Got My Eye on You FIN

⋄ January 13th, 2024 | Great Hall ⋄
⋄ Interactions: @Pericles Dralt | Mentions: None ⋄

𝓢tifling a yawn, Bex did her best in her rumpled, sleep-addled state to divide her attention between her rapidly cooling egg and soldiers and the aviary postmen that were currently making their rounds throughout the Hall. While she wasn't currently expecting any post today, her dad's owl, Owlie, had been holding a grudge against her ever since delivering her broom back in November, and a lack of vigilance these days often led to bitten fingers and stolen toast. If only Crumb could be trained to ferry her correspondence back and forth to her parents, all her problems would be solved. She'd have to teach her ferret how to fly first, but if it meant she'd get to keep all of her fingers, she'd happily put in the effort.

While the typical Saturday breakfast cacophony was in full swing around her, Bex - ever-so a morning person - was barely paying attention to it in the slightest. Would it be rude of her to just lay down and go back to sleep right here at the table? She wouldn't even get in the way, everyone could just eat around her, or place their plates atop her head while she dozed for all she cared. Had this been a just and kind world, breakfast would instead take place in the afternoon.

Lost in her daydreams of going back to sleep for twelve, maybe thirteen more hours, the goings-on of the older boy sitting across from her weren't even on her radar. What was on her radar though was something small and flitting landing in her cup, splashing milk onto her clothes. "Not this again." She bemoaned. Unfortunately if you looked at a graph of Bex's first year, with the x-axis being her clothing and the y-axis being a cascading list of tragedies, you'd be remiss not to notice that the two lines were intersecting like, way more often than she'd prefer, with a recent hoodie-soldier lost but a week ago to the unrelenting march of war (aka fruit punch).

Now tired and disgruntled, Bex looked into her cup to see what had triggered her current milk-related debacle, only to let out a small noise of confusion as she recognized what appeared to be a small, rather freaked-out looking eyeball floating in her milk. The older, pale-haired boy across from her stood up and immediately apologized to her, and Bex looked up at him, taking in his closed, sunken in eye socket. She then looked back down into her cup, and back up at the boy again, before suddenly the neurons in her brain fired successfully, and she let out a strangled shriek as she realized that the other student's eye had fallen out into her milk.

The older boy reached towards her cup as if to grab it back, but in her panic Bex was faster, scooping his eye up into her hands and cupping it in her palms, cradling it close to her chest. She tried to remember what little she knew about first aid, but how to go about re-attaching eyeballs was not something they typically taught in children's first aid classes. Her voice was frantic and watery when she asked the white haired boy, "Can it go back in?"

@Rebecca Lark

Pericles had a full 180° view of Rebecca's realization setting in. The line of his lips curdled into a frown when she shrieked, turning a few heads towards their debacle, and he mumbled some more "Sorry, sorry,"s in an attempt to calm her down. "Really sorry, but if I could just- I don't think milk's good for it...." She acted on impulse in an effort to help. Sure, she had gotten his eye out of the cup, but he'd meant to use a spoon or anything, really, besides her hands. "Oh- don't-!" His words were disrupted by a physical cringe as she scooped it from the milk. The eye swirled around upsettingly, wriggly as a tadpole out of water. The wizard briefly malfunctioned as he processed the fact that his eye was no longer in his head, but instead, in the hands of some stranger. Thanks Abi.

It was possible Pericles was desensitized from living at Hogwarts for four years longer than Rebecca, but he seemed to be handling the loss of his eyeball better than the first-year. It had been a bit of a shock, sure, but most of all the enchantment was disorienting. Pericles was viewing things from two perspectives, observing the unfortunate bird both from across the table and, yes, from in her palm. It looked like she took good care of her nails. Both Ravenclaws looked rather miserable as she asked if the thing could be returned, to which Peri could only sigh "You know, I honestly have no idea. Here." He scooped up a chalice of water from the table, presenting it with a weary "Please don't drop it. If it's damaged, I might not be able to reverse the enchantment. D'you have a clean spoon? Mine has egg on it."

⋄ January 13th, 2024 | Great Hall ⋄
⋄ Interactions: @Pericles Dralt | Mentions: None ⋄

𝓗er hands had been many things in this life: creators and destroyers, protectors and aggressors, helpful and eager assistants and petty little thieves. She was generally a hands-on kind of girl, and wasn't afraid to get them dirty, bloody, or bruised. One thing they had not ever been though was a makeshift gurney for a strange housemate's eyeball. This was definitely a first for her (and maybe also for everyone else on Earth, though she'd admittedly never asked), and she was actually handling it super well and normal, thank you very much. It's not like there's any etiquette for these sorts of things. And if she was crying a little, well, that was her business. Stay in your lane.

