Quote:

Originally Posted by PhoenixRising

SPOILER!!: Aspen and Byron

Hadley was watching and listening to the pair in the corridor discuss her new sign. Were they going to do it or not?

Then, right there, the female did it first. Figures.

But were they going so soon? Coming out from her concealed spot in time to catch sight of one of the students from her own house, she nodded politely at them.

"Lachlan appreciates your generosity," she beamed at them. Generosity? What was that? That didn't even make any sense. But this was Hogwarts, when did things ever make sense?

Oh... Well that was a little creepy. Had Aspen known they were being observed, she might have tried to pick a more intelligent topic to speak with Byron about.

"Does he?" Aspen turned her eyes to the statue, wondering if maybe this Professor was a Statue Whisperer or some such. "How do you know?" she asked, genuinely curious.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CassiopeiaAKTF

Walking with his head held low and staring at the ground, Daichi wandered throughout the castle. His mind was in a completely different world as he shoved his hands in to his pockets. These past few days had been hectic already. Made new friends, made an enemy although he wasn't sure about that. Almost drowned in the lake while clinging on to a little first year and getting saved by a fourth year...And not to mention classes.

The second year Slytherin sighed heavily as his feet continued to drag him towards Merlin knows where. He liked being alone from time to time. He could actually THINK. And right now his mind was set on...Quidditch. Having been one of the chasers that brought Slytherin in to victory last year, Daichi couldn't wait until try outs were being held again. He still had no idea who the captain was though... He thought about it as he passed a couple of older students and even a Professor, which he hadn't seen at all. It was when he reached a statue that he looked up completely dazed and snapped back to earth.

Daichi looked at the statue. Something was written above wasn't there?
He squinted his eyes as he tried to read what was written on it, but failed. His eye sight had apparently gotten worse yet he still blamed the letters for being so blury. He was fine when he just looked around , sometimes got a headache but that was it. But when he had to focus on words it became blury. "What does this say?!" he asked more to himself as he scratched the back of his head while squinting his eyes again but it only resulted in closing them.

Aspen quietly read the note to the boy, "It says... Precocious Decree #47. If you pass this spot, please kiss the statue. Thank you for your cooperation." Always helpful, that Aspen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nabs

Byron looked around at the strange crowd that had formed around the statue. The Professor was making absolutely no sense, and Aspen had agreed to have dinner with him... but...

"What's going on here?" he asked everyone who was assembled there, including Lachlan the Lanky, "I feel like I'm in one of those muggle... surprise... candid whatnots."

Had he kissed the stupid statue and gotten caught on camera??

Byron held up a hand to stall the Hufflepuff girl who was being urged to kiss the statue as Aspen and himself had done earlier, as well as the squinting second year, "Maybe we should wait and see what Professor, er..." he didn't know her name yet, "Her, has to say about Lachlan's generosity."

Something shifty was afoot. And there was nothing Byron quite liked as much as an intrigue...

Wasn't Byron SO glad they'd followed directions now? See? You could trust the professors. They'd done the right thing and the Professor (Hadley...? Aspen was pretty sure) was smiling and proud of them.

She nudged Byron gently in the ribs. He didn't SEEM as glad as he should have. "We did good, silly. Right, Professor?" Unlike the other girl, the Hufflepuff, who was getting in trouble for not following directions.

Having finished up the mild disaster that was Simon and his Banner of Embarrassment, Kurumi decided that it was time to return to the Gryffindor common room and de-blush herself. She probably resembled a ripe peach at the moment and she felt as though she were sitting right in the middle of the fireplace in the common room.

As she walked, she noticed Professor Hadley had made her appearance on the 7th floor. Odd. Wasn't she the Hufflepuff Head of House now? Something she needed to congratulate her on still. Not only that, but Arthimancy wasn't on the 7th floor either. Heck, neither was Divination anymore by the looks of things. "P-Professor Hadley!" Kurumi called out, kicking up her heels and jogging over to her and...the crowd of students? "What is going on?"

But then her eyes flicked up to the decree. "Precocious Decree #47?" she read. "I didn't even know we had Precocious Decree #1." Kurumi panicked a bit. There were now 46 new rules that she was unaware of.

Kurumi glanced at Professor Hadley and then back at the statue. Really? Kiss it? Could she at least shake its hand first?

Ah well it did make sense to kiss.....WHAT? NO IT DIDN'T!
Daichi looked at the girl who had read the sign out loud with a confused expression. Was she for real or was she playing a prank? "B-but i don't wanna kiss a statue~!" he muttered as his cheeks fired up slightly and he fumbled with his fingers. He didn't want to kiss anyone let alone a statue. A statue! This wasn't a joke right? What if he kissed the statue and everyone would laugh at him?

