Holidays always disrupted a child.  Akiva was an ordinary girl in that respect.  Though her family did not celebrate Christmas, they wanted their daughter home for the holiday season, able to enjoy her and hear about her experiences so far.  They tried their best to keep up with her, but Akiva wasn’t sure about the rules on sending letters and things, so she tended to avoid the issue.  Holidays were the only time they got to hear the majority of their chatty young daughter’s experiences, and even then, Akiva only told them the good things.

She left out the part about being called names and still being considered kind of weird.  She had never thought she was that strange and though, in primary school, she had attained something of a reputation for being interested in strange subjects and being oddly proficient at higher level mathematics for an elementary school girl, she hadn’t noticed it quite so starkly against some of the wizarding children she was going to school with.  Those raised in this environment knew very little of mathematics or science – which were some of her passions, amongst other things, so she had trouble finding people to talk to and others just made her feel bad. 

Going home had calmed her nerves and sated the sadness, but upon going back, she had only gotten upset when she realized it was her first birthday without being with her parents.  It was hard to know that she was a year older and they weren’t able to see her.  They had sent her back with her cards and present, a stuffed bear she decided to name Phileas for a character from a novel she very much liked.  It didn’t help when she was trying to fall asleep though.

Indeed, she had snuggled Phileas, tossed and turned, and cried but ceased to be able to sleep.  She missed her parents and wished she had been able to spend her birthday with them.  Climbing out of her bed, she slipped on the pink slippers she had and quietly sneaked out of the room.  She was supposed to be in bed, of course, but she could not sleep and tried to quell the sniffling and rubbing as she tip-toed out of the door. 

Rubbing her red eyes, Akiva hoped she might find the seventh year she had become friends with at Halloween in the common room.  Though most of the younger students were asleep, Akiva figured that the older ones would be awake – they liked to stay up late, didn’t they?  She gripped the railing and walked down from the bedchamber, glancing from side to side with her big brown eyes every few steps – she didn’t want to get in trouble. If Tamis wasn’t there, she would just go back to bed, she assured herself. 

Poking her head around the corner, Akiva’s wide eyes searched each chair and table for a sign of the long-haired seventh year.  Luckily, perched in front of the fire (she always seemed to be there, especially since it had gotten really cold and windy), and Akiva scurried forward, avoiding the eyes of anyone else who might be around.  “Tamis?” she questioned with big eyes rimmed with red, Phileas crushed against her chest, knuckles almost white because of her strong grip, “may I sit with you for a little while?”

Quill caught between her teeth, the teenager trapped the tip of eagle feather between her tongue and the roof of her mouth, sucking on it in concentration. Nestled cross-legged in a cocoon of a heavy blanket, the infamous Tamis Raynor leaned forward over the heavy book, chin tilted up and eyebrows furrowed as she peered over the text. “Peered” being the key word. Those intense gray eyes settled on the page without moving – staring rather than reading it.

The seventh year had created a semi-circle of parchment and the single textbook on the floor in front of the fireplace. The other older students had abandoned the Ravenclaw Common Room, retreating back to the dormitories with rolling eyes. They knew what it meant when Tamis Raynor “degraded” herself to at least considering reading a book and it never bode well for anyone. This was so stupid and pointless. Why did she have to study Defense anyway? Quirrell was a stuttering idiot and seemed to get progressively more distracted and dimwitted as the year progressed. She did not need a N.E.W.T in the class to get into St. Mungos. But it sure helped. And Tait kept on insisting. Insisting.

Rocking back into an upright position, Tam huffed and pulled the blanket back up over her shoulders, slipping strains of long hair back behind her ear. Her mind kept drifting back to the Winter Holiday, which she had spent at Tait’s flat in London. She had not seen much of him with his constant frolicking at the Ministry – training he called it. He would still have two more years of training. It was hard, sometimes, to be supportive. Tam loved him, she knew she did. But this Auror business of his – and now making her promise him she would not drop defense. Grumbling under her breathe, she decided it was entirely unfair that he was hours rather than minutes away. She wanted to yell at him.

