of pebbles and marbles ((open))

[FLINT COTNOIR]

It had been another long day. But then, for Flint, most days felt pretty darn long. He'd wake up, eat something, get through classes, then head straight to the library to read for a few hours. Weekends were worse - He felt he was doing himself a disservice if he didn't spend at least two thirds of his day studying or doing homework. As he had thought often before, it was a good thing that he enjoyed it, or else he'd probably have driven himself insane. Sometimes, he wasn't sure that he hadn't already and just not noticed. But then he had his anchor - walking. He loved just wandering with very little aim, absorbed in his own little world, thinking about anything and everything, winding himself down from 'study mode'.

Today, for instance, he was strolling around the grounds in the sun's dying rays, each gentle footfall a million miles from his conscious mind. He wasn't thinking of anything in particular. He was zen, with only fleeting ideas, or more correctly the ideas of ideas, flitting across the blank canvas of his mind every so often. Every thought was no more than a notion, every little murmur of brain activity just a vague concept. If he'd been trying to achieve this level of calm, he'd probably had put himself in a coma. This, was sheer, unadulterated, bliss.

Which made it all the more unpleasant when he slipped on a loose pebble and fell flat on his backside.

He let out an uncharacteristically high yelp as he was thrust back to the planet earth in an untidy bundle of limbs. Gingerly, he dug the offending stone from under his left knee where it had settled, and held it aloft in front of his face. It was fantastically well rounded, he couldn't help but notice - no wonder it hadn't sat properly amongst the others. Flint sat himself up, turning so he was facing out towards the lake, the castle towering on the opposite side. It really was a marvelous view, and Flint took a second to bask in it's splendor. Then he returned his attention to the pebble in his hand.

"Be a shame to waste it really", he thought to himself, and slipped it into his jeans pocket. He leaned back, stretching his legs out and supporting himself on his arms. He may as well make the most of his rather embarrassing fall to have a rest - That was, anyone who might have seen him may, possibly, think he just had a rather unconventional way of sitting down. Of course, if they knew anything about him (or people in general), they'd know this wasn't the case, but hey. A man could hope, right?

[Deleted]

Hanna had been savoring the last moments of daylight as the sun sweetly caressed the dissonant line of the horizon offset only by the jagged coniferous trees of The Forbidden Forest. The young robust lion sat perched amongst the lower boughs of an ancient oak tree, several feet away from the jagged and marginally sloped embankment of The Black Lake, her legs crossed and following the wayward curvature of the trees thick limb. Spread open over her lap sat a book- some silly raunchy thing she had picked up at Flourish & Blotts this past summer. On the front cover there was a pink-haired witch swooning away in the arms of a stately looking vampire with the words ‘The Metamorphmagus and The Monster’ in decorative flowing text. Needless to say, it was a novel Hanna dared not read in the Gryffindor common room amongst the eyes of her peers, the comfortable wing-back armchairs, and the sultry warmth of the fireplace. She had been there for the finest portion of the last hour, and while the sun set the inky pages of her book changed from taupe to apricot.

Engrossed, she had not realized just how much the temperature by The Lake had plummeted until her fingers grew stiff with cold. Pouring over the last few words of chapter eleven she snapped the bawdy novel shut and slid it back into her tawny leather messenger bag and in exchange fished out a pair of wooly gray mittens. It was then that she noticed the swarthy haired boy take a rather compromising spill just a few meters down the shore, and dread filled her chest.

Had he seen her reading that garbage? Bloody hell, she hoped not. Hanna had a reputation to uphold. She couldn’t look like some swooning bubble headed teen! Dropping from the boughs of the tree she gingerly approached the boy, now resting in what Hanna presumed was a very uncomfortable position. Hanna was still dressed in her school robes, a dark fur-lined cloak wrapped tightly around her small yet stable frame. Her cheeks and nose were flushed rose from the arctic chill, and her hair, as usual, deemed itself sovereign from her attempts to tame the frizzy locks. Standing behind him, she now cleared her throat, a declaration of her arrival.

”What are you doing here?” she questioned, her voice brazen and tactless. ”Were you watching me?” Carefully, she circled around the stranger, taking in his appearance. She did not recognize him, at least not at first. They had classes together, sure, but Hanna was generally friendly and boisterous and this boy simply was not. ”Because if you were you better not say anything or else I’ll tell everyone you like to…” an awkward pause. ”Lay in rocks! I guess… Yeah. Lay around in rocks… What are you doing anyway?”