Being given a concrete task by the older boy definitely helped with her panic, though, and even if they couldn't put his eye back in, maybe they'd be able to salvage it enough that the nurse would be able to. Or perhaps they could turn it into a cool fake eye, if it was too late. As such, with careful hands she removed a clean spoon from the table, gently setting the eyeball atop it and lowering it into the chalice to rinse the milk off of it. This was by far the weirdest potion she had ever made.

She was worried they wouldn't be able to effectively clean it without scrubbing it, but thankfully the eye's fretful wiggling did the job for them. Once it had been suitably de-milked, Bex lifted up the spoon, holding the eye up to the fair-haired boy for inspection.

"What did you mean by... reverse the enchantment. Did somebody curse your eyeball out? Do you know the counter-curse?" Bex hadn't been afraid of having her eyeballs cursed out before this, but definitely was now. One of the many, many, many reasons that she should have been allowed to go to muggle school: almost no one got their eyeballs cursed out there.

@Rebecca Lark

The poor first-year, in her mortified state, continued to surpass Pericles' expectations. He had expected her to give him a spoon. Now she was dunking his eyeball into a goblet of water. His mouth opened, then closed, the correction swallowed down. She was clearly managing the situation as best as she could, and he wasn't about to make her feel any worse than she already did. "Oh, you're too kind," he muttered weakly instead. Her contribution was watched with a growing expression of sympathy. If she had a muggle background, he realized, this just might have qualified as "weird". Through the eye, he could only see a cloudy haze of milk water until she lifted it into the light again. Pericles leaned in to squint at it with the remaining eye. He nodded in approval.

At her panicked questions, the boy raised his hands, holding them out in a pacifying gesture. "Don't worry. It isn't a curse, just my sister's silly sense of humor. I'd just tried on this ring she sent me and... well, you know the rest." He turned his right hand over, revealing the simple band with a small glass eye attached."Suppose that'll teach me not to try on unfamiliar artifacts. I think if I just-" He removed the ring. All too suddenly, the spoon was empty and his head jerked back, eyes squeezing shut as he grunted and hissed. "Ah, hss!" Water trickled down his cheek as the eyeball resumed its rightful place. After gingerly rubbing at it, he forced his eyes open, though they were teary and struggled to stay that way."Right as rain," Peri reassured with a strained voice and some malfunctioned, teeth-baring expression that might have qualified for a smile if it weren't so pained. "The water stings a bit, but it'll be fine, see?" He forced his eyes open a little wider. The ball swiveled around like those cheap toy eyes suspended in a plastic sphere, before finally settling into the socket in a straightforward position. Peri offered a thumbs-up. It would be difficult to tell if he was being faceitious or not when he offered out the ring, saying "Care to try?"

⋄ January 13th, 2024 | Great Hall ⋄
⋄ Interactions: @Pericles Dralt | Mentions: None ⋄

𝓘t was disconcerting, to say the least, watching the older boy's eye just- well, rather violently reassert itself back into his face. He certainly didn't look like he'd much enjoyed the process, but he did, at least, seem to be mostly sound and unharmed in the aftermath. Bex watched, grotesquely fascinated, as the boy widened his eyes for her, allowing her to watch as his eye rolled about in it's socket like a marble, before finally stopping still in what was presumably (or at least hopefully) his eye's normal operating position. Bex admittedly didn't know much about how the human eye worked, but she was almost sure there was supposed to be like, an optic nerve in there, and this whole process simply should not have worked the way it had. Magic was proper weird, and she now felt even more justified in her distrust of it.

However, her skepticism regarding how exactly the object worked (and the relative safety of its effects therein) was in no way able to overshadow how ridiculously cool the whole thing was, and as such Bex didn't hesitate to reach out accept the ring when the newly two-eyed boy offered it to her. She turned it this way and that in her hands, scrutinizing it thoroughly and looking for some sort of indication of how exactly the magical object worked. It really did look like nothing more than a simple, unassuming metal ring with a glass eye affixed to the center of it, staring out at her enticingly. While it was gently warmed from the boy's hand, it didn't seem to emit the tell-tale heat of inner machinery, and no gears or little whirring instruments were visible upon it, nor were there any other immediate indications apparent to her to hint at how exactly this little thing worked, let alone what powered it.

