Saturdays were always Roland's favorite days. It was especially so today, after the conclusion of Career Day the afternoon before. Even if Rou wasn't involved in the proceedings, the atmosphere the previous day was not conducive to the boy's concentration. Unfortunately for him, this led to him getting an assignment for extra homework from Professor Strangely due to his negligence during the previous day's lessons; He had to catalog several specials of magical weeds and their properties to present in class on Monday . And while he was glad to be back from Spring Holiday with Ted, Roland was not happy to have his homework load increased for the weekend.

As a result, Rou was forced to drag himself out of bed extra early in order to get a quick breakfast before delving into his studies to compensate for lost time. He had slipped up in his studies, and he knew that Grandpa Roland back home wouldn't be happy with his faltering. By the time Rou was finished catching up with Herbology, the sun was overhead and Rou couldn't make out his shadow on the ground as he emerged from the greenhouses.

Lunch time, the boy thought glumly, regarding his dirt-stained hands and clothes after packing away the roll of parchment he'd written his report on. Rou was not in the mood to be amongst other people, especially not Ted. His friend's attempts to cheer him up would only make him more annoyed and irritable. Instead, Rou crossed the grounds and found his favorite spot by the Hogwarts Lake, sitting down on the spot and smiling contentedly as he saw the resident giant squid dart across the water right below the surface.

Removing his dirty shoes and socks and unrolling the legs of his trousers, Rou laid back on his rock and enjoyed the pleasant April day.

Iris knew it was weird to enjoy things like Career Day, and probably came off as snobbish, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Besides, the whole mess gave her something to concentrate on that wasn't her newest puzzle. She knew it wasn't like that for everyone, though - it put some people on edge. Her mind drifted to the boy who had such trouble focusing that Professor Strangely had assigned him an extra report, due Monday. Iris couldn't help but feel a bit bad for him, though she personally would not have minded.

She snapped herself back to reality when the clock chimed noon. She had been sitting in the Ravenclaw common room for nearly two hours, reading and thinking and mulling things over as she often did on weekends. She stood up, wincing as her knees readjusted to bearing weight, and headed down to the Great Hall for food, the pieces of her latest puzzle still trying to sort themselves out in her head.

It was, she realized with a start, a beautiful day. Instead of eating a proper meal, Iris opted to enjoy the sunshine while it lasted, and headed outside. Without being aware of her destination, she strolled across the grounds, lost in thought, until she found herself near the lake. She looked up to see her most recent puzzle sitting on a rock, unaware of her presence. Walking as silently as she could, she moved close enough to see that he wasn't wearing shoes or socks. Another puzzle piece.

The boy, she knew, was a first-year Hufflepuff. His name was ...Roland, Roland Something-or-other. She also knew that she'd been staring at him in their shared classes, as if her eyes could bore holes in his head to let her see how his brain worked. She also also knew that he knew that she'd been staring, as he'd looked up once or twice and seen her, causing her to flush faintly and look down at her work.

Without saying a word, she approached the rock, stopping to take off her shoes and socks as well. No sense in getting them wet when she had to wear them for the rest of the day. She took a deep breath and sat down on the rock next to him. She figured she owed the boy an apology, or at least an explanation.

No sooner had Rou begun to slip into a serene nap than someone decided that they wanted to share his rock with him. The sudden arrival of the unknown presence startled him, and Roland quickly tried to situp only to immediately fall off the rock in his scrambling and land face down in the soil next to it. The boy was disoriented as he lay on the ground and slowly rose to his hands and knees as his head continued to spin. When he regained his sense, Rou rose to his feet to see a Ravenclaw classmate he only passingly recognized sitting on his rock, her shoes and socks held in one of her hands. He wanted to say something about her sitting in his usual spot, but he couldn't bring himself to open his mouth, much less speak.

Rou dusted himself off and tentatively sat next to the girl, awkwardly glancing in her direction as she looked at him.

"Um...hi," he said softly after a short bit of time.

Iris hadn't realized the boy was asleep. When he started and fell, she jumped up, looking over to make sure he was okay. She felt bad for disrupting his nap, and on top of that, causing him to fall. He seemed fine though, dusting himself off and sitting back down, albeit hesitantly. She could tell he wanted to say something, but was stopping himself. The question why, which always permeated her thoughts, rose now to the forefront. That was always the question with him, wasn't it?

