A Small Meeting Finished

Slytherin

There wasn't much that Maisy Dane understood about Hogwarts. Until a few months ago, her only real understanding of magic was what her mother had read to her in fairy tales. Needless to say, when the letter arrived explaining to her that she was, in fact, a witch... Maisy's world opened up slightly larger than she ever expected.

In primary school, she had always been a diligent student, but few would go so far to suggest she was studious, but upon receipt of her Hogwarts: A History book, Maisy poured through the pages in a somewhat desperate attempt not to be the only one at the school without a clue of what to expect. Needless to say, she had been properly aware of all of the houses that she might find herself sorted into, and the very last one she'd expected to hear the raggedy old hat whisper in her ear was Slytherin.

Cunning. Ambitious?

These weren't the traits of any Dane she knew of, let alone ones that could be attributed to her. The remainder of the ceremony had gone on in a symphony of laughter and raucous chattering, the clanking of forks against plates and more smells than one room had any right to bear. But Maisy spent her time chewing her nails to pieces as she stared blankly at the plates in front of her. However thrown she was by her house assignment, she couldn't help feeling awestruck by how they swapped out delicacy after delicacy. But her appetite had greatly diminished and, in fact, her stomach twisted so tightly into a fisherman's knot, she found it increasingly difficult not to throw up.

Finally, the ceremony was over and Maisy was one of the first out of her seat, pouring out of the Great Hall and into the antechamber. There, shuffling towards a quiet corner, she found herself face to face with the painting of a young, pretty witch in a blue dress. The painting winked, and Maisy's eyes widened in shock before she remembered this was customary for portraits in the wizarding world...

And then, because she didn't seem to have anything left to do, she burst into tears.

There were plenty about the hall chatting or looking about at all the wizards and witches that lined the walls. Yvaine didn't pay them much mind as he watched the paintings go about their own business as if alive. Each portrait held their own place, yet they all seemed connected and living. His eyes looked up at the portrait of Dumbledore knowing full well, just as all the rest, he was no longer like himself. But who was to say what was living and what was just a painting? And so he wondered if perhaps to the paintings he, too, was locked in the frame and wandering about in an enchanted picture. What did it look like from the other side.

The quiet sobs halted his wonderings, easily pin pointing the origins of such a flow of sadness. It was no painting, though she was before them unabashedly displaying her feelings off in one of the corners. Walking over to her, he peered at the surrounding portraits as if to find the perpetrator, though none seemed to look mischievous or knowing.

"Missing home?" he asked, taking a guess as to what might bother someone in such a magical place like Hogwarts. "I know I do. But there's always the holidays."

With a small squeak of shock, Maisy spun towards the voice that interrupted her rather mortifying and open display of emotional overload. She hadn't expected that she would be alone in the Small Hall... not really - not when there seemed to be so many students and teachers and... she was fairly certain she had seen at least three ghosts so far... and the portraits. But in a sea of faces, anonymity was a person's greatest gift, and truthfully, she'd expected to go unnoticed.

So when he spoke to her, she gulped down hard and shaking her head, dried her eyes with her sleeves, her plaited blonde hair swinging wildly with the exaggerated motions, "N...no. No. Goodness. I mean, yes! Well, I suppose I am. Oh, I hadn't stopped to even think...but then... It's only been a day, hasn't it? And... No. I wasn't homesick."

Sniffing, she lowered her hands to her sides, but not for long, one rising again, nail pinched between her slightly-too-large front teeth, "Oh, gracious. I must look terribly stupid. It's just, this is all so very new to me, you see, and I... well, I was rather sort of hoping... or maybe I was not hoping... with the hat..."

Looking up, fixing the box with a watery stare, she shrugged, "I think I was sorted wrong."

"The hat's never wrong," Yvaine assured as he leaned against the wall, hands pressed against the wood to bounce his frame off in varying increments. He looked her over, neither of them wearing their house colors just yet due to only having been just assigned. But he tried his best to recall the verdict. It wasn't all too strange for someone to second guess their sorting, but he never imagined he'd see someone cry. He scrunched his lips together to one side in thought.

"Why would your House make you sad?" he asked. "My mum always told me to keep an open mind and be happy with what comes. She said when the Sorting Hat called out the House, I should celebrate with my house mates and make new friends. Everyone seems so nice so far!"

He cast his gaze over to the doorway as students filed out, careful to watch for his prefect and fellow Ravenclaw First Years. For now, it seemed they were still in the Great Hall.

"I mean," he continued, "I'm in Ravenclaw. I wasn't all smart back in primary school. Not like a lot of the Ravenclaws. I guess you could say the Sorting Hat knows us better than we do!"

Bringing a hand around and extending it towards the blonde, he smiled brightly at the girl. "I'm Yvaine, by the way," he said. "But you can call me Eevee. Like the pokemon. Some people say it's a lot easier to say than my real name, so I don't mind."

"Everyone's wrong at least once in a while..." She sighed, "At least... That's what I thought before there were hats that could talk and pictures that moved."

Now not much of anything made sense, and as if she were there to add inflection to that very thought, Maisy looked up just in time to see the woman in the blue dress uttely disappear from the edge of her picture frame, popping into the one of the dark haired woman that hung a little ways away.

