A Picnic by the Lake PV Aurora Ranvier Closed

@Melody Rathburn

Honestly, it was really nice to talk about these things with those who did not know how the muggle world works. It was a bit funny to think that some people think everyone is nice and will always have good intentions. If only that was true.
“No muggleborns gone mad because we got lucky, and plus, I don't think Hogwarts admits 1000 muggleborns at once, that would be overwhelming. my Mom is a muggle born witch, my step father is a muggle. He’s, well, interesting, but not bad, i mean bad, but not that kind of bad.” Aurora rolled her eyes at the mention of her step father.

“It was really hard for my mom, and my father, my real father, since he was a wizard as well, to stop themselves to use magic around the house, it wasn’t as hard for me because I showed my magic pretty late, let’s just say that I am a late bloomer.” She chuckled a bit, then shifted gaze to the lake as her body turned a little tense.
“I have muggle relatives too, but they left, once they knew my mother was a witch. Never tried to reach out for us, not even once.”
“The thing is, we live in a world where some people cannot appreciate something that looks different than them. Not everyone is open minded. Some of them are dim witted.”
As she paused for a little while, her hand reached for the soury lemonade. She drank in a big gulp as her face made another scrunched expression.

“While in the wizarding world, there are lots of prejudices against muggle born and slytherin being evil, in the muggle world, people also have prejudices and racism, and it is really bad.”
Then, she turned her head to face Melody as she raised her hand halfway abruptly.
“But, muggles are not all bad! They have great inventions. This is the best invention they ever made, pen and pencil! Watch this!”

The Ravenclaw put her hand inside of her robe, she had two additional pockets stitched up inside. After a couple seconds, she held up a wooden stick with one pointed edge and another stick with a little cap on the bottom. She handed them to Melody so the Hufflepuff could touch and admire them.

Melody frowned into her drink. Aurora certainly was smart. That would make sense as to why she was a Ravenclaw. But she also saw things in a way Melody would have never looked. It changed her point of view, really, and made her wonder even more about the muggle world. What more did it have to offer?

"I guess muggles aren't very different from us, then," said Melody considerately.

As Melody listened to her companion go on about the prejudices of muggles and things they had done, she ate her sandwich so fast that soon all she was left with were the ghost crumbs of her eaten sandwich. She frowned down at her empty hands and, wanting something to do, drank out of her lemonade. The tart drink brought her back to her senses and she went back to paying attention to the girl.

Melody was handed two strange little sticks, and she poked them curiously. She wondered if she was supposed to eat them, although they didn't look that appetizing to her. She smelled them, and coughed. The pointy one smelled like wood, and the capped one smelled of ink. She shook them and held them up to her ear, wondering if they were some sort of listening device. Finally she gave up, and set them down on the checkered blanket.

"What are these?" Melody frowned, "they smell funny, I can't hear anything out of them, and I hope I'm not supposed to eat them because of the smell. You say these are a pen and.. pentil?"

The words seemed so strange on her tongue, and she pulled out her wand. She began prodding the sticks as if it would do something, she didn't know what they were nor any helpful spells that would reveal what they were. The only spell she knew was to turn a Whistle to a Watch.

Melody held the capped stick up to the sun's light. "Wait.. I've seen one of these. Don't you write with them?"

Melody then tried (and failed) to write with the stick, she kept the cap on and rubbed it against the back of her hand. Her eyebrows furrowed and she rubbed it with frustration, nothing was showing, her hand was still pale and smooth. She crossed her arms and threw it back on the ground, looking up to Aurora for an explanation.

"It doesn't work."

Word Count: 397

@Melody Rathburn

Amusement was all that Aurora was feeling. The sight of the confused Hufflepuff admiring a pencil and a pen like it was the weirdest thing on the entire world. Melody looked like a stranded person who ended up on an alien planet. Was she trying to eat the pencil? She did ask if it was edible on the letter, that should not be surprising. Wizards are weird. It’s 2021, and some people don’t know what a pencil and a pen are. Maybe they do need a little bit more of muggle exposure.

“Why would you want to eat it? There’s ink and graphite inside!”
But, maybe that was how some first years who grew up in the muggle world looked like when they first stepped their foot in Hogwarts. She looked at Melody, who started to recognize the pen. That was better than nothing. Although, she could not use it because she did not open the cap.

