Pyjamas and Fluffy Slippers Private

The day so far had gone fairly quietly and uneventful for Arthur. Alone for the day, he'd spent most of the morning reading in his room. His mum was at work, his father and half siblings were at some pureblood function, and his two closest friends were on holiday right now. Though his mother didn't like to leave him by himself in the house, sometimes it was unavoidable. She was supposed to have the day off, but something had come up with one of the other nurses and she had to fill in. By late morning, he decided to walk to the local co-op to buy something to make for lunch. He was zoning out as he walked (not a great habit in this area, but the route was second nature to him now) when he heard someone running over.

"Excuse me? I'm terribly sorry to bother you, but I've found myself lost. I was wondering if you could give me directions to get home? Or at least, tell me where I am?"

Hearing the voice beside him, Arthur replied automatically before he even turned his head. "Oh! Sure.. Of-" His eyes widened when he turned, seeing the girl standing in her pajamas and fuzzy slippers. "-course," he finished, trying not to stare. He blinked, still processing what he was seeing. "Arthur," he replied, still a little stunned. He shook her hand. "Uh.. Are you okay?" he asked, wondering what could have caused her to be in such a predicament. Did she lock herself out of her house or something?

He glanced around a little, concerned. They weren't on the high street anymore. It was mostly residential buildings from here until his house, and not exactly the greatest neighborhood. Tottenham, he always thought, had its own kind of unique charm. Of course, the only other place he'd lived in London was Enfield, so maybe he was biased, but still.. Despite its reputation, he felt like Tottenham probably wasn't as bad as people seemed to think. It might not be the richest part of London, but it had a good sense of community (and a killer football team!). Still, it definitely wasn't a great place to be wandering around in your pajamas, or admitting that you were lost. There were people 'round here that would hassle you for nothing. Not being the nail that stuck out around here was key, and she definitely stuck out.

Touching her arm briefly, he moved a little too the side, between the steps of two town houses, so they were a bit more out of the way while they talked. "I can't tell you how to get home unless you tell me where you live, but I can tell you where you are. This is Elsden road in Tottenham. If you have a map, I could show you..." he offered. Unfortunately, he only had a flip phone -no gps!- and he suspected that if she had a phone, she wouldn't have needed to ask him for directions. In any case, seeing her, he'd already made up his mind that he couldn't just point her in a direction and let her go. He should probably make sure that she actually made it home alright.

"Um... Do you want to, like, borrow some clothes or something?" he offered. Or at the very least, shoes.

[font=Times New Roman]"Oh, thank you so much. That would be perfect. It isn't too much trouble, is it?" The avoidance of the boys first question had been somewhat deliberate. While she felt that he was one of the few people she had meet that she could trust instantly, her mother had taught her never to trust a stranger with too much information. She had been brought up being taught that this was just plain common sense.

But, even despite her upbringing and every cell in her brain screaming at her not to tell this strange boy where she lives, she did anyway. “I live in Notting Hill, do you know where that is? Am I close to it?” she couldn’t understand why she was making such a big deal out of simply telling someone her neighbourhood. It wasn’t that bad, was it? At least, not until some crazy killer turned up on her doorstep wielding a blood stained axe. But he was only a kid - nothing bad could happen, right?

Truth be told, she had no idea where this ‘Tottenham’ was, which was odd for her. She was the sort of person who had to know everything about anything just so that she could be prepared for situations like this. Looks like she needed to brush up on her London neighbourhoods when she got home. That is, if she ever did get home.

This meeting was odd for her. Because of her mothers pure blood status, she almost never interacted with muggles. That was, if he was a muggle - but she felt for sure he was. He just seemed like the muggle type. She knew she’d best be careful not to let anything slip about the wizarding world while in his presence. Even if he was a wizard, you could never be too careful around the subject of wizards. You never knew who could be listening.

