A Tower(ing) Conversation

"Fine," Vivianna relented, frankly surprising herself as she did so, "but if you do anything I don't like, I'll curse you into 2053." The Slytherin was kidding, mostly. There was something about this stupid little crazy Ravenclaw that was addictive. The witch wasn't naïve enough to think that Henri was as honest as she seemed, but the girl didn't quite care.

Henri was the perfect mix of outgoing and honest, and whatever more cunning and calculating tendencies lay deeper that allowed her get away with anything she set her mind to. The girl was both rather similar and very different to Vivianna in that way. The Slytherin had two sides, the sweet innocent side she used to stay out of unwanted trouble and that let her get away with things, and her darker side that took pleasure in messing with the minds of other students. The girl was fully aware that Henri was using some rather unique tactics to mess with hers, but the peculiar companionship she got from the younger students' company overrode any urge to leave.

As the fifth year followed after the fourth, she pondered Henri's two sides. Unlike Vivianna, the girl seemed to just disguise one side of herself with the louder half. The Slytherin thought that it was quite ingenious, and yet again wondered if the girl was ever aware of what she did on a daily basis. Such things could be pondered over later, however, because for now a canister of dye awaited her.

The girl agreed and Henri's face split into a smile - VICTORY WAS HERS. Why these small successes even counted as success to her, Henri would never be able to explain. People would not understand why she prided herself on being able to convince people into doing things that seemed so trivial. But, even if they asked her to explain, and she could, Henri doubted she would. She would pull some other trick, give some other lie, all to feel the warmth of success once more.

"Duly noted," Henri said, completely unafraid of a threat. She had come from an all girl's school. One did not leave an all girl's school without getting into a cat-fight here or there. Henri was confident enough in her underhanded tactics to never fear a threat from anyone else.

Henri dragged Viv out of the Astronomy Tower, down the stairs, and quickly turned into the nearest bathroom. A first year was washing her hands. It was easy to scare someone by telling them to beat it. But Henri was more creative that. "Oh, my gosh! You have such pretty eyebrows! I could pierce one of them for you."

The girl looked shocked, and quickly ducked past the pair, hurrying out and clutching her books to her chest. Henri laughed. She looked about and spotted a stool that girl's sat on while waiting for a stall to free up. She released Viv and pulled the stool over to a sink, setting up her canisters. She knocked on the stool. "Step right up. I'll need you to lean back so we can get your hair wet in the sink."

Vivianna frowned slightly as the Ravenclaw responded to her threat. Nice to know that she wasn't going to be taken seriously. The Slytherin considered showing the younger girl exactly why such a large majority of the Hogwarts population avoided her, but didn't. The redhead was in a good mood right now, and those tended to be rare enough. If she wanted to show the other girl just how seriously she needed to be taken, she'd need to let her darker emotions out. That was easy enough, but it was tucking those unpleasant emotions back in that was the struggle, and good moods were rare when she had to watch the snow melt.

Vivianna snorted as Henri scared off a Slytherin first year with the mention of a piercing. The fifth year swore the Sorting Hat was getting less and less picky every year. "You could have just told her to get the bloody hell out you know, that was the only Slytherin firstie who didn't avoid me like the plague, so much for that," Vivianna told the other girl dryly.

The Slytherin sat herself on the stool when Henri told her to, but purposely didn't lean back as directed. Snatching up the blue canister from where Henri had placed it on the edge of the sink, the girl began to shake. Reaching into her pocket and fumbling for a blank scrap of parchment, the girl put the canister down for a moment. Popping the top off the canister and unrolling the parchment, the slightly paranoid girl tested the dye on the modified tree pulp in her hand. Examining the parchment for any sign that the dye would be anything but what the packaging said, she allowed herself a slight nod, and cracked her neck before finally leaning back. The parchment dropped to the floor harmlessly.

"Just checking," Vivianna announced with a smirk, eyeing the younger girl.

Viv seemed eager to teach Henri how it was done in the scaring business. Henri smiled, "I don't scare, I dazzle. We Ravenclaws try to find inventive ways to do things." She smiled, as though she were not insulting the Slytherin girl, but a part of her did feel superior because of her House. Henri was not one for school spirit, or House pride, but she did feel as though she were in the best House. And Slytherins - she had written them off as mostly unintelligent muscle.

V didn't seem too bad though. She was letting Henri dye her hair after all, and she had held her end up in an argument, sort of.

Viv sat down on the stool but immediately got own to inspecting the blue canister. Henri sighed and waited, her hip jutting out impatiently. The test was over, and Henri held out a small little container that looked like it held ointment. "Want to test the bleach too, or have I proved myself?"

"Dazzel," Vivianna replied with a half-smirk-half-smile that she wore far too often, "I may have to use that, hope it hasn't been trademarked." When Henri made a snarky comment about testing the bleach, the Slytherin allowed herself to smirk fully and plucked the container from the younger girl's hand.

Tossing the bottle up into the air and catching it quickly, her way of turning the bottle from one side to the other without any awkward scrambling, Vivianna scanned the label on the back of the product. Not seeing anything out of the ordinary, the older girl squeezed a small amount of bleach onto her palm, before tossing the bottle back to Henri.

The girl figured she'd get another snarky comment for this, but couldn't bring herself to care. After all, she couldn't not check after a comment like that, such comments were classic set-ups, the oldest trick in the book. "Yes, indeed you have proved yourself as one who carries decent quality hair products," Vivianna finally replied, knowing that they were both aware quality was not what the Slytherin was checking for.

