And If You Look to Your Right...

[Aurora Night]

Turning back to face her captive audience, Rory swung her arm out with a flourish to gesture at the corridor stretching away behind her. "And now we begin to enter the truly horrifying parts of the castle. Here, you see what seems to be just a normal corridor, but - " she paused for dramatic effect. "It is in fact the first of the corridors that contain the greatest evil on this earth." Her voice had previously been an imitation of some kind of low doomsayer's voice, but she returned to her normal tone as she moved her hand to point at one of the doors. "That one's the Charms classroom, it's pretty cool, actually." Not waiting to see the expression on the other person's face, Rory turned on her heel and continued to march on ahead of him, just as she had been doing for this entire tour.

She had started the morning completely ready to turn over and just go back to sleep, almost succeeding until she remembered that her American cousin had asked her to do something today. Rory had spent a few minutes muttering and grumbling as she got dressed, punctuated more than once by 'stupid Leah,' but once she had reached the Entrance Hall she had become kind of excited to carry out the favour. Her cousin's best friend had just transferred to Hogwarts, and she wanted Rory to show the guy around. Happy to oblige, Rory had firstly dragged Matthew outside to show him the entirety of the school grounds, before eventually agreeing with his suggestion that he should probably know his way around the castle, too. Now she was beginning to guide Matthew along the corridors, and was planning to point out where significant things had happened during her first year to add a little excitement, as well as remembering to absentmindedly jab a thumb at each of the classrooms. This little tour had actually turned out to be quite fun.

 

[Matthew Harper]

Matthew had forgotten what it was like to be completely new to a place. The last time he had experienced something like this had been when he had been a first year at Ilvermorny, but that had been years ago and he had at least been in the country he grew up in. Here, everything was different, even the seasons were. And the school was a complete maze, something Rory's tour was only slightly helping with. Matthew tried his best to pay attention to her, but his mind kept wandering. For startes, every time he saw a young girl with blond hair pass them he jumped. It was silly, he had no clue what Odette even looked like. In his mind, she looked like his other sister Charlotte, so he was on the lookout for someone like her. He could ask around, but he didn't really know how to explain why he wanted to know so much about a second year. It was too private to share his real reasons with anyone and he didn't want to lie, so he would figure out a plan later.

Another thing that was occupying his mind was the cousin of the girl showing him around. Leah Mustard had been on his mind more and more, and leaving her behind had been harder than he had imagined. For the first time, he was starting to wonder if his feelings for her were really only friendly. It would be a disaster, he knew, if he really had a crush on her. Not only were they a world apart now, but they were best friends. You didn't ruin that with stupid feelings. Maybe being away from her would cool things down and be a good thing? He could only hope so.

Aurora, or Rory, was nothing like her older cousin. Matthew had known this, but it had still been startling to meet her and see almost no resemblance to Leah. She had shown him the outside first, which was fine but not very practical. He figured he would find most things there on his own, it was the castle that worried him. He didn't want to be lost like all the first years when classes started. But Rory didn't seem to have classes as a priority on her list of things to show him. Still, she was doing him a favor, so he tried to be friendly to her. "You like Charms?" He asked her. "Is it your favorite subject?" She kept walking ahead of him, which he understood but it did make him feel a bit silly. It must look odd, Rory marching in front pointing at things with him following somewhat awkwardly. "Thanks for doing this, by the way." He said casually. "Did Leah say anything about me when she asked?" He asked even more casually. He couldn't help wondering what sort of things she had said in her description of him to her younger cousin.

 

[Monty Pendleton]

Monty was on his way back down to the dungeons, several textbooks tucked under his arm, when he overheard a little of what appeared to be a guided tour of the school. As he drew close to the Gryffindor and her friend - a transfer, it appeared - he raised an eyebrow. "Come, now, Miss Night; Professor Styx may be a little intimidating, but I wouldn't go as far as to call him the greatest evil on earth." The potions professor grinned, pausing to address the boy. "Welcome to Hogwarts! Your tour guide here has just earned herself three house points for Gryffindor." With that, Monty nodded goodbye and hastened on his way.

