Career Day with The Arjan Oberoi Errand Open

Credit to Maisie Gemmell

The @Arjan Oberoi

Aislin was a twelve-year-old with a number of strengths: creativity, knowing bug facts, asking too many questions. Paying attention to signage and announcements was not among her strengths, though, and so she'd missed that today was Career Day. The unusually high number of old-looking people might have tipped her off, but seventh years might just look like that, especially after the stresses of NEWTs, who was she to judge? She'd been busy thinking about her own finals, pulling off a last-minute grade flip (or trying to).

Wandering outdoors for a brain break, or maybe just a better study spot (she hadn't tried sitting in a tree yet, would that work?), it was much harder to miss the tent pitched by the Quidditch Stadium. Aislin wasn't much of a Quidditch person, but she knew that wasn't usually there. Curiosity drew her closer, squinting in the sun at posters, brooms, faceless mannequins... and finally an adult man. He definitely wasn't a Hogwarts student. He was... some kind of sports player? Now that she thought about it, standing right in front of his tent and eyeing lots of pictures of this same guy flying, she vaguely remembered hearing something about Hogwarts welcoming professionals to show off their jobs, though he didn't seem to be doing much of that at the moment. Done with her silent observation, she stood up a little straighter and asked, "Who are you?" If she'd looked around a little longer, she surely would have seen Oberoi plastered everywhere.

T H E- A R J A N- O B E R O I

@Aislin Darragh

He realised how much he was going to hate being here when the first visitor was a child. Most of the people who came to the stall today would be children. Wasn't there any cute professors that could visit? Who was their Quidditch Professor? He had no idea but maybe it was an attractive twenty year old woman!

The young child would mostly get ignored. She would probably just want a signature or a photograph or something and he really just couldn't be bothered. It was hard being so popular- wait- what? The words that came out of her mouth caught his attention, shocking him. She had... no idea who he was?! "Wh- who am I?! Who are you?!" He retorted, in a display of true maturity, of course! "I'm The Arjan Oberoi. The famous athlete. I've won tournaments!" Wait, why was he defending himself to a child?! Who was she! Right, who did she think she was to have the audacity to question him and his greatness. He was the famous one! His name was literally in magazines! His photo was everywhere! HER MUM WAS PROBABLY A HUGE FAN OF HIM!

Yes, that was right! "Ask your mum about me! You're obviously too young to know about the real world and stuff. She probably comes to my matches, she's probably a huge fan."

Credit to Maisie Gemmell

The @Arjan Oberoi

She didn't think she'd ever actually seen an adult man splutter (that was the word, wasn't it?). Maybe she just didn't see her uncles enough for it, and her grandad was much too refined for this sort of thing. She blinked through the rush of words. "Aislin Darragh?" Aislin held no expectation that he'd know who she was. It would probably be weird if he did. Her family name was recognizable to some, but he didn't sound Irish, and it was usually only Irish witching folk from the Midlands who'd heard of or gone to the farm. The Arjan Oberoi was indeed not a familiar name, and could he really be famous if she'd never heard of him? "I've never heard of you," she decided to tell him, though she didn't sound like she was trying to be mean about it, just sharing a genuine piece of information to bridge the apparent confusion. Maybe Arjan Oberoi was famous in his circle of sports people? People who followed things like tournaments.

Her nose wrinkled at the mention of her mam. "I don't think my mam goes to any games." Aislin guessed she could, there was a lot of time in the last year Aislin hadn't been around for, but she tended to brew potions, talk with Christine, or hang around the house and look kind of sad. She did listen to the radio sometimes. "But I can ask her?" she offered, scratching her ear. "And aren't you supposed to be telling me about the real world? If you're here for the Career Day."

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@Aislin Darragh

The former Durmstrang player was almost offended by this Aislin Darragh girl! Who the heck was she? Nobody, that's who! As she spoke, he suddenly started to realise the issue. Perhaps she was a muggleborn or raised by those muggle folks or something. Yes, that would make sense. Anyone magical would obviously recognise him but this school allowed all sorts of people to attend. In his day, almost everyone was a pureblood at Durmstrang!

"Well, I've never heard of you," He retorted in return. If this was a cartoon, he would have stuck his tongue out in a childish manner. He pondered her statement. "Well, aren't you supposed to be asking questions?!" He added! The audacity of this little girl!

He sighed, leaned forward in his chair and put his elbows on his knees, "You want to know about the real world waiting for you when you graduate? Alright, kid, listen up then, the real world is hard. There's lots of pressure, from family or society or whatever, but you have to take responsibility for yourself and your own happiness. What sports are you interested in?" He assumed she was interested in something because, well who wasn't?! And she was here, right? She must have liked Quidditch or Broom Racing or a muggle sport or anything athletic.

