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Laundry Room https://s26.postimg.cc/rdja3d389/lau...om-banner2.jpg Ever wonder where your dirty underpants wind up? Just down the corridor, not terribly far from the kitchen, the door to the laundry room can be found. What you will find in this room will, likely, not be a surprise. Within are no Muggle washing machines or dryers. Instead, front and centre, are large tubs with accompanying wash boards and sticks. A bizarre system of clothes lines fill the back of the room, beside which tables and large hampers await. |
Ashley was doing her own laundry, wondering why there were no muggle washers or dryers. Like, why were wizards washing their stuff by hand? Is there not a spell for that? It seemed so weird. Why did the house elves always have to do everything around here? Sometimes, it seemed to Ashley, the wizarding world got a little bit full of itself and refused to listen to good muggle ideas, like 'doing your own chores' and 'washing machines'. And so here she was, doing her own laundry by hand, which was not a thing she had done before. She was bored and done with her homework, so why not? It was a little bit fun, as long as you sing while you're working. |
Since taking up Muggle Studies, Zayn couldn't deny that he was curious about how non-magic folk went about their days. Their way of living seemed so foreign to him. Quite honestly, he couldn't believe how they managed without magic. But, on the flip side, he wondered if not being dependent on it benefited them in the end somehow. These were the question that ran through his mind, and naturally he didn't have any answers when it came to magicless living since all he had ever known and was used to seeing on the daily was magic. Today he was willing to see, in one aspect at least, what the Muggle life was all about. He knew there was a laundry room in the castle, since his clothes were washed every week like clockwork. Up until this year he hadn't really given much thought about the how and even the who behind his cleaned clothes, and he certainly had never been inside the Hogwarts laundry room before. The door creaked as he opened the door, but the Slytherin lingered as he stood inside the doorframe. The room was currently occupied by someone who was washing their own clothes. "Oh, err, hello," Zayn managed to say, debating whether or not he should leave. He assumed that washing one's clothes was more of a private matter. "I can, uhh, come back later?" |
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Zayn did see the girl jump right after he had spoken. Of course, he didn't act like her had. While he saw things, even things that many probably overlooked, there was a time and a place to point them out. This was not one of those times. Even though he didn't want to invade the girl's privacy, he was intrigued by what she was doing. He had questions now that he had been welcomed in. The questions, however, would have to wait. The girl standing before him, Ashley, was quite the talker. It was a bit overwhelming for him, going from introductions to being asked why things were washed by hand at the school to the mention of some Muggle machine that did the all the washing to how this all seemed to be 'behind' the times before going back to introductions. While she spoke, he made the assumption that she was very much a Ravenclaw. The robe, which he just now noticed, confirmed as much. "I, uhh, I don't think anyone here actually does the washing by hand. At least I don't think so," he replied, stepping into the room as the door closed behind him. "Pretty sure the house-elves use their own magic to make the clothes wash themselves in those tubs." Speaking of the tubs, now he was getting a good look at them as well as the boards and sticks. "Ashley," Zayn repeated with a slight nod of his head as he eyed up the odd arrangement of clothes lines. "Uhh, I don't think we've met. I'm Zayn." At this point, he returned his attention back to Ashley. "If you don't mind me asking, are you, err, Muggle-born?" She had to have been with that knowledge about Muggle washing machinery, unless she was one of those Ravenclaws that knew a lot of random facts. |
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"Well, I suppose using a wand is easier. But I don't actually know how to do that. Still, you could just... push a button. It would be faster to dry. But this is cool too... I suppose." She shook her head. Why had she suddenly taken an interest in washing machines? She hadn't, was the answer. "Cool to meet you. And I don't mind your asking. I am a muggleborn." Ashley had a weird way of talking that sort of jumped between saying 'epic' every possible moment and saying weird things like 'I sincerely apologize' or 'It's quite a pleasure to meet you'. She did not say such things now, because most people thought that it was too stuffy. And Ashley wasn't really very stuffy at all, so she didn't want to make that impression. "I take it you probably aren't a muggle-born?" He also was probably a slytherin and probably older than her and probably never had his arm set on fire on the first day of school and probably thought that Hogwarts was a normal school. A lot of things were probable at the moment. |
