First day, first enemy, first accident.

[Alex Cullen]

Alex opened the door to the hospital wing feeling the corridors slightly quiet after the chaos at the party. Chuckly slightly at the party, he held the door open as the bright green haired girl hovered in. Bed, he mused over, seeing the just opened wing which empty, not surprisingly. After all, it had only been half 'n' hour after the sorting just finished and the parties just getting started in the common room, or almost done in Hufflepuff's case.
Alex let a yawn out as he just decided to place her on one of the beds in the middle. All this magic for the pranks was finally taking it's toll on him finally and he was slightly weary on his feet. Maintaining charms hear and there constantly exhausted even the average adult and right now, Alex wasn't an adult at all. 17 only, but another couple of months and that was him, 18 years old and ready to brace the world of seriousness.
A shudder ran through his body as he thought about it. It was the exact opposite way of behaviour to his and he wasn't looking forward to it at all. Finsihing the spell off, he flicked to her hair and transfigured it back to it's normal colour, thinking a scene for the green hair would not be so good anymore. He almost collapsed into one of the uncomfortable chairs in the wing, and rubbed his face with the back of his hand trying to rub away stress that was building up in his.

 

[Maria Madison]

Maria was totally unconscious through all the levitation. Had she been conscious though, she would still have been kicking and flailing furiously, and probably crying too. Her eyes were red-rimmed from the tears, and her cheeks were still wet; the little water remaining from her tears mixing with the blood trickling slowly from her nose. She had hit the "door" quite hard, and while her forehead was growing a large lump, and an impressive dark bruise, her nose had actually broken. It was only a small break, easy enough to fix with magic, though were Maria awake, it would be The End Of The World. The back of her head was also bruised, from rebounding off the "door" to the floor, and she had a carpet burn on her back. All in all, she did not look her prettiest at this moment in time. Probably a good thing that she wasn't awake.

 

[Jessame Rose Trewelly]

After hearing the screaming, and the thud, and then the silence from her dorm room, Jessame Rose had stormed downstairs and demanded where Maria was. Everyone was too shocked to give her a reply, but she'd seen the common room door close behind Alex Cullen as he left, and she had followed him to the hospital wing. She walked in, saw the awful Alex Cullen sitting in a chair looking sorry for himself and Maria laying on a bed, unconscious. Summoning all her courage, she walked over to them. "You can go," she directed the words at the Head Boy, although she didn't look at him. "You've done enough damage." Then under her breath, she added "freak!"

She stood by Maria's bed, vision blurred from anger and willed the tears back inside her eyes.

 

[Alex Cullen]

Alex heard the door of the wing open and thought it might be a nurse or something finally, but no. Course it wouldn't. It would have to be one of the little first years that had also suffered by his ingenius prank. Giving her a charming smile, though she wasn't even paying attention to him. But why should she after all? He had joked with her when she had said her name, and had discovered she was not one to enjoy being joked with.
'Umm, thanks but no thanks. I might as well stay here for a while, let the party get some life of it's own before I go back,' he replied to her, not bothering to hide his Glaswegian accent now . She wasn't worth his little act he put on for everyone else. After all, he was gone from here in under a year and would never have to encounter horrible idiotic little kids again for a long while. He had heard her call him a freak but words meant nothing to him anymore and it would be one day that she would discover that all by her little lonesem self.
'You're happy to come join me in the waiting,' he offered Jess, pulling up a chair to the bedside. He noticed the girl's face was pretty bloody by now. 'Scourgify,' he wipped out, cleaning her up from dirt and blood in one flick.

 

[Jessame Rose Trewelly]

Jess wished he would just leave, but obviously he wasn't going to. Obviously, he was someone who liked to rub salt in others' wounds. Didn't he realise Maria would be so much worse if he was still here when she came round? And of course now that she was here, she could hardly leave again. She'd look like an idiot, and looking like an idiot was high on Jess' list of things not to do. Of course, that's why she disliked this Alex Cullen in the first place. He'd made her feel like an idiot when she made an effort to be brave. It's not like I wanted to talk to you. I just want to be left alone. Her face hardened at the memory.

