Aftershock
She had to get away.
Do you ever feel like a misfit?
✪ Everything inside you is dark and twisted ✪
The girls she'd been sitting with had done everything they could to reassure her in the aftermath of that great and devastating humiliation, but Poppy hadn't been able to hear any of it. The memory of the screaming howler ricocheting off of the walls of her mind was louder. What was "don't listen to him" when "you utter disgrace" blared deafeningly? How did she hear "no one thinks that" when "filthy mudblood" rang so loudly in her ears?
She excused herself the moment she could, quickly rising to her feet and stalking out of the great hall before further humiliation could find her.
It had been a while since she felt so...exposed. It wasn't that she'd never heard those words before. On a bad day, she told them to herself – believed them wholeheartedly even. Having them thrown at her in such a public setting was what rattled her.
Breathe, Poppy, breathe. If she didn't get a hold of herself, the deep violet her hair had descended into would take forever to leave, and the girl had already been made into enough of a spectacle.
She was shaking. Her limbs trembled as she made her way across the small hall, her hands clenching uncomfortably tight at her sides. Each breath she took was heavier than the last as her chest constricted with a mixture of dread and mortification. An invisible force had gained a vice-like grip on her, squeezing inward until she felt she might combust.
Poppy was nearly at the other door when her legs gave out, forcing her up against the wall for support. She stood with her back pressed into the stone wall as her vision began to blur from the welling tears. Her hands rose to wipe them away, but the harder she rubbed, the more persistent those tears became. Soon, her lips were quivering as her entire body gave in to the shock she'd suffered.
Her mind was a flurry of chaotic and distressing thoughts. The Great Hall hadn't erupted into wild laughter – a small mercy in the middle of the greater mayhem – but there had been a few snickers. How many others thought the same?
It was a bitter pill for the little girl who'd only just started to feel like she may have carved out a place for herself at Hogwarts. It wasn't perfect, and she still struggled with accepting many things, both about the place and herself, but Poppy had made up her mind to try. She'd come to accept that magic would always be a part of her and that denying it entirely wouldn't make it go away.
She'd been trying to speak to others more, listen more, try more. With her anxiety gripping her by the throat each time, she'd soldiered her way through interactions, basking in the subsequent relief in the times when it ended on a more positive note than she'd allowed herself to anticipate.
To have this happen was akin to a tub of ice water being thrown on her, and she didn't know how to begin to recover.
Last edited by Persephone Grimsbane on 22 Mar 2026, 00:07, edited 1 time in total.
Encyclopaedia ✿ Metamorphmagus ✿ If the sun shines, that's reason enough.
Aftershock
| —— |
—date. [ 05/03/26 ]——————word count. [ 1002 ]— Unless conquered by a sudden and rather vulgar bout of gluttony, Roland exhibited a rather ascetic disposition toward delicious foods. More fork-pushing than lip-greasing, and with the merry prospect of the upcoming weekend dancing frantically in his eyes, he shuffled the fruits of unpaid elfish labour aimlessly about his plate. His mind, in a departure from its usual elevated strata, was entirely on Quidditch nowadays. He was commenting on the latest triumphs and tragedies of the school league, though not without lingering dread - would his old man see it just a broom-bound football, a hopelessly banal street-kick game? In his defence, though, after exhaustive research, the boy had faced the rather tragic reality that this antique castle accommodated no sanctuary for a 'properly' nuanced athletic pursuit, say, cricket-esque. "I'm saying this with zero objectivity and a ton of pride," he managed, the morsel in his mouth expanding like a sickly feline attempting to chew, "Us lions are taking home the cup this year. Harlan Montgomery will be the toast of the castle. You know the name, don't you?" All normal it would've been, all too normal, had the taller of this little tale been right-tongued and brief-spoken. One must acknowledge, after all, those temporal expanses wherein no novel event manifests beneath the sun; during such lulls, Time, undergoing a vast dilation, conjures endless scenes of inaction masked by abundant conversation from its vast treasury of nothingness. This very equilibrium of the uneventful, sagging much like a dilapidated electrical wire of some developing (and therefore never to develop) lands, is violently