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| QM#2
Jenna
[This might be interesting. I'm just gonna go with it.]
[[I promise I'll do it after class, blood drive, and fashion club meeting! I have an idea that methinks will be something good. yay long live the qm! boo stupid qm jackers who have like the same page as ours!]]
Jenna awoke with a start. It took her a few moments for her to realize that she was in the Gryffindor common room. Her disorientation and open book lying flat on the floor suggested what she feared the most; she wasn't just dreaming. This was starting to get ridiculous now.
She got up from the squishy arm chair in front of the fire and materialized an invisibility cloak. Sighing, she threw it over her shoulders as she climbed through the portrait hole. Another vision hit her. Kastern would be approaching in about 30 seconds. Loitering around an open door to an empty classroom, Jenna smirked when she saw her prey hurrying around the corner.
Ever since Jenna had started living with her uncle, Professor Snape, she and her sisters had been living with him and developing their extraordinary powers. was no longer afraid of the gift she had, and she had become particularly skilled with walking on air.
She snuck up behind Kastern and knocked him into the open door. "What the-" he gasped from the floor, searching frantically for what had knocked into him when the door slammed shut. "Who's there!?" Kastern jumped up, pointing his wand wildly. Jenna smirked. "Macho man" she whispered under her breath and rolled her eyes.
She threw the invisibility cloak to the floor. Kastern didn't recognize her at first with the wavy black hair, although, he thought, it was working really well for her, a little over done, but it worked. He let out a sigh of relief. "It's just you."
"What do you think you're DOING?" she demanded vehemently.
"I'm not doing anything!"
"Wrong answer." She flicked her wrist and Kastern slammed against the ceiling. "You're ruining everything!" She was suddenly in his face. He flinched, and kicked himself for doing so. "You don't love her the way Horatius does!" There were tears in her eyes now. "You don't even love her at all."
"How do you know?"
"I saw it." She let him down with a thump and landed gracefully beside him.
"So what's with the black hair? Trying to look like your uncle?" he sneered.
Jenna's face flushed scarlet. She waved her hand and her hair returned to it's normal shade of auburn semi-curly mess. Kastern walked up and put his hand on her face. "I didn't say you had to change it. I was just messing with you."
Jenna pulled back away from him. "You're an egotistical jerk!" She turned and walked towards the door. She paused as she reached it. When she turned back, her hair was different again. It's normal shade with black low lights. She smiled. "She you at the game tomorrow."
Kastern groaned. Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff. | | |
| QM#1
Aiofe
[Not sure where we are anymore with ages and years. I figure, we can at least finish out whatever year this is with us all in school then move on if we want to.]
It was odd enough for Kastern to be out in the common room so late after hours. Even odder was his companion, who sat waiting for her friends to get their freaking act together and get downstairs. Aiofe had been killing time for nearly a quarter hour, and the only other company in the large room was making her uncomfortable with his proximity. But that was, undoubtedly, his goal and she'd be the very last person to give him the satisfaction of visibly unsettling her.
But damn was he doing a good job of it.
"Aren't Hufflepuffs supposed to be honest? It's not very trustworthy of you to be breaking the rules and sneaking around the castle after dark."
"What do you care?" she sniffed loudly, refusing to give him any more attention than that as she dug around the bottom of her bag for something distracting. Her restraint was wearing so thin now that one wrong word from Kastern, and she knew she would snap like a weak rubber band.
"Just saying, you sure aren't much of a credit to your house if this is what you do in your spare time."
Aiofe could literally hear the smirk dripping from the corners of his lips, but something inside her refused to ignore the obvious bait.
"Listen to me, you bastard. I get that you weren't as close to Angus as any of the rest of us were, and I'm sure you just want us to snap out of this 'funk' and get back to focusing on you, but everyone else is still trying to get over what happened and you being a constant jackass isn't getting anything back to the way it was any quicker. It's getting really old. And frankly, I can't stand it anymore."
Aiofe's whole body was flushed, wired and ready to lash out as she finished, when to her utter amazement, Kastern began to laugh. "Finally!" he nearly shouted, throwing his hands out to the sides. He stood quickly from the recliner across the room and moved to sit beside Aiofe on the worn sofa as he went on. "Finally you do something other than mope around the school like a lost puppy! Merlin! It's been months since you've said almost anything. Same with the rest of the guys."
The expression on his face was a cross between honest confusion and derision, like he couldn't manage any respect for someone who dared mourn the death of a close friend.
Aiofe bristled. "What else am I-"
"Crying about it," Kastern managed to turn the words into an accusation, dripping with disdain, "isn't gonna bring him back."
"Fuck you," she managed in a fragile whisper.
He leaned in further and whispered back, ["My pleasure." "You first." "If you insist." - Choose Your Own Adventure!]
And then there was no space left between them to move to think to breathe, only the electric pulse of rising emotions after a famine of none.
It was rough; the tentative touch that Aiofe had seen Kastern use with Jenna was lost or missing or left behind or God knows what just not there.
His hands were foreign and big and calloused and knobby at the knuckles, and they had a hard time slipping between her own slim fingers when he reached for her hand.
~
For the third time that morning Moira prodded, "Where were you last night? Jenna and I came downstairs and you weren't there."
"I said I'd rather not talk about it."
"We were worried about you. I thought maybe something had-"
"Moira, please!" she snapped, and the girl recoiled like she'd been cut.
It wasn't too often that Aiofe's perpetually sarcastic mood turned sour enough to genuinely hurt the people around her.
