Sketches

[Hayley Elridge]

Hayley sat cross-legged on the grass by the lake, her sketchbook on her knee. She had been trying to draw the castle (a castle, in new Zealand? Who had built it? How old was it?), but had given up in frustration at its complexity. Now she scribbled angry doodles; a heart dripping blood, a skeleton with enormous wings spread out behind it, a wolf howling at the moon. She had been so excited to go to a school of magic, but it seemed the kids here were just as narrow-minded and bigoted as the kids in what she still couldn't help thinking of as the real world. Kids in Slytherin looked down on her because she was a Muggleborn. Kids in other houses looked down on her because she was a Slytherin.

F*** PUREBLOOD SUPREMACY, Hayley scrawled across the page (though carefully avoiding her sketches, which she was actually quite proud of). She looked up, across the lawn towards the lake. There were other students scattered across the grass, most in pairs or small groups, enjoying the rare warm day. Hayley hadn't managed to make any friends yet, much to her chagrin. The other Slytherins seemed to all be either snooty or cold, so while Hayley didn't think of herself as a loner, here she was, alone.

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley stuck her hands in her pockets as she made her way across the school grounds. She hadn't really realised that going to Hogwarts meant living inside her school, every moment of every single day, and the castle was beginning to feel suffocating. Too many teachers and prefects and boring people all around. She needed some fresh air.

With a handful of pens and pencils (and a couple of markers, should a particularly fetching wall take her fancy) Harley made her way out of the castle and away, quickly, as far as she could go. Wandering down towards the lake, she had at first planned to find a spot with nobody else around to relax and hang out, but it seemed someone else had had the same idea as her. The sight of a sketchbook catching her eye, Harley made her way over to the girl drawing by the lake, quietly walking up behind her and peering over the girl's shoulder.

"Those are cool." She commented, leaning over the seated girl. "I came out here to draw too." She said, holding up her sketchbook. Harley had been prepared to sneak a peek and move on unnoticed, but those drawings caught her eye, and she found herself interested enough to stick around, flopping down next to the girl, sketchbook in hand.

 

[Hayley Elridge]

A shadow fell across Hayley's sketchbook and she looked up behind her abruptly, startled. A Gryffindor girl her age stood over her. A Gryffindor, deigning to compliment a Slytherin's art? Maybe things in this school weren't quite as messed up as she had thought. "Thanks." The other girl sat down beside her, and Hayley smiled at her aggressively nonchalant attitude.

"I'm Hayley," Hayley said casually. She shaded in her wolf a little more as she spoke, trying to match the other girl's style. Inwardly, she screamed with excitement. Could she finally have found someone worth talking to in this place? Magic was the most exciting thing that could possibly have happened to her, but this was a school like any other, full of cliques and pettiness. Hayley needed some friends. She hardly dared hope that she might have found one, just by sitting out here and drawing.

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley opened up her sketchbook to a clean page, setting her pencilcase on the grass next to her. She started setting up to draw, but was distracted as the other girl introduced herself. "Seriously? I'm Harley." She laughed. "That's weird." Harley smiled, getting out a pencil and rubber, ready to draw.

"Are you a first year too?" She asked, starting to sketch the outline of a skull idly. The girl looked to be about the same age, but Harley wasn't totally sure. She seemed calm at least, and it'd be nice to sit and chat with someone calm and relaxed as she drew. As much as Harley liked excitement and adventure, she'd already had more than her fair share of both in just her first few days here.

 

[Hayley Elridge]

Hayley looked at the other girl in surprise as she introduced herself. "What a coincidence!" she said, trying and probably failing to convey a mixture of sarcasm and genuine interest. "That's pretty cool, actually. We could totally confuse people." She laughed, then went back to shading her wolf, watching Harley out of the corner of her eye.

"Yeah, I'm a first year," Hayley said. "This school is pretty weird, right?They want us to write with quill pens and ink. Screw that! I bought the quills 'cause they could be cool for art, but I'll stick to my ballpoint pens for schoolwork, thanks." Hayley had already tried drawing with her quill; she had found it difficult to keep the wet ink from dripping and smudging. She quite liked the look of the ink blots on the page, but she'd have to figure out a way to avoid the smudging.

"You're a Gryffindor, right?" Hayley added casually. "What's that like?" Were all the houses as full of weird magical prejudices as Slytherin was, or had she just been unlucky?

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley laughed. "Oh man, we could mess with teachers and stuff, tell them they've got the wrong name until they don't know which one of us is which..." She grinned, eyes lighting up at the thought of mischief.

Harley pulled a face and nodded. "Quills suck. I already lost mine, I think. Doesn't matter. What're they gonna do, tell me I'm not allowed to take any notes? Pens and pencils work fine. Even my parents never use quills, and they always go on about how Hogwarts was the best years of their lives." Harley had barely even touched her quill and ink, giving it one go and getting ink all over her hands before tossing the entire mess to the bottom of her trunk. Definitely not the medium for her. Maybe one day she'd just bring paints and a paintbrush to class, and paint all her notes. Might be an idea if she ever got in trouble.