Arjan's life may not have been a difficult one, per se. He never had to worry about money, or anything but even then, he had things he wanted and things that society wanted from him, which he refused. He fought against the family's pressure to do something he cared about. That was important, you have to live for your own dreams and he was a master at thinking about himself.

Credit to Maisie Gemmell

The @Arjan Oberoi

It was possible that she was supposed to be asking the questions. Aislin wasn't really sure how a Career Day worked. He answered her, though, and because of the surprise of it, she listened with a surprising amount of focus. That the world was hard was nothing she hadn't heard before, nothing she hadn't seen in the grey hairs her mam charmed away. But she knew mostly about the pressures of jobs and money. Happiness was never really something she'd thought about adults needing to protect, though she thought he sounded right and nodded slowly, agreeing. Under her breath, she repeated, pressure, responsibility, happiness.

Then Arjan asked about sports, and Aislin wasn't completely sure what that had to do with looking out for your happiness -- maybe you needed to keep up your exercise? "I really like duelling!" The brooms and flying photos caught her eye again and she added, since he didn't look like a duellist, "Broom racing, too. I like how fast they go. Is that what you do?"

She took a few steps away from him, wandering the tent. "You have a lot of brooms," she noted, and Arjan would probably be happy that she didn't reach out to touch any of them. She did reach for one of the moving pictures of Arjan in flight, pulling it off the wall if she could and spinning around to show him. "What were you doing here?" If she was supposed to be asking questions, she could absolutely ask questions. "Did you... learn anything important when it was taken? About being an adult?" That was a fitting Career Day question, right?

T H E- A R J A N- O B E R O I

@Aislin Darragh

Arjan was actually rather surprised that the little rugrat answered him. He almost thought she would say she hated all sports and only liked books, which would have been gross. "Not specifically," He replied as he pondered a bit. His stuff was similar to broom racing, sometimes, "I take part in this tournament called the Wizard Trials. It's like magical trials to test your abilities. Each trial is entirely different. The last game I played had three trials. One was essentially a mini broom race, the second was like everyone was a beater and had to bludger their opponents off their brooms and the third trial was a team fight. There are mazes, different terrians, capture the item or flag, individual trials as well as team trials, I dunno, there's quite a lot..." He tried to explain. In a way, a duelist or broom racer may enjoy some of the trials but may hate others. Arjan enjoyed being able to do Quidditch type things without having to protect a puny seeker for the most part but hated having to cast so many spells.

For the first time, Arjan actually stood up. He towered over the girl as he approached and looked at the picture, "Oh well the photographers love me, so they are always taking photos. That one..." He paused and looked at it closely trying to recall the exact moment. In the picture, he was captured smirking whilst leaning forward on the broom, just flying in the sky. "Oh yeah, you see that there? It's the edge of a hoop in the background. The challenge was a race, flying through hoops without touching them. It was kind of easy, bit boring so I suppose I learned that adulting can be easy if you're good at it," He replied with a nod. He had no idea why they didn't add fire or something interesting to the hoops. A race? Pffft, too easy. Then again, there were other racers and people were allowed to use magic..."Actually, I change my mind. I learned that it's important to always look good. You never know when someone will take a photo," He added, deciding that was the real lesson here!

Credit to Maisie Gemmell

The @Arjan Oberoi

Aislin might have heard of the Wizard Trials before. They sounded faintly familiar, like one of those things that had been said while she wasn't really listening. Honestly, they sounded so cool. Arjan was an interesting guy, interesting in that she wasn't quite sure what to think of him. Her nan would probably say he had an overinflated ego. But what Arjan did for a job had her attention, her fascination; it was chaotic, violent, probably loads of fun. She nodded along, and her eyes went a bit wider with each detail. "You can get paid to do that?" she blurted, incredulous.

She was realizing that Arjan didn't just get paid for this. He was probably rich, if he had this many brooms and all these photos of him. Some of that came with the sport and maybe his family, some of that was all him. The photographers love me. She wasn't sure she'd like that. Though it was kind of nice when Christine took pictures of her and her mam, she knew Christine, and Arjan didn't know these people. At least, she didn't think so.

Neither old nor experienced enough to raise an eyebrow, Aislin skipped right past his commentary on the ease of adulting. But at it's important to always look good, she said, "Huh." She wrinkled her nose. As a kid who existed in outfits assembled from hand-me-downs and had never shied away from dirt, she wasn't living by that rule. She also didn't really think she cared for it. "Have you ever had a bad photo taken on you? One where you weren't looking good for it?" None of the photos here looked bad, but of course they'd been hand-selected. The same filter perhaps did not exist for Aislin's mouth. "Is it even possible to look good if you, say, get knocked off your broom?"