[FLINT COTNOIR]

The gentle ebb and flow of the lake's waters was another feature Flint found strangely relaxing – this, however, he had not noticed before. Perhaps he walked too fast, or thought about thinking too much while he walked. Perhaps walking at all was his mistake, and maybe he should instead take the time to sit instead. Still, Flint was unsure if he'd be able to properly allow himself to relax sitting all of the time. It would still feel like a waste of time that could be spent studying, where walking did not. He fiddled with his blue Ravenclaw scarf for a moment, neatly tucking it back into his black double-breasted jacket as it had dislodged itself in the middle of his falling escapade. He began to contemplate getting back up, resuming his walk or even returning to the castle, when a noise came from behind him.

Flint, however, did not have time to turn around before a girl's voice had sounded, and momentarily after the girl herself stepped in front of him, between himself and the lake. He looked up at her, a flicker of familiarity crossing his mind as she began to... well it wasn't shouting, he supposed, but it was certainly a bit more than speaking. Words evaded him as he tried to make sense of just what the girl was on about, his expression growing more and more puzzled with each word. As well as trying to work out what she was accusing him of, or attempting to, he was trying to remember her name, as he was certain they were in a few classes together. Helen? That sounded close to being right, yeah. Harriet, no, that was more like it. Probably. Flint was not good at names.

When the girl stopped, Flint took a moment of silence to ingest what had just happened. He wasn't too good with fast talking, he was much more of a slow intake kind of person. It was different with the written word, but by god people just didn't stop. “Uh... I... walk...”, he stumbled, before looking around desperately for some kind of anything to help him out. There was nothing, so he returned his gaze to the girl, his look incredulous. “What? I don't even... Um, I'm sitting down I guess?”. He wasn't even sure what he was doing any more, such was his confusion. “Sorry... what where you doing? No”, he shook his head ,”Nope, better I don't... It's Harriet, right?”. As soon as he said it, he knew it was wrong. 'Should've stuck with Helen', he thought...

[Deleted]

A flash of several expressions decorated Hanna’s freckle-dusted features. First, skepticism, dark and solid eyebrows convoluted into a gnarled quirk of suspicion and her lips pursed into a grimace. Her arms crossed firmly across her breast and her legs planted rigidly before the strange boy, a stance of defiance, shoulders hard-lined and tendons tense. Her body, all the menacing 5’2 of it, carefully articulated Hanna’s assertive character, as if saying ‘Go on and do it. Challenge me.’ This however was quickly replaced with a dumbfounded expression, mouth dropping open slightly as the boy, visibly bewildered by her heedless approach, attempted to respond to her unfounded accusations. And finally, relief, as he spoke what he believed her name to be. Hanna’s arms slackened until they hung loosely at her side and her mien grew placid, much like tides of The Black Lake behind her. This boy hadn’t the slightest clue who she even was let alone what she had been reading. What a relief! Her lips formed a circle and she uttered her response:

”Oh.”

So maybe it was a little anticlimactic. Delicately she tread over the rugged terrain in her chestnut suede penny loafers and took a discreet, uninvited seat next to the stranger. Smoothing out her skirt she spoke up again, this time issuing an apology, her flexible Southern Welsh cadence this time replaced by saccharine tempo.

”Well, I’m sorry about that then. I thought you were… Well, never mind. It’s not really important. But my name isn’t Harriet. My name is Hanna. Hanna Hunt. Sixth year Gryffindor, in case you couldn’t tell,” she declared, undoing the top clasp of her cloak to reveal her gold and crimson uniform tie.

”What is important is that I think we sit here in total silence for at least five minutes. I think sometimes silence is the best resolve to conflict, don’t you? Especially accidental conflict.” She then brought her finger up to her lips to signal the start of their silence.

