Acts of Rebellion

[Hayley Elridge]

Hayley peered round the corner into the dark corridor beyond, her face lit eerily by the muted glow of her wand. "All clear," she whispered, not even trying to keep the excitement from her voice. Perfect. This was going to be so great. She hadn't hung out with Harley nearly enough lately, and she hadn't broken the rules nearly enough ever. So the idea of joining her friend for some collaborative Illegal Public Art, as Harley called it, was ideal. Besides, though Hayley would never admit it in words, she was a little worried about Harley. She had been distant, and angrier than usual, since her last encounter with Odette. Hayley hadn't been there, but Rory had told her what went down.

Hayley strolled down the corridor, trying to look confident and nonchalant, as if she'd done this hundreds of times before, like Harley probably had. She didn't glance behind her, trusting implicitly that Harley was following. Hayley had little experience of roaming the school in the dark, but it seemed to her like the best time to do it. The thrill of the illicit, the classic spookiness of exploring a real, genuinely haunted castle at midnight. And, of course, making some sick art with her best friend. Hayley stopped at a wide stretch of bare wall, far from any of the entrances to classrooms, and with reasonably smooth-looking stones. "How about here?"

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley was beyond having steam to blow off. Harley was a geyser, pressure built up inside her to bursting point, and the fight with Odette in the great hall had only increased the tensions inside her. Harley needed an outlet urgently, since all punching a tree had given her was bloody knuckles, and hopefully this excursion with Hayley would go a ways to being that outlet.

She followed Hayley quietly down the hall, resisting the urge to kick every wall they passed, pretending each one was painted with Odette's face. The blonde deserved so much worse than the punch Harley had managed to land on her, she deserved to pay for what she had said about Jason. Harley was deep in furious thoughts when Hayley spoke, and it took her a long moment to snap back to what they were doing. "Oh. Right, yeah, this looks good." She looked over the wall angrily, once again resisting the urge to kick it, and finally set down her bag of paints and brushes. "Let's get started."

 

[Hayley Elridge]

Hayley could feel the anger emanating from her friend, so strong it was almost a physical force. She'd never seen Harley like this. It almost scared her. It had been a low blow even for Odette to insult Harley's brother like that. Hayley had heard of squibs in passing, and come across references to them a couple of times in her haphazard research into the position of Muggleborns in the wizarding world. It sounded like they had it even worse than Muggleborns. People barely even acknowledged their existence. It had been bad enough for Hayley to come into this new world and be immediately insulted and looked down on for who she was. She could barely even imagine how much worse it would be to know about the magical world your whole life, and then be denied a place in it. She wanted to talk about this with Harley, but didn't know how to broach the topic.

Instead she picked up a paintbrush and began to rummage as quietly as possible through the paints that Harley had brought. She picked out the black paint, opened it and dipped her brush in. Then, reaching up as far as she could (not very), she began to draw a long, arching line. The elation of illegally painting on this pristine wall was electrifying. Hayley grinned as with brush in one hand and lit wand in the other, she began to make an outline. Her intention was to draw a bird of prey of some variety, as huge as she could make it, hovering over whatever scene she and Harley created.

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley dropped down onto the floor with an angry grunt, crossing her legs and rolling up her sleeves as she scooted in close to the wall. She hadn't quite gotten as far as planning exactly what she intended to paint, but red seemed like a good start, and as soon as Harley's brush was covered in paint, the idea came to her. With slightly more aggressive strokes than was necessary, Harley began adorning the wall with large, angry flames, scowling angrily as she focused. She was mulling over painting Odette into the fires, wondering if the satisfaction of painting her burning would be worth making herself so easily identifiable as the artist, when an errant elbow knocked a pottle of paint, spilling onto Hayley's bag. "Oh crap, sorry!" Harley dropped her brush back into her own paint, hurrying to find tissues.

 

[Hayley Elridge]

Harley was making a lot of noise at Hayley's feet, and given that this was supposed to be a stealth mission the young Slytherin was increasingly unnerved by her friend's behaviour. Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea. Just as Hayley was wondering how to respond there was a clatter and an exclamation, and she looked down to see a bloodstain-ike streak of red paint spreading over her bag. "Oh, poop!" Hayley hurriedly knelt down beside it. "Um . . . uh, what was that cleaning spell?" Most of the spells they'd learned were, in Hayley's opinion, astonishingly useless for a magical school, but this one was entirely the opposite. Thus, although it was one of the harder spells they'd covered, Hayley had actually put effort into learning it. "Scourgify!" She waved her wand and the paint spill disappeared. Hayley grinned. "Magic, dude."

Hayley looked up from her bag, and made eye contact with Harley. poop, she was really upset. Trying hard not to show it, of course; Hayley would do no different under the circumstances. But she knew her friend well enough to tell. It occurred to Hayley that her gloating about the usefulness of magic had probably upset Harley more. What could she do? She had to say something. What could she possibly say that was cool but also caring? "Hey . . . Do you want me to go put some spiders in Odette's bed?" That wasn't great, but it would certainly start a conversation. Anything she could do to open the floodgates on the huge buildup of angry tension that was Harley Tsuji.

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley sighed, relieved that Hayley had been able to get rid of the stain so fast. "Sorry." She said awkwardly, sitting back. Well, that had been an embarrassing moment of forgetting she was a witch. At least Hayley's instincts had been quick enough to save the bag. Picking up her brush again, Harley turned back to the wall, quickly breaking eye contact with Hayley. Great. These flames looked awful now that she was looking at them again. Just like everything else was awful. Harley's internal fuming was interrupted by Hayley's voice, and it took Harley a moment to actually process what she had said, snorting when she did. "That'd be a start." She grumbled. "I was thinking more shoving her off the Astronomy tower." The thing that was actually strangest to Harley was that she didn't have any retaliatory plans. Usually things between her and Odette were a constant back and forth of attacking one another, but Harley had... no response to this. How did you retaliate against someone who agreed with the most horrible thoughts your parents had? An attitude Harley had spent years pushing back against at home, with no success at all.

 

[Hayley Elridge]

Harley wasn't making eye contact, so Hayley stood up and continued painting. She slowly began to create the outline of the bird while she tried to think of how to respond. Maybe she'd make the bird a phoenix, to fit in with Harley's flames. Hayley knew phoenixes really existed, and she'd never seen a picture of one, but that wouldn't stop her. It wouldn't be hard to draw an identifiable mythological bird, even if it didn't resemble the real mythological bird.

Hayley didn't actually have any intention of pranking Odette; she wouldn't risk their fragile stalemate for something so small and petty. "Yeah," she replied vaguely, "she deserves . . . something. Something worse." Hayley wouldn't go so far as to condone murder, but Harley hadn't really meant that, either. "That was really f***ed up, she's really f***ed up. To try and make you feel ashamed for your bro existing, just . . . what the hell." Actually, the wizarding world was pretty messed up for Odette to even think it was possible, and Hayley wanted to bring that up, but not yet. For now she'd keep her focus where it should be, on Odette and what that evil snake had done.

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley began stabbing at the wall again with her brush, trying to tidy up her flames. It all just looked like a disaster to her now, too internally unsettled to paint properly. "It's not him existing that's the problem." Harley said bitterly as she painted, scowling at the wall. "It's him existing wrong. Everyone acts like he did something wrong, like he's... something to be ashamed of." She snapped, gripping her brush so tightly her knuckles turned white. "My parents act like they never even wanted him. It's disgusting. Everyone hates people like him, the whole wizarding world acts like there's no such thing as people like him. Like they failed, just by being born." Harley spoke through gritted teeth, glaring at the flames she was trying to detail with her clenched fist. "I don't know why I didn't realise Odette would know about Jason, but if she mentions him again I'll do worse than give her a black eye."

