The Girl with the Ruby Slippers ;;Trent;;

[quinn]

Weekends were her favorite. She loved the fact that she wasn’t constrained by dress code and could wear whatever she wanted; which explained the yellow cardigan, flowing white shirt, and high-waisted bellbottoms that she was currently wearing. Oh yes. Weekends were most certainly her favorite. But especially this weekend. Scar Blackwood had promised herself that she would have a weekend that lacked all things that she despised during the week: stress, feuding brothers, and all forms of Slytherin girls. In lieu of the things she hated most, she had found something better to occupy her time.

In her hands was a copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Ever since Liander had mentioned something about Ruby Slippers and Dorothy, she had been unbearably curious about Oz....whatever that meant. All she knew was that once he had mentioned it and she couldn’t get it out of her head, she had gone straight to the secondhand shop at the corner of Hogsmeade that sold muggle trinkets. She had searched every book shelf until she found that book that was in her hand because she just had to know what it was about. Upon reading the back, here is what she had determined:

Dorothy was stuck in a land in which was entertaining, but one to which she did not necessarily belong. And the only way for her to go back was to click her ruby slippers together. But she didn’t know that at the beginning of the novel, so she spends the entire book trying to reach the Wizard of Oz who turns out to be nothing of a wizard at all.

”Muggles have such strange views of Wizards and-”

[/b] She stopped herself mid-sentence as she realized that she had no idea where she had gotten herself to. She had been thinking much too hards about the similarities between her and that Dorothy girl to realize where she was walking. And of course - she looked back and forth for a couple of moments at a fork in the corridor - she had no idea where she was now. She bit down on her lip, slightly disconcerted that after 5 years, she still wasn’t completely able to find her way around the school.

Turning slight to her left, she thought she saw a portrait that looked vaguely familiar. Perhaps she could ask directions, ”Excuse me, Miss-”[/b] She asked the small child that was sitting in the rocking chair. The painting was exquisite, each brush stroke appearing more realistic than she had ever thought, ”I was wondering if-”[/b] The loud yelling in Russian broke her off and Scar stood there stunned. The little girl was yelling at her. Yelling quite loudly. She looked around in terror, hoping that no one was around to see her embarrassment, ”I just thought-”[/b] She tried to speak over the yelling without success, ”Could you-”[/b] She couldn’t get a word in. With another cautious look across the hall to make sure that no one had seen, she ducked into another corridor.

That was when she ran nearly smack dab into someone. Her book went flying out of her hand, ending up hitting the wall to her right. She hit her nose on his chin, or at least that’s what she thought had happened. All she knew was that she was stumbling backwards and in serious pain, ”Bloody Merlin!”[/b] She groaned as she managed to lean against the wall to her left. She lifted her hand from her nose and saw a small trickle of blood. Her eyes slowly trailed up the blood and then landed on the boy’s face, ”I’m so sorry! Are you alright?”[/b] She said, her face showing concern. This was not the beginning of a beautiful weekend.[/justify][/blockquote][/blockquote]

[lukejordan]

Trent whistled tunelessly to himself as he wandered down the corridors of the castle with no particular goal in mind. The weekend had finally rolled around, and with it the opportunity for him to indulge in yet another solid few days of extra-curricular reading that would allow him to make another large dent in the towering pile of books beside his bed.

But his plans had been foiled and his hopes dashed all in the one moment - Lachie had manhandled him out of the commonroom as Chase disposed of - Trent dreaded to think of how - the selection of treatises and essays he'd planned to work through before Monday came around again.

And so Trent found himself mechanically walking the twisting and turning passages of Hogwarts in an attempt to stave off his boredom long enough to survive until the new week and his next class - because of course after depriving him of his books his friends had then proceeded to make plans with their respective girlfriends, leaving him with nothing to do.

This explained why Trent's ears pricked up when, around the corner, he heard the unmistakeable imperious and accented tones of the Heiress Evpraksiya "Don't call me Evi" Irinushka's portrait as she screamed out abuse at her latest victim. Stifling a grin and a chuckle out of empathy with the plight of the spoiled duchess' latest victim, Trent moved quickly around the corner in hopes of finding something to distract him from his book-deprived malaise only to run headlong into someone coming around the other way.

Trent didn’t get much of a view of them, however, as his head snapped back in response to the impact of their nose against his chin and he fell to the floor with a muffled oath. Pulling himself to his feet while trying to jostle his neck as little as possible, Trent leaned against the wall for a moment before standing fully upright.

