Errand Organization with a Dash of Creativity Finished

"And she did show up!"

Well, two people showed up...

Colin really only paid attention to one of them. His green eyes widened as he noticed a particularly graceful girl, her long brown hair bouncing along behind her as she entered. She crossed the hall towards the table with all the supplies and journals on it and without missing a beat found a place to sit and began her work.

Some older Slytherin boy followed right after Clair, not so close as to obstruct Colin's thoughts of her, and not so far that Colin didn't notice things. Motion registered in his mind --- a spinning movement, like that of a top of black and green --- that deigned to settle itself at last across from him.

Wait.

There was something --- wrong.

Colin wrinkled his nose. His eyes were still on Clair, visible over the boy's right shoulder. Something didn't smell right! Clair was fully engaged in setting up her planning journal. There would undoubtedly be loads of flowers on it! He whispered: "A false snake, my love!, has entered thy garden." Colin, quite reluctantly, drew a deep breath, straightened up and refocused his eyes.

The boy before him stuck out his tongue. Indeed he was no Snake! His was a familiar face, somewhat impish, somewhat serious. Sometimes shallow, always deep. He greeted Colin: "What if I told you that all of us were actually 15 minutes late and time is a construct created by man to restrict his imagination?" Piérre Marchonné. The only other person who would have greeted him in such a way was his friend Jarael.

Colin sniffed the air again. Piérre's cat, Figaro. Colin tipped over to the right, disappearing for a moment beyond the horizon of the huge wooden table. "Miau-wauw!" he called to Figaro before righting himself again. He whuffed, then focused on the Gryffindor boy. Cocking his head to the right, he said: "Two things. First, you're no snake, kitty cat! And second ---"

Now Colin leaned to his left and smiled. Both arms were spread wide and his hands rested on the table top. "Second, that man has no imagination to restrict!" He nodded his head towards Clair. "I could remain like this forever! Just thinking of her!"

"I'm the only one that came here on time, if that is true," Piérre said.

"Third!" Colin said, showing the Slytherdor boy four fingers. Now he stared directly into Piérre's eyes. "A wizard is neither late nor early. He arrives precisely when he means to!" Suddenly Colin stood up on the heavy wooden chair, his bare feet making no sound. "And fifth! Time has no meaning when CLAIR FERNANDEZ IS SITTING RIGHT ACROSS FROM ME!!"

Colin smiled, satisfied that the girl he liked had heard him. Colin crouched back down on the chair, ending up in a sprawl. He watched as Piérre was drawing on his own hand. "My God I don't know what there is about her, but that girl makes my heart race!" Colin paused while Piérre continued to ink the back of his hand. Colin laced his fingers behind his head, twining them within the mass of his blond hair. "Whatcha doin, Piérre? Is that a temporal web? Or ---"

THUMP!!!

"Oh!" Colin's eyes widened as Piérre brought the back of his hand down with a smack --- right onto Colin's journal! "Whoa! Piérre Handsmacker! What---?" He sat upright to see what had happened.

"There was a bug. I swatted it!" cried Piérre, apparently satisfied that he'd done a yeoman's work this day.

Colin looked down onto his journal where he'd been working of his sketch of Clair. He lifted up the book and sniffed at it curiously. "Hm. Poor bookie! Back ain't broken anyway!" He set it back down on the table and turned it this way and that. "Well, lad, if there ever were a bug, you'd've driven it clean through the entire book, out the cover and deep into the poor table! That was a smack and three quarters! But --- WHOA!!!"

Colin turned the book right side up again. "Attercoppery!" Without further explanation of the term, Colin took up the pencil in his left hand and began to sketch some delicate twigs and vines up the center of the book, so that Piérre's addition could be supported. After a while, Colin stared at the Gryffindor across from him. Then he drew a wee spider, with yellow and scarlet striping on its back and green and black around the edge.

He smiled at the prankster king and waited with interest to see what the boy would get up to next.

