(Untitled)

[jeannm]

Week Name/Date/Time: 'The Season Begins' / Sunday, 27 November / 3:42 PM
Location: Random unused classroom
Open To: ANYBODY ZOMG [Preferably someone she doesn't know? And hopefully somebody that wants to save her. But if they save her they're gonna get a friend for LIFE, just so you know.]
Currently Involving: Jeannie

Comments

[jeannm]

She let go of him as he pulled backwards and mumbled something-or-other, and wondered why he was staring. Did she have another cockroach on her or something?! Jeannie shifted, a bit uncomfortable.

Truth was, Jeannie had thought they were out to get her. An overactive imagination and a tremendous fear of anything creepy-crawly had ensured to that. If they had gotten to her, she believed... well, she didn't know what they would've done, but it probably would've been something like EATING her!

...So yes, she was of the opinion that Erik had saved her.

Jeannie thought about it for a moment. Well, he did have a point. She couldn't have known, and it wasn't really her fault that she was curious, more like her parents'.

She nodded. Erik Cohen now had a devoted follower. A Slytherin devoted follower, but one nonetheless. Though Erik may not have known it, she took his promise to heart - and not just for the cockroaches, also. Of course, she didn't know that Erik wasn't too popular with the Slytherins, and that shouting out for 'ERIK COHEN!!' in the middle of the Common Room would not be the best of ideas. Despite the fact that it was totally unreasonable that he'd hear it, all the Slytherins would probably turn their heads and say "ERIK?! WHERE?!".

"Are you a Gryffindor?" she suddenly blurted out, realizing that might be why he seemed to be a bit awkward about her. "I think you are. If not you should be! Saving me from the bugs was awfully brave. And you look like a Gryffindor, too!" Jeannie stopped, realizing she didn't really know what she meant at that last sentence.

[erikcohen]

Erik was in need of a few followers. Simply because he was Erik Cohen, and in his opinion that was rather follower worthy. It didn't really matter that she was a Slytherin. Though most of Erik's experiences with Slytherins were rather negative (or in the Mallard's case, just plain strange), he didn't believe them all to be out to get him. That was as if someone said all the Gryffindors were insane! Erm... Jackie was sane-ish. Possibly.

Erik would have been extremely amused to see the reaction of a nice "ERIK COHEN" shout in the middle of the Slytherin common room. Not that he wanted the first year to acquire any enemies or summat... just a thought, really.

"Very much so," Erik answered her with a wiggle of his eyebrows, though he wasn't quite sure what that was supposed to mean. He was very much a Gryffindor. Well... it seemed to make sense. Who would argue it?

He looked down at his toes and back up at the girl as she said he looked like a Gryffindor. He was wearing a blue shirt and jeans. Perhaps she meant his demeanor? He had the strut of a lion? BLOODY HELL! He couldn't wait to tell Avis.

"You're a Slytherin, right? What's your name again?" Erik asked, not bothering to move though the staircases had stopped.

[jeannm]

He was in luck, then! Jeannie was an exceptionally loyal follower. And she tended to be on the so-devoted-that-she-stalks side also, but pssh. Most people were flattered when she stalked them, she had no reason to think Erik was any different. The other Slytherins were all very serious. Perhaps it would be good for her to know a Gryffindor, even!

"I think it's the hair," Jeannie said, and squinted at him. She couldn't tell if it was red or blond. But HEY - red and gold are the Gryffindor colours, and blond was... pretty close to gold. "It's kind of Gryffindor-ish. Red and gold and such. And it's kind of curly. And curly makes me think of excited, which makes me think of passion, which makes me think of Gryffindor!" Satisfied with her explanation, she smiled happily.

"Yep, I am!" she said, and beamed. "I'm Jeannie. I saw you at Dustin's birthday party, I think!"

[erikcohen]

Erik was a bit of a stalker himself when the situation called for it. If she managed to follow him around without him noticing... well, he'd probably be impressed rather than concerned.

Erik couldn't say he followed the girl's thought process without it being a lie. Honestly, his hair was clearly blonde, as his entire family (save his poor father) had that hair colour. Perhaps if the light hit it just the right way there'd be red tint, but.. well not often. And as far as curly being exciting and then... well, what? There were people with curly hair in other houses, as far as he knew.

But while none of this made any logical sense, Erik had to be pleased anyway. It was odd, but he'd take it as a compliment, and why not? He was handsome enough. Possibly.

"Oh! I remember you, all right! A friend of my mate, now a friend of mine," Erik said with a grin and placed his wand back in his pocket. Seemed the coast was clear for now!

[jeannm]

((...my bad. the red hair thing was my colour-blind eyes. XD))

...had Erik said that aloud, he would've had himself a challenge. Perhaps the most Slytherin-y aspect of her was that she had drive, especially in contesty type things. She probably would've stalked him until... well, she didn't know.

