» simon said, open, astronomy tower

[Hannah Loren]

The thing that woke up Hannah wasn't the sunlight, but an owl. It skreed at her and she woke up, blinking, confused as to why there was an owl in her dormitory.

Except she wasn't in her dormitory. There was rock beneath her hands rather than her mattress, and it was never this sunny in their room.

She was on the astronomy tower. The sun shone on her, and her head started to pound. What? she tried to say, but no words came out. That didn't make since, either. Why couldn't she speak?

She remembered leaving her dorm the night before because she couldn't sleep. But she did not remember anything after that, and trying made her head hurt even more. She stood up while concentrating and immediately fell back down. Okay, so that's not happening, she thought.

I don't suppose you know what's going on, do you? she tried to say to the noisy owl. Of course no words, and of course the owl skreed even louder. The headache was subsiding somewhat, but every time she tried to figure out what the hell she had been doing it came back. She was going to be so late to breakfast, if she hadn't missed it already. What time was it?

[Sorcha MacFusty]

Pip's fingers twitched against the fine thread of her emerald green coverlet as she counted the minutes that she had been awake in what was now ritual to her. She had always been an early riser with the ability to wake the sun though it also came with the inconvienient ability of wanting to go to bed with said sun on the opposite end of the day.

She had learnt quite early in her first year that her other dorm mates were not early risers and rather liked to sleep past dawn and so often it led to her lying in bed and counting. Everyday she wondered if she could count long enough so that the dormmates would wake up. She rarely succeeded. More than often she'd just grab her clothes and scurry off to the bathroom to change and then walk around the grounds.

She knew she should probably use the time to do things like her homework... but it was so boring... and hard. It had more to do with the fact that it was hard and Pip didn't like to do things that were hard. She liked it when people helped her and she rarely could think of anybody she knew to help her with homework so early. She ponderered whether her cousins... or maybe Una was up but it wouldn't be any use. They were in Gryffindor when they really should be in Slytherin. Slytherin was the house of the serpent and they were dragon keepers weren't they?And dragons were serpents to that should mean...

She felt uncomfortable so she got up and grabbed all her clothes as quietly as she could manage as she snuck out of the room and towards the girls bathroom. She'd changed quickly (she had given up being surprised how at easily she could use the corset stringer.) and was on her way to the probably empty great hall when she decided to take a detour. It was something she did every now and then to prove to herself that she wasn't afraid of heights. (It was just broomsticks... and everywhere else that didn't have a solid floor made out of rock. It was a perfectly reasonable fear. She could die if she fell and Pip did not want to die.) She walked up the astronomy tower stairs telling herself that she was perfectly safe. There was no way she could fall. She saw a girl up there already and brightened.

Somebody else was up this early.

"Good morning!" She said and kept her gaze away from the window.

tag: here | outfit: here | notes: here
made by Emily exclusively for Charming

[Hannah Loren]

A person Thank Merlin. Even if this person was neither a 'Puff or a First Year, Hannah was excited. Anyone in those groups would have guessed something was wrong when Hannah wasn't talking even a little bit. She was loud, of course, and it was weird to see her far away from her dorm. A new person might not understand that something was wrong... Still, she gave the girl a small smile and tried to come up with a way to communicate with her. She had just woken up in the tower with no memory of how or why she was there, completely mute. If she didn't try to maintain hope of someone understanding she was going to lose her mind.

Mouthing would work, she hoped. "I can't talk," she tried to say. It failed, but hopefully it had gotten the girl's attention. If her handwriting was any better, or if she had paper, she would have written something down explaining what had happened. Unfortunately, she didn't even have her wand with her, and paper hadn't been on her late-night wanderings priority list. Why am I even here? she wondered.

Hannah glanced behind her. The owl had left the window. She supposed it was because the unknown girl had talked, when Hannah hadn't. Or maybe it just had things to do. That was a bit of a shame; the owl had been her brief companion, even if she had wanted to strangle it.

[Sorcha MacFusty]

Pip's grin faltered as the girl didn't reply with the customary answer of 'good morning' and she pursed her lips in consternation. The girl was being obviously rude. She had thought everybody knew how to be mannerly knew how to say good morning.

