(Untitled)

[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

[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.

"The sun hid and the land turned cold. All the plants died. Nothing would grow and the people starved. When the people found out the reason behind Demeter's wrath, they petitioned Zeus. Zeus had no choice but to grant Demeter her wish - he demanded that Hades return Persephone to her mother. Hades had no choice but to obey. But while in the underworld, Persephone had eaten some seeds from a pomegranate... um... I forget how many. And since she'd eaten the food of the underworld, she would have to return to the underworld for as many months as she'd eaten seeds. So, every year, when Persephone has to return to her husband, Demeter mourns and we have winter. But when she is allowed to return, her mother rejoices, and we have spring again." She took a breath and rubbed the short fur on the bridge of the kitten's nose.

"I named her Persephone because I think I know how Hades felt."

[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.

[jeannm]

Jeannie wondered if she should start up a new topic. Gabriella was just staring at the fire, and again Jeannie wondered if she shouldn't- maybe Gabriella was thinking something important, after all! She didn't want to interrupt. But then it was getting terribly boring, just sitting there all by herself.

Looking down at her essay, then back up at Gabriella, she squirmed slightly, trying to think of something to say. Normally she was easily able to think of something spontaneous to chatter about, but Gabriella was so different from her it was rather hard. All randomness and charm seemed to have deserted her.

"Is your hair naturally that color? I've never seen black hair before. Just very dark brown," she managed to blurt out.

[glorious_sadism]

It took her a second to react to Jeannie's words. When she did, she startled out of her thoughts with an abrupt, "OH. Oh. Um... no, it isn't natural, I dye it. You know, with normal dyes, because I didn't know any magic before," she explained, putting a hand up to her head. "The roots are growing out, though. I should ask the Charms Professor if there's something I can use to keep it black."

[jeannm]

"Wow," said Jeannie, "Normal dyes? As in... the ones with the crushed flowers?" She didn't know much about the Muggle world. Wrinkling her nose slightly, she said, "Doesn't that get messy?"

Hearing the part about asking the Charms Professor, she brightened. "You could use a Permanency Charm. Or an Illusion Charm." Jeannie wasn't that good at Charms, she wasn't horrible but Gabriella was actually better than her at it. Jeannie just knew the names and functions of a whole bunch of charms, due to her mother- but, she couldn't do any of them besides the ones they learned how to in class.

"So then, what's your real hair color?"

[glorious_sadism]

"Well, they make it with chemicals now," Gabriella admitted. "It's still fairly messy, but it's not so bad if you get a hairdresser to do it. It actually helped my hair be healthier since there was so much chlorine." She shifted, uncurling her legs. "It's dark brown. My parents don't like it that I dye it, but it's not too far off my natural color, so they got used to it, I think."

[jeannm]

Jeannie blinked, at first. Chlorine? Wasn't that a chemical? And it was good for your hair? She internally shrugged it off. She would probably learn about it later in Muggle Studies, anyway.

"My parents would get very mad if I did something like that," said Jeannie unabashedly. "They love my hair. It's rather sickening."

[glorious_sadism]

"Mine wouldn't let me for a long time," she said. "But like I said, they eventually came around. My swimming coach helped me talk them into it. They wanted me to go auburn instead of black, but I think that would have just looked wierd," Gabriella said. "I'm not a redhead. Really."

[jeannm]

Jeannie couldn't help but giggle and agree. "You look better with black," she said. "Auburn would've just taken the emphasis off your eyes." Hopefully she wouldn't be offended or anything.

She hesitated for a moment, then continued. "You swim, then? I'm not very good at many Muggle sports. I do some Quidditch, sometimes, but I haven't since school because of the no-brooms allowed rule for first years." Jeannie paused, then continued. "Maybe I could convince my dad to send me one anyway. But then I would get caught," she said, almost to herself.

"Oh, but I've been swimming sometimes, of course, though I've heard Muggles do competitions and laps and... butterflies? I can't recall exactly what I've heard."

[glorious_sadism]

Gabriella smiled. Ah, another subject she knew a lot about. "It's butterfly stroke," she said kindly. "There are four different strokes used to compete. There's Freestyle, which is the front crawl, Backstroke, Butterfly stroke, and Breaststroke. They make pools that are a certain length across - twenty-five meters or fifty meters. And the fastest swimmers get prizes. When you swim across the pool twice, there and back, that's called a lap." She smiled wryly. "It's my favorite sport because... well... I don't do well on teams."

[jeannm]

"It sounds tiring," Jeannie commented. "Are you really good at it? Which stroke is your best?"

She blinked at Gabriella. "I don't know if I'm any good with teams. I only played with my brother since I was tutored at home, and we used to take turns being ever single player." She giggled slightly at the memory. "I really only liked playing Seeker, which was kind of an individual part, y'know? Like part of a team except... not."

[glorious_sadism]

"I don't have a broom," Gabriella told her. "I've done okay in flying classes so far, but I don't think I'm good enough to play Quidditch. And I'm not really that good at swimming... I was never the fastest, but I wasn't the slowest either. I love it for the work-out," she admitted somewhat sheepishly. "And everyone thinks I'm crazy. Because it hurts when you've been doing repeats for three hours. But it hurts in the good way. Breaststroke's my favorite but the only one I've won ribbons in is Butterfly, which I hate."

[jeannm]

Once more, Jeannie listened attentively.

"I don't think you're crazy," she said frankly. Most unlike her. "Loving something for the physical activity doesn't make you crazy, it makes you fit."

After a moment more, Jeannie mouthed 'wow' to herself. "Three hours is a long time. And you're doing laps all that time? And-" here she furrowed her brow confusedly, "-how can something hurt in a good way? I mean, hurting is hurting, right? It hurts."