Closed Racing towards chaos PV Eonaria Kabukimono

IC Time: 1:21pm, January 11th, 2025

XXXEver since returning from the winter holidays, the weather at Hogwarts seemed to be even chillier than usual. Well, duh. It's winter. In fact, she was surprised not to find a blanket of snow covering the grounds, though the grass was indeed quite frosty. Today, Eonaria felt like taking a walk. No particular destination in mind, no time limit. Just... walk. So off she went, descending from Gryffindor Tower in her school robes. There were no classes on the weekend, but Eonaria couldn't be bothered to figure out what could keep her warm and still look good at the same time today.

XXXHer steps wandered, sometimes criss-crossing from one side of the corridor to the other while she subconsciously swapped paths every five seconds to avoid the other students. Eventually, Eonaria found herself in the Great Hall, where lunch was still happening. Some students were about to leave and still others had just arrived.

XXXWell, this is too noisy! How will I ever find the solitude necessary to zone out? Yes, she had indeed begun to make snarky mental comments to herself. Oh, the horror. Eonaria passed through the Great Hall and left through the tall double doors into the Small Hall, which was much quieter.

XXXThe large stone fireplace reminded her of the Gryffindor common room, except it wasn't as... cushioned, with the carpets and plush armchairs and whatnot. She took in a deep breath, beginning to relax, before feeling a sharp pain as something came whizzing along the floor to crash straight into her ankle.

XXXEonaria gave a sharp intake of breath, hissing slightly as she leaped away from the object. For a split second, she thought it was a snake, but surely it wasn't-

XXXShe turned around, regaining her composure, and found the perpetrator to be... a, uh, a something. Something vaguely resembling a flattened carriage. Okay, that was a bit of a stretch. It resembled nothing. Eonaria glanced down the hall and saw a Slytherin boy standing there with a slightly guilty expression on his face. Well, it looks like she found who disrupted her peace.

XXX "What," she accentuated dryly, "are you doing, and what is this?" She nudged the object that hit her with her shoe. Her ankle really stung, and depending on the surface of the thing, some of her skin probably scraped off.

.・-: ✧☾♩♪♩♬　. 。・゜✭・.・✫゜・。.　♬♩♪♩☽✧ :-・.

What had previously made him whoop with excitement ended in a guilty wince. The car was shiny with its bright orange finish, but it wasn't cushy or smooth with its bumper and side mirrors. And the ankle it hit probably felt the full impact of its hard exterior and those edges. Did it bounce off that bone with a clack?

"What, are you doing, and what is this?" the girl enunciated in annoyance, obviously irritated by the toy, and he reached out ineffectively to stop her as she nudged the car with her shoe.

"Don't step on it!" he called out, rushing over to snatch up the car into the safety of his arms, before it was trampled by the giant it had run into. "It's a Porsche 718 Boxster Spyder!" he sputtered, as if that would make sense to anybody and everybody, and floor them with awe. "It has a 4 liter flat-six engine, with an amazing 420 horse power! It can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.7 seconds! Well, not this little car specifically, but the real thing, if you know what I mean," he explained. Somehow, he had completely forgotten to apologize for the Boxster's mishap against the girl's ankle in his excitement to rescue the car and explain its specs.

With a closer look at the girl, she seemed a bit familiar. Where had he seen her? He squinted at her and scratched his messy bird's nest of black hair. "Oh, you're the physician I killed," he said, nonchalantly, which may have sounded dismissive. He didn't know if he remembered her name. Had she introduced herself during the Whispers game? He couldn't recall, as much as he racked that small brain of his. Hopefully, it wasn't too impolite of him, but as far as this conversation was going, he probably came across as very rude with his multiple faux pas.

IC Time: 1:22pm, January 11th, 2025

XXXAs Eonaria reached to poke at the object warily, the boy rushed over to pick it up. "I wasn't going to step on it." She grumbled. "And-" She stopped as the boy began spewing off a whole bunch of words she couldn't understand. Was this stuff learnt in second year or was it something else entirely? The only things that told her it wasn't a whole other language were the connecting English words she could decipher among the other mystifying speech he was using.

XXX"It... it what?" Eonaria eyed the 'car' with suspicion. "Is this a model of a larger version?" How big is the actual one, then? She grimaced at the thought. Now that she took a closer look, she recognized him as the murderer in the Whispers of the Dark game they had played in October. It was... Avery something, wasn't it? He had vaguely introduced himself early on in the game... Then he alluded directly to what she was thinking of by adding a straight "Oh, you're the physician I killed." Eonaria choked slightly at this statement.

