Searching for Distractions pv Closed

Elrich felt completely and utterly paralyzed by fear, his brain overtaken by questions of anxiety. Was he going to fail the class? Be suspended? Be stripped of magical ability and have to work a muggle job for the rest of his life? Of course, the worst possibility he was looking at was detention; but the boy had never been in such a situation like this before in his life, and his thoughts just kept on racing. As if this mental malfunction was not enough, the entire class having their eyes on him made him feel like screaming. Or simply walking out of the room. Or both.

It felt like it would never end, but then the girl he had been passing notes with spoke up. He quickly turned around to hear her say that it was her note. He was simply astounded. He had simply pegged her as a casual troublemaker, but what she was doing was both kind and brave. Brave? That was when it donned on him that he was a Gryffindor, and although he was still a bit confused as to why he had been sorted there, he was knew he could not just let the girl take all of the blame when he was just as much at fault. It simply wouldn’t be just. “Um, I…”, he tried to get the words out but he couldn’t, so he let out a sigh and continued, “I wrote notes, too, it isn’t all her fault and she shouldn’t take all of the blame”.

Why did he say that? Now they would just both get detention instead of only her. His mind went back to doing summersaults as he awaited his punishment.
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Class had ended, and he rushed to get out of the room as fast as he could. They had both been let off with warnings, but he still wanted to distance himself from the room. He let out a large sigh; it felt like he had been holding his breath since he had been caught. He leaned against one of the stone walls to catch his breath when he saw the girl.

When the boy spoke, Coriander found herself shouting at him inside her head. Stop! We'll both get in trouble! But of course, he couldn't hear her, and so they were both reprimanded by Professor Cazarez. It was a shame, but she was able to admire the fact that he hadn't left her to be the only source of the problem.

After class, Coriander gathered her things as usual. She wasn't a stranger to getting in trouble, and a warning was considered good news to her. It was slightly more frustrating than a detention, sometimes - a warning meant she was being given another chance, which she would obviously fail. More expectations, more disappointment.

As she left the classroom, walking along with the flood of other classmates, Coriander spotted the boy she had passed notes with leaning against a wall. He looked out of breath. She figured she should probably apologize, or introduce herself, or something. It was her fault that he had gotten into trouble, and to dismiss him would be rude.

Coriander walked over to him, feeling a bit awkward. "Hi, I'm Coriander. Sorry for..." She trailed off, trying to find the right word or phrase. She mentally reviewed what had happened exactly, which took a couple of moments. Finally, she completed her sentence. "Getting you into trouble, I guess." There was more she could have said, but Coriander wasn't the best at communication.

When Elrich realized the girl was walking toward, his brain returned to a panicked state, though he tried not to show it externally. Was she mad that hadn’t kept his mouth shut? He honestly was not sure if he had made the situation better or worse. Logically he should have just let her take the fall since he had never even met her before. Even so, he still would have felt guilty had he simply done nothing.

When the first words out of her mouth were an introduction and apology, his panic was replaced by confusion, then by relief. He felt like he was the one that should have been apologizing to her, but at least she was not mad at him. In retrospect, although he was incredibly perturbed at the time, it was a pretty exciting experience, especially compared to his rather uneventful past.

“Nah, no need to apologize. I should be thanking you for helping me survive that horrifically dull class,” he joked, cracking a smile to replace his initially puzzled face. All in all, it was definitely worth it to goof off a bit. Maybe he would do it more often now that he knew the consequences weren’t as dire as his exaggerated them to be.

“Oh, and I’m Elrich. Pleasure to meet you,” he added, wanting to be polite.

Coriander smiled back at Elrich. He made a joke, which was always good. She wouldn't have blamed him if he had been mad at her, but it still would have been disappointing. He seemed nice enough - more polite than her, probably, but that wasn't hard to do. Something about Coriander just made her want to rebel against everyone and everything.

"Well, you're welcome. It's always a joy to save somebody else from the clutches of the mind-numbing lecture," Coriander said. It was a joke but it was spoken in a casual tone. If somebody was not listening carefully, they could have missed it. This wasn't usually the type of humor that Coriander went for, but it seemed appropriate given the circumstances.

After all, there was absolutely no way that Coriander could completely give up the jokes, but she could easily tone it down a little if needed. She had at least that much control, even if she was wild in other ways. Sometimes, if a really bad thing happened, Coriander could even find it within herself to be serious. A terrifying prospect, but it was needed in specific situations, like deaths or something of the sort. While thinking about this, Coriander may have temporarily forgotten where she was or what she was doing. Fortunately, she quickly came back to Earth.

Elrich laughed not only at her joke, but also at the manner that she made it in. The casual tone and manner in which she executed it made it all the funnier. He was not used to people like her; more laid back and fun, but not in a way that took away from other essential qualities. The way he grew up, the only real personality traits he learned to identify were that of rigidity, almost mechanical. She seemed to be a mix of both freedom and responsibility, at least from what he had seen thus far. Free enough to goof around in class, but responsible enough to claim her share of the blame when it went haywire.