interrupted by the blunt intrusion of the unforeseen. Roland, prattling on about Quidditch, could not possibly know that such a moment of upheaval was developing into a foetus ready to be born in the womb of time. And then - bang! The invisible chronometer, having exhausted its predetermined measure, registered its final fraction of a second as an owl breached the Great Hall, delivering a howler right in the middle of the Gryffindor table. Realising that a fellow student was about to get publicly shredded, the collective gaze of the table gravitated toward the poor girl as she fumbled with the envelope. Looks of pity and smirks of pleasure, the dark human-mix of glad-it-isn't-me... Roland, on the other hand, found himself suspended in a state of acute, almost spine-tickling inquisition - a frisson of anticipation regarding the exact nature of the impending assault of the infamous howler. He'd seen some of them before. A young badger who was subjected to paternal wrath over his academic deficiencies, and the unbridled fury of a grandma who, offended by a month's silence, alchemised her pique into a howling tempest. But this... This was on a whole different level. Vile-spit words, ugly-mouthed and accusing, thrown at the girl in the crimson and gold regalia, for all the hall to hear, delivered by an enchanted parchment possessing the trembling anger of a deranged chihuahua. Roland had noticed the girl on a few occasions. Kind of impossible not to when you shared the very same Common Room. And honestly? She seemed dreadfully well-meaning. They had not yet engaged in formal greetings, lost in the exhaustion of the never-ending meet-and-greet of freshman year that made Roland feel he was stuck in the world's longest cocktail party. Following the terrible howls of the howler -true to its name!-, a sudden reservoir of sympathetic affection ruptured within the Marin boy, causing his features to contort as though he had bitten into the sourest lemon that ever existed. Lord above, he thought-spun, what mud-souled things creep in these halls... If that howler was from one of her actual social circles, Wizarding child services needed to step in and snatch her away somewhere safe. And if it was 'just' a prank, Roland was pretty ready to throw modern law out the window and vote for tossing the jerk straight into Azkaban for life, a precrime lockup for the breathing good of all. Suspended within this tempest of outrage, the gossiping murmurs of his housemates faded into a dull buzz, and Roland's eyes locked on the girl as she ran out of the Common Room. Roland, as a fellow mudblood, felt a massive wave of solidarity hijack his chest. It was a moral imperative that the downtrodden must band together, for his dad had always tried to hammer home the idea. The theatrical streak within the boy's soul, too, demanded a display of chivalry. Everyone could guess that when someone storms out of a room, and even if they literally scream 'don't follow me!', they usually want someone to come after them, for a sudden departure is an act of emotional protest, and what good is a protest without witnesses? Roland, therefore, shot to his feet, fired off a quick apology at the jocks sitting around him, and set off toward the Small Hall. He had not the faintest idea what he might say upon catching her. He'd never had to console anyone before this seriously, and he doubted he'd be any good at it. His ethical compass, nevertheless, had irrevocably aligned his course, and even a divine intervention couldn't have arrested the progress of his young and agile legs now. When he found the girl, her back facing him, Roland opened his mouth to speak, but completely blanked. "Hey," he finally breathed out, deer-soft, stepping light on the stone. "That thing... awful it was. It always blows my mind how vile people can be." He offered a minute shrug, telegraphing a blend of exhaustion and defiance. "I'm guessing you feel pretty terrible right now. But that's exactly what that stupid letter was designed to do." He found himself gripped by a fear that he was being a nuisance. What if she craved some solitude, and what if his attempt to communicate was simply overstepping? Having concluded that a prop might serve better than further prose, he extracted a linen square from the interior recess of his robes. Extending, "Here," Roland said, "I promise it's clean." ═════════════════════  ═════════════════════( interacting with @persephone grimsbane, mentioning @harlan montgomery codes by uly & banner credit goes to harlan ! )— | —— |
Last edited by Roland Domagoj Marin on 26 Mar 2026, 22:21, edited 2 times in total.
| sta • 6 | eva • 5 | str • 2 THEATRE KID wis • 9 | arc • 7 | acc • 6 | the muggle condition THROUGH⠀THE⠀YEARS every step a scene worth watching |
Aftershock
"Hey."
