Annie Enright wasn't homesick, exactly, but she had gotten herself into the habit of emitting a sudden, wistful sigh every few minutes for no apparent reason since she'd woken up, as though longing for some far off and intangible thing. She supposed she fancied herself a bit like a heroine in a romance novel, or a princess in a fairytale – not during the exciting part after the 'Once Upon a Time,' but during the part before that, when the girl just sits around, waiting for her chance to become beloved or extraordinary. It was hard work, sitting on the cusp. She felt like she had to be ready for anything, but it was possible that nothing would happen at all. Even in her downtime she felt frenzied. It was a feeling specific to being at school, whether it was Hogwarts or the familiar Salem Institute. It was still present at home, but it was a slowed down, under-the-skin kind of feeling, and she missed that sense of near-calm that accompanied being back home in the woods. There were only a few things she could do to recreate it. She'd learned the hard way that crying in her dorm was not helpful, so instead she gathered her little brown leather pouch, cradled it in her arms, and headed out onto the grounds to try and distract herself.

It  was a short lived expedition. It had only taken her about five minutes of getting snowed upon before she decided fresh air wasn't worth the hype and trudged back inside. It wasn't even the pretty, inspiring kind of snow that may have inspired some pretty doodle – it was just fast melting flurries. She paused by a window on the ground floor, the snowflakes melting slowly as they clung to the soft fibers of her gray knit winter hat. She'd felt inadequately bundled when she'd been outdoors, but inside she felt burdened by her layers, and made haste to remove the damp outerwear, appraising her reflection in a windowpane. She sighed. Ugh, if she was still sighing then her plan definitely wasn't working! The elements were just as frazzling as any schoolwork or upcoming exam. With another sigh she draped her cloak over her arm and half-walked, half slid her way into the great hall on the wet soles of her boots. She wasn't optimistic that this was really going to work. Decompressing publicly was difficult. It was hard to pretend you weren't homesick when surrounded by difference – different people, different scenery... and yet nothing novel enough to snap her out of whatever funk she was in.

It was a pretty room, as far as almost-monotonous indoor spaces went, with its cloud sheathed ceiling reflecting the sky. She plunked herself down at the Salem table, happy to finally feel settled, and set her leather clutch in front of her. The interior had been magically enlarged to be as efficient for carrying materials as possible, and she reached inside to yank out her sketch diary, then her pencil case, both of which were tucked inside. She didn't know what to draw. Horses, probably – when in doubt, go with what you know, right? - but before she could even commit to something to doodle, her fingers were fumbling over the metal latch on her narrow, tin pencil box, which opened suddenly, spilling its contents. Her erasers stayed where they fell, and a few of her pencils didn't go far, but one determined pencil seemed as though it had finally found its opportunity to escape and explore the world, and it rolled, and rolled, and rolled...

And the pink cheeked Annie chased after it, leaving her workspace cluttered, like the pencil box had exploded there. “Oh shoot, shoot,” she mumbled, her face scrunched as she scurried off in pursuit of the rogue drawing implement. Was this a joke? She looked around, half inclined to think someone was teasing her, magicking the pencil just to get her goat... which reminded her she had a wand. A delicate and precisely cast summoning charm was enough to see the pencil fly through the air and land squarely... ouch, okay, squarely on the floor... after bouncing off of her forehead.

Today was... a day.

Rayven was sitting at the Hufflepuff table conversing with her friends. She had been talking with them about the tournament and giggling about all the new cute boys at the school. Rayven wasn't really interested in any of them, but it was fun to gossip and giggle. She had no real clique she was part of and tended to mingle with anyone who was around. She would wave at friends as they came through the doors and kept an eye out for a few specific people.

When Annie came through the door, she immediately noticed something wrong. She knew that look all to well. During her first couple years at Hogwarts she had been homesick herself. She watched as Annie walked to the table, shying from the conversation she was having. She saw Annie sit down and saw the trouble Annie had with her things. She looked around to see if anyone was using their magic to taunt and tease the new girl. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she looked back to Annie in time to see the pencil come flying toward her.

Rayven excused herself from her table and went over to Annie. She hated seeing someone upset and having such a hard time. If she could help someone who needed a friend, she would do all she could to make the situation better. When she got to Annie, she smiled and knelt beside of her.