Henri smirked. "Careful, my lawyers may have a conniption." Henri always was proud of her way with words. Sure, she did not have the elevated language of all these self-righteous, pretentious Brits (she did love them, don't her wrong) but she did know how to make it work for herself. And that was enough.

The girl had spirit - Henri would admit that, no matter how far you had to twist her arm to get it out of her. She took the container before Henri could respond and began to show off a bit to check it out. Henri pushed her lips out with sass, resting her hand on the hip bone that now jutted out. Finally, Vivianna handed the bleach back and deemed it worthy.

"Thanks," Henri sneered. She tossed her hair back, "I should certainly hope so. Now, lean back." She put the blue aside and turned the sink on, beginning to feed the bottom of Viv's hair under the stream of water to wet the back. She pulled gloves out an donned them, explaining, "The bleach can burn skin." She turned the water off, opened the container and began to rub bleach into streaks where Viv had suggested they put the color.

"Woops," Vivianna said sarcastically in response to the lawyer comment, "be sure to send the medical bill to my father." The smirk didn't leave her face at that, the other girl would likely think Vivianna was just attempting to brag about her wealth. Really, the girl just wanted to see her father cringe. The man deserved it, in her very humble and reserved opinion.

The teenager made sure to run her hand under the water after Henri had turned on the tap, if the bleach truly could burn skin, the girl didn't want to deal with her wand hand getting hurt. Vivianna smiled lightly as she felt Henri wet and then start to bleach her hair. From what she could tell, the girl had listened to her, and wasn't going to be doing too much dying. This pleased the Slytherin, it wouldn't have been easy to do it herself, which is what she would have done if the girl had decided against listening to her.

"So what else do you carry around in that bag of yours?" the older girl couldn't help but ask, almost expecting for Henri to have a shrunken magical zoo in there. Or perhaps not a zoo, but something else equally as exciting and dangerous.

Henri turned to make sure the blue canister would not fall from its perch on the other sink and mocking mouthed, 'I'll call my father.' She rolled her eyes - that was the one thing she could not get over. Back at Salem Witches' Institute, the little prisses had always threatened to run and tell Daddy. Perhaps it was because her parents had done little to raise her. She had had her brother, and a twenty year old was not a very attentive caregiver. Henri had gone without, and her Daddy wouldn't have answered if she had called.

She turned back and continued to rub the bleach through the girl's red mane, smiling a sickeningly sweet smile. "You have such pretty hair." She smiled, trying to push down her annoyance at the father comment. It shouldn't have such power over her and yet... She shook it over, continuing to work the bleach in.

She grabbed her wand, and pointed it at the girl's hair. "I'm just hurrying the process, otherwise it would have to sit for an hour." She pocketed her wand and turned on the water, beginning to rinse out the excess bleach.

"Oh, you know, the basic necessities. Needles. Earrings. Body jewelry. Cigs. Extra panties. Tampons. Incense. Normal stuff."

Vivianna noticed as Henri tensed up at her comment about medical bills. Interesting, seemed as if this powerhouse of crazy did have a weak spot. It was good to know at least, but the fact that it had been hit was unintentional. "Daddy issues too, huh?" the Slytherin asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral. "I live with my aunt and uncle," Vivianna continued, hoping to relax the other girl with this information. The wellbeing of her hair was at stake, after all.

Vivianna knew that people like Henri tended to feel better once they had private information on you, it made them feel powerful and in control. It gave them something to use against you in case they ever felt weak themselves. The Slytherin had been careful though, even though this seemed like private information, it was in no way a sore spot for her. The girl was happy she lived primarily with her uncle, it was a choice she'd made herself at a young age, and had never regretted. It was also a useful thing to have up her sleeve.

Since so may Slytherin's found importance in blood, insulting each others families was a common thing in the dungeons. Whenever someone tried to insult her mother or father, Vivianna would retort that she lived with her uncle as she didn't get along with her parents. Her housemates had tried to use the distance between herself and her parents against her, but it hadn't worked. So they'd turned to making cracks at her uncle, all it took was for her to announce that he uncle was a vampire who took his honor very seriously for them to back off. It was times like then when it was very obvious that courage was not a Slytherin trait. So Vivianna had been left alone, happy to sit back and laugh at the power plays. It was one of the reasons she was left alone in her house, the other Slytherin's were aware they'd been trumped.

"You do know that most people consider parchment and something to write with as the norm to keep in a bag," the older teen announced dryly.

Henri did not like that Vivianna had caught on to her small, no matter how jarring, shift of attitude - and what was worse, she was intelligent enough to use context clues to try and track down a reason. Henri was used to most people dismissing her mood changes. She was unpredictable, after all. People seemed to think she was just sane enough to be taken seriously, but just insane enough to not be analyzed. People knew she was a threat, and knew she meant what she said, but they also did not try to look any deeper than what she presented them with.

It had taken a lot of time and practice to get her personality just right to promote this attitude among her peers.

Henri did not know what Vivianna was up too. In this sense, Henri typically understood Slytherins. They liked to collect what they considered to be crucial information on people so they could add it to potential damage to be done later. That said, they were rarely willing to offer up information of their own, especially if it cleared a debt and put them on equal ground with someone else. Henri had to do something, and she knew what she had to do.

She smiled. "I'll say. I killed my dad."

She turned away from Vivianna, washing her hands and the gloves off in the other sink before reaching for the blue canister. She opened it and returned to the original sink, beginning to squirt blue onto V's hair.

Henri had not, of course, killed her father. Nothing in her expression said she was kