Within the Starlight (open)

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Julienne made sure to keep her steps light while she made her way onto the quidditch pitch. It was around nightfall, but not too much so that she would be reprimanded for venturing outside. her feet were bare against the softness of the ground, taking every step into the consideration of her senses. This was the kind of serenity that she wished to feel in every moment of each day.

Her hair was long, as though her mind knew that the girl would enjoy the sensation of it flying through the wind with each motion forward. In a single moment, her content morphed into the fear that this would be the closest she would ever come to flying. She felt her hand lift towards the sky, her body yearning to experience the vastness of the atmosphere. She wondered what it would be like to touch a cloud.

But there were no clouds in the sky to which she could refer. Instead, the sapphire sky of nightfall was embellished by a million minuscule diamonds. Julienne thought about how the stars would feel in her hands. She wondered if there was a star small enough for her to hold in her hands. Would it burn? Would it hurt her any more than this life she was currently living?

Breathing in the world around her, Julienne lowered her body to the same level as the ground. She felt the world beneath her wrap itself around her like a blanket, encasing her in the safety of the natural world. She looked up to the stars, smiling. Nothing could hurt her here.

Guest

Wesley had taken himself for a walk, for some fresh air from the suffocating surroundings of Hogwarts. He hated it. All of it. The people, the classes, the school. Everything was too much, and he just needed his own space. Six months away from school, from people his own age, had allowed the boy to forget just how much being in school bothered him.

It wasn't the Durmstrang nightmare he was accustomed to. Everything seemed so fake. So forced...

The grounds were a good place of solitude, the magic vibe from hundreds of people lessened, and the weight of his own social anxiety lifted greatly in that moment. Wesley's feet took their own path, until he realised he'd come to the Quidditch Pitch. A place that he had no reason to move towards, and yet, here he stood.

Moving to the middle of the pitch, Wesley sat himself down on the pitch, pulled his knees to his chest, and sat, taking deep breaths, and trying to calm himself. The Healers had said he had to find a way to do this himself, but Wesley had lied when they had asked if he'd found the place to which he could escape.

How could you paint a world of sunshine, rainbows and happiness when your happiness had been torn from you?

Squeezing his eyes shut, Wesley blocked those thoughts out. Instead focusing on the tranquility of the pitch. The grass. The fresh air. Letting out a shaky breath, the boy did not think to even consider another would be here as the darkness started to grow.

Guest

At this point in her life, Julienne could name almost every constellation as well as the backstory of how it was named. As a child, she'd constantly been thrown back and forth between her father and mother. She'd spend a couple of days in Italy, followed by a few days in France and vice versa. It was as though one parent would place a bet on how long the other could last before shipping their daughter off again. She'd heard of custody battles, but her life had been more comparable to a custody battle in which each parent was trying to obtain as little custody as possible.

Due to this constant game of parental tag, Julienne had grown accustomed to traveling between countries at a moment's notice. She'd spend her time wandering her surroundings, whomever she was staying which having often been away for the day. She'd found that every landscape was different, each river flowing at its own leisure and each skyline framed by its own trees.

She felt as though she and the world were the same in that regard. Neither Julienne or her surroundings were ever the same for very long. The feeling of similarity was not a good one, as one may think it should be. It was the sort of feeling that felt like a pit in her stomach, ever growing with each passing year.

As the years passed, Julienne had found herself craving some form of continuity within her life. She'd realized that going through the world without something to grip onto would drive her insane. So she'd looked to the sky. No matter the angle from which she was viewing them, the constellations never changed. Orion would always contain a nebula within his belt. Ursa Major and the Big Dipper would always have their smaller counterparts. The stars were content with who they were.

She wondered what would happen when the stars burnt up, as she had once been told that some do. Would the Earth succumb to the darkness? The girl was sure that the artificial lights of science would be no match for the light that was once there. It wasn't enough to compete with the light of a star. Besides, science was prone to error. The sky was trustworthy.

Her back cushioned by the softness of the ground, Julienne looked up to Orion. After looking into his history, a young Julienne had decided that he was the most interesting of all of the constellations. He'd been named after a figure of Greek mythology, Orion the Hunter. Orion had been cursed by a king, his thirst for love having led him down a dark path.

