Open Jumping to Conclusions

[Cameron Roswell]

Set after the new school year starts so please don't join with any active students

Cameron could get this right, he just knew it. He just needed to try harder. He'd seen plenty of other people do magic, and he'd heard enough times that kids especially could just kind of have it happen. Cameron just needed to scare himself bad enough that he'd do it without thinking. Easy. He swung his legs a little harder, feeling his stomach swoop and flip as the swing swung higher. He'd already jumped from as high as he'd normally dared, so if he could push himself just a bit further, he was sure his innate magic would kick in and he could prove he wasn't a squib. Easy, he reminded himself, gripping the chain of the swing tightly. Cameron swung back and forward again, watching the sky and the ground swing back and forth as he stared forward. He just had to let go of the chain and jump and he'd probably fly or float back down the ground. It'd be awesome. He just needed to convince himself to let go over the chain...

 

[Jingyi Huang]

Jingyi was bored as he hung around in the park. The house was quiet these days with Xiuying off at Hogwarts now, and while he still had his brother, it just wasn't the same without his sister. The boy sighed from where he hung upside down on one of the swings, legs hanging over one side and his head over the other so it was almost touching the ground. He didn't really know what he was supposed to do with his time, he felt as though he had already explored the whole park and there was nothing else interesting to be doing. But the boy in the swing next to him caught his attention, Jingyi watching him curiously as he swung up and down, getting quite high up as well. But he chose not to say anything, simply watching quietly to see what was going to happen.

 

[Margo Fox]

Margo didn't come with her grandmother to Brightstone often, not that her grandmother went to the village often to begin with. She knew that she belonged here as much as everyone else but it didn't stop her from feeling like an imposter or some kind of spy. Her grandmother hardly used magic at home, to the point where it seemed more like a peculiar talent rather than a part of who she was. But Gram had told her to go to the park while she did her shopping and Margo begrudgingly agreed. She guessed she was old enough to go off on her own and apparently she wasn't the only one. Margo joined another boy and watched another kid swing higher and higher. Her heart leapt in her chest as he got so high the chain went slack for a moment before catching him on the way down. "You're getting quite high!" she called out, concern clear in her voice. She looked around to see if there were any adults around, feeling certain he was about to hurt himself seriously and there was nothing she could do about it.

 

[Cameron Roswell]

Cameron's stomach swooped as he reached the top of his swing, his bum leaving his seat with a little hop before he swung backwards again, still unable to make himself let go of the swing. He hadn't realized he'd amassed a small audience until someone spoke, surprised to see someone else on he swingset along with another girl nearby. "Yeah, it's okay. I'm gonna do magic soon, I'm sure of it," he assured her, gripping the chain of the swing tighter as he swung his legs forward another more time. Now that he had an audience he really couldn't wimp out on this one.

Hitting the peak of swing, Cameron clenched his eyes shut and pushing himself forward from the swing. He felt an elating, terrifying feeling in his stomach as he shot through the air. Surely this was it, his body would panic about him falling and force him to zap himself magically to safety. Or fly. Or- Cameron hit the ground roughly, his knees not prepped for the impact and giving out with a fizzing pain from the ground shock. The rest of him promptly followed suit and Cameron was treated to a face full of bark as the last of his momentum carried him face first into the dirt. "Ow," he announced flatly, face already burning from both the impact and humiliation.

 

[Jingyi Huang]

Jingyi blinked as the boy exclaimed that it didn't matter he was about to come off the swing because he was going to do magic. How did that one work? Curiously, Jingyi sat up properly so he wasn't just watching the whole world from an upside-down position, tilting his head to the side as he watched the other boy finally let go of the swingset and go flying - only to roughy land on his knees and then face plant the floor a moment later. "I don't think that's how magic works," he couldn't help but point out. Though he did feel a little better, knowing full well what it felt like to come off the swing having accidentally done it far too many times in the past himself. So he frowned, leaning forward in his swing to be a little closer to the crumpled heap of the boy on the floor, "Are you okay?"

 

[Margo Fox]

The boy on the swing said something about magic kicking in, and while she didn't know much about it, she was fairly certain it didn't work like that. She was about to say as much when the other boy finally spoke and stole the words from her lips. The boy swung higher and higher and he eventually let go and jumped. Margo wished there was something she could do but she froze, only managing to cover her eyes seconds before he reached the ground. She heard him speak after few moments after the thud of him hitting the grounds seemed to rattle her bones, so at least he wasn't dead. Finally she lowered her hands and was relived he didn't look too banged up. "What were you thinking?!" she nearly shrieked when she found her voice again.