"Looks like you're having a rough day. Need any help?" she said with sincerity and concern.

Annie sighed. Again. It was beginning to become a trend, and she wasn't certain that she could have stopped it if she tried. Sometimes a girl just needed to sigh non-stop, because it was a step up from bursting into tears in the middle of a well-populated public space. Weekends just weren't the best for her, without classes to distract her and a fairly prescribed daily rhythm to follow. At her own school there were things to do, because it really felt like her space – she had horses to visit, haunts to frequent, and a much larger variety of friends to spend time with. But Hogwarts? She couldn't shake the feeling that she was just a visitor here, even with her fancy little dorm space and her school's own table in the great hall. She was overly conscious of her outsider status, which made it difficult for the timid Mainer to really embrace her weekends. She was already feeling sensitive, so a pencil to the face, as innocent as it was, seemed catastrophic.

And someone was walking over to her. Greeeaaaaat. Annie winced openly, instantly humiliated that someone had seen her bungle an easy job so badly. She was supposed to be an ambassador from her school, and there she was getting in the way of her own summoning charm in plain sight. They were going to send her home, she knew it – any day now they were going to tell her they'd made a mistake and send her and her stupid pencils back to Salem to die of shame. In fact, maybe someone had hired this girl to tell her so right now. Maybe this girl was the Head of the Hogwarts Department of Bad News and she was here to put her out of her misery. Except she wasn't – because Annie recognized her from classes. She was really nice.... and really cool... and it only made Annie want to die more.

”Looks like you're having a rough day. Need any help?”

“I'm, um...” Annie stammered, looking uncomfortable and seemingly unaware that no one wrinkly arrangement of her features would lead to the onset of the power of instant invisibility. “It's okay. I'm just... I'm a mess.” Snatching the pencil that caused all of the trouble she rose to her feet, dusting off her knees. She bit down on her lip as she turned her head, glancing back at the chaotic workspace she'd left behind. Most people wouldn't have thought too much of it – it was pretty tame, as far as messes went – but there was an eraser on the bench, and for some reason that was the worst thing in the world, and Annie was overtaken by a sudden compulsion to set it on the table top. “I should straighten my things, probably. I didn't think I was bothering anybody. I didn't, um... hi, sorry.” She was beyond frazzled. “It's just... my pencil box?”

Rayven looked to the scattered pencil box. Sh felt bad for the girl. Here she was in a new school with people she didn't know and probably felt out of place. Rayven had seen Annie around the school and hadn't seen her with many people from Hogwarts. From the look on Annie's face, even though it was relatively early, it had been a very long day and this pencil box episode was the last straw. The poor girl looked like she was about to break at any moment.

"Looks like you were having a bit of trouble with it. I can help you gather your things if you'd like. Your name is... Annie right? I'm Rayven."

Rayven couldn't stand to see people having a hard time like this. She wanted to help Annie feel welcome and feel like she was part of the school. Hogwarts was, after all, the host school of the tournament. What kind of student would she be if she didn't make their new visitors feel welcome and as close to home as possible? She smiled a warm, welcoming smile as she offered assistance.

“Yes, Annie Enright,” she spoke when the other girl asked, though there was still something a little bit crazed in her eyes. It was like the explosion of her typically well-kept pencil box had triggered some latent obsessive compulsive tendency in her – she just felt anxious about taking up so much space at her mostly empty table, as though a rogue eraser on the bench was going to get her into massive trouble. Even so, she stuck out her hand to shake, not wanting to be impolite. She got occasional slack for that – some called shaking hands too old fashioned, but when she didn't shake hands she always feared she'd get called out for being rude. “It's really good to meet you. Sorry, I'm just... I'm a mess. But it's okay. It's okay, I'll get it,” she spoke, as much to herself as to the other girl. Her words were functioning as a mantra intended to get her through this small but significant catastrophe. Now she felt pressure, not only to organize herself, but to prevent this nice girl from thinking she was out of her mind.

