Good friends like you are hard to find

[Lilyanna Hope]

Lilyanna was very glad to be back at school for another semester. She had come back much more prepared for her exams this time and was willing to show her parents that she had what it took to easily ace all of them. After a talk with her parents during the holidays, the Slytherin was still quite annoyed that there was no possible way that she'd be able to move to a better school, but she tried her best to push it aside as she believed studying was much more important and it was such a silly thing to put in the way of it. Lilyanna wanted to be a good role model to everyone, especially those that were younger than her. There were too many people nowadays that were getting bad habits off of others and it was about time that someone decided they'd step in and change that. But she knew she wasn't able to make much of a difference. Besides, she was only a small eleven year old and was one of the youngest in her year; there was no way that anyone would bother to listen to someone like her. She would have to wait until she was older and had more authority before stepping in and trying to make a change. After all, that was her biggest ambition in life and no one was going to stop her from doing that.

With her books pressed firmly against her stomach and her head held high, Lilyanna walked down the Fourth Floor corridor and made her way into the library. Not many people were there as it was only the start of the semester and it was a long time before the exams would start but she still wanted to be prepared for them. Besides, it was better to get in as much studying as possible before the library flooded with too many students which made it hard for her to concentrate. She had learned that the hard way last semester and was not going to make the same mistake. She took a seat at the nearest available table and took out her charms textbook to start reading about the levitation charm in preparation for her next lesson. She had already read about it ten times over but there was no harm in reading it again as she had nothing better to do anyway. Her eyes scanned the page as she read until she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. She looked up from the book and noticed her friend. "Tholomyes!" she exclaimed, quite excited to see someone who she was on good terms with. Leaving her books on the table she began to make her way over to him.

 

[Tholomyes Fontaine]

Tholomyes rarely found himself in the library, it wasn't that he didn't like it, it was more that he simply didn't use it, most of the books he had were his sister's old books which he didn't need and given that his sister had always been a lot more studious than him he hadn't needed to worry about anything or not having a subject matter covered, however one thing it didn't account for were books about academic things he'd done before coming to this magical school, having a magical sister hadn't really help in furthering his knowledge of the magical world, and ever since he'd spent that time with Lilyanna he had grown curious about wizard painters, wondering how they did their work, especially given that she hadn't even known what a pencil or any of the utensils that went with it were. The boy had therefore found himself in the library at the beginning of the second term, and he was feeling pretty good about it, searching the shelves of the library for any book about magical painters but either he wasn't very good at using libraries or the school didn't really have any, either option was viable, Tholomyes hadn't spent too much time in his old school's library, only ever when he needed a book on an artist or a language book, but he hadn't found many language books in this library either. It was a pretty frustrating thing he was finding.

The ravenclaw turned a corner in the shelves, the librarian had given him a small list of books that he could check out if he wanted to, that might help him or answer the queries he had, but he was doubtful of that just willing to give them a chance, so Theo was trying to find them, and was a little startled when a female voice spoke, exclaimed his named and he glanced in the direct, "Lilyanna," he returned warmly, aside from perhaps Madeline, whom he didn't know all too well, and Emma, Tholomyes was rarely nice to most others, or well people didn't associate with him because he was rather cynical and he figured that meant most people thought he wasn't that fun to be around, which Tholomyes was fine with, but Lilyanna hadn't seemed to mind, and he'd met the girl's twin at the wild patch event which had been a bit of a funny moment, when he'd thought that she'd, Lilyanna, had forgotten about him,but by this reaction it wasn't the case at all. Tholomyes gave her a warm expression, "How are you?" he asked politely, though he kept his voice quiet, this was a library after all and he wasn't keen on being kicked out of the library before he'd found the books he wanted.
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[Lilyanna Hope]

Lilyanna hadn't been happier to see anyone else in her life. She had been thinking after they met if she'd ever be able to see Tholomyes again. They weren't in any classes together, nor were they in the same house, and he probably had other people he could talk to like that girl he had a crush on. Lilyanna wondered how he was going with that and if he ended up taking her advice and talking to her or even just laying off it a bit until they were older. Lilyanna wasn't very good at giving advice so she wouldn't blame him if he didn't want to take it but she liked to think that people admired what she said and that he would perhaps put talking to her into consideration. It gave her the desire to want to meet this girl, whoever she was, to see if Tholomyes and her would be good together. She didn't know much about him (they had only met once before) but if Tholomyes liked her then why wouldn't Lilyanna?

