Silence Finished

"You know that's not what I meant, Cecily," Adam replied as the two of them approached the door of the empty classroom on the fifth floor. He and his fellow Ravenclaw had met up in the corridors and, when they realized they were headed to the same place, had walked together to the classroom. Pushing the door open, Adam stepped into the room and was surprised to find another girl already there. She introduced herself with a smile, and Adam tried not to seem too caught off-guard by her presence.

"Oh! Hi! I'm Adam." It wasn't his most elegant greeting, but it wasn't his most awkward, either. Adam supposed that it would suffice. Besides, he didn't think the girl would care that much about how he introduced himself. She didn't know him, and almost everyone he'd met at the castle seemed pretty nice, anyways. "It's nice to meet you too, Amadea."

She was a Hufflepuff, he noticed, judging from the yellow tie around her neck. On the desk in front of her sat a Charms textbook side by side with a very organized-looking day planner. Adam wondered if he was interrupting a study session, and felt a bit bad. He didn't want to cause anyone any more trouble than they already might have been facing. Standing awkwardly by the door, not sure if he should step in or step out, he continued, "Um, we could leave, if you're busy....."

He was sure Cecily wouldn't mind finding another place to practice whatever she had been planning to practice, and Adam could just go back down to the Small Hall. Of course, there was always the likely possibility that the girl wouldn't mind at all.

Cecily just rolled her eyes as her fellow Ravenclaw, Adam, continued to defend his point. She barely slowed her pace, physically or intellectually, as he twisted and pushed the doorknob to the abandoned fifth floor classroom-- and consequently ran into his back as he stopped dead in the doorway. She closed her mouth, which had been open and primed for a rebuttal, before putting a hand on Adam's shoulder and using it to jump to see over the taller boy. With the extra leverage, she was able to just get her head above his shoulder, and caught a glimpse of red and yellow-- one of which was the girl's frizzy hair, and the other, her Hufflepuff tie.

Adam seemed to keep his cool, but Cecily was thrown by the presence of another student in the usually empty classroom. Cecily heard the girl's voice say her name was Amadea, and Adam sort of-smoothly introduced himself.

Taking a moment to regain her senses, Cecily ducked under Adam's arm to stand, squished, next to him in the doorway. "Hi, Amadea!" she said with what was hopefully a friendly smile. "I'm Cecily." Cecily noticed that the girl had parchment and a quill on the desk, and a fancy planner full of neat check marks. A closed Charms textbook sat beside her.

"Oh, were you studying? I'm sorry, we can just..." Cecily trailed off as she realized she was talking over the top of Adam. She let him finish, and just shrugged when he asked Amadea if she wanted them to leave. She could go practice her charms somewhere else, and she was sure Adam would find another place as well.

Amadea was startled to realize that there were not one, but two students that had arrived in the doorway. She watched at the girl appeared behind the boy's shoulder as she leapt up to introduce herself. Amadea stood up hastily but accidentally knocked her planner to the ground. Papers fluttered out onto the ground. She sighed loudly, and bent down, scooping up the papers quickly. Both students started talking as they introduced themselves and said more. The tall boy, Adam, trailed off his sentence as he asked Amadea if they should leave.

She shook her head quickly. "No, no, sorry," she said. "There's enough room for all of us in here. Please, go ahead with whatever you were doing, I wouldn't want to get in the way of that." She sat back down and looked down at her planner, trying to watch them still inconspicuously. She felt slightly bad that she had just sat back down again; maybe she should have just stayed standing. Now there was an awkward vibe floating through the air, and Amadea didn't know how to change it. She wished she knew what to say, but no words were coming to her and her mouth just kind of hung there for a minute until she finally managed to make her jaw close. She waited for the two to either leave, or join her.

