Caution. Prank in progress. pv Closed

Cricket O’Shea was running late for breakfast. It was extremely uncharacteristic of her to be late for anything, much less a meal. However, she’d been up nearly all night reading an intimidating stack of books she’d borrowed from the library—books about the school’s history, the Ministry’s history; anything she could find that might hold a clue to the mystery of her birth parents’ dark deeds and disappearance. There were surely some amazing things to learn about Hogwarts: its founders, its most esteemed professors, the stories of the people whose portraits she passed by on a daily basis—but no information of the sort she was looking for. She’d gone to bed at five o’clock in the morning feeling disappointed, and woken up feeling like she’d been hit by a tractor. She was greeted in the mirror by a pair of eyes with dark, ominous circles under them. Reading, she decided, was probably best done by daylight—but her burning curiosity might not allow for that.

As she rounded the corner up from the basements, her stomach growled. After last night’s failure, she could surely go for a heaping helping of eggs and beans on toast, chased down with a cool, refreshing glass of…

…water?

There was a puddle on the ground in front of her.

Odd, Cricket thought—she hadn’t ever known this corridor to have a leak in it. Her eyes scanned the ceiling first, but it looked dry enough up there. She continued down the hall, following the water, only to hear something about throwing buckets—and suddenly found herself face to face with a tiny girl who was rather conspicuously wearing a hat. Cricket’s eyes flickered to the buckets in the girl’s hands—very suspicious. She gave the girl a second look; more scrutinizing this time. She looked somewhat familiar…from the Sorting Ceremony, perhaps? She was definitely another first-year.

“I don’t suppose you’re on cleaning duty, now,” Cricket said, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

Juni wasn't bothering to look behind her shoulder, she kept doing what she was doing. She wanted everyone to look as if they were ice skating, like a crazy Hogwarts on ice show with all these cool tricks. Until... they fell. But Juni wasn't thinking, because if people were falling all over, they could get hurt. Juni was just so used to falling and not getting anything serious, just bruises and maybe a bloody nose. Again, she wasn't the brightest Ravenclaw there was. She was humming to herself but she heard foot steps. She stopped and widened her eyes, debating to run away. Before she could decide, a girl had walked in.

Juni spun to face her, tugging her hat down and making sure her bright pink hair wasn't visible. The girl didn't speak for a moment, and Juni stood there not sure what to do with herself. When a student catches you, what next? Finally, the girl spoke up. Juni spoke quickly. "It's for... detention!" She nodded as if assuring herself. "Er, yeah... I got caught..." She gave a quick look around the room with her eyes. "Trying to sneak into the Hufflepuff common room!" She didn't realize this girl was hufflepuff. And if someone did try and sneak into the hufflepuff common room, people would be talking about it.

"Er... Cody Stevenson.. the most annoying Hufflepuff... I was gonna surprise him or something... So now I hafta... clean!" Again, she nodded to assure herself. This was fool proof. No way anyone could see that she was lying. She was totally smart. Right?

She looked at the girl again, eager to change the subject. "I'm Ju-" She stopped. She shouldn't give the girl her name. "Juuu- ust getting started!" That was close. "And what are you doin out here? Shouldn't you still be asleep or eating breakfast?" She asked.

@Cricket O’Shea

The next most conspicuous thing about this girl—after the hat and buckets—was her accent. She’s a Dubliner, Cricket realized. Not that that alone made her suspicious, of course, but something in the back of Cricket’s mind was screaming that this should remind her of something.

But what…? A rumor she’d heard, maybe?

The girl said she had detention.

“Detention on a weekday morning? Isn’t that interesting,” Cricket said, fixing her schoolmate with a rather penetrating stare. She did not believe a word of it, naturally.

And it was—allegedly—for sneaking into the Hufflepuff Common Room? Now there was a downright lie if Cricket had ever heard one. If someone had gotten into Hufflepuff—or tried to—she would be the first to know about it. She’d spent more time quietly holed up there with books in the last two months than she cared to admit.

And then the girl in the hat casually dropped Cody’s name into the conversation. Cricket couldn’t say she knew the lad very well; they’d never talked, although she knew of him. They were housemates, at least. And yet that was what set off the final alarm bell:

A Dubliner? Check.
Of extremely short stature? Check.
Acting very oddly? Double Check.
Associated with Cody? You guessed it—Check.