Lilyanna smiled at Tholomyes as he politely said her name, making her feel welcomed. She hoped she hadn't spoken his name too loudly as Lilyanna could see that it had startled him. He had seemed to be occupied in doing something else which made Lilyanna really curious as to what it was. She was always in the library and had never saw Tholomyes in there until today so it was quite obvious that he was in there for an important reason. "I hope I didn't disturb you." she told him, understanding if he wanted Lilyanna to go away whilst he finished whatever he was going. "I've been quite fine actually. How about you? Did you end up talking to that girl?" She winked at him, hoping that he wasn't already annoyed at her. She wanted Tholomyes to be her good friend as she really did not have anyone else and only hoped that he wanted that too.

 

[Tholomyes Fontaine]

Tholomyes glanced at her and lightly shook his head, since really she hadn't disturbed him at all, since that would've required him to have been doing something more important than just wandering the aisles of the library, walking up and down, trying to find what he was looking for, though he never did find what it was. The boy smiled at her as he shook his head, folding the bit of paper in his hand and then slipping it into his pocket since if he was with Lilyanna he wouldn't need to continue looking for the books he was trying to search for. He didn't have many friends, and he didn't really try making more, he found it easier to just try less and never just be less than who he really was. The Ravenclaw liked Lilyanna, the time however brief that they had spent together had been greatly enjoyable to him, teaching her and letting her learn about the muggle items he'd had had just been amazing to him in hindsight, the only glimmer of hope as he thought all hopes of a future were lost.

The boy nodded, "Emma's my friend, we get along really well," Theo told her proudly, "We went to the Yuleball together, just as friends," he then added but while it didn't seem like it was a good thing since they weren't more than friends, his feelings for her had quietened quite a bit, he knew that he should just be her friend that his interest in her was mostly because prior to her few had been so kind to him. The boy continued to smile at Lilyanna, "I understand now that it is too early for us to talk about love," he explained, before then motioning to where she had been sitting, suggesting that they go sit, Tholomyes usually doodled when he was bored, or when the person he was with wanted to do something other than just sit around talking, it would all depend on what she wanted to do really, "How was your break? Have you spent more time drawing?" he queried,wondering if she had taken to it, like he was interested in it, or if she hadn't really bothered.
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[Lilyanna Hope]

Lilyanna watched as Tholomyes slipped a piece of paper into his pocket. What was he up to? It couldn't have been something top secret because he would need the restricted section for that and it couldn't have been something too important as he wouldn't have stopped looking for it just to talk to Lilyanna. Lilyanna didn't really care though and just stood there as he talked about his crush who was named Emma. She was glad that Tholomyes had talked to Emma and that they had turned into really good friends. Lilyanna didn't really have many feelings for others but seeing Tholomyes talk about Emma proudly in such a way lifted her heart just a little bit. She followed Tholomyes back to the place where she had been reading her charms textbook and put it to the side so she could talk to him. "Yeah, I had a great holiday!" she replied once they sat down. "My mother brought home a dragon tooth from where she works. She's a magizoologist, you see." She smiled, glad that someone had eventually asked her such a question. She hadn't talked to many people that would ever ask that and she felt like Tholomyes actually cared about how her holiday went which made her smile.

