Still Waters

[Eli Swan]

Coward.

That was probably mean, probably uncalled for. Probably, there were all sorts of reasons why Cassius Lestrange was justified in running away after class instead of sticking around to talk things out. Probably, if Eli remembered everything, he would have understood.

But Eli didn't remember everything, and he didn't understand, and at the moment, he didn't really want to. He didn't want to talk to Cash, not know, and he didn't want to talk to Angie, either. She was just an extension of Cash, really--or, more appropriately, an extention of Old-Eli. Angie was tied in too closely with this Old-Eli, this person that Eli used to be and now didn't remember, and so was Cash, and at the moment he wanted nothing to do with either of them.

He was starting to regret coming with them, coming back to Hogwarts. You don't mean that, something told him, but in the moment it certainly felt like he did. Sure, Hogwarts had magic and books and a lake and statues, but Hogwarts wasn't his place. Hogwarts belonged to that boy he used to be, the one that Cassius and Angie kept trying to talk to.

So Eli had left the note on the bed and disappeared, trying to find a place that neither of them would think to look for him. A place that did not belong to Old-Eli. Not the dorm room or the common room, no place heavily populated. Not anywhere near any of Cash's places, not the library or the Quidditch Pitch. Just somewhere that was neutral and not tied to anything that he was supposed to remember.

After wandering a bit, Eli found himself near the edge of the lake. There were probably hidden memories here, too, but he was past caring. He just wanted a place to sit down and hide for a while; until after Angie and Cash had gone to bed and he no longer had to deal with any of their bullshit. Finding a tree that mostly shielded him from the view of the rest of the grounds, Eli nestled himself down in the roots and watched the water ripple in the breeze.

  

[Katy Farthing]

Really, Katy was surprising herself these days. On her first day at Hogwarts, she thought she'd never get used to all these lessons, these specific places she had to be at specific times. Compared to her (brief) life in the Slums, this was the most ordered and regimented her life had been in a long while. Why, even in the orphanage, although she had to work for four hours a day, the orphans might pick and choose when they did such work, and so their free time was often at different times. Having periods of time set specifically aside for the entire school for recreation was quite a new concept for her.

It was one of these moments now. Katy had no lessons to go to, so she decided to make full use of this free time by doing what she had never been allowed to do in her childhood - going outside, wherever she pleased.

She skipped across the grounds, daring to whoop out loud without caring who heard. She was allowed to be happy, was she not? She felt like letting off all the steam that had been accumulating inside of her, so she broke into a run as she neared the lake. The lake! Katy had never been to the lake before. She'd been on it, of course, in a boat, in order to get to the castle for the very first time. But she'd never actually been to see it before. She ran at full pelt, trying to see how fast she could go. She wasn't quite sure what to do once she GOT there. What did one do by lakes? she wondered. But suddenly, she didn't have to think of anything. She had forgotten just how close the lake had been getting, and all of a sudden she realised there was no longer ground beneath her feet, and with a sharp intake of breath and an almighty splash, she pitched herself face-first into the water!

Luckily she had learned the basics of swimming at the age of five, so she managed to right herself in the water enough to come up for a large gulp of air. Pushing her dark, now sopping wet ringlets out of her face, she then swam ungracefully back to the side of the lake, with a lot of kicking and splashing, and (she could swear) a little push from something squishy deep in the water.

She climbed out of the lake, and let out a joyous laugh, shaking her hair like a dog. Oh, what a joke that had been! Once she'd dried the water from her eyes, it was only then that she noticed the older boy sitting pensively under the tree next to the lake.
"Oh, hello, sir!" Katy smiled, bobbing a little almost-curtsey. "I'm awfully sorry for disturbing your peace by my ungainly fall into the lake. I promise that, had I noticed the lake rapidly approaching as it so rudely did, I would have tried to fall more quietly, and with less splashing. I hope no water got onto you."

  

[Eli Swan]

Ooc: Hi, Zenith! ^^

Eli barely had time to figure out what was happening--namely, that a first year was running at him full speed, or, more appropriately, in his general direction--before she collided with the lake. Eli shivered just watching the water explode around her. At this time of year, it must have been near freezing, and although the day itself wasn't fantastically cold, it wasn't exactly Singapore, either. There was a breeze that was pleasant if you were wearing a coat and scarf, but for someone dripping wet, as she was when she saw him, he was sure it would make her shiver when the wind picked up again.

