The problem with having a creative mind was that there was always something he wanted to do. Or at least try. And right now the Ravenclaw entered the art room he had discovered yesterday while he continued his exploring of the castle.

It came as a surprise to him that the room was empty at the moment yet thought it was the perfect opportunity to let his creativity go wild. He walked to the back of the room to grab an large easel and white canvas and placed upright. Then he grabbed some old newspapers, folded them open and placed them on the ground under the easel. This way he wouldn't make a mess. Cause he was planning on making one.

Rolling his sleeves up to the elbows, Dorian checked a cabinet and picked a couple of random paint colors. Purple, white, green and orange. Placing the cans on the table nearby, the second year used his hands to open up all the cans and set them up in a line.

With a grin, he slowly scooped up a handful of green paint and as he aimed and threw it with strength. The force caused the paint to hit the canvas and drops of paint exploded on the surface. With a satisfied smile, he dipped his hands in the purple now and splashed it on the canvas again.

ART!

Jessa Cambridge wasn't all that into art; anyone could tell you that. Her free time was spent on taking apart new concepts, modifying ones that already existed and working towards creating some of her own. All that took place in her makeshift lab she'd created in an abandoned classroom up on the 6th floor.

This trip to the art room was a bit of an anomaly for the girl. It was a sure fact that if all her experiments were currently on wait time, she'd just find a friend and call it a day but today was different. This trip was an inspired anomaly, one that she figured would double as a relaxing way to spend the afternoon--art was meant to be relaxing, yeah? One of those things people did to de-stress? She wouldn't know. There were several things she did to de-stress and smearing paint all over a canvas was not one of them...well.....figuratively maybe.

"Oh, hey Dorian. Wasn't expecting anyone else in here." She said, greeting her housemate as she moved into the room. The lack of expectation had less to do with thinking people didn't like art and more of an...unknown. Not making it a habit to visit here, Jessa wasn't aware of what the foot traffic was like. By all counts, this could've been worse. One other person was hardly a crowd.

She watched the boy toss paint at his canvas, thinking it not a bad idea at all. Harder to be terrible and have the piece come out rubbish if it was random to begin with. "D'you mind some company?" She could always come back. Some artists were a little finicky when it came to their creations.

After splashing the paint on the canvas and getting some on his uniform as well, Dorian suddenly remembered what he had forgotten to do. Change in to comfortable clothes!

The boy looked down at his colorful grey cardigan and white blouse and sighed. Guess he needed to pay a visit to the laundry room soon. Unless someone more magically experienced than him wanted to clean it for him? He dounted doubted it. It was embarrass enough to make a stupid mistake like this one in the first place.

Since he was alone anyways, he grabbed the cardigan and started to take it off when he heard a voice behind him. Struggling to get it back on, his cheeks flushed red as his left arm got stuck in the sleeve and he moved around in a circle, flapping his arm and causing splashes of paint to fly everywhere but eventually he managed to put his cardigan on. "hey!" he said a bit too loudly and after making sure he was presentable he turned around to see who it was.

Ravenclaw Prefect. OF COURSE

He watched her as she entered the room and dipped his hand in the pink paint before splashing it on the canvas like nothing had happened. "I don't mind" he said as he handed over the bucket of white paint to her. "Throw it, it can be a stress relief activity" his blue eyes gazed over at the badge. "I want that badge too. My dad was a Prefect as well, cool right?"

It took everything in her to mask the snicker that threatened to come out. Jessa didn't know if she was more amused....or embarrassed for him but outwardly her expression remained neutral save the slight upward quirk of her lip that was the beginning of a smile she'd quickly contained while he struggled to get his shirt back on.

Ahem. No need to make it worse for him, especially not when he seemed so keen to play it down himself. She was here for this, however he wanted to pretend it went, so sure, she didn't see anything.

In light of this not seeing anything, Jessa moved to the cupboard to gather a canvas of her own. She set it up next to his at the work station so they could more easily share the paints but paused a moment to cast a non-verbal impervius charm at her clothing. By now, after a year of determination to not cast unless she could cast non-verbally, that sort of spell had become something of second nature to her. It almost seemed foreign to say the incantation after nearly a year of only making non-verbal attempts. It was the price of perfection and had left her stranded without magic for months before things started working. "Is that what you're doing? Relieving stress?" Had the Second Year already found himself overwhelmed with the routine happenings of the school?

She looked to his shirt, not failing to notice that unlike her, he hadn't bothered to do much protecting for his uniform. "You'll wanna have that cleaned up as soon as possible." She said offhandedly, taking some blue paint and throwing it at her own canvas. Pretty sure it counted as defacing the school uniform which was actually against the rules. Just something for him to think about. She wasn't about to go all militant.