She really shouldn't put it on. Nothing about what she had just witnessed had looked fun for the ring's first victim, just painful, embarrassing, and potentially riddled with harrowing, life changing consequences if something were to happen to your eye while it was out and about, having it's night on the town. Bex had no idea if the school nurse could regrow eyes, and that felt like a question that one should ask before putting a magical eye-stealing ring on. While the fear and panic she'd been afflicted with for the past few minutes had begun to subside once it had become clear that eyes could, in fact, be magically re-attached by the same thing that had removed them in the first place, the thought of putting the ring onto her own hand was a formidable one, as just because her fellow Ravenclaw had managed to avoid any macabre consequences from this breakfast excursion did not mean that Bex would end up as lucky.

These past few months at Hogwarts, though, she'd found herself growing more and more inclined to snuff out her fears via throwing herself bodily at them, at least in situations in which she had some degree of autonomy over the proceedings. She'd spent so much of this year in a fluctuating anxiety spiral over the things she just couldn't seem to wrestle any semblance of control over. Her magic, her parents, her grades.

Possibly losing her eyeball to a magic ring, though? At least that was a potential disaster that she could choose for herself, eyes wide open. A poison of her own brewing, swallowed down in one unflinching gulp.

Also, it had looked cool as all hell when the older boy had done it, and Bex was nothing if not a curious little beast. His sister must be cool if she sent him things like this in the post. Bex mostly got snacks.

"Is the milk situation optional?" She asked the boy. "Like, can we try to catch my eye when it pops out, or do I just cross my fingers and hope it ends up somewhere clean?"

Regardless of his answer, she would take the ring and, after squeezing her eyes shut, slide it onto her thumb, the only one of her fingers that was big enough for the ring to stay securely on. The sudden emptiness she felt where her eye had been not moments before was a sudden shock to her system, like jumping into a pool without allowing herself to adjust to the temperature first. It wasn't exactly painful, but it certainly wasn't pleasant either.

Opening her remaining good eye, it took her a few disoriented seconds to get her bearings with her perception of the world now suddenly rended down the middle. Her brain struggled to process the conflicting viewpoints of the pale-haired boy standing in front of her and holding out a cup, and a second, unfamiliar view of somewhere small and dark, with the ceiling of the Great Hall flickering high above her. Dizzy, she grabbed onto the edge of the table for support, squeezing her eyes shut again as she tried to shut out as much of the confusing stimuli as she could, though this unfortunately had no success in quelling her view of life inside a cup.

"Wow, this sucks so hard. Tell your sister thanks from me."

@Rebecca Lark

Magic was mystifying, even for those who had been raised in the thick of it. Abilities were unobtainable to some, others were born with them. Enchantments and curses alike could be woven into objects, whether fantastic or mundane, large or small. The rules magic followed often seemed more like guidelines than laws. Pericles knew when it was time to be a perfectionist, and when it was time to submit to magic's whims. He watched as the young bird examined the object and calculated the risks, ultimately deciding this was one of those times to take a chance, and grinned warmly when she took the ring from his hand. The move was bold and brave. "Atta girl," he muttered.

"Let's endeavor to avoid milk, this time." Peri grabbed the goblet and emptied it with a quiet "Tergeo," siphoning out all liquids and impurities. He thought on her next question for a beat before answering. "Close your eyes tight before putting on the ring. If it works the way I suspect it will, you'll hold it in until they open." He would have the cup ready, though. Just in case. They must have made an odd sight to any onlookers, but the boy wasn't worried about whether or not they had an audience. He braced one forearm against the Ravenclaw table, stretching the opposite arm out with a hard stare of preparation. Sure enough, on went the ring and out came the eye, his face flashing with an intense look as he lunged. Pericles beamed down at the catch now rolling around in the bottom of the goblet.