 

[Tiffaney Phoenix Blakely]

Tiffany was exploring her new surroundings. It was breathtaking and she had no idea a place could look so wonderful. She was in awe right up until she heard some shouts. Her head snapped down from the sky and she saw three kids around a set of swings. She carefully walked closer trying not to intrude too much. She gasped when she saw one of the kids face down on the grass. Her instinct to help quickly kicked in and she walked up beside the kid. "Are you okay? What happened? Can you stand up? Should I go get an adult from somewhere?" The questions rolled off of her tongue as her mind went into a mini panic. She didn't like seeing others hurt. She wanted to help in anyway she could. She was sure she made that clear through her questions.

 

[Cameron Roswell]

“It should be,” Cameron muttered, sitting himself back upright and brushing at the bark that clung to his jumper ruefully. He glanced over at the boy still on the swings, tilting his head now that he was actually upright. “What I was thinking was that I could just magically-“ Cameron waved his hands, making a complicated movement that was supposed to imitate magic, or maybe someone who had an itch, “-Not fall,” he finished flatly. Another girl rushed over, yet another witness to Cameron’s spectacular fail, apparently, and started fussing over him in a rush. “No, no! No adults, I’m fine,” he said, holding up his palms, like a not hurt person would do, to show he was okay. His legs ached, and he was sure his knees were bruised along with his ego, but Cameron wasn’t seriously hurt. “Wait, do you think I should be hurt? Maybe I magically healed?” He asked excitedly, dropping back to sit on his butt so he could roll up his jeans and check his legs for bruises.

 

[Jingyi Huang]

It would be pretty cool and pretty useful if they could just make magic work like that before they had gotten their wands, but Jingyi knew from experience that it simply didn't. "You can't just make accidental magic work for you like that. That's why it's called accidental." No matter how much you wanted to perform magic he simply hadn't found a way. Another girl came rushing over and Jingyi glanced to her for just a moment as she instantly started worrying a little too much. People fell off the swingset all the time and most of the time they were fine. "No," he responded almost instantly, quite an expert on getting hurt and falling off of things, "I've come off the swings a bunch of times. The worst I got was a scraped knee and palms one time."

 

[Tiffaney Phoenix Blakely]

Tiffaney was glad that the boy was okay. She stepped back and muttered a sheepish. "Oh. That's good." She had always assumed magic only existed in Disney movies and worked whenever someone needed it to. She was still learning that it existed even, never mind trying to know how it worked. "But why doesn't the magic just work when you need it to? Like in Rapunzel." Tiffaney blurted out with a slight frown.

The other boy had explained that it was fine, because he had done something similar and he was okay. She knew it was going to be okay though. She just always tended to go a little overboard with worry. Even if it was someone she didn't know very well.

 

[Margo Fox]

Margo nearly jumped when another girl joined them and started asking a bunch of questions. She found herself nodding along to her stream of questions and was glad to have another sane person around. But the boy who had fallen seemed to be moving and talking just fine so she started to relax some. She frowned when he insisted on no adults and wondered where his parents were. “It was a pretty hard fall.” she insisted when he tried to prove his was ok, and the other boy said he did stuff like this all the time. “Yeah, you would need, like a spell to do magic. You can't just trick it.” she pointed out, in agreement that accidental didn't work like that. “The fairytale?” she asked the other girl. Margo had read the original fairytale not that long ago and was unsure about what she was referring to.

 

[Isadora Novak]

Isadora had a sneaking suspicion her nanny was under orders to keep her away form her parents as much as possible, since everything she did seemed to frustrate them. Today, they had taken a trip to Brightstone, and while her nanny did some shopping, Isadora was told to play in the park. After nodding and smiling during the lecture about not getting in trouble, Isadora ran into the park eagerly. She was hoping to make some friends here and to have a great time. To her delight, there were a bunch of children there. They seemed to be around her age. But she didn't understand what they were doing. They all seemed to be standing around and staring at a boy on the ground, who was rolling up his jeans and looking at his legs. Isadora walked up to them and tilted her head in confusion. "Why are we looking at him? Is he doing something cool?" She asked, though that didn't seem to be the case.

 

[Cameron Roswell]

Cameron tried to tune the dissent from the other kids out as he inspected his legs, shaking his head in annoyance. "There's gotta be some trick to it," he said plaintively. He perked up when one of the girls commented that he had had a hard fall, still warming to the idea. “Yeah, yeah it was a hard fall! I’m sure my ankles were probably broken right? I just magically healed them,” he said excitedly, rotating his feet experimentally. “I just healed my legs. With magic!” He said with more certainty than he felt when another girl joined in ogling him on the ground. His shins still hurt, and Cameron wasn’t sure he totally bought his own suggestion, but he was desperate for some sign, any sign, that he might actually be magical now. There were only so much playground he could jump off of to try and trick his body.

