Outside the Slytherin common room, about 3:00 in the afternoon

"Ant-eo-cula-tia. Ante-o-ku-latea. On-teo-cool-a-ta."

Dione threw up her hands in frustration, cursing in the loudest thought she could muster. When she got her hands on the bleeding fool of a prefect who thought the Anteoculatia hex would make a brilliant password, she'd wring his neck. Oh sure, it was all well and good for the people with working tongues, but her? She'd been trapped out here a good twenty minutes trying to wrench a proper pronunciation out of her translation artifact. The wall, stubborn as ever, remained closed.

There was nothing for it, then. She would have to wait for someone else to come along and open the door for her. Dione turned her back on the wall and slid to the ground, clutching her schoolbag against her chest. Tears of frustration pooled in her eyes. This was so...so stupid. She was better than this. It just wasn't fair.

Why was Lexi down here in the first place? She started by taking a walk around the castle for some exercise and found herself near the Slytherin common room's. Awkward. But she kept walking, because it wasn't illegal to walk around, even if you were near the house who pretty much hates your house.

But she spotted Dione outside the doors, curled up on the ground against the wall. She looked frustrated, but Lexi wasn't really too enthusiastic to run over and offer help. After all, it seemed like whatever Lexi did, Dione would never approve of it. Her blood wasn't pure enough, her magic wasn't good enough, and apparently scarlet and gold were terrible colors.

This is Lexi we're talking about though, and so she walked over to see if she could help. "Dione? Are you alright? Do you need something?"

Of all the people to come around at a time like this, Dione had not been expecting McGee. Hunter, possibly -- the nerdy cousin of their pair was Hufflepuff, after all, and their cozy little hobbit-hole of a common room wasn't supposed to be much further up than the Slytherin dungeons -- but how odd to find a girl so proud of the scarlet-and-gold down here.

Dione dabbed her eyes before looking up, leaving her eyes a bit raw-looking. "Common room. I can't get in," she signed, lifting her head so that McGee could more clearly see the gem as it buzzed with each word. "Strange new password. A spell. A hex. My artifact was not made for Latin.

"What are you doing here." There was no such thing as a question mark in sign language, so the words sounded like a statement even as she pointed at McGee and curiously cocked her head. "Not snooping, I hope."

Lexi held her hands up, "No I'm not snooping. Just wandering around." She said a bit defensively, she realized that Dione didn't mean for her words to come out so harshly, but with an artifact speaking for you, it was hard to get your point across. Or at least that's what she assumed.

"I don't think you'd want me to help, I'm not supposed to know your password..." She said, feeling totally useless in the situation. What was she supposed to do? Have Dione tell her the password? It was against the rules to know other houses passwords, right? But maybe they'd be changing it soon. Or at least they would if they knew a Gryffindor knew it.

"D'ya think they'd change it after I helped you? I could try saying the password and see if it opens up. Or does it only allow Slytherins to open the door?"

Dione shook her head. "There is a schedule. Password changes every fortnight. Just changed. Won't change again."

Besides, it wouldn't do to let a Gryffindor in on the password, even if it'd been about to change the next day. Slytherin already had the dubious honor of being the only Hogwarts house to ever get broken into, even if it was by Harry bleeding Potter, and she had no interest in repeating that embarrassing incident. She'd come to Hogwarts to restore Slytherin's honor, not ruin it.

Sighing, Dione stood gracefully from the floor and brushed off her skirt. If she was stuck anyway and McGee was going to pity her, she might as well make the most of it. A werewolf wasn't the best connection in the world, but it was still a connection. "Suppose I will have to come back later, with others. May I wander with you."

Dessa barreled down the hallway, following the flash she'd seen of Lexi's red hair and breathing heavily. She hardly noticed when the windows became less and less frequent, and the air suddenly took on that feeling of slight pressure that Dessa associated with the Potions classroom. She was determined to catch Lexi, because Lexi had a book she needed.

Okay, to be honest with herself, it was more like because Dessa was just extremely bored. And doing homework just wasn't cutting it. Besides, how was she supposed to write her Charms essay without the very important book that Lexi had borrowed?

Careening around a corner, Dessa let out a whoop as Lexi finally came into view, and she ran up behind her friend and looped her arms around her. "Hellloooo!" she sang, "It's--" she skidded to a stop when she noticed two things. The first was that Lexi was standing oddly still for someone in the middle of a random hallway. The second was that she was not alone, but in fact accompanied by Dione, the Slytherin who signed to speak. Her face burned with embarrassment as she unwound her hug and gave a jaunty wave. "Oh, hi. Erm...sorry." she glanced back and forth between Lexi and Dione. "What's up, guys?"

"A Gryffindor invasion of Slytherin, it looks like," Blossom said as he came around the corner.  "Not meaning to be rude but aren't you two a little out of your normal wandering range?"  Even with the statement that it wasn't meant to be rude, it sounded rude, even to Blossom but in front of the Slytherin door, he wasn't exactly going to apologize.

He nodded to Dione and tried to surreptitiously sign the word 'Problem?' to her but he was by no means a master of the digital language and had to sign each letter, which made it rather obvious.  Once he got the hang of it, he was quite certain it would make an ideal secret language.

"Yeah sure, I don't really know where I'm-" Lexi started. But she was cut off with a bear hug from Dessa. She stumbled forward ever so slightly with the momentum of the hug. "It's okay Dessa. Dione just got stuck out here and we were trying to figure out a way to get her into the common room."

"A Gryffindor invasion of Slytherin, it looks like," Blossom said. Lexi raised an eyebrow, "We're not that far out of my normal wandering range. I like to walk around and know where everything is."

