September 2, 2009
Approximate 5:00 PM


The week had felt like the longest week, ever. He did not feel like functioning today, and in fact—Zel had very heavily considered staying in bed all day. However, the sun had been shining, the weather was mild and pleasant, and most of all—he had classes to attend. In his sixth year, he could not afford to simply skip class, unless there was some sort of bizarre medical emergency.  These high level classes were bound to assign piles of difficult homework in order to prep students for increasingly difficult exams. Today, he had already attended Arithmancy, Charms, DADA, Care of Magical Creatures, and Herbology. It took all of his own personal strength to convince himself not to skip dinner and Astronomy, and simply go straight to bed.

Zel sat down on a grassy area, and opened up his bookbag. He pulled out his Astronomy textbook and began to look over it, hoping to prep himself for the upcoming class. However, his heart wasn’t really in it. The werewolf figured that, if he looked like he was busy studying, that nobody would bother him. That would leave him with a lower likelihood of making himself look like a complete buffoon by being so socially inept. As he read the book, he was not processing any of the information. His mind was wandering, and he was feeling nervous about the next full moon. It was coming up shortly, and the idea of it just erased his appetite. Though, these days, everything took away his appetite.

Last year, he was a healthy and lean 200 pounds, which was fairly skinny for his tall height. But now, he was closer to 170 pounds, and his normally pale skin looked almost see-through. There were dark circles under his light blue eyes, presumably from either a lack of nutrition, lack of sleep, large amounts of stress, or even a combination of all three. His face was thinner, along with, well… The rest of him, He began to chew on his bottom lip nervously, and finally he closed his astronomy book. He simply could not focus on it. He couldn’t focus on anything. He did not know how he was going to survive the year, if he was having such a difficult time retaining even simple bits of information that was required for him to understand.

“Zelig Lucian Trumble,” He mumbled to himself. “What are you going to do with yourself?”

Twang.

The sound echoed off the castle walls and nearby trees. It wasn't particularly lyrical, but this type of guitar playing wasn't; such was the price of coming to a place like Hogwarts, it seemed...

That is, Jak wasn't so much playing her guitar as adjusting the strings so she could play the guitar. This castle was too damn magical for her usual guitar to work - no electricity! How did the British survive? - and so she'd had to bring her backups with her. The acoustic guitar sitting in her lap was one she hadn't really played in years - not since getting her proper bass. Which she'd brought, but it just didn't sound right...

"Damn," She said, plucking the strings. They were starting to sound much better, at least. Somehow, she was feeling rusty without having ever stopped practicing. Maybe it was the anxiety of being overseas and adjusting to this castle which was entirely unfamiliar.

Jak wasn't the sort to pay much attention to her surroundings, especially while she was focused on...well, anything. So Zel's arrival went unnoticed until she looked up for a moment to think, and spotted him. Ah. Good! A second opinion.

"Hey, you!" She said, waving - her star-dyed hair curling against her shoulders. "You! Yeah. Does this sound right to you?" She asked, and without waiting for an acknowledgement she plucked one of the strings. "Or does this sound better -" She adjusted the string and plucked it again.

When he heard the first twanging noise, Zel couldn’t help but jump. He was startled, and the noise left him shaking. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. When Zel realized that, of all things, someone was playing a guitar, he visibly relaxed. Good. At least he knew what that strange noise was. He was about to get prepared to study, when he heard a voice. He looked around, and realized that a young woman was addressing him. Zel nervously ran his fingers through his white hair and gave her an awkward, forced smile.

She wanted his opinion, good. He was relieved that was alls he wanted from him.

Zel had an appreciation for music, and he respected those who were talented enough, or patient enough to pick up an instrument and learn how to play it. He was not one of those people who were musically talented. He had no idea how to tell which notes sounded right, and which notes weren’t. However, the first one did not sound… Good.

“Um…” Zel hesitated, looking at his hands. ‘I-in my unprofessional opinion…” Oh, he was feeling so nervous. This lady who had never spoken to him before in his life was now asking him questions about music, “I- I think that maybe… The second one?” his got quieter the more he spoke, though he did not mumble. Although Zel spoke quietly, he was very articulate, albeit a bit nervous.

Jak tried the string again, and nodded. It did sound better; she just felt out of practice with her acoustic and it was hard to adjust it purely by ear. If only she hadn’t forgotten her book.

She strummed the guitar and its notes came out beautifully. She grinned. “Awesome, thanks,” she said, and then got a good look at Zel – her greenish eyes looking him up and down before she grinned in a friendly sort of manner.

“You’re from Hogwarts, aren’t ya?” She said, leaning forward with her arms crossed oon th guitar’s body. “I can tell ‘cause of your accent.” British accents were kind of a giveaway! And they sounded so awesome.