 

[Aurora Night]

Hearing Matthew ask her a question Rory swung back around to face him, continuing to walk backwards up the corridor as she did so. "Of course Charms is my favourite. We get to learn actual spells! I mean, we learnt some spells in other classes too, but in Charms we don't have to waste the lesson talking about boring theory or listening to dumb lectures, we just get to do the magic straight away, it's great." His second question made her pause, stopping to tilt her head up at the ceiling while she tried to think back to Leah's letter. "Well, I think she just kinda said that it was pretty important to help you, and it would mean a lot to her? I don't know, typical Leah stuff." Her cousin was super nice to everyone, so Rory hadn't really thought too much of her request - everyone in her family had known about Matthew for years, Leah often mentioned him. Rory snorted to herself, remembering the look on her cousin's face at Christmas last year when she had asked if Matthew was her boyfriend.

She was about to continue the tour by pointing out the location of a particularly interesting event from first year when Professor Pendleton walked by. However, before she could respond to his quip she was stunned into silence by the fact that he had just given her house points before walking off again. Rory didn't think she'd ever earned points outside of class before. This was terrible. It had actually been kind of fun to completely lose the House Cup last year, and how was that supposed to happen again if she was gaining points instead of losing them? It made her feel weird. Shaking herself, she turned her attention back to Matthew. "That was my potions professor. He's cool, but I won't get to take his class until next semester because my timetable sucks." She pulled a face. "And Professor Styx is the Defence professor - I reckon he actually is at least a little bit evil though, no kidding." With that she continued to sail on up the corridor, heedless of whatever Matthew's reaction to that last statement might have been. She had actually been referring to all classrooms in general when she'd introduced the corridor, but to be honest she agreed that it wasn't that great a leap to assume she had been talking about Professor Styx in particular - it was still the one class she didn't dare to fool around in.

 

[Matthew Harper]

Matthew listened to Rory talk about Charms, feeling amused. He himself was a bit similar to her, preferring practical lessons to theory. Though, he didn't mind the theory as much as she seemed to. "Makes sense." He told her with a smile.

It was a bit disappointing though to hear that Leah hadn't really said anything special about him. He suddenly wondered what her family really knew about him. She talked about them a lot and they all seemed very close and wonderful, the type of family he sometimes wished he had. He didn't really want to press the issue now, in case Rory would report back to Leah that he had been asking weird questions. No, it was better to focus on the tour right now. Matthew was amused when a Professor showed up to give Rory some points, especially because she didn't seem all that pleased with it. The man had seemed friendly, and Matthew wondered if he would get lessons from him. "Sounds like they have interesting teachers here. What makes Professor Styx evil, exactly?" He raised one eyebrow. "Did he give you a bad grade?" From what he had gathered, Rory didn't seem the type to worry too much about that sort of thing.

He looked at the younger girl and hesitated before asking his next question. It was a casual enough thing to ask, but he had ulterior motives for asking it which made him feel a bit... weird. He hated deceiving people, but he didn't think this quite counted, it was just a question. "Uh, what are your friends like?" He asked her a little awkwardly. Was it weird to ask? It was normal to show interest, right? His real reason for asking was that he knew (unless his information was mistaken) that his sister Odette would be around Rory's age. Probably in her year. He had no clue if the two would know each other and he didn't want to ask directly, but it would be a wonderful coincidence if the two were friends. It would definitely make things easier.

 

[Aurora Night]

Rory shrugged at the first part of Matthew's comment. "Most of them are pretty boring - they just blah blah blah a lot." At his second question, however, she scoffed and turned to look him in the eyes in order to communicate the serious of what she was about to say next. "I wish. Styx is like... a gargoyle. He's completely quiet and massively scary, and he has these eyes that just stare right through you, like he can read your mind, and he just knows that you're thinking about ripping up all your notes and dancing on them before you throw them out the window - only you wouldn't dare 'cause then you'd be in trouble, and you'd probably have to die as a punishment." Rory nodded decisively, almost completely believing the embellishments she'd made to the Defence professor's description - particularly the last part. "They'd never know what happened to you, you'd just disappear one day and they wouldn't find you until seventy years later - somewhere dark and cobwebby," she added, waggling her fingers in what she hoped was a spooky manner.

