Gritty Situation PV Celeste Wetherstead Closed

Nikolai, inevitably, walked right into a poor, unsuspecting student. And she, in turn, walked right into him—her level of distraction equal to or possibly even greater than his own. The two students collided, Nikolai’s borrowed book slamming open-spine first into his nose. The girl (Nikolai caught flashes of her as he reacted by yanking the book from his vision; sharply geometric bobbed hair, dream-like gray eyes, a far-away expression, Ravenclaw colors) reacted in a manner Nikolai wouldn’t have expected in a thousand years.

She dumped sand on him.

His first reaction, aside from surprise, was just to stare at his shoes with a blank, confused expression. Sand? Seriously? Where did she get it? Why? And why did it end up on his shoes? Where was she keeping it? Why?

His eyes snapped back up to her—not a terribly long journey, she was practically as small as he was—and his lip curled with sudden, embarrassed venom.

“I’m short?” he snapped. “You run into me and get bloody sand all over me, and all I get is ‘you’re short’? Are you serious?!” He puffed up, a defense mechanism (his pale face pink all the way to his ears). “What the hell are you doing with a bunch of sand in your pockets?”

A little part of him recoiled from his own reaction. He hated that his fuse was so short, sometimes. Wished he could pull the wick out, give his temper more of a slow burn. And some of that must have shown in the way his brow wrinkled in sad confusion.

Oh crêpes. So he was angry, after all.

Celeste stared at the boy unblinkingly throughout his outburst, snapping at her with enough withering animosity to make her rethink her actions a little. Why was he angry? Because she dumped sand on him? Why would he be angry about that? What was wrong with a bit of sand here and there? She kept quiet, sensing that to bring this up would be to only be inviting further trouble.

The proper thing to do would be to apologise and offer to get his shoes cleaned for him. However, Celeste being Celeste, she decided to answer his questions first.

"Well, you are short," she said, turning out her pocket and watching the last remnants of sand fall to the floor, "Like me. But I wasn't running. I'm never not serious. Except when I'm joking, of course. And it's in case I get hungry, obviously." It did not occur to her that this was not obvious, at all, nor that the disjointed nature of her speech (a habit formed from her tendency to address every part of someone's speech chronologically) could cause confusion.

She continued to stare at the boy, his freckled face bright pink with indignation, puffed up like a watermelon, brow crinkled with an emotion that Celeste failed to recognise. Finally, the thought that perhaps she should introduce herself came ambling leisurely into her head. Wasn't that what most people did, when they met someone new?

"Oh yes. I'm Celeste Wetherstead." she paused to consider whether shaking his hand would be a good move, before deciding in the affirmative, thus proving once and for all that this girl is totally incapable of reading the room. Plucking the book from his unwilling grip, Celeste reached out to take his left hand in hers, ignoring the snickers of several passing students, and pump it with the intensity of a biker with a deflated tyre and a pack of wolves behind him.

Interacting with @Nikolai Dragos

“Wait, you eat—” Nikolai began, his jaw working out the syllables that didn’t vocalize themselves in pure disbelief. Was that a wizard thing? Did wizards eat sand? All the food in the Great Hall so far had seemed… normal, at least. Did only the most elite wizards consume sand? Did it make your magic better? Was she making fun of him for not knowing intensely obscure wizarding knowledge? Was this some kind of hazing thing? Did she… actually eat sand?

Nikolai stared at her as she rambled, his mouth more and more agape as further nonsense spilled out of her. It would appear that it wasn’t just her gaze that seemed far-away and dreamy, it was her whole head. There was such casual nonchalance to her every word and movement that he thought for a moment she might be under some kind of spell. He wondered if she was capable of linear, cohesive thought at all.

Rude, he told himself. Weren’t you taught better than to assume the worst about people?

And then she yanked the library book out of his hand without warning.

He didn’t even have the chance to try and grab it back, she’d taken him so off guard. The girl seized his (now vacant) left hand and shook with a ferocity that almost knocked him off his feet. His teeth snapped in his head, bit the edge of his tongue, with the force of her greeting. He uttered a confused noise, something between a yelp and a whimper.