He really couldn't disagree with her saying that using a wand was easier. Zayn was willing to bet that it was, considering a lot of things were made significantly easier when one used magic. He nodded. "I know there are cleaning and heating spells that my mum uses," he explained. "Takes only a few seconds to get the job done. I know of a few of them, but I haven't quite mastered them yet myself." As for Ashley's comment about just pushing a button, his reaction to that was a few blinks of his dark brown eyes. He really had no idea what she was talking about. A shrug was all he had to offer her. But things did make more sense when she confirmed that she was indeed a Muggle-born. He definitely had questions for her, about the setup of this room and now about those machines Muggles used to clean and dry their clothes. "Yeah, not a Muggle-born. I'm half-blood actually. My family used to be pure-blood ages ago. Err, not that any of that matters," Zayn told Ashley. "Blood status was never really important to the Shafiq." Anyone who knew of his family's history could confirm that. The purity of their magical lineage was not what their family stood for. Bearing the name Shafiq was about having pride in their family's long-standing beliefs and positively contributing to the wizarding community. Looking down, he took note of the wash board that was next to the tub. "So, uhh, how does this all work exactly? Without magic?" |
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The girl's shrug was enough to make him wonder if he had given the Ravenclaw unnecessary information. He assumed that she, being Muggle-born, probably had never heard his family name before, at least under a wizarding context. Even more so, she likely wasn't interested in having to listen to him talk about it. Zayn was fine with that; he didn't want to end up sounding like his parents and grandparents who were rather persistent in reminding him on what it meant to be a Shafiq and going on and on about their family's history. Zayn's head tilted to the side while Ashley went over the basic details of what seemed like rudimentary clothes washing. "That all sounds ... time-consuming," he muttered, "and something that requires a lot of energy." It sure did make a simple wand movement and the uttering of an incantation seem like a walk in the park. "And those machines you mentioned earlier... those run on electricity, right?" He knew about electricity to an extent, among a few other things. "Might explain why those things aren't here at the school. I've heard Muggle stuff like that tends to work a little wonky around here because of all the magic." |
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The Slytherin simply nodded at Ashley's reasoning for wanting to clean her laundry by hand. He couldn't help but wish that he had 'a lot of time' and 'enough energy' like she did. Even though he was only a third year, the additional classes he had picked up was enough to keep him busy most of the time. With that in mind, he was rather grateful that OWLs and NEWTs were still a few years away. His head shook again, another nod about the confirmation that the machines she mentioned ran on electricity and how they wouldn't work at Hogwarts. Her mention of the technology lounge was, he thought, a valid possibility. "Might be something to ask Professor Schmoe about. Surely laundry must be a part of his curriculum at some point." A few moments of silence followed. Too much silence for Zayn to feel comfortable just standing there. "So, uhh, I guess I'll leave you to your washing?" he said, slightly awkwardly. "Unless you want the company." He didn't have any laundry of his own to wash, but he could volunteer himself to take care of the random pile over in the corner. |
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Should he stay or should he go? Zayn really didn't know. His whole point for venturing in this part of the castle was to see the laundry room with his own eyes, investigate how the washing was done since there was a whole room dedicated to it, and then maybe catch whoever did the laundry in action. The first two objectives he considered complete, and he figured he could count Ashley going about her washing as witnessing the job be done. Though he was curious about the elves: did they use their own magic to do all the washing, or was this a task they did by hand? He eyed the pile of clothes in the corner and mentally debated what he should do. He figured it was the elves that did the washing, and he knew some of them were pretty finicky about how things were done and when. Then the Ravenclaw in front of him didn't seem to really care if he lingered or not. Decisions, decisions, decisions. "Well, uhh, I'll leave you to it then," Zayn finally decided. "Probably should get back to getting some homework done anyway. So, I guess, I'll see you around." |
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