Apple Banter

[Hayley Elridge]

Hayley sprawled at the foot of her favourite tree by the lakefront, her back leaning comfortably on the rough bark. The sun was shining, the shade was dappled, it was a perfect day to be outside at lunchtime. She had arranged to meet her friends here to share a lunch break, and let the drudgery of classes be forgotten for a time in the fun of their conversation. She pulled her sketchbook out of her bag and doodled idly while she waited. It wouldn't be long until they turned up. She drew long, lazy loops across the paper, filling the abstract enclosed shapes in with silly faces.

Hayley glanced over her shoulder towards the castle and saw Rory coming across the grass towards her. She smiled. Her initial dislike of Rory had mellowed into a friendly antagonism, wherein she enjoyed poking fun at the other girl at every possible opportunity. Naturally, Rory did the same. If you'd asked Hayley last year whether this sort of relationship seemed like a good idea, she would have thought the genuine antagonism of her fellow Slytherins was prevalent enough to make any joking hostility too frustrating to be any fun. Instead, she found it a welcome change of pace. "Hey, idiot, I'm over here!" she called good-naturedly. "How's it going?"

 

[Aurora Night]

Rory's eyes had just about been glazing over in boredom during her last class, and she was pretty sure she had knocked into more than a few students in her dash towards the door at the end. She had been rushing so much, in fact, that she had gotten separated from Rose and Harley in the process. Normally she would have waited for the other girls to catch up, but today she was feeling the itch to get outside particularly strongly. They all knew where to meet Hayley, she would be fine going on ahead. She just needed to feel the outside air on her face. Rory ended up increasing her pace so much that soon she was running through the castle corridors, barely even slowing down when she almost fell down one of the moving staircases in her haste. An injury wouldn't be so bad anyway, she thought, it would probably get her out of afternoon classes.

It was only once she passed through the main doors and into the sunshine that Rory finally slowed down to a walk. Tipping her head up, she pushed her hair back behind her shoulders and smiled at the feeling of the sun on her face. This was such a perfect day - maybe she should just skip the afternoon classes. Her journey down to the lake was wonderful, and she had almost completely slipped into the serenity of the day when she heard a voice she would now recognise anywhere calling her, and looked around immediately for the source. It was only once she located Hayley's grinning face that Rory realised she had just responded to being called 'idiot,' which annoyed her slightly. Compared to some of her previous encounters with the other girl, however, the feeling was pretty tame and Rory had soon shrugged it off as she collapsed on the grass underneath the tree. "You're the idiot. Class is killing me, I just want to stay out here all day." She immediately pressed her whole body flat to the ground, as if becoming one with it would provide her with an escape.

 

[Hayley Elridge]

Hayley grinned mischievously. "Hey, you're the one who responded to 'idiot'. That means it's your name now, no take-backs." She yawned and leaned her head back against the tree trunk. "Ugh, I know exactly what you mean. At least you had classes with friends today." Rory had classes with friends every day. Hayley was so envious of the rest of their group being all in Gryffindor together. She didn't have any friends in Slytherin, only enemies. Hayley decided not to dwell on that. This was supposed to be a break, a fun time. She gazed absently at the small puffy clouds passing overhead. "How is it that term has only just started and already it's been so long?" It seemed forever since their holiday sleepover. It seemed like she'd always been part of this group, even though she'd known Rose such a short time and only stopped hating Rory at the start of the year. It was so good to have such good friends.

 

[Aurora Night]

Rory turned her head to stick her tongue out at Hayley. "That's just dumb." She waited a moment before she suddenly called, "Moron!" hoping that the other girl would respond. She couldn't be blamed for at least trying. However she quietened down at the reminder that Hayley most likely had an even worse time during classes than she did. Lessons were bad enough with the other Gryffindors there to distract her - lessons with no friends around at all sounded twice as terrible. Plucking at some grass, Rory replied, "What electives are you gonna chose for next year then? I'm definitely taking CoMC*, and I think Rose is, too." Rory didn't have a good idea of which other elective to take though, and maybe hearing which ones Hayley wanted to do would help her make a decision. While she waited for a response Rory began digging around in her bag, looking for the apple she had snagged at breakfast time. Her hunger had just sort of arrived upon her all at once, and sitting up she was about to bite into the fruit when she suddenly snuck at look at Hayley out of the corner of her eye and grinned. "Oh no, warning, warning! I'm about to bite into this apple, you'd better stop me if it's too pretty!"