Adam kept smiling, hoping it didn't seem creepy or awkward, and sat down at the next table over from Amadea. He thought it might be a bit weird if he had chosen a seat next to her, having just met her, and she looked like she needed plenty of room for the numerous books and papers she was using to complete her homework. Adam himself still had plenty of work to finish up, but that's not what he was planning to do with his free time in the classroom. He had hoped that he'd be able to go over some spell theory, though he was kind of embarrassed to do it in the company of others. Now that a dueling club was being set up, and they were reaching the last few months of their first year, Adam figured that he'd better start learning at least the incantations now.

He pulled out a sheet of parchment he'd used to copy down some notes from the library and flattened it out on the table. He still wasn't really sure why the school insisted on using these outdated materials. It added to the allure and medieval-ness of the place, he guessed. Adam spent a few minutes whispering to himself the various charms and curses he had written down, stumbling over a number of them and quietly hoping that no one had picked up on his mistakes. After a particularly confusing conjuration (the Incarcerous Spell, which created ropes to tie up your target) Adam realized just how out of his league he was getting. Re-folding up the scroll and stuffing it into his bag for later, he looked over at Cecily and asked, "So, what are you working on?"

As soon as Cecily stepped into the room, she could feel the waves of awkward tension. The girl, Amadea, seemed very nice but, like Cecily herself, clearly was no good at social interactions.

Cecily followed Adam into the empty classroom, and finally got a better look at the girl. She was short, with wild red hair and Hufflepuff robes, and had stacks of books and parchment around her. Cecily smiled at Amadea before sitting down at Adam's table. For a moment she wondered if it would be rude to exclude Amadea by sitting at a different table, but soon dismissed the worry when the other girl seemed to show no mind.

The trio sat in silence for a few minutes, besides the shuffling and scratching of Amadea's parchment and quill and the muttering of Adam's under-his-breath incantations. After awkwardly sitting and twiddling her thumbs for a time, Cecily finally remembered that she really had not been meaning to work on anything-- she was just looking for a secluded place to read about a certain wizarding sport. Realising that this was probably as secluded as she was going to get in Hogwarts, Cecily pulled out her book on Quidditch from her bag and began to read. Whether she made the team or not (no one knew about the Ravenclaw team yet, as their Head of House had gone MIA a couple of weeks ago), she was determined to learn as much as she could. Maybe if she knew more of the theory behind the game, she could become a better player and make the team next year.

If she didn't make it this year.

After a while longer, Adam finally gave up on his spells when he became particularly tongue-tied on a confusing incantation. He turned to Cecily. "So, what are you working on?"

Cecily looked up from her book for a moment to tell him, "Quidditch. I'm terrified that I'm not going to make the team this year, and if I don't, I want to know as much as possible about the sport so that I can be as good as possible." Cecily snapped her mouth shut, knowing that he was probably just trying to make conversation to take his mind off of his failures and didn't really care. "And you? How are those spells coming?"

Amadea tried not to stare as the two Ravenclaws entered the room and sat down, smiling at her. They sat at the table two rows over from her, thankfully. She wouldn't have known what to do if they had sat with her; making conversation took a dreadful amount of brainpower that she would rather use on her studies. She opened her book and tried to get back to work, but couldn't help sneaking glances over at their table. She tried to get a good look at them. The girl had long blonde hair that covered her robes; if Amadea had not seen the boy she would have not known what house the girl came from. She realized she was staring and quickly looked back at her work. She didn't want to be a creeper, so she pulled out another book to begin her History of Magic homework. Hopefully it would be a breeze; she had read the book already on the train to Hogwarts.

She pulled out her quill, ink, and a blank piece of parchment, ready to begin the questions when she heard Adam speak. Startled, Amadea jumped in her seat, knocking the ink to the floor. The glass container struck the floor with a loud crash, sending glass flying everywhere. Amadea was sure her face was as flaming red as her hair. As she stooped down to begin cleaning up the mess, her face became even more red as she realized that the boy had not even been talking to her. She sighed and began blotting at the ink spilled on the ground, hoping it wouldn't leave any stains. She didn't know the proper way to clean all of this up. She glanced over at the Ravenclaws, who were now looking at her, probably wondering where the crash had come from.

