PRECIOUS/dirt/STONE/road, II
Title: PRECIOUS/dirt/STONE/road
Rating: T, for this chapter, M overall.
Words: 2079
Notes: I had thought about writing all of her day, but soon, the chapter was as long as it needed to be, and she hadn't even left her Common Room. Probably I must remark that this fic is going to be more character-centric than story-centric.
PRECIOUS / dirt / STONE / road
II
The dancing lights of the Alarm Charm felt like stabs on her retinas, and as she slowly regained consciousness and awareness of where she was, Emmeraud threw a hand in the air as if to push away the lights. They flickered on for a minute more and then went off, and the girl turned on the bed. Emmeraud had never liked waking early, being regularly a late sleeper. And the previous night, she had hardly slept at all, considering all her excitement and anticipation to her first day of school in a completely new place. She had been planning and looking forward to things, knowing that she’d have to become a teacher favourite as soon as possible, if she was to be left alone to do what she wanted. It was an obvious tactic: the high-scorers were always given more leeway, and she will need all the indulgence she could get if she was to make her search on her own.
The girl trusted her innate ability for wandless magic to help her - it shouldn’t be hard, she thought, to channel my magic through that wooden crutch for a while, until I get the hang of the spell, and then do it on my own, should it? She had been brought up to think so; after all, that’s how they taught magic in American schools. The use of wands was compulsory only for Muggle-borns and that only through their first two years at school, on the consideration that they hadn’t had any previous magical training, and later they were expected to be apt to join the rest of the school population, in the regular classes. So, since Emmeraud’s mother had been a witch, the girl had been required to have mastered, at least, the basics of magic - levitation spells, simple transfiguration, and basic potion brewing - before entering Magical High School. It was like having been home-schooled, only that Americans rarely relied on wands or any other artefact designed to channel their own power.
But still, such a positive outlook in her new school life didn’t make up for having to wake before the sun was up. Emmeraud grumbled a little before finally pushing open the curtains of her four-poster bed. It didn’t help her much that it was, by far, the most comfortable bed she had slept in.
As the first lights from the window - apparently charmed to appear as if they looked outside, considering they were in a dungeon - fell on her face - meriting another grumble - she noticed two things: first, that there wasn’t a bathroom in sight, and second, that the two other girls she shared the room with had been staring expectantly at her bed, and had turned their faces away as soon as her face showed up.
It might be useful to befriend these little idiots, Emmeraud thought, pulling herself out of her bed and waving her hand towards her trunk, which opened neatly, letting a few clothes fly out and reach their owner.
The girls stared at the trunk and the flying clothes, bewildered, forgetting to look nonchalant. Emmeraud smiled as she grabbed the items. “Do any of you know where the nearest shower is?” she asked them, trying to sound as friendly as possible.
“Y-yeah… of course,” one of them, the less intimidated one, walked towards the door and opened it, pointing to her left. “At the end of this hall there are two doors: the one in the left is for students from First to Third Year, and the one in the right is for students from Fourth to Seventh Year.”
“And which one is the less crowded?” Emmeraud asked.
“Well, there were only three First Years this year…”
“Thank you.” Emmeraud answered and waved her hand once more to her trunk. An assortment of bottles and brushes flew behind her as she left the room. The other two followed her with their gazes, and after a brief moment of hesitation, got up and trailed behind her.
“But you can’t go in there!” one of them said. Emmeraud turned around, eyeing her with a defiant look. “I mean, you shouldn’t go in there…”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because…” the girl hesitated, “you’d be jinxed, with a horrible skin rash.”
Emmeraud thought about it for a second. “Fine, then, I’ll go to the other one. Thank you.”
The two girls smiled, and went back to their room.
Emmeraud pondered, as she walked, on what to do. When she arrived to the corresponding bathroom, she noticed a long line of older students waiting for the six showers to vacate. Fuck, she thought, I’ll never get a proper shower at this rate. But she smiled, nonetheless, and closed her eyes. Soon after, a heavy thud was heard inside of one of the stalls, and a cry of pain flew out of it, filling the room and reverberating across the walls.
