A Long Time Gone

Mmmmmph. Swish. Plunk. Mmmmmph. Swish. Plunk. Mmmmmmph. Swish.Plunk.

Amelia Lyons was standing on the bank of a secluded lake, just off the grounds of her family’s summer home in Ireland. It was far enough away from her family that she would consider such an unrefined pastime, for if she was within shouting distance of her mother, Antoinette, the woman surely would have made her objections to Amelia’s actions known.

Amelia, daughter of the internationally renowned violin player Antoinette and her fantastically intelligent husband Frederic, was throwing pebbles, with all the strength she could muster, into the lake. And she was barefoot, no less.

It had been five months now since she had been at Hogwarts, a much longer break than the rest of the students had experienced thus far. This was because her mother and father, after receiving word that Amelia had been chosen as Ravenclaw champion for the Hogwarts Tournament, had promptly arrived at Hogwarts to make absolutely sure that Amelia would be taking no part in the actual tasks.

Of course, Amelia had known when she put her name in the goblet of fire that her mother would be anything but fond of the idea of Amelia competing. But to be honest, Amelia hadn’t really anticipated having to deal with her mother’s fury; she had never dreamed she would be picked. But fate had deemed otherwise, which had led swiftly to her removal from Hogwarts by her red-faced mother, who had filled the entrance hall with a string of whispered threats and questions of Amelia’s sanity as she dragged her out the door.

Amelia was of the opinion that it had been her mother who had convinced her father that Amelia should take no part in the tournament (her father probably would have been intrigued by the chance to put his most recent magical discoveries in Amelia’s hands in front of such a large audience), but it hadn’t really mattered either way. In her household, whatever her mother said, went. And so Amelia went – went home three months early and had to be privately tutored away from Hogwarts to see that she didn’t fall behind in her studies.

The extended punishment of having to spend nearly all her time with her parents – away from the negative influence of her classmates, Antoinette had claimed, who she was certain had talked Amelia into entering the tournament in the first place – had made Amelia, who was much more accustomed to solitude, more than a little restless. With two more months before she could return to school, Amelia was finding very few outlets for her thoughts and emotions, which is how she found herself on the bank of this lake in the first place. Now, she blindly threw another pebble with all the strength her lithe frame had to offer.

Mmmmmph. Swish. SCREECH.

Cringing, Amelia watched as a green bird which looked somewhat like a vulture, but Amelia knew to be an Augurey, swooped angrily out of the tree in which it had been perched. Though Amelia would not have put it past the creature to make an attempt to return the damage it had been dealt, the bird instead decided to head for the dark forest which rimmed the lake, probably believing it to be a safer place than within range of Amelia’s pebbles.

And he’s probably right… Amelia thought moodily to herself.

Recognizing the futility – and potential danger, considering her lack of aim – of throwing endless pebbles into the depths of the lake, Amelia folded her legs beneath her and dropped the handful of pebbles that remained, staring instead into the depths of the water, trying to remind herself to revel in this time alone while she had it.

Jack had taken to wondering the Irish countryside during her spare time, sometimes bringing along a tent and camping gear and pitching up tent if she wandered along to far. She liked the outdoors and it did not hurt her to be alone. She never got the alone time she wanted, so these stolen hours (and sometimes days) meant a lot.

And it is not like it mattered to her family. Well, it did matter to her family, but what they thought did not matter to Jack. Her parents would be her enemies if they weren't related. Jack spent most of her time pissing them off and they spent most their time telling her they did not care what she did, and then promptly telling her off when she did not show up after two days. Luckily, they were both career orientated, so they were hardly ever home to notice.

Her brother Riley cared, but he was off trying to find his place in the world. He had come to visit when she was on one of her little adventures and he had pleaded with her not to do so anymore. He didn't even know the half of it; he had no idea there was a wizarding war going on. But Jack had just told him not to worry.

If her Uncle Chip knew about them, he would tell her to go ahead and live life. Uncle Chip got her. He understood the thirst for adventure, for thrill, for ruckus...

So here she was, ambling along, breathless from having run for a mile or so, her cheeks pink. She was slowly getting her heart rate back to normal though, her green eyes sweeping the landscape. She ran a hand through her short mane of red hair and shifted her knapsack on her back. The magically expanded bag held a tent, some food, clothes, matches, and various other items she would need if she planned to spend the night.