Confusion masked her features for a moment, her nose wrinkling as she mulled over his curioisity, "I... I don't know why it made me sad. It's not... I'm sure there's nothing wrong with Slytherin. It's just... Everything is new, and I don't think they'll like me much. Not if everything I've read about them was true. And I hate the color green." Drying her eyes with the hem of her sleeve, she shook her head, before stretching out a hand to give his a proper Dane shake (which was, in all honesty, nothing different from a regular shake).

"I'm Maisy." The barest of smiles curved at the corner of her lips and returning her arms to her side, she picked at her robes, "You... You know about Pokemon? Sorry... It's just... I don't know what it's like for... Are you... Did you always know what you'd be?"

His shaggy mop nodded as he continued his grin, offering her hand a good, hearty shake before release. "Yep!" he said in return. "I come from a long line of people like us. But my sis is a squib so my mum and dad are pretty open to the muggle world. I've got a 3DS but it's in my trunk. I can show you my Pokemon sometime though."

More and more students began to exit the Great Hall, meandering through the Small Hall only to slowly get to their destinations. Everyone looked happy and excited to see each other as they caught up on the summer's vacation. "There's no way to charge any electronics here," he rambled on to Maisy. "But I have a portable charger I got for Christmas two years ago. Used it for camping with my mates. It needs flowing water to charge it though."

Yvaine briefly paused as he considered how exactly he would charge his battery given the layout of the castle grounds. The thought was fleeting in the moment, and something he would shelf for later contemplation. Snapping his attention back to Maisy, he smiled a bit.

"Slytherin is a pretty good house!" he assured. "If they want something done, they'll get it done. I think people in that house seem prickly because they know what they want and are already going at it. Don't let the past dictate your per-spet-shun. At least, that's what my mum says about it. She says it means stuff like what you read shouldn't tell you how to think. The whole House gets a bad rep for a few people who were in it, but when you read you got to remind yourself you're reading about people who aren't here. I like you! You should give them a chance to like you too."

"My brother Auggie was big into it when he was little. He's fifteen now and all 'mature', or whatever he calls it. Mum says he's just playin' at it, but he did throw away all his cards last summer when Evelyn Slight, my sister Henny's (that's Auggie's twin) called it childish. Mum said it was stupid, onacountof Auggie is a child, but he did it anyway. Cholly, that's my oldest brother, he said it was stupid cause some of the cards'll be worth money someday. And Mary... She's the one just above me... She thinks Evelyn Slight is a chav. Mum gave her ear a pinch for saying it, but Daddy laughed."

Biting her index nail, Maisy managed a small, watery smile, "Anyway... I guess it's sort of what you're saying, a bit. Auggie let someone else ruin something he liked cause he was being stupid. Maybe it won't be so bad. And the rest of the school sounds wicked... Did you know, well you probably did, but did you know there's real honest dragons?" A wistful sigh escaped as her gaze lumbered off into the immense, shadowed ceiling, "I'd give anything to see one!"

Her eyes dropped back down and turning from the empty portrait frame before her, she looked to Yvaine with a bright, lopsided smile, "Thanks, Eevee. I like you, too. Oh! But... You might be out of luck for the DS. The book I was reading on the train said something about how electronic stuff goes sort of wonky in this castle. Radios and phones and stuff."

“I’ll find a way around it,” he assured as he waved his hand dismissively. “It might not work in the castle, but there are loads of places outside! Who knows? I might get lucky.”

He shrugged a bit in uncertainty despite his unphased confidence. It was less so in concern and moreso a shrug suggesting ‘I’ll get to it when I get there.’ Besides, the device was buried inside his trunk underneath layers of clothes and books and school appointed items. He wasn’t supposed to bring it at all, according to his mother. She had taken it and put it in a safe place for his return, but he couldn’t stand to part with it for those rainy days.

“I never got to collect the cards,” Yvaine mumbled thoughtfully, now wishing he had the cards instead. Those would definitely work inside the castle.

“You know, I’ve seen a dragon before,” he mentioned, perking up as he recalled the subject. “My uncle’s brother-in-law’s friend works with them. I don’t know what he does, but I got to see one before it got shipped back to its home. It was a Hungarian Horntail, and wow it was amazing! I was probably about...”

Yvaine took a few steps back to provide a visual reference for the distance he stood between his past self and the dragon he came in contact with, though perhaps in a little bit of exaggeration. “This far,” he finally said. He was about ten paces away, arm stretched out towards her to show how close his fingers could have been.

Grinning, Maisy nodded, "That's probably why you're in Ravenclaw, you know. They're pretty smart, and you seem it, too. I'm sure you'll figure it out! Me? I was never good at that sort of thing. Dad's a carpenter, but I'm just a great big klutz."

Her hands slid into her pockets as he continued, and she bounced from heel to toe, just about toppling backwards once or twice before she planted her feet, nodding, "I have a couple that Auggie gave me before he threw them out, but I didn't bring them."

A brow lifted at Yvaine's exclamation and only traveled higher and higher up her brow as he went on, her jaw dropping into an oval. She bounced towards him, hands covering her mouth, but unable to contain the squeak of excitement that escaped, "Oh! You... You have to tell me absolutely everything about them! What did it look like? What color was it? What did it sound like? Do they smell funny like the elephants at the zoo? How big was it?? Does he fly them? Your... Uncle's brother-in-law's friend? Wait... Do they fly ? No. Of course they do. I can't believe you saw one! You actually saw one!! Oh, I would give just anything in the whole entire world!"