@Piérre Marchonné | @Clair Fernandez || @Sophia Nelson

WC - 850

Reducio

washi tape design

Reducio

floral doodles

Reducio

cute fruit stickers

mentioning : @colin mccoire, @clair fernandez, @bailey glade
ooc note : Apologize if there are a lot of mistakes in this post, I wrote it at 2 am my time and really sleepy ~.~

English | Parseltongue

Della had passed her first, albeit eventful, year at Hogwarts with excellent grades. Transfiguration had been her only E in a sea of O's. However, the grades didn't reflect her constant state of fear that she would fail. And she assumed that her second year would only get more difficult. Unlike her previous muggle school, Hogwarts professors expected their students to be more independent. They expected students to use the library unsupervised and manage their time between classes accordingly.

Time management and planning were not Della's strong suits. She found herself writing the homework down in the corner of the sketchbook or in the margin of her textbook, closing the book, and promptly forgetting about it until the morning it was due. Sometimes she would even doodle over these notes, resulting in her having to ask a peer what exactly they were supposed to do. She had turned in her assignments, and she found she had a knack for most types of magic (apart from the aforementioned transfiguration), but the constant stress loop of doing assignments last minute and feeling unprepared for exams was something she did not want to repeat this year.

So Della found herself in the Great Hall, where one of the prefects had set up an event for the students to make their own planners. Regardless of Della's organizational problems, she probably would have found herself here anyway—when there was an arts and crafts activity, she came running. Not only were they making academic planners, but they were also making academic planners that looked good. Over the summer, Della had caught up on all the YouTube she had missed—aesthetic planners, pretty bullet journals, artistic academic planning—it was all the rage right now. It was clear that the person who had supplied the materials for this event at least had an inkling of what was going on in the muggle world, or the same aesthetics had coincidentally made their way into the wizarding world as well.

Della found a corner of the Gryffindor table where she could spread out her own supplies. She brought her watercolors and brush pens, along with a few sketches she had made over the summer when she was watching people on the internet create their own journals. She took an empty notebook and got to work. She used a ruler to make her monthly and weekly spreads. It took some time to create all of September through June. She had saved a few pages in the front to track her "habits" and her classes. The class pages made sense; she would finally have a place to write her assignments and exam dates. She kept it simple, leaving plenty of space because she had no idea how much homework she would receive this year. With the habit trackers, pages that seemed essential for any planner, she made a graph where she could fill how many hours of sleep she got, what days she sketched on, and any books she read for fun. Were there any other habits? She thought of doing a water drinking one or a gratitude one, but in all honestly, she wasn't sure if needed to track any habits at all or if she was just copying what she had seen online.

Next, the fun began. She decorated each class page with different washi tapes. And she created a theme for each month that extended through the weekly pages. Most people designed their journals one month at a time, but Della felt the motivation to do it now, so that's what she did. It would be handy to have the whole thing ready when the school year was in full swing. It might even be helpful to be able to plan things months ahead of time. She already knew the dates of her broom racing games and most of the professors gave exams in the same weeks.

Her monthly themes were as follows: September was the Hogwarts castle (she remembered her boat ride yesterday and first seeing the castle), October was spooky cats and pumpkins (she remembered the terrible pumpkins that terrorized students last year), November was dueling, December was Christmas and fairies, of course, January was quidditch, February was sad hearts (her Valentine's last year was a little too eventful, March was broom racing (she had the most fun making this theme), April was snakes (hmm, this one might be difficult to explain to someone looking over her shoulder), May was golden retrievers, and June was quills and art supplies.

On the monthly pages, she left room to write down racing practice dates, exam dates, library study sessions, and so on. On the weekly pages, she left space for a weekly doodling prompt, a section to break down essays into smaller to-do lists (something she desperately needed to do!), and an area to write down what she learned in class that week so she could turn it into a study plan.

Whew! When Della finally looked up, the Great Hall's pretend sky had grown much darker. She had been here for hours. It was time to go and put her planner into action.

Lucia had always struggled with keeping on top of things. She was a disorganised person by nature and tended to ignore the things she didn't want to do in favour of less useful but more fun things like sewing or dancing. Even with those hobbies which she enjoyed though, Lucia often had multiple projects going on at the same time, meaning it took her three times the amount of time it would take anyone else to finish anything. This had been very almost fine in her first few years at Hogwarts, and not caring about the subjects she didn't like hadn't been something Lucia had thought much about. But now, she was in fourth year the pressure was building. Her OWLs were at the end of her next school year. She was failing six out of her eleven subjects. What with her grades, Ebony's high expectations, and the crushing prospect of redoing a year if she failed her exams, Lucia couldn't afford to not care any more. She had to up her game.