The older eagle had a strong guess as to what she was feeling when she suddenly gripped the table, holding herself steady. "Try keeping your eyes closed," he encouraged, tone suddenly soft and patient, attempting to walk her through things to avoid her hurling all over the breakfast table. Doing so ought to limit her view to the one. Peri carefully set the goblet between them as she said something about the experience "sucking hard". "Is that a good thing?" he asked absently, rolling his sleeves to his elbows. "I'll be sure to tell her. Abigail doesn't send this sort of stuff for no reason. I think, if I'm remembering right, this artefact is meant for spying. Wingardium Leviosa." Up the eyeball floated, guided by his steady wand into the air. Rebecca would see herself from its perspective as it tilted towards her. Pericles coaxed it a little higher, giving her an overhead view of their tablemates. One was gradually spooning half a stick's worth of butter into their oatmeal. Two were whispering and giggling to one another while staring over at the Slytherin table. Another was gawking, slack-jawed, at the eye now levitating a few feet above the table.

⋄ January 13th, 2024 | Great Hall ⋄
⋄ Interactions: @Pericles Dralt | Mentions: None ⋄

𝓣he absurdity of the actual developing events was matched only by the absolute conversational whiplash she was experiencing. "Is- is sucking hard a good thing?" She thought about that for a moment. "Huh, I guess I can't really decide that for you. Sure, I guess."

Bex had experienced no small number of strange things since arriving at Hogwarts, ranging from odd to disorienting to downright traumatizing, but the experience of being able to feel her eyes squeezed shut, and yet still be able to see herself, from an outsider's perspective, was a particularly jarring one. She'd seen herself every day in the mirror, of course, but it was different seeing yourself as others see you, even for a moment. She wasn't very in tune with herself in the physical sense, often forgetting that she had a body that other people could perceive, so it was disconcerting to come face to face with herself. She wasn't nearly as impressive looking as she would have hoped. Rather short, and currently sort of hungover looking, though she supposed losing an eye could do that to a person. She'd could give herself some grace here, she supposed.

Soon enough the view changed, as the older boy helpfully floated her eye up and over the Ravenclaw table so that she could gaze upon her housemates in a delightful little microcosmic panopticon. She dutifully followed the boy's instructions and kept her eyes shut tight, allowing herself to focus exclusively on her view from amongst the flock of candles. One of her housemates was staring directly up at her - or, at least, at her eye - apparently in shock. He appeared to have been mid-bite before he caught a glimpse of ocular-Bex and she watched as, in his confused focus on her, his scrambled eggs slowly fell off of his fork and onto the table below.

She waved at him, only to feel suddenly embarrassed as she remembered that eyes didn't have arms, so she was functionally just waving at the pale-haired boy across from her physical body, who was currently flying her eye like a kite.

Slowly but surely, the nausea and dizziness began to fade as she grew used to the sensation, and she tentatively cracked her good eye open, trying to get a feel for how exactly the ring was intended to work. The older boy had said the ring was for spying, but she couldn't imagine it would be of much use in that regard if you had to keep your eyes closed the whole time. That was how a spy got themself murdered, for sure.

She blinked, which was really just winking at the moment, allowing herself to get used to the sensation of being in two places at once. Once she was able to stand on her own without being afraid she'd throw up, she gave a quick thumbs up towards her lovely assistant. It wasn't a feeling that could really be described, standing there as your brain carved out new neural pathways in an effort to try and process two competing sets of stimuli at once, but it was kind of like trying to take the first bite of an apple when you had a really small mouth. She would not be taking questions about this at this time.

"This is kind of cool. And maybe also the worst thing that's ever happened to me. What do you think you'll use it for? The ring, I mean."

Was he intending to do a lot of spy work? Was he already a spy? She hoped so. Maybe this was a roundabout way of recruiting her. That would be so sick.

"Could you bring my eye back down, please? I think I'd like to go back to bed."

@Rebecca Lark

Pericles' sleepy stare had been traded for a squint of intense focus. His thoughts were on the sustainment of his spell, guiding the adrift eyeball through a firm hold on his wand. He didn't care to imagine the unpleasantness that could come about from dropping another student's organ, let alone the trouble he'd be in, so blunder wasn't an option. He still spied her waving on the edge of his vision, though, and quirked a small smile to himself. And oh- a thumbs up too! One of his top three favorite muggle expressions that could be conveyed with one's fingers. That was a good sign.

On hearing this was both very cool and very awful, Pericles gave a thoughtful hum and nod combo, appreciative of the younger year who had incidentally become his artefact guineapig. She posed a particularly good question. What would he use it for...? He took a moment to mull this over, ignorant of the fact that their demonstration was drawing more curious (and unsettled) stares. "I can't say just yet," Pericles admitted, steering her eye through the cloud of floating candles with a dutiful wave of an aspen wand. "Off the top of my head, I suppose I could float it into the Restricted Section of the library. That way, I could search for a title without going in myself, and Accio out whatever I need. Or maybe I'll drop it in a jar, then leave it wherever I need to keep an eye on things." He spoke so simply that the pun could not have been intentional.