“We're in a few classes together, right?” Annie asked in an attempt to make conversation, even as she scurried over to the bench to finally retrieve that blasted eraser and set it on the table top. The rest of the pencils that had fallen were on the ground just under the table. For obvious reasons she wasn't especially eager to summon them to herself (she made a mental note to practice summoning and catching next time she was working on practical wandwork on her own – that was just too simple to still be messing up), so she clambered to her knees and reached an arm under the table to gather up her things. “I'm such an idiot,” she remarked as she fished them out one by one, reaching with the very tips of her fingers for the pencils furthest from where she sat. “I just can't believe I dropped all of them. And now I'm on the floor.” Hand eye coordination was not her strongest skill, but pointing out the obvious was up there with breathing air. Taking the last escaped pencil in hand she stood up again and returned them to little tin box where they lived. “Okay,” she said, “Okay.”

Rayven shook Annie's hand politely when her had was offered. She couldn't help but notice what seemed like panic on her face. All this fuss over a little mess? There had been many messes at Hogwarts. Almost all of them much worse than this! An exploding pencil box was certainly nothing to be so conscious about. Rayven watched as Annie gathered her things, afraid to grab anything. Annie seemed to be quite meticulous about the placement of things and Rayven didn't want to offend her or upset her anymore than she already was. This girl needs to lighten up a bit. She needs someone to let her know she's not a total outsider here, Rayven thought to herself.

"Accidents happen. People spill things or drop things or run into people all the time. In fact, just yesterday, I was on my way to class. We had a test so I was going over my notes on the way to make sure I remembered it all. A very last minute cram I guess you could say. Well, I wasn't paying attention to where I was going and I bumped right into another student. It wouldn't have been so bad if we just bumped shoulders, but it was like a head on collision. I dropped all my books and my note cards went flying everywhere. I ended up having to chase one almost out the window! We all do silly things and some things just happen that we can't control. I wouldn't stress about it too much."

Rayven smiled hoping she could make Annie feel better. Maybe showing that she was a bit clumsy as well would help Annie not feel quite as bad about the situation. Things -did- happen all the time after all. There were many more things to worry about than a pencil box and a rogue pencil or two.

“Your note cards?” Annie asked incredulously, her face falling in sympathy. She was certainly exhibiting some kind of empathy, but it wasn't clear whether it was for Rayven or for her note cards. “Oh, gosh,” she sighed. “If that happened to me, I would stress about it for sure. I'd cry,” Annie insisted with a firm insistence, about as earnestly as you could get. The girl's relationship to her note cards was not your typical relationship. She adored her cards like she adored nothing else. They were self-correcting, for a start, each one individually charmed and complete with illustrations. They were not something to joke about. She studied them with a fervor, the way some people worshiped, and she kept a strict rotation so she was always aware of which cards she knew backwards and forwards and which she had to work on. A story about note cards flying out the window was, for Annie, the equivalent to a horror story. Some people feared werewolves or dragons or death. Annie Enright feared confusing her 'to learn' pile for her 'learned' pile the day before an exam. 

“I don't mean to be so, um... so much like this. It just annoys me so much when things don't go right, and then I can't help it,” she admitted, taking a seat on the bench. Maybe she wasn't doing what she'd intended to be doing when she left the dorm earlier, but she was certainly distracted. “I was just planning on drawing a little, but now I'm thinking about my note cards upstairs,” she admitted with an anxious little laugh. Sometimes she wondered if she might be better off with her beloved note cards buried in the ground where she couldn't touch them or fix them or think about them. They calmed her when she had them – they had all the answers, after all – but when they weren't in hand, she felt like she was missing a limb.

Rayven sat down next to Annie. Her story didn't have the intended effect, but at least Annie didn't look as if she was about to cry anymore. That had to be an accomplishment it itself. She didn't understand how such little things could have such a huge impact on someones life. She could understand if there had been -a lot- of bad things that happened that day. Sometimes that would happen. It happened to her more than a time or two. You wake up and nothing seems to go right. No matter what you do, everything seems to be working against you. The days when Murphy decides to take over. It was still early in the day though. There was no way that many things could have gone wrong so quickly.

"I'm sure your note cards are patiently waiting for you in your room", she said confidently. Rayven didn't sound like she was making fun of Annie or mocking her, but like a parent reassuring another parent that their child was fine in day care.