All of these thoughts rushed through his head even before really getting to know her. He was not really sure how to proceed with the situation, not exactly being the most socially adept person. “So, do you usually throw paper balls at people’s back whenever you get bored in class, or was this a special occasion?” he asked, only half joking. He was curious as to her initial intent. Elrich would love to live in a world where everything could be predicted through calculation, but the hard truth was that some things happened purely due to fate or chance.

“Like, was I just the easiest target to nail in the back, or what?”

Coriander grinned as Elrich laughed. Above everything, she loved when people were receptive of her, joke or not. There were times when Coriander was pegged as the weird kid, and avoided, but this wasn't one of those moments. Other times, she was pegged as the bad kid, but the line between weird and bad was often fuzzy. At least, to teachers and other forms of authority.

"You looked dead," Coriander said honestly, "but unfortunately, conscious, so... I thought if I bothered you, you'd probably at least get irritated and then neither of us would be so bored." Perhaps it wouldn't make Elrich her friend, but Coriander didn't feel like coming up with something else to say. The truth was sometimes the easiest answer to come up with, even if it could reveal what an annoying person you were.

"It seemed to work." Coriander shrugged, offering a small smile. Hopefully he wouldn't mind that she had had malicious intentions - it was just the way she got when she had nothing interesting to focus on. It was nothing personal at all, and if he was smart in any way, shape, or form he would see that. Coriander wasn't a very complex person.

Elrich couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of himself looking dead in the middle of class. Boredom could definitely feel like being somewhere between dead and alive, while also unfortunately conscious, and he supposed that he had not been making the hardest of efforts to even pretend to pay attention to the lecture. She also did make a good point that being irritated would have at least distracted him from how bored he was, so couldn’t fault her or her logic. The only thing that really surprised him was the guts she had to do what she did with such a casual attitude. Even compared to a student more average than Elrich, she had a lot of courage. It was a bit ironic; the Hufflepuff seemed to have a whole lot more courage than the him, a Gryffindor. It must have been just as he thought; her other attributes must be even more prominent if she was in Hufflepuff. She seemed the loyal type, at least from what he had seen.

“Well I won’t argue with your methods, they definitely get results,” he remarked positively. “Even if they’re a bit unorthodox. So, what are your plans now, or were you going to just stand in the hallway for the rest of the day?”

As Elrich spoke, Coriander finally glanced around their surroundings. They were outside of the classroom, but most other students had left the area, presumably onto whatever was next on their agenda. Speaking of agendas, Coriander realized that she didn't have one. History of Magic was her last class of the day, which meant that dinner would soon follow and then she would have the rest of the evening to do her homework. Oh, yeah - homework.

"I guess now I've got to find somebody who actually took notes," Coriander sighed. For the life of her, she couldn't even remember what the lecture had been on. If only she had a photographic memory or something, then maybe she would have a chance of finishing her homework. "I have no idea what that lesson was even about, but I still have to do the homework. You know, school, and all that."

Oftentimes Coriander wished she was one of those geniuses that slacked off but still got perfect grades, but unfortunately, she only had average intelligence at best. That meant that if she had any goals at all, she had to work just as hard as everybody else - which made it difficult to be the sort of carefree that she wanted. Ignoring the lecture had been entertaining overall, but Coriander would definitely pay for it in the form of bad grades.

When the topic of homework came up, Elrich felt himself swell with pride. Academics were his specialty, so surely it would be a breeze to figure out how to complete the assignment.

“Well that’s easy,” he began, “I know all about…um…history?”

He hadn’t listened to a single thing mentioned that entire class. His pride deflated as he realized he was at a loss. Schoolwork was usually the least of his worries, but when you fail to absorb a single bit of information from an entire class period it became a bit hard to excel. He thought hard on what they could possibly. Simply not doing the homework was not an option for him. The only thing scarier to him than his parents finding out he was goofing around in class was them finding out his grades were slipping. He had spent nearly his entire childhood with his head in his studies and it would be a bit of a kick in the head for him to start falling apart in his first year.

“Well…I suppose we could go to the library…or borrow one from another student”, he thought out loud, not really sure if he meant actually borrowing or just stealing. Immediately after saying it he realized how awful it sounded to even think about such a thing. Perhaps he did take his grades a little too seriously? “Maybe just go to the library, I'm not so sure I could bring myself to cheating,” he added, hoping to redeem himself.

Coriander nodded along to Elrich's words. Cheating was, surprisingly, not something she did. Just like passing notes, she had never had the chance before Hogwarts, and now she just didn't feel the need to. Rather, she was on the other side of the spectrum - she had let others copy her own homework. She didn't get outstanding grades, but they weren't all that bad either.

"Me neither. I guess the library it is - although, I'm still not sure what the class was about." Coriander was starting to dread the coming hours. Schoolwork was already a drag, especially when they were surrounded by such beautiful land, but now she had to figure out how to fake this and still get a decent grade. Well. Maybe not decent. But turning in atrocious schoolwork was better than no schoolwork at all, in Coriander's opinion.

Truth be told, Coriander had been listening to the very beginning of the lecture, but as it went on she became too bored. The information she had contained then was now lost, due to the events that had happened since. It would have been immensely helpful if Coriander could just remember one or two names, but that was not how her mind worked.