She heard a nearby screech and she looked up to the sky, eyes squinting ever so slightly. She could barely make out the outline of a giant birdlike creature flying off towards a line of trees. Jack's eyes turned downward and she saw the glimmer of something. She altered her course and strode towards the shine.

A magnificent lake came into view and Jack immediately thought to drop her bag, rip off her shoes, and go die into the lake, just for the hell of it. But instead she just walked towards it, breathing in the air. The air around a lake or a pond was always fresher and she always loved to inhale as much as possible, as though the air would stay in her lungs forever.

She stopped though as she approached. She saw a figure at the lakes edge, a girl about her age from the looks of it. Jack tugged onto the strap to her knapsack and thought about what to do next. Jack was neither outgoing nor shy; she was just confidant in all interactions. Still, she never exactly knew what to do.

Best just to plunge in, eh?

Hitching up her skinny jeans and adjusting her knapsack, she continued on her route towards the lake. She took up a place next to the girl and squatted, dropping her hand into the lake and feeling the placid water. "Actually somewhat warm. Wow, I did not expect that. Nice." She turned her head towards the girl, squinting in the sunlight. "What are you doing out here?"

Jack wasted no time in getting to the point.

With her legs scrunched beneath her, Amelia had to adjust the hem of her dress so as not to allow it to touch the ground or the dirty soles of her feet. Her mother was sufficiently distracted at the moment that she likely wouldn’t notice Amelia’s absence – the King and Queen of Spain were invited for brunch with a private violin concert to follow – but even the slightest bit of dirt on the white linen dress her mother had chosen for her this morning would surely lead to another lecture.

It wasn’t that Amelia intentionally defied her parents; on the contrary, she did everything in her power to please them. She had spent the last few years at Hogwarts earning every award worth having, succeeding at being top in her class, and had been appointed prefect without any hesitation on the part of the headmaster. She spoke four languages fluently, played two instruments, and knew just when to feign laughter at the jokes of important people. Aside from being quidditch captain – and Merlin knew that would never happen with Amelia’s dismal skills on a broom – there wasn’t much more Amelia’s parents could ask of her.

But it was a heavy burden to bear, one she should have shared with her brother. Raoul, however, had taken the opposite path when it came to the parental pressure they had both been exposed to: he had bucked the system and disappeared to heaven-knows-where. The owls Amelia received from him had been few and far between, even more scarce since she had regaled him with the story of being dragged home from Hogwarts on account of her participation in the tournament. She and Raoul had had a bit of a row about it – he thinking she should have just refused to leave and told their parents to shove it – and Amelia refusing outright to hear anything on the subject.

The truth was, Amelia was too invested in earning her parents approval to do anything that might jeopardize their high opinion of her. True, she had entered the Hogwarts tournament, but as mentioned before, she had never dreamed to be chosen. It was, or so she thought, a form of silent rebellion – the only kind she ever endeavored toward. But, as evidenced by her exile to Ireland, she had been wrong.

So entangled were Amelia’s thoughts in her reminiscence and introspection that she failed to notice the approaching footsteps until their maker was crouched immediately beside her. Amelia very nearly fell over onto the muddy ground in surprise as a red-headed girl appeared, wasting no time in beginning a conversation, though she might as well have been talking to the lake as talking to Amelia, such was the direction of her words. It wasn’t until she asked her pointed question that Amelia was even sure she was being addressed.

Surprised at the directness of the question – she was much more accustomed to people dancing around the subject or trying to wheedle their way through her defenses – Amelia toyed for a moment with her standard response of merely walking away or giving a stock answer that would be boring enough to encourage the asker to leave her alone. But seeing as this was the first contact she had had with anyone even remotely her age – she did not count the pompous and dreadfully chatty suitors her mother brought around to the house – she didn’t really feel like shooting herself in the foot right away.

“I was having a personal pebble throwing contest,” Amelia said with emphasis on the past tense, surprisingly honest but unsurprisingly blunt in her answer. She wasn’t one to waste words, for she said so very few of them in general. She did not skimp on them, however, when it came to being sarcastic. That was one of her specialties.