She wondered if anyone would ever love her like that. She wondered if she'd want someone to. Was it really love if it drove the other party insane? Was it love if it didn't? Julienne wondered if her father had driven her mother insane. Perhaps that was the reason that they had grown apart; because she no longer enjoyed the person that she was with him. Yes, that had to have been it.

After considering this for a while, a sound began to emerge from the distance. The beat of her heart quickened with each sound the intruder's shoes made. No-one was ever on the pitch at this time because it was too dark for anyone to safely engage in a sports game.

'Sports game,' She thought, wondering if that was actually something that people said when referencing athletics.

It was unnoticable in the dark cover of night, but the Hufflepuff's eyes grew a pale shade of blue, as if the fear of the interaction to come had drained all pigment from her gaze.

"Hello?" She squeaked, unsure as to whether or not whomever was there could hear her. The panic grew even greater as she realized that this may be a staff member coming to reprimend her for being out so late. It was another hour or so before she had to be in her dorm, but that fact did not register in her mind at the moment.

"I'm sorry," she added, though unsure of what she was sorry for.

Guest

Eyes closed, breathing calmed down substantially, Wesley was beginning to relax in to the moment. Except, of course, there was no such thing as relaxing in Wesley's life, and no soon had his shoulder's begun to release their tension, he heard something that got them right back up again.

The softly spoken hello had jolted Wesley upright, eyes flashing open as they scrambled to find the person who'd just spoken to him when he had not noticed anyone on the pitch. Merlin he needed to be more careful with himself, he could have walked in to anything...

Hand moving to his wand - but not pulling it from where it was tucked in to his belt, Wesley continued to scan the area, until, finally, his eyes landed on another. A witch, if he was not mistaken, and perhaps roughly his age, Wesley wasn't good at guessing these things. Especially seeing as it was kind of dark, too.

But, it was the apology that got Wesley's mind ticking. The nerves... oh, he knew how nerves worked, the crippling anxiety of talking to people... It was so familiar that he simply could not stay where he was. He was drawn to people like him, it was how he had made friends with Anastasiya...

That thought had made Wesley stop, though. The idea of befriending someone like Anastasiya was one that terrified him, truly. What if he lost another friend... Closing his eyes for another few moments, Wesley forced himself to relax again, wondering if the voice and the image of a person had simply been a trick his head was playing on him in that moment.

After counting to ten, Wesley slowly opened his eyes, the person was still there before him. Not moved from the position that he'd seen them in before. Slowly, the Ravenclaw stood from his position, moved closer, but not too close, and sat himself back down about ten feet away from the witch.

Real. His mind supplied upon closer examination.

"You... don't need to be sorry." Wesley told the witch quite softly. His mind had a million questions, but none came forward. Anxious about the situation, Wesley's eyes dipped to his hands, fiddling with the grass to keep himself from exploding with the fear of the situation.

"Ummm." He added, jaw setting for a moment, before he spoke once again. "I'm Wesley." The boy told her, his Bulgarian accent quite distinct in this country, and still something that often swayed him from speaking to others.

But, as his mother's letter had assured him when he'd raised the point, there is nothing wrong with being different.

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The pace at which her heart was beating made Julienne curious as to whether or not the soft pulsations could be heart within the silence of the night. She could hear her heart taunting her with ever sound that it made, taunting her for being afraid of a figure in the distance. But she hoped that the figure could not hear her fear because the predator never ignored the frightened little girl. No-one with a hungry ego ever gave up the opportunity to ruin a shattered sense of self-esteem, because it was easier to destroy something that had already been fractured.

She remembered one particular moment, perhaps during her first or second year. Julienne had been sitting in the library, her eyes glassed over by the letter that she held in her hands. The voice of her mother rang through the parchment, insisting that the daughter would rather spend the entire Summer holiday with her father in Italy instead of coming to France. She'd received a similar letter from her father only days prior.

She remembered sitting there, trying to come up with an idea as to why people had children if even a small portion of their soul was telling them that they would never want to look their child in the eyes and tell her that they loved her. She wondered if either parent had ever told her that they loved her. If they had, it had been far before her memory could comprehend.