XXX"...yep. You sure did. You missed the first time, though. Thanks for getting my arm amputated before killing me." She sighed internally. Amputation was not particularly common in the Wizarding World, since there were potions that could grow back most limbs, unless it done away by Dark Magic. It was actually quite sad that Muggles had to permanently lose their body parts if some chronic affliction were to arise. Probably one of the few reasons I feel bad for Muggles... Eonaria turned her attention back to Avery. "Honestly, though, who on earth begins a topic like that? You didn't even apologize for hitting me with your... model car." She scowled, crossing her arms.

XXXThis boy had absolutely no decorum at all. Eonaria had only nudged the car tentatively, and it was clear she was not about to step on it(and risk further injury), yet Avery had ran to save the car instead of... anything else that would've been appropriate at the moment.

.・-: ✧☾♩♪♩♬　. 。・゜✭・.・✫゜・。.　♬♩♪♩☽✧ :-・.

She wasn't going to step on it? Really? Maybe he read it wrong, but it sure looked to Avery (from his over-protectiveness of the toy car) that she was going to smash the car to bits, because he probably would've done it if one of them ran into his ankle.

"Yeah, it's just an innocent tiny model of a larger version. One that's big enough for two people to sit inside and travel around in. Hardly anything dangerous or malicious," he said, realizing that he'd been spouting probably a bunch of nonsense that had been lost on the wizard-born girl.

Oh yeah... he had shot the physician in the arm before killing her. What a slow, painful death with an amputated arm. Not his best moment with the Nerf gun. What kind of crap mob-boss-son-hitman was he?

Awkward. He stared as Amputated Physician went on to criticize his choice of topic and not apologizing for hitting her. Somehow, instead of feeling bad for amputating her arm and scratching her ankle with a car accident, our indignant teenager responded with an ill-placed sense of self-righteousness. Lately, he hadn't quite been himself: quick to anger, whether it was being mad and irritated at himself or others, but most likely both. His violin practice sucked, his fingers never found the perfect intonation, his mind wandered to distraction, and his best friend had abandoned him. What was there to like? Maybe Ming was right to abandon him.

In return, his frustration unfairly unleashed itself on the girl in front of him. He wasn't the one who was rude, she was.

He crossed his arms, too, and went for the jugular. "Well, stop trampling around with your big feet, then, will you? You were obviously going to step on my car, which was perfectly innocent. Like, what, you can't take a little nudge to your foot? You've obviously never played any sport, have you? I can see you're as soft as they come, if you feel like that hurt," he let himself scoff here, because he had taken plenty of bludgers and blatches, and he was proud of his ability to get back on the broom afterwards. It had become the hallmark of who he was. If she was going to survive at Hogwarts, she was gonna have to be tougher than that. Because Hogwarts was ruthless, as he had come to know.

IC Time: 1:23pm, January 11th, 2025

XXXDespite what Avery said, if that car grew to a size that could fit two people, it sounded like it would be much more dangerous than he made it out to be. "I highly doubt that," Eonaria commented with a grimace. "How do you use such a bulky, unwieldy form of transportation?" And really, it made absolutely no sense to have metal chunks moving around. It sounded like a lot of danger to her. How did they function with no magical system at all? Surely gears weren't powerful enough to move the entire structure plus two people.

XXXOnce Eonaria pointed out his lack of an apology, Avery stared at her for a moment before crossing his arms and beginning to rant. Every sentence he finished cause her eyebrow to raise higher and higher at the audacity. He was clearly trying to brush over the incident and turn it on her.

XXX"Excuse you??" Eonaria subconsciously glanced down at her shoes. "My feet are not big, and I do not trample!" She wore shoes of size 4 (size 5 in American) and took pride in her silent footsteps. "Does it look like I could do any damage to your little car??" Eonaria raised said foot slightly, offended. "And your car is not innocent, it gave me a bruise! But that's not really its fault, is it? You were the one who used a spell to send potentially hazardous items flying down a hall with no thought to if someone might be at the other end!!" However, it was Avery's next words that made her jaw nearly drop in outrage. But of course, it didn't happen, because she would never be caught dead doing something so unsightly.

XXX "I- you- what?!?" At this point, Eonaria was speechless at just how shameless this boy was. Sadly, she had indeed never played any sport except mini Quidditch as a child, which involved toy broomsticks and only two players(every family had their own rules), so there wasn't much to say about that. She could feel her face reddening in embarrassment. No doubt if Eonaria got into a physical confrontation, she would lose to... well, almost everybody.