Do you ever feel like a misfit?
✪ Everything inside you is dark and twisted ✪
Poppy flinched automatically at the greeting, recoiling at the realisation that she was no longer alone. It was unending. Whether she remained planted in her seat or tried to escape, there would always be a witness to her social annihilation. In her limited scope of only 12 years, Poppy believed that it would follow her forever. When she went to her common room, while she sat in classes, and, perhaps the most terrifyingly, even while she tried to steal some time for herself, as was the case now or whenever she next ventured onto the grounds for a spot of photography.
"That thing... awful it was. It always blows my mind how vile people can be."
She had to hold it together. Quick as she could, Poppy wiped the tears from her eyes with a few forceful swipes. The little girl sniffed, desperate to put an end to the unsightly snivelling that would too easily give away the degree of devastation she knew better than to admit to.
"I...Oh..." she shook her head in an attempt to distance herself from the sympathy the boy – Roland, wasn't it? – offered.
No, sympathy wasn't right. Pity. Pity was the beginning of the end. She would never recover if she allowed herself to fall beneath such unrelenting waves. "It's...that was n–nothing." That was the answer, wasn't it? It was how "Gryffindors" were meant to handle things. Shrug it off; smile if you could afford to. Continue the joke until it was no longer funny. "He – Reed – was probably right."
The smile wouldn't come, no matter how hard she tried, leaving her instead with a half grimace that didn't sit right on her lips. "Ruddy hat got it wrong from the first day anyhow." A heaviness settled in her chest, spreading out to weigh down her limbs. "What a joke, right?" she continued quietly. Was it still a joke if it was true? Could it still be considered funny when every bone in her body testified to the truth of it all?
A disgrace wasn't so far-fetched. At home, at Hogwarts, there were standards she couldn't meet and people she had disappointed. It also wasn't hard to believe that there were people in her house who wished she were sorted elsewhere. She was one of them. For a while, Poppy was starting to accept that not every lion roared the same, but there was nothing like a little public humiliation to remind her of her place and the wide gap that remained between what she tried to believe and reality.
Filthy mudblood.
Poppy could still remember the first time she'd heard that word and how acutely it had resonated with her. It wasn't all magical unicorns and wingardium levoisas inside the ancient stony walls. Everyone wasn't holding hands and singing songs of peace and belonging.
Some believed that those with 'muggle' parents had no business with magic – that it was stolen or otherwise undeserved. The message had come down to one thing; Poppy wasn't meant to be there. It shouldn't be her but someone more deserving. She held space that rightfully belonged to those with a magical heritage, and for what reason? Because she'd gotten 'lucky'?
She didn't feel lucky, certainly not in the moment when it was one of the reasons she'd been singled out.
Poppy hesitated when Roland offered the handkerchief alongside his promise of its cleanliness.
Inches from taking it, she pulled her hand back. "Y–You really don't have to." It was more kindness than the situation warranted...than what she warranted.
"I'll...I'll be fine."
She hoped.
Encyclopaedia ✿ Metamorphmagus ✿ If the sun shines, that's reason enough.