Again her self restraint was called into question when he said he wanted a badge too. For the life of her, she couldn't see why. So far, all it'd done was change around what had grown to be a rather normal schedule of events for her. Now her days had to be re-arranged. Suddenly, there were so many other things that needed doing. "Yeah, it's alright. My sister used to be too before she got Head Girl back then. All you really have to do is make Hirsch think you're more responsible than everyone else, though don't ask me what his criteria is." Because she shouldn't have been top of the list.

Harriet had been at Hogwarts for six years, but she still hadn't really spent much time in the art classroom. She liked being outside and paint more. But she really needed to sort, and do more different kind of things. So she was heading up to the art classroom. She had her sketchpad under her arm, with her pastels, watercolors, and acrylic paint in her bag. She didn't know what she was going to do. But she wanted to try and experiment and do some new things. She didn't know if anyone would be in the art room, but that didn't matter. She didn't mind not being alone when she painted. Sometimes company was good. It depended on her mood, but she wouldn't be too annoyed if there were people in the room. Unless it was really packed, and then she wouldn't be too happy. She couldn't paint well if it was really busy.

She headed into the room, and smiled as she saw two Ravenclaws were here. "Hey guys" The blonde murmured with a smile, as she for a moment got distracted from what she was doing, and looked at what the one boy was painting. "That looks nice" She didn't paint like that, but it was cool.

.......what?

With a handful of purple paint in his hand and it dripping on the newspaper floor under him, Dorian looked at Jessa with a perfectly raised eyebrow before he laughed. "What kind of stress does a twelve year old have?" he shook his head with another snicker and threw the paint at the canvas, aiming for the right corner and hitting the left one. "Nah, i just like throwing stuff without getting in trouble" he smiled broadly. He did not want Ravenclaw to be last place again like previous year. It had been so embarrassing coming home for the holiday after writing letters that they were the best house ever. "Oh, so embarrassing" he mumbled to himself as turned to the door when he heard another voice.

He knew her from classes, but had never actually spoken with her before. Then again, people rather hang out with people their own age. He knew he did. "Nice?" he asked as he looked at his art work. "Just...just nice? I put my heart mind and soul in this..." not really but hey.

Wait...his clean up? Dorian looked down and sighed heavily. "Can't any of you help me?" he asked. "Or should i call an house elf to take it to the laundry room?"

What kind of problems could a 12 year old have? Merlin, where did she start and how much time did he have? Probably not a lot and this wasn't the day for that anyway. This was just some downtime in the art room. It didn't need to be analyzed from every angle and turned into something more. "All kinds, if you're proactive enough." She finally said, her shoulders rising in gesture of a shrug.

Simply liking to throw things was something she could understand, not from her own inclination but because she knew several who found this sort of thing to be calming. "What's embarrassing?" She'd caught the tail end of his muttered words but was soon distracted by the entrance of another student.

"Hey Hattie." The girl was into painting and that sort of thing if she remembered right.

Jessa looked to her housemate again, now remembering the problem he'd had with his uniform. "No need to bother them." She decided. "Hold still." The Fifth Year drew her wand, casting a silent scourgify to make the pain spots leave. "I'd suggest impervius before you get back to throwing paint, just 'cause it'll at least stop it from getting stuck on your clothes in the process."

Would he be needing help with that too before she got back to throwing?

Hattie bit her lip. Yes. It was nice. She didn't know what else to say. Other art critiques would say the same. She would know, she'd entered enough art competitions to know. Throwing paint wasn't the best. Not to her anyway. She couldn't get the precision that she liked in her art work. It was fun, but she had grown out of it now. She was more serious now, and she figured she needed to be if she really wanted to sell her artwork. It was only going to be a secondary form of income though, what with her having plans to go to muggle university to be an art therapist. But she would always be invested in her art, to the extent that she wanted it to be good enough to sell.

"Well...." She paused, tilting her head as she looked at the piece again. ""It is nice." and she didn't really know what else to say. Hopefully he wasn't offended, but she was only saying her opinion. It was a free country right? So she could totally say what she wanted. The blonde then looked back at Jessa and smiled. That girl was good at her wand work. Hattie was a little jealous. But she was getting better at it now.

"It's always good to paint in old clothes too..." She mused, offering Dorian some advice for next time. Or well, at least she hoped he'd want to do some painting again. Not enough people did, and it made her sad.

Even though there had been an art classroom - or at least an art-devoted room - at Hogwarts for a million years (or thereabouts), Abra had never really been tempted to use it. He liked to draw or paint in his common room (though a common room full of Gryffindors wasn't really the best place for trying to concentrate) or in his dormitory, the latter of which being his favourite choice.