Lilyanna had tried to draw some things during the holidays but was mainly focused on reading her textbooks than drawing. But thinking of Tholomyes and the way he drew gave her inspiration and whenever the thought of her friend came to her she would begin to draw something before getting frustrated and throwing it away. Drawing decent sketches was harder than she thought and she didn't even have the right equipment to do it. Whenever she tried the ink would run out or the artwork would smudge all over as she was left handed. She didn't want to tell Tholomyes that she had failed almost all of her attempts at drawing and simply just nodded her head. "Yeah, I drew a couple of things during the holidays but I don't have a... pencil or eraser so they aren't perfect." she told him, remembering what the funny stick thing was called. She asked her parents for one but her birthday wasn't until a few more months so she had to wait. "What about you? Did you have a good holiday?"

 

[Tholomyes Fontaine]

Tholomyes followed her to where she was sitting and sat down on the chair next to hers, nodding along with what was being said, finding it interesting to hear that there was an equivlant magical thing to a zoologist, and he had to admit that was far cooler as a job than what his parents did, "That's so cool, my mum's just a business woman, and my dad used to be a politician, but now he's just a lecturer," he whined as he compared them with the job that her mother held, the only thing that his parents careers were good for was that he didn't really have to worry about one, his brother he assumed would be the one to carry on in the company perhaps follow in their father's footsteps but Theo didn't have to if he didn't want to, and considering his love of art he definitely didn't intend to follow the family. He would live off the money they'd be willing to give and live his days as an artist because he didn't think he'd ever be good enough to sell his pieces, "Does your dad do something as cool?" he couldn't help the tone of jealousy that laced his voice but it was just a tone, he wanted to hear about it.

The boy decided that, he could probably spare some of his writing and drawing utensils to the girl, Lilyanna was a friend and he had very few friends with which to share any of his belongings not that he really was a huge fan of sharing just felt like it was something that friend could do, although he hadn't yet be able to do that, other than perhaps the flower crown he'd helped make which had gone out to people. The boy then just smiled and nodded happily, "I did, my family and I went back to Belgium to spend it with my grandparents, it was amazing," he replied with a smile, feeling so happy about how it had gone, "We're not allowed to talk about this school when with family but it was good to see my other brother and sister, and I love eating grandma's food, she makes the best cake," he gushed easily. Tholomyes loved his family, he loved the two worlds in lived in, he had the perfect combination of the two worlds, "What are you doing right now, classes have barely started?"
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[Lilyanna Hope]

Lilyanna found it very confusing how Tholomyes thought that her mother's job was cool. She thought it was rather dangerous and often felt slightly worried whenever her mother went off to do it. Working with animals was only good if you actually liked them and Lilyanna doubted that she would survive at all as she believed most animals were dirty and annoying. Her favourite animal was a cat as they were mostly clean animals, despite the large amount of fur they shed daily. Her cat Felix was quite obviously her favourite cat in the world. She hadn't really met any other cats but she didn't think she needed to. "No, my father works at the Ministry as a Curse Breaker. A lecturer would be a much better job in my opinion. What does your father lecture about?" she asked with curiosity in her voice. Muggles must have lectured different things to wizards and Lilyanna wondered what exactly that was. She wanted to spend a whole day with a muggle family just for one day to see what their life was like. With no magic, they had to have found easier and more interesting ways to live their life.

Lilyanna smiled slightly when Tholomyes started talking about his family. They all seemed really close and it made Lilyanna wonder just how close her own family was. None of them lived in New Zealand other than her sister and her parents and she had always wanted to go over and visit everyone else in France one day and possibly live over there. France had always seemed like a better place in Lilyanna's opinion and the education over there was always going to be so much better than in New Zealand. But unfortunately that was never going to happen no matter how hard she tried. "I was just reading the charms textbook for this year for a bit of heads up. Did you know that the levitation charm was made in the sixteenth century by someone named Jarleth Hobart? I've always wondered how people just randomly make spells. I mean, how would you do it? Mr Hobart must have been very intelligent." she told Tholomyes, imagining the layout of the exact page that she read it from in her head. Her mind had taken a photo of the page and she knew that she was definitely going to need most of the information on it for her exam.