Aftershock
| —— |
—date. [ 05/03/26 ]——————word count. [ 579 ]— Roland Domagoj Marin stood there with no accurate map for the wet and weeping of it. His mate, Nate, wept only as a matter of strategic policy, feigning despair whenever he needed to manipulate his mother into letting him get his way. And Roland's own mother, the rarer times the water came into her blue eyes, grew cold and distant, a well-walled city he knew better than to touch, keeping his safe distance to save his own skin. He'd never actually been slapped by her, and he definitely wasn't planning to give her a reason. Still, the boy was determined to do his best now. "It was definitely something," Roland replied, shaking his head. "And kurv-" He arrested the word mid-sentence, realising this was hardly the proper venue to deploy his Croatian vocabulary to an audience breathing the cold English air. "I mean, total bollocks! The Reed boy wasn't right. Not a bloody bit of it." Well, he couldn't be. For if Reed were right, it logically followed that Roland, too, had no business whatsoever in this magical castle. And the ache of having no place, the cold wind of being unhoused, he hated it deep in the bone. The mere idea of abandoning his perfectly cheerful home back in Dover merely to languish for seven fuckin' years in a school where he was officially unwanted... well, even if it were the heavy truth of the turning world, Roland would enthusiastically wage a lifelong crusade against it. A grimace of absolute revulsion crystallised upon his features, "Not much of a fan of the old rag myself," he added. "But after being forced to literally run blind and full-speed into a solid stone just to get to school, honestly, you kind of have to figure that if these fellas trust a talking hat, they must know one or two things we don't." Roland had not given the houses a second thought, actually. He just wore the lion and defended the name simply as a matter of civic duty. It was a frictionless integration into his new reality. Besides, the colours were rich and bright, the heavy crimson and the gold, and that was enough. The look of a thing was the whole of the thing, well, at least, in most cases. But looking at Persephone's expression now, she clearly was not ready to buy into this flawless logic. Even with the loud and clear no hanging in the air, Roland refused to retract the handkerchief. "Oh, but what does this have to do with whether you're fine or not?" he asked, playing a baffled, clueless boy. "I just wanted to hand you a gift, is all. Persephone, right?" He raised his eyebrows slightly. "Nothing at all to do with the wet in your eyes, nothing like that. Here. Just a small thing from one mudblood to another." The young lion executed a casual elevation of his shoulders. "Besides, hardly anyone carries handkerchiefs anymore," he noted breezily, "we should totally bring the trend back. It's chic." His arm remained extended, and though he felt like an idiot, he stubbornly held his ground. He was such a Balkan boy to retreat. "Well, I could stand on this spot all day long," Roland continued, "Please, don't make me look like a total prick like Reed, Persephone." A tiny, warm smile, then, tugged at the corners of his mouth; it was a begging thing wanting only to catch fire on her face as well. ═════════════════════ ═════════════════════( interacting with @persephone grimsbane codes by uly & banner credit goes to harlan ! )— | —— |
Last edited by Roland Domagoj Marin on 2 Apr 2026, 03:21, edited 1 time in total.
| sta • 6 | eva • 5 | str • 2 THEATRE KID wis • 9 | arc • 7 | acc • 6 | the muggle condition THROUGH⠀THE⠀YEARS every step a scene worth watching |
Aftershock
Wasn't Reed right, though?
Do you ever feel like a misfit?
✪ Everything inside you is dark and twisted ✪
The howler hadn't said anything that she hadn't heard before, and while not the majority, there were enough of them back in that suffocating room that found humour within the cruelty. Was she not a mudblood? If it was the name given to those without a magical heritage and she had none to speak off, logic followed that she fit squarely within the category. Was she not a disgrace? Had the hat not taken a timid girl and thrown her into a den of lions?
It seemed a little silly, if not outright dangerous, to deny such indisputable truths. Poppy didn't care that Reed had said what he did; she didn't even care whether he really meant it or was only trying to be cruel. With six brothers and sisters, there was always someone trying to be cruel when things didn't go their way, and then it was forgotten.
Reed Smith could've been forgotten with time and a bit of determination. What just happened in the Great Hall was the real blow. It was public, intrusive, sharp and cutting in a way that had nothing to do with the cartoonish and overly contrived jabs of the enchanted letter and everything to do with the light it forced onto her. Obscure as she'd been before, there were now some who might take notice of her for all the wrong reasons. For a girl that was only trying to fit in, there could be no worse fate.
The mention of the wall back at the platform had her cracking the faintest smile. The first time she'd seen the wall had been downright terrifying. The concept of running into solid brick on purpose had been enough to petrify her. After that, it had become something of a parlour trick, one she hoped to share with her siblings someday if her parents ever let them come along for the school pickups and drop-offs.
