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**Wilber Winterbottom** · #1 (**permalink**) 12-27-2022, 12:45 AM

Image Credit: Charely Potter

The Topiary Garden is home to creatures both magical and mundane. From Hippogriffs to rabbits and everything in between, these figures have been trimmed from specially selected plants to provide a relaxing environment for you.

Take a seat on the grass or perhaps on one of the polished, wooden benches and inhale the crisp freshness of the air. More often than not, you may find yourself being distracted by a topiary as it waves to you or it randomly scratched its nose. Once in a while, they may even resort to performing a small hilarious act if they are not receiving enough attention. Professor Khanna asks that you refrain from interacting roughly with the topiaries. None would want a broken wing or a twisted paw.

OOC: The topiaries are charmed to move about, however their actions wouldn’t be anything over the top. There will be no attacking the students and professors or dragons breathing fire. You are free to RP for the topiaries as well as to decide what sort of creatures live in the garden!

sweetpinkpixie · 06-01-2026, 11:43 PM

The initial message he had enchanted to appear between the bristles of her broom ― the one place he had confidence she would pay attention to ― had been brief. Suspiciously so, perhaps. Just a summons to the topiary garden to discuss concerns about her recent behavior along with a date, time, and location. No direct inquiry into why she had been skipping lessons or nearly broken a boy's nose with a goblet, though the weight of such things was carried in the flourish of ink on the parchment.

The Gryffindor's reply had arrived sometime later carrying all the emotional transparency of a reinforced vault door. To which Professor Cox had responded with another note.

No words this time. A map. A painstakingly detailed map that allowed no room for error.

One entire sheet of parchment dedicated solely to charting the route from Gryffindor Tower to the Topiary Garden. Every staircase labeled. Every turn annotated. A helpful arrow indicating YOU ARE HERE beside the tower. Estimated travel time included. Two alternative routes provided in the event of moving staircases. Landmarks carefully marked along the way. At the bottom, beneath a final arrow pointing directly at the garden, he had written: Saturday, 10:00 AM.

Underlined twice.

He, however, had arrived by 9:30 to set things up.

Several wooden crates had been arranged along the edge of the Topiary Garden, each overflowing with mature Puffapods swollen to the point of splitting. Canvas sheets had been stretched across sections of grass nearby. Collection bins waited beside them. Several large circular targets had been erected between the topiary figures at varying distances, painted with concentric scoring rings more commonly associated with a Quidditch training exercise than school discipline.

And there he waited, leaning against the crates with his arms folded across his chest and eye fixated on the entrance to the Topiary Garden.

*Samia* · 06-04-2026, 06:21 PM

The first note had received a reply. A perfectly reasonable reply, in Marina's opinion. She had informed Professor Cox that she was fine, thanked him for his concern, and assured him there was absolutely no need for a meeting. Which should have been the end of it.

A responsible adult would have accepted that. Or at least pretended to. Instead, several days later, a second parchment had arrived.

A map. An outrageously detailed, painstakingly labeled, impossible-to-misinterpret map. Every staircase marked. Every turn annotated. Alternative routes included. Estimated travel times provided. The destination underlined twice.

Marina had unfolded it and immediately understood Professor Cox was not in the mood to let this go. She had spent the last week quietly hoping the matter would dissolve on its own. Avoidance had always seemed like a perfectly respectable strategy. Not foolproof, perhaps. But respectable. She had certainly committed to it. Corridors were rerouted. Entire hallways abandoned. More than once she had spotted Professor Cox in the distance and abruptly remembered an urgent need to be literally anywhere else.

But... maps like that weren't sent by people who were going to forget.

So now she was here. Which, frankly, felt like an accomplishment all by itself. By the time she reached the entrance to the Topiary Garden, her nerves had already worked themselves into a tangled knot somewhere beneath her ribs. She wasn't entirely sure what Professor Cox wanted from her. Well. That wasn't true.

She knew exactly what he wanted.

Explanations.

Reasons.

Answers.

Things she didn't actually have.

Skipping classes had been easier than explaining why she couldn't make herself walk into them. Throwing a goblet at the gryffidor troll had been easier than explaining why hearing her name twisted wrong for the hundredth time had somehow felt like the final crack in something that had already been splintering for months.

Neither of those facts felt particularly impressive now.

Marina stepped through the entrance and immediately stopped. The sight before her was so unexpected that it managed to shove her anxiety aside for a full three seconds.

An entire setup that looked suspiciously like someone had combined detention, gardening, and Quidditch practice into one deeply concerning activity. Her gaze bounced from the targets to the crates.

Then to Professor Cox.

Then back again.

For a moment she simply stared.

"...what is all this?"

The question escaped before she could stop it. Curiosity won the battle. Briefly.

Then she remembered she was supposed to be nervous. And that this was Professor Cox. And that she had spent ...quite some time now avoiding him. The realization settled back onto her shoulders immediately.

Still, Marina was Marina. Which meant the anxiety had to come out sideways. Her arms folded tightly across her chest. "Also," she informed him, because apparently this was the important thing to address first, "the map was unnecessary."

"The second route was objectively worse. And the estimated travel times felt a little passive-aggressive." The corner of her mouth twitched despite herself. Only slightly. Her eyes drifted back toward the targets again. Then Professor Cox. And for the first time since arriving, some of her bravado slipped.

Just a little.

Enough for the uncertainty underneath to show. "Am I in trouble?" The question came out quieter than everything else. Not because she didn't know the answer. But because suddenly she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to hear it.

sweetpinkpixie · 06-05-2026, 10:46 AM

A long silence followed her inquiry, one that suggested he was evaluating several possible responses and discarding most of them on principle. Her observations, he decided, did not dignify any sort of acknowledgement.

His arms remained folded as he pushed away from the crates.