"It's okay," he said, climbing to his feet, using the tree for support. "I didn't get wet. Are you alright, Miss?" Besides the cold, there was the presence of other things in the lake to be considered, too. "Here, come here, I'll help dry you off," he offered, holding out a hand to help her up off the bank of the lake and reaching for his wand in the other. "You'll freeze if the wind picks up. You ought to be more careful. There are grindylows in the water, you know," he said with a nod.

  

[Katy Farthing]

((OOC: Hello Lynn!))

"Oh yes, I am perfectly alright," Katy smiled gratefully at the boy. "Thank you." From his expression, she could tell that he did not envy her little dip in the water. Hmm. Perhaps that was sensible. As the (very) early spring breeze began to pick up a little, a sudden chill passed over the girl, and she shivered, thinking that yes, that had not been as fun as she anticipated. That was the trouble with Katy, she always thought about her actions after the consequences.

She took the boy's hand and used him to stand up. Her robes were clinging to her, but she didn't really care. Aside from the fact that she was getting a little chilly.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, with downcast eyes. Really, she seemed to be doing nothing but getting into trouble, lately.

"What's a Grindylow?" she asked, eagerly, which was possibly not the effect the boy was trying to achieve. "Was that the squishy thing that pushed me out of the lake? Because there was something," she said to him, seriously. She thought he might not believe her. She reverted back to her usual tone, entirely serious, yet childishly lighthearted. "If so, they seem rather pleasant and helpful creatures. I wonder if you might buy them as pets? That would be a joke. Were I to tame one!"

  

[Eli Swan]

Eli laughed, shaking his head at her questions. "That doesn't sound like a grindylow. They're not very nice. They'd be more likely to bite you than help you out of the lake," he explained. As far as taming one for a pet, Eli didn't know if that were possible. He thought he'd heard once that Mers could tame grindylows, or maybe he had read that somewhere, but he couldn't really remember. There wouldn't be much point to keeping one as a pet, anyway; there wasn't any sort of water inside Hogwarts, and they didn't really come close to the surface of the lake often, he didn't think. It'd be about as useful as having a pet rock.

"Here, stand still," he said when she'd gotten up out of the lake, sending a jet of warm air at her from the tip of his wand. It would speed the dying process considerably, and keep her from catching cold or something in the meantime.

  

[Katy Farthing]

Obediently, Katy stood as still as she could without even rocking back and forth on her heels, which was something she was guilty of doing when she was meant to be standing still, much to the annoyance of Sister Margaret when the annual head-louse check took place at the orphanage. The boy pointed his wand at her, and she grinned as she felt the warm air pass over her body.
"It tickles," she commented, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, because apparently that helped her stand still. When the drying ceased, she looked at her robes. They were no longer clinging to her, and she felt considerably less cold now. She smiled. "Oh, thank you," she told him, sincerely. "And yes, I have decided I don't want a Grindylow any more. Biting one's owner is awfully rude." Katy glared into the lake, as if the Grindylows that dwelt there should be ashamed of themselves.

"Anyway," she said, after a little while, coming to sit down next to the boy's spot at the foot of the tree, with little thought for the possibility that he might not want to spend any more time in her company. "On my way over to the lake, I noticed you sitting here, and it crossed my mind that you looked very sad. Not quite sad as if your owl had been eaten by a Grindylow, but more of a cross between sad and angry. About... three parts sad to one part angry," she decided, nodding. "More as if [i]you[i] had accidentally eaten your owl, and then regretted it." Katy frowned at her own analogy. "So, I have decided that I don't think you should be sad, because you seem like a rather nice person, and in my opinion, rather nice people deserve not to be sad."

  

[Eli Swan]

Eli probably would have invited her to sit, except it seemed he didn't need to; she invited herself. Eli sat down next to her, smiling a bit at her comment about grindylows, then trying hard not to blush when she said he'd looked sad. Perceptive girl, seeing as she'd been falling into the lake at the time, though Eli wasn't sure sad was the right word for it, exactly.

Maybe he was sad. Maybe he was even angry, but if he was angry, he thought he was angry at Cash. Not at himself. At least, not at the moment. He'd long since gotten over trying to blame himself for not remembering, and he didn't even really blame Cash, not now. He did feel an enormous amount of pressure, though, to be old-Eli, to be the person that he had been, and he want sure where it was coming from. Maybe Cash, maybe Angie, maybe even himself. Maybe just the school, and all the familiar faces.