"I...yeah..." He wasn't wrong. Poppy was discovering that there were a great many things that shouldn't be possible, things she'd never think of but were general knowledge among wizardkind. "Sometimes...sometimes it's amazing everything they know, and then...then there are things that don't make sense at all, you know?" She'd had a lot of time to think about it, even in the midst of her awe and wonder. "L—Like how does the hat know? How come it can see things and—and get inside your head? Why a hat?"
There were more questions, all barrelling their way up the back of her throat before meeting with lips she pressed shut the moment she realised she'd fallen into a bit of a tangent. Of all the things she could fall into post-humiliation, it was likely the least appropriate.
But it was helping. Little by little as the conversation ebbed into the mundane, it forced her from the heightened emotions of shame and into something more neutral.
"Persephone, right?"
"P—Poppy's fine," she offered as she finally reached for the handkerchief. A gift. Poppy was naive in many ways, but not so much that she couldn't tell when someone was trying to make her feel better. The small smile from earlier grew a little wider despite the way her stomach churned again at the comment of her wet eyes.
Her hands reached up to wipe at her eyes again, finding it easier to hold it together with her housemate as a distraction. When her hands fell, blue-green eyes settled on him again, widening with some surprise. "You're...you're a mud—muggleborn, too?" Blood status wasn't something people spent their free time discussing. In fact, in many settings, it could even be considered rude. On a more personal level, Poppy didn't dare allow herself to imagine just how many of her classmates might be like her. It was better not to get her hopes up. "Your parents...um...do they – how do they feel about...?" Her hands waved vaguely about the small hall, as if the gesture might complete the question that she couldn't.
Maybe she shouldn't ask at all. Parents, from her own experiences, could be a sensitive topic.
Poppy folded the handkerchief he insisted she take before placing it in her robe's inner pocket.
"You're nothing like Reed." Not from what she'd seen for herself, in what small interaction they'd been having. It helped. The deep indigo in her hair began to recede, fading in a slow return to her natural gold.
Encyclopaedia ✿ Metamorphmagus ✿ If the sun shines, that's reason enough.
Aftershock
| —— |
—date. [ 05/03/26 ]——————word count. [ 830 ]— The smile on the girl's face, albeit faint, was enough to quiet the waters of Roland's soul. The young lion by no means was one of those insufferable, pain-eating, self-proclaimed martyrs forcing their unwarranted help into the wounds of the world unasked. Yet, he was equally estranged from that dreadful class of people who dress up their sheer apathy as 'respectful distance', brothers to the ones who call their cruel tongues honest truth, sitting safe and clean while yearning for the shine of the good and virtuous. Homo homini lupus. Man is a wolf to man, they say. At least, that old, broken-down actor at his father's table spitting the Latin into the wine once said that. And Roland had once spotted something similar to this gloomy wisdom in a philosophy primer his mother had gifted him: Hell is other people. But Roland Domagoj, born of the golden, falling leaves of November, hated the dark taste of that talk. For one, he couldn't stomach the fake, performative pessimism. Watching his parents' vain social circle with their borrowed bohemian faces, Roland had quickly grown tired of such an attitude. Plus, the boy had always suspected the exact opposite was true. He didn't buy the dark law of it. Man wasn't forced to be a wolf to his fellow man, no, he took up the teeth because he wanted to and laid the blame on the heavy world or the stupid phrase 'that's how the world works'. The old, tired story of the sacrificial lamb... By the same token, the other people could be heaven just the same. Roland couldn't suppress an equally faint smile appearing on his face as he listened to Persephone's questions regarding the Hat. He gave her a teasing, oh-you-sweet-summer-child look. "Are you honestly still trying to apply logic to this place?" he asked. "I gave up looking for the sense of this place around the third week. I recommend the same to you." He offered a carefree shrug. "It knows nothing, the old Hat. It also stinks, but whatever... Just a bit of magic the Founders stitched into the brim to make it talk, outsourcing the sorting process so they wouldn't have to literally fight over us. That's basically it." A conspiratorial grin appeared. "Think of it like most of our own traditions, worshipped just for the dust on them. Like, think about it, what if every single first-year student who shows up next September in that hall happens to be incredibly cunning? Do you really think it'll pack them all down