tick and some tock

Henri was curious, that was all.

She had followed the sound of the heavy tick and tock all the way up to the clock tower. Even as the skeptic she was, she had to admit the mechanism was a bit of a sight to behold. Nothing to write home about, but enough to impress her in this moment. walked as closely to the pendulem as she could get, and then tipped her head back, looking up.

She was going to unscrew this thing this year.

It was decided.

"Impressive, isn't it?"

The clock tower wasn't a place where many people hung out, but Lucy liked it. It was... inspirational. It kept perfect time and there was absolutely nothing magical about it.

"I like it," she continued. "Lots of things in Hogwarts are like that, if you know where to look. The Hogwarts Express is entirely un-magical as well, you know, and yet people still think muggles are backwards? It's fascinating."

A voice roused Henri from her musings and her head swiveled to look back at the newcomer. She was a stranger, obviously. This girl would have to be one of three or so people in the castle to be someone Henri would rightly recognize.

The girl continued on and Henri turned, her eyes intently taking in this stranger as her words were processed in the transfer student's deviant mind. The girl was thoughtful on muggles, and Henri was a bit unsure about how to twist that into something useful. Blood purity had never been a big problem at Salem, so she wasn't sure how to handle or use it.

"It's quite a spectacle," Henri responded, looking at the pendulum. "Anything important about it, or is it just a clock? They act like everything at Hogwarts has significance, so I wouldn't doubt if this was named after a goblin or something."

"Huh."

Lucy shrugged carelessly.

"I guess it depends what you think is important. It has a moon phase dial and see that thing up there that looks like a roundish saw near that other thing that looks almost like a conch shell? That's a striking rack. It makes the bells toll the right number of times. Not all clocks have those."

"But no, not made by a goblin. They'd probably want it back by now if it had been; they have some interesting ideas about inheritance."

She gazed at the Ravenclaw girl, gazing at the pendulum.

"That's mostly for decoration," she added.

Oh Merlin.

Henri had not been fishing for a lesson in clocks and horology, but it seemed she had no choice in the matter. Henri could not keep the subtle lines of boredom from setting into her features, but she looked up, staring at the mechanism above her.

The girl also had to burst her bubble about the pendulum. Sigh. Still, though. Just because unscrewing it wouldn't stop the clock, didn't mean that it wouldn't be hilarious to drop the pendulum in the courtyard.

"Sad. The coolest parts are always the useless decorations. Just like a mohawk. Cool, but impractical, and only worn by posers not fit for the leather they paint onto their bodies." She heaved a sigh, as though it were a real problem.

Sometimes, it was.

Lucy didn't know what to say to that, mainly because the girl had used a really weird metaphor that she couldn't understand. Nobody wore pendulums, at least, not unless you counted some girls' earrings.

"I think somebody might have got impaled on it during one of the battles here," she lied in an attempt to cheer the girl up and also to fill the awkward silence that was forming.

"So, it's not completely useless. Just not very useful as far as timekeeping is concerned."

Henri's expression visibly lightened as the girl informed her that the pendulum was the marker for a brutal, violent death. "Yeah? Impaling someone during a battle is good! Very good." She looked back up at the large fixture, nodding contently. "I feel much better about it then."

She turned back to the girl, before extending one of her arms to shake hands with the girl. Most people thought shaking to be strange, but Henri liked forcing contact with the people she intended to play with. "I'm Henrietta Finch. You are?"