The Slytherin looked around for someone with a hidden camera. Maybe they were being photographed right at this moment?! O_o.

His eyes gazed back at the statue and he figured that he would find out if he just did it. He was about to walk towards it when the other boy hold him back. Daichi bit his lower lip as he listened to what he had to say and he nodded his head. "You're right, i'll just listen first what the Professor has to say" he looked over at the Professor who was talking to a, what seemed to be a hufflepuff looking at her badge. "I'm Daichi by the way" he said out of the blue while looking back at the sign. Maybe he could just walk away? But he had heard from a classmate that another sign had been posted somewhere in Hogwarts and it had said that everyone who ignored it would be punished. What if it were the same thing with this sign? Daichi didn't like the whole punishing idea. So he waited for an explanation and it was then when he heard a girl's voice call out the Professors name from the other side.

Turning around, he saw a girl walking towards them. She looked really familiar to Daichi. Hadn't he tasted one of her cookies at the beginning of last year? Or maybe she looked familiar because she was wearing a Prefect badge and therefore had to stand out.

Maybe it was because he had been lost in his thoughts earlier that he couldn't progress that the sign had read #47 according to the girl who had read it for him but when he heard the Prefect talking about not even knowing the first degree he too looked panicked. "I-i don't know the other degrees either" Well , he did ..but only two of them. And one he didn't even know what it was. This was confusing him.

Eamonn was already off exploring the castle. Yet he was already sure he was on his way to class, or he was going to be late. He hoped he was heading in the right direction. he just had to go downstairs and maybe he'd find one of his friend's already. He was hoping he'd see Emmaleigh. "Hey! You look tired."
Eamonn waved at her, running faster to catch up with her. "This is the astronomy tower right? Wait I'm so lost again." It stank that he was in Ravenclaw and she was a Hufflepuff but hey, it could be worse. He could have gotten Slytherin.

Em was a little relieved when the boy that was standing by the statue advised her not to kiss the statue. It was an odd thing to be told to do, and would be even more awkward to do in front of people.



Just then, Em noticed a familiar Gryffindor heading their way. "Kurumi" she said smiling at the girl. It was good to see a friend considering this strange predicate she found herself in. She really wanted to catch up with her, but now really wasn't the time. The read head found her self nodding as both Kurumi and the boy called Daichi said they didn't know about the other 46 Precocious decrees. "What is a precocious decree?" she asked aloud.



And it appears the boy she had been looking for found her. Found her standing around some statue that apparently wanted kissing. Smiling at the boy, she said. "Yeah, its a long hike all the way up here. Like eight flights of stairs ore something." Not like she had actually counted how many flights it was this time. "Yeah, Astronomy is up here." somewhere she thought. "i'll try to show you around in a bit, but we are currently trying to figure out why this statue wants, or needs kissing."

Right, this was getting fun. More and more people were gathering and actually questioning the decree, instead of merely accepting it's word as fact. Having seen the professor put the sign up herself only moments ago, Byron was determined to get it from the horses' mouth (not that the prof was a horse, in fact... he gave her a quick sweep... not at all).

"Yes," Byron looked at the sign, his brows raised in amusement, "Precocious Decree? What does that even mean?"

Kat was bundled up in her cloak as she walked down the corridor. She was preoccupied thinking about what kind of tea and cookies she wanted to eat when she saw the sign hanging above the statue. I don't remember that being there the first time I came up here...hmm...

Kissing the statue seemed harmless enough, and everyone around seemed to be focused on their discussion about the various decrees. What's the worst that could happen, yeah? Here goes nothing...

Kat kissed the statue quickly and stepped back, waiting to see if anything would happen or if anyone would notice.

João had been neglecting going up this far for a few weeks now, because he had nothing to do with here and it was just too many stairs. But, if he was to live in this castle for at least a year, then he had to at least have a general idea of what was where. Thus there he stood, at the top of the stairs, and just tried to catch his breath.

That was definitely the last time he was up here until it was really necessary.

Aurora had hauled herself up to the seventh floor, she had wanted to gaze out of the windows and see if she found any inspiration. She already had a little tune going round in her head that she wanted to develop and she was humming it a little as she passed one of the statues.

And then...

"Oh! 'Schuldegung! Es tut mir- sorry, I mean, Sorry, are you alright?" she had walked straight into an older boy.

Take a deep breath... let it out. Take another... let it out. Now take a shallower--

"HEY!"

He turned quickly to the thing that had just tried to knock him down, and it was a slightly younger girl. With a deep frown, he kept staring at her for a moment, until it occured to him that she had spoken German. German, a foreign language! Although he would be furious, he knew that sometimes it wasn't possible to avoid crashing into someone, and the fact that she was a Slytherin and had just spoken German, one single glare would do it.

"You're foreign?" Cutting directly to the point. He hated small talk.

