Violet's current problem was sitting right over there raving about glitter, and while she may be a bubbly person to some people, she had not shown Violet that side recently. And Violet had been unable to come up with whatever she'd said or done to set Aria so against her, and quite frankly, she was now fed up with thinking about it. If she really had done something wrong, she wouldn't hesitate to apologize, but unless and until Aria chose to let her know, Violet had determined to put the whole thing out of her mind and just avoid the younger girl when possible.

Violet had taken some grey, dark green, and grey-blue streamers and fastened them together--that was sort of watery, wasn't it? It looked the color of the water of the Lake outside the Slytherin windows. Then she transfigured some of the tacks she found on the table into seashells and used them as decorations for the streamers. Violet was actually not bad arranging colors and shapes, she was just very clumsy at drawing. She had hoped that someone else with more talent would join her; then she had planned to offer to help them. But so far, she was the only one here and she was running out of things she thought she could do, or do without looking too stupid.

Then she looked again at Atlas, sitting up there on the dias all alone and intently working on something. And for a moment he'd glanced up and smiled at her. That was all the encouragement Violet needed. Whatever he was working on had to be better than anything she could come up with, so, leaving her completed streamers lined up carefully on the Water table, Violet got up and walked over to join him.

And when she got there, she found--some sort of mechanical contraption that looked like some elaborate and beautiful insect, and it seemed to be actually helping him, bringing him things, as he worked on what seemed to be an impossibly intricate drawing or diagram of some sort. "That is absolutely fantastic!" Violet exclaimed, watching the metallic thing with admiration--this was a really useful companion, much better than the misbehaving, thieving old magpie she was stuck with. "And--uh, what is it you're working on, exactly? Do you need any help?" Which was a stupid question, because obviously Atlas had already got all the help he needed, probably much better help than an unartistic Slytherin could offer.