“Millie, are you alright?!” one of the students in the line yelled, and rushed to the door. Inside, the occupant was crying and moaning, and as her friend pushed the door open, she tried to cover herself from view, and, at the same time, massage her back. Her friend tried to wrap her in a towel and lift her, only to make her yelp in pain.
“My back, I’ve hurt my back!” she cried, and tried to stand up on her own. “I slipped on something, I don’t know what…”
“It’s alright, we’ll take you to the Hospital Wing,” another girl attempted to lift her, but it was impossible without making her hurt. She cried and yelled and asked her friends to call Madam Pomfrey to the bathroom, but before anyone had gone to do so, Emmeraud spoke.
“Why don’t you Stun her?”
Everyone turned to look at her, as if they had just realised she was there. “What?” asked one of Millie’s friends.
“Stun her,” Emmeraud repeated, as if teaching a small kid to count. “That way, she won’t feel pain, and you can levitate her to the Hospital Wing, right?”
Most girls nodded and asked around for a wand to do what Emmeraud had suggested. In a few minutes, Millie was unconscious, and her friends were clumsily wrapping her in towels, and throwing a cloak over her, as they made their way down to the Hospital Wing.
Since at least five girls had left the line, it was much shorter than when Emmeraud had arrived. But she didn’t feel like waiting about twenty minutes more. Another girl had entered the vacated stall, and had just closed the door. It’s only too easy, Emmeraud thought, and waved slightly her hand towards the door. Instantly, a scream was heard behind it, and the girl inside threw the door open, escaping the stall half-wrapped in her towel. She was white in the face, and trembling.
“A-an… a-c-cro… ac-c…” she stuttered, pointing to the stall.
“What is it, Kels?” asked one of her friends, but they couldn’t get a straight word out of her. One thing was for sure, though: she didn’t want to go into that stall ever again.
So, that did the trick, thought Emmeraud, suppressing a smile, as nobody dared to enter that accursed stall after the second girl had gone out. She took a step front and asked, in a clear and audible voice, “isn’t anyone going to use this one?”
All the girls looked at her as if she had gone mad, and moved aside for her. She walked confidently and closed the door with a snap behind her, to enjoy a nice, long - and earned - shower.
Later, as she got back to her room, clad on a pair of low-cut, tight jeans, a red blouse, unbuttoned down to the middle of her breasts, and red leather boots, her roommates eyed her inquisitively.
“What?” she asked slightly annoyed.
“Are you alright?” one of them asked.
“‘Course I’m alright.” Emmeraud answered, not knowing nor caring about the other girl’s meaning.
“They said you went into the Cursed Stall…”
“The what?” Emmeraud asked, but before anyone answered, she knew what they were on about. “Oh, that…”
“No one has even been hurt in the stalls, and Kelsey Wilkins said she had seen a huge, black, Acromantula in a corner…” one of them said, almost whispering.
“And you concluded,” Emmeraud said, rolling her eyes, “that the stall had to be cursed, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah…” one of them answered, hesitatingly. She sounded like a little child afraid of ghosts, and she had just realised it. She blushed and added, “o-of course, it could have been a coincidence…”
“She could have imagined it…” said the other girl, quickly.
“Of course she imagined it,” Emmeraud said, impatiently. “Look, why would someone curse a bathroom stall?”
None of the girls could answer that. Emmeraud nodded, and went on, packing her books into a black jean bag, fashionably torn and patched. It didn’t look old at all.
“So, eh…” one of the girls ventured, trying to start a conversation with Emmeraud, “are you any good at Charms, eh… Wilshire?”
Emmeraud suppressed an exasperated sigh and turned around, a veiled tone of sarcasm in her voice. “Oh, how rude have I been!” she said, with a simper, “my name is Emmeraud, or Em, if you’re in a rush, what are your names?”
“I’m Clara Banks, and this is Emily Stonebrock,” one of them replied. Clara was a short, plump girl with curled, brown hair. Emily was medium-height, with long, dirty blonde hair. Neither of them had, apparently, realised that they weren’t exactly being treated nicely.
Emmeraud surveyed the both of them, smile firmly on, and pushed her bag to a shoulder. “Nice to meet you, girls,” she said, walking to the door, “and yes, Clara, I’m quite good at Charms,” she answered and opened the door. “So, shall we go?”