.・-: ✧☾♩♪♩♬　. 。・゜✭・.・✫゜・。.　♬♩♪♩☽✧ :-・.

A 'bulky, unwieldy form of transportation'? Avery almost gasped at her dreadfully unfair description, but only his mouth hung open as he paused. Did he need to cover the sideview-mirror-ears of his little car, so it wouldn't get offended? Had he damaged the Physician's eyes in addition to amputating her arm? "It's hardly bulky and unwieldy!" he protested, holding up the car for the girl to admire. Anyone with eyes could see that its sleek design captured a blend of elegance, aggression, and raw performance. "Do you see how the lines of the hood bring your eyes toward its oval, signature four-point LED daytime running lights? What I like most about it is the manual fabric roof, which gives it a classic open-roadster feel when it's down, but gives it a coupe-like silhouette when it's up. Doesn't it just look fast even when it's standing still?" he asked excitedly, almost holding it up to the girl's nose, as if his emphatic gesturing would shove the good sense into her brain.

"As for how you use it," Avery continued, having felt that he'd adequately addressed its optic design features, "the driver sits here, puts their foot on the pedal down there, and a bunch of energy made from oil goes into the machine part somewhere over here, and BOOM BOOM BOOM lots of tiny big explosions go off inside it that turn the wheels and make it go super fast!" With one hand, he zoomed the little car quickly through the air, but hoped it wouldn't give her the wrong idea, because it wasn't meant to fly... "And you use this round wheel to steer it left and right.” He supposed that was the toddler way of explaining things. Which this girl might as well be.

He eyed her feet as she did, and saw that her shoes, unfortunately, were in fact quite small, and not as large and clomping as he had proclaimed them to be. But, he couldn't possibly let her think that she had won this argument. "Huh, they look a lot bigger than my great-grandma's, and she's just about your size," he sniffed, and looked at her feet in what he hoped looked like disgust on his face -- as much as he could muster. "Hers are like, two-thirds of your giant ones." Which was true. His great-grandma had grown up with traditionally-bound feet, which was a whole different story, but they didn't need to get into that. "You're like, a big old troll stomping around my car," he added, to drive that stake deeper. Because what girl could possibly like being compared to a troll?

Uh-oh, she had been right. He did use a spell to send items flying down the hall, and he sure has hell didn't care if anyone's ankle was there to receive them. But the words that came out of his mouth were different. "Yeah, I didn't really expect loners with nothing better to do to walk by around here aimlessly. It's Saturday afternoon. Like, go have some fun," he rolled his eyes, as if Amputated Physician was simply boring. Because what he was doing was obviously a lot more exciting. Or at least creative. Not elementary-school-like, no.

He watched as Amputated Physican turned red from his sports and 'soft' comment, and a cheeky victorious grin pulled at his lips, as he had probably hit jackpot. "Bet you couldn't make a sports team at Hogwarts if you tried," he taunted in a sing-songy voice. Maybe she could try, and he'd show up just to eat some popcorn, if he had nothing better to do. Did he like to watch underclassmen suffer? Admittedly, yes, more than he used to, especially compared to when he was more of an underclassman himself. Growing up did have its charms, after all.

IC Time: 1:24pm, January 11th, 2025

XXXAs soon as Eonaria deemed the would-be-larger-car as bulky and unwieldy, the older boy instantly protested, practically brandishing the car at her. He began going off on a tangent about, presumably, all the features of the car. All Eonaria heard was numerous more confusing, unknown terms. LED? Manual fabric?? Open-roadster?!? And what is a coupe??

XXX"...no. It looks completely stationary to me, and definitely not moving or fast." Eonaria was about to head into the details of how a lump of metal could hardly travel quickly by oil and tiny explosions(which made no sense, by the way!), when Avery jumped back into the topic of her feet. Seriously, why was this topic still going?! Do Muggleborns just constantly discuss distasteful things??

XXXShe stared at him, astonished by his remark. "...that doesn't sound very healthy for your grandmother." Eonaria took a few steps in no direction in particular, trying to imagine walking on smaller feet. "What...?" How does that work? Is she okay?? Avery's words grew even harsher, and her head heated up in mortification. A troll?! Excuse me- no, excuse you?! What- Tears began to prick the back of her eyes.