Perhaps Jeannie needed glasses, then, or maybe it was the light, or even her imagination. Before she had met Gryffindors, honestly, she had imagined them all as bright people with red hair who bounced everywhere. And Hufflepuffs were all blond short people, and Ravenclaws had black hair since blue would be weird and Slytherins had brown since it was the only colour left. Er.

And it was a compliment! Sort of! But it wasn't as if Jeannie meant it to be an insult, so it might's well be a compliment.

Jeannie beamed. Yay more friends!! She wasn't near done with her questions, of course. "Are you a fifth year like Dustin is, then? What electives do you have? Are they fun? Is your name spelled with a C or a K?"

...yeah. Inquisitive could be Jeannie's middle name.

[erikcohen]

She was asking loads of questions, and Erik's brain wasn't really prepared to answer them all. He blinked at her a few times, wondering what he was supposed to respond to first. Hopefully he wasn't walking right into a trap here. It was horrible to assume that because she was a Slytherin, she was a blood snob, but it seemed he just couldn't be too careful these days. Who knew if she was actually the cousin of Wes or something, out to spy on him and report his every move back to the older snake!

No.... that seemed a bit extreme. She was probably just not sucked into their dark, dark world yet. Perhaps he could save her from that too.

"Yes, I'm in fifth year. Been best mates with Dustin since first year, and erm... I spell my name with a K and a C actually. K for the end of Erik and C for the beginning of Cohen. I take Divination and Arithmancy... Divination's no fun at all, but Arithmancy's pretty interesting if you've got the mind for it," Erik explained and waited for a moment.

"So... tell me about you! Liking your first year? Have any siblings?"

[jeannm]

All the questions was just really Jeannie's nature. If she got another friend, she had to know a lot about them. Consider it... er, like an induction ceremony, or a test. Of course, it was kind of impossible for one to fail. But that was kind of the point, eh? She didn't want to make friends with someone and then just abandon them if they didn't answer their questions. As for the spying thing, Jeannie didn't have the attention span for that. Pfft. She would've gotten bored of it too quickly.

She did have some friends who were pro-Voldemort, not that she knew that, and talked bad about her muggleborn friends, like Niamh. She learned they didn't get along too well after that Romey-Niamh fistfight.

"Divination confuses me," Jeannie said bluntly. "I asked someone what they do in that class and they said just make stuff up. That doesn't sound very fun. I want to take Arithmancy, though. It was my brother's favorite subject and he said I'd like it! He's eighteen or nineteen."

"Hogwarts is really big!" she said. "I've gotten lost a lot. Especially since the Slytherin common room is in the dungeons. I think it's way too dreary! No sun! Is it nice in Gryffindor Tower?"

[erikcohen]

Erik didn't have any friends that were Pro-Voldemort, and if they were he didn't know about it. Honestly, it wouldn't make sense for a muggleborn to be on friendly terms with the people who wanted him dead or gone... or both.

"That's basically all it is, yeah. A lot of lying and pretending to know what'll happen to you when... who really knows what lies in the future?" Erik told her, stretching out his legs and smiling. It was obvious he was going to be here awhile, and he had no problem with that. The staircases were his favourite place in all of Hogwarts.

"Your brother sounds like an all right bloke, then! Arithmancy is definitely worth your time. It requires a bit more thinking as the years pass, but... eh, it's worth it," Erik continued and shook his head. Funny how he didn't even really get into discussions about classes with his Ravenclaw girlfriend. Hmmn.

"I got lost a good deal in first year as well. Gryffindor Tower is comfortable for me, but I suppose anything is if you've spent five years there. It has some nice windows, it gets a fairly good amount of sun when it's the right time of day," Erik answered and shrugged his shoulders. He was a very boring hero, wasn't he?

[jeannm]

((... LJ was being weird and posted it to the wrong place. Fixed now!))

Jeannie actually did have a bunch of Pro-Voldemort friends, not that she knew it about most of them. Most of them were very subtle about it anyhow. Slytherin and all. A few of them even wanted to persuade her over to that side, but Jeannie preferred to stay neutral. Picking a side was permanent, after all, not flighty like she usually is.

"I think that's silly!" Jeannie declared. "Besides, if the Divination professor can see the future, wouldn't they know if people are going to cheat and who? And then nobody would be able to cheat at all because she would've been able to sense it! And then she might've been able to see they'd stop so she wouldn't have done it at all and then... and then... that's why seeing the future messes things up!" After this rather off-topic rant, she sat down on the stairs next to Erik, satisfied.

Jeannie scrunched up her nose in a way that said "thinking. eurgh." but grinned anyway. "It's numbers and stuff, isn't it? Numbers are all right with me. Not dangerous like Care of Magical Creatures, not boring like Ancient Runes, and not confusing like Muggle Studies. Plus numbers don't change all the time to make you mixed up."