She hadn't realized she had been staring again until he looked up.

"Um...hi."

Iris bit her lip, suddenly nervous.

"Hi. I'm Iris. We're in a couple of classes together, right? I just wanted to..." I just wanted to explain why I've been staring at you for the past while, she thought, but what came out of her mouth was "I just wanted to properly introduce myself. Sorry for startling you."

Well that was...enlightening, Rou thought to himself after hearing that and getting weirded out by Iris being so forthcoming. He recognized her from a couple of classes, yes, but they'd never spoken until now. It was clear, though, that she was wanting to say something but was purposefully holding back. The fact that she was biting her lip showed that she felt she'd be embarrassed to tell him.

Rou shuffled his bare feet a bit on the ground from the awkward silence, burying his toes in some of the gravel. While doing so, he didn't look her in the eye and instead decided to focus more on Iris' bare feet, if only because doing so kept him from having to look at her, though he could feel she was looking intently at him. He glanced at her, confirming his suspicion, and then looked down as he felt uneasy when he met her eyes.

"That's...okay," Rou said, his tone again rather soft and withdrawn, "Not a lot of people here really talk to me, much less sit right next to me when I'm alone at my favorite rock by the lake. I'm Roland, by the way, though everyone just calls me 'Rou' for short." Rou stooped and found his sack sitting behind the rock, from which he pulled out a small block of wood. He began to turn it over in his hands, regarding it intently in order to avoid having to look at Iris.

Oh lord, thought Iris, How much of that did I say out loud? She worried at her lip more insistently, waiting for him to say something, anything, to break the uncomfortable silence that had fallen over them. She looked down at her lap, fiddling with the hem of her skirt, but found her eyes drawn back to him, wishing she could see inside his brain. She decided that all of this interpersonal stuff would be much easier if people could just think at each-other, without words getting in the way.

When their eyes met for a moment, she stared back down at her lap, fighting the blush she could feel rising in her cheeks. She began chewing at her lip again, not sure what to say to make the moment any less awkward.

"I... You looked lonely," was all she could offer in the way of an explanation, "Do you mind if I stay here?" She hoped she wasn't making him any more uncomfortable, smiling a little at the nickname.  Rou, she thought, was somehow a very fitting name for this quiet boy. Finally her gaze settled on the clear surface of the lake, watching the fish and thinking about how to make this situation any less awkward.

"I...no," Rou replied, shuffling his feet some more as he leaned forward and further contemplated his block of pine. As he did so, Rou glanced over at Iris and began to lightly kick some of the loose gravel and sand around his feet onto Iris'. He didn't know why, maybe it would make her want to go away. Or maybe he figured he might as well get some sort of amusement now that she'd crashed his solitude.

As he did so, Rou pulled his father's old dagger from his waistband and unsheathed it. With the curved blade in hand, the boy began to lightly cut at the wood, intending to get it ready for carving once he'd figured out what sort of carving he wanted to make. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Iris blushing and fiddling with her skirt, stuck on what she wanted to say.

"So you saw me in Herbology, right?" he said, keeping most of his focus on the block he was cutting.

Iris wondered briefly why Rou was kicking gravel at her, then decided the proper response was to reciprocate the action, shuffling her feet out from under the pile of sand. It was a good excuse not to look at Rou's face, because her brain and her body seemed to stop functioning as a unit when she did. She chided herself for being unable to talk to this boy. It was strange and perturbing and made her want to figure him out even more.

She saw a flash of something out of the corner of her eye, but decided that at this point, it would be better not to ask. Asking would mean speaking, and she wasn't sure she trusted herself to do that. Instead she went back to studiously observing the still water, occasionally lightly kicking some loose sand in Rou's direction.

"Oh, er, yes. I did," she said, remembering the previous day's class.

Rou's brow furrowed slightly when Iris was so short with her reply. He was hoping this would get her to finally open up about what she wanted to say in the first place, but unfortunately she remained tight-lipped. He again clenched his bare feet in frustration as he stopped cutting at his block and began turning it over in his hands once more. Even though it looked like he was searching for an artistic inspiration, he was mainly thinking about how he might get Iris to finally start talking instead of fight herself about whether or not she should tell him the truth. And even as he did this, he could still feel her eyes burrowing into his head until he turned to look at her, at which point he saw she was looking out at the still lake.