"I was informed you recently demonstrated considerable enthusiasm for throwing things when frustrated." He gestured toward the puffapods, the targets, and the collection bins with one hand. "I thought it prudent to redirect that talent toward something... less likely to require a visit to the Hospital Wing. Professor Feirgrund was, likewise, inclined to agree with the assessment."

The corner of his mouth threatened the faintest twitch before disappearing again.

"You're going to throw puffapods at those targets. Repeatedly." Only then did he address the quieter question, something in his posture shifted subtly.

"Ma ― Miss García Massey. You have been skipping lessons. You threw a goblet at another student with enough force to nearly break his nose. Those are not particularly brilliant decisions, wouldn't you agree?" His gaze drifted briefly toward one of the topiary hippogriffs before returning to her. "But if this were merely about punishment, I would have assigned you writing lines over and over and over again, as I did your peer, and gone back to grading essays."

A low breath escaped him, fingers flexing as an uncomfortable burn began flowing through his veins and pooling in very specific sigils across his skin.

"You had already spent several weeks demonstrating that avoidance is your chosen coping mechanism. You are not here because I, specifically, am angry with you."

His jaw shifted once, the muscle ticking briefly beneath the skin before settling again. One hand came up to rub at the back of his neck, fingers lingering there for a moment as though attempting to work tension from muscles that had no intention of cooperating. A slow sigh left after, heavier than the conversation perhaps warranted. It broadened his chest beneath the dark fabric of his robes and lifted his shoulders before they settled again.

"You are here because something is amiss."

Only then did his eyes return to hers.

They narrowed slightly — not in irritation, but in the weary way of a man already anticipating the argument before it had been made. Because Gryffindors, in his experience, simply could not help themselves under these sort of circumstances.

"And before you tell me that nothing is wrong, allow me to remind you that have developed a reasonably advanced understanding of when someone is attempting to feed me complete nonsense."

Finally he nodded toward the nearest crate.

"So. You may either begin throwing puffapods at targets while we talk. Or you may begin throwing Puffapods at targets while refusing to talk."

A shoulder lifted in a small shrug.

"Either way, you are throwing puffapods at targets."

*Samia* · 06-13-2026, 03:47 PM

For a moment, Marina considered pretending she hadn't heard any of that. It was an appealing option.

Unfortunately, Professor Cox had always possessed the deeply inconvenient habit of continuing to see right through her when she wished he wouldn't.

So her gaze drifted immediately toward the puffapods instead. Not because they were particularly fascinating. They weren't. They looked vaguely ridiculous sitting there in their crates, swollen and overripe and waiting to burst. But looking at them was considerably easier than looking directly at him.

The problem was that every time she tried, her brain supplied a completely different memory instead.

The End of Term Feast.

The whistle.

The scolding he'd given her afterwards.

Objectively, it had not even been one of the more serious reprimands she had received in her life. She knew that. Rationally. Unfortunately, rationality had very little influence over the part of her brain that still wanted to crawl under a table whenever she remembered it.

So she climbed onto the nearest crate instead, reaching down to grab a puffapod and weighing it thoughtfully in her hands. "In my defense," she said at last, studying the pod with exaggerated concentration, "his nose did survive."

Then she hurled it.

POP.

Pink beans exploded across the outer ring of the target. "Also in my defense," she added, reaching for another, "he kept saying my name wrong even when I asked him to not do that."

A second throw followed.

POP.

Closer this time. The silence stretched. Professor Cox was very good at silence. Marina hated that. The next puffapod rolled between her palms while she stared fixedly at the target.

Anywhere except him.

"And I wasn't avoiding lessons." The lie sat between them for approximately half a second. She sighed. "Okay, I was avoiding lessons."

Another throw.

POP.

"But I wasn't trying to be difficult." The words came quieter. Because she hadn't been. At least not on purpose. Her fingers tightened around another puffapod and she risked a glance toward him then. It was a mistake, so she immediately looked back at the targets.

"I know most of my decisions lately have been a little stupid. But I am working on it though"

sweetpinkpixie · 06-17-2026, 05:19 AM

He remained where he stood beside a unicorn topiary, one shoulder angled lightly against the foliage. His arms were folded in more of a resting posture across his chest than a barrier.

The first puffapod burst drew only the smallest shift in his attention — eyes tracking the trajectory, the impact, the scattering of colour across the target ring.Emotional discharge translated into a measurable outcome. He nodded, his gaze returning to the Gryffindor while he remained a silent observer. He watched her climb unnecessarily onto the crate without correction, watched how she chose not to look at him when speaking, watched the slack in her shoulders when she admitted she had been avoiding lessons.

The faintest exhale passed through his nose in acknowledgement of something already accounted for in his assessment. Only when she hesitated did he move, slowly pushing off the topiary and ignoring its attempt to nuzzle his shoulder, close enough that she could no longer pretend she was speaking into open space rather than to someone who would actually hear her.

His eyes flicked briefly to the next puffapod in her hand, then back to her face.

"Continue," he nodded. "You are not required to edit yourself for my benefit."

He bent to inspect a bit of bush that had begun to creep beyond its marker stones, pinching away a yellowing leaf with practiced fingers. The silence stretched comfortably between them, at least as far as he was concerned. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her roll the next puffapod in her hand, turning it over and over as though weighing whether to squeeze it.

"Mr. Miller's error in judgment is being dealt with," he continued. "I would hazard that he is now somewhere around inch 13 of a 300 inch penance involving correct orthography."

He straightened and brushed a trace of soil from his sleeve before moving on.

"What I am trying to understand," he continued, pausing beside a lion whose mane was due for trimming, "is what you were avoiding. Because I refuse to believe it was simply a matter of name mispronunciation..."

He rested a hand against the cool hedge, studying her expression rather than the topiary.

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