into Slytherin in one go? That wouldn't exactly be fair for the House Cup, don't you think?" Poppy. Truth be told, Persephone was way more flamboyant, but Roland didn't have the brass in him to tell a girl the shape of her own name. "And Roland," he said, giving it over, "but you can call me Domagoj. No one ever wants to use my middle name, I don't know why, but I don't want to lose the sound of it." He arched a single eyebrow and executed a small, teasing reverence to the girl. "Mudblood. Proud and unashamed. The pure brats could smell it on me from down the hall." He slumped back against the wall. "You mean, what do they think about the whole wizard thing, hm?" he asked, finishing her thought. "Mother loved the shine of it. Mad for it, really. She suffers from a terminal need for me to be a special child, you see. Father wasn't singing the same tune, though. He doesn't have a backup kid to inherit our theatre back in Dover. If I actually choose some magical career, he's probably going to have a biblical meltdown over his worthless son who left the family boards behind. We'll see, I suppose, we'll see..." Roland was no longer employing these lighter words, this conversational grace as a strategy, finding his own breath settling in the giving of comfort. The dreadfully public spectacle of the howler had entirely vacated his mind, right up until Reed's name resurfaced. Roland felt a dark furrow form upon his brow. God above, if the screaming words were the boy's own truth, it was a rotten thing. This entire blood purity nonsense was nothing more than a magically bedazzled plagiarism of the fascist rot of the Muggle world. And if it was supposed to be a prank, it lacked the fundamental requirement of good taste. And then, something so bizarre happened that Roland's brain flatlined. "Ehm," the boy managed, his throat dry and tight. "Don't panic now, but... your hair, its colour is turning. Unless my blood pressure just randomly skyrocketed." It was true, Poppy's hair was slowly taking on the pale light of a blonde dawn. "It's quite possible those brats slipped some amateur potion in your food. Don't let it worry you, it won't hold long, I'm sure. I've seen them in Potions, they haven't got the brains to brew a thing that lasts." ═════════════════════ ═════════════════════( interacting with @persephone grimsbane codes by uly & banner credit goes to harlan ! )— | —— |
| sta • 6 | eva • 5 | str • 2 THEATRE KID wis • 9 | arc • 7 | acc • 6 | the muggle condition THROUGH⠀THE⠀YEARS every step a scene worth watching |
Aftershock
"Are you honestly still trying to apply logic to this place?"
Do you ever feel like a misfit?
✪ Everything inside you is dark and twisted ✪
"Aren't...aren't we meant to...?"
The question spilled forth before she could think about it, her mind breaking at the very idea that none of this was to be dissected or understood. It was all she'd tried to do since the kind man from the ministry showed up to their farm, explaining what for years had been a mystery at best and an unholy manifestation at worst. Ever since, questions were all Poppy had. How had she ended up with it? Why was she the only one? Did it really mark her the way her mother had said?
A whole different world existed beyond what she'd ever known. There were witches and wizards who'd been going about their lives longer than she'd been alive. Magic as old as time, systems and governments parallel the one she thought to be the only one. There was whimsy within the terror, an unmistakable wonder that captivated her as much as it baffled her.
It didn't seem to be the same for her housemate. Roland sounded properly disillusioned with the whole thing. Where Poppy saw shining lights and puzzle pieces scattered across a mat, Roland described the mundane. It was grey and covered in dust, unremarkable and unworthy of the awe she hadn't been able to prevent herself from harbouring from the moment she'd arrived. Was that how it was meant to be? In truth, not many of her classmates seemed to be as taken as she was, but unlike the pair of them, those students were often raised in magic and already understood the ins and outs.
Should she also have been so unimpressed? She didn't think she knew how. There wasn't a reality where Persephone could look up at the enchanted ceiling of the great hall and not grow quiet in reverence. As much as she hesitated where the hat's judgement was concerned, the little girl liked to think there was more to it than a simple charm for the sake of bureacracy. But would she come across as naive or uncultured for saying so? There had already been several conversations where Poppy realised too late that her simple upbringing on the farm made her the odd man out. Roland described a theatre. Showbiz was the sort of thing that could really show you another view of life. How worldly he must be, how above it all. And there she was, still tickled when their professors performed certain spells during their lessons.
