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[glorious_sadism]

Week / Date / Time: "Promises and Plans" / Monday, October 10th / 7:00pm
Location: Slytherin Common Room
Open to: All Slytherins
Currently Involving: Jeannie, Gabriella

Comments

[jeannm]

Jeannie walked into the common room after dinner, her bag over her shoulder. Monday was always an interesting day. No classes, and that meant she had to do her homework for everything else.

She saw nobody whose face she knew- oh, wait, there was her roommate! Gabriella, was it? Jeannie had never gotten the courage to talk to her... they seemed like opposites, and the other girl was rather intimidating. Or so Jeannie thought.

But gathering up her wits, she came and sat down at the table, across from her. "Hi!" she said brightly. Now observing her companion's face, she would say that Gabriella looked angry. Whoops.

"Do you need any help? I'm good at Potions. You've got something on your cheek, y'know." Jeannie chattered on, while getting out her own Transfiguration homework.

[glorious_sadism]

Gabriella looked startled and blinked across the low coffee table at Jeannie. "Hello?" she responded, seeming somewhat taken aback by the other girl's cheerfulness. One hand went tentatively to her cheek and rubbed at it, but missed the ink spot. "It's probably ink," she said somewhat warily, examining her fingers and finding nothing. Her voice was colored by a scottish burr. "It's okay, I have a week to finish the essay and I already have half of it done." She watched the girl make herself comfortable in the other chair in front of the fireplace. The kitten cracked one golden eye open, saw Jeannie, yawned, and went back to sleep.

[jeannm]

"It's ink," said Jeannie, studying it closer. "If you rub it on your hand, it'll get stuck on there, too," she advised, pulling out a handkerchief and handing it to her. Maybe not one of the most normal things for a first-year girl to carry around, but Jeannie was very neat and Kleenexes annoyed her.

"I don't remember that essay," she said, looking at it for a second. "Ah well. If it's due next week, I have forever. But this essay, on the other hand, is due tomorrow. But it shouldn't be that bad, since I like Transfiguration. Though maybe I shouldn't have put it off so long." She stopped, remembering that she was in fact talking to a person and not herself.

A bit later she noticed the cat. "Ooh! A kitty! It's cute," Jeannie giggled. "Gray is one of my favorite colors. Oh, and its eye color! That's adorable."

[glorious_sadism]

Gabriella poked the tip of her tongue out and touched it to the handkercheif, then scrubbed at her cheek. She kept checking it until she found the black smear, then rubbed at it ferociously until it was a little lighter in color and a spot on the handkerchief had turned periwinkle blue. "It's an extra credit essay," Gabriella told her, not wanting to say anymore, especially not to mention the four consecutive Potions classes in which she'd bungled her mixture so badly that Snape had Vanished it rather than accepting a sample. She peeked at the top of Jeannie's Transfiguration essay. "Oh. I'd already done that one... it didn't need to be all that long." Glancing upwards and behind her, she said, "That's Persephone. She's my familiar," she said matter-of-factly.

[jeannm]

Extra credit? When she heard the words, Jeannie nodded knowledgebly. "I do lots of those for Herbology," she said. "I just can't stand touching those plants, especially when they squirt out gunk at you." She made a face. "It's nasty. And Care of Magical Creatures isn't that much better, but most of the time the animals are harmless. I like to keep away from them, just in case, though."

Looking down at her paper, she frowned slightly. "I don't remember how long it was supposed to be. I sorta forgot to pay attention. But I figure if I keep working I'll make it longer than the longest that the Professors assign us, so I'll be fine anyway."

But her frown soon turned upside-down at the mention of the cat. "I've read books about familiars, though I'm not sure they were right since they were all fantasy books. Is it true that they're a representation of what you'd be like if you were an animal? Like an Animagus, kinda?" Jeannie looked at the cat interestedly.

[glorious_sadism]

"I think if I were an animal I'd be a wolf," Gabriella told her matter-of-factly, setting her quill down. Persephone didn't seem to care that she was being spoken of - she continued to sleep, sweet face pillowed on her tiny gray paws. "A familiar is more of a magical helper. I haven't figured out how chewing on my quills and chasing balls of parchment around is supposed to be helpful," she said somewhat dryly, "but the books say that if you work for a long time with the same familiar, and really bond with each other, you can create a kind of connection that strengthens your magic and makes them smarter and stronger. It takes years, though." She reached down and picked up a small, spiral-bound book with a violet cover and looked in it. "Transfiguration essay due this week, eighteen inches of parchment," she told Jeannie.

[jeannm]

She listened intently. "So, anybody can have a familiar? You just buy a pet and that would be it?" And it makes you stronger. Now, that sounds like something Jeannie would like. But if she bought a pet, it'd be one that could clean itself up.

Jeannie looked at Persephone, then Gabriella, curiously. "Wow!" she said, "That's pretty cool."

A determined glint came into her eyes for a moment, as she stored this useful piece of information away for later. But back to the present.