 

[Tholomyes Fontaine]

Theo was pretty pleased that she didn't seemed to think that what his parents did was bad, and in fact seemed pretty interested in what his father did, however he really did think that what her dad did was father better than him, but this was largely because he thought that most of what muggle people did was better than magical people and therefore he always thought that the jobs they had were more interesting. Tholomyes had to think for a moment before then replying, "It's either politics or history, I forget which," he replied with a small shrug, since he really didn't remember most of the time what his father taught it wasn't like he was ever going to actually need to know that kind of information. Theo didn't think it was interesting so generally when his father started on about it, he ignored him or stopped listening which was probably why he couldn't now easily tell her what he did. Tholomyes knew really that it didn't matter, even though Lilyanna was one of her only friends he was pretty glad that she likely wouldn't ask more about it, or wouldn't mind if Tholomyes was a little vague about the answer.

Talking about his family overall though was something that he liked doing, he found it easy to talk about his family, found it easy to just sit and tell her about what they did and the pitfalls they had to watch out for, especially since half of his immediate family was magic and the other half weren't and they were the only branch of the family as far as they knew that were magic, so he was feeling pretty glad about the fact they were always on the same page when it came to talking about it. But, Tholomyes figured really that him talking about his family was of little interest to Lilyanna whose family was all magic and didn't have to worry about keeping anything a secret. The boy nodded as she replied to his question, and just wondered about the question, "Magic is kind of like creating a piece of art, you have to see it in your mind, then you can do a motion and perhaps sometimes a word is needed," He replied, "A word would focus the magic, you'd have to be powerful though to be able to just invent a spell," Tholomyes shrugged at her, "How would you think to do it?" he returned easily, wondering what her opinions on it were, if she would just agree with him or be different in what she thought.
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[Lilyanna Hope]

As much as Tholomyes didn't seem like he thought it was interesting, Lilyanna was really curious about Tholomyes' father. He seemed like a really interesting person and she thought that it would be great to meet him one day so she could ask him all about his job. It made her wonder if muggle history would be much different to wizarding history. They all had to link somehow as they did live on the same planet and it made her want to see if she could find a book in the library on the topic. Better yet, she wanted to live a life in the day of a muggle just to see what it was like in their shoes. Being without magic mustn't be that hard. They seemed to survive perfectly fine without it and she would love to see how that was possible.

Pushing the thought of that aside, she listened to Tholomyes' theory on how a spell was made. He had quite a good point and Lilyanna nodded at him, glad that he was willing to discuss it with her. "I think it would be very dangerous and I agree that you'd have to be very powerful. But I guess what emotion you feel would be a vital part in making it too. For example, if a wizard was really angry and wanted revenge or something the spell would be dark and cause a lot of pain. But if a wizard who was recently happy tried to create such a spell, it wouldn't work and they could possibly die." she told him, wondering if Tholomyes would agree with her. She wasn't entirely sure if she was right but that's what she thought anyway. It wasn't like she had even half the power of Jarleth Hobart so creating a spell was the last thing she would ever think of doing.

 

[Tholomyes Fontaine]

Theo didn't much care for his father's profession, to him it just wasn't that interesting, he knew his brother who was the only non-magical person of the Fontaine children would enjoy what his father did, since from the conversations he'd had with him during the break his older brother was definitely interested in pursuing such a thing, he was feeling a little left out, desiring to be like his siblings but having now realised that he stood out to his parents. Where before the important and odd child had just been Victoire, with only one of the children non-magical it was now him. Tholomyes as the youngest of the boys and biological children didn't have much concern about what his father wanted him to do, teaching seemed like a good and fun option but he wasn't too sure and he still had plenty of time to actually decide what he wanted. The young boy just looked to Lilyanna and smiled, listening along as one of his only friends at the school responded to the point.

