Pages of Roaring Flames and Rattling Scales

[Alkander Avaskadiras]

There were times that even Alkander was less hyper and in need of some relaxation time. The outdoors and especially the lake would have been the perfect location for the boy to spend his first Sunday morning at Hogwarts but the rain outside seemed that it was going to pelt down all day. He hadn't visited the school's library yet and he had heard that it was a feast for the eyes, at least for bookworms. After a light breakfast, he decided it was a good time to pay a visit and maybe find something exciting to read.

The boy wasn't disappointed when he stepped into the impressive area of bookcases that were reaching up to the ceiling. Dusty tomes, withered parchments rolls and rare manuscripts left no empty space on the long bookshelves. The librarian wasn't at his desk at that moment. Maybe he had a day off on Sundays. Alkander's attention was drawn by a rectangular shelf behind the librarian's desk, where a sign inscribed 'Reserved Books'.

Alkander raised an eyebrow wondering what kind of books were so popular for someone to make a reservation and approached the shelf after he made sure he wasn't watched. Browsed through the books piled neatly on the shelf until he came across a familiar photo collection with hard, scarlet cover. With excitement building, he pulled carefully the book out of the pile, making sure nothing tumbled down. A smile spread on his face when he read the name of the author.

It was the new photo collection of dragons around the world by his uncle Cadmus. Unlike his father and his older uncle, Cadmus, the youngest one out of his father's siblings, had chose not to work at the magizoo and the breeding program but only occasionally. His passion about photography, along with his love for magical creatures had win him over and the man had devoted the past one year traveling around the world in order to capture snapshots of different dragon breeds in the wild.

Alkander was really proud for his uncle and he couldn't wait to see his newly published work. Someone had made a reservation for this book but maybe it wasn't for today. He could have a quick look and return it back as soon as possible so he set to find a quite corner to enjoy it. A set of two cozy armchairs with a round, wooden table between them next to a window was the right place. Alkander plumped down on the armchair and with no hesitation opened the book.

A blast of fire that engulfed the whole frame of the first picture made the boy flinch but then a pair of yellow, glaring eyes with long coal-black slits appeared and amidst the flames appeared a Chinese Fireball. His uncle must have used fire protection potions to take that photo. With the sound of rain against the window's glass, Alkander proceeded to read the text about Chinese Fireball beneath the picture, also describing how this shot was taken by the photographer.

 

[Sapphire Michaels]

Sapphire was in a hurry. She had tossed and turned half the night and when she had fallen asleep it had been fitful. She had woken up, finally, about ten minutes ago. She had done nothing more than stumble into a pair of dark blue jeans and pull on a deep blue hoodie before running straight to the library. She had put in reservations for a book about a week ago after a chat with the librarian- ugh. -and now she not only had to have the damned thing, she needed about a dozen others. One book would not be enough.

She darted into the room and almost instantly started weaving in and out of shelves, picking out books as she went. She didn't notice her stack was getting to be too much for her, she just knew that she needed them. Muggle Photography; The Most Beautiful Places in the World; The Most Dangerous Places in the World; Traveling Alone, A Young Witches Guide to Practical Living; Life on the Road for a young Witch, the stack just kept growing and growing until- BOOM!

Sapphire tripped over her untied shoelace and hit the floor with a loud thud, her stack of books landing around and on her. She laid there for a minute, her hair a mess and a book on her head, trying not to laugh and or cry. She might have bit her tongue.

 

[Alkander Avaskadiras]

Alkander's grey eyes were fixed on the pages of the book, reacting accordingly at each new picture he encountered, each time he was turning a page. He fantasized of owning a dragon although he knew that this was probably legal. He did preferred griffins over dragons because of their loyalty but still this was a dream that might never come true. He was completely unaware of his surroundings, he had even forgotten the rain that was intensifying outside and was pelting furiously the window. He was reading about the dietary habits of Norwegian Ridgebacks when a sudden thud draw him out of the book's pages. He raised his head over the book with a frowned expression on his face, as he tried to figure out the source of that loud noise. Curious, he snapped the book closed and jumped on his feet, determined to find out what had caused that sound.

Turning around the first row of bookcases, he came across a girl that had fallen down on the floor. She was surrounded by books, one of them resting on her head like a hat. When he recognized Sapphire's face, he couldn't contain his chuckle.
"I'm sure this is not what the charms professor meant when he said to hit the ground running right from this weekend, regarding next week's homework." He quipped amused. He was coming across this girl a lot lately, even though they belonged in different houses. "Let me help you." He got serious, left his book on a bookshelf temporally, in order to pick some of the books she had dropped around her. "Are you okay?" He asked and offered his free hand to help her stand up.