“I—hey!” Nikolai managed to cry once he had worked himself free of the shock. With the hand that wasn’t held hostage, he tried to snatch the book back. “That’s library property! You can’t just—!”

The frustration that had begun with a collision was starting to come to a boil in Nikolai’s blood, and, finally fed up, he shouted: “Why are you being such a jerk?!”

Oh, how rude. It was an immensely difficult task to ruffle Celeste's feathers, not least (as she would have said) since she didn't have feathers, but her metaphorical feathers were certainly rumpled right now. Okay, so maybe she had been a bit rough on him, she knew that people were sometimes surprised by such strength coming from such a small girl, but really, you would've thought that he'd stuck his hand into an electric socket with the fuss and noise he made.

The boy—who still hadn't introduced himself, mind—groped for the book with his free hand, protesting about it being library property or some such, and so Celeste very reasonably extended her arm to him. However she had failed to moderate the speed with which her arm had moved, and as a result it shot out like a bullet and the accompanying book knocked against his chest with a dull thump. I don't know if this counts as godmodding, so sorry if it does and feel free to make him duck/dodge it

To any normal, sensible person, they would have realised that this seemed a lot like assault and bullying. Alas, Celeste was not normal nor sensible by any definition of the words, so any distress on the boy's part would be, in her mind, totally unwarranted and overdramatic.

Wait. Did he just call her a jerk?

She, Celeste Wetherstead, a jerk?

The nerve of this Hufflepuff shrimp!

"I'm not being a jerk," she said, all but flinging his hand out of her grasp. "You walked into me! And you didn't even introduce yourself after I did!"

She stopped to pat down her hair, which had started to bounce up in her indignation, and tried to regulate her tone. This proved nigh impossible, for one look at all the lovely, wasted sand scattered haphazardly over his shoes and her temper flared. Admittedly this wasn't a very serious threat, because Celeste at her angriest was somewhat reminiscent of an irate hamster—oddly cute and prone to biting. In any case, she shot the boy a look like the woman in the "the what" meme and gave the worst insult she could think of on the spot. "I don't like you."

@Nikolai Dragos

Nikolai was about to protest again, one hand snatching desperately for the library book and the other still trapped in her surprisingly iron grip. When she, for apparently no reason, decided to look affronted at him. What the hell had he done?!

She knocked the wind out of him by shoving the book back into his chest, and he stumbled back a full step. Dazed, Nikolai shook his head to regain his faculties. Both hands now free of her draconian grip, he latched both arms around the book like it was a life raft and she was a shark. Turned half away from her to put the book out of her direct line of sight.

Now, Nikolai was not at all a proponent of stiff-upper-lip and manners-minded mindset (because, yes, he had to be honest, he was kind of a little jerk himself). But he still knew what common freaking human decency was, and either this girl was an outright bully or she just didn’t care. Nikolai didn’t know which option was worse.

He’d had his fair share of encounters with bullies back in the regular world (muggle world, he harshly snapped at himself). And he had never quite had the spine or the confidence to stand up to them before—he was much better at running away than defending himself, which didn’t curry him much favor with those doing the bullying. But Nikolai wasn’t in the muggle world anymore. He was a wizard now. He could be someone different. He could be someone that stood up to bullies.

So Nikolai reeled up, spine straight, and scoffed: “Um, yeah, you absolutely are being a jerk! And to be pretty honest, I’m not really fond of you, either, right now! Here’s some advice, okay? If you want someone to introduce themselves, don’t steal things from them!”

Nikolai kicked one of his feet out in her direction, trying to return the favor and return some of the sand she’d spilled on him—back onto her shoes, if she chose not to shuffle back out of the way.

Celeste was now well and truly pissed off. Not that she would ever have used that phrase to describe herself. If you had asked her at that moment, she would have exclaimed that she was “just fine, thank you!” in a manner that suggested she was not in fact just fine, but that to contest her claim would bring her ire down on you, so it was best to nod your head and beat a hasty retreat.

