another lesson yet to learn pv astrea Closed

Date: Sunday, March 14
Outfit

The owlery had become a sort of refuge for Jess, a place to go when she felt she needed to be alone. The silence of the room, broken only by the occasional hoot of one of its resident owls, and the slight, cold breeze wafting in from the small windows set into the room's stone walls, would typically repel the girl, perhaps even frighten her in their capacity to make her feel shut off from the rest of the world, but she longed for it sometimes. When the clamor and chaos of Hogwarts got to be too much for the young Hufflepuff, she would come here, to this dimly lit room and the solitary it promised her.

It wasn't that the girl did not like being around others, no. But Hogwarts, even with all its marvel and magic, was very, very different from home. Here, Jess was constantly surrounded by people, pressed in between the bodies of students hurrying to their classes through the halls or bumping elbows with the people sitting next to her as she ate. Even at night, when all she wanted was a breath of silence and calm after the mind-bending impossibility of the reality that Hogwarts was, every way she turned in bed had her staring at another curled body, asleep yet nevertheless present and near her. Jess loved the castle, of course, but she often found herself wishing she could just come back to her own room in her own house in her own city and stay there for a few hours, surrounded only by privacy and the mundane familiarity of the decorations she herself had picked out. Of course, the Hufflepuff was far from being able to apparate between Hogwarts and her home, even if there had not been the magical barriers that warded off such an action, so she was left lying awake, feeling somewhat choked by all the people around her, until her eyes finally closed and she sunk into sleep. In the morning, she would wake up, and, on those rare occasions when her sleep had failed to wash away all her feelings of suffocation, she would come here.

The owlery was far from the perfect place to go, especially on the mornings like today's when the air held an almost painful chill to it if one ventured close enough to the windows, but it gave the girl a breath of freedom away from the eyes and general presence of Hogwarts' many inhabitants. So, after being almost unable to fall asleep for the awareness of the students all around her last night, Jess had found herself walking up the long, winding steps to the owlery early this morning.

Now, she sat, twirling her wand idly between her fingers as she rested her head against the cold stone of the wall. The wand was dark, hard chestnut, and the coarseness of the bumps along its handle were attractive to the girl's fingers, always itching to play with something. Her eyes were closed, chest rising and falling with each deep breath she took. One of her arms was draped across her body to her shoulder, giving her some solace from the frigid breeze wafting in from the room's pane-less windows.

The girl had thought, when heading up to the owlery, that she would be adequately dressed for the weather. Yes, her jeans had rips in them, but it wasn't like her knees were typically cold. It was her torso that mattered, and she had put on a large, very oversized, white sweater and had practically begun sweating during her rather long walk up to the owlery, though that may have been more because of the many moving staircases that she had had to mount before being able to relax. Once there, though, Jess had realized that the air of the owlery somehow managed to bite straight through the fabric of her shirt and settle directly on her skin, making her hair rise unpleasantly under the garments.

Shifting from discomfort at the chill, Jess realized that actual movement would be both more productive and more likely to warm her up than simply sitting on the floor would, though her body protested against the idea of physically getting up. After a few more moments of motionless sitting, Jess sighed, opened her eyes, sat up a little straighter, and readied her wand. She still didn't want to do much in the physical department, though she figured that while she was here and alone, she might as well test her mental capacity by practicing her spellwork.

The question that remained, then, was what spell to practice. There were the Sparks Charms, but those would probably blind both her and the owls perched around her if suddenly lit in the dimness of the owlery. Incendio seemed an attractively exciting option, too, but the memory of the burning straw at the Costume Party was enough to keep that spell at bay for now, and likely for a long time to come. With those options crossed off, the most interesting yet least dangerous path that remained was Tarantallegra. Pulling a small Lego man she had brought to Hogwarts with her after visiting home during winter break from the backpack she had propped up, leaning half on her and half on the wall, next to her, Jess threw the figure across the room. It landed near the top of the staircase, which was directly between Jess and the wall she was facing, and skidded a few feet across the floor before coming to a stop. It may have been a bit of a risk firing off spells in an enclosed area with animals all around her, but, Jess reasoned, as long as she only aimed the spell down at the Lego man now seeming to stare at her accusingly for throwing him the way she had, it should be fine.

Taking a deep breath, Jess leveled her wand so the tip lined up with the Lego man's head. Focusing on the mental image of her skeleton keychain dancing away in class the first time she had tried the spell, Jess cleared her throat and, eyes pointed straight at her figurine, said "Tarantallegra."

As she spoke the incantation, her words strong and clear, Jess thought she saw a shadow flicker on the stairs at the edge of her vision. Knowing how important concentration was to successfully casting spells, however, she thought nothing of it, and the charm perfectly cast in the next second only seemed to solidify this belief, assuring Jess that she was correct to have focused on it, and only it. After all, it was just a shadow. What could possibly go wrong?

Word Count: 1114