“Is it true your Headmaster’s a choclatier? He’s got a good name for it, doesn’t he? Are they any good, the ones he makes?” Jak tended to let hesitation fly over her head; a distinct lack of subtly had made her good a Quodpot but not at a lot of other things.

From Hogwarts. Um, of course he was from Hogwarts? Zel didn’t know what other school he’d go to. Though, if he lived in Germany, he supposed he could have ended up going to Durmstrang in an alternate life. This girl was strange though, and he assumed that she attended the Salem school. He was curious about her, though. He had never really interacted with students that did not attend Hogwarts. However, Zel did not really know how to act around strangers. He was horrible at asking questions, and not much better at answering them.

“Yes, I-I am from Hogwarts.” He stuttered anxiously, looking down at his hands. He was having difficulty making eye contact, and he hoped that she didn’t assume he was autistic or something. “Um… I don’t think he’s a chocolatier?”  He obviously did not understand the reference to Hershey’s chocolate. “I-if he really likes chocolate, I suppose he could…”  Zel finally looked up at Jak, obviously confused beyond comprehension. “Wh-why do you think he likes chocolate?”

Jak moved her guitar slightly so her arms weren't on the strings. "It said so in your paper. Not the boring one, the interesting one," she said. "You know?"

She was, of course, referring to the Quibbler - which, to Jak, made perfect sense. It was a lot easier to believe such things when she had no real gauge by which to judge this new country and didn't know these people. Besides, most of it did make sense to her - raised as she was by people who thought the Government was covering it all up. There was a reason that, under her thick bobbed hair, she had a pair of alien-head earrings.

Besides, the Quibbler had been right. She'd seen the centaur child running through the halls with its wings flapping. It was therefore perfectly reasonable to assume the rest was true, too![1]

"Who doesn't like chocolate?" she said cheerfully. "Most of the people I know eat that shit right up. What kind of person doesn't like chocolate?" Maybe that was why Voldemort was so evil!

She watched Zel twitch and raised an eyebrow. However, her conclusions as to the source of his twitchyness and shyness wasn't exactly on the mark. "You on somethin'?" She asked. "Didn't think they let you guys have shrooms on campus." Her tone wasn't unkind, but definitively hinted that somewhere in the back of her head, the word 'duh' featured prominently.

1.

Article

The paper?

Was she referencing The Quibbler? Everybody knew that paper was rubbish, though Zel was far too polite to inform Jak of this. After all, the last thing he wanted to do was insult somebody that he had just met.

“I don’t think the paper was right…” Zel said softly, fiddling with his thumbs. “I’m sure h-he likes chocolate, but I don’t think he makes it..” He cleared his throat and looked at Jak. This girl was fascinating, with her strange accent and rather crude manners of speech. He figured that it was a cultural difference, and that Jak deserved every bit of respect as anybody else. Still, she did stun him quite a bit.

“On something?” He sounded confused.  “Shrooms? I- I don’t know what… What are you talking about?” Zel gave Jak an incredulous look. Was she implying that he did drugs? Of course not. He was clean! He had never done a drug in his life, and he had never, ever once gotten drunk. He was as sober as they came. The idea of not being under control of his body terrified him, and that was part of what he hated about being a werewolf. As a werewolf, there is no control. Yes, there was a wolfsbane potion, but it still was not the same. Zel knew that he would never again have the same freedom that he had enjoyed before the attack.

One of the fantastic things about Salem was that most of the student body was pretty friendly - scratch that, even close. Sure, they had some sour grapes, but Kayla was pleased as punch that most of those students had stayed behind. This drastically raised her chances of, at any moment, coming upon a Salemite that she knew and loved. It also helped that Kayla had spent many happy years drifting through activity after sport after club, and so knew most of the school by face if not by name. She had her favorites, as did anyone, but Kayla was a generous, warm-hearted kinda girl, and happily forced her affection on pretty much anyone who wasn't quick enough to run away.

Today that lucky individual happened to be Jak, whom Kayla spied upon meandering out onto the grounds after her afternoon classes. She smiled at the sight of the girl's bent head, the purple stars in her hair gleaming under the sun, and sped up a skip.

Kayla threw herself down on the grass beside the other girl, letting out a happy little "oof" as she accidentally rebounded off Jak's knee. She patted it in apology, shifting in the grass, ensuring her skirt wasn't all crinkled up beneath her, and generally settling in for the long haul. Her bag, a scarred leather veteran of many such inelegant drops, nestled without complaint at her side. Her legs floated lazily up to sway in the air, modesty preserved by a pair of school-mandated black tights.

"Hey," she said cheerfully, before seeming to notice her classmate's companion. "Oh, hullo to you too. Sup?"

