Ari screwed up her face, eyes tightly closed, as if the physical effort of squeezing her head would produce more ideas. It looked ridiculous, but she didn't concern herself with it, her mind was spinning, trying to latch onto any idea, or better still a good idea.

"I got it!" She yelped, eyes flying open and arms splaying towards the empty classroom's ceiling which was lit by the last of the day's light. Then as soon as her face had exploded into that bright expression, it fell away. "Oh no, that's a stupid idea." Her hands flopped down to her sides and she leaned back in her chair, balancing it on the back two legs and moaned to herself.

"Why is it that you can have a six zillion ideas when you're daydreaming in your own time, but the minute it becomes a piece of homework, every good idea you ever had escapes? It's like the nixies took my ideas, well, not the actual nixies, but you know what I mean." She waved a hand at her classmate, Deborah Clarencieux, or as she was more often known - Flo.

Although neither of them were particularly tall, Flo looked like if she tripped on the stairs she'd break into little pieces because she was so slight. Ari had more than once entertained the possibility that Flo could benefit from feeding up, but feeding up wasn't too much of an issue when house elves provided such a glorious array of dishes for every meal, quite the opposite. Dinner that night had been yet another meal where Ariadne wished she could have three stomachs to try everything.

"I'm sorry Flo, I was quite sure that I'd have a hundred and two ideas by now for Kesali's homework. It sounded like a right ball, invent a saleable charmed product, but all I've thought up so far are things that already exist, like self-pouring teapots, shoe brushes that polish your shoes when you put them in the rack... I'm not sure if we'd be up to working out the charms for the wardrobe that spits out clothes according to the weather to form your outfit."

With a bump, the front legs of her chair met the floor of the classroom and she scooped her chin up into her hands and placed her elbows on the surface of the desk which was littered with parchment and doodles and notes between piles of their favourite charms textbooks and standard books of spells.

"Save us, Flo, tell me you've got something in that clever head of yours?"

The making of her flourished script across her notes were paused when a sudden yelp coming from the other earthly presence in the room (other than hers) pierced through the air. She looked up from her seat - she sat secluded from her partner in an alcove which had a large, stained glass window on it - and inspected the damage. Ariadne definitely caught her full attention - and though she’ll admit she was indeed listening to the other girl, another part of her was far too gone, lost in transcribing newly found texts. When she had first found out that Professor Kesali had paired her with another student, she wasn’t, undoubtedly, surprised. As far as she was concerned her life consisted of study-homework-early-submission and of course, deadline. Feigning interest, her ears were perked as Ari continued her speech.

Waving back at the Gryff, she concluded her own thoughts: “Perhaps it is because they aren’t there to remain - and besides, daydreaming isn’t as restrictive as homework.”

Shifting her focus back into the task at hand, she moved the quill from her right to her left because it was starting to ache - she can’t remember the first time she’s realized she was ambidextrous, but it sure helped whenever one of her hands couldn’t step up to its max performance. Dipped the quill into the ink, grabbed a new scroll - before beginning to write away the time once more. She was already at the second to the last paragraph when she heard Ari say something again. Having come to terms that she hasn’t offered anything so far (that was of her own), she held the quill in mid-air for a moment, watching in fascination as a few droplets of darkness found their way into her elegant letters - shortly afterwards placing it back again into the inkwell, which sat by her feet. Rubbing her left brow with the tip of her index finger, she tried to conjure an effortless answer for Gamp.

Thank the fortunate muses, she did come up with something out of the blue a few minutes into the silence. “We can always do a... A Fabergé egg - one that features a working clock and a music box movement altogether. I’ve heard that the professor is leaning towards clockwork, so maybe we’ll get lucky and get bonus points for that.” She looked at the white, bare walls of the abandoned room and mentally berated herself for having forgotten something. “Oh, I’m sorry - I don’t know if they’re popular in your household. They were pretty common in mine, as they were exasperatingly present most of the time as… lavish ‘matchmaking gifts’.” It left a bitter taste on her tongue, and reminded her of the pile of letters waiting for her in her trunk - she’d make sure to burn them later on.

"We can always do a…"

Ari looked expectantly, and sat forward as possible, intent on understanding Flo's suggestion in absence of her own. She understood egg, but not anything more than that with the context, and didn't recognise at all the type of egg.

"A clockwork egg?" She echoed quietly.

"Oh, I'm sorry - I don't know if they're popular in your household…"

"Oh yes, very, erm, popular." Ari replied, trying to look serious and hopped from her chair, "I've been matchmade at least three times in the past year with eggs." She acted out being given an egg, cradling it in both hands before her stomach and looking bashful.

Wiggling her way through the desks towards Flo's alcove she shook her head,
"Nah, I'm being silly, us Gamps don't give each other eggs, but I'm not knocking the Clarenciuxes for doing it. I'm guessing its not like a real egg, but just the shape of one, right?" She asked, seizing a piece of parchment and offering it to Flo.