Julienne recalled the tears that had run down her eyes as she read her mother's words, as she tried to come up with a plan as to how she would decide which parent would be more likely to tolerate spending minuscule moments with their flesh and blood. After what seemed like hours, she remembered a girl walking up to her to examine the salted shimmer on her cheeks. Why had she been crying?

She'd told the girl that she did not know if her parents could have her over for the Summer, but she left it at that. No need to burden another with the weights of her troubles. A mental image surfaced of the girl smiling. She remembered how she'd offered for Julienne, a complete stranger, to spend the summer at her home.

And then the world crashed into her happiness like an asteroid colliding with the moon. Her eyes shifted from blue to green, such a small piece of what she was capable of doing, and the girl who had been nothing but kind was now saying nevermind. She'd forgotten that her house was already full, but she was sorry for the false hope.

The next day, every person she passed in the hallway was calling her chameleon.
The next year, Julienne had faded so far into the background that no person could remember her long enough to call her by even her real name.

So her heart raced, because she knew what the world was capable of and every move was worth her life. Every move could ruin her life. Especially the next move made by the stranger in the darkness as he sat beside her.

He was distant, but not too distant that Julienne could not make out the fact that he was a he. She wondered why he'd chosen to leave such a distance between them. Most people, if any, were up-front when approaching her. It was as though looking into her eyes was like having front row tickets to the side-show at the carnival, and she was the main event. But this boy did not seem to be like that. There was a safety within the distance that he'd created, almost like he was equally afraid of this encounter as she was.

The safety grew as he rejected her apology. From the uneasiness in his breaths, Julienne could tell that this was not coming from a place of insincerity. She could tell that the wizard was unsure of what to say to her, because she was too.

His name was Wesley, and the accent with which he spoke was something that she had never heard before. It was thick, comparable to Russian but not quite similar enough to be considered as such. It was curious. She wondered if his thoughts sounded to him as he sounded to her. She wondered if he could understand himself or if the comprehension was just as difficult as it would most likely be to others.

She looked to the boy, unable to see his facial features under the safety of the night sky.

"J-julienne," She offered back to him. She would have liked to ask him about his accent, like if his spells worked the same or if he could order a hamburger at the drive-thru without his intentions being questioned (Did the boy belong to a world where ordering a hamburger at a drive-thru was an option?), but all she found herself capable of was telling him her name and she hoped that that was enough.

Guest

The girl had simply given him her name, and she'd stuttered in the process of doing so. Nervous. Julienne - as he now knew her to be called - was nervous. Of him? He doubted anyone could be remotely nervous because of Wesley. Yes, he was tall, but he wasn't imposing, and seeing as they were both sat down, he didn't think that this could be something that was truly bothering the witch.

So, that simply left the notion of her being socially inept, uncertain, or else wise scared of the outside world, and that was why she'd only spoken her name. They had something in common, even if they had only introduced themselves.

Pausing for a moment longer, Wesley thought through what he might say next. It was not something that came naturally to Wesley, so to say that there was an elongated pause between her single word and his words.

"Julienne is a pretty name." Wesley said, trying to work out it's origin, but upon not being able to work it out easily, the Bulgarian decided to forget that line of conversation, pausing once again before looking up to the stars in the sky. They were not bright enough to be able to see through the dark, but they were pretty.

"Why are you out here?" Wesley asked, the question much more direct than he'd really meant to be, but he decided not to correct himself, after all, it was a valid question. And there was nothing much else he could think of to ask in that moment.

OOC: I'm so sorry this is so short, but Wesley is not a big internal monologue kind of character... heh.

Guest

The boy appeared to be at a loss for words, the crickets' cries echoing in the night as the two of them sat in the darkness without a thing to say to one another. For a moment, she wondered if perhaps he was just as scared as she. Was he too familiar with the corset that became her throat as a stranger made their way into her mind? Did he know what it felt like to drown in a crowd?

She dismissed the thoughts almost as soon as they appeared. How could he know these sensations? How could anyone?

After breathing in the silence for what felt like an eternity, the boy made a comment about her name. He told her that it was pretty. She nodded. It was small talk; party chatter that one would pose only if they could not think of anything better to say.