“But I lost,” she added, and there was the sarcasm. Amelia’s eyes met the girl’s – she would refrain from calling her an intruder for now, though the description was not inaccurate – and she surveyed her quickly, taking in her traveller’s appearance and trying to make a judgment on how to proceed. She had never been awfully good at making conversation; in truth, she was more a collection of witty barbs and awkward small talk.

“And might I return the question to you?” Amelia asked, remembering to remain polite despite her mother’s absence. Some things were just too ingrained to shirk off when out of Antoinette’s presence, unlike the impractical strappy sandals her mother had forced her to wear to brunch, which now lay in the grass behind her.
((This is what she is wearing (the one on the right). Practical, no?
))

((Very, haha))

Jack raised an eyebrow when the girl responded by speaking of a personal pebble throwing contest, emphasizing the past tense of the action as though to accuse Jack of interrupting her little game. Jack let it roll off her back, giving the girl credit for the quirkiness of the activity. Jack really did not care if she had interrupted.

The girl continued on to say that she had lost and Jack cracked an amused and approving smile. This girl may act a tad superior, but it did seem that she had at least the brains to back it up. Jack admired brains. Jack admired backbone. But coupled with cowardice and stupidity (respectively) they meant nothing and the people she could respect the most had not only intelligent things to say, but also the gall to say them.

Jack raised an eyebrow and took in the girl's appearance. She was dressed rather formally for a day by the lake. A nice, practical white dress, hair practically pristine. The only unorthodoxy was the lack of shoes, though Jack figured there might be some perfectly matching discarded heels somewhere. This girl reeked of perfection and elegance.

Even her whole manner, countenance, and way of speaking was perfectly refined. (The latter had probably been achieved in an etiquette course, or perhaps her whole family was simply refined.) This girl probably lived in a nice little manor, was rolling in galleons, and had a perfect little life. Though Jack would not hold that against her until she knew for sure.

It all drastically clashed with just about everything in Jack's life. Here she was, in her black skinny jeans, her old tee shirt portraying an obscure muggle band, muddy sneakers with the laces tied towards the heel as opposed to the lip. Her hair was a frazzled mess, she probably had some dirt on her nose. The closest she got to rich was her eccentric Uncle Chip; her parents had mediocre jobs, though they hid that, and Jack's car was a miserable excuse.

Yep. Jack was pretty sure that the girl sitting next to her on the bank of this lake was probably from an entirely different realm; That was just about how different they were. And this was all what she could gather from having known the girl for a full whopping two minutes.

The girl then asked, very politely and eloquently, what Jack was doing. Jack shrugged. "Ah, you know..." She let herself topple backwards to a sitting position, scattering leaves and some mud, though none landed on the girl's flawless dress. Jack propped herself up on her hands.

"Just adventuring and the sort. I might find a nice forest around here and set up camp, I dunno. Depends on if I feel like it at the moment." Now, Jack was one who prided herself on intelligence and she would pop out some large and confusing words quite frequently. But she was one who believed that conversation was a casual activity, and she did not like to make it a formal affair. Therefore, she had a laid back manner of speaking.

"The name's Jack. Jack Dyllan." She thrust out her hand to shake her hand, before seeing that it had become quite dirty from her flop onto the bank. She retracted it, wiped it on her jeans, transferring the dirt to her jeans, and then held it back out. Jack had a feeling that the two would also differ in name. She was sure the girl would have some sort of melodic name that just rolled off the tongue. Very unlike the guttural, choppy Jack Dyllan, which sounded like it could be a beer brand.

The girl’s response to Amelia’s sarcasm came again as a surprise to Amelia, though not nearly the one she had received at the girl’s initial arrival. The redhead’s bemused expression suggested that instead of being insulted by Amelia’s choice of conversation material, she might have actually gotten the humour.

Have I really been gone that long that my peers have adapted to my cynical humour? Amelia wondered to herself, though she said none of this aloud. The question was more rhetorical, anyway; she knew it was likely that this girl was unique in her appreciation of Amelia’s sarcasm.