Letting her hands lay rest in her lap she faced forward. Gradually her eyes glazed over and she listened. Somewhere in the distance there was the call of a loon. Sable-colored eyes scanned the waters depths for its owner and after a minute she spotted it, but it was only for a brief moments time. No sooner did she identify it, a sudden surge in the tide signaled the massive tentacle that rose from the surface, sending ripples across the glassy surface. A squawk and then silence, the tentacle disappearing within the cloudy depths of the lake. Hanna's eyes widened excitedly and she turned to the boy, despite their hush having lasted hardly two minutes time. Her face broke out into a wide grin. 

"Wow! You know, I've seen The Giant Squid loads of times but every time it just blows me away that he can live down in the very bottom of the lake like that."

[FLINT COTNOIR]

When the girl herself began to react with some confusion to the situation, it only succeeded in confusing Flint further. The situation was incredibly baffling to him, from the sudden outburst to the now apparent 180 on the whole situation. He let the girl talk, partly out of politeness, partly because he was at a complete loss for words. She certainly said a lot. He wasn't too sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, he had long ago learned that talking too much too often meant saying too little – But this girl didn't seem to be the stupid type, not at all. No, rather he saw her as the friendly type of talker, the kind who felt the need to feel the air with niceties. Flint wasn't one of those people, but he appreciated them all the same. It made his job of being a foppish nerd that little bit easier if he was able to take the passenger role. He guessed his father would not approve, but his limited knowledge of Léonce Cotnoir's personality was often propped up by fantasy and fibs. His father had been a brave man, though. He'd have rocked the socks in conversations.

Somewhere beyond Flint's internal ramblings, he somehow also paid attention to Hanna (Of COURSE that was it, he remembered now), yet was still a little surprised that she'd sat next to him, and insisted on silence. Not that he minded, in fact she was quite right. The whole experience had been a little embarrassing for him after all. It had been a truly spectacular fall, his backside was still smarting. He wondered briefly what Hanna herself had been so uptight about, right up until one of the squid's tentacles surfaced, almost as if waving the land a how-do-you-do, before leaving mere moments later back to it's dark, wet abode. Flint gave an impressed half-nod, just as Hanna turned to him and expressed her glee. He couldn't help but smile as well. Her enthusiasm was certainly impressive, and a little contagious too.

“It's pretty incredible, yeah.”, he said, returning his gaze to the surface of the lake. “I've my suspicions he's more than your average squid, he must be a bit magic. I mean, squid aren't freshwater animals for one thing, so the old boys obviously got something going on. That or the lake's a...”. He caught himself being an enormous dweeb, stopped, and shook his head. “I'll stop now.”. He smiled again, glanced over at Hanna then back to the lake. He was silent for a few moments more, then said “Hanna's better than Harriet anyway. I'd stick to that one if I was you.”.

[Deleted]

“The lake is a what?” Hanna pushed the conversation forwards despite the darker haired student’s reticence, dark eyes wide and receptive. Her curiosity once piqued was near an unstoppable force, at least until the next whim of fancy took hold of her wayward heed. She did not know Flint, nor did she know his inclination towards the quiescent lull. Hanna was quite paradoxical, in fact, preferring loud dramatics to the hush of The Black Lake. She was as temperamental as the Pacific- often times loud and turbulent, ever changing and progressive with its torrid tides. The two students together, although Hanna was not nearly pensive enough to realize at this moments time, were the two diametric sides of a scale. Often times she was so wrapped up in her own sentiments that she missed the cues of another individuals temperament, where as Flint’s quiet nature enabled a more perceptive outlook.

”I think it’s only fair if I guess your name as well, since, well, I mean… Harriet? That’s like your fat Aunts name or something. How would you feel being named Ferguson or something of the ilk. How embarrassing,” she rolled her eyes expressively, but there was a clear playful edge to her voice. She had remembered Flints name only seconds ago but preferred to tease the boy in lieu of  actuality. Flint Cotnoir from class- he was a quiet wallflower, intelligent but a wee bit socially inept. Certainly not akin to Hanna’s usual gang of rowdy Gryffindor peers, but she was never one to judge. 

"So Ferguson, are you going to tell me The Lake is-" she started, however while she spoke an unforeseen siberian breeze cut through the thick lining of her cloak causing a chill to shoot through the petite lion's limbs. Shuddering, she straightens out her back and lets her previous thought expire. "You know Ferguson, this has been lovely meeting you but I'm afraid my skin isn't as thick as I lead on. I'm a child of the sun and I fear I may just melt away in the nights chill."