"Sometimes things happen that are out of our control. That's part of what makes life interesting. Sure it would be great if we could control every element of our existence, but without imperfection and chaos, we wouldn't know order and perfection. When things happen that you don't expect, try to find something positive about it. Everything happens for a reason. You may have to look really hard for that reason at times, but it's always there."

Rayven smiled and patted Annie's arm. She hoped her words had eased her anxiety and gave her something else to focus on other than the catastrophe that seemed to have just happened.

“Find something positive?” Annie asked, seeming to consider this. Her lips were pursed together, her eyes slightly squinted in thought. She was a girl who panicked over wrinkled sheets of parchment. Thinking about the positive aspects of her daily crises did not come naturally to her. She was generally too busy having mini heart attacks and actively worrying to stop and contemplate whether or not any of those crises were blessings in disguise. After a few long seconds of tortured thought her face relaxed and she shrugged. Granted, she was coming from a generally negative, defeated sort of mindset, but she wasn't immediately buying into Rayven's mantra. What was positive about things she'd worked hard to organize coming undone in one clumsy slip of an uncoordinated hand? It was just a bummer and, frankly, she was already over it. It was just the anxiety of living in the in-between, trapped in an odd, entropic space, that got to her. It was overwhelming. Where did positivity fit in?

She looked down at her sketch diary, which sat before her on the table. It was a handsome looking book, hardbound with a mostly unadorned, cream-colored cover. There was something pristine about it that seemed to suit Annie nicely – it was plain but functional, with just a little bit of golden detail on an embossed portion of the spine. She wanted to open it, and would have if she was alone – there was something calming about quickly glancing at each page, with each detail where it was meant to be, every line intentional. It was a world where she had complete control. Part of her wanted to open it anyway – she was proud of her work – but there was something tugging at her insides, reminding her to be humble. To flip through would be a silent version of bragging. It always lead to some sort of conversation, and usually an uncomfortable one. Her work was just as obsessive as her nature. She ran her fingers over the cover of the book but kept it shut, conscious of the fact that she was being quiet and awkward and likely keeping Rayven from doing something far more fun or cool than sitting around with her. She sighed again.

“Thank you for...” she started, then trailed off, smiled down at the tabletop a little, and then looked up again, “Thank you for being so nice.” It was a weird thing to say, and she knew it, but it couldn't possibly be more awkward than silence. “You don't have to sit with me, though, if you don't want to. I know I'm not really, um.” She might have best finished that sentence with 'great at conversation', but it didn't occur to her. What was was thinking was 'cool enough' – because, in addition to being nice, Rayven was cool. Annie could just tell. Her entire demeanor was the opposite of Annie's, and that meant she was doing something right. “But... and, okay, this is a weird question, but how did you make your hair like that? I think my mom would kill me.”

Rayven laughed. People asked her this question a lot and she was never quite sure how to answer it. Back home, it was nothing special. A lot of people had their hair done like this in her neighborhood but here it was a little different. She was the only one she knew at the school who had hair like this.

"It was a little difficult. My mom helped me do it the summer before my fourth year. My hair was down to my behind and when we were done, it was around my shoulder blades. It was a lot of work and a lot of product and I couldn't do anything with it for the first month or so. I'm use to it now. A lot of people where I live do their hair like this."

She smiled and watched Annie pet the book as they talked. She had seen her with the book open on a regular basis. While Annie drew, it seemed so natural. Rayven often wondered if the pencils Annie used were charmed in some way. Her movements always seemed so fluid and perfect. It seemed like a nice escape. Hers was the rain. Rayven could wait for it to rain before she escaped but Annie seemed to need to escape more often.

"I see you with your art book out a lot. You seem to really enjoy it. I'd love to see some of your work if you don't mind showing me. I love art."

Annie instinctively ran a hand over her hair as the other girl explained her process, combing her fingers through to the bottom of her plain brown locks. She let her fingers linger there, idly rubbing the ends of her shoulder-length tresses between her fingers. Her hair had been that way for as long as she could remember – the same color, the same length, and more or less the same style. Every time she saw someone with super long hair, colorful hair, interesting hair – anything outside the norm, really – she felt a strange sort of envy, even knowing that she didn't really have the nerve (or permission) to do anything like that to her own hair. “My mother would never let me do anything like that,” Annie admitted, dropping her hand from her hair and back down to the cover of her book. “She won't even let me grow it long, but I wish I could. Not that long – just a little longer, so I can have, um, you know, a nice braid that goes down my back. I always thought those looked pretty.” Coming from a well-to-do family, one might think that Annie would be short on things to wish for, but as it turned out, there were plenty of completely free things that were out of her reach.

