Simple Pleasures (OPEN)

[Juliet Featherwood]

Her long brown hair flew softly in the wind ripping out of the loose hair tie it sat in Juliet moved to brush the stray strands out of her face as she stood before the shallower depths of the lake. She loved the lake, it was so peaceful looking not to mention beautiful, she grinned bashfully as she sat down on a moss covered rock and let her feet dangle just above the water. She loved water she loved swimming there was a sense freedom in every stroke you took while diving in the depths especially if you went underwater, with the bubblehead charm Juliet could do it all day if she had the choice.
She reached behind and grabbed her bag taking out a book and abandoning the rest of the contents shamelessly. She loved reading; it was the next best thing to exploring! Especially if it were a good book, she hated books that were terribly written it just made her mad and she was the type of person that just couldn’t stop reading a book, she had to finish it.

She opened the finely decorated book to the page she’d left it on last time. It was a muggle book, by an author named Lewis Carroll, it was trippy the author must have been on some sort of high while writing it. The characters were so crazy it was amazing! Banish the thought if her mother caught her reading it, she’d have been chastised from here back to Italy! Her mother wasn’t the biggest fan of muggle literature, in fact she wasn’t that fond of anything Juliet liked.
Never the less she loved it, and imagined falling into her own wonderland it would be a cool experience, every corner ladled with adventure and every turn full of surprise! She closed her eyes her long lashes fluttering softly as her stray pieces of hair flew into her face uncomfortably. If she only believed it just a little bit more Juliet could make it real.

[Evan Rosier]

Rosier was in a terrible mood. Not to say that that in itself was anything unusual, he had a habit of getting into foul tempers quite often, even if he tried to keep silent about it. No, his housemates would easily assure you of his less-than-quiet ramblings that he reserved for the Slytherin Common Room or dorms - they certainly wouldn’t be surprised. Today, however, was something different entirely. His slightly eccentric nature had just recently breached the secure stone walls of the dungeon, and had subsequently poured out onto the campus as a whole. People noticed, damn it. They noticed him fidgeting, and his borderline obsessive searches through the halls and classrooms. He knew they were watching him, talking about him. They thought he’d gone round the bend.

This was, of course, unacceptable. He usually kept himself very strictly poised, after all, doing anything less would be purely shameful, and there was little chance of him ever allowing that to happen. However, this… situation… was a bit different. He couldn’t let this one go - not for lack of trying, oh no. No, he sincerely tried to move on. He sat in class and listened dutifully to his lessons, absorbing absolutely everything he could, even on the topics he was already familiar with… but he could not focus like he normally would. He couldn’t even function like he normally would. He… he’d lost something.

In the grand scheme of things, the item itself wasn’t all that important. It was a sterling silver feather quill, yes, but it was far from the most expensive thing he owned, completely ordinary in not having any alternative uses - it wasn’t even a heirloom. This did not mean its disappearance would go unrecognized. Rosier had never lost anything. In. His. Life. Losing things was something lesser beings did, for being careless. He was not careless, thus, this should have never happened. But, as the oppressive 10 grams of missing weight in his bag continuously pointed out, it had.

That wasn’t even the worst part. Oh, no. No, the quill was one of a set of eight. All properly kept and attended to. Pristine in their condition as well as practicality. Now, there number had been cut - mutilated - into the obscene quantity of seven. Seven! As if that horrid, disgustingly asymmetrical number could possibly follow him any more. Seven days in a week, seven bloody years at Hogwarts. He’d gladly repeat a year, if he wasn’t so very eager to leave this school, just to avoid that despicable digit. Now, he had seven quills in his bag. What the hell was he supposed to do with seven quills?!

The rest of Slytherin house wouldn’t help him, he wouldn’t bother asking anyway. Each quill had been charmed against spells, so Accio or a Locator charm would be less than useless. A bit of a flaw in it’s design, obviously. It left him with no alternative than to search himself, which brought him now to the school’s Grounds. He had to walk, alone, about the wide open area, looking for where he may have - oh, dark goddess Skatha, give him strength - dropped his quill. Yes, him - alone. Besides Snape, who always liked to stray off on his own like some sort of mentally deficient cow, how many times have you seen a Slytherin go anywhere alone? Never.

In the end, Rosier found his foul mood to be rightly justified. He certainly didn’t have a reason to not be angry at the entire universe at the moment, he’d just been flat out betrayed by it. By matter of default then, he did not have a particularly accommodating ambience when he reached the lake. This was made only worse by the fact that, as he slowly and meticulously scoured every square centimeter of the lakeside, that his search was soon to be obstructed by a mid-sized girl blocking his clear view of the ground. Getting closer he noticed it was a Gryffindor girl. Wonderful. Must they exist to needlessly take up space? What was she doing? Just sitting there? How meaningful and productive. It must be so incredibly commodious for them to be able to lay about the lake with no concern at all.

When he finally reached the side of the lake he was on, he already knew there was no chance of slipping by unnoticed. The terrain of the lakeside make it difficult to move about surreptitiously, what with the various twigs and debris waiting to be stepped on and snapped, the incessant blow of the wind that insisted on ruffling absolutely everything, and the damp ground that made the most repulsive squishing noises even when he was trying to be cautious. He wouldn’t have been able to abide leaving this spot unsearched anyway, and as always, he was already steadfastly dedicated to standing his ground. “And who are you?” He spoke in a calm and detached sort of manner. It was more a ’gaining ground’ sort of question, posed mostly as means of getting the first words in and being set as the originator of a conversation. Those things did matter. Whatever answer she gave was irrelevant. He knew who she was. He’s been to class with her for seven years, he’d be an idiot not to notice her. The other way around? Perhaps not so much. He was not nearly as publicly visible as, say, Mulciber, Avery, or even Snape, all readily identifiable Slytherins. The only thing truly noticeable about him on the surface was that he was a particularly self-absorbed person, in a generally self-absorbed House.

This girl, Featherwood, was a bit more particular. She stood out at first as having a difficult time fusing in with the typical Gryffindor culture, which made her an easy target by his friends. As she grew into her own, however, whatever fun his classmates had in taunting her had faded into general animosity. Being the Muggle-lover that she was, Rosier had dutifully hated her, though never personally voiced any opinions of that matter to her. He didn’t make a habit of speaking with Gyffindor students anyway, and would have continued, very happily, on that tread - if only this wasn’t such an urgent matter. He couldn’t very well search properly around her. This girl had to move.

(ooc: Ros is the Caterpillar. I can just see it.)