It then occurred to her that maybe the girl was being mannerly. She tried, in vain, to remember her etiquette lessons. Her mother had tried to give her additional tutelage and whilst she had been etiquette, decorum and all that other stuff were certainly better then her cousins she still wasn't up to standard. Probably. She had a feeling that whatever she did her sister would know. Una was like that. She always knew. She would know that Pip had been talking to a member of the lower classes - Pip could tell simply by the quality of the girls robes that she wasn't wealthy - and maybe the girl knew that people of such differing classes were simply not supposed to talk.

She'd even seen the practice in place of servants who turning their backs to the corridor when people of the wealthier classes passed maybe this girl was doing the same by not talking to her. Pip looked around to check for any people or spies who would tell her sister that she hadn't been behaving as was expected of her, and finding none especially at this hour she said:

"It's okay, you can talk to me... there's nobody around to overhear."

tag: here | outfit: here | notes: here
made by Emily exclusively for Charming

[Hannah Loren]

Hannah swore in her head. I can't talk, you.... She breathed, calmed herself, and walked over to the windowsill. She studied it for a second, failed, and glanced at the floor. There! Right under the window was a patch of dust.

Hannah bent over and, with one finger, scrawled a messy note for the girl. I dont kno why, but I wok up and can't speek,* she spelled. She stepped back and gestured for the girl to come over. If it wasn't a clearly-upper class student Hannah would have grabbed their sleeve and dragged them, but there were some boundaries she knew better to cross.

Please, please, please show life in that head of yours, she mentally pleaded, tightening the leash on her temper again.

*spelling errors intentioonal

[Sorcha MacFusty]

Pip's cheeks puffed outwards* in annoyance as she realised that her rather gracious invitation was ignored. It wasn't very nice and left her feeling irritable. She liked talking... if she couldn't talk whatever was she going to do? There was absolutely nothing to do this early. She wondered what the other girls did....

"You know you probably shouldn't be here, being what? a first year. I heard a rumor that a first year jumped off the tower cause he got bad grades." She said to the air and not paying any attention in the slightest to the girl who was writing on the floor. She'd heard that rumour from Melanie Roper who'd heard it from Peter Johnson. She couldn't tell after taht but it seemed like it had spread through the entire school.

"They say his sister found the body." She said chattering on, the best bit. The bit that said the found him was a different story

*yes. she's a species of chipmunk.

[Hannah Loren]

Hannah just barely resisted the urge to slam her head against the wall, half because she was fairly certain the story was false and half because the girl still didn't understand. She mentally cast a wish for brighter girls in the upper classes. Egeria Rivers, Cecily Gallivan, and Charity Baddock seemed bright. (Of course, Hannah had never needed any of them to use their minds, so...)

Hannah debated the merits of just going down to the Hospital Wing. Miss Black was smart, theoretically, or at least wouldn't tell her about first years jumping off of a tower.

Hoping she could escape without the girl noticing, Hannah slipped out of the tower, walking down the stairs as quietly as she could - which was not very quietly.

[Sorcha MacFusty]

She chattered for a moment about innane thing like the rumors that she'd heard until she noticed that she no longer had any audience. She looked around confused for a moment and realised that 'of course' the other girl had gone downstairs. She'd listened to Pip and she'd taken her advice to heart. She'd left the astronomy tower.

Pip followed at a run, though she knew she should have been walking slowly and stately.

"It's a good thing you listened to me!" She exclaimed behind the other girl "I wouldn't want you to get in trouble." She reached for the other girls shoulder feeling friendly and like she had done a job well done.

"My name is Pip, well it's not my name it's a nickname that my cousin Dunny gave me when I was really little... just a wee pip of a girl. My real name is Sorcha MacFusty, and I have like two relatives with it already so everybody just calls me Pip." She grinned broadly at the other girl feeling like she'd made a friend.

[Pip totally wants to use this post and thread as an example of her showing Prefect qualities.]

