to be taken out and cleaned regularly." The Slytherin found it amusing how he could be simultaneously educated on phenomenons in the wizarding world as well as being able to educate others about the muggle world.

"Some are colored to make it look like you have different colored irises and those are often used for costumes or aesthetic purposes if not also sight-correction. The ones Fangs - er, Faust - wears are yellow with slitted pupils. They're probably meant to mimic snake eyes, but they reminded me of yours." He shrugged. "I didn't know any sort of human could have slitted pupils naturally. Or actual fangs for that matter." If she was human, of course. That still remained to be seen.

Jack guessed that Xailah, like Selim, wasn't used to being asked about her eyes or having to explain about why her pupils were slitted. Though Jack was certain students other than him must have noticed, most probably thought it was too impolite to ask about them, which the redhead found silly. How else was one supposed to learn if they didn't ask questions?

”I think the lisp is kind of cool, don’t you?”

Just then, another Gryffindor spoke up - the one Jack recalled having seen a few other places before such as in class, and during errands such as the ones involving the Lunar New Year and Valentine's tea. He considered him to be quite a rambunctious oddball and had left him alone for the most part in an attempt to avoid being rude. If the other boy was going to thwart those attempts by initiating conversation himself, however, Jack had no choice but to oblige him.

"I wouldn't call it a lisp," he answered with a bright grin. "Lisps usually have more to do with the tongue than teeth. They also generally prevent people from pronouncing 's' and 'z's at all, turning them into 'th' sounds; not prolonging or slurring them."

"I don’t really think we met properly. I’m Piérre!" the enthusiastic boy greeted, approaching Jack. ”I would shake, but I’m kind of sick right now. It’s nice to meet you, though!”

Sly mischief glinted in his hazel eyes at they met the burnet's emerald ones. "I find cultivated minds and personalities cooler than appearances or superficial mannerisms that one can't help, but to each their own," he told the Gryffindor boy. "As you may have heard, I'm Jack. The pleasure's all mine, Lion. But...if you're sick, what are you doing volunteering to clean up a dusty library?"

Tilting his head, he raised a brow, smirking as he meaningfully waved his feather duster. "Wouldn't it be more logical to avoid such a place so as to keep from contaminating everything with your sick germs? Not to mention worsening your own sickness by breathing in all the dust and dirt being blown about by our efforts?"

Jack didn't abide stupidity. Though he tried to avoid underestimating people when he could, in all the time he had known Piérre, the boy had never done anything remarkable enough to disprove his apparent ignorance to the Slytherin. Therefore, Jack didn't hold him in very high regard. Let's see just how long you'll have considered it 'nice' to have met me. If the burnet wanted to get along with the redhead, he was going to have to do better than that.

"You know her? She keeps ssstaring at the Ravenclaw, and that other Gryffindor boy."

Xailah's new question caught Jack's attention and his gaze followed the prefect's indicative gesture to Evelynn. The cat-eyed girl's blatantly voiced observation earned a laugh from him; it seemed he wasn't the only one who enjoyed trampling others' delicacy and discretion in favor of raw curiosity.

"Evelynn Decipio," he echoed the grey-eyed girl's introduction to Talia, turning to one side as he continued dusting to get a better look at the trio chatting nearby. "Guess she doesn't know the girl, but the boy is the one who was trying to comfort her after she got burned at the Valentine's Day Tea Party." He sneered, not bothering to keep his voice down. "Let's hope she doesn't take a leaf out of Barret's book upon seeing a guy she knows talking to a girl she doesn't. Good thing there's no tea around here, at least..."

@Xailah Alptraum, @Bastille Aurelius, @Piérre Marchonné, @Evelynn Decipio, & @Natalia Draig

"I'm fully human. Technically speaking." She let out a pensive hum. It was hard- trying to explain something that no one really understood, and that she knew very little about. "My mother told me that it was her fault, that it was a transfiguration accident. Mistakes happen, some are bizarre, most are rare, but they do happen. Lots of room for error." She nodded hesitantly, feeling that she gave a decent explanation. "Thats all I know. No one really talks to me about it." She shrugged. "Not that they would need to. Its not particularly important anyways." She admitted. The condition was a gift and a burden. And equally unimportant when it came down to it, because on the inside she was no different than anyone else- well, maybe just a little.

"Your muggle contacts, sssound absolutely dreadful." She cringed, revealing a pained look. Sure, she wore glasses, but she couldn't picture putting them onto her eyeball. "Who in their right mind would put sssomething inside their eyeball. This is probably why muggles have a shorter life expectancy than magic folk- they're sticking things in their eyes!" She shook her head. And they called her crazy. Xailah truly loved muggle inventions, but these contact things just didn't seem right. Best to avoid them. "Your dorm mate wears artificial eyes then? He sssounds pathetic." It kind of just slipped out, like most of her other comments, and thoughts.

The child was just... unintentionally blunt at times. It was a result of her slight detachment. But, she did mean what she said. She had always disliked things with different eyes. Eyes that were artificial. Beady. Unmoving, or made of glass. Eyes that were not alive. She had always found those sorts of eyes rather pathetic, and pitiful. Those were the kind of eyes that belonged to weak creatures. Eyes were meant to be the windows to the soul. They were meant to burn with the fire of life. The pupils were supposed to grow and die- like hers. And when an eye didn't grow? Didn't burn? Didn't pulse with the energy of life? Then something was wrong.

Jacks suspicion of contacts were forgivable. He was probably just trying to understand something through means that he was familiar with- it was what any person would do, when faced with something abnormal. But anyone could tell that her eyes were not, the work of a colored piece of plastic. Deep down, people knew this, and it often scared them. "Apologies. I come from a rather... gifted, pureblood family, you see; so my opinion on objects used to change ones natural appearance, is biased." Gifted. In other words, they were Metamorphmagi.

