Sketching the skyline [OPEN]

Vivian had been up and down those staircases so many times she’d lost count. The tower was yet another excellent place that most people avoided, simply for the effort required to move up and down. This week Vivian was making her pilgrimage because everyone in the common room was being a twat, yelling, screaming, and making noise. It was impossible to concentrate on reading under such conditions.

Magic wasn’t technically allowed outside of class, true, but surely it couldn’t hurt if no one was watching? With a quick look at either side, Vivian whipped out her wand and in a flash her rather heavy bag was merrily floating along in front of her the rest of the climb. There, much easier. Why did they need the towers so freaking tall anyway?

It wasn’t the first time Vivian had accidently ran across someone up there, but it had been so long since the last incident, and Vivian was really not paying attention. So, when the girl looked up from the floor after reaching the top of the stairs and spotted the back of a Hufflepuff, the first thing that happened was she almost jumped a foot in the air, then her bag came crashing down. Ink bottles smashed, and parchment and books (now splashed in a variety of colours) strewed themselves all over the place, as well as a few everlasting gumball wrappers and a now broken in half sugar quill.

”Oh hell.”

Flushing a violent red to match the Gryffindor colours on her robes, Vivian ducked down to try and pick some of it up, trying to remember the spell for gathering stuff off the floor and working ink off pages.

In any case, great, utterly admirable first impression. Like she needed the other houses to think she was a dumbass too.

Vivian was fairly focused on just trying to snatch things up as fast as possible and not look at Gale directly. At least then if her face was some strange colour he didn’t have to know about it. She was just leaning forwards to try and retrieve a piece of paper that looked dangerously close to being blown away when she spotted him ducking down to pick some of her rubbish up. Well, he had decency then at least. But then, it was sort of a Huffepuff trait.

”Zanks,” she replied quickly, realising he was basically the same colour as her, though the reason was a good guess. He wasn’t the one to make a giant mess. Still, it calmed Vivian down a bit; he was more approachable that way. He wasn’t that bad looking either, if a bit... well, it was hard to tell. A lot of straight boys over groomed themselves also, and she’d been known to come to embarrassing assumptions before. Steven Larsen wasn’t, in fact, a girl, as it turned out.

”Um, yeah, zat’s why I come up here,” Vivian admitted, feeling the heat in her face start to recede. ”And don’t vorry about ze book, charcoal comes off better zan ink.”

Giving up her plight, Vivian stood up determinedly, muttered something under her breath and made a sweeping motion with her wand. The two nearest books and a few sheets assented and flew back to her hand, the rest of the stuff just twitched. Back to doing it manually then.

”Are you American?” she asked, trying to prevent things from dissolving into an awkward silence. She was fairly convinced though, the accent of the good old U.S of A had to be the most recognisable on earth.

”Oh, sankyou!” Vivian sighed in relief as Gale vanished the ink off her pages. She’d forgotten that spell ages ago, although it was probably a useful one to relearn. ”I keep forgetting zat one.” With Gale’s help they picked up the rest of it, and this time she made a mental note to keep her bag over her shoulder and not floating around ever again. It was only lucky she didn’t have tampons in there or something, that would have been epically horrifying even if the boy was sympathetic about it all.

”Yes, zat’s right,” Vivian replied in response to Gal’s guess about her ethnicity. She was a little surprised actually, and it probably showed. Everyone always guessed Bulgarian or Austrian or Norwegian or something, though she couldn’t really blame them. Most European accents must sound very similar to those who’d never heard them before, and it was worse when they only knew them from muggle television actors who didn’t know what accent was what to save their lives. The French for example were actually quite capable of making the ‘th’ sound, though that accent was always generally imitated very badly. ”So how did an American end up in Briton?”

||OoC|| I decided to be an idiot and post anyway. *Should be studying. A lot.* ||

Gale sure had a lot to say, but Vivian didn’t mind. It was nice to get to know people, and if he was willing to say that much when a few words sufficed it meant he was sociable and friendly and there was nothing wrong with that at all. ”Ah, I take it zat art runs in the zeh family zen,” she said politely, glancing at the sketchbook with the half finished drawing behind Gale. It would be nice to have something that cool run in her family: all Vivian had was cancer on her mother’s side and stroke on her fathers.

”My turn then,” she smiled, rearranging the shoulder bag so that it was more comfortable. The thing had a habit of digging in to the same spot after a few minutes. ”Dad vas from Briton and didn’t vant me to go to Durmstrang, or vatever ozer schools in Europe because he said zat Hogwarts teaches things better. Proud man, and of his roots, so he vanted me raised the same as he was. I zink he made the right choice, Hogwarts is a very good school,” Vivian said thoughtfully. No need to apologise for that one, Gale had said about the same quantity. There was one more thing though, and it was rare for a life story to come because this most basic of steps: ”I’m Vivian, vat’s yours?”