Open Mind Games

[Lysander Summers]

For a few months now, Lysander had been practicing legilimency more or less on his own, doing his best to correspond with a local legilimens when he could, while he'd been studying at Hogwarts. It was his latest venture into some of the more advanced magical skills, after his less than stellar attempts at trying to become an animagus like his father, or pick up parseltongue from Kas. Neither had ended well for him, and despite the envy and bitterness he'd begun to feel creep in, toward the people who could do those things with seemingly no effort involved, he'd tried to push those negative feelings down and work towards something else. Something different. Legilimency hadn't spoken to him the same way being an animagus had at first, but the more he'd explored his options, the more he felt it was just another way to achieve what he'd set out to. It frustrated him, the way his father and any other animagi just understood creatures. The way they could communicate their wants and needs. Though it didn't frustrate him nearly as much lately as it did whenever he had to listen to Kas hiss at snakes at the menagerie, in some private conversation he wasn't privy to. Knowing Kas, he was probably only complaining to them or about them, but that had always made it worse, the way Kas didn't seem to appreciate the gift he was just naturally born with, the same way Lysander would have. It was unfair. Lysander couldn't deny he was jealous. He wanted to be able to understand the creatures he'd grown up around the same way so many other people he knew seemed to. It felt like a secret part of life he wasn't allowed to take part in.

If he couldn't have literal, verbal conversations with the animals in his life, Lysander had come to the conclusion that perhaps he didn't need to, if he could learn to understand their thoughts instead. It seemed like a sound option, if only those same animals would cooperate with his attempts to do so. Lysander had come down to the harbour's shore with Fuzzfeathers to practice after his shift at work, and his current struggles with said practice were perhaps his own fault. His correspondent had stressed how important eye-contact was, and while initially he'd thought that an owl's larger eyes would make the process easier, he hadn't considered the fact that getting the bird who could swivel its head up to two hundred and seventy degrees to maintain eye contact with him was a harder endeavor than it first seemed. "Look at me. Look. No, not there. At me." Lysander sighed. Fuzzfeathers seemed more interested in what looked like the fin of a merperson's tail swishing through the saltwater. "You couldn't even fit that in your beak if you tried. Eyes - here. Come on, help me out." He tried again, fishing out a treat from his bag to wave in front of his face in an attempt to entice his owl friend's attention.
​

 

[Freya Song]

Freya hadn't intended to leave Hogwarts over the break, but her brother was beginning to get suspicious about why she never came home for Christmas and she was rapidly running out of excuses. Now that he was an actual adult and doing muggle university things that Freya pretended she didn't care about at all, he had more time to grill her about where she was all year. She needed to figure out a better story to hide her magical status because otherwise there was a slight possibility that she might end up having to come clean and just tell him everything. She wasn't ready for that. There was absolutely no chance that she could just tell her muggle brother that she'd been hiding a massive secret for an ever-increasing amount of years, so really the best option was just to keep it to herself.

Avoiding drama involving other people left her with an awful lot of time to stew in her own insecurities and then subsequently ignore them, which was rapidly becoming one of her favourite hobbies. She'd managed to ditch her brother for a few hours - not like he could follow to where she was going - and wanted to find some sort of distraction before she had to snap back to reality. The cool owl boy who worked with Kas was probably the most interesting person Freya had spotted so far in the harbour. But, he was also a prefect, which automatically meant he was a narc and better for avoiding. Connors notwithstanding, Freya didn't like to make a habit of hanging out with people who could report her for breaking rules. Whatever Lysander was doing had gotten her attention, and he couldn't exactly do prefect-y stuff out here so she was probably safe. "Dunno what you're trying to achieve here, but very impressive," Freya quirked a brow and gave Lysander a thumbs up as she wandered over.

 

[Lysander Summers]

The treat that Lysander had found to entice his owl with was nothing compared to the mermaids tail, judging by how uninterested Fuzzfeathers seemed to be in his tactics. "If you help me out, I'll literally engorgio a whole fish for you." He muttered. He'd probably do it anyway, just to show Fuzzfeathers how ridiculous his expectations were. He sighed and dropped the treat back into his bag, perking up when Freya made her way over. He gave a brief, cursory glance around the area, half-expecting Emma to pop up out of nowhere. According to best friend code, he wasn't supposed to be talking with Freya, since Emma seemed to have taken an issue with her for one reason or another. He'd never really seen any reason to dislike her though, she was one of Kas' friends, and his few interactions with her had never been bad. "Glad someone appreciates my efforts." He responded, giving his owl an accusatory look. "You ever wish they understood what you were saying?" He asked. "Pretty sure this guy does and just pretends not to care. Yeah, I'm talking about you." The owl had finally stopped peering into the ocean to swivel his head back at Lysander, almost as if he knew he was talking sh*t about him. Or he was after that treat now, either or. Lysander rolled his eyes and dug his hand back into the treat bag. "Why isn't squawktongue a thing? Who decided snakes had the only language people could speak?"​

 

[Freya Song]

Catching a glimpse of a mermaid tail in the water, Freya understood perfectly why the owl was less interested in Lysander. Sometimes she wished that she had a tail. It'd make swimming so much easier. Although, mermaids in reality were nothing like the ones Freya still associated with the name. Even after years of magical education, it was still difficult to shake off the preconceived notions from her childhood. "Oh, definitely." Freya agreed easily. "He's only going to listen to you if he gets something out of it. Mercenary little creatures, owls are," she joked. She didn't make a habit of hanging out with owls. Cats were more her thing, and they were definitely capable of ignoring her if they didn't want to be picked up and snuggled. Which was definitely not something that Freya took extremely personally, not at all. She wasn't sure how she felt about the idea of being able to talk to animals. Communicating with humans was hard enough, she didn't even want to imagine the concept of animals that were able to lie. "I reckon they can but don't want outsiders to know they talk, but snakes have some ulterior motive or something. Cover yourself in glue and stick some feathers on, then he might believe you're also an owl." Freya shrugged as she observed the owl. "See, we're on to you." she said, pointed an accusatory finger at the bird.