When the new errand was announced, Lucia had to go and have a look. Even if the bullet journal style of organiser didn't work out for her, she might as well try. The worst that could happen here was that she abandoned the journal after a day or two and went back to her current lax ways. Lucia even brought her enchanted embroidery hoop with her to hopefully customise the cover of her notebook a little.

Lucia arrived in the Great Hall a little late, which meant that there were plenty of people already there. Scattered around were notebooks in every colour imaginable. Upon opening one, Lucia realised that they were dotted, which reminded her of her astrology book. She'd started the thing in the summer before second year and it was almost full by now with various notes and diagrams, mostly written in white or even silver (when she could afford it) ink on its dark pages. These notebooks had light pages in an off-white sort of colour, and the one which Lucia was holding had a cover of the same shade. The Hufflepuff put it back and instead searched for a notebook of the colour she always gravitated towards - deep blue, the same as her eyes. There were none that were perfect, so instead Lucia just grabbed a random one and sat down at a table by herself, pulling her wand out of where she'd stored it in her bun. "Colorvaria." How had Lucia ever survived without the colour-changing charm? The notebook immediately became the perfect shade of blue. When she tried to jam the cover into her embroidery hoop, though, it wouldn't go in. Of course. The notebook cover was far too... solid to fit into the hoop. Lucia would have to sort that out before she could embroider it. She aimed her wand carefully and - "Diffindo!" - the cover fell off the pages, leaving her to experiment with it as she liked. "Spongify." The Softening Charm worked like, well, a charm. The cover went floppy anough for Lucia to jam it into her embroidery hoop, and she set it to work sewing her name and a starry border onto the front in silver thread.

While the enchanged embroidery hoop was working on the front of the notebook, Lucia started on the inside of the book. It was strange seeing the pages without a cover on, but Lucia moved past that quickly and wrote her name again on the first page, along with her house and a quick message. If found, please return via owl ASAP. The next page formed half of the first double-page spread, which Lucia dedicated to an index. Was she going to have to go through and number all the pages? Apparently, yes. But she would do that later - there were better things for Lucia to do now. Like make a habit tracker, and a spread for each month utilising the calendars that had been provided. When she'd done with this, the embroidery hoop was just about finished so Lucia took the cover out and hardened it again. "Duro." Then she positioned it against the book. "Repairo." The newly embroidered cover sealed itself back onto the book as if it had never been removed.

There. Done. Lucia surveyed her new journal for a moment. This was complete... but while she had access to free notebooks and craft supplies, she might as well make some more. The astronomy notebook had proved incredibly useful for collecting together all of her notes and the work she'd done outside of lessons, so maybe it would help to make one for each other subject as well? That would definitely help her get her grades up. (And, okay, maybe she just wanted to decorate a journal again too.)

For Charms, Lucia chose a pale blue notebook that reminded her of a Beauxbatons uniform. After repeating the same cover-removing steps that she performed on her general planner, the Hufflepuff set her embroidery hoop going on a simple design: the word 'Charms' in the middle, with a pattern of sparkles and wands around it. On the first page she wrote her details again and another 'please return ASAP' request just in case she lost it. The next double-page spread became another index, and once the embroidery hoop was finished Lucia reattached the cover. There - Charms done.

For the rest of her subjects (except Astronomy, of course) Lucia repeated this process, but with a slightly different design for each one. Each notebook had the name of the subject embroidered on it, but was a different colour and had different images around the name. For Potions, a black notebook was decorated with twirly lines like potion fumes. For Transfiguration, straight lines (Lucia's imitation of light rays) crisscrossed against tanned background. The blood-red notebook dedicated to Defence Against The Dark Arts had a few very wonky representations of dangerous magical creatures, a stark contrast to the pygmy puffs on the olive Care Of Magical creatures book. History of Magic was peach with squiggles like really bad writing, Herbology emerald with leaves and plants, and Divination purple with a crystal ball around it. The magenta Ancient Runes notebook had its title written in runes, and the title of the grey Muggle Studies book was written inside a London Underground sign, a nod towards where Lucia had met her new Muggle Studies tutor, Adlai.