He still hadn’t introduced himself. What a jerk. Now, standing the short distance he had staggered away, half-turned, clutching his book like a shield and she was a wild boar, he had the nerve to glare at her. At her!

Okay, maybe she’d come on a bit strong. Her father had told her she had a tendency to do that sometimes. She still remembered vividly the time he had taken her aside, looked her sternly in the eyes, and told her that sometimes people didn’t always get what she was doing. It might be obvious to her, but she needed to watch out for herself, he said, face softening with sympathy, since not everyone would understand that calling them a tortoise was a compliment, nor that sand was a perfectly normal thing to keep in their pockets. He had then released her, shooing her back to her room, but not before she heard him mutter under his breath that “it’s not”. Yeah. That had been a serious blow to her self-esteem, but she was over it. In any case, Celeste was just preparing to say something vaguely apologetic and declare peace restored when the (still unnamed!) boy went ramrod-straight and launched into a scornfully derisive, infuriatingly self-righteous speech. Which instantly ignited her temper again. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was squids. That wasn’t relevant. Another thing she couldn’t stand was people giving sarcastic advice, because though she would never admit it she often couldn’t tell when they were being sarcastic, to disastrous effect. He even accused her of stealing. Stealing! So he was dense as well as rude! Because anyone with eyes would have termed that as robbery, not theft. But she didn’t bring that up, sensing that it would do little to placate him.

And to add injury to insult, switching the phrase because it applied, the boy kicked her sand at her. The idea of moving failed to occur to her, instead she just stood and let the sand billow over her shoes and settle.

And now she was flipping mad. “At least I didn’t yell at anyone,” she said furiously. “And I’d rather eat squid than take your advice. Maybe you shouldn’t be a Hufflepuff, if you’re so quick to get angry! Patience, fairness, I don’t see that in you at all! Go screw a lightbulb!”

With that final jab, Celeste took out her wand and poked it through the thin river of sand between them, sending up sparks.

@Nikolai Dragos

This was absolutely getting out of hand, and it appeared neither of them were aware of the fact that they were causing a scene. The corridor was still bustling, but more than a few eyes had turned to their increasingly loud interactions.

Okay, so Nikolai was new to this whole magical school thing (and magic in general), but no one got to tell him that he didn’t belong. Because he already flipping knew that. He knew that the Hufflepuffs had all been incredibly patient and kind with this newbie in their midst, someone who couldn’t tell toadflax from wormwood if you had a gun (or a wand) to his head. Of course he questioned the Sorting Hat’s decision the moment he knew how to tell a Hufflepuff from a Gryffindor. Nikolai was anything but patient—he was a neurotic little mess; a worried, tense little boy.

(Someone who loved his friends and family more fiercely than he could ever love himself, when they had the patience to move through his shell; when he found the courage to let them in.)

Stubbornness rose in him like a stormcloud, and his lip curled in defiance. Ready to spit another line at her.

The girl whipped her wand out, and Nikolai’s heart froze solid in his chest. His breath stopped, eyes wide and suddenly pinned to the spot in fear.

And he was ten years old again, pinned to the wall behind the school—the older boy’s hand holding him hard to the spot, flat on his chest, made it hard to breathe. He could barely even remember the boy’s words. Just how much stronger he was than Nikolai, how much bigger, how easily he could have seriously hurt him if he’d wanted to. Nikolai had come home with bruises that he’d hidden from his kindhearted mother. Sat nauseated on the edge of his bed for hours into the quiet night, sick with just the thought of going back to school.

If just some muggle bully could do that much to him, what could this witch do? What spell was she going to throw at him? How many spells were there that she could use to hurt him?

Nikolai stumbled back a step, knees shaking. Lost his footing and fell backwards onto the flagstones. Couldn’t help the shaking radiating outward from his chest in waves. And he just winced, his instincts reverting, ready for the blow like he’d taken so many times before. Like he deserved it.