Distractions (Max)

Guest

In all of her six years at Hogwarts, Riley hadn't even gone down to the dungeons besides going for class. Today it was by accident. Riley was always dreaming about swimming or being back in the water that sometimes she forgot where she was going or that she was even walking. Sometimes it seemed that she was just always floating in the water. Her mind was with the ripples of the ocean. As a thought entered her head it would disappear as fast as it came. Riley tried very hard to be the same as everyone else, but sometimes it was hard. She couldn't talk to Alex about it because she didn't understand.

She wanted so badly to talk to Alex about school and the world that she was thrown into, but apparently it wasn't allowed. Muggles couldn't know about the magical world. So she was basically alone. Her parents knew of course, but she was told to keep it a secret. She had never kept anything from her sister so the fact that she had held this in since she was eleven was truly difficult. Then Riley snapped back to the situation at hand. She was lost. She couldn't even pin point where the potions room was.

Riley did what she usually did when she was nervous. She twirled her hair and started humming a song. It was somewhat comforting, but didn't help her get back to where she needed to be. Riley low key hoped that a professor would come down here and catch her. Loosing house points would be better than dying. She looked everywhere looking for a way out. As usual she wasn't paying attention and bumped right into something. "Oh! I'm sorry! I wasn't paying attention!"

Guest

Max's patrol duty was boring. Primrose had had to take a student back to their bed, or somewhere (Max hadn't been listening because he'd been examining a part of the dungeons he'd never been to before and had forgotten to be a good prefect before Prim had promised to be back shortly. Max had insisted he would be okay, and went back to patrolling the corridors with little and less coming up from it.

Of course, as a Gryffindor, being down in Snake territory on your own was not the most pleasant of experiences in the world... Which, was probably why a smile grew on the Prefect's lips as he rounded the corner, only to bump in to someone. Who probably shouldn't have been down in the dungeons, but Max wasn't exactly a firm believer in the rules.

As the apology came from the witch's lips, Max shook it off with a casual wave of his hand. "Please, don't worry about it. No harm was done. Though, I don't think you're supposed to be down here... so you should probably keep it down a little bit so that I don't have to dock points off of you. I don't like the idea of docking points, you see, so, please... help me out?" Max said, his sentences being spoken much too quickly, but getting his point across nonetheless.

"I'm Max, by the way." He added as an afterthought, because that was what you were supposed to do when you met someone you didn't know, right?

Guest

Riley froze for a moment. Human interaction was not her strong suit. So when it came to introducing herself to other people, Riley wasn't an expert. Sometimes she liked to pretend she was somebody else going on different adventures. She did it so much sometimes that she often forgot her own name. One moment she was Rachel, taking pictures on a wild safari, another time she was Anna, a painter. Hardly ever was she Riley, the boring swimmer. Maybe she could play pretend with this fellow. It might be fun being somebody other than herself.

She said, "Right.. I'm.. Jessica. Ravenclaw."

She couldn't lie about which house she was in because well, she was wearing her house robes. It would give herself away if she said otherwise.

She continued, "I was daydreaming while walking. Turns out I can't multitask. Haha."

She smiled and looked down awkwardly. She hated talking and meeting other people. That was why she was down here instead of out talking with her friends. If she had any... Riley had been a wallflower these six years she had been here. She thought being at Hogwarts would help make the transition easier and maybe help get her some friends that she had stuff in common with. But no. Here she was still different. It didn't matter that she had the same magical abilities as them. Her mind wasn't the same and she couldn't figure out why.

Riley then gave in. She wanted at least one friend and to have a friendship she was told that she had to be honest.

She said, "Actually my name is Riley. I'm sorry I lied. I like to make stuff up and thought it would be fun being somebody else for a change. I hope you're not mad. Also, can we get out of here? These dungeons are freaking me out..."

Guest

"Hi Jessica!" Max replied to her greeting with a warm smile that showed she really didn't have anything to worry about. He might be a Prefect, but, really he was the good cop of the whole scenario. Not scary by any stretch of the imagination. Primrose had said he'd probably been elected because he was so likable, and in this moment in time, it was probably going to help.

"Daydreaming?" Max enquired, though he wasn't sure if it was proper to ask these questions... "Oh, multitasking, I completely get not being able to do that - it's really difficult, right? Like, trying to do homework, and looking after your pet Bowtruckle, and talk to your girlfriend, all in the same space!" He shook his head at the thought - he was never very good at that, and his attention usually landed on the Bowtruckle, or, on occasion, his girlfriend.

The girl was quite nervous, Max realised as she looked down away from him. He wasn't one hundred percent sure on how you dealt with that, so he instead looked away from her in the moment, to give her some 'space'. Until the witch spoke again and Max looked back, still smiling.

The admission that not!Jessica had lied to him made the Gryffindor frown, though, and for a moment, he wondered just why you would lie about who you were. But, Max gave a small shrug of his shoulders. "No, I'm not mad. Why would I be mad? Making things up is actually pretty fun - so long as you don't hurt people with it! So, Riley, why do you think you need to be Jessica?" Max asked, motioning for her to follow him so that he could show her out of the dungeons like she'd asked of him.

Guest

"Why did she NEED to be Jessica?" Max had said.