Twirling the quill between the fingers of her right hand, Tamis gave a small start as a small and rather pathetic little voice snuck up on her. A voice that was becoming all too familiar, the little pest. She should have been annoyed, but despite all attempts the little Katz brat was strangely endearing.

“It is the little Odd Bird,” Tamis grinned easily, the teasing evident. “Up past curfew. You are becoming a Rebel.”

Finally actually looking up at the first year – regrettably, if standing, there would not be a drastic height difference despite the six year age gap. She should not have laughed. She knew it. It was probably only going to make things worse. But she could not help it. The little Bird just looked so… pitiful. Had she been getting picked on again? The bushy mass of brunette curls was a vision in pink – from the fluffy slippers to the plushy robe. Between the hair and the nightwear and the bear she was practically decapitating and all of the sniffling and red eyes – Tamis just could not help it. She looked like a lost waif.

It was an analogy Tam knew all too literally, an actual waif herself. It was unusual for a seventh year to even be on speaking terms with a first year. Even more unusual for one with a reputation like Tamis’ to acknowledge first years exist. But this little muggleborn one, well, she had been a little Bird that fell out of the nest too soon and all of the high-and-mighty purist half-grown birds kept pecking at her. So, Raynor had claimed Katz as a lackey. It was padding but Tamis refused to coddle Katz entirely. She was not going to have her protection next year.

“Yeah, sure thing.” She finally replied when she stopped laughing. “Just ease up on the bear, okay? I think you are suffocating him.”

Akiva had not meant to startle Tamis and took a step back when she saw her perk up as though she had heard a hex being fired off or something.  A small, apologetic smile briefly fluttered across her face, but it died quickly – her current mood, particularly in relation to the rest of the world, was not good enough to sustain an air of good humor.  She blushed – Tamis had come up with such a weird name for her, but she did not mean it in a nasty way like some of the other students did.

Other students stuck with calling her names that were apparently bad words, for all intensive purposes, or just cruel things – nerd, loser – she had heard them all.  It was probably a product of her curiosity about almost everything, asking questions and wanting to know things.  She had a feverish desire to know everything – experiment, deduce, and analyze all that she saw and experienced.  Unfortunately, even some of the more patient students and professors could find her constant stream of questions agitating.  She had never been taught to curb her enthusiasm for learning (both of her parents highly valuing an investigative education), so it was hard for her to have to adapt to this atmosphere.

“I figured you might appreciate the rebel part…” Akiva tried to joke, the blush still evident on her normally pale cheeks.  Tamis Raynor had quite the reputation, so it was easy to be seen with her and then associated even once.  It had made some of the teasing a little better, particularly by the older students who liked to bother her about being a Muggleborn.  She didn’t see what was so bad about it, really, but apparently people just didn’t like them.  She asked questions about that too – they were even less patiently received than her academic inquiries. 

Of course, as soon as Tamis started laughing, Akiva wondered if her comment had really been that funny or if something else had happened she was just not aware of.  Was she laughing at her for some reason?  Akiva could not understand why someone would intentionally laugh, but Tamis was not exactly an easy person to understand – and it looked as though she was going crazy from all of the studying she was doing.  The young one looked down at the pages and nodded, recognizing a little bit of it as Defense Against the Dark Arts, a class she was fairly awful in for the time being (she hoped to get much better, but it was so hard with a professor who didn’t appear to know what he was doing!). 

She settled and finally indicated that Akiva could stay, putting a smile on the girl’s face all too soon – to be wiped off when she realized that Phileas’ head might be liable to come off from the squeezing.  In a state of almost perpetual blush, Akiva loosened her hold and chuckled awkwardly, “Oops… I guess I forget sometimes…” she shrugged her shoulders pitifully and moved around the parchment to climb over the arm rest of one of the large, deep blue armchairs right near her (literally) oldest friend at school. 

Curling up, she rested her hands on the armrest facing Tamis and cuddled up, putting her head atop her hands, Phileas seeming to peer over the rest as well, her legs curled up under her while the fire crackled and popped.  “You won’t tell on me right?” she asked cautiously, “I was just…” she sighed, playing with a little strand of upholstery that seemed to come loose from the chair to distract herself, “it’s my birthday and I miss my mum and dad.”