”I see you with your art book out a lot. You seem to really enjoy it. I'd love to see some of your work if you don't mind showing me. I love art.”

“Oh, me too!” she gushed, “So, so much!” The change of subject seemed to wake Annie up a bit. Even if she was self conscious about her own work, her love of drawing was still something she could talk about with over-enthusiastic confidence. Even so, she faltered for a moment, frozen with her finger stuck inside of the book's signatures, ready to open it but unwilling to do it just yet. “Okay, don't look, hold on,” she demanded as she leafed through, trying to find something she wasn't embarrassed to show off. She was only willing to bear so much of her soul in front of near strangers. The pages of the book were made of good rag paper, firm and clearly high quality. Some pages housed simple graphite drawings, but a few held bright shocks of color, and in a few places there were photographs or clippings pasted in.

“Okay,” she said finally, opening to a two page spread filled with winged horse drawings. Out of all of the subjects she drew, she felt most confident in rendering horses. It wasn't a cohesive piece – rather, it was full of little, highly detailed studies. There was a lot of pencil work, but she'd worked into a few of the drawings with gouache and charcoal. It wasn't the best piece she had to show off, but it made her happy – it reminded her of home. Maybe it wasn't too late to find that calm place inside of her after all.

“My mother said that if I do well while I'm here then I can spend part of the summer with my brother, which is a really big deal because, um.. well, it's just a really big deal. But my brother said that if I come and stay, I can do this summer camp, sort of? Near where he lives? It's at a muggle art college, and it's, um, well it's... you can take classes. Real ones. Well, there aren't grades, but they teach you. My brother really wants me to go there when I graduate.” Clearly they'd hit on a fine topic, because Annie couldn't stop chattering, a very excited undertone to her voice. The summer program was supposed to be a secret – from her mother, anyway – but every time she thought about it she just wanted to jump up and down. “I think I'd like to be an illustrator, but I'm not really sure yet.”

Rayven looked at the drawing and admired the fine details. The artwork was absolutely amazing. Far beyond what she was capable of doing. Better than some of the drawings some of her friends could do as well. Annie was apparently being quite modest about her skill as an artist. She had obviously been drawing for quite a while and had honed her talents. She didn't understand why Annie would be so nervous and shy about showing people what she could do.

"I thing being an illustrator would suit you. This is beautiful, Annie! You really have a lot of talent! If you end up illustrating a book, you'll have to let me know. I hope you are able to go see your brother and go to that school. I'm sure you would do great and really enjoy something like that."

Rayven wanted to see more of Annie's work but was afraid to flip the pages. She was actually afraid to touch the book. With how meticulous Annie was about everything, touching the pages may send her into another frenzy if she touched it wrong. She also didn't want to flip to something that Annie wasn't comfortable with anyone seeing.

"I would like to see more if you would be willing to show me." Rayven smiled. She was happy to see Annie seemingly relaxing a bit finally.

“I really, really want to go, but I don't know if it'll work out,” Annie admitted a tad sadly, because she knew how fickle her mother could be, and also how much getting one's hopes up could hurt. The opportunity to stay with her brother was, without a single doubt, a parental bribe, as if dangling something she desperately wanted over her head would be enough to ensure she snagged herself a spot in the tournament. It was more pressure than she usually put on herself, which was really saying something. The reason a few weeks with Chris was such a grand reward was because her parents were almost entirely estranged from her brother these days. He didn't even come home for Christmas anymore (though Chris, with the assistance of his muggleborn boyfriend, had supplied most of Annie's favorite, albeit totally secret, Christmas presents each year, straight from the hallowed halls of the Providence Place Mall – she was looking forward to some new muggle loungewear).

“I'm not really, um... well, um, I'm not used to muggles so much.” That was the part that scared her. If she came off as a space cadet around her magical peers, how was she going to look to real muggles? Were they going to think her strange when they assessed her portfolio, given how prevalent winged horses were as subjects? Was it even legal to send those drawings to them? Luckily, Rayven brought the focus of the conversation back to the drawings at hand, single-handedly preventing Annie from entering a vortex of unending panic... again.