"Um, sorry to bother you," she said hesitantly to them, "but do you happen to have any ideas of how to get this ink out of the floor so it doesn't leave any permanent marks?"

Crap! The sound of shattering glass drew Adam's attention before he could answer Cecily's question, and he was surprised to see black ink flowing from a broken glass container. He felt terrible. He didn't know what had happened, but Adam had broken his share of glass objects, and he knew the uncomfortableness that came with it all too well. Hopping up out of his seat, Adam stood kind of awkwardly next to the table -- he was now realizing that there was no real cause to hop out of his seat at all -- and tried to look reassuring.

"Don't worry, I think there's probably a spell or something for this." Adam knew that there were dozens of cleaning spells. There was one specifically for this type of situation....what was it? Tereo, Scourgeous....no. Tergeo. That was it. It was a siphoning charm. In theory, it should have been able to extract the spilled ink from wherever it had gone into the floor and replace it in the container.

There was just one small problem. Adam didn't actually know the first step to casting the siphoning charm. He didn't know any of the steps. Sheepishly, he put his readied wand away again and weakly laughed. "I don't suppose either of you know how to cast the Mending Charm? Or Tergeo?" He didn't think it was likely, but he might as well ask. "We might have to do a little more work, then."

The sound of shattering glass startled Cecily, and she snapped her book shut, the noise only adding to the chaos. Cecily rushed over to Amadea's table, and found her cursing over a fallen inkpot. The pot was now nothing more than scattered shards, and the dark ink was seeping through the cracks in the stone floor. Cecily winced at Amadea's misfortune, but kept her mouth shut.

"Do you happen to have any ideas of how to get this ink out of the floor so it doesn't leave any permanent marks?" Cecily heard the Hufflepuff ask. Cecily turned to Adam, knowing he was probably the most advanced in spells in the room. He already had his wand out and was telling them not to worry, poised to cast a spell that would fix the whole incident. Unfortunately, he hesitated before giving an awkward chuckle, saying, "I don't suppose either of you know how to cast the Mending Charm? Or Tergeo?". Cecily bit her lip and shook her head, herself being a slightly inadequate spell-caster so far. Adam seemed to expect this answer, and Cecily agreed when he said that the trio might have some work to do.

"Maybe an older student can help us. You have a brother, right, Adam?" Cecily figured she would ask, although knowing her relations with her older brothers, doubted Adam's sibling would help; however, it never hurt to ask.

Amadea felt so very stupid. She always managed to create the worst possible outcome to situations. Well, maybe not the worst, but they still usually ended up with something breaking or someone getting hurt. She preferred to say she had bad luck rather than that she was just really clumsy.

Both Ravenclaws immediately jumped at the sound and came over to where Amadea was kneeling. The ink had spread and was now seeping into her robes, not that it really mattered of course as her robes were the same rich black as the ink. Adam suggested using magic to solve the problem, which would be very sensible with Amadea actually knew how to use her wand in a useful way. Unfortunately she didn't know a variety of spells yet and certainly not that "Tergeo" could fix the ink bottle. She gestured to him. "Not to be stereotypical," she said, "but you two are the Ravenclaws here. I have no idea how to cast that spell." She blushed and ran her hand through her hair, only to realize that she must have streaked her hair black from the ink stains on her hand. She shook her head. Just another thing she would have to clean up.

"I'm really sorry to have caused such a mess," she told them. She could see that they both wanted to help. Cecily suggested having an upperclassmen try to help, but Amadea couldn't imagine getting someone else involved in this. It was such a stupid mistake. "It's really all right," she said. "We don't need to get anyone else involved and make it more complicated. I'll just find a mop or some rags and hopefully the stains will come out." She hoped she hadn't come across as abrasive and ungrateful. She was very appreciative of their help; she just didn't want to hassle them when they might have other things they needed to be doing.