The boy - Arthur as he had introduced himself - seemed nice enough for a boy. A lot of the boys she had met were absolute and utter flobberworms. Like that Parasite fellow, and his friend with the ugly hair that she had met at Summer Camp. Arthur seemed, well, almost decent. She would even go as far as to say nice. But she knew deep down that boys were flobberworms, and you could never trust them with anything. She was still unsure as to why she had told him so much about herself when only speaking with him for a few minutes. She never usually told strangers this much about herself - especially muggles. But something about this boy made him seem trustworthy, and from the way he spoke he sounded kind. This confused her, boys weren’t kind were they? They were rowdy, dirty, smelly, weird animals that were brought up with little or no manners. [/font]

"No trouble at all. My flat is just a couple minutes from here," he said, gesturing down the street as he started to walk back in that direction. His eyes widened as she explained where she had come from. “Wow! You.. You really walked all the way here from Noting Hill?" he asked, surprised. He did know where that was, more or less, but it's not like he could give her step by step directions from here to there. All he really knew was that it was southwest from here, about 30 minutes away by car. Walking, it must have taken her an hour at least. Some morning! She didn't seem to want to elaborate on her predicament, though, so Arthur refrained from asking her anymore. At least for now.

Arthur shook his head. “Well, we’re definitely not walking back, then." He tried to think about how exactly they could go. “I suppose we could take the metro..” he mumbled, mostly to himself. Glancing over, he supposed there was no point in asking if she had her Oyster card with her. It didn't seem like she had time to grab a wallet when she left that morning. They had a couple extra metro cards at home, from times that he'd forgotten his card on the way to school, so it was fine anyway.

He got out his keys as they reached the entrance of his building. Unlocking the door to their small apartment, he stepped aside and held the door open for Bella. Probably his mum would be annoyed that he let a stranger into their house while she was out, but he had to think that she would be more annoyed if he let someone almost as young as he was wander half way across London in her pajamas.

Making sure the door was closed behind them so their cat didn’t get out, he turned to Bella. “Just a sec,” he said, running into his mum’s room to grab something she could borrow. There was a box of clothes in her room that they were planning to donate to charity shops anyway. Fortunately, his mum was a pretty small person, though the clothes would still probably be large on her.

As he came back into the main room, he suddenly felt oddly embarrassed, realizing how it seemed to have a girl here alone in his apartment. “Um, h-here... we were planning to give these away, so you can just get rid of them after. Or, whatever..” he said, handing her the small stack of clothes to choose from. There were some skirts, jeans, and T-shirts. All a bit mismatched and not particularly stylish, but hopefully they would do. “You can change in any of the rooms over there..” he said, pointing.

[font=Times New Roman]"Haha, yea, I really did walk all the way here. I didn't really know where I was going so I just sorta, uh, kept going for an hour or two." To be quite frank, she was a bit wary about going to this boys apartment. She had just met him. What if he had some psycho at his home waiting to kill her? Still, he was her only hope for getting back home on time for her mothers ‘so important’ family reunion. And plus, she really didn’t want to be walking around in pyjamas anymore.

Raising an eyebrow in question as Arthur mentioned something called ‘the metro.’ What the hell was that? Her childhood hadn’t really been one with too much muggle stuff, as she guessed this was. Even though her father was a muggle, her family had used side-along apparition on her mother's behalf whenever they travelled anywhere.

Dismissing the thought as they arrived at Arthur's home. She mumbled a quick thanks as he held open the door for her, and stepped inside. It wasn’t as big as she was used to, but she could tell it definitely felt like a place she would like to call home. It was obvious people lived there. Not in the way most people thought ‘lived’ meant, not in the eating, breathing, sleeping, ect ect way. But in the way that gave them memories they loved. ‘Lived’ by her standards meant joking around, family game nights, movies and so on. A place had to hold special memories for someone to be classified as a home in her eyes.

But no matter how homely a home may feel, being left alone in a room in a house she hadn’t know about until a few minutes prior was not something she had wanted to happen. ‘Oh god, I’m gonna die. I shouldn’t of agreed to this. Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. This is how I’m gonna go out.’

Her worries - or to be more accurate, terrors - were quickly diminished when Arthur walked back into the room she had been left in, a small pile of clothes in hand. Taking the pile, she crossed over to one of the doors that he had been pointing at. Turning the handle, she walked inside and put the clothes on the bed.

Instantly passing up the jeans, she went straight for a skirt. Growing up in dresses and skirts, as well as living out her schooling year in robes, had left its mark on her. While she didn’t dislike jeans, she definitely didn’t care for them and would choose a skirt over them every time.