The two girls hurried to get their books and followed Emmeraud down to their Common Room. “Hold on, I want to say hi to a friend,” the girl said, as she spotted Silenius sitting on a sofa, apparently waiting for someone. As soon as the boy saw her, he sprang to his feet and strode towards her, grinning widely.
“Hello there,” he said, eyeing her tight clothes with failed nonchalance.
Emmeraud didn’t seem to remark on that. “Hi, how’s it going?” she asked, innocently.
“Fine, thanks. Had a good rest?” the boy asked.
“Very good, thank you,” she replied, and added, “are you waiting for someone?”
The boy threw a look towards the girl’s dormitories. “No, I don’t think she’s coming any time soon,” he said, and jumped to his former seat to pick his books.
“She?” Emmeraud asked when they were at the door.
“Oh, it’s just Cassie, the other Sixth Year Prefect, you know her,” the boy answered, promptly, “we’re in the same class, and we usually go together, but we’re not- I mean, dating, or anything.”
“Oh, alright,” Emmeraud smiled at him. “So, would you like to walk with me to my class today?”
The boy smiled, delighted. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said, leading the way.
But he stopped before they were out of the Common Room. “Please, could you- you know, it’s the rules- wear your Hogwarts robes?”
“Aww, you’d prefer me to?” asked the girl, pouting.
“Well, no, of course,” Silenius shot her a mischievous look, “but the other Prefects might probably make it an excuse to take points from Slytherin, you know…” he replied, hiding the plea in his voice.
“And nobody wants that, right?” Emmeraud replied, and pulled her robes out of her bag. She knew she would not be allowed to go around the school without her uniform, anyway, but she had wished to delude herself for a few blissful minutes. “But you have to know I hate them,” she added, throwing open the robe rather as if it was a coat, fitting it over her clothes and closing the Invisible Stitch in front - the one she had worked on, among other things, the day before, at the Hogwarts train - with a tap of her finger, “they get on the way of things.”
The two girls were amazed at the way she had fixed her robes, but Emmeraud didn’t take notice of it. The boy merely chuckled, and walked out of the Room, showing her around the castle as they made their way to the Charms classroom, Emmeraud’s two classmates trailing behind them.
Rating: T, for this chapter, M overall.
Words: 2079
Notes: I had thought about writing all of her day, but soon, the chapter was as long as it needed to be, and she hadn't even left her Common Room. Probably I must remark that this fic is going to be more character-centric than story-centric.
PRECIOUS / dirt / STONE / road
II
The dancing lights of the Alarm Charm felt like stabs on her retinas, and as she slowly regained consciousness and awareness of where she was, Emmeraud threw a hand in the air as if to push away the lights. They flickered on for a minute more and then went off, and the girl turned on the bed. Emmeraud had never liked waking early, being regularly a late sleeper. And the previous night, she had hardly slept at all, considering all her excitement and anticipation to her first day of school in a completely new place. She had been planning and looking forward to things, knowing that she’d have to become a teacher favourite as soon as possible, if she was to be left alone to do what she wanted. It was an obvious tactic: the high-scorers were always given more leeway, and she will need all the indulgence she could get if she was to make her search on her own.
The girl trusted her innate ability for wandless magic to help her - it shouldn’t be hard, she thought, to channel my magic through that wooden crutch for a while, until I get the hang of the spell, and then do it on my own, should it? She had been brought up to think so; after all, that’s how they taught magic in American schools. The use of wands was compulsory only for Muggle-borns and that only through their first two years at school, on the consideration that they hadn’t had any previous magical training, and later they were expected to be apt to join the rest of the school population, in the regular classes. So, since Emmeraud’s mother had been a witch, the girl had been required to have mastered, at least, the basics of magic - levitation spells, simple transfiguration, and basic potion brewing - before entering Magical High School. It was like having been home-schooled, only that Americans rarely relied on wands or any other artefact designed to channel their own power.
But still, such a positive outlook in her new school life didn’t make up for having to wake before the sun was up. Emmeraud grumbled a little before finally pushing open the curtains of her four-poster bed. It didn’t help her much that it was, by far, the most comfortable bed she had slept in.