Harley nodded. "Gryffindor's fine. My roommates are mostly pretty cool, we already hang out a bunch and stuff. Did you meet your roommates yet? What're they like?" She paused, realising the girl was a Slytherin. "I already know one of them..." She said a bit coldly, face falling into a scowl.

 

[Hayley Elridge]

"Yesss, we should definitely mess with the teachers." Hayley grinned back at Harley. Maybe this year wouldn't be so frustrating as she'd feared. Hayley turned the page in her sketchbook and started another drawing, this time of a dragon. If magic was real, were dragons real, too? Surely something that big couldn't stay hidden . . . but then, this was a whole castle.

"Your parents went to Hogwarts?" Hayley looked up from her drawing again, curious. "That's pretty cool. My mum and I had no idea about any of this until I got my letter. Does that mean they, like, do magic at home and stuff? Do they have wizard jobs - is that a thing? - or do they just do normal stuff but with magic?" Hayley knew very little about the magical world, and she hadn't yet had much opportunity to learn. Her first few classes had been just like the first classes in any school year, full of boring introductory chit-chat and with no actual substance.

"Man, I'm jealous. Slytherin sucks." Hayley picked up on the other girl's expression, and from what little she knew of her roommates so far, she couldn't blame her. "No one I've met so far wants to hang out. A bunch of them are rude to me 'cause I'm a Muggleborn - I only learned that word a week ago, and it's already an insult." Hayley scowled, and drew jagged flames coming out of her dragon's mouth.

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley nodded, drawing a few flames coming out of the eyes of her skull. "They do magic stuff at home, but they've both got muggle jobs, my mum's a nurse, and my dad's a physiotherapist, which means he helps people who have like, injuries and stuff recover. Basically they're both super boring." She sighed, grabbing another pencil to colour in the flames. "They always do magic around the house though, they go on and on about how awesome it is, it sucks." Harley scowled, thinking of how Jason must feel all the time.

Harley scowled. "I don't know about Muggleborn stuff, but stay away from Odette Harper, she's a snake." She said angrily, pressing a little harder with her pencil. "She went to my primary school and she's such a bully, she lies to people all the time and pretends to be nice just to get her way, she's horrible."

 

[Hayley Elridge]

"That's still kinda awesome," Hayley said, using quick sweeps of her pencil to make the outline of great outspread wings across her page. "I wish Mum just . . . did magic, casually around the house. It must be so much easier for you, knowing what stuff means. I was going to classes this week without any idea what they'd be about. But . . . if your parents do normal jobs, why doesn't this school teach anything that isn't magic? Wouldn't getting into medicine need . . . I dunno, science?"

"Odette? Uh, yeah, I met her. Actually she seemed nicer than most of the Slytherins." Hayley drew a row of spines along the back of the dragon's neck. "She did seem kinda like there was more going on in her head that she was letting on. I didn't think I could trust her. If she's that bad, I guess that's just one more Slytherin to keep away from."

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Harley shrugged. She hadn't really thought about what this school must be like for people unfamiliar with magic. She supposed everything must feel very surreal and unusual, but she couldn't quite picture it properly. "I mean, even muggles have to go to extra school to do medicine... they just had a bit more extra school to do than most muggles. It kinda sucks that this school makes it so hard to get a muggle job, there can't be enough magic jobs for every single wizard to never need to get a muggle education, and then some people like my parents just wanna do muggle stuff, I guess." Harley had never really thought about her parents youth like that, and it was frustrating to consider. She frowned and put the thought out of her mind quickly, shading a little more aggressively than before. They were still jerks.

Harley's frown deepened when Hayley said nice things about Odette, her grip on her pencil tightening to the point of being painful. "She's a liar! She always acts like she's super nice and the best person ever, so that people will do what she wants, and let her get away with anything she wants! She's a horrible person, and nobody ever seems to notice!"

 

[Hayley Elridge]

"Yeah, I suppose so. I did kinda wonder about how many magical jobs actually exist, and how Hogwarts doesn't teach any basic useful subjects - even things that must be useful to wizards too, like maths and English." Hayley laughed. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I want to do maths. It's just weird. There's so much that doesn't make sense about this school, it's ridiculous! And everyone acts like it's totally normal . . . I guess for them it is."

Hayley noticed Harley tense up, and turned concernedly towards her new friend. "Hey, it's okay. I believe you." Harley was frowning deeply at her sketchbook, so Hayley went back to her own, and started filling in scales on her dragon's neck. "There were some manipulative *****es at my old school, too," she said, effortlessly pronouncing a string of asterisks.

Out of Character:

Yes, that was a fourth wall break and a Discworld reference and I am not sorry.

 

[Harley Tsuji]

Out of Character:

ur the best

Harley shrugged and nodded. "I mean, I don't really know what muggles must do in high school... like, I learned maths and english and stuff, how can I need like seven more years of THAT? Both ways seem weird to me. At least this school is more interesting." Harley sighed, stretching her legs out in front of her towards the lake.

Harley laughed slightly and relaxed, surprised to hear Hayley somehow make a noise presumably representative of swearing. "I just... I know she's gonna start messing with people again, and nobody here knows anything about her, she could really hurt someone's feelings or even mess with their life because they wouldn't know what she's like, it makes me so mad..."