“That is not how you supposed to use it” She let out a light-hearted laugh as her hand grabbed the pen from the confused girl. “Here, let me show you how, open the cap first-“ slowly opened the cap, “-then, you write with it,” The Ravenclaw grabbed the parchment that she previously handed to Melody and began to write her name on it.

“You don’t have to dip it on ink since the ink is already inside! You cannot erase it, though. But you could-“ She picked the pencil from Melody’s hand, “-with a pencil.” Aurora began to write her name as ‘Aurors’, grabbed an eraser from her robe, brushed it against the parchment and replaced the 's' with an 'a'.

“What an invention, am I right? No more spilt ink, just like magic.” She handed it back to Melody and said, “You can have them.”

"Graphite?" Melody cocked her head and allowed Aurora to take the pen from her clumsy, small hands.

Melody watched keenly with interest as the girl took off the capped part and wrote her name on it. She felt excited, as if she had made a brand new discovery that no one else had. She wanted to take the pen back, but before she could, the other, wooden stick was taken from her hands. She watched as Aurora spelled her name incorrectly and was about to say something before her companion made it disappear and rewrote it.

"So it's like the opposite of a Revealer?" asked Melody eagerly. She was handed the sticks back and beamed, "wow! Really? These are cool!"

By now, Melody had forgotten all about the food and all about her wand, which lay beside her on the blanket, untouched. She grabbed a piece of parchment from the basket and started to write her name on it with the 'pencil.' The words came out in her usual big, loopy cursive, and she watched in fascination as it was a dark grey color instead of black.

The parchment was soon covered in Melody's scribbles and doodles, she had drawn a flower and a badger on it, as well as her name over and over and over again. She thought it was the strangest little thing, but her hand started to cramp up and she used her opposite one to grab her cup of lemonade and press the cool condensation against her tired hand.

"They kind of hurt to use," Melody frowned. The shape of the pencil was made up of a several surfaced block, instead of being completely round. The pen was round all the way around, but whatever material it was made out of was painful, and it pressed up against her knuckles. She pocketed both of the sticks and looked up to her new friend.

"I think I'll stick to quills," said Melody with a grin, "but thanks!"

Word Count: 333

Interaction: @Aurora Ranvier

@Melody Rathburn

It was an exceptional fun experience to introduce a magical person how a non magical world works. Melody was not a dumb kid, of course. She just grew up in a different way that she did. But she can't help to feel like a scientist who discovered something life-changing

"Graphite is a type of carbon, some said you could turn it into a diamond if you heat it, not sure how it works, though." Melody was exceptionally similar with her childhood friend, Naomi. Although, Naomi is usually more chaotic and talkative. She would be happy to meet Aurora's new friend, plus, another witch. The Hufflepuff looked like a toddler who just learn how to write and being so happy because they now can write properly.

It was so amusing to see, She wondered what would it be like if she take Melody to an apple store. The thought of mentioning the Apple store and misunderstood it as a shop that sells apple made Aurora giggling like a mad scientist. Doodle after doodle slowly filled the parchment, was this what some mothers were feeling when seeing their kids just happily playing around? Not that she thought Melody as her daughter, that would be weird and creepy. Aurora never really seen someone can be so fascinated by a pen and a pencil before. After a while, she noticed the Hufflepuff getting tired from her previous activity.

"Yeah, sometimes it may hurt your fingers, especially if you write like a really long essay for a long period of time." The memory of her hands redden from hours of drawing with pencils filled her mind for a second. There was something else that Aurora would love to show her new friend. Melody will jump in excitement like a gymnast if she see what a laptop can do. Unfortunately, Aurora did not have one with her. A little smirk planted on her face.
"I assume, you never see a laptop, haven't you?"
"I would be happy to show you the muggle worlds and its technology during the break if you want to. I won't push you to do something you don't want, of course. That would be considered as kidnapping."

Melody had no idea how the muggle world worked. Pure-blood, with a large, annoying extended family, she couldn't imagine coping without using magic wherever she went. She didn't know any spells, but her mother needed to, and she was quite a good witch as well. If she didn't have magic, Melody's little cousins would have surely wrecked their entire house into even more than a wreck it was.

She looked up as Aurora began to discuss something.. a 'lappop?' Melody didn't want her lap to pop off, she liked it too much for that. Her little cousin, Finn, liked to sit on it too, much to her annoyance, and beg her to read bedtime stories. She didn't have time for that.