"I...well, I guess...but I'd like to hope there's more to it than that."
"but you can call me Domagoj."
Oh. Had she gotten it wrong? The students in their classes called him Roland, leaving her little need to consider alternatives or preferences, but..."Is t—that the name you prefer?" It had never occurred to her to ask. Most called her Persephone. It was an adjustment after a life surrounded by family and church family but nothing she was prepared to rock the boat about. There were a few who called her 'Poppy' and that was enough. If nothing else, it was a small marker of who she might be getting a little closer to. Friends and friends adjacent tended toward pet names, making those moments when someone did call her that a little warmer.
"Mudblood. Proud and unashamed."
Rol—Domagoj was an eye-opener. There had been many sentiments surrounding blood status, but she'd never heard a muggleborn speak quite like...this. Poppy didn't know whether to be awed or horrified, but she was certainly entranced by the ease with which the boy articulated his disdain. She could never. The sentiment carried over into his discussion about his parents, more flippant and borderline irreverent...and honest. Was he allowed to speak about them like that? Would he ever say it to their faces? "It...I...I guess it's good your mum wasn't happy about it then – whatever the reason." She couldn't imagine the same for herself. 'Special' wasn't exactly the reaction any of them had had. "The theatre could be...it could be neat. Are you just not interested then?" His father seemed so sure he would go the other way. "I—I've never really thought about it, I guess, what career I'll have in the future." The obvious choice was to remain on the farm and help the business; otherwise, Poppy thought she wouldn't mind being a teacher of some sort. She liked teaching the animals what she learned when she had some free time. Photography, if she ever got good enough, was also a strong contender. But the world was bigger now. Career options nearly doubled.
An ease was slowly creeping into the conversation. Away from the heat of her earlier embarrassment and distracted by milder conversation, her muscles continued to loosen. Then the mood shifted again. Poppy could see the moment something shifted in Domagoj. His hesitation brought her hesitation, unsure what could've shifted in the time they stood there.
Don't...panic...?
Hair? Her hair—OH!
The locks that had only just begun to lighten into their natural blonde sank for a split section into bone white with surprise before she caught herself. Her hands rose at once, shaking in tandem with her hair. "Oh, no. N—No, no, it's...it's nothing like that. It...my hair...it just...does that sometimes. I—It has a mind of it's own s—sometimes." No matter how much she wished it would stop.
Encyclopaedia ✿ Metamorphmagus ✿ If the sun shines, that's reason enough.
Aftershock
| —— |
—date. [ 05/03/26 ]——————word count. [ 1029 ]— Roland, donning his face with a quiet smile, replied to the Grimsbane girl with a chiding tsk - not once, thrice. "We aren't meant to do nothing. Unless, of course, it's your desire." He displayed a little shrug. It was his most sincere conviction, he was not trying to be insolent, he had always been genuinely appalled by the phrases 'have to', 'meant to', 'supposed to', the most utterly repulsive constructions of this Anglo-Saxon language. Well, what else could one possibly expect from a boy raised by a man whose harshest command was 'I'd prefer you didn't.' Especially when that exact same man practically made a religion out of screaming, 'WE'RE NOT YOUR SUBJECTS!' at the image of the then-Prince Charles on the telly. The apple, as they say, doesn't fall from the tree, huh? Could our Roland truly claim that he wasn't utterly spellbound by this entirely and absurdly new realm? Hardly. Since the day a Ministry official arrived to the Marin house with that parchment on his hand, the river of his life had violently taken a dramatic turn. But then again, the boy was practically built for drama itself. Besides, his deep aversion to the idea of looking like a tourist was of considerable importance (frankly, who doesn't despise them, even slightly?). They were an invasive mass, a mob perfectly willing to swoon in raptorous adoration before the most common streetlamp, a thing of no meaning to the native eye. They were famous for learning just one word of greeting and then aggressively weaponise it, throwing it at weary servers who watch the clock. They were