She noticed his accent was different from earlier, but she just figured it was him trying to make fun of her again. It was probably his pathetic attempt at a New Zealand accent. Well sucks to be him, cos that's nothing like a Kiwi accent, she thought, Not even close!

She was considering her response to his offer of joining him while she waited for Maria to regain consciousness, or for a doctor to come, or for whatever you were supposed to wait for when someone was passed out, but before she could reply, Alex pointed his wand at Maria again. Jess could only look on with horror as he said some awful sounding word. She wanted to cry out, swear, beat him, hurt him, but she could only stare. And... and then the blood on Maria's face disappeared. Jess honestly didn't know what to make of it.

She turned her wide green eyes on Alex Cullen, her Head Boy, supposedly someone she was supposed to look up to. Her brown face and messy dark hair spoke volumes of disgust. Here, sitting there looking as though he was the one who'd had a tough day, was everything that was wrong with magic. How could he wave that wand around like a toy? He'd already knocked Maria out cold, who knew what else he was capable of, either on purpose or by accident? It's sick, she thought, sick, sick, sick! Taking her eyes off the horrible boy, she climbed into the chair he'd pulled up and sat staring at Maria.

After a long silence, she murmured, puzzled, "Where does it go?"

 

[Alex Cullen]

Alex looked up to the girl's face as she turned round to face him. She seemed to be horror shocked that he could actually feel the need to cast something on her again but he hadn't a clue. And nor was he even going to try read the girl's mind. Like she would even pay attention to anything he would say to her. But when the face of horror turned disgust, he felt the anger spike in him slightly. Well, he would have a quirky comeback if she dared to say anything insulting him to him, that was for sure.
As she sat down though, Alex could only twirled the wand round in his hand waiting for someone to break the growing tension between them. It was a wonder when he nearly burst out laughing as she asked something totally unexpected.
'Where does what go? The blood? 'he asked her not sure what she meant. He mused over it for a second. 'Hmm, not sure actually. I've always thought it just dissappeare dbut now you mention it, I guess it does have to go somewhere,' he thought aloud thoughtfully. Tapping the wand's tip against the his lips, he welcomed the little chills it sent through his body as he continued to wonder.
'I was taught in Transfiguration that when you banish something, it goes into a semi-permanent realm almost, until you summon it back again. I guess this is sort of the same in a way, but the realm is a permanent one which gets filled up with everything unwanted on this planet. You'll have to ask the Professors for a better answer to be honest,' he told her finally, thinking it was pretty logical explanation in his mind. He gave her a glance before smiling. 'Why?' he asked her, tilting his head up a few milimietres to get a better look at her.

 

[Pearl Firn]

Pearl had decided to spend a few extra hours with her new husband before heading back to Hogwarts for the school year, what could happen on the first day back? Flooing directly into the hospital wing Pearl brushed the dust off her clothes before looking around and frowning as she saw three people in here already, "Oh dear" she muttered to herself as she went over to the girl who was laying unconscious in a bed. "What happened?" Pearl asked the boy with a raised eye brow. Turning back to the girl Pearl saw that her nose was a little crooked. Sighing Pearl checked the girls nose out and sure enough it was broken. Pearl pulled out her wand and used a non verbal spell to fix the girls nose before checking out the large bump and bruise on her head. Using her wand again Pearl summoned the bruise paste and applied it to the girls forehead gently.

 

[Jessame Rose Trewelly]

Jessame Rose wasn't really expecting a reply, so when Alex spoke, she was a little surprised. Surprised enough to answer normally: "Yeah," she said, indicating it was the whereabouts of the blood she was referring to. She listened with interest as he explained the best he could, and sat still for a moment, eyes vacant, as she always did when she was thinking. She wanted to make sure she understood properly. "A junk realm? But that's horrible. Like throwing your rubbish over the fence just so you don't have to deal with it. And what about the...balance," she faltered, trying to explain the multitude of ideas going through her head. "If you take something away, you have to put something back. Are there just... holes where the atoms of the blood were before? That doesn't make sense, the world would wear thin, we'd tear apart at the seams." She was only half talking to Alex, mostly just trying to reason it out in her own mind. She'd always been interested in how things worked, and wanted more than anything to understand magic, for two reasons. First, if she understood it she could destroy it. It had ruined her life, and for the first time ever, the usually mild-mannered girl wanted payback. Secondly, if she understood it, she wouldn't feel so lost. She hated not understanding the world around her.