But from the look on Moira's face, it was often enough.
~
It wasn't until the day after the Morning After that Horatius caught up to her.
He sidled up and smiled gently. "Hey, you." The grin he was wearing was so practiced, that Aiofe swore it must have hurt to keep it plastered there.
"You need something, Horatius?" She stopped mid-step in the dead center of the bustling hall, causing Horatius to stumble to a sudden halt a few steps in front of her. She could tell he was thrown by the lack of warmth, but honestly, it had been a month since he bothered to speak to her last and she had cracked all the way open the other night, let out all there was to let out that she just didn't have enough in her left over to give a damn that he was a little put off.
"Yeah, actually." A faint shadow flickered over his face for a moment. "Moira sent me."
"Figures."
Horatius looked about as uncomfortable with this whole thing as Aiofe was, but more determined to press on. "She wants to know what's up with you. You didn't show the other night when you guys and Jenna were supposed to head to the kitchens, then you won't talk about whatever did happen. She's just- we're just a little worried, that's all."
There was more he could add, a whole lot more that he should add, but his words hung there without any more explanation. The ball was in her court now.
"I'm just... I was just stuck,” she offered by way of explanation. “I was headed to the Gryffindor common room to meet them when I heard Filch and had to run back into my own house commons. I tried to wait him out, but he hung around the portrait entrance until I fell asleep."
For a spur of the moment concoction, Aiofe was pretty confident it was airtight. Although she did feel a pang of guilt in the pit of her stomach thinking of where she had really been.
Horatius was shaking his head. "That would be the perfect story, if Filch hadn't been giving me detention all night. Hours and hours of painful scrubbing of those Godric-awful high ceilings aren't something you easily forget." And that seemed to settle his mind with finality. He wasn't leaving until he got an answer. "Where were you, Aiofe?"
It seemed like she was a broken record as she repeated to him what she'd said before to Moira. "I'd rather not talk about it."
But Horatius seemed to have thought he struck upon some golden idea and pressed on. "At all? Or just with me?"
The hairs on the back of Aiofe's neck stood up. “Do you think that it’s even halfway normal to completely ignore someone for weeks then demand to know where they were on a certain day?”
"Listen, if this is really about what happened with me and you-"
"What didn't happen."
Horatius kept on as if she hadn't spoken. "If this is about that, then I have-"
"Stop, just stop. I get it, okay? This whole year so far has just been a mess for everyone, and all I ended up accomplishing then was screwing with your head. Didn't do either of us any good. Whatever, it doesn't even matter."
At that, Horatius took pause. He shifted his weight from his right foot to his left as he began. "Aiofe-"
A splitting howl broke the monotonous din. Kastern's unintelligible voice came booming down the hall in the midst of three other raucous voices and stomping bodies. Deep burgundy and gold flew out behind him as he shot down the corridor with a group of Gryffindor guys, throwing a wink at Horatius and Aiofe as he passed.
The distraction gave Aiofe just enough time to slip into an empty classroom, out another door and into a separate corridor. Her feet were mechanically taking her to the next class whether she wanted to go or not; her mind was too full to put up much of a fight, anyway. Aiofe had been trying to block out the event with Horatius for weeks, and it seemed like Horatius, in turn, had been trying to block her out. It had been working until now.
Wasn't there more he was supposed to do? At least offer an explanation? A girl near throws herself at an unresponsive guy, and that's supposed to be the end of it?
Stumbling into Astronomy, she realized just how winded she'd become from the hike up to the tower. Her legs gave way to nerves and aching muscles within moments of arrival, and never had she been so happy to find an uncomfortable, unyielding chair beneath her. And - her eyes roved the students in attendance - no Jenna today. Thank Merlin.
That was one can of flobberworms she didn't want to have to open.
~
Kastern gave a final thrust, shuddered and collapsed on top of Aiofe.
He rested heavily on her chest, his own still heaving, and with a sharp twist behind her breastbone, Aiofe realized it wasn't the first time in recent days that she had felt like she simply couldn't breathe.
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| WELCOME BACK TO HOGWARTS
Everyone, please update this post with your character stats.
OR
Comment that you have at least read this post but have forgotten the character info, and I'll post it later when I find the old entries.
This new QM takes place about a year and a half after our first posts. For simplicity's sake, we can call it season 2. It's the middle of the school year in January, only months since Angus' death which has sent the remaining characters in new directions. The first new post should have a subject or header of QM#1, the second should be QM#2 and so on.
If you wish to post stories that take place in the past, future or even in an alternate timeline, please change the header to reflect this. AU1 or Prequel1 are suggested subjects. Organization, people! -raps ruler on desk- This means that each post should also have the author's name below the subject to keep things clear.
S2 CAST:
-Moira
-Kastern
-Aiofe
-Horatius
-Jenna
-Quinn
-Devon
-Rion
Others will be added as the story dictates.
Pictures of the characters are always welcome, as are OOC comments after new posts.
Not all posts have to be the traditional third person point of view. I know Danni has written some scenes in the past with all dialogue, as have I. As long as it follows the present storylines and is clear enough to follow, give a new style a try.
I sincerely hope that since summer is fast approaching (nearly here!) we have at least one post from each character/author a month. This may or may not seem like alot, but most of our QM buddies are transitioning to college and that in itself is madness without pulling double duty trying to keep up with daily story continuations.
Thanks, and happy writing!
-Hailey
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