"It was right 'bout that horse, though," she said, as if that made up for any other inaccuracies. Which, at least to her, it did. It certainly made England sound far more interesting - half-goblin fashion designers! Centaur pony...things! Merpeople! Oh, yes. "And about that fish girl. The green girl with eyes like..." She made an attempt to gesture Heliotrope's weird eyes but it most likely made sense onto to her.

She smirked at his look though. "Oh, chill. I was just yanking your chain," she said, waving a hand. "You're just twitchy -" She was going to add like you've got the munchies or something - and then Kayla arrived, which made Jak jump when Kayla hit her knee. She adjusted her guitar to make room regardless, grinning. "Hey," she greeted, arms going back to resting atop of the guitar's body.

Kayla's question made Jak realize she didn't know Twitchy Kid's name either. "Yeah," she echoed Kayla. "What's your name?"

What? Another person? He didn’t recognize her, and she seemed rather friendly towards this guitar-playing American, so he assumed that she was also from the Salem school. Zel laughed nervously and gave her a welcoming wave. He was far more comfortable talking to people one on one, and once he was in a group of three or more people, he got nervous. So nervous. He didn’t know what to do in groups, and he hated making people feel like third wheels so much, that often times Zel made himself the third wheel by default.

“My name’s Zel.” He said softly, as if speaking any louder would cause his voicebox to burst. He looked between the two Salem ladies nervously, “What’re your names?” Zel didn’t know what to say. Obviously, the two were friends. At least, they weren’t both males. Zel dealt far better with females than males, for males could be rather crude. He hoped that they wouldn’t make any more insinuations that he did drugs, because he was the last person in the world who would become purposely intoxicated.  "I... I take it that you two ladies are friends?"

The Hogwarts boy Jak was talking to gave a nervous sort of laugh and a wave, and Kayla's answering smile lit up her whole face. What a little cutie! She felt the very strong urge to coo over him, so soft-spoken and so shy. He was so pale... quite pretty, really. She didn't tell him that though, because boys generally didn't appreciate that sort of thing.

"I'm Kayla," she said easily, swinging her legs in the air. "Lovely to meet you, Zel. What House are you in? I haven't gotten them all straight yet." They had sort of weird names - well, they were based on wizards after all. Kayla, raised in a muggle household, still wasn't very good with remembering some of the more outlandish names in the wizarding world. This whole animal business was.... cute, probably, with their badgers and their snakes and things. Kayla liked animals, she really did, but wearing a badger on one's chest seemed to her to be a little odd. This heraldic animal thing'd never really caught on in America.

"I... I take it that you two ladies are friends?"

"We're classmates," she said, as if it was the same thing (it was). But she specified for the sake of the stranger: "Yeah, Jak's cool. How is it here, between the students?"

Oh, classmates. So that meant they knew each other, but they weren’t particularly, close, right? “I-I’m in Hufflepuff.” He explained, wondering if the students from Salem also had houses. “It’s the one with the badger.” It was the best way Zel could explain it. What else was he supposed to do? Explain the qualities of a Hufflepuff? They weren’t exactly badass attributes. Yes, Hufflepuff had produced the least amount of dark wizards out of the houses, but he didn’t feel like that was exactly a huge accomplishment. Of course if you cared about others, you wouldn’t feel the need to dominate your will over others.

“Between the students? Err.. It depends?” Zel laughed nervously, “I-I don’t really talk much to others but… I have a friend named Ligeia. She’s really nice. I guess… Slytherins and Gryffindors  have a rivalry… Um.” He paused, not quite sure what else to say. “I guess everyone has their own cliques.” This American student seemed nice enough, and the two of them were so… Outgoing. It made conversation much easier in some ways, and more difficult in others. If you’re with another shy person, there’s no need to speak much. When a shy person is with a talkative person, the silences could often be uncomfortable.

"Does Salem have different houses like Hogwarts does?"

Hogwarts had strange, strange house names, Jak decided. Salem's made sense, but...Hufflepuff? Gryffindor? They were famous wizards too, she supposed. They'd learned about them in school. Jak had even done a report in her Freshman year about how alliterative names had once been common and had used the Hogwarts Founders as examples. But still...what the hell was a Hufflepuff, exactly? Other than a yellow badger.

She puffed her chest up when Kayla confirmed that Jak was, in fact, cool. It'd been a goal of hers through school to have the younger years look up to her! The fact that Kayla liked pretty much everyone was ignored in this particular case.

"Yeah and no," She said. "We've got like..named dorms? But they're just chosen for like, rooms and stuff. We don't have uniform colors like you guys," she said. "They're split by grade, n' named after famous wizards. Merlin and Ptolemy and that sort of thing. It's pretty cool. And they've got their own like...culture? But it's not official. You just get your dorm assignment and bam, there you go."

She rested her arm against her guitar, propping her chin up in her hand. "What 'bout your houses? Everyone's been saying the Slytherins are all snobs and stuff like that. You sort by personality, yeah? What'd you get picked for?"