Pleased with the tale she'd just spun, Rory grinned and happily launched herself into answering Matthew's next question with just as much enthusiasm. "They're awesome. We're all in Gryffindor, so they're totally cool with breaking rules and sneaking out to do fun stuff all the time." If she hadn't already described her Forbidden Forest adventure in detail to Matthew when they had been looking around outside she absolutely would have launched into it here - it was easily the most exciting of all last year's exploits. As it was, she suddenly remembered what she had been planning to show him before being interrupted by Professor Pendleton. Jogging ahead a few steps, Rory stopped in a certain place and turned around on the spot with a jump. Once again affecting her doomsayer's tour guide voice, she proclaimed, "Despite its seeming innocence, this spot marks the place where last year I defended one of said awesome friends from a truly terrible horror." The fact that she was trying to make a joke out of it, however, did nothing to smother the negative feelings that were beginning to stir again at the memory of her fight with Odette.

 

[Matthew Harper]

Matthew decided to take Rory's assessment of most of the teachers with a grain of salt. They couldn't possible all be boring, and she seemed like the sort of person that labeled things as 'boring' very quickly. Her description of Professor Styx made him raise his eyebrows a bit and he couldn't help glancing around. If that Professor had been around to hear it, he was quite sure they both would have been in trouble. "Is he really that bad?" He asked, amusement creeping into his voice. Dying as punishment seemed excessive, no matter how strict the teacher was. Clearly, Rory had a very active imagination. He did laugh at her spooky description at the end. She was cute, he couldn't help but hope his sister was a little bit like her. At least that she would be as carefree and happy.

His question about her friends didn't really get him the result he wanted. She didn't name any names, and asking for them would seem sort of creepy to him. He smiled good-naturedly and nodded. "I assume you're part of the reason Gryffindor didn't win last year, huh?" He asked her with a smile. He had no idea what Rory wanted to show him next but followed her dutifully. Even as she jogged ahead, it was easy to keep up with his longer legs. Her description of what happened in this spot was as vague as her description of most things so far, and Matthew tilted his head to the side a bit. "A horror? What kind of horror?" He asked her. "Like, some sort of animal that got into the castle? A monster?" He was sure it was less serious than that, but he couldn't help but humor her a bit.

 

[Aurora Night]

Rory nodded vigorously at Matthew's question. "He is. Pretty much everyone's terrified of him. I'm terrified of him," she said, putting a hand to her chest and saying it in a way that he would know just how out of the ordinary such an occurrence was for her. "I would rather eat an entire bowl full of mud-flavoured Bertie Bott's beans than have him for a teacher." She knew this for a fact too - she'd once completed that very feat as a dare from one of her older cousins, but she'd got him back by setting Sophia loose on all his Quidditch magazines. Make the players pretty, she had said, pushing tubes of glitter glue into her sister's hands. Rory snickered at the memory.

She grinned at the fact that Matthew didn't seem particularly fussed about the fact that she and her friends broke rules. "I hope so," she nodded, laughing. "Are you sure you're friends with Leah? If I'd told her about sneaking out, she would have pursed her lips at me for sure, and made that tut noise." She mimicked said noise for effect. "Does she do that to you too?" Clearly Matthew was too cool for her cousin, but at least she had good taste in friends. Trying to explain her encounter with Odette last year, however, seemed to not be as good an idea as she'd originally thought and she grew quieter. "Nah, not anything like that. It just sucks to find out one of your friends could be so horrible to another friend and not even care about it." Even using the word in conjunction with Odette felt wrong coming out of her mouth, and she hoped they wouldn't have to dwell on this. She'd rather just get on with the tour.