"All of this 'technoloy' makes me hungry," muttered Melody, grabbing another sandwich from the basket.

As she munched on the new sandwich (corned beef), she looked out across the lake, for she thought she saw a figure there. When she shook her head once more, she realized she had just been imagining things, for all that stood there was a rock. She looked back at her companion, and chose that moment to take a very large bite of her sandwich, swallow, and, eyes watering, continue to talk.

"But how do you not.. you know.." said Melody, intrigued, "how do you live without magic?! I mean, I get it, they've been doing.. alright, for a while. But.."

She paused and looked down at her sandwich, which was looking considerably less delicious now. She set it down on the blanket and took a sip of her lemonade. The cool refreshment felt nice on her dry throat.

"I mean, we've been doing better, right? Besides all the Dark Arts and stuff, our life just seems.. so much easier," she shrugged, "they just have to do so much work."

The more Melody thought of it, she realized that's what she thought more. The sun was growing higher, stretching up past the highest of clouds. As she looked at the light-stained fluffs of condensation, she felt sorry for muggles. She felt sorry they had to live their lives without using magic, sorry that they didn't get to experience ever going to Hogwarts and watching one of these magical sunrises. She felt sorry that they were just.. muggles.

Turning back to Aurora, she tucked a loose strand of brown behind her ear and bit her lip thoughtfully. "You know, muggle-borns are just muggles who get to use magic.. or is it that they have some long lost descendant who was magical?"

Whatever point Melody was trying to prove, or make, it clearly wasn't working. She was just as confused and concerned as before, the muggle world did funny things to her head. The thoughts inside her head felt like snakes, weaving their way around her brain and squeezing it, so that she was trying hard to think of something interesting to say, compared to all of these muggle things Aurora was showing her. She felt awkward, and decided to switch the subject over to something more magical.

"So.. how many times have you gotten lost in the castle?" she laughed nervously, playing with her fingers, "I think I have more than I could count."

Melody mentally slapped her forehead at what she thought was such a boring thing to say. And embarrassing. She doubted this smart, Ravenclaw, 'O' student would get lost as much as her, a foolish, clumsy, doltish Hufflepuff. Her cheeks burned red and she took another small bite of her sandwich, though she felt as though she couldn't taste it at all.

Word Count: 397 Sorry that took so long I've been busy with stuff OOC

@Melody Rathburn

One thing that Aurora learned about wizards that have no idea about how muggles function in a daily basis is that they are a bit strange. What did they expect muggles do? Living inside a cave and making drawings on the stone wall? Do wizards think they are so advanced, huh? Interesting. Well, of course magic is impressive and all, but they still use a bird to deliver messages which is very inconvenient

“We’re doing just fine! Technology helped a lot. Let’s just say, technology is magic to muggles.”
Aurora reached for the sandwiches that Melody brought with her. She looked at the Hufflepuff to see whether she approved or not, if she gave any gesture that could have been an unapproval, she grabbed the lemon drink instead. Melody mentioned something really interesting. Something that the Ravenclaw never even thought about before. “Ah, now that you mentioned it-“ She tilted her head slightly, “-it’s possible, I suppose.” Maybe those with magical ability has this extra ‘magic’ chromosome in their DNA or something, that would be cool.
“Maybe, Adam and Eve were purebloods, then maybe they had a couple of children and one of them was a squib, then they marry a pureblood, became half-blood, then maybe there was another squib in the family, then squib with squib became-“ She turned her head to Melody, “-Muggle?”. Aurora thought she just discovered something extraordinary. Obviously, she was not the first person who thought of that, but still, she felt smart all of the sudden.

The Hufflepuff looked a bit concerned about something, or maybe she felt awkward, it wasn’t clear. Perhaps she felt slightly left behind when discussing muggle stuff since she was not really familiar with the topic. Before Aurora could ask what was on Melody’s mind, she asked something about getting lost in Hogwarts. This magical school is a huge castle, of course Aurora often ended up in places she did not intend to visit more than she wanted to admit. She will blame the identical hallways and corridors across the castle.
“a load of times, besides, getting lost somewhere is another fun adventure!” Well, not really. She remembered that time when she ended up crying in the basement because it was dark. That will always be a secret and will never be mentioned to anyone.