like born-again Alices all shoved down the rabbit hole, hand-in-hand. And beneath it all was a feral greed to get their money's worth, the money they spent in agony for their cheap tray. Roland categorically refused to walk the halls of the castle in the skin of a tourist. Granted, there were countless mysteries he had yet to fathom, but he was quick enough to realise that the lore was forcibly shoved down one's throat, regardless of their wish. So, he decided not to give himself a migraine trying to study it independently, and he resolved to conduct himself as though he'd been birthed in one of this castle's very chambers. It was, from one perspective, a defensive mechanism as well. Much like their family trip to Lyon where he refused to speak a word of English for over a week, forcing a rusted French to bind himself to the local earth. If, therefore, he now chose to reduce the Hat to a stinking fraud, and if he was so eager to caricature the marvels around the castle, it was his own method of surviving the shock of being thrown into this circus. An override - translating the magical anomaly back into baseline Muggle reality to bypass the heavy melancholy of being a tragic little mudblood. Yet, if the path of our migration pulls us from the borders of Roland's inner landscape and plunges us back into the immediate realm of his conversation with Poppy, as the moment demands aloud, we hear the drawn breath of his answer. "No, not really, Poppy" Roland replied. "I don't have a preferred name. Well, Roland was a hero, you know, a Frankish darling from the Charlemagne era. And Domagoj was a Croatian duke who waged war against the Franks. Ironic, huh?" He offered a wry smile. What mind would bind a boy to the names of two men who shared an era and spent their lives trying to destroy one another? Was it a deliberate attempt to trigger a split personality? "Just... no one calls me Domagoj here, as I said. It might be nice to hear it, now and then. But if it rings like a tongue-twister, no problem, at least you don't call me Ronald." A truly annoying proportion of the people here carried the belief that his name was Ronald. Ronald! As if the Marko Marin was a tragic admirer of Harry Potter's heroics. As if the young lion named after his ginger sidekick. Roland couldn't simply understand why slightly rearranging a few letters was such an intellectual strain for these people. It was equally hard to comprehend the magnificent indolence of the British. He held three languages and hungered for a fourth, yet these islanders, privileged by a language the whole world was forced to speak, was terribly passionate to turn their nose up at even the mere idea of crossing the border into another tongue. "No, no, I love theatre," Roland went on. "It's just... Dover is just a small edge of the world. And I don't understand why my parents have to be so avant-garde. I mean... they have brilliant backgrounds, but they don't even consider to drag their stage up to London." It was something that even Roland's young mind could weigh its unreason. Why'd two gifted artists, trained by the best in Paris, insist upon languishing in a fishing town of barely fifty thousand souls? "And I don't know well the career paths available in this world. Not truly. Perhaps I can be a master Transfigurer, you know? Assuming they'll actually pay me for it. Turning myself into an ironing board for fifty galleons sounds easier to memorise Shakespeare." He let a short silence fall. "What about yours? I'm sure you come from a place larger than Dover. It feels as though everywhere must be larger than Dover." At the girl's final assertion, though, a shadow of quiet doubt settled upon Roland's face. "I... see..." he managed to articulate. "Your hair, you say, umm, has a mind of its own. Hmm. Must be a lovely thing." The waters of his mind were troubled. "Are you sure, right, that we don't need to walk to the... ehm... Hospital Wing?" If the shifting colour of her hair wasn't the lingering poison of a cruel potion, as he'd initially deduced, then perhaps the healers could at least offer her a certain draught to clear the fog from her mind, right? Since when, after all, and in what mythology, did the hair upon a head hold a mind of its own? ═════════════════════ ═════════════════════( interacting with @persephone grimsbane codes by uly & banner credit goes to harlan ! )— | —— |
| sta • 6 | eva • 5 | str • 2 THEATRE KID wis • 9 | arc • 7 | acc • 6 | the muggle condition THROUGH⠀THE⠀YEARS every step a scene worth watching |