She was jolted out of her musings when Alex asked her why she wanted to know. She looked at him properly for the first time. She was baffled by such a question. "No wonder you hurt her," she said, in sudden realisation, "how can you expect to use magic properly if you don't even know how it works? Didn't you ever wonder where the green came from that you put in her hair? What if, wherever you took it from, it was needed? It can't just come from nowhere. Maybe some poor creature was using it to camouflage itself, and when you took the colour away, the thing got eaten? Don't you think about that?" It was the most Jess had spoken since arriving at Hogwarts, but it was only the beginning of her questions. She felt slightly lighter, but it barely made a difference to her feeling of being utterly crushed by the uncertainty of her new world.

Just then, a woman arrived, who Jess assumed was a doctor. She thought it could only be a sign of bad things to come that a school (a school for crying out loud!) had its own hospital and doctors. If her parents knew, they'd kick up a stink. Or would they? They knew less than Jess about this place. Anyway, she wasn't about to tell them, the last thing they needed was more worry. The doctor asked what happened, but was looking at Alex Cullen, not Jess, so she kept her mouth shut. She wouldn't even say anything if he told the doctor a lie, but it would make her hate him all over again. She cringed when the doctor pointed her wand right at Maria's face. She hated to think what might happen, but nothing visibly bad seemed to occur. Jess wasn't convinced nothing awful had happened though, especially since Alex had planted the idea of other realms in her mind. She didn't know Newton's third law in so many words, but she understood the basis of the idea that 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction.' She saw no harm in the application of a cream to Maria's bruise - it was probably just arnica - but she thought it was a little lazy not to just walk over an pick it up.

((Sorry for the novel - everything is new to Jess and she likes to analyse everything!))

 

[Alex Cullen]

Alex listened as the girl spoke. she was quite a logical thinker already and wondered why on earth she had placed in Hufflepuff rather than Ravenclaw. That was just weird but the sorting hat knew what he was doing, he guessed. He had no idea what replaced the atoms taken away but he had guessed it was just air. He couldn't understand why she cared so much about it anyway. It wasn't important in his eyes.
He laughed though as she asked where the green had come from. 'Well, I know how that one works. It's a illusion The colour hues get altered so the colour you want is the result. That one isn't a bad for the realm thing because your hair colour is still there but it's just covered up, like make up,' he told her before flicking his wand at his hair and changing it back to black. 'See? Still there,' he pointed out, before returning it to his blonde. He much preferred it blonde to black but actually thinking about it , maybe it was time for a change.
Just then, the nurse came finally so Alex smiled at her. She seemed to think he was responsible for this for some reason and had no idea why. C'mon, it's not like I'm always the bad part of the story, he thought to himself before wondering what he'd say.
'Not much too be honest. She just managed to run into a fake door and konk herself out. Mind you, if she hadn't been so hysterical she might of realized that the fake door had already been found out by some other people,' he told the nurse with a crooked smile. Said like that, it didn't give much stuff away though she would probably ask how there even was a fake door there. But like he cared.

 

[Jessame Rose Trewelly]

Jess didn't respond to Alex this time. His explanation didn't answer all of her questions, but she just sat, mulling it over to herself. He clearly wasn't going to be of any use to her. He seemed oblivious to the fact that magic was dangerous, despite what he'd done to poor Maria. She was critical of his explanation to the doctor; he seemed to believe his 'pranks' were entirely harmless and was practically blaming Maria for knocking herself out. Of course. No sense of responsibility for his actions, she mused.

She sat silently, wanting Maria to wake up and be okay so she could leave.