Oh god... stupid, clumsy, idiot Aurora! She really had to stop running into people. Especially older people. Especially older Slytherins. Who looked kind of scary... She raised an eyebrow as the older boy glared at her.

"No... yes. Well, sort of." She shrugged. "Germany, England, France... pretty much everywhere European to be honest. Why?"

Oh, these indecisive girls! Someone is either foreigner or not, they cannot be both. João considered telling that for a moment, before he thought better of it and instead shrugged casually.

"I am foreign too. And you spoke German, that's why." So she was also a traveller like him. Such common points. Only, her accent was British, while his was curt Latin American English.

"Yes. I can tell that." she said. He had an accent she couldn't really place, having not spent much time out of Europe. Her own accent was actually very strange. Almost non-existent. Having lived in Germany for nine of her thirteen years with a French brother in law, ever-so-English parents, Irish, Belgian and Italian cousins and various other family members with crazy accents she had kind of lost track. She was, primarily, upper class, but a few of her vowels had a german lilt and often the ends of her sentences would sound French. "And yes, I did, I had been writing to my Mother. I was thinking in German." This boy was rather... curt. She wasn't sure if she liked him or not...

Wow. So she wrote to her mother in German? The aspect of writing to a mother was a thing by itself anyway, and writing to her in another language was even better. But, if the mother was German, of course. He wasn't sure, she never really told. The boy shrugged. "Upon hearing your German, I got excited. I don't see many foreigners in here." Aaaaaaawwwww, he almost felt lo-lo-loneeeeeeeelyyy! Not.

"I'm João Neves, fellow house-mate." He held out a hand, accompanied with a smile. "Fifth year."

"Well, yes. I suppose most people here are English." she said, thinking about it. "Though I think there are a fair few American and French people... Shame really. I like speaking German." And Italian... Not that she was very good at it... but it was always a good idea to practice. She couldn't work this boy out... he was... odd. She kind of liked the fact that everyone here spoke English. It was much less confusing than when she was at family gatherings and every other person was speaking a different language, only half of which she understood...

"Aurora Stewart-Quinn." she said, grinning as she shook his hand. "Third year." Not enough people shook hands nowadays, honestly, way too many people had actually hugged her when they introduced themselves. And she didn't like that.

Of course one person had to bring her round from unconsciousness before they introduced themselves but... nevermind about that.

Pssh. Made sense, right, since it was essentially a British school? João hardly held back himself from rolling his eyes. He could have told her that he did learn German, albeit only for a year... but he didn't feel like it. He didn't see himself talking to her in general, let alone in another language. If she spoke Portuguese, maybe, but German... she had an arrogant air. Sure, Slytherins should be arrogant anyway, but hers was just... off. Shame, really, she was even beautiful...

"Do you know Italian?" Wow. Now she impressed him, a little. Not many British could manage both German and Italian, pronouncing them understandibly. And her German pronunciation was nice enough. Maybe, if that was the case, she deserved another chance...

"Nice to meet you, Aurora." Weird name. Why did people have such eccentric names around here? "Is your hair natural?" Because also that was eccentric, the colour of it... he liked it.

Aurora grinned, "Yeah, a little. Not completely fluently... but I can get by. I mean, we spent a lot of time there." she explained. If there was one good thing about being homeschooled it was the travel. Her parents traveled ALL THE TIME. And she LOVED it! "My family are kind of... all over the place. My dad's Irish, grandma's french. My mum's British, her Father's German, my dad's brother and all their family live in Italy..." she trailed off. Counting them off on her fingers. Then there was her other uncle in Spain, his wife was Portugese, then her Mother's brother, Rufin, who had spent a lot of his adult life in Germany... She got confused sometimes...

"And you, Joao." Well, he seemed nice enough, if a little haughty at first. "Oh, er, yes. It is." She fiddled with the end of one of her curls. "I kind of like it." she added. Yep, she was the only one who had inherited the true Quinn hair. Her brother's was a dark auburn-y brown and her sister had their Mother's blonde. She was the little Irish girl of the family. Even though she hadn't ever spent more than a couple of weeks there at a time...

Jenny was speed-walking back to the common room, struggling to keep her now angry escaping pygmy puff in her hands. Seriously! Did Professor Lafay even mention how long the potion was supposed to last?

Suddenly, she stopped; her pygmy puff jumped off her hands, but she caught it just in time. Did it really hate her that much now? Keeping the pygmy puff close to her (with great difficulty), Jenny noticed a huge crowd standing around a statue. Unfortunately, she wasn't close enough to hear what was going on, but she did notice something on the nearby statue.

Jenny tiptoed a bit closer, trying to read what it said. Oh. Good thing she didn't walk right in front of it yet. She had to find an alternative route to the common room soon though; her pygmy puff chomped its teeth on her hand. Ouch!