---

*OOC Note: Rory pronounces this as 'comic.'

 

[Hayley Elridge]

Hayley rolled her eyes. As if she'd fall for that. "What's comic?" she asked, not grasping what Rory meant from her pronounciation. Hayley shrugged. "I dunno. I can't say there's anything that sounded exciting." Hayley's default position was a complete lack of enthusiasm about schoolwork, but that wasn't helpful in choosing which classes to take. She chuckled. "Maybe I should take Muggle Studies - that'd be guaranteed easy marks." And it might give her more insight into how the wizarding world viewed Muggles . . . but she wasn't really serious about the idea of taking that class. Schoolwork was dull enough without having to go over things she already knew. Hayley gasped with exaggerated drama as Rory joked about the apple. "Ooooh, I don't know. You'd better let the apple prettiness expert examine it. It might just be too pretty for me to allow you to eat." Hayley stifled a grin, trying to play the scenario with the maximum seriousness she could muster, so as to accentuate its inherent silliness. She was very pleased that Rory had decided to bring up the apple discussion from their midnight trip to the kitchens. This might just be their first reference joke together.

 

[Aurora Night]

Rory wasn't really surprised that Hayley hadn't allowed herself to be caught out - the other girl was much smarter than her, unfortunately. She'd probably been expecting it. Rory resolved to lie in wait and catch Hayley out when she least expected it... as long as she didn't forget, surely it would work. "CoMC, you know, Care of Magical Creatures. And what do you mean it doesn't sound exciting - CoMC is like, the most exciting one. You get to be outside, and there's animals, and -" Rory broke off suddenly, remembering that Hayley was muggle-born. "Heck, you know dragons are real, right? I bet we definitely get to learn about them at some point!" They'd better anyway; Rory wasn't really keen on learning about any small, boring, fluffy nonsense. She'd almost forgotten about the apple during the delivery of her spiel, but now she thrust it into Hayley's face, waving it back and forth underneath the other girl's nose. "What's the verdict then, pretty expert? Can I eat it, or am I going to starve to death today?" Rory thought most situations called for over-exaggeration on her part, and this one was certainly no different.

 

[Hayley Elridge]

"Ohhh, of course." Curse these stupid acronyms. DADA was bad enough - wasn't that an art movement or something? It wouldn't have occurred to Hayley to pronounce CoMC the way Rory did, but now she said so it made sense, inasmuch as such a clumsy word could ever make sense. "'Course I know dragons are real, I do pay a little bit of attention in class. And you're right, actually, of all the classes that sounds like by far the most interesting." Hayley didn't share Rory's level of enthusiasm for animals, but they were definitely more interesting than being stuck inside. And they were bound to provide Hayley with lots of fun things to draw. Now Rory was waving the apple at her. Well, if she was going to make this a big deal, Hayley would absolutely take it further. "How can I tell if it's pretty if you won't let me look at it?" she exclaimed. Hayley snatched the apple from Rory's hand, held it up to the light, squinted at it, then brought it close to her face and examined in great detail. All the while she tried her utmost to keep a straight face. Finally, she passed it back to Rory. "Nah, you can eat that one."

 

[Aurora Night]

Rory nodded at Hayley's agreement. "Of course it will be." So far, all she could tell of the other classes was that they would be hard, or boring, or both. It was making picking between them more difficult than she would have liked. Distracted by the sudden removal of the apple from her hand, Rory couldn't decide whether she wanted to roll her eyes or start laughing at Hayley's close examination of the apple. She still believed there was no difference that made one piece of fruit prettier than another when they really looked just the same, but it was clear that the other girl was just about on the verge of breaking out into giggles as well, and that itself almost set Rory off. Finally Hayley handed the apple back, but Rory wasn't done with their little game just yet. "Well, what if I think it's pretty?" she asked, trying to sound mock offended that it was only Hayley's opinion that mattered in such cases. "What am I going to eat then?"