As the first lights from the window - apparently charmed to appear as if they looked outside, considering they were in a dungeon - fell on her face - meriting another grumble - she noticed two things: first, that there wasn’t a bathroom in sight, and second, that the two other girls she shared the room with had been staring expectantly at her bed, and had turned their faces away as soon as her face showed up.
It might be useful to befriend these little idiots, Emmeraud thought, pulling herself out of her bed and waving her hand towards her trunk, which opened neatly, letting a few clothes fly out and reach their owner.
The girls stared at the trunk and the flying clothes, bewildered, forgetting to look nonchalant. Emmeraud smiled as she grabbed the items. “Do any of you know where the nearest shower is?” she asked them, trying to sound as friendly as possible.
“Y-yeah… of course,” one of them, the less intimidated one, walked towards the door and opened it, pointing to her left. “At the end of this hall there are two doors: the one in the left is for students from First to Third Year, and the one in the right is for students from Fourth to Seventh Year.”
“And which one is the less crowded?” Emmeraud asked.
“Well, there were only three First Years this year…”
“Thank you.” Emmeraud answered and waved her hand once more to her trunk. An assortment of bottles and brushes flew behind her as she left the room. The other two followed her with their gazes, and after a brief moment of hesitation, got up and trailed behind her.
“But you can’t go in there!” one of them said. Emmeraud turned around, eyeing her with a defiant look. “I mean, you shouldn’t go in there…”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because…” the girl hesitated, “you’d be jinxed, with a horrible skin rash.”
Emmeraud thought about it for a second. “Fine, then, I’ll go to the other one. Thank you.”
The two girls smiled, and went back to their room.
Emmeraud pondered, as she walked, on what to do. When she arrived to the corresponding bathroom, she noticed a long line of older students waiting for the six showers to vacate. Fuck, she thought, I’ll never get a proper shower at this rate. But she smiled, nonetheless, and closed her eyes. Soon after, a heavy thud was heard inside of one of the stalls, and a cry of pain flew out of it, filling the room and reverberating across the walls.
“Millie, are you alright?!” one of the students in the line yelled, and rushed to the door. Inside, the occupant was crying and moaning, and as her friend pushed the door open, she tried to cover herself from view, and, at the same time, massage her back. Her friend tried to wrap her in a towel and lift her, only to make her yelp in pain.
“My back, I’ve hurt my back!” she cried, and tried to stand up on her own. “I slipped on something, I don’t know what…”
“It’s alright, we’ll take you to the Hospital Wing,” another girl attempted to lift her, but it was impossible without making her hurt. She cried and yelled and asked her friends to call Madam Pomfrey to the bathroom, but before anyone had gone to do so, Emmeraud spoke.
“Why don’t you Stun her?”
Everyone turned to look at her, as if they had just realised she was there. “What?” asked one of Millie’s friends.
“Stun her,” Emmeraud repeated, as if teaching a small kid to count. “That way, she won’t feel pain, and you can levitate her to the Hospital Wing, right?”
Most girls nodded and asked around for a wand to do what Emmeraud had suggested. In a few minutes, Millie was unconscious, and her friends were clumsily wrapping her in towels, and throwing a cloak over her, as they made their way down to the Hospital Wing.
Since at least five girls had left the line, it was much shorter than when Emmeraud had arrived. But she didn’t feel like waiting about twenty minutes more. Another girl had entered the vacated stall, and had just closed the door. It’s only too easy, Emmeraud thought, and waved slightly her hand towards the door. Instantly, a scream was heard behind it, and the girl inside threw the door open, escaping the stall half-wrapped in her towel. She was white in the face, and trembling.
“A-an… a-c-cro… ac-c…” she stuttered, pointing to the stall.
“What is it, Kels?” asked one of her friends, but they couldn’t get a straight word out of her. One thing was for sure, though: she didn’t want to go into that stall ever again.
So, that did the trick, thought Emmeraud, suppressing a smile, as nobody dared to enter that accursed stall after the second girl had gone out. She took a step front and asked, in a clear and audible voice, “isn’t anyone going to use this one?”
All the girls looked at her as if she had gone mad, and moved aside for her. She walked confidently and closed the door with a snap behind her, to enjoy a nice, long - and earned - shower.