Given that Tholomyes was not born of magic and all his current knowledge of the world was due to his classes he felt he was at a slight disadvantage in this discussion, though he agreed with her point, a happy wizard could not do a dark spell, and a dark wizard might not be able to do a good spell, but he could reason the same was true just in muggle life too, "The same principal is true of muggles, a happy muggle could probably not do something wrong or dark, much in the same way a happy wizard couldn't cast such a spell, though they might be capable of doing it in a different circumstance," he conceded with a nod, thinking that this was an important point to make, any one was capable of bad in the same way they were capable of good, "Are you hoping to one day create a spell? I think you'd be capable of it,"
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[Lilyanna Hope]

Lilyanna was glad that Tholomyes understood what she was saying. She hadn't really had such an interesting conversation before, possibly because she wasn't really one to talk to people and almost all of her conversations didn't last very long. It was probably the main reason why she liked Tholomyes so much; he was always up for talking with her and he appreciated everything she said. She hadn't really met many people like that before and was very glad to call him her friend. "Many different things can influence the way a wizard practices their magic. A wizard who was raised to be good can always decide one day that they want to practice dark magic, hence then having the ability to create dark magic depending on their mood." she added. "Same can go for a muggle too, just like you said." She smiled at him, agreeing wholeheartedly with his point.

Lilyanna almost blushed when Tholomyes complimented her and said that she could be capable of creating a spell. The only reason she didn't was because she knew that Tholomyes was probably only saying that to be nice. As much as Lilyanna always thought she was the best, creating a spell was definitely something that she knew she couldn't do, especially when there were more important things to focus on. "I'm not sure. I don't think I want to because I'm not going to risk my life just so I can create a spell. If anything, I think it would be safer to create a potion, despite how long it would take. But I'm pretty sure all the spells already invented cover everything needed. There would be no need to create another spell." she explained, not sure if that was the answer Tholomyes was looking for. "What about you? With determination, I think you could master it. If you want we can create one together once we both graduate!" she exclaimed. She didn't want to think about the future too soon and she didn't even know if she'd be friends with Tholomyes for that long but thinking about it always gave her a good feeling.

 

[Tholomyes Fontaine]

Tholomyes hadn't ever expected debates from other students at the school, none of them seemed that interested in discussing things with Theo, Theo was generally quite pessimistic, so his arguments generally surrounded that aspect of himself, but this conversation with Lilyanna was different, he wanted to impress her, he didn't want to be useless like he thought he was with her. One of his only friends, and he was happy to call her so. The teen therefore leaned forward in towards her so that he could better listen to what she was saying, so that he could better understand her point better, and he just nodded along with it, since he definitely agreed with her point, any person was capable of magic that could be classed as dark magic, and he just nodded, "I guess it begs the question what counts as dark magic and what is not dark magic," he commented almost off handedly, "Some things are innately wrong, but there must be some grey areas," he glanced down at his hands as he spoke thinking more about it, trying to figure out the grey area in his head.

The boy just continued listening to her, and he definitely thought her capable of creating a new spell, but he thought that creating potions would be just as dangerous as trying to create a spell, the boy didn't think that potions could be at all safer, from what the professor said about the potions they were complicated and dangerous and would only get more dangerous as time went on. The young boy at her compliment blushed lightly and shook his head, "I'm not that good at magic, theory yes, magic no" he admitted, feeling a little embarrassed by the admission, the truth was he wasn't good enough by his own standards and his own standards as high as they were didn't help him. Tholomyes just looked back up at her, smiling a little weakly, "I think when I leave school, I want to paint, I'm not that good now, but I think I could improve, and get better and maybe even sell some of my work" he shrugged at her, he wanted to do something with magic but he didn't think himself capable of it, he wanted something he thought he could somewhat do, which wasn't magic.
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