"Can you doodle one for me?"

Deborah suddenly found herself giggling uncontrollably at the mental image that Ariadne conjured just by telling her that she and the others in her family exchanged eggs. Bringing her hand over her mouth, she calmed herself. “Oh, no, no, no.” she chuckled. “No one in my household bothers to exchange a Fabergé egg, they’re mainly for the purpose of suitors having something to represent the extent of their family’s wealth. In fact, we never...” she paused, trapped in her mind. "We never exchanged gifts in our family - there are times wherein protocol requires the younger to gift the older, but I'm an only child." Her tone had an underlying emotion of sadness within it. Taking the parchment from her partner’s hand, she gently patted down the space next to her, indicating that she may sit. “And yes, it’s primarily in the shape of an egg - except that they’re jewelled, and is partial to being opened.”






Making a quick sketch of the said item using her quill, she dipped her quill time after time, before finishing the sketch and having it over to Ariadne. "There are different kinds of those eggs, but mainly, as I've said, they could be opened and typically has a 'surprise' inside. That surprise could be a heirloom of the suitor's family, or something specifically tailored to the woman's family's liking. Either way, they are reserved for such mundane occasions. We can just grab the idea of the mechanism and make it our own." she continued, whilst covering her inkwell with its lid.

"What do you think?"

It was a rather lovely sound to hear Flo laugh. Too many of the Slytherins lost their sense of humour when she was mucking about. She nodded along as her classmate explained the concept of the egg and doodled the outline of it. It was quite unlike any egg Harry had seen.

"A ticking egg with a surprise inside." Ariadne thought aloud, her eyes unfocused at the room around her as she contemplated how that might work.

"Sounds exactly the sort of thing Kesali will go for, genius!" The Gryffindor exclaimed with glee and peered down at the drawing with a grin on her face.

"But we'll have to make the egg out of something, or transfigure if it'll stay for long enough? I mean, I certainly don't have one of these in my trunk. Do you reckon a jug would be near enough in size and shape?" She held out her hands to try and judge the size.

"And I've got a little alarm clock we can pull apart - it's nothing special, I only bought it second hand in Hogsmeade to try and stop falling asleep before Astronomy on a night when we were studying OWLs." Her fingers ruffled her hair as she considered.

"Ok, so what else do we need, when it was clockwork, do they like move because of the mechanics, or does it just have a clock in it?"

“A simple round apothecary jar made out of glass will do - I have a jewellery box made of silver metal that we can use for its stand.” Making out the measurements, she began to estimate how much material they’d have to make-do. “If transfigured correctly, I doubt it wouldn’t hold for long. There are a few spells we’d have to pick up from the library in order to accomplish this, but overall, it’s not really that much of a consuming task.”

“Now about the mechanism…” Deborah paused, thinking of how it was supposed to work. “We can pull apart the alarm clock, take a few of its gears, and then come up with a structure of our own. Don’t worry, I can do that one - the question is, what could be its surprise? What should Professor Kesali see once it is opened?”

Allowing Ariadne to process her thoughts, she then turned over the parchment and marked out the dummy. “How about a firebird?” she mildly suggested, gnawing on her own thinking. “A firebird that has its own mechanism and could be set into motion once the egg is opened? To do this, alongside the clock, and the music box movement, I daresay we’d need a complicated system of levers so as to ensure the proper operation and correct sequence. Not that the movement isn’t easy to regulate - we could always pick a thing or two from classical music pieces, tune it out and…”

“There. There we have it.” she smiled.

"Merlin," Ariadne breathed from over Flo's shoulder, "you're really good at this." She nodded along to the Slytherin's reasoning, opening her lips a couple of times to chip in and then stopping herself as Flo's mind kept spilling out ideas that she didn't want to stop.

"A firebird, yes, how about Stravinsky's Firebird[1]?" It might have surprised her classmate that Ariadne knew of the piece, but Flo was one of the more cultured with her upbringing as far as Ari knew. "There's some repeating theme patterns that are tuned fairly close together that would work. I can sort that out, you've got the clockwork…" she began to try and hum out a bit to illustrate.

"Ok, so apothecary jar, jewellery box, alarm clock, hmm, I'll find something, a trinket or something to work as the firebird with some modifications, and I know someone who'll have offcuts of metal to help with the levers."

The plan was falling together nicely and Ariadne was rather excited about their charms work and smiled brightly at her classmate.

"Can I duplicate that? Gemino!" Flo's drawing became two and Ariadne was careful to lift the duplicate, leaving Flo's original for the author.

"Ok, we'll split these and meet up again with our bits - tomorrow lunch?" She suggested, though suspected by then Flo would probably have created the whole thing given half a chance!


End

1.

Finale