Piérres compliment would get a strange look from the lioness. People didn't compliment her looks, so this was just weird for her. She looked at the books in front of her, as if they were going to give her a good response. "Um. Thank you?" She had no idea what this kids deal was. Maybe he was just joking around to get a response from the prefect. Whatever it was, it irked her for some reason. His admitting to being sick, didn't help his case, and only earned a groan from the lioness. "Oh my god. Why- see, thank you Jack. At least you're sssensible." She said, muttering. Why did she have to get stuck with the group that had a sick kid?

"Piérre. Do we need to take a trip to the nurse?- Because I will not have you getting them sssick. Or me for that matter." She jabbed a gloved finger, at the students who where helping with the errand. "I know I said that I wasn't going to make nurse trips, but I see this as sssomething that needs to be tended to, before it gets worse." She said in a rather aggressive manner, before rolling her eyes at the elf-child. "Goodness, gracious."

Jack would confirm the name, of the little ginger girl. "Ah, that is what I thought. Rather unfortunate what happened. I do hope that blonde is more careful, about who she chooses to hurt." She peered through the books once again, trying to find where the ginger-girl went. "It would be very unfortunate if she one day targeted the wrong person." She fell silent, after her ominous remark. But she would soon begin to snicker at the red-headed boys comment. "You don't sssuppose she's jealous of the Ravenclaw?" She said in a low, humored, whisper. She took a moment, before later calling out to the subjects of the conversation. "Bastille, Natalia, how is your job coming along?" She inquired. "And, its nice for you to join us, Evelynn. Are you doing alright over there?" Her tone was warm, and genuine. She did want to make sure they were fine, despite her previous witty retort- it was her job to frequently check in on them, after all.

As she fell into the familiar rhythm of scrubbing the shelves down, the young Ravenclaw girl turned her keen ears to her peers, listening passively. When she finished with one level, she immediately moved on to the next. She didn't stop until Bast called the attention of another student, and her curiosity quickly got the best of her. She dropped the rag then, figuring that she'd scrubbed enough shelves that she could leave them to dry for a little bit.

"Enchanté," she greeted warmly, tipping her head forward in a quick, subtle bow. When she straightened again, a kind smile played on her face—once, it had been a foreign expression, but it suited her now, far more than the worried frown she'd once worn. "I'm Natalia Draig. Talia."

At Evelynn's curious question, the blonde's eyes flickered towards Bast nervously—perhaps there was a hint of longing in them, thick like a blizzard in the blues of her irises, but she blinked and it was gone, lulled into calm, azure pools that betrayed nothing. "Ah... no, unfortunately. I have not tried out for a team," she admitted, accent heavy as she scuffed the floor lightly with the toe of her shoes. "I don't believe I am—hm, cut out for it, yes? However, it seems I still have prove that as well."

She feigned a pointed look at Bast, although the smile twitching at the edges of her lips was enough indication that she appreciated his faith in her, even though she personally believed that it was absolutely misplaced. She turned her attention back to Evelynn. "What about you? Do you play?"

When Xailah mentioned her name, the young girl was quick to turn around and face her, noting that the boy that had dropped off the bucket of water was not too far away. She offered him a quick smile in greeting before returning her attention to the person leading the entire ordeal. "Oui, we are just waiting for the shelves to dry," she answered cheerfully, before adding, "Perhaps I should clean the books now."

She turned to the piles upon piles of books then, making a step towards them before stopping, realizing that she's missing a cleaning material. She had no idea who had it. "Does anybody know where the—the... uh..." Talia's face screwed up as she tried to remember what it was called, brows furrowed. She stayed like that for several seconds, looking pensive, until her expression cleared into the look of success.

"The dust-feather! Yes, who has it?"

Oh well. At least she tried.

@Bastille Aurelius, @Evelynn Decipio, @Xailah Alptraum, @Jack Burnett

Bastille rolled his eyes at Eve's retort, evidently neither impressed by her assertion that she wasn't a swot — in a particularly swotty tone of voice — nor too chastised by her dark glower for having introduced her in such a fashion. It seemed clear that the Gryffindor didn't care much for formalities; he rarely provided any information aside from "Bast" when forced to greet strangers, and seemed to have a strong inclination towards to referring to everyone by some form of nickname. Hearing Eve introduce herself as Decipio to this day, months and months into their first year, amused him every time. 

He turned back towards his shelf as Talia introduced herself, clearing off the last stack of books and smirking to himself when he heard her angle that snide comment in his direction. He did look back over to the girls at Eve's question, however, and informed Talia with a mild trace of amusement, "Oh, Eve loves Quidditch. Practically obsessed. Bet she'd like to practice with us." 

Actually, Eve struck him as the sort of person who hated to practice with anyone other than the actual team, or perhaps the sort who was simply too competitive to bear to practice peacefully at all. Still: offering her up to socialization amused him, if only because it sounds like the sort of nonsense Eve would volunteer him for. (Nevermind that he had already volunteered himself. He liked Talia.)

He wasn't bothering to pay attention to Jack and whatever he was going on about now, and therefore missed the boy's loud commentary. He did, however, look up when Xailah called out to them, turning away from his cleared shelf to arch a brow at her. As Talia spoke, he nodded along, adding mildly, "Yeah, we're good." A pause as he absorbed Talia's assertion, and then he bit back a laugh as he added lightly, "Just, you know... Getting those dust-feathers."

321 words (/1589 total), interacting with @Evelynn Decipio, @Natalia Draig, @Xailah Alptraum, & mentioning @Jack Burnett.