In fact, the girl who was crouching next to her – clearly more at home in this position than Amelia was, whose legs had already started to ache in protest – was unique in many aspects, none of which escaped Amelia. Her attire was unlike any Amelia had seen for quite some time, though that probably had a lot to do with the fact that she attended more tea parties than teen scenes. The jeans the girl wore were older than anything Amelia owned – her mother had a nasty habit of throwing away anything she considered to be “last season” – and the shirt bore the name of a band Amelia recognized only because her mother had expressly forbidden Amelia to play any of their music as part of her piano repertoire. And aside from the nature of the girl’s clothes, there was also the fact that every visible part of the present company was covered with varying degrees of dirt and mud, including the shocks of red hair which stood out in every direction from the girl’s pixie-like face.

At least she looks comfortable… Amelia’s subconscious commented as Amelia tugged again at the hem of her dress. Though Amelia would likely not have chosen such an… eclectic outfit, she certainly would have preferred a pair of jeans and a cardigan over the constricting dress her mother had chosen. However, Amelia hardly thought Antoinette would have approved of anything denim in the presence of royalty.

As the girl made to answer Amelia’s question, she had only gotten three words in before she started to fall backwards. Thinking this was an accident, Amelia made to steady the girl, but thought better of it only just in time; a particularly juicy drop of mud sailed right past the hem of her dress as she straightened her legs to get out of the line of fire. It was only after she was standing that she looked back down to the girl who, it seemed, had intentionally come to be sitting on the ground. It took a great deal of self-control for Amelia to refrain from wrinkling her nose at the thought of sitting in the mud. Though her companion looked perfectly at home – and judging by her appearance, this wasn’t her first wallow – Amelia was a bit too attached to her neat-nick tendencies to even consider getting near the gloopy brown goo that was currently sinking into the backside of the girl’s jeans.

Distracted though she was by the steadily decreasing cleanliness of the girl beside her, Amelia had enough mental capacity to follow the thread of conversation that was falling easily from the pixie-ish girl’s mouth. She seemed entirely unfazed by the impression she might be making, which both surprised and intrigued Amelia. The Ravenclaw girl had been so ingrained with the importance of first impressions that she was now so robotic about them that they never turned out quite right. This girl, however, seemed to have not a qualm in the world as she described with flippancy her plans for the afternoon.

Before Amelia could comment on the idea of camping – though what she would have said to that, Amelia hadn’t the foggiest idea anyway – the girl continued to forge through the conversation, bypassing the small talk in favour of a direct introduction. At first, Amelia thought she had misheard the girl when she introduced herself as “Jack”, for Amelia was quite certain that name belonged to the male gender. But there was no mistaking it when it was repeated for her.

Though Amelia’s thoughts on the girl’s name might have been evidenced on her face, it was unlikely the girl would have processed this before she extended a hand toward Amelia, who took a step back in a self-protective manner as the muddy extremity came within proximity of her. Though Jack might take this offensively, Amelia had done it without thinking. In general, she wasn’t overly concerned with offending people, as she seemed to do so without trying and it kept people at bay, but still, Amelia was embarrassed by her visible reaction to a polite gesture of a handshake, and she blushed slightly in spite of herself.

Mid-Amelia’s blush, Jack seemed to realize what had made Amelia stray away, and she retracted her hand to wipe it on her jeans. Although Amelia was somewhat doubtful of the effectiveness of wiping one dirty thing on another, her social graces were not so under-developed to know that shying away from this societal mandate a second time would be the epitome of impolite, and with her mother’s stern impression fixed in her mind’s eye, Amelia extended her own hand down to Jack’s, resisting the urge to hold it with only two fingers and instead placing her palm against the other girl’s.

“Amelia Lyons,” the taller girl responded, keeping her introduction brief, for she was still rather embarrassed by her earlier retreat. Unsure of what else to add, Amelia held onto Jack’s hand for a few more awkward seconds before retracting it, unsure what to do with her hand now that it had a few slightly dirty finger prints on it.

“So um…” Amelia muttered, making her lack of conversational skills glaringly apparent.

Think, think, think…. My hand is dirty…. No! Don’t think about that. Think of something to say! Something, anything. This silence is already too long. Just say-

“Do you always holiday in Ireland?” Amelia spat out, grabbing onto the first acceptable question which passed through her over-crowded mind, speaking a little faster than she would have if she hadn’t been rushed by her embarrassment. Which only led to more embarrassment, which presented itself in crimson on Amelia’s cheeks.