Later, as she got back to her room, clad on a pair of low-cut, tight jeans, a red blouse, unbuttoned down to the middle of her breasts, and red leather boots, her roommates eyed her inquisitively.
“What?” she asked slightly annoyed.
“Are you alright?” one of them asked.
“‘Course I’m alright.” Emmeraud answered, not knowing nor caring about the other girl’s meaning.
“They said you went into the Cursed Stall…”
“The what?” Emmeraud asked, but before anyone answered, she knew what they were on about. “Oh, that…”
“No one has even been hurt in the stalls, and Kelsey Wilkins said she had seen a huge, black, Acromantula in a corner…” one of them said, almost whispering.
“And you concluded,” Emmeraud said, rolling her eyes, “that the stall had to be cursed, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah…” one of them answered, hesitatingly. She sounded like a little child afraid of ghosts, and she had just realised it. She blushed and added, “o-of course, it could have been a coincidence…”
“She could have imagined it…” said the other girl, quickly.
“Of course she imagined it,” Emmeraud said, impatiently. “Look, why would someone curse a bathroom stall?”
None of the girls could answer that. Emmeraud nodded, and went on, packing her books into a black jean bag, fashionably torn and patched. It didn’t look old at all.
“So, eh…” one of the girls ventured, trying to start a conversation with Emmeraud, “are you any good at Charms, eh… Wilshire?”
Emmeraud suppressed an exasperated sigh and turned around, a veiled tone of sarcasm in her voice. “Oh, how rude have I been!” she said, with a simper, “my name is Emmeraud, or Em, if you’re in a rush, what are your names?”
“I’m Clara Banks, and this is Emily Stonebrock,” one of them replied. Clara was a short, plump girl with curled, brown hair. Emily was medium-height, with long, dirty blonde hair. Neither of them had, apparently, realised that they weren’t exactly being treated nicely.
Emmeraud surveyed the both of them, smile firmly on, and pushed her bag to a shoulder. “Nice to meet you, girls,” she said, walking to the door, “and yes, Clara, I’m quite good at Charms,” she answered and opened the door. “So, shall we go?”
The two girls hurried to get their books and followed Emmeraud down to their Common Room. “Hold on, I want to say hi to a friend,” the girl said, as she spotted Silenius sitting on a sofa, apparently waiting for someone. As soon as the boy saw her, he sprang to his feet and strode towards her, grinning widely.
“Hello there,” he said, eyeing her tight clothes with failed nonchalance.
Emmeraud didn’t seem to remark on that. “Hi, how’s it going?” she asked, innocently.
“Fine, thanks. Had a good rest?” the boy asked.
“Very good, thank you,” she replied, and added, “are you waiting for someone?”
The boy threw a look towards the girl’s dormitories. “No, I don’t think she’s coming any time soon,” he said, and jumped to his former seat to pick his books.
“She?” Emmeraud asked when they were at the door.
“Oh, it’s just Cassie, the other Sixth Year Prefect, you know her,” the boy answered, promptly, “we’re in the same class, and we usually go together, but we’re not- I mean, dating, or anything.”
“Oh, alright,” Emmeraud smiled at him. “So, would you like to walk with me to my class today?”
The boy smiled, delighted. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said, leading the way.
But he stopped before they were out of the Common Room. “Please, could you- you know, it’s the rules- wear your Hogwarts robes?”
“Aww, you’d prefer me to?” asked the girl, pouting.
“Well, no, of course,” Silenius shot her a mischievous look, “but the other Prefects might probably make it an excuse to take points from Slytherin, you know…” he replied, hiding the plea in his voice.
“And nobody wants that, right?” Emmeraud replied, and pulled her robes out of her bag. She knew she would not be allowed to go around the school without her uniform, anyway, but she had wished to delude herself for a few blissful minutes. “But you have to know I hate them,” she added, throwing open the robe rather as if it was a coat, fitting it over her clothes and closing the Invisible Stitch in front - the one she had worked on, among other things, the day before, at the Hogwarts train - with a tap of her finger, “they get on the way of things.”
The two girls were amazed at the way she had fixed her robes, but Emmeraud didn’t take notice of it. The boy merely chuckled, and walked out of the Room, showing her around the castle as they made their way to the Charms classroom, Emmeraud’s two classmates trailing behind them.