Nice windows and sun? Pretty much sounded like heaven to Jeannie. "It sounds much better than the dungeons. I wonder why Dumbledore put the Slytherins there, anyway? Windows, too?! If we had windows in the dungeons we'd just get rock and dirt. I wish I was a Gryffindor!" Jeannie exclaimed.

[erikcohen]

Erik couldn't really say that he had any idea what she was talking about. He cheated at Divination all the time! It was the only way he could get through the class without failing miserably. 'Cheating' of course was basically another term for flat out telling lies. Though, if she was saying that Divination was bullocks, he could understand that completely.

"I suppose Divination professors are not to be trusted," Erik said with a shrug of his shoulders and smirked as she sat down beside him. That seemed like as good as of a response as any. Would be of no use to blame the students.

"It's definitely numbers, no... creatures involved really," Erik answered her with a slight nod of his head. He'd never been a fan of Care of Magical Creatures himself, simply because he was much more of an academic mind. Not that too many people knew this, however, as he never acted very scholarly. He'd never taken Muggle Studies either, as he felt as though it were cheating in some way, which brought him back to Divination and... bugger.

Erik didn't bother to state his opinion on why the Slytherin Common Room was positioned where it was, but instead beamed at her as she said she wished she were a Gryffindor. He was proud of his house, of course, but there was a reason for most things around Hogwarts, even if he couldn't always see them.

"I'm sure you were placed in Slytherin for a reason. You must have some pretty big goals or summat," Erik said with a small smile and thought for a moment.

"The Common Room's not all that important, is it? When it's not after curfew, you can just be somplace else!" he said as if it were some amazingly brilliant idea.

[jeannm]

Well, it made sense to her. And that was all that mattered - since when did eleven-year-olds make much sense in general, anyhow?! I mean, Jeannie's mind wasn't a world full of ponies and flowers and happy sunshine, but it was pretty dang close. Jeannie was kind of scared of ponies. They stunk and pooped everywhere and you had to groom them and this is really off-topic, isn't it?

She giggled, and shifted around. More happily than nervously, though. "I don't know why it's a class, really. It should be a special thing for only people who have the... erm..." she frowned, trying to remember the word, "... the Eyes? The Smell? I can't remember." Divination hadn't been anything of importance in her mind, and so she hadn't really retained any information about it.

"Is it like maths?" she wanted to know eagerly. It was in her nature to prod people for information until she got it - couldn't help it, really.

"I don't know if I have big goals," she said. "If I ever get big goals I usually dismiss them because they're not possible. Like building an underwater city! I wanted to do that for a long time, but then I found out that it wouldn't work too well, and would take a lot of planning. Maybe one day I will, though. Except I'd have to do it after I build a castle in the sky." She paused for a moment, then added seemingly at random, "My family is mostly Ravenclaw."

"Oh, and I like red better than green anyway," Jeannie added as an afterthought. "And I like pink too, and it's related to red! I don't mind bright green, but the Slytherin green just looks like mold. And mold is nasty."

"I always get lost after dinner, though," she said, not meaning to complain. "But the dungeons are dark and can be scary!'

[erikcohen]

Erik's mind probably was a world of ponies, flowers, and happy sunshine. And unicorns and rainbows, for good measure. He didn't mind the pony poop, as it was happy pony poop probably. Of course, Erik Cohen was 15 years old, and all that happy stuff came from being head over heels in love. It was a bit different, really.

"Eh... it's some sort of sense, close enough," Erik said, waving a hand dismissively and chuckling. Who cared about Divination and its many forms of insanity? Honestly, he couldn't give a reason for staying in the class. As a muggleborn, it was extremely unlikely he had any chance of developing the sight. OH RIGHT THAT WAS IT. Oh well.

"Not... exactly. There's a bit of maths to it, but not as much as you'd think. It's interpreting and reading numbers and analyzing and such," Erik explained. Hard to really explain Arithmancy, and it was his favourite subject! Bloody hell.

"Well, see? You might not actually do anything about them now, but you've got ambition! You dream big. So... there must be something Slytherin about you," Erik tried to reassure her. No point in doubting it, the sorting hat didn't lie!

"Colour's got nothing to do with it! My favourite colour is green, and I'm not a Slytherin. I don't think it looks like mold either, though some of their faces do," Erik told her with a grin and put his arm around her shoulders. Getting lost was part of being a first year! She'd be okay, as long as some of the older snobby Slytherins didn't get to her.

"You'll make it work for you, Jeannie! Hogwarts is different for everyone. You just have to look on the bright side, focus on what you do like and not what you don't," he advised, hoping it would make some sort of sense to the girl.