"I'll try not to be sad," he assured her with a small smile. "I don't have an owl, though. So nothing has eaten him."

  

[Katy Farthing]

Katy squinted at him slightly, yes, his expression definitely was pensive. He was thinking about something, and that was causing the pained look upon his face. Katy did not wish to know what it was that he was thinking about, but only hoped that whatever it was would go away.

"Well, I suppose that's something," she mused, in response to his comment about his non-existent owl. She was quiet for a bit, biting her lip in thought. "I think everyone should be happy all the time," she suddenly said. "Why, I think you for one are a very nice person, because you helped me when I was drenched in water, having just fallen into a lake. So... shouldn't God be bestowing chocolates and gold upon you, and not sadness and pensive thoughts?"

Katy did not like to mention it, but often she had unpleasant feelings in which she couldn't decide whether God was a very nice person or not. She knew it was terribly, terribly wrong to think such a thing, and when she voiced this feeling to the Sisters once when she was quite young, they had clapped their hands to their mouths in horror and declared her as being tempted by Satan. She had to go and pray for a full hour and, even though the Sisters had not explicitly blamed her, she felt very much in the wrong. She knew she had never met Satan before. He had not visited her in a dream, or simply knocked on her dormitory door. She had done her best to be a good Christian from then on, and love God as a good girl should. But sometimes, she really did wonder...

  

[Eli Swan]

Eli also liked to think that he was a pretty nice person, even if the evidence didn't exactly support that conclusion lately. Generally, though, he did try to be a nice person, maybe even a good person. Her mention of God surprised him; Eli hadn't done much thinking about the Almighty since--well, he couldn't really remember ever having done much thinking about the Almighty. He suppose he must have, at some point, because everyone did, sooner or later, but the idea of God was such a distant one from the more tangible aspects of his life.

Eli thought about hell more often than he thought about God.

He shrugged. "I don't know if God cares about chocolate," he said, because that was much more pleasant than saying I don't know if God cares about me.

  

[Katy Farthing]

"Oh, I should think he does," Katy said, indubitably. "It's in the scripture." She looked down at the grass, beginning to plait it idly between her fingers, before realising that she hadn't really explained herself. "Well. It isn't LITERALLY in the scripture, but... it says God saw that everything he made was good. And chocolate is good. And God made everything," she nodded.

Her good-girl expression faltered a little. She was trying her best to seem not like a Satanist, because otherwise she felt sure that somebody, if not this boy- oh, who she did not yet know the name of...
"Er, what's your name, by the way?" she asked. Oops, that was something she'd forgotten upon meeting the boy. No, she was definitely not a good little lady. With this thought swimming miserably back onto her conscience, she continued her train of thought. Despite the Sisters not being here, somebody would be sure to tell her off for her lack of "decorum", if she did not maintain a good Christian girl's heart.

  

[Eli Swan]

It was sort of rude to just ask someone what their name was--or, if not rude, at least unexpected. Typically in polite conversation, one was supposed to be introduced by a mutual friend, and, when that failed, as it often did in the case of the lower class, Eli typically thought it best to offer one's name and hope the unknown companion followed suit, not ask straight-out. Still, he didn't mind much--it was sort of rude for him to have not offered his name so far, anyway--and it was a useful of conversation, since Eli didn't know how much more he had to say on the subject of God. How much he had to say, anyway, that wasn't borderline blasphemy.

"My name's Elijah Swan," he offered with a smile. "I'm a Ravenclaw. What about you?"

  

[Katy Farthing]

Unaware that she had done anything out of the ordinary, Katy smiled.
"That's a nice name," she told him. "E-LIE-jah. It sounds soft and approachable, like a... like a pillow," she decided. "And then Swan sounds all graceful and quiet, like a..." The girl frowned. "Well. Like a swan, really."

She looked out onto the lake, but there were no swans there. She rarely saw any non-magical animals around Hogwarts, except the regulation cats, toads and owls, and even those Katy was sure were not completely without powers. Surely Muggle owls would not be able to carry post in such an ingenious way?