By the time Lucia had finished, most people had already left, and Lucia was left with the tast of carrying her eleven planners down to her dorm room. Thank goodness she was in Hufflepuff rather than Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, so didn't have to climb up a tower! Lucia balanced her planners on top of each other, vowing to herself that they would help her achieve the grades she needed. Wanted. Was expected to have. And, if nothing else, at least she'd had fun making them.

@Colin McCoire

House Colours: Slytherin

The Jester remembered this student in particular; the boy that was terribly similar to him. He had seen him around more and more frequently here and there: making flower crowns, spreading glitter...

Figaro trotted up to the boy, sniffing his hand once. The nose kept booping the tips of the boy's fingers twice or thrice before purring with a measure of uncertainty and reluctantly letting himself be stroked by the gentle lad. Truth be told, Figaro was a complacent and gentle beast, but unafraid to remind when an action had gone too far for his tolerance. So long as Colin did nothing to aggrieve the feline, Figaro would be perfectly content with his circumstance and would willing let the Slytherin Scotch pet him to the kid's attempt.

As for Piérre himself, not only did the Jester chuckle to himself at the accusation that the "kitty" didn't belong here, but the boy grinned a bit more as the excitable Slytherin serenaded his love for a flame, feeling a thrill of empathic happiness for the kid and his ability to find love that was so real and true to him. "Who says I can't belong, barefoot poet?" He whispered in a crisp, precise query. "If I come from nowhere, go to nowhere... then surely I can belong anywhere and nowhere as well, true?" He raised his eyebrows and flourished a bit as he leaned back. "And to me, that's all I want." It was one of the things that the boy had figured out in his short 14 years of life. He had learned quickly that he was not destined to settle down, the eccentric and wanderlust-filled boy with many names, faces, and personas.

Once, he believed that it had been a gaffe of his, a running gag, a joke; the switching of his house personality and bending the rules of this rigid and restricting house system. Maybe... it was something more now. A movement, a message?

"I don't have a house." Piérre finally shrugged and laughed to himself; a joke both inside and literal. Indeed, he had never shared his true house with anyone. It was only because people knew that he housed in the Gryffindor tower that anyone could make an assumption... and even then, they were hard pressed to try and make the Britalian confess to that fact.

Though Piérre found it incredibly entertaining when they did try.

The kid laughed as Colin continued to become more and more enthused, leaning on an elbow and resting his head on his hand in awe as the serenade continued, complete with all the nonsense that Piérre was so well known for himself. Truly, this kid was one after his own heart; something to be protected, someone to be guarded with a fervor unmatched by any romantic. Something precious and rare. Something...

Irreplaceable.

Following up after the slap to push someone a week forward in time, Piérre curiously observed as Colin the Poet not only exclaimed surprise (as Pi was sure that anyone was likely to do when their hard work has been messed with by the hand of chaos itself) and bequeathed upon the fool the name "Piérre Handsmacker" (and yes, that was a nickname that the kid was going to remember for all time), but then not only was amused by the actions of the Jester, but also innovated, adapted, and made art from the small mess that the boy had made. The boy chuckled at the spider in its little web for a moment before stopping and thinking.

Hadn't shadowy spiders been a blight on the Slytherin common room not two years ago?

Piérre's smile vanished. "Make sure you raise that one right, Colin." Piérre warned in a half teasing, half serious voice. "Don't want that one to turn out a bad egg and get squished." He gave a lopsided grin again as he laid down on the table entirely and rolled to his side to see the world sideways. "Acoppy!" The boy tried to mimic the Scot's interjection, likely failing horrifically with the extension of the second syllable that gave away the relatively thick Mediterranean in his accent.

Eyes flicking around again, Piérre lazily rolled his head and his eyes upwards to look further up the table; searching for ammunition.

He would find it in the form of paper.

And if anyone knew Piérre, especially from last year...

They knew that he quite enjoyed his confetti.

Quick as a blink, Piérre snatched a large amount of all sorts of paper; construction, cardboard, tissue, scraps from other people, snatched a pair of scissors, and looked Colin right in the eye. Piérre raised a brow. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Snip. Snip.