[Hannah Loren]

Hannah just barely resisted the urge to jump when the girl touched her shoulder. She was genuinely surprised to have been followed - and despite the idiocy of the stranger, decided she was a tad endearing. Hannah often decided that she liked people on a whim, sometimes without sense. But the girl - Pip - had followed her, and Hannah decided that meant she was worth something. Even if she wasn't very bright.

She smiled back at her and jumped from the last step. Glancing around, Hannah found a staircase that was clicking into place at the right floor and started heading down it, hoping it wouldn't move again before she was there. The good thing about walking around the school when so few people were around was that no one was bothering her about walking around in her nightgown.

Clinging to the railing as she headed down the steps, Hannah turned to Pip and grinned cheekily. She hoped that Miss Black would be able to fix her quickly.

[Sorcha MacFusty]

Pip followed after the Hufflepuff first year with a frown on her face as she tried to follow her as best as she could, though she was still slightly peeved at the fact that despite her best efforts to be friendly she still wasn't getting any verbal response or cues from the other girl. She knew she liked to talk and gossip but she liked having feedback on the other side of the talking to keep it going. As it was she knew was getting the feeling that any convesation she was attempting to begin was just going to be onesided and so very boring. She pouted and tried not to pay any attention whatsoever to the windows or Hannah's feet leaving the ground as she jumped the last step.

Did the girl not know that she could hurt herself when she did that? Pip had broken her arm when she was small falling off a broom that she'd borrowed from her cousins and she had not been able to stand heights or the sensation of having nothing beneath her feet since. In retrospect, if Pip had had any retrospect it was more of her fear of heights that had kept her properly occupied in ladylike fashion rather than a genuine desire to act ladylike.

She struggled to keep up with Hannah, and though she succeeded she felt slightly of breath. Her dress was not made for any particularly quick movement. She had no idea how the other girl managed it. She tried to pause until she realised how.

"Are you a Bohemian?" She asked curiously as she blurted the words out staring at the girls nightgown. It could be the bohemian fashion. Her mother always said that Bohemians were improperly dressed in their nightgowns.

[Hannah Loren]

She was so, so close to the Hospital Wing. Elladora was smart, she had to be, she'd figure it out and then Hannah would get to miss her morning classes. Explaining why she had been out at night would be a problem... Hannah supposed that she could just say she had been going to the bathroom when she was attacked, and that her attacker had put her in the astronomy tower. She supposed that could have been the actual case... apart from the fact that she distinctly remembered wandering around that evening. She wondered, absently, if any of her roommates were worried. Perhaps they just thought she had gone down to breakfast early. Hannah tried not to hope that they would be scared for her by their first class of the day.

Bohemian? What even was that? Hannah turned to acknowledge her shadow, and gave her a perplexed look before shaking her head emphatically. She wanted to know why she had asked, but without her voice had no way of finding that out. Hannah swore mentally. Of all the things she had to lose, why her voice? And who had done this? She wanted to kick them in the crotch.

She took a turn. Only three more corridors and two turns before the Hospital Wing, she was certain. And then everything would be all right - or at least it would be easier to let people know what was wrong with her.

[Sorcha MacFusty]

Pip followed her for quite sometime though with each passing second, each turn the strange looking first year got further and further away from the her until Pip eventually lost sight of her. She stopped walking around when the dull-witted Slytherin realised that she had gotten herself lost looking for the first year.

"How very rude." She said out loud and one of the nearby paintings looked towards her like the comment had been addressed to hwe.

"What is dear?" It said in a soft pitched voice.

"I was trying to help a firstyear out." She said stubbornly. "and the first year ran way from me."

"How very rude indeed," Agreed the painting and she decided that this painting was just the painting she ought to talk to until it was time to leave for breakfast.

[Hannah Loren]

It took Hannah several moments to realize that her shadow had left her. She spun, frowned slightly - she almost missed the constant noise in the background. After a few more seconds she continued her walk, hurrying even more this time. She found the Hospital wing after a few more minutes and explained to Miss Black in writing; she was told that her cure would take a while to prepare. She was equipped with a large piece of paper explaining, went to the common room to dress n her robes, and carried the paper to her third class of the day.

Her lack of a voice was dealt with.

Now, the question was - who had done it?