 

[Hayley Elridge]

"poop, that's . . . that's rough." Hayley had known it was bad, but just how bad surprised even her. If Jason's parents to practically disown him . . . no wonder Harley hated adults so much. Hayley's mum had always supported her, and here, where most of the world was against her, she needed that more than ever. For someone's parents to turn against them seemed to her like the ultimate betrayal, and clearly Hayley felt the same. Hayley finished the rough outline of her phoenix and cleaned her brush with a muttered Scourgify. Since Harley was still monopolising the red paint, she dipped it into the yellow and began painting big, daubed feathers across the wings. Eventually she spoke again, slowly and thoughtfully. "I think . . . I'm not trying to be selfish about this, I don't want to make it about me - I'm just trying to understand - but . . . I think the treatment of squibs and muggleborns are part of the same problem. People hate squibs because they can't do magic, but their families can. People hate muggleborns because they can do magic, but their families can't. The basic problem is that wizards hate muggles." Hayley was silent for a moment as she stretched up to paint in the long lines of the phoenix's primaries. "Point is, I think we need to change that. And I think there has to be a major shift in society for that to happen." Hayley paused again and continued painting. She hadn't meant to rant quite so much, but she needed Harley on board with this. She wanted to go further, to explain her idea of how to bring about that change. First, though, she would wait to see how Harley responded.

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley sighed and nodded, glaring at the wall as she painted. "Yeah. It is. And he doesn't get to run away to boarding school to avoid their crap, he's stuck living with it. It's awful." Jason didn't complain much about their parents, hardly ever, but Harley had seen firsthand how their attitudes towards him changed. She knew it must be painful, and leaving him with them was the only part of going to Hogwarts that she hated. Next year it would be even worse, with Zoe joining her at school. He would be all alone.

Harley nodded slowly as she listened to Hayley. "I... think it's more than hate." She said slowly, brushstrokes slowing down as she thought. "I think... they're scared. Magic people are so used to thinking magic automatically makes them better, they're terrified of anything or anyone who could challenge that idea. That's why this place is stuck in the dark ages, learning anything from muggles, even basic stuff like... pencils... that would mean admitting muggles are better at some things, that magic doesn't automatically make you the best at everything. They see it as like... a threat, almost. They'll ignore or belittle anything as long as it means they get to keep their image of themselves as better."

 

[Hayley Elridge]

Hayley nodded thoughtfully. She was pleased to see that Harley shared her pet peeve about the school's refusal to use anything other than quill pens, but more than that it was an enormous relief to have it confirmed that her best friend agreed with her. "I think you're right. And in a way, they're right to be scared. If muggle tech is as good as magic - which, as far as I can see, it is - then what's the point in all this?" Hayley swept her arm around, taking in the whole castle and everything they were learning in the gesture, and inadvertently spattering paint on the floor. "But the origin of them being scared was way back in the middle ages, when muggles were persecuting wizards for existing, rather than the other way round. These attitudes should rightly have vanised sometime in the hundreds of years since then. The wizarding world is stuck, in some twisted fantasy of how they think the world should be." Hayley continued painting as she spoke, big, angry bruststrokes quickly filling in the outline she'd drawn. "I think . . . the whole world needs to be shook up if we want to change anything. I think it's time muggles knew about magic." Hayley paused, then began speaking faster and faster as the ideas poured out of her. "The wizarding world clearly can't move forward any more, not by itself. I can't see any better way of making them stop being scared, and shaking them out of their complacency, than revealing the secret. Magic could be better with muggle tech, muggle tech could be better with magic. And the whole world would be better if wizards could learn that muggles are f***ing people." She stopped and looked down at Harley, eyes bright with anger and enthusiasm in the dim wand-light. "Wanna start a revolution with me?"

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley had always known this was a deep passion of her friend's, but as Hayley went on it really struck her just how much time and thought Hayley had put into muggle/wizard relations. It must have been bothering her more than Harley realised. Harley was all too aware of how unfair things were, how badly the system affected those on the 'wrong' side, but she had never really thought about the possibility of changing things, certainly not with the kind of zeal Hayley clearly had. When Hayley turned to her, Harley let out a slightly disbelieving laugh. "S**t, mate, absolutely." She grinned, on board at once.