Then she noticed that Professor Hadley was also there. Jenny's day just got worse; she needed to get out of here soon!

Lola Jones was an ADVENTURER.

How dare she stay missing in action for days--no, weeks--NO, MONTHS. It was too much, the Slytherin couldn't handle it any longer and so, she ventured out from the depths of her slumber and out into the wonderland of Hogwarts. She was a mere victim of worrying and panicking for the OWLs, what with her obsession with complete and utter PERFECTION!!11 How can an actress be successful if one does not act intelligent? Right? RIGHT.

She passed Lachlan the Lanky during her expedition, with of course, her trademark silk top hat kept warm under her arms.

"LACHLAN!" she preached with a 'long-time, no-see' tone.

WHAT WAS THAT? Lola couldn't help but stare at the sign beside him. "Pre--," she squinted, "Preco--oh my what a pretty word!" She gasped. Kiss the statue? Kiss Lachlan?!

"WHAT. IS. THIS," she screeched out in disbelief. Everybody KNEW Lola and Lachlan had somewhat of a spring fling last term. "So I wasn't good enough for you?" she screamed face to face against the statue. SCOFF. GRUNT. ROAR. In a matter of moments, her hands found themselves around the statue's neck and her feet kicking and abusing.

Auggie was bored. He had been sitting in the blasted Common Room for a few hours after working on some homework and hadn't had much of anyone to talk to for a while so he decided to come out into the Castle, maybe he would find someone to talk to.

After roaming around the seventh floor a bit, the third year came to the Laclan the Lanky tapestry and just stopped and stared at it. Many times he had passed it on his way to the Common Room but had never really stopped to look at it like today. It was strange.

Eino had spent the past fifteen minutes trying to answer the riddle to be granted entrance to the Ravenclaw Common Room, but failed miserably. Plus, every one else seemed to be downstairs at this time of the day so no one had come up to help him. He was so used to the small groups of students gathering outside, trying to solve the riddle, that when the hall was empty it was rather sad. No matter, it wasn't an emergency, so he decided to return to downstairs, still thinking about the riddle.

Of course, this distracted him so he began to walk around mindlessly and ended up at the end of the corridor, by the statue of Lachlan the Lanky. He only stopped to notice, however, when he accidentally bumped into a Gryffindor student. "Oh, pardon me." He said apologetically.

August continued to stare at the sculpture and rasied an eyebrow in confusion. Why in Merlin's Beard would someone sculpt him like that. He personally would be angry if he ever found a statue of himself depicted his body that way--unless that's really what he looked like.

Shiver.

Just as he was about to head on his way, he felt someone bump into his left shoulder. "Oh no it's not a problem, partly my fault." he said with a small smile. It was a boy about his age, and wearing Ravenclaw robes. Auggie had thought their Common Room was up here in the Towers too. Instead of this being just an awkward run in, he decided to introduce himself. "Oh um, I'm August Goldstein, third year Gryffindor." he said holding his hand out to shake the other guy's.

Eino looked at the statue that the boy had been admiring previously to the collision, and then back at the boy. Eino's eyes were drawn to the crest on his robes, and blimey, he was a Gryffindor. Eino was hoping that he would be a Ravenclaw to help him solve the riddle, not he already had made up his mind about waiting, anyway. "Hello." Eino said waving his hand three inches from his face. It looked like he was checking if he boy was blind, but no, he was greeting him. "A pleasure to meet you, Aw-Gust Cold-And-Stained of Gryffindor." He said taking his hand and shaking it rather violently. "I'm Eino Uronen, fourth year Ravenclaw." Then he turned back to the statue, trying to figure out why the boy had been looking at it.

Ahh, a hand in his face! August shot his head back a few inches as the new boy's hand nearly whacked his nose off of his face. He was about ready to look over this, odd wave when the kids butched his last name.

O___o

Was everything...ok with this boy? Auggie smiled politely and then looked for signs of disease or insanity. He couldn't see anything on the outside, maybe he was just feeling a bit under the weather? "Oh um, yes. Nice to meet you too Eino." Ah so he was a Ravenclaw? He had heard from some other Gryffindors that they tended to be...eccentrics. "So what are you up to Eino?"

What he was up to? Eino looked at the boy in confusion, slightly tilting his head to the side as he tried to make sense of the expression. "I am up on the Seventh Floor of Hogwarts, I believe." He said and stomped his right foot twice on the floor. What he was up to he didn't know. He look at the boy and shrugged, as though he knew what Eino was thinking.

"What are you up to?" Eino asked naively and poked the boy's chest, to emphasize the you. Maybe he could get some clues as to what it meant when he heard the boy's answer. Just what Eino needed, another riddle.