 

[Sapphire Michaels]

Sapphire blew a strand of hair out of her face, frustrated. Ugh, at least that snarky boy wasn't here to see- "I'm sure this is not what the charms professor meant when he said to hit the ground running right from this weekend, regarding next week's homework."

She groaned. "Of course," She pulled the book of her head to see Alkander standing there. "Of course it was you. Don't you have any paintings to harass?" She teased lightly, remembering their encounter with Ms Fortune. She took his hand and let him help her up.

She rolled her head and ran a hand through her hair, trying to act like she hadn't just been caught in a rather embarrassing position. "Nothing hurt but my pride." Sapph stuck her tongue out and went cross-eyed trying to look at it. "An maybeh muh ton..." She shrugged, not seeing anything, and looked down at her books.

She bent down and started gathering them again. "I'm not here for charms, so you can keep your snarky remarks to yourself," She teased. "I got... sidetracked." She looked up at him from under her lashes. "What are you doing in here?"

 

[Alkander Avaskadiras]

A half smile of amusement remained on his face as Sapphire teased him in return. "No paintings. Just books today." He chuckled and helped her get on her feet again. He handed her the books he had picked up and retrieved his book from the nearby shelf. "A. I'm the new librarian, B. I'm assembling a swarm of flying books to execute my plans for world domination, C. I was just kicking back with a book." He replied with a quiz to her question and showed her the leather, scarlet cover of his book where a dragon's illustration was glaring at the reader. Alkander then noticed the number of books she had been carrying and his smirk broadened. "Up to some light reading?" He sneered and tried to catch a glimpse of her books' titles. "I've found two armchairs around the corner to chill. Wanna come?" He offered to join him as a lightning struck outside.

 

[Sapphire Michaels]

Sapphire snickered at his remarks, and then nearly burst out laughing when she saw his book. She shifted the books in her arms and gestured for him to lead the way. "Yeah, sure, so long as you give me that book back when you're done. I got curious about what you said about your uncle so I'm here to look into it." She nodded at the stack of books in her arms.

 

[Alkander Avaskadiras]

"Sure, no problem." He said and led the way to the spot were he had been reading. "Bad weather." He commented with a glance at the downpour outside the window and plumped down on the armchair. He opened his book again and brought his legs on his seat and folded them. He read a few lines but he darted a look over his pages at the books that Sapphire had brought with her. "Are you planning to read all of them today?" He asked casually and flipped a page, his attention caught by a dragon nest's picture, full of black eggs with scarlet ripples. "If I was my uncle I would have taken one of these eggs for myself." He muttered to himself. The photo was so realistic that Alkander could feel like he could reach and take one of the eggs in his hands.

 

[Sapphire Michaels]

Sapph followed Alkander, setting her stack of books down on the little table between the chairs. She fell into the other chair and took the book off the top of the stack and flipping through its pages. His comment about the bad weather made her look up, and she stuck her tongue out at him. "I like the rain, thank you."

She turned back to her book as he asked if she would read them all today, and shrugged. "I don't really read them so much as scour them for interesting tidbits. That's why I got so many. I have questions that I want answered."

She turned the page in her book as she talked, not hearing whatever it was Alkander had muttered to himself. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a sucker, unwrapping it and putting it in her mouth. She placed the wrapper back in her pocket in exchange for another sucker. She held the other treat out to Alkander.

 

[Alkander Avaskadiras]

Alkander couldn't let a single thing she was saying unremarked. "Yes, when your indoors, cozy and warm. Try trekking with wet shocks." He commented, recalling a not so pleasant memory. He liked the sound of rain however. It made him zone out like he did right there, gazing outside at the dense, grey clouds. "You can ask me anything you want. I might know the answer." He said, still with his eyes glued outside the window. "I know! I can tell you things about the wizarding world and you can tell me about the muggle world!" He exclaimed expectantly, finally zoning in on his friend.

Alkander looked rather suspiciously at the candy that she provided him. "I hope this is not a blood-flavored lollipop. That's for vampires." He sniffed warily the blood-red lollipop after unwrapping it. He reluctantly put it in his mouth to find out it was plain strawberry flavor. At this point he was guarded with the slytherin not because he didn't trust her. They had some short of prank war going on that Alkander didn't want to be the victim.

 

[Sapphire Michaels]

Sapph snorted as Alkander took her candy, commenting on the weird ones she'd seen at Honeydukes. "If I'm going to get you, Salamander, you won't see it coming, and it won't be from my personal sweets stash. You don't defile that which is sacred." She leveled her gaze at him for that one, remembering the bad candy he'd slipped her.

However, his idea intrigued her, so she shut her book and set it aside. "That sounds fair," She turned to face him. "You first. What's your question?"

 

[Alkander Avaskadiras]

Alkander shot at her a dismissive look at her words of revenge. "Too much talking." He sighed and shook his head, challenging her even more. "Good for me that I'm not really into sweets." He said with the lollipop in his mouth, making a mental note to be more wary the next time that the slytherin was going to offer him so generously a treat.