Jack grinned a wide, toothy smile as the girl shook her hand, despite the traces of dirt still rather evident on her palm. Jack saw the fleeting look of confusion cross the girl's face in regards to Jack's name. That only made Jack's smile deepen, and when the girl introduced herself, Jack's assumptions were confirmed when the girl introduced herself; she had a name fit for royalty.

Which, regarding the little information she knew about the girl, Amelia, could very well be true. The girl seemed as though she was new at interacting with people, or was at least rusty at it. Indeed, she sort of hung on to Jack's hand a moment longer than normal. Jack relieved her of the duty of shaking her hand and retracted her hand after that awkward moment.

The girl was obviously a little freaked out by Jack's apparent disregard for her general appearance. The girl had leapt up as Jack had crashed into the moist, muddy bank side, spreading mud and some grass in the general vicinity. The girl apprehensively sat down, eyeing the area around Jack.

Jack sat up a little, wiping off the back of her jeans for spare mud and brushing the ground beneath her, out of respect for Amelia, who would probably not be able to get past the fact that Jack was slowly sinking into the mud. As it was, Jack could see Amelia's eyes lingering on her hand, which probably had some mud or dirt on it now.

Jack looked across the lake, noticing how lovely the lake looked. The placid water reflected the pleasant sky above them, images of trees rippled around the lake's edge, the wind pressed small little rippled towards the siting girls. The reflection of the girls showed that the differences them were quite appalling. There was Amelia, the face of perfection, looking anxious and somewhat nervous. Then there Jack, imperfection reeking from her, yet looking perfectly content.

She realized that Amelia had spoken to her. She turned, a question on her face. "Huh?" She had asked if Jack had always holidayed in Ireland. "Oh, right. I actually live here. I used to live in California but when I was young, we moved here because my grandma died and left us a better house. My parents are greedy snobs, so it wasn't too much of a surprise."

Jack always thought that it was funny that her parents could be so arrogant and focused on the material things. They really had nothing to be proud of. The house was plain, their jobs were just nicer than mediocre, and they had a rebellious troublemaker for a daughter. Not much to brag about.

She laughed. "If I holiday, it is somewhere far from here and my parents. Sometimes I go and hang out with my uncle, wherever he is at the moment. Or I spend a few weeks in Diagon Alley." She nodded. She really did hate to be stuck here, in close proximity to her family.

She turned and asked Amelia. "So, what about you? You always spend your holiday time here?"

Jack’s smile was somewhat reassuring, though Amelia knew from years of practice that a smile did not necessitate sincerity. Amelia could think of no incentive this girl could have for making Amelia relax a bit, but perhaps she was just the charitable type. She might have picked an easier task, though; Amelia was perpetually high strung and uptight, a product of many years of scrutiny from sources within and outside her immediate family.

When her companion looked away and to the scenery, Amelia followed her lead, glad to be tasked with something other than thinking of another thing to say. The view would have been breathtaking if Amelia had been in the mood to take in the scenery; instead, she had taken out her frustrations on it, and she could still imagine the disturbance her earlier pebble throws had caused in the now smooth lake surface.

It had been highly out of character for Amelia to be doing something so unproductive, not to mention un-ladylike, as throwing pebbles into a lake, but, thinking herself alone, Amelia had acted on the whim when the thought struck her. She had arrived to a lake just as smooth and peaceful as the one she saw now, but she had not reveled in the peace and quiet as she usually did. Instead, she had found the serenity frustrating, reminding her so much of the manor she had just left, in which her mother ensured no object was out of place, no music played too loud, no guest greeted a moment too late. Since she would never have the chance – or rather, the gall or death wish – to disturb the peace at home, Amelia had taken to throwing the stones to take out the pent-up emotions she had been storing over the last few weeks.

Storing up emotions was a bit of a pastime for Amelia, one she believed to be a method of self-preservation, but it did lead occasionally to these types of outbursts. Usually, though, no one was around to witness the breakdown of Amelia’s typically icy demeanor, to catch a glimpse of her more human nature. Thankfully, this trend had not been broken by Jack, who had arrived just late enough to miss Amelia’s minor fit.