The upperclassmen seemed entirely content to continue traumatizing his peers, but as soon as Becca decided she'd had enough, he was quick to comply. "Of course. I'm afraid it's a bit early for bed, though." He winked up at the eye. It was coaxed down, brought to hover not far from her face, when Peri instructed: "Whenever you're ready, remove the ring." He made a point to hold it close so it wouldn't rocket back as abruptly as his had. Waiting until it was securely in the socket, the boy then stowed his wand and offered a hand, not to take the ring right away but to give a shake first. "Where are my manners? I typically try to get someone's name before levitating their body parts, or at least offer my own. Pericles Dralt, fifth-year. Most call me Peri, though I'm partial to Pear, too."

⋄ January 13th, 2024 | Great Hall ⋄
⋄ Interactions: @Pericles Dralt | Mentions: None ⋄

𝓤nlike a frankly unreasonable number of her housemates, Bex didn't really share the all-consuming desire to pilfer the restricted section of the library that seemed to afflict Ravenclaw house so widely. Bex didn't even enjoy reading unrestricted books. Frankly she was rather pleased that they'd locked some books away in jail, good riddance. If they wanted to restrict the entire library, that would be a-okay with her; she'd settle for just the Transfiguration textbook, though, if she was pressed on it.

The older boy seemed smart though, a traditional Ravenclaw through and through, and as it was best not to insult the person holding the fate of your eyeball in his hands, she kept these rather treasonous thoughts to herself. Besides, the pale-haired boy seemed rather cool, or at the very least had access to some really weird stuff, so maybe there was something equally as cool and weird in the restricted section that she just didn't know about. Like a dragon, or one of those house elves that everyone kept talking about.

"Keeping an eye on things, that's funny. Is there a specific book you'd be looking for in the restricted section? Or are you just window shopping?"

The jar idea however, she was a little less fond of. There was something somewhat off-putting about a singular eye, alone and vulnerable in an empty glass void. She thought of the caterpillars and beetles she'd catch in the backyard as a child, and build little terrariums for in old jam jars. Leaves, sticks, rocks, dirt; a home in miniature. She wondered what the boy's eyeball would need for its own pocket sized habitat, but as these thoughts were both too abstract and too complex to accurately relay to him, what was actually said out loud was: "If you kept your eye in a jar, would you make it a little bed? So it wouldn't have to sit on the cold glass all night during its stakeout."

Bex waited almost-patiently as the other Ravenclaw brought her eye back down to Houston and, once he'd given her to go-ahead, she closed her eyes once more and pulled the ring off of her thumb. As suddenly as it had been ejected, her eye was summarily returned to her once again. She found herself both immensely relieved to have survived the ordeal with the same final number of body parts that she'd started with, but was also surprised to feel a certain level of disappointment that the whole event was over.

It was rare that she ever got to enjoy magic. It was such a constant source of stress in her life that she often found herself with very little in the way of positive feelings for such a big part of who she was as a person. She neither liked nor wanted to be a witch, so the peculiar joy and whimsy of her mini adventure today was- strange, maybe. Good, but odd. She didn't know what she was feeling, let alone what to call it. It was different.

She blinked up at the older Ravenclaw, doing her best to ignore the squishy feeling that she could only assume was her eye readjusting itself in her socket by wriggling about like a tadpole. It wasn't pleasant, but it didn't seem to hurt much, so she'd consider that a win.

"I think I'm good now." She told him. Still a little off-kilter, but far better than she would have expected.

After the older boy introduced himself, Bex repeated his name back to herself, testing the weight and feel of it on her tongue. "Pericles." It was a fun name, a name that felt distinctly magical in the way you'd often run into at Hogwarts. Some people were named Rebecca, and some people were named Leviathan. She was named after her late grandmother, so she felt bad for the inclination, but it would have been so cool to have been named Leviathan. No one ever consults you on these things when you're a baby.

"Nice to meet you, Pericles. I think I actually do a lot of weird things without telling people my name first. It's Bex by the way, Bex Lark. Short for Rebecca."

"Oh!" She reached her hand out towards him, palm upturned, and offered him back his ring. "Here's your spyball back."