Arch the eyebrow a bit further, and let a full blown evil grin form.

Piérre began to slice up the papers as quickly as possible into as tiny pieces of paper as humanly possible, creating a pile in front of him that was a scintillating mess of dead trees and wasted color dye. And yes, he had taken some of the unique pieces of paper because Piérre could not think of anything funnier to do with them other than actually trying to put them in his notebook which-- if Piérre could add-- was still completely undecorated and was only a blank black composition notebook. In a matter of a few minutes, there were likely hundreds of little shreds of paper that could be perfectly used as confetti.

And confetti, in order to fulfil its purpose in life, must always be thrown.

Satisfied, Piérre leaned back with a sigh, looking to Colin once more. He stared at him for a while before glancing at the mountain of confetti and then back to the Jester's apprentice. If his intentions were not already clear, Piérre indicated to the mountain of tiny paper shapes and waved a hand. "Well... how do you want to get these little pieces of paper... absolutely everywhere?" The Jester left the method of causing havoc open for Colin. This was not just a prank for the boy Piérre alone, but a shared experience for Colin as well. This was the Jester's assessment. If he had been in this situation, the Britalian was able to envision a multitude of ways to get the job done quickly, slowly, dramatically, sillily, and even dangerously... but Piérre was curious as to how Colin would choose to do the deed. Or would he do it at all?

Colin smiled as Piérre's kitty cat, Figaro, nosed and licked his fingertips. He'd occasionally rub his cheeks against the boy's hand too. A clear sign of affection! He smiled at nothing in particular. As clear a sign of affection, surely, as howling across the hall at one's beloved!

"Who says I can't belong, barefoot poet?"

Colin smiled. Barefoot poet. He liked that. And that was a question that deserved attention! He stared Piérre in the eyes, then pushed everything out of the way, got up on hands and knees onto the heavy wooden table until he was almost nose to nose with the older lad. He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to one side. "Who says I can't belong? Who says I can't belong says the snake in cat's fur! Says the wolf in boy's fur to the catsilisk you belong to miiiii-yau!" Colin raised an eyebrow at Piérre's next question. "If I come from nowhere, go to nowhere... then surely I can belong anywhere and nowhere as well, true? Is that all what he asks, my precious?" Colin smiled, tilting his head the other way, so that he could now see Clair to the boy's side. The witty answer of deep philosophy he'd come up with disintegrated in his mind the moment he saw her.

His eyes defocused, looking into the Elsewhere. They saw neither boy nor hall. Only sunlight on the far hills. He knew what was going to happen next, and it brought such a great joy to his heart! Colin almost collapsed as it struck him in his heart. He hadn't felt this welling of power within himself since last year. And it was so much stronger than ever it was before! Fyre Angel knew it and recognised it for what it was. He wished she were here! His smile faded somewhat as time stilled and the noise of the hall was swept to silence. He felt hot all over and he trembled with the strength of it. He whispered:

"Here am I.
Near to thee and far!
I am where you are,
for in your heart my heart does lie
whether nowhere you are
whether anywhere you are
there and always my heart does lie
witherwhence and nigh or far
thitherthence I'll go afar
and there am I."

He closed his eyes as he felt the hot tears dripping upon his cheeks. Colin slid back off the table and plunked back down onto the chair. His chin rested in his left hand and his right arm lay outstretched upon the table. Colin's green eyes stared lovingly at Clair as she decorated her book. He smiled, slowly become aware of sound and sight again.

"And to me, that's all I want," said Piérre.

"Aye," Colin replied, the smile broadening on his face. His eyes were still on Clair. "That's all I want!"

"I don't have a house." That sounded like something Colin's Da would say. In fact, he'd read something very like that in his Uncle Colin's book. He tried to recall, but it was difficult when his mind and soul were everywhere and nowhere all at once! Colin rose out of the profound and abysmal depths of his reverie and focused again on Piérre. He doesn't have a house. That's what he said. Colin wondered. He thought about what he'd read.