Looking down at the girl who’d run into him, Trent gave her a friendly smile and offered her a hand up, chuckling softly. ”Neck’s a little sore, but that’ll pass.” Spotting the trickle of blood running from her somewhat swollen nose, he raised an eyebrow. ”And forget me - what about you? That nose of yours looks painful.”

[/justify]

((OOC: the muse is not with me, and so this is fairly awful and I am very le sorry. 'Twill be better next time.))

[quinn]

Scar managed to keep her eyes open as she looked more closely at the blood on her finger. Normally, she would have squeezed them shut and been carrying on about how much it hurt. Her eyes ran over his face again, familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. Not without his uniform on. She tried to scrunch up her nose to survey the damage, but as soon as she did, a shooting pain ran down the bridge. She cursed aloud, sincerely close to tears. Scar would think that after all those years of playing Quidditch she would be used to pain, but no. She had never grown used to the stinging or the bruising that accompanied her favorite sport, ”Ergg-”

[/b] She was about to complain about the possibly broken nose, but then she realized that he was smiling at her. There was something about the friendly smile that he offered her that made her feel a little bit better. It had obviously been an accident, one that she couldn’t possibly be upset about.

”I really am sorry-”[/b] She expressed again as she looked down at her bloody hand. There was no way that she was going to grab his when she would probably get blood all over him. She managed to place her other hand in his as he pulled her to her feet, ”I wasn’t looking where I was going and after that rude conversation with the girl in the painting over there I-”[/b]

That’s when the headache hit her. She wasn’t sure if it was from the previous blow to the nose or if she was just starving, but either way, Scarlet Blackwood suddenly felt like someone was stomping on her brain repetitively. She turned slightly away from him, trying to hide her face. Scar didn’t really do pain. So many people had seen her get hurt on the Quidditch pitch and no one needed to know that after she walked it off like a trooper, she cried about it in the locker rooms. Lance always said she was a baby badger in snake’s skin.

When she managed to think straight again, she gently touched the tip of her nose, ”It’ll be fine in a little while. Nothing a little bit of ice and some famous kitchen Ginger Snaps can’t fix.”[/b] That was the first sentence that she had managed to get out this entire time. This poor boy probably thought that she was the stupidest being that he had ever met: not only had she run right into him, she also was talking like a nervous git. Not to mention, her short attention span did cause many people to think that she wasn’t all with it.

Her eyes flitted from his for a moment and saw her book on the floor. The binding had been completely ripped, leaving a rather sorry collection of pages floating around the corridor, ”Bollox,”[/b] She managed to say and bent down to start collecting them, ”Where were you headed?”[/b] She asked without looking up. Perhaps if he wasn’t doing anything, he wouldn’t mind escorting her to find some ice; after all, she wasn’t quite sure that she was stable enough not to go crashing down the next time she started walking. Concussions were very common with nose injuries, as she had discovered during the previous Quidditch Season.[/justify][/blockquote][/blockquote]

OOC;; Not a problem in the slightest! I know how it is :] I thought your post was lovely and well-written, for the record! xoxo

[lukejordan]

As he pulled the girl to her feet Trent felt his neck throb painfully before he felt his back and neck crack back into place. Letting out a relieved sigh at the release of tension, he felt his smile widen as he pulled out his wand and cleaned the layer of blood she'd been so worried about off of her hand.

Chuckling lowly, Trent interrupted her apology with a casual wave of his hand. "It's quite alright. No real harm done." But no sooner had the words come out of his mouth and she'd started trying to explain the chain of events when she swayed and turned alarmingly pale, turning away towards the wall. Readying himself to catch her in case she fell, Trent watched her with concern until she recovered and replied to his question.

At the first sentence that she'd managed to complete, Trent couldn't help but cackle softly at the joke. "Oh yes, that most magical of House Elf beverages. Someday soon I expect we'll hear about how they've learned to use it to fix blindness and cure cancer." Still smiling, Trent smothered a chuckle as the girl cursed and bent down to begin gathering up the scraps of what had been her book before their accidental collision.

"Nowhere in particular." Wry amusement laced Trent's voice as he answered. "I was kicked out of the commonroom by my roommates for reading too much on a weekend, would you believe." He reached over and mended her book with one of the many spells that he'd convinced the Librarian to teach him over the years. "Would you like a hand - or a shoulder to lean on - getting to wherever you were going? The kitchen, maybe - to grab some ice or that Ginger Snaps you spoke of."

[/justify]