"You did, did you? So why were you looking at me then and why do you continue to look at me when you don't think I'll notice now?" Rou said, deciding to be blunt about the fact that he knew. If she wouldn't be open about things, he thought, then at least he would be in order to clear the air between them. "I guess you were thinking what most other people think: What's with the weird Hufflepuff who carries a dagger around with him?" He lightly twirled his father's blade in his hands after saying so to show her what he meant.

Iris wasn't sure if she knew what Rou was getting at with his question about Herbology, but apparently her answer was insufficient. She noticed the way his feet scrunched up - it reminded her of the way the Potions Mistress scrunched up her eyebrows before delivering a positively moving speech about how imbecilic the first-years were. She sighed and rearranged herself, ending up on her stomach with her chin on her hands and her feet in the air, toes curling and uncurling as she continued worrying at her lip.

It seemed Rou had decided that if Iris wouldn't say anything, he would. She closed her eyes, listening in silence as he spoke. She knew what he was speaking the truth, but it stung a bit, for reasons she didn't understand. It was true, except for the "weird Hufflepuff who carries a dagger" bit. She didn't think that at all.

"I..." Iris was surprised at Rou's outburst. It was clear that she couldn't dance around the issue any more. And suddenly, it all came pouring out. "I don't mean to stare. Really I don't. Only, there's something about you that I don't understand, and I've been trying to figure out what it is, and honestly I'm probably a lot weirder than you, and I wanted to apologize or explain or something, because staring isn't polite, and I really have no idea how to talk to people and I didn't even notice the knife, and really I just want to be in your head because you're like some kind of puzzle, only I can't solve you and it's infuriating me and -" Iris cut off, her face turning a stunning shade of red. She bit her lip again, hard enough to draw blood, looked down, buried her face in her hands, looked back out at the lake, looked anywhere that wasn't at Rou.

Finally, after what seemed like hours but was probably less than a minute, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and said, in a very small voice, "I'm sorry."

Rou was, well, completely caught off-guard by the sheer stream of words that wound up pouring from Iris' mouth. Sure, he wanted an explanation, but he wound up getting her life's story in the process. After she finished speaking for so long, Rou decided to simply clam up and focus on something else. When he briefly looked over at Iris, with her laying on his rock and taking up more room than before, thus leaving him little to sit on, with her head in her hands and her bare feet in the air, Rou smiled slightly and began to work in earnest on his pine block. She seemed to think he was angry at her, when it was anything but at this point. After she explained herself, and furthermore demonstrated what they had in common, how could he get mad at her?

"I'm sorry."

She said this after he'd been working for a couple of minutes, his quick and deft crafting already giving the wood a vague shape that he'd later use. At this, Rou stopped his carving and looked over at Iris, meeting her eyes and making sure to know that he didn't mind that she was staring at him this time. He maintained his slight smile from earlier and gave her a light pat on the shoulder.

"It's okay," he said, just as quietly as she spoke earlier to show his earnestness. With that, he went right back to work on his block, which would quickly begin to take more shape and form as he gave life to the form within his mind.

The whole time she was talking, Iris was certain that Rou would be angry, yell, tell her to leave. She was convinced it was imminent, and ended up burying her head in her hands, waiting for the inevitable. But it didn't come. She was sure that his silence was out of anger, and simply waited. She heard him move, adjust to her own repositioning on the rock. In her peripheral vision, she thought she saw him look at her, but couldn't bring herself to meet his gaze. It was coming. He was going to...

...Not do anything, apparently. He just went back to whittling at his block. Iris didn't understand. Wasn't he mad? Wasn't he going to tell her to go away? The silence was unbearable.

"I'm sorry."

She looked at Rou as she said these words, slightly more than a whisper, and he caught her gaze. He was... smiling? He maintained eye contact, and for some reason Iris felt very comforted by that. He reached out, touched her shoulder.

"It's okay."

His voice, like hers, was just barely audible, and the sincerity she heard made her smile. He went back to carving, and Iris realized he hadn't told her to leave, or seemed angry at all. She smiled to herself, looking back out at the lake. She wanted to ask what he was making, but felt like that might disturb the quiet that had settled over them, so much less awkward than before. She was content to stay on this warm rock next to this boy who was being so much calmer than expected.