But Blossom was busy signing to Dione, crude letter-by-letter movements. At one point, Lexi would've known them, but she had given up on sign language after her aunt had tried to teach her.

Dessa grinned widely at Lexi, then rolled her eyes when Rose  popped up in all his usual pompous glory. "Don't worry," she replied, "We have no desire to gain access to your common room. I would much rather be..." she glanced at her surroundings, "Above ground."

She returned her focus to Dione, but saw that the Slytherin girl was focusing on Rose's hands, as he crudely shaped them around the letters of the sign language alphabet, clearly thinking that he was being subtle.

Dessa wasn't sure what she thought of Dione. The girl was quiet--and Dessa didn't mean that as some sort of rude joke. The Slytherin would rarely speak up in class, and she could count on one hand the number of conversations they'd had, more often than not simply in passing. The very fact that she was a Slytherin was enough to set Dessa on edge, but she knew that she ought to continue tamping down that part of her that naturally wanted to distrust anyone in green and silver. Regardless of whether they were friends, Dessa figured that being locked out of your own common room was punishment enough for whatever evil Dione might be secretly considering, so she cocked her head and asked exactly how this had happened.

Dione blinked in mild surprise as first Share and then Blossom appeared, cutting off their growing conversation. One hand covered her mouth delicately. It was an reflect she'd developed for surprise, masking any instinctive mouth-movements so she did not reveal her scars.

Blossom's slow finger-spelling drew her eye. She shook her head in response. The presence of a truly pure-blooded classmate mellowed out that of the mudblood and the were, and it wouldn't do to alienate herself from her female peers, even if they were beneath her.

"Stupid password," she signed, in response to both Dessa and Blossom. "In Latin. My artifact can not pronounce it." She shrugged, as though it didn't really matter, though it was hard to hide the fact that it upset her. "There is nothing to be done about it until the next password change. I will have to stay close to other snakes."

There was no word for 'Slytherin' or any of the other Hogwarts houses, so she tended to use their animal mascots in place of the name to save time. She cocked her head at Blossom -- she hoped he wouldn't blurt out the password now, not while the Gryffindors were around -- and quietly observed them all a moment before signing, "Might we walk, still. It would be nice to talk." She finger-quoted around the sound for 'talk' and, though the sign had no translation, she trusted it got her point across.

"That's fine by me, if you two want to walk as well you can join us." Lexi said, pointing to Blossom and Dessa. "I was just walking around down here and trying to get oriented with the rest of the castle, although I'm sure as Slytherin's you know your way around here pretty well."

She smiled, albeit a bit lopsided, but it was still a smile. Not that she always trusted the green and silver clad classmates, but they were trustworthy and good people overall. It made no point to be enemies in the first year of school and have to hate the same people for seven years. Mortal enemies got boring after awhile... if you could believe it.

Blossom shrugged.  "I've got nothing I need to do right now," he said.  "Are we going to stay inside or get some fresh air?"  He considered extending an elbow to Dione but thought better of it.  She wouldn't be able to talk if she had a hand wrapped around his arm.

He suspected that Dione had made her suggestion so that he wouldn't be tempted to open the door for her in the presence of the two Gryffindor.  She needn't have worried.  As much as he admitted to a grudging respect for the two girls, he wasn't about to offer them a free pass into the Slytherin common room. 

"Wait! Blossom, Wait for Me!" Rico walked out of the Slytherin door, Taco perched on his shoulder like a parrot. A whole slew of first years had gathered around the door, including his sister's roommate and Dessa and Lexi. Rico said hello to all of them and then asked. "Where you pingüinos[1] going?"

He turned his head and scratched behind Taco's ears. He purred contentedly. "You guys wanna go skip some rocks or something by the lake?" He like skipping rocks, at home when he wasn't in the woods , where he wasn't allowed to go at school, he was throwing rocks at the lake's glassy surface.

Sometimes a few mermaids would pop their heads out and throw the rocks back and he would throw rocks back and forth with them, if they were lucky today, while the clouds were still out, they might see one.

1.

penguins

"Hey, Rico. We were actually thinking of trying to further familiarize with the layout down here. Well, Lexi and I, since all others in attendance probably know their way around down here just fine." Dessa smiled, trying to ignore the slight awkwardness that had settled about the group.

Gryffindors and Slytherins weren't known for their friendly behavior towards one another, and while there hadn't been a major altercation between them all in a while, Dessa couldn't quite tamp down the memory of what had happened the last time there'd been a gathering of first years.

She didn't want to cause a rift, however, so she tried to smile agreeably. "But erm, your idea sounds good too." Her voice sounded completely unlike her own, most likely a symptom owing to the extreme embarrassment she felt, without even a recognizable cause to assuage it. She simply wanted to keep the peace. It would be good to not dislike each other on "principle", and she was sure that they were all--she grimaced a bit just thinking this part--perfectly lovely.

Though her back was to the wall, Dione heard the enchanted door opening before any of the others, and closed her eyes with a soft sigh as it appeared. She'd been hoping to direct the Gryffindors away before the entrance to their dorm was uncovered. It closed immediately afterwards and they couldn't get in without the password, but it was the principle of the thing.

She quirked her head at the odd word Rico used to address them. He and Mercedes slipped so much Spanish into their speech, it was often hard to keep up.

"One may lead to the other," she signed in answer to Dessa and Rico's friendly exchange. "I hear there may be a corridor that opens onto the lake." Or into, technically, but that was part of the fun. She'd let a Gryffindor go first, though -- if anyone was going to fall in, it might as well be one of them.

With full knowledge that no proper lady should wander without an escort, she hook her elbow with Blossom's, leaving her hands free to sign together in front of her. She pointed to the right side of the corridor, opposite of the way McGee and Share had come. "Follow the moist. Best chance."