All the rumors Cricket had heard lately started to come together. Jumping into the lake, sneaking into Hogsmeade, getting into a fistfight, dueling without permission, and…something or other about bribing someone with a sack of candy. All the work of one person. This person. This person, right here, was trouble with a capital “T.”

Luckily, Cricket had already had more than her fair share of experience with troublemakers at home. She knew all too well how to play this game—at least she thought she did. This girl seemed the childish sort, so Cricket would handle her the same way she handled her younger brothers.

“Hello, Just Getting Started, I’m Cricket,” she said, pulling one of Da’s best jokes—only she had an almost completely serious expression on her face.

“Cleaning, are you? Sounds minus craic. But you’re doing it without a mop—that’ll work so well, will it?” she asked, indicating the wet floor. The corner of her mouth quirked up slightly.

“Well, you’re lucky I’m here. I was on my way to the Great Hall for a bit of late breakfast. While I’m there I’ll just go down the caretaker’s office a minute and tell him you’ll be needing a good mop to go with those buckets.”

She turned to leave very deliberately, then turned back.

“Oh, wait a moment, before I do that—”

She pulled a blank parchment and a piece of charcoal out of her satchel, wrote the words ‘CAUTION! WET FLOOR!’ on it, and stuck it to the wall with a piece of spare tape.

“Perfect,” she smiled at her handiwork. “Don’t go anywhere now, I’ll be back straight away!”

Interacting with: @Juniper Kelly (You can play it as though Cricket leaves momentarily or try to stop her! Either way is fine with me.)

Juniper nodded quickly. "Yeah! Unfortunate, right? It's bad... I had to wake up early, too." At least this part was true. Not that she wasn't fine with lying, no. She was a born liar. Some people learn to lie perfectly, really. She doesn't brag about it, but she knows how to keep a cool face when lying. she learned it from OOC moi
The girl fixed Juniper with a searching look and Juni did her best not to squirm. Anything could give her away. Anything.

Juniper knew this was the part where she either ran or tried to play the questions off calmly. Either that or break down under the responsible glare of obvious stick-in-the-mud. But the girl didn't shout for a teacher, instead, she cracked a joke and introduced herself. "Oh, hi Cricket. That's an interesting name, by the way." She pointed out trying not to sound rude about it. It would be smart not to badmouth the name of the girl who caught her red-handed.

Cricket proceeded to point out that Juniper didn't have a mop. Juniper almost did a facepalm. Of course! A mop would help greatly with her cover. So instead, she looked around with mock surprise. "Oh, darn! I forgot the mop!" She raised her eyebrows at Cricket.

Juniper's heart quickened. "Oh- you don't-" She stared with dismay at the sign the girl put up. That would ruin the point. "Oh, no! Cricket, you really don't have to bother-" Juniper thought fast. Of course, just loop her into it. "Gosh, Cricket!" Juniper kicked over a bucket, spilling the water.

"Now why did you have to go and spill that water?" Juniper sighed and shook her head. So far, she's never been caught rule-breaking. That wasn't going to change anytime soon. "C'mon, you stick in the mud. Let's have fun."

@Cricket O'Shea

An interesting name—well, that was an understatement, really. Cricket’s name had always set her apart from the other children in the Muggle public school she’d attended before Hogwarts. Her classmates occasionally made chirping noises when she went walking by, which she had largely rolled her eyes at and ignored. But she did wonder sometimes—would her life have been much different if she had a normal name, like Mary Ellen or Sophie or Grace?

It probably wasn’t worth dwelling on. Cricket’s name was, after all, one of the three things her birth parents had left her with. Best to pay more attention to the matter at hand.

“Well, I’m sure there are a fair few…interesting things about yourself, as well,” she said with a touch of Mom’s wry wit. All the while, she continued to observe her classmate’s behavior very closely.

In the kerfuffle that ensued, the tiny girl in the hat kicked over a bucket of water and tried to pin it all on Cricket—

“Me? You’re the one galloping about like you’ve been hit with a Dancing Feet Spell, now,” Cricket said. She stopped and stood in the middle of the corridor in a wide-eyed state, surprised at the girl’s…well, let’s say creativity. Liam or Nathan would’ve cracked and confessed to their mischief by now.

The comment about her being a stick in the mud made her frown just slightly, but it was the bit about this somehow being fun that really had her confused.

“Well, all right, that’s fine, so—sure I’m not about to leave you here alone with all this mess now when you’re liable to slip and break your ribs. But stall the beans—what about all this is fun, exactly?” she asked, curious and exasperated all at once.