 

[Tiffaney Phoenix Blakely]

Tiffaney was slowly starting to feel more and more out of place. All this talk about magic reminded her just how much she didn't belong. She understood nothing about what the other kids were talking about. "Oh. Amm well yes. But more like the new Disney version." Tiffaney responded to the girl when she asked.

Tiffaney slowly stepped further back to include the new girl and hopefully to get ignored for the rest of the exchange if she chose to stay longer. She hung her head a bit and crossed her arms over her stomach in an attempt to make herself as small as possible.

 

[Jingyi Huang]

"There isn't," he continued to offer rather unhelpfully as the other boy tried to insist there was some sort of trick to how it worked. Without a wand, you couldn't just perform magic whenever you wanted, especially not when you didn't have any proper training. Not that he was some expert on the matter, but he had grown up around magic and he had never seen his parents perform any magic without their wands. So it probably wasn't possible. But he was already growing bored with the conversation, huffing as he slumped back over the swing so he was simply hanging upside down again, his hair barely brushing the ground as he swung a little using his heels. "You probably didn't do that." He really didn't understand why this boy wanted to do accidental magic like that in the first place. "If you wanna do magic you just have to wait until you get to school."

 

[Margo Fox]

“Define cool?” Margo asked sarcastically to the new girl who joined them. This whole situation was becoming a much bigger scene then the boy who ended up on the ground had probably bargained for. “If the magic did heal you, consider yourself lucky.” she said, putting her hands on her hip still sounded skeptical. She had broken her arm last summer and her grandmother had given her some old Skele-Gro that had left over in the cupboard. It had been awful but it was better than healing it the muggle way she supposed. “Oh right.” she said, remembering the movie version of Rapunzel. But even in the movie the magic required a spell in the form of a song. She nodded along as the other boy explained they would have to wait for school before they learned any real magic. Margo was excited and terrified at the idea of school. Her brother had been homeschooled but that was a long time ago, and she wouldn't have that option.

 

[Isadora Novak]

apologies for taking 70 years

Isadora tilted her head skeptically when the boy claimed he had healded his legs with magic. She crossed her arms. "No you didn't." She said, agreeing with the boy who said you had to wait to get to school to do magic. "If you had broken your legs you would have been crying a lot more, it hurts." She said with confidence. "I broke my wrist once and my mother had to heal it, you have to know magic to do that."

 

[Cameron Roswell]

Cameron didn't have time for the non-believers around him, ignoring them in favour of poking intently at his shins. "Maybe I'm just tougher than you," he offered off-handedly, rolling his pants legs back down with a decisive sniff. "Higher pain tolerance or something. And there's got to be some way to make magic happen. Magical kids do it all the time, right?" He said, glancing around the gathered group skeptically. including the girls talking about some muggle stuff he didn't recognize.

"Have any of you ever done any magic then?" He asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he got to his feet and then having to uncross them when some of the bark still stuck to his sleeves poked him uncomfortably. Admittedly, Cameron didn't totally believe he had healed his legs on impact, but he liked the idea a lot better than thinking he hadn't. And it would save him an awful lot of time jumping off the rest of the playground equipment.

 

[Jingyi Huang]

Hanging upside-down the way he was was making him start to feel a little ill from all the blood rushing to his brain, but Jingyi decided to ignore it. Instead, he continued to observe everything as he frowned. "Magic isn't going to heal it instantly like that anyway," he shot back with a small shake of his head (which really didn't help with his whole 'blood rushing to his head' problem). "But no, I already said that you can't just make it happen. It happens when it happens." That was about as much about the matter as he knew. There was probably some better way to explain it, but he didn't understand it enough to do that.

"I have!" He was rather pleased to announce with a grin, "I don't really remember it though, I was only little. But it happened." His parents had told him as much and that was why they weren't worried that he might be a squib or anything.

 

[Margo Fox]

Margo’s tolerance for this conversation was wearing thin. They were arguing in circles and it was driving her crazy. “Well magic or not. You’re lucky you’re not hurt now.” she said firmly. “I hope you got that out of your system and won't try anything like it again. Who knows what could happen next time.” she added and firmly planted her hands on her hips like she had seen Gram do countless times. She didn’t think it was likely she could intimidate him but she hoped to make him at least think twice. But Margo faltered when he asked if they had done magic before. She looked between all the kids around her before she answered. “I don’t remember either. But I think so.” she said quickly, her voice bit softer now. She was fairly certain she had done something at some point but she really couldn't remember and it wasn’t like she could ask her parents.