Julienne was a French name, chosen by her mother before she realised what a mistake her daughter had been. It meant youthful. Funny, how a name could represent the innocence that she'd been deprived of as soon as her parents had decided that she was not deserving of their love. Names were a funny thing, but she did not tell the boy any of this.

Instead, she allowed him to grasp for another topic. He asked her why she was here. Her eyes darted across the sky, reaching into Orion for the strength to say even a single word.

"To see the stars," she responded softly. Four words. She smiled.

Guest

The four words that had been uttered made Wesley's eyes moved up towards the sky again. Constellations were not something that Wesley understood, nor did he find them particularly interesting. Many people believed they carried messages, but Wesley couldn't say he agreed with that. Fate, if it existed, was in the hands of you, and you alone.

Well, and bullies, or his brother...

Wesley shook his head to remove those thoughts from the forefront of his mind, it would not to well to dwell on such things in this moment.

Looking back down from the sky, Wesley's eyes had adjusted just enough to see a smile playing on the witch's lips. She liked the stars, then, he decided upon seeing that. Feeling like he was intruding on her time, Wesley paused for a moment, thinking about how he could deal with the situation.

"Would... you like me to leave?" Wesley asked, because it seemed that everything was pointing to the idea of the witch wanting to be alone. Her nerves, her short answers. Wesley knew how to take a hint, and he was more than accustomed to being surplus to requirements.

And, at the end of the day, you never won anything by pushing your presence on people.

Guest

"Would... you like me to leave?"

"I-I," she stammered. She'd wanted him to leave at first, but now she was not quite sure if he was as much of a threat as she'd thought that he was. He wasn't doing anything and he had barely spoken a word since he'd been there. And yet Julienne's heart still raced at the idea of there being another person there. And yet she felt safer in the presence of another person. It confused her, how she could feel so much fear and so much comfort in exactly the same moment.

"Do you want to?" she asked, making sure to put emphasis on the word she'd used. The girl had decided that she had no place forcing someone else to leave, seeing as the Quidditch pitch didn't exactly belong to her. It was completely his decision on whether or not he wanted to stay. But what if he did not want to stay? Did her being there make him uncomfortable?

Had she asked him why he was there? He had asked her and she had told him, but did she take the time to ask for his story. She was so selfish.

"W-why did you come here?" She asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "I told you why I am here, but I never asked you." She wanted to add an apology to the end of her sentence but she'd already said so much. There was no way that the boy wanted to hear her say anything else. Was she always this obnoxious?

Her eyes then focused on something flying over the night sky; a bat, she assumed. She remembered reading something once about how birds tend to not fly in the nighttime, meaning that any birds you saw at night were more than likely bats. It was odd, she remembered thinking, that you could go an entire lifetime thinking one thing only to realise that it had been an entirely different thing all along.

Guest

The witch stammered slightly over his question and Wesley couldn't help but feel a little guilty for putting her in that situation. Pushing your own decision on to someone else was quite cowardly, even Wesley could see that, and so, he almost simply got up to leave, to avoid the awkwardness of waiting for Julienne to answer his question.

However, she flipped the question back to him, and Wesley stilled himself, looking at the witch before he shook his head. "No, I don't..." He told her softly, but didn't elaborate on why. Somehow, weirdly, he felt comfortable being on the Quidditch Pitch with Julienne, though he couldn't quite work out why.

Comfortable, in the awkwardness of the meeting.

The question that came only a few moments later, though, made Wesley's heart start to hammer in his chest. He couldn't tell her the real reason he was here, he had an opportunity to make a friend. And yet, if he were to make a friend and lie about his being here, wouldn't that be making friends based on lies?

Letting out a slow, shaky breath, Wesley looked to the other witch for a moment, before deciding on a half truth. "The castle... makes me feel like I'm suffocating. So many people, so... many differences from what I'm accustomed to. I... figured being outside would help me to not feel like that." Wesley explained slowly, testing the words out in his head before he spoke them. Was that too much? He wasn't sure, but he'd said it now, and all that was left was to see how Julienne took those words.

Maybe... maybe she would ask him to leave now.

Maybe she would say he could stay.

But the most important thing was, he hadn't lied.

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