She wondered if they could be friends someday.

The block of pine took shape and form, transforming from the original featureless lump of wood into a capturing of one single moment in time for him and his friend. The shape of the block became that of a girl, Iris specifically, laying on her front with her head resting in her hands in front. Her bare feet were pointed and kicking back and forth while he worked and she was...enamored by the water of the lake while her skirt fanned about her legs. In the sculpture her was creating, Rou had her left leg at forty-five degrees while her right pointed straight up, giving the impression of motion for an observer.

The general form was finished, and thus Rou began to cut in the details for Iris as he continued to watch and observe her out of the corner of his eye. He shaped her feet and separated the toes, he cut in the folds of her skirt at an exact moment, and he even perfectly captured the way in which she clasped her hands in front of her, with each finger in their own individual and unique pose. It wasn't often that Rou got to perform such an incredible feat of craftsmanship, honed by years of imagination and hours alone at the lake since coming to Hogwarts for practice. Perhaps, in this case, it was because he knew that this carving would be kept and saved, as opposed to the others he had to discard lest they wind up needing to be thrown away when he went home.

With the details and shapes of all of his Iris sculpture completed, he proceeded to try and capture her face perfectly, which would take at least as much time as he had to take to finish the rest of her body if he was to do it properly.

After a long time of watching the lake and daydreaming, toes curling and uncurling in time with the swinging of her legs, Iris had regained enough of her composure to glance over at Rou. She smiled slightly, seeing him working away at his block of wood. He looked so happy doing that, like maybe his purpose in life was to carve blocks of wood into little miracles. She couldn't see the carving close enough to determine what it was, but assumed that he would tell her if and/or when he wanted her to know.

Iris noticed the distinct differences between now and just a few minutes ago. Before, she was nervous; now, she was content. Before, Rou seemed confused, then angry; now, he was working peacefully on the carving in his hands. Before, they had been classmates who didn't even know each other's names; now, they were friends - or at least, they were getting there. How proud her father would be if he knew.

This was one of those moments that Iris knew she'd be able to remember for the rest of her life - her first friend at Hogwarts, or really ever. She wished fervently that she was an artist, so she could capture the tranquility of the moment to be treasured forever. But she wasn't an artist, so she had to satisfy herself with absorbing everything, burning every detail into her memory. She decided that, if all her attempts at making friends went this well, she would make an effort to do so more often.

Iris wanted to say or do something, to make some acknowledgement of the moment. She tapped Rou on the shoulder with one foot - lightly, so as not to jog his arm and cause him to make a bad cut, or worse, but enough to get his attention. She let it rest there, her smallest toe brushing his neck just below the ends of his hair. It was a form of contact, expressing something she couldn't put into words. The closest she could get was Hello, I am here, I am so incredibly lucky to be right here, right now, sharing this moment with you. She gave him a sideways look, offering a small smile.

When Rou felt one of Iris' feet resting against his shoulder, he looked over to her and saw that she was doing it to show that she was really enjoying the fact that he let her stay. She must have convinced herself that he was going to tell her to get lost earlier, and now she was enjoying that she was proven wrong. She appreciated his company, and because of this, Rou smiled at her and placed his hand on her clasped hands after setting down his work; He was almost finished, anyway.

"Hey!", he said mirthfully as his smile became a full grin. When he felt her toe brushing lightly against the base of his neck, however, Rou quickly contracted as the tickling sensation sent a small but lovely chill down his spine. He laughed from the unintentional tickling and shooed away Iris' foot, but not before running two of his fingers down the length of her sole in retaliation. Even if she knew his weakness to tickling, which Ted had discovered over break, he was fine with her knowing.

Rou went back to his carving and was finished after some more time had passed. The small sculpture was a full-blown perfect model of Iris as she lay on the rock, with every detail he could fit into the carving cut in spectacular clarity. It was almost as if he had made a small clone of her, but it wasn't one of those magical models that could move about and behave like she would. No, it would be some time before he would be capable of making one of those. However, this still carving still bore a perfect resemblance to her, especially if it was painted to better do so.

Rou lightly blew on the new carving to clear away any dust or wood shavings before turning it over several times in his hands in front of Iris so she could see as well.