XXXThis boy was way meaner than the last Muggleborn she encountered, which hadn't been a very pleasant experience, either, but at least they kept civil. Eonaria was embarrassed to be caught crying at the words of a Muggleborn, but this boy had no excuse to be insulting a girl three years younger than him! My feet never did anything to him! His car is fine! Totally untouched and unharmed!

XXXShe listened in silence, trying her best not to let her tears escape her eyes, but once she blinked, a tear slipped down her cheek. Why was she here again? Avery went on to taunt her lack of strength, declaring that she couldn't even make a sports team if she tried. Well, I wasn't planning on trying, anyway! Everyone has different strengths! But all the things she wanted to say in retaliation didn't come out.

XXXEonaria inhaled shakily, trying to muster up the strength to turn and leave. But wait- that wasn't a good idea, either. The Great Hall behind her was still filled with students chattering and eating lunch. She was not about to go in front of a portion of the student body in tears. She clenched her fists slightly, attempting to discreetly wipe the tears from her eyes with her sleeve before any more fell. At this point, Avery probably would have noticed, anyway.

.・-: ✧☾♩♪♩♬　. 。・゜✭・.・✫゜・。.　♬♩♪♩☽✧ :-・.

It looked 'completely stationary'. Avery's face fell. Wow, there was no use in getting rocks to understand art, was there? No matter how hard one tried. He looked at the misunderstood car and sighed. "Wow, is that how all my professors felt when I came here as a first-year?" he wondered out loud, pressing a hand to his face to drag his cheek down in agony. He probably seemed just as dense and frustrating. No wonder he barely passed all of his classes.

No, the bound feet were definitely not healthy for his great-grandmother, but he just let Amputated Physician stay confused on that topic, because explaining bound feet would likely not help his argument here, and he was in it to win it. "She was very healthy," he insisted instead. "She lived to almost 90." No thanks to her bound feet, she probably could've lived to 100, but sshhhh...

It seemed that she was closer and closer to framing him for his misdeeds, so the greater his indignance grew, until he was spouting stuff about her being a boring-klutzy-loner-troll. He was getting quite a bit carried away, probably enjoying the sound of his own voice and this frenzy of terrible jesting, that he hardly noticed the tears filling her eyes. So, as he came to a halt, she didn't respond to say anything at all. What was up with her?

He squinted back at Amputated Physician, and it was only then that he noticed her swipe a sleeve over her eyes... What? Was she crying?

"Are you crying?" he asked, dumb-foundedly, because that was the first question that popped up in his mind. "Why are you crying?" he asked, because, he had to make sure. His tone was not accusatory, just a little bewildered. People didn't typically respond to him in tears, even when he sometimes talked smack. Usually, they would smack him right back, or give him weird looks, but not necessarily tears. Was it really his fault? Maybe some dust got into her eyes? Maybe she was terribly allergic to... metal and plastic? Process of elimination was the key to any confusing enigma.

IC Time: 1:25pm, January 11th, 2025

XXXEonaria sighed internally at Avery's comment. Somehow, she could easily imagine the older boy acting slow upon first arrival- which didn't totally apply to her, because she was actually sort of trying to listen, and besides, he didn't even bother trying to explain the many terms to her first! His offhanded comment about his grandmother didn't exactly help her mood or his reputation. Right. I'm pretty sure she either had a bone deformity or was oddly small. Which I am not. So we can hardly be compared! No offense to said grandmother. She glowered at Avery.

XXXUnfortunately, once the knuckle-headed Slytherin finally noticed she was crying, he merely asked in a rather bewildered tone, "Are you crying?" Oh, I am crying? I hadn't noticed!! Her temper flared slightly.

XXX"Well, yeah." Eonaria managed to mutter through gritted teeth. "So glad you have eyes, you know. Functional ones, surely." Unfortunately, her tear ducts didn't seem to realize that it was time to stop crying, so she could feel her vision blurring over again. She quickly wiped them away again, scowling at the boy. At least her voice didn't feel as clogged as before.

XXX"Are you really so insensitive to only be able to restate what is so obviously happening directly in front of you? Have you spent so long fiddling with nonsensical Muggle toy cars that everything around you has become cold and metallic?" Eonaria lifted her head slightly. Despite the unflattering redness in her eyes now, she would not remain a crybaby. "I find it hard to believe that you have managed to make many friends in your years at Hogwarts with such an attitude." Such a comment was probably unwise, but at this moment, she didn't care.

.・-: ✧☾♩♪♩♬　. 。・゜✭・.・✫゜・。.　♬♩♪♩☽✧ :-・.