It's Just a Biro? PV Everly

─────── ☆ Everly Charlton ☆ ───────

March 25, 2021.
@Gabriella Haworth
#b76e79

Writing essays was not Everly's strong suit.

The Gryffindor set her sights straight and sat down with parchment, a quill and a bottle of ink, and her textbooks. She told herself, don't worry, Everly! Today will be the day I'll finish all my homework, and then I can spend the rest of the day doing whatever I want. Do not procrastinate.

The first thing she noticed immediately was how annoying the sound of the quill was. It was, for one, extremely distracting. Then, the quill began to soften, making it a lot harder to write, and Everly chewed her lip in frustration, reminding herself that she needed to buy more quills after this. And then the inkpot tipped and all the ink spilled over the table.

Once Everly finished cleaning this extremely large mess that she had created, she noticed a girl nearby, who seemed to be writing her essay at ease. On closer examination, she noticed that this tool she was using to write on her parchment wasn't a quill.

Lucky her.

Everly had never seen anything like it before - at least, nothing she could remember seeing. It looked like a quill... at least, from the tip, it did, but there was no feather. And... it had ink, but there was no inkpot nearby. Everly marveled - was there an inkpot inside this machine?

She had to know.

Approaching the girl, Everly coughed lightly. "Excuse me, but um..." Deciding to go full force, she rattled off everything she wanted to say. "What is that thing you're writing with? It looks SO much easier to write with than a quill, and it also looks really cool, and how is it getting so much ink? Is there an inkpot inside? Or... did you make it yourself? Because that would be one cool spell, could you teach me?"

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Gabriella had nearly finished her essay. It was pleasantly surprising how quickly she could do it without the bother of having to use a quill, and the standard of her writing hadn't decreased the quality of her writing any - if anything, it had made it better.

She glanced up at her messy, quill-scrawled notes from the lesson and fleshed them out into full sentences, adding an insight or two where necessary. The Ravenclaw marvelled at her work - Herbology was a tough subject for her, and she generally found very little point in it. It was all Latin names and properties and uses and other practical things, and Gabby had never been good at that. She tended to work in her head or on paper, not with objects, and even writing about working with objects was difficult. Nevertheless, she didn't let this hinder her, and she was nearly onto the conclusion before she knew it.

Suddenly, Gabriella heard a young voice. "Excuse me," said the voice. What is that thing you're writing with? It looks so much easier than a quill!" Gabby glanced up and listened patiently as the person asked more questions. How did it work? Where did the ink come from? Was it a magical item?
The person in question was a girl who appeared to be around Gabriella's own age - a very petite figure, a first year, she would say, a second-year at a stretch. The Ravenclaw smiled.

"No, it's not magical," she said. "It's called a biro, or a ballpoint pen. It's a very common thing in the Muggle world." She laughed internally, but felt bad for the girl as she did so. It had never occurred to her that wizards might not know how to use one or maybe never would have even heard of one. She hesitated for a moment, but because her essay was going so well and she was in such a good mood, she said: "Come, sit down. I'll show you how to use it if you want. My name's Gabriella Haworth by the way, call me Gabby. Are you a first-year too?"

Word count: 357
Interacting with: @Everly Charlton
aaargh sorry about the wait I promise I'm not always this slow

───────────────────────── INTERACTION @Gabriella Haworth ─────────────────────────

───────────────────────── MENTION - ─────────────────────────

To Everly's relief, the girl seemed none less than happy to indulge in Everly's weird fascinations. She tilted her head again, examining the pointy thing. Curious, it was, were these objects, what humans could dream up. Was there a hole in the pointy thing for ink to come out of? What if ink dripped out of it, or the ink in it spilled? Would the ink be gone, and would you have to replace it with new ink? Once Everly had questions, things started sprouting in her head like a train that went on forever. Thankfully, the girl answered some of them.

"No, it's not magical. It's called a biro, or a ballpoint pen. It's a very common thing in the Muggle world."

This... thing was a common Muggle thing?

Well, that explained why Everly had never seen it before.

Everly stood there, gaping. "OOoooooh!! I've never seen something like that before. This is so exciting!" She was jumping on her toes - maybe even literally. "And yes, I'm also a first year! My name's Everly Charlton. Nice to meet you, Gabby!"

"Argh, I'd love to join you, but my essay is still... uh... barely compiled," Everly said guiltily, staring back towards at it. "Actually, you know what, screw you, quills, I'm moving. Do you think I could borrow one of your... buros? I'd love to try one of the buros out myself, quills are a pain to use." Everly grinned, proud of her expertise of the word buro.

Grabbing her bag, books, parchment, quill and inkpot, she moved all her stuff over to her new friend's table. Everly had made a new discovery, and it would take quite some time for it to leave her head.

haha no worries this post is a bit lacking too sorry

☆

Gabriella was glad when the Gryffindor showed interest in her biro - and pleasantly surprised, too, as it was never something she thought she'd have to explain, but now that she did she almost wondered why she had never wanted to explain it before.

"It's called a biro," said Gabby, not unkindly, when the girl - Everly, she had said - called it a 'buro'. "I don't know why. Probably named after the guy who invented it, or something." She waited patiently for the girl to sit down, then handed her another pen from her bag. "Just pull the lid off," she said, not wanting to leave Everly stranded on even the simplest step. After all, she reasoned with herself, Everly's never seen one of these before. How is she to know?

"It's not a dip pen like quills are," the Ravenclaw continued, "the ink is actually inside it. See this black thing here?" She held up the pen. "See that? That's the ink. It comes out of the nib and onto the paper. It's really easy to use. Eventually it will run out and you have to throw it away - you can't refill them - but they're so cheap, you can get them in packs of, like, 50."

Gabriella tore a page out of her notebook and scribbled a line onto it. "It's that simple," she grinned, glancing expectantly at her new friend's face, hoping she was impressed by this piece of Muggle technology - incredibly simple in the Muggle world, admittedly, but completely novel to Everly, and that was what mattered. "You can have a practice on this page if you want," said Gabby, "although you'll get the hang of it really easily. It depends how neat you want your essay to look... if you want it neat, then maybe you'll want to get the feel of the pen first."

She set her pen down on the table and waited for Everly, although she still had some of her essay left to write. "Go on then," she grinned. "Try it out!"

Word count: 346
Interacting with: @Everly Charlton