The question burned into her soul. Riley had never let anybody see what was really in her mind. So the fact that she had shown some random boy she just met a few seconds prior was rather surprising. Riley didn't like to talk to people much. She mostly liked to stick to herself. Knowing that he wasn't mad about her lying about her name put her more at ease.

She replied, "I guess, it's more fun being somebody else. Nobody really get's Riley. So I think it would be easier for everybody to get me if I was somebody completely different. Like Jessica, the writer."

Riley wrote too, but she was afraid to show people what she created. She thought Jessica wouldn't be afraid to show everybody what she had written. Jessica would be a published author in no time, which was on Riley's bucket list if she ever got the courage to persue it.

Also, she enjoyed givng the make believe people in her head more exiting lives. She sometimes grew jealous of the lives they led, and pretended she was them all the time. One time, as Anna, she was chased by a stampede, and then saved by a wild man. The idea was hilarious, but she wrote it in her journal. She loved being visual with her entries, so something that should've been a couple lines, ended up being pages and pages.

Maybe this boy would understand her. Maybe all the years of waiting finally would pay off and she could make a friend. She could laugh in her sisters face when Alex made fun of her for not having any. For being in one place for six years and not knowing a singe soul. But she wouldn't get her hopes up... She did lie to him about her name... She could mess this up like she did everything else.

Guest

Max, quite honestly, didn't understand why on earth you wouldn't be able to 'get' someone. So much so that as Riley said these words, he found himself frowning as he tried to understand. For a few moments, Max didn't say anything, still trying to puzzle that out in his own mind, without going too far away from the subject in the same time.

"You know, that... doesn't really make sense... to me?" Max told the witch, a sheepish smile on his lips as he admitted to that much. But, it had been honest, and most people favoured honesty when you spoke to them. Unless it was brutal honesty - something Max wasn't sure he fully understood either. Having to keep on topic, though, Max didn't say this much out loud.

"Why would people not get 'Riley'?" Max asked, his tone soft, but curious as he looked over at the Ravenclaw witch. "I mean, people are more complicated than animals, I've always known that much. There's a complicated array of emotions, thoughts, feelings. But I've never understood why people are so complicated, do you know what I mean? Maybe not, I'm rambling..."

Max fell silent, still trying to work these things out in his head, before he turned to her once more. "I'm interested. In knowing Riley. If you want to have someone 'get' you. Is that how you explain it? Or say it... I'm not sure. But, I'm here." The Prefect finalised with a warm smile.

If he'd lost her... that wouldn't really be anything new with Max and his overly excitable thought process.

Guest

He asked THE question she was afraid of answering. Riley was a unique character. Not even her family understood her so why would anybody else? Riley looked down. She had to answer this question right. She had to answer it with the little dignity she had. This was the deal breaker on making a new friend for the first time in years. Sometimes she pretended that Alex was with her just so she could talk to her.

Riley wanted so badly to be able to tell Alex how she felt about everything. She wanted to share the world she belonged too with her, but it just wasn't possible. Right now, In Alex's mind, Riley was away at a boarding school. It was for special people, her parents described it that way for Alex, and Riley couldn't get if "special" was good or bad.

But describing it that way also left a rivalry between the two. Because it meant that Riley was more special than Alex. Riley didn't choose to become a witch. She didn't want to hide things from Alex but life just wasn't fair as her dad had put it. When she thought about it, she hadn't remembered the last time she even spoke to Alex, and that hurt her soul a little bit. They were twins. There was apart of Riley that could feel what Alex felt. Or so she liked to think. She wanted that connection with Alex. And then she realized she was avoiding the boys questions with her own thoughts.

She said, "Um.. Riley is.. Different I guess you could say. She's always been different."

Then he said the one thing she had been waiting to here for years. He wanted to get to know Riley. The real her. Something she had never done before. And of course, it was a year before graduated. What was going to happen after she graduated? She would become an Auror, and what would happen with her new friend? Would he forget about her like her family would?

She said, "Um.. sure. If you want too. "

Because, what the hell right?

Guest

OOC: I apologise for the slow response, I've been mad busy!!

The explanation that Riley gave about her being different made Max smile to himself. That was not something that was a new idea to him. After all, they were all different in their own way. Some people were born in to magic, others weren't. Some people were good at magic, some weren't. There were nice people, horrible people, tall people, small people, Max's head could go on and on, truthfully, but he pulled himself back in to the moment.

"Well, you know everyone thinks I'm weird. Or, well, different. Because I like animals a lot. Lots of people think it's weird that I like to spend my time with animals more than I like to spend time with people, but I don't see why that should make me different in a bad sense of the word." Max explained, trying to put her slightly at ease by explaining she wasn't the only one who'd been labelled as different.

"I've just come to realise that the people who matter the most to you, are the ones who love you for being different. Like, my girlfriend Prim, you probably know her, she's the other Gryffindor Prefect?" He explained, trying to put this in to some context. "She's always liked me for being different. So, you know it's not always a bad thing. If you have people who love you for it."

Max paused for a moment, before giving a small shrug of his shoulders. "What is it that makes you different?" Max asked, curiosity still on his features as he tried to guess in his head.