 ”I would like to see more if you would be willing to show me.”

“Really?” she asked, her voice high pitched and laced with genuine surprise. “Um, let me see,” she spoke as she flipped the page, only to reveal – shock of all shocks – more horses. These weren't the majestic winged beasts rendered on the previous  page, however. This was, well... a depiction of a wingless, fuzzy pinto with big eyes. “I like animals a lot,” she explained, studying her own work with a pleasant little smile. “If I'm not an illustrator, I kind of want to be a vet, like, a farm vet?” she explained, “But my dad doesn't think I should. I never told him that I wanted to be an artist, though. He'd hate that even more. He's not really... I don't know,” she trailed off, shrugging. “But, um, these are just some sketches of my mini, Lexie.  She's just my little pet. You can't really tell, since it's, um, a drawing, but she's really, really tiny.” Lexie was  the queen of her family's little petting zoo – in a world where huge winged horses were common place, the lone miniature horse was the anomaly, drawing all sorts of attention and questions. “I really miss my animals sometimes.”

"I can see how you would. I have a dog at my parents place and I miss her all the time. There is something about animals that make them better than humans. They listen and they don't judge you. I like my dog much better than some of the people here."

Rayven laughed. She understood why Annie would draw these things. It was something she could relate to and something that probably made her feel a little closer to home. There was nothing wrong with that. If Rayven could draw to this extent, she would probably draw pictures of her dog quite often. Instead she settled for the pictures she took when she was at home.

"That's why I'm taking the care of magical creatures class. I get to learn how to take care of them and I get to play with them and pet them and everything. Not to mention I love being in nature and the class is typically outside. I heard we may get to see some Pegasus this year. I'm sure you'll love that with how much you adore horses."

Rayven looked at the pictures detail again. She knew a charm that would make the horse move on the paper. She thought about doing it to try to make Annie smile, but changed her mind. She didn't know how Annie would react to someone "tampering" with her drawing. She charmed her friends drawings quite a bit, but she didn't know Annie well enough to know if it would be safe or not. 

Annie smiled a bashful but conspiratorial sort of smile and looked askance at Rayven. “I like my animals better than everyone,” she admitted with a little giggle, knowing it was the sort of anti-social thing you weren't supposed to admit to other humans, but she couldn't deny that it was the truth, especially since the Hufflepuff girl had said it first. She averted her eyes, still smiling softly, and looked back down at her little sketches of Lexie, wishing she could go home and see the real thing. “She's really funny. She's a little horse who thinks she's a big horse. She's always trotting around her enclosure like she has somewhere to be. She's kind of like a dog, I guess.” Puckering her lips, she made a little kissy noise at the paper, as if expecting the miniature horse to wake up and walk up to her so she could give her a pet.

”I heard we may get to see some Pegasus this year. I'm sure you'll love that with how much you adore horses.”

“Winged horses, you mean?” Annie asked, her eyes growing wild as the corners of her mouth rose upward excitedly. “There are going to be some here?” she asked, flipping back in the book to the previous page, where the fully grown winged creatures were  frozen in their poses, some wings tucked, others stretched out. “I don't, um, I don't know if you knew this, but my house... well, my family... I mean, where I live..” she rambled, getting tongue tied in her excitement. She paused, took a breath, and tried again. “We keep winged horses,” she spat out finally. “Where I live. We have stables right on our property, and this one,” she said, pointing to one of the horses on the page, “Well, he's not mine. He's kind of mine. Well, he is, when I'm home... but he gets shown when I'm not there, which is most of the year..but anyway, his name is Hexes. I wish I had a photograph to show you instead. He's really beautiful.” The sketches featuring the Granian gelding were well done, but weren't quite photo-realistic. It was clear, however, that Annie knew a thing or two about equine anatomy.

“What I'd really like to see is a unicorn,” Annie admitted a tad wistfully. “I've never seen one up close. Well, um, I've never seen one at all. Have you?” she asked. She'd be incredibly jealous if Rayven said yes, but she was fascinated by the creatures and couldn't help asking.