He was glad that she liked his idea and he closed the book, with half of his fingers trapped between the pages as a bookmark. "Hmm, okay! I wanna know about those flat things with buttons that glow when muggles use them." His first query came pretty easily. He had seen muggles in the streets using them and he knew they were something like telephones but they seemed to be using them in other ways as well as they were staring at them for such a long time. "You know those things that are like phones but they also show images." He tried to discern any signs of comprehension on her features, hoping his description was intelligible. "I wanna know in how many different ways it can be used." He concluded, acknowledging that it was something more than conducting a conversation through sound.

 

[Sapphire Michaels]

Sapph was a little confused by Alkanders question at first, but it clicked pretty quickly as he continued talking. "Oh, a cell phone. It's mainly used for calls, but you can program it and download a bunch of games, or send like letters to other phones or devices instantly, or watch videos of people doing stuff or singing or things like that." She stretched, noting that the chairs they were in were super comfy. "What's it like living at your house?" She asked, not sure how else to word it. Sure, she was interested in the magical creatures aspect of it, but she also wanted to know more about her friend.

 

[Alkander Avaskadiras]

Alkander listened closely to Sapphire's explanation, new unknown words popping up as she continued talking. Muggles' stuff sounded so complex. He was grateful that magic was making everything much easier. He had a couple more questions in his head regarding what she had said about cell phones but it was her turn. Her question was much more generic but he knew which bits she wanted to learn about. "It's pretty extraordinary even for a wizarding family." He paused before elaborating farther. "Due to undetectable extension charms, our house is in the middle of vast countryside. As I have told you, my father and his siblings are magizoologists and their business is within the property. So not far from the house they have their infrastructures and the zoo of magical creatures that is open to the public. The whole place is named The Sanctuary." He tried to explain concisely but he was convinced that she was going to have more questions after this.

Alkander decided then to talk more about his daily life back at home. "So apart from being literally around winged horses, before coming to Hogwarts I was home-schooled by a centaur mentor. It is a family custom. Me and my sister were having classes on herbology, literature, poetry, arts. We were also having English classes. Then on our free time we use to play at the backyard, chasing gnomes or flying on brooms. And then later we have dinner with our father and Ledo, our house elf, that we consider really part of our family. On weekends we go trekking at the mountains within our property or exploring with our father or we have family dinners with my father's brothers." He referred to a few of the things that would define his life back to The Sanctuary. "Our property is literally a small world so there are a tons of things to do." He concluded, now wondering what could have been her life before Hogwarts.

"How about you? What you used to do back at your home?" He asked interested to know.

 

[Sapphire Michaels]

Sapph listened intently to Alkander as he talked. His life sounded absolutely fascinating. She would have to try and bribe him into taking her back with him one year. For now, though, she wasn't entirely sure her presence would be welcome for that long. Maybe if they were still friends next year, she might ask.

Alkander asked about her life then, and she shrugged. "It's not as interesting as yours. Sometimes the Home will go to this Inn about an hour away. The girl that owns it holds little classes. Her husband runs a cooking class, she does sowing and gardening. That's about as interesting as it gets. When I'm at the Home, if I'm not busy getting into fights I tend to hole up in my room."

She thought about her next question a minute. "So, do you ever meet anyone interesting at the zoo?"

 

[Alkander Avaskadiras]

Listening to Sapphire's life away from Hogwarts made him feel bad for taking for granted things that she didn't. As she proceeded mentioning more bits about the house she was living before attending school, the boy thought that her whole experience might have made her to toughen up and be able to fend for herself. No wonder since she had mentioned a few times how often she got into fights. Alkander secretly admired her resilience. "Not really, although we have visitors coming from all over the globe. I just stick with my sister, my cousin and the janitor's daughter and we explore around." He said, remembering his father telling them that they shouldn't bother the visitors in any way.

"What's your room like?" He asked then, recalling her mentioning that she liked spending most of her time in her room.

 

[Sapphire Michaels]

Sapph nodded. Meeting people wasn't really her thing anyway, though she had tried to talk to more kids here at school. She had talked to several people, but so far only Alkander was the only one she had really hit it off with. She almost opened her mouth to ask another question but Alkander beat her to it.

She shifted her sucker to the other side of her mouth. She tried her best to describe her room. From her brightly colored walls to the lights in the clear canopy above her bed. Her room was rather eccentric, with a bookshelf covered in different notes and doodles that overflowed with books. A chest in the back of her closet filled with all her favorite things that she hid there to keep Blaine out of it. She snorted. "I'll probably have to replace the lights over my bed when I get back. Blaine thinks it's funny as hell to snip them."

She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, your turn. Whats your room like?"