Still standing rather stiffly beside Jack, Amelia turned hastily as the girl turned her attention back on Amelia. The guttural sound she made seemed to imply inquiry, though the unsure Amelia raised a questioning eyebrow at the girl’s less than eloquent response to her earlier question. Though she spoke easily, Amelia could tell Jack did not filter her words the way Amelia did, carefully weighing each one. If she had, Amelia was fairly certain that ‘huh’ would have tipped the scales too much to be said aloud.

Jack didn’t leave Amelia much time to dwell on her less than perfect word choice, though, as she continued on with a more satisfactory response, this time using words Amelia could easily identify. Amelia followed her answer, nodding to herself and filing these details away in the new folder in her mind entitled ‘Jack Dyllan’. The girl was surprisingly forthcoming with information about herself, and Amelia was especially taken aback at the flippancy and disrespect with which she spoke about her parents. Amelia could not help but raise her eyebrows at such a bold statement of dislike, but lowered them after a moment or two, blinking away thoughts of how her own mother would respond if she had ever heard herself described in such a manner (though it was not entirely accurate of her own parents – not all of it, anyway.) The image was not pretty.

“Occasionally,” Amelia responded vaguely when Jack turned the question around on her, and only after taking a few seconds to contemplate how to answer it and still give away the least amount of details.

“It has a lot to do with where my parents need to be for business,” Amelia added, somewhat truthfully.

Or how far they want to keep you from anyone you know, her subconscious added bitterly, though Amelia kept the facial expression that went with this thought concealed.

“The countryside is not a bad place to holiday, though,” Amelia said in what she hoped was a conversational manner, though it lacked the luster that seemed to naturally accompany Jack’s speech. Having nothing else to add, Amelia looked down at a tuft of grass she was pushed at with her bare toes, feeling the blades tickle the underside of her feet and send chills up her leg.

Jack nodded thoughtfully as the girl said something about her parent's business. The fact that she occasionally vacationed told Jack that she probably had a few exotic or distinguished places of holidaying as reserves. That made Jack even more sure that this girl was rich. Only the rich and the spontaneous chose different places to vacation. Jack felt that even if by chance this girl was spontaneous, she doubted her parents were.

She mentioned that it was not a bad place to holiday, and again Jack nodded, only this time more jerkily. "Yeah, it is actually quite nice." This time she did not disclose all the information in her head, because it would be much too much to tell a stranger. Not that it was particularly personal, just that it was irrelevant.

Truth be told, Jack loved Ireland, but she hated the memories that it held. Though her parents completely disregarded Jack nowadays, they used to be overly protective. This was what had caused the rift between Jack and her parents. Unlike most children of protective parents, Jack had learned early on to rebel and to find ways to escape the shelter her parents provided. Soon Jack had become the very kid that her parents had sought to protect her from; a bad influence, a troublemaker, a punk.

It was almost expected that Jack would receive official notification to confirm that she was an unorthodox little freak and a disappointment to her parents; it came to her family in the form of her Hogwarts letter. Jack was still filled with mild hate every time she thought of her parents' attempts to keep her from going. Only with the help of her eccentric, rich uncle Chip had she been able to escape to the magical world.

So despite her love for Ireland, she could not help but resent it for being the place in which she had to sever herself from her parents, and in some more regrettable ways, her brother Riley, who was still under her parents' thumb. And because of all of this, she thought she would do better to spare Amelia the rant.

Anyways, she would much rather spend her time elsewhere. In San Francisco or London or Cuba or wherever her uncle happened to be staying at the time (he was spontaneous and rich, a double whammy), or in Diagon Alley, or mooching off one of her friends at their home.

The thread of conversation having been somewhat lost in Jack's thoughts, she cast out for a different subject. The girl was her age but she did not remember seeing her at Hogwarts the past year. She did not think she looked old enough to be a graduate so she said, "Are you going to Hogwarts? I don't remember seeing you last year."