But this term was a term for trying new things. Or... something.

Well, no, it wasn't at all. Actually it was more like he had started to feel like he had less space to work in when he sat at on his bed to do artsy things, or even when he set himself up in the common room. Everything felt crowded and like he just didn't have enough room to spread out all his supplies, and if he stopped to think about it for a moment he might have connected this phenomenon to the fact that he himself had grown a lot over the past couple of years, and so was now taking up more of this space with his own limbs.

Because he was starting to feel a little too cramped in his living quarters for doing his art, he had decided to brave the art classroom, feeling certain that, given the nature of the room, there had to be more space to work with. Abra had packed all the things he thought he might need for today's project into his schoolbag, after emptying it of all the useless schoolbooks, and brought it along with him. Up in the common room he had hitched a ride with a couple of seventh years (read: noticed them leaving the common room and seized the opportunity to trail behind them all the way to the first floor), and now he lingered outside the door to the art classroom.

Because he hadn't much felt like doing this particular bit of exploring on his own - mainly because he knew it might involve interacting with people he didn't know very well - Abra had asked Simon to come along with him, and to meet him outside the art classroom so they could both go in together. That way, not only was it helpful to Abra, but it also meant they could hang out together, just the two of them. Except... he was not always brilliantly social while concentrating on drawing, and could get a little snippy if people distracted him but... well, whatever. It was quality time with a close friend and that was the part that mattered. That and not having to come in here alone.

Naturally, because he was waiting for Simon, Abra still didn't go inside. What he did do was gradually grow more and more anxious, and also tried very hard not to think about a time in first year when he had Simon had both been caught unawares in a different empty corridor. As time ticked on his ears started to pick up on every tiny sound nearby, and Abra started mentally rebuking himself for rushing behind those older students and getting here much earlier than he had planned to. It would have been less stressful to take the corridors at a normal pace than to be stood alone in one; at least then he could keep moving.

Siiiiimoooooon where aaaaaare youuuuuuu?

What was so embarrassing? Dorian shook his head, dismissing the question. "Nothing, I have a habit of thinking out loud" he laughed. Something that surprisingly had not gotten him in to trouble at school yet. At home however....

As Harriet criticized his art, the Ravenclaw turned his attention back to the Prefect and stood still when she pointed her wand at him. He trusted her as she had helped him out last year as well during class not to mention that she was one of the Prefects which meant she had to be good. What did drop his jaw however was the fact that no sound came out of her mouth. "But...you..." he cocked his head to the side as he tried to remember which year she's in. "You're a fifth year and you can do non-verbal spells?" there was a twinkle in the boy's eyes as he looked at her in adoration. "Wow!" he said as he looked down at his fresh and clean uniform. "Thanks Jessa, what spell did you use?" Also, Dorian frowned. "Isn't impervius an unforgivable curse?!'

Looking over at the Hufflepuff again, Dorian sighed as his art work was nothing special and he knew it. Cause it was just paint throwing really. A child could do that. "I kinda want to learn how to paint but I have no clue what I'm supposed to do" with his mixed colored fingers he picked up a brush from the nearby table and held it in his hand. " do I hold it like I'm holding a quill ?" he asked.

Oh. In the broad spectrum of Ravenclaws she knew, herself included, thinking out loud didn't seem at all like a problem. It was almost normal. So many thoughts and concepts going through your head, it was inevitable some would come out before your brain could properly decide whether this was the sort of thing it wanted out at all. "It's an interesting quality to have, I'll give you that."

Jessa nodded at his assessment of her year, all too aware of it herself. Yep. Fifth Year. A year older than Fourth Year and still going. "I can." She confirmed, flicking some blue paint from her fingertips onto the canvas in haphazard manner. "Valko promised he'd teach me a new curse but said I needed to be flawless with non-verbals first. Went cold turkey with my verbal magic until I could finally cast non-verbally." Took a year and several frustrating attempts daily, not to mention putting several other experiments on hold to find the time but she finally did it. For the most part. Some were still easier than others.

"That one was scourgify." Standard cleaning spell that usually got the work done sufficiently. And more paint thrown onto the canvas, this time a deeper shade of blue for some contrast. "But you're thinking 'imperio'." As the unforgiveable. "impervius just makes stuff resistant against water or in this case, paint." Liquids.

"Are you working on something new, Hattie?" Jessa knew the girl was into this sort of thing. She bet she was here more often than most. Who knew, maybe she had a project a long time in the works or had just finished one and was ready to start anew.