 

[Hayley Elridge]

"Yeah. I still think there isn't much else that sounds interesting, though. You got any ideas?" Hayley was genuinely interested to see what Rory thought; she'd been trying (with little engagement) to figure out what classes to take. They all seemed dull. Dull and useless. When was she ever going to need to use these things? Hayley rolled her eyes dramatically. "Since when have you ever thought it was pretty? You have no notion of apple aesthetics!" Rory had made that perfectly clear on their midnight expedition to the kitchens. Hayley, as an artist, saw the beauty in most things, including apples. She didn't think she knew anyone who could see it so little as Rory. Sure, some fruits looked pretty much the same; bananas, for instance; pears (though at least they had interesting shapes). But apples were by far the most interesting of the common fruits, with their streaks and blobs, their ranges of colour and delicate shades between them. If Rory couldn't see the beauty in apples, Hayley despaired of her.

 

[Aurora Night]

Rory let out a short bark of laughter at Hayley's question. "No, that's why I asked what you were taking." In her mind, at least the boring classes could be made better by being able to spend them with her friends. "There's Divination, which is dumb, and Arithmancy, which, yuck, and... Muggle Studies and Ancient Runes," Rory finished, counting the subjects out on her fingers. At this point it was definitely looking like a toss-up between the last two. "So, I'll probably just take whatever one you guys end up taking," she concluded, shrugging. However, she was far from ambivalent about Hayley's snub of her 'apple aesthetics,' whatever that meant. Rory bit into the apple in mock petulance, then thrust the newly formed crater back towards her friend. "What about now, then?" She thought the apple looked edgy and daring now - Hayley liked that kind of stuff, didn't she?

 

[Hayley Elridge]

Rory was right, if they could arrange for their group of friends to take the same electives, it would make these uninteresting-sounding classes far more bearable. Hayley desperately wanted to spend more time with her friends, and these classes that all the houses took together would be an opportunity to do so, even with the unfortunate distraction of their being lessons."Well . . ." Hayley ticked off the options on her fingers. "Divination does sound dumb - though if it's actually a thing that works it could be kinda useful to know. Arithmancy's a definite no. Muggle Studies . . . could be hilarious or horrifying, and I don't think I want to find out which." Hayley had had plenty of experience of how pureblood supremacists viewed Muggles. If the view of the rest of the wizarding world was even a shade of that - which she suspected it was - she didn't want to have to deal with it. "Ancient Runes, IDK. Sounds like a waste of time, but what is there at this school that doesn't?" Hayley laughed despite herself as Rory bit into the apple. She shook her head. "Well now you've just ruined the symmetry." This was complete rubbish, the first thing that came into her head to be disapproving of. Apples weren't even symmetrical. But she had to be disapproving of something about Rory's treatment of the apple; that was the fun in it.

 

[Aurora Night]

Rory listened to Hayley's opinions of the electives, a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. "Yeah, Divination works, but in that 'it's going to rain sometime in the next week' kind of way. Like, duh it's going to rain, it's winter." It wasn't worth her time in Rory's opinion, and she was pretty sure she didn't have the 'gift' everyone always talked about when they mentioned it anyway. "But yeah," she laughed, "school is completely a waste of time - it's probably the one thing I would never argue with you about." Apples, however, were obviously a different story. Rory smirked as she examined the bite she had made in the apple, before suddenly taking another one. "Symmetry is overrated anyway," she said through a mouthful of the fruit. "Look, I reckon it looks like you now," she said with a grin, offering the apple back for Hayley's inspection. Poking fun at this girl was just so much... fun.

 

[Hayley Elridge]

Hayley nodded. "Oh. Yeah, I should've expected that. Is it me, or does all the magic stuff we learn seem way less useful than it's made out to be?" There were a handful of spells they'd learned that were really, genuinely handy, but the rest . . . What use was turning a beetle into a button ever going to be in daily life? Honestly, Hayley was increasingly bitter about her whole experience of magic, but she wasn't ready to talk about that with Rory yet. She wasn't sure Rory was discontented enough to understand. Hayley smirked. Symmetry was overrated - maybe Rory wasn't quite such a hopeless case as she seemed. Or maybe, more likely, she was only saying it to contradict Hayley for the sake of contradiction. Hayley cocked her head at Rory's feeble jibe. 'It looks like you'? What an utterly pathetic burn. On the other hand, she couldn't think of anything better to respond with. Impulsively, Hayley grabbed a scrunched up piece of paper from her bag (a failed drawing of a particularly pretty apple) and threw it at Rory.