Jack’s agreement to Amelia’s statement about Ireland being a nice place to holiday meant that at least she had managed to say something conversational, which meant something of Antoinette’s constant work in this arena was paying off. After cringing repeatedly as Amelia accidentally offended or estranged party guests and suitors, Antoinette had worked tirelessly to teach her daughter something of making conversation. Despite Amelia’s protests and utter lack of grace in social situations, her mother had pressed on. For whose benefit this coaching was – Amelia’s or her mother’s, who would be saved from embarrassment – the Ravenclaw girl couldn’t be sure, but at least it had proven useful at least once.

After her somewhat abbreviated agreement to Amelia’s statement, Jack seemed to disappear into the silence that Amelia knew all too well. Not being at all uncomfortable with the quiet, Amelia allowed her eyes and thoughts to wander, moving from the grass she was kicking at to the trees around her. She thought for a moment she had seen a garden gnome peeking out from one of the nearby shrubberies, but it was such a fleeting sight that she couldn’t have been sure.

I wonder how the Queen of Spain would respond to a garden gnome traipsing through their tea party in the back yard… Amelia thought, the corners of her lips turning up slightly at the scene which bloomed in her mind, stifling the urge to laugh at the expression on her mother’s imagined face, though Amelia was quite certain it wouldn’t have been far from reality should such an event ever occur.

The two girls had been in quiet company for a few minutes before Jack spoke again, this time proving herself more perceptive than Amelia might have guessed, though she had not yet ventured such a conjecture, considering how little she knew about Jack. Amelia was what one might call a woman of science – she liked to have all the facts and weigh every option before making a judgment. This was rooted, Amelia guessed, from her father’s work, and also because she hated so much to be wrong. Evidence was far more likely to generate good results than a shot in the dark.

“I do attend Hogwarts,” Amelia answered carefully, “Though it is perfectly possible that you might never have seen me there. I spend much of my time alone,” Amelia said, not untruthfully, but not exactly disclosing the reason why Jack would not have seen her last year. It wasn’t impossible that even if Amelia had been at Hogwarts, that Jack would not have known of her existence. Many of her classmates didn’t (by Amelia’s design, of course), though her absence in the second half of the past school year certainly would have aided in her relative anonymity.

“I will be in my seventh year in Ravenclaw in the fall,” Amelia added, realizing that her prior statement served no purpose in furthering the conversation. Her mother was always chiding her about stoppering the flow of conversation with her blunt answers, and so Amelia for once felt blessed to have such an obvious direction in which to send this thread of dialogue.

“To which house do you belong?” Amelia asked, venturing her own unspoken conjecture mentally even as she asked.

It seemed that Amelia was becoming more and more comfortable with Jack and was finding her place in the conversation. Her answers were becoming less and less weighed, it seemed, and they were becoming a little more bolder, though still perfectly worded, grammar and all, of course.

The silence did not daunt Jack. In fact, in some ways, it was heartening. To have an almost no-awkward silence between strangers was no small feat. Usually, these silences were full of shuffling feet, awkward coughs, failed attempts at small talk, and a lot neck running. This one, however, was quite comfy.

She admitted to going to Hogwarts as a Ravenclaw and Jack nodded. She could have deduced that. The girl was not obnoxious enough to be a Gryffindor, nor complacent enough to be a Hufflepuff. If Jack had to narrow it down it would have been between Ravenclaw and Slytherin, though she would not have guessed the latter, because Jack did not like Slytherins much, so she would not like to assume anyone was one.

Amelia said she doubted Jack would have noticed her because she preferred her solitude, and Jack nodded, though she found that hard to believe. She did believe that Amelia was one who tended to keep her own company, but when she said she was going into her seventh year, Jack began to have her doubts.

You would think that if they were in the same year, they would at least know each other by name. Truth be told, Amelia had a vague familiarity in her face, but Jack could not remember an incident where they might have met before. Jack bit her lip, wracking her brain for the answer to this puzzling riddle.

Amelia asked what house Jack was and Jack but her hands on her hips, puffed out her chest, and struck as best a superhero pose as she could while sitting down. "Gryffindor, of course." She exhaled, letting her chest fall and then dropped her arms, laughing at her own dorkiness. "That's why I was so obnoxious and abrasive by approaching." Again she chuckled. "I'm also going to be a seventh year this year."