He focused on the older boy. Gryffindor, he thought. Right? Today he wore Slytherin accented robes. He was pretty sure he'd seen the boy in Hufflepuff robes before. He gave Piérre a queer and curious expression. And then it hit him! He snapped his fingers and recited:

"What do you get when the snake chases the badger and the badger ---" He grasped for his sketch book and pencil, drawing four animals in a circle, rotating the book as he went. "--- What do you get when the badger bites the lion's tail? And what do you get when the lion rides the eagle's wings? And what do you get when the eagle lifts the snake from the earth?"

"My Da says there's only one house. I reckon it's our job to connect the four. Make them one?"

Colin noted how Piérre focused on the drawing he'd made to surround the web of ink. "Do you like spiders, Piérre? We get a lot down in the dungeons you know. What do you know about spiders?"

He drew a shape in the middle of the four animals chasing each other in a connected ring.

Π

"Make sure you raise that one right, Colin." Piérre sounded like he was serious, but Colin thought he must be only half so. He wondered for a moment if anyone would believe Piérre if he tried to warn them of a real danger. "Don't want that one to turn out a bad egg and get squished." He wondered how he himself would react in such a situation. Would he believe the warning or would he assume the jester was at geste? It was a conundrum, to be sure, and one that Colin would turn to again.

The older boy stretched himself out on the table top for a moment. Perhaps he needed a rest! Or maybe just wanted a new perspective. Colin wrote down what he could remember of the vision poem he'd recited to Clair. He'd want to show that to AngelFyre some time. As he was writing, he noted a flurry of activity from across the table. Piérre had launched himself towards the supply table and brought back all kinds of paper! Oo, the older boy had some kind of plan in mind!

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Piérre was definitely planning something! And his look suggested that Colin was invited to join in! The boy was a scissors wizard, and soon had a whole heap of wee squares of paper on the table between them. Colin looked around, gauging what must inevitably happen whenever paper, Piérre, and pranks coalesced within the same area. Colin was no seer, but he knew well enough to shove his sketch book and new journal into his satchel and close it up! Otherwise, he was certain he'd be digging drifts of confetti out of its recesses for the rest of the year!

Colin interlaced his fingers and rested his chin on them as he watched Piérre wield the scissors like a well practiced artisan. Colin was impressed. They boy knew how to make confetti! He nodded his head. He could guess what was going to come of this, too! At last the older boy leaned back in his chair. Colin sat up straight. He was curious to find out what would happen next!

Piérre stared at him for a while, perhaps gauging what Colin might do. For his part, Colin was eyeing the heap of confetti. The mathematics were clear --- P_rank = ∏ x (∑C + V_confetti + F_applied) --- and he smiled. His eyes darted around. He'd seen that Kim was finishing up his projects and getting ready to leave. Clair was busy organising, and so was a first year Ravenclaw next to her.

"Well... how do you want to get these little pieces of paper... absolutely everywhere?"

Piérre didn't need to ask Colin twice! He had a plan in mind and as walked by, Colin had it solidified. As soon as the older lad had said 'well', Colin was already standing up on the chair! By the time he said 'little pieces of paper', Colin was standing on the table with his wand out! Kim had passed by, so Colin could only hope he'd catch a wee bit of the prank! And just as Piérre said 'absolutely everywhere', Colin jabbed his wand into the heap of confetti!

FLIPENDO!!!

Colin could feel the rush of magic flow down along his left arm and into his wand. With a whoosh of thousands and myraids and scores of crores of confetti slips forcefully slid against one another, Colin whooped and watched as bajillions of pieces of confetti exploded into the air of the hall and began raining down in many places!

He hoped he'd gotten Kim with a little confetti, but he was pretty far away by now! Clair and the poor first year were certainly in line of sight, and hopefully they'd get some confetti! Perhaps some would float over and decorate fellow broom racer Della Barfield's book as well! In any event, unless he managed to duck, ∏ certainly would've gotten a mouthfull of confetti!

"CLAAAIIIRRR!!! New eaglet girls!! Something to decorate your books?" Colin called out into the hall as the last of the confetti floated down and settled into its final resting places. He turned to Piérre: "∏!! That was grand!"

@Piérre Marchonné | @Clair Fernandez | @Jordyn Fletcher | @Ellie Kinsey | @Della Barfield || Mentions @Kim Sato | @AngelFyre McCubbin