Eighteen inches! She had twenty-five. "Oh! Thank you! Then I'm done." Pleased, she scribbled down a closing sentence and then put it away. Now, what other last-minute homework did she have to do? Oh, right, History of Magic. Yet another essay. Oh, joy.

[glorious_sadism]

Gabriella seemed to relax a notch. If there was one thing she was always ready to do, it was hold forth on a subject she knew a lot about. "That's not really it," she told Jeannie, animating a little more and using her hands to emphasize her words. "You actually have to invest in your familiar. You have to love them, and they have to love you. They have to be a significant part of your life and you have to devote a lot of attention to them. Just having it around the house won't help you. That's why it takes years, because a bond that strong isn't born overnight. The more of yourself you put into your familiar, the more their own abilities will fuse with your own. You'll sort of... meld at the spiritual level. They learn from you how to think and reason and be more like a human, and their connection to the magic inherant in the natural world allows you to draw from it. It helps you understand magic better, helps you perfect your spellcasting abilities, and helps you with improvised spells, not to mention the emotional

[jeannm]

Jeannie put down her quill as well, listening to Gabriella talk and noticing that she seemed to be getting more open.

It was very interesting. Not really Jeannie's type of thing, as she was rather skeptical about the spiritual and divine, but it was interesting to hear another person's views. She imagined they looked rather strange, two first years discussing familiars in the middle of the common room.

When she was done, Jeannie thought about it for a moment before speaking. "So how far are you and P-Persephone?" she asked, trying out the new word on her tongue. She always had problems with pronounciation.

[glorious_sadism]

"I only just got her before I came to Hogwarts," Gabriella confessed, tilting her head back and looking up at the kitten. Persephone noticed her movement and stretched a paw down, fingers spreading to flex needle-sharp claws before resting the velveted paw on Gabriella's forehead. Really, it was rather cute. "But she's very fond of me, so I think maybe in a few years we'll be able to do it. She already seems really... attentive to what I'm feeling. Whenever I get upset, she gets upset, so I have to be careful about how strong my feelings are around her. She doesn't like it when other animals are around me," she added, straightening. "She and my other cat didn't get along at all."

[jeannm]

"Ooh," Jeannie said again. "So, how'd you come up with the name Persephone? It does sound rather familiar- is it from mythology or something? It does have that sort of sound. Does she have a nickname? And you had another cat? Really? Wow! Why?" Once more, the questions were flying out of her mouth faster than she could control them.

She smiled at the sight of the cat's paw on Gabriella's head. It was cute. Jeannie herself had always wanted a pet, but as she had thought before, they were too messy and hard to take care of. Now, if there was a pet smart enough to not require taking care of, it would be perfect. Thinking of another question, she asked "Did you ever have to take care of Persephone, like groom her and clean up after her and things?"

[glorious_sadism]

"Persephone is the name of a goddess in GrecoRoman mythology," Gabriella told Jeannie, reaching up and rubbing the cat's ears. The kitten shoved its head adoringly into her hand and purred quietly. "She was the goddess of springtime, flowers, and revelry, daughter of the goddess of grains and fruits, Demeter. One day while she was picking wildflowers, Hades, god of the dead, was looking in his scrying pool and he saw her. He fell so much in love with her that he had to have her right away. So he went out in his chariot and he snatched her from the field and took her home with him, to the land of the dead. Since he was the brother of the king of the gods, Zeus, nobody would challenge him, and he made Persephone marry him. But Persephone's mother, Demeter, didn't care about reprecussions from Zeus. She brought famine on the world," Gabriella said solemnly, large dark eyes fixed on Jeannie

[jeannm]

Jeannie listened to the story eagerly. It was a fantasy, a myth. Her favorite kind of story. Her other unanswered questions were forgotten.

But when it got to the end, she was a bit confused. They were, after all, only eleven. She wondered if Gabriella would consider it offensive if she asked.

Taking a chance, she asked anyway. "What do you mean, by that last part?" She sounded a little hesitant, afraid of rebuke. After all, she didn't want the past hour or so of talking just to go to waste.

[glorious_sadism]

"I mean, sometimes you just want something in your life that's simply happy and sweet. That's what she is to me." She put her hand back down in her lap. "And I call her Sephie for short." Put-out by the sudden lack of petting, Persephone stood and stretched, then used Gabriella's shoulder as a step to clambor down into her lap and curl up on top of her potion books, tucking her nose under her tail.

[jeannm]

Sephie. That was much, much less of a mouthful then "Persephone". Good.

Jeannie admired the cat for a moment, then looked down at her essay.

History of Magic. Eughh, yuck. She didn't really want to do it. Jeannie looked back at Gabriella, wondering if she'd continue to do her essay. They didn't have potions until Wednesday, after all.

[glorious_sadism]

Jeannie's lack of response let Gabriella stand down, and she adjusted herself in her chair, moving the cat from on top of the books to beside her thigh. She looked at the notes she had already and sighed, closing them inside one of the books and beginning to stack them on the floor. She considered working on something else, but in the meantime, she stared blankly at the fire, lost somewhere in her own thoughts.