"My name's rather boring, next to yours," she said, pausing a little sadly, before introducing herself. "My name is Katy Farthing. Now, 'Katy'.... not very imaginative at all," she judged, shaking her head. "Really: My father, with the excellent name of 'Cornelius', could only come up with 'Katy'? That's just two letters, but spelt different. Lots of people are called it, anyway. Usually, they shorten it from Katherine, but I don't know if that is true for me. I don't like Katherine much, either." Katy wrinkled her nose. Her parents had died before she had grown old enough to ask them such questions, and since they had only ever called her Katy, she and her orphanages had been inclined to take that as her full name.

"As for my surname," Katy carried on. "A bicycle!" She shook her head, expressively. "You know, that odd contraption with one large wheel and one little wheel? A 'penny-farthing'. How dreadfully silly."

  

[Eli Swan]

"I don't think any names are boring," Eli said, trying to be helpful and positive. He offered the girl a smile as he hugged his knees to his chest. It was a rather childish position, but he hardly thought the eleven-year-old was going to judge him for it. She, after all, had just crashed headfirst into a lake. "Because they're attached to people, and people are never boring."

With a smile, he added, "There was a Catherine the Great, once. In Russia. So that's not a boring name at all, it's a great name. And coupling it with a silly surname just makes it better," he teased lightly. "It gives you two different sides. Great and silly. You wouldn't want to be just one or the other, would you?"

  

[Katy Farthing]

Names are attached to people, and people are never boring.

Katy considered this. She nodded slowly; he had a point. "Some names are awfully common, though. If there were two people, named Mary and... and... Star, you would be more inclined to get to know the one named Star, would you not?"

She laughed happily when Eli told her about Catherine the Great.
"Very well!" she grinned, "now I'm Katy the Great, and I'm from Russia. I have never been to Russia," she mused. "I don't actually know where it is. I'm awfully bad at geography. The only lesson I was ever very good at was writing; I could join up my letters before anybody else in my orphanage!" The girl frowned. "Oh... It's wrong to boast, I know... but it is alright, surely, as I do not have much to boast about."

"No, I think you're quite right, I wouldn't want to be simply great or silly. If you were just great all of the time, you would be a terribly boastful person, and you would walk about with such airs and graces saying 'Oh, aren't I splendid?' all the time, like a girl at my orphanage who was seventeen." She said this as if being seventeen was the reason she did this, that if you were seventeen certain allowances should be made owing to your behaviour.

"And if you're just silly, then nobody would take you seriously, even when you tell Sister Beatrice that the fire really HAS scorched Amelia's doll this time and it isn't a joke this time and she tells you off for 'crying wolf' even though it isn't a joke this time." Katy frowned. Honestly. Would Amelia have been crying if it had just been a joke again? She thought not.

"It's nice when a person has lots of sides to them," Katy the Great and Silly decided, valiantly trying to impart some wise statement as well. "Because then they're like a shape instead of a... a line." Hm. Well. That would have to do.

  

[Eli Swan]

Eli couldn't help but laugh at her explaination of what someone would sound like if they were just great. He hadn't really thought it through before he'd said it, but he had to admit that Katy's explanation of it was probably the most amusing.

"I'm seventeen," he said defensively, but he was still smiling. At least, he was fairly certain that he was seventeen. He knew he was at least sixteen and no older than seventeen, because he was still a sixth year, so there wasn't much of a window, but when he couldn't actually contact his family anymore and didn't remember much of his past, there was a bit of a margin for error. "But I think I'm more of a shape than a line."

  

[Katy Farthing]

Katy grinned a little when the boy laughed. It was nice to see him laugh, he had looked so terribly sad when she'd first caught sight of him. And, not to sound too much like the seventeen-year-old, but she was taking the credit for this.

"I'm seventeen!" Eli pointed out. Katy looked politely surprised.
"Are you really? Well." She studied him, and concluded with a nod. "Yes, I think you are a much nicer seventeen-year-old than the girl from my orphanage. You would eb a shape. I do find that lines are very dull people, a lot of the time."

There was a small silence. "You shall have to forgive me!" the girl protested. "To an eleven-year-old, seventeen is very old, practically an adult. Why, a girl of seventeen would be married to her sweetheart! Imagine!" Katy looked almost averse to this idea. She frowned, rocking back and forth on the ground slightly, but began to smile. "Whoever is to marry me may not have the quiet life he is expecting," she mused, grinning.