Surprisingly, it was the perfect fit. Pairing it with a randomly selected shirt, she bundled her pyjamas and less than useable footwear into a ball, picked up the pile of clothes with her free hand and opened the door using her bare foot.

“Hey, uh, what should I do with my old clothes? I don’t really need them anymore, I’ve got others at home and I don’t really wanna carry them all the way back. Oh, and here’s the rest of your clothes back.” If she may come across as spoilt when saying she didn’t need a perfectly good pair of pyjamas, she was unaware of it. Basic necessities had never been a problem for her, and it was unknown to her about how certain families had to go without some of the stuff she could get by only walking a few steps to her wardrobe or kitchen.
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While Bella was getting changed, Arthur got his metro card out of his school bag and found the spare ones they kept in a drawer. He got out a carrier bag from under sink to put her old clothes in, grabbing a packet of Hula Hoops while he was at it (on second thought, he grabbed two). He'd been on his way to get something to eat when they met, so he was pretty hungry by now. As he waited for her to come out, he couldn't help but wonder again what on earth might have happened that led to such an unusual situation. A more paranoid part of him worried that maybe he was being too trusting. Like she was going to lure him somewhere to get robbed or something... He probably shouldn't have brought her to their house, but it's not like they had much of anything worth taking. And maybe he wasn't the best judge of people, but she seemed genuine to him.

"Oh, uh... Are you sure? I mean, I can carry them for you if you want?" he said as Bella came out of the bedroom, asking what she should do with her old clothes. He went over to take back the pile, looking down at the bundle of clothes. He could understand not wanting the slippers anymore, which were probably beyond repair at this point. The pajamas looked fairly nice though, not that he could really tell one way or another, but if she really didn't want them anymore.. "Uh, okay. I'll just put them with the stuff we're giving away," he said, adding it to the stack of clothes he'd given her before. Though it seemed a little odd to him, he didn't dwell much on it. "Here," he said, holding out a metro card. "I'm guessing you don't have one with you?"

"You can borrow any shoes that fit," he said, pointing over to the entrance way where his converse, trainers, and school shoes sat next to smart sandals, flats, and nurse's shoes. He was going to need those back though.. Locking up after them, he started back down the street in the direction of the nearest metro station.

"So... Where do you go to school?" he asked her, for lack of anything better to say. It's not like he would have heard of it, since she probably went to school near where she lived. Noting Hill... Now that he thought about it, that was one of the richer areas of London. That might explain why she didn't care about getting rid of her pyjamas, and why she didn't seem that familiar with the tube. So maybe she went to a private boarding school somewhere fancy. Like France.

[font=Times New Roman]Taking the strange card, she shook her head at Arthurs question. Have one? She didn't even know what one was - let alone have used one. Her mother used apparation as the only way to travel - she hadn't ever travelled any other way she could remember.

Making her way over to the shoes, she picked out a pair of sandals that looked around her size - slipping them on before standing up again. Following the boy out, she looked around her once before following him up the street.

Falling into step next to Arthur, she kept her eyes on her feet until he spoke. "Where do I go to school? Well where else would I go? It's not like I'm going to go over to Ilvermorny. Hogwarts, of course!" A smile spread across her face as she talked about Hogwarts. The summer holidays seemed to be dragging on forever. While most kids dreaded the return of the schooling year, Isabella was actually looking forward to it. Although she had only left Summer Camp a mere few weeks ago, she was already feeling homesick for a place that felt more home to her than, well, home.

But as quickly as the sudden burst of happiness at the mention of her school had come, it was gone. Replaced instead by a scared feeling. The International Wizarding Code of Secrecy was a law that was not dealt with lightly by the Ministry of Magic if someone was to break it. And although she was only a child, she was still scared of being put into Azkaban for the words that had just escaped her mouth.

Clearing her throat, she followed up her sentence before with a lame explanation - a white lie - on what Hogwarts was. "It's a um boarding school in Scotland. I wouldn't of expected you to here of it. Not many people know of it and it's pretty selective." Hoping to Merlin that he would of believed her lame explanation on her precious school. She smiled a nervous smile, praying he wouldn't pick up on her nervousness.[/font]