Closed Motivation for Illumination

⋖ 10/Apr/2024 @ 20:25 | OUTFIT | ENGLISH [#715380] | FRENCH [#b654a9] ⋗
INTERACTIONS @Jack Warren | MENTIONING @n/a
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Heels clacked dully at a slow pace as Evelynn moved down the hall. Unaware of the time, her pace was unhurried. Not that it would have mattered even if she'd known she was past curfew. Habit was hard to break and she'd long ago grown accustomed to late night paroles during her stint as a Gryffindor prefect. Even before that, the curiousity that drove her to search for secrets and answers to her endless questions could rarely be contained by the rules of time and place. Sleep would often evade her and peace was easier to find away from distracting peers and noisy common rooms. Although it wasn't the evasiveness of the Sandman, nor a need for solitude that guided her this time.

Over the course of past month, Evelynn had been slowly prodded back from apathetic inaction into the realm of motivation. Suggestions had been dropped--and later supported by others--that the castle's tendency for disaster and destruction was not quite as dormant as the Gryffindor had previously believed it to be. This realization had brought with an antidote to her emotional agony. There was nothing quite so distracting as an unsolved mystery, and if there was one source of chaos, how many others of her cold files needed to be reopened? Thoughts had been kicked back into motion, suspicion and speculation waking from their slumber.

Suddenly, potential meaning could be once again found in the smallest of details. A stone out of place could suggest a hidden stash now recovered. A new portrait on the wall might be a means of indirect, though simple, scrying. Missing students, previously thought relocated or transferred, added urgency to the notion that dark deeds might still be afoot. Withdrawn from the social sphere for too long, there were too many unfamiliar faces and too many changes that had overcome the school. If Evelynn had any hope of being useful or finding answers to even some of the loose ends that had yet to be tied away, she needed to refamiliarize herself with her environment with the greatest of detail.

To that end, she had taken to ambulating the halls of the school when thoughts occupied her mind or she needed to work through the approach to an assignment, allowing her gaze to roam where it would, passively taking in everything in its path. Tonight was no different. Her steps had opted for a detour on the way back to Gryffindor tower, her gaze affixed to the wall opposite her while fingers absently traced an unbroken path along the stones immediately next to her. Frame after frame drifted into her sights, only to leave them again. She almost felt like she was looking for something, though nothing immediately came to mind. But when a table with a bowl of fruit, featuring a particularly succulent looking pear entered her field of focus, she paused. Familiarity nagged at the back of her head. There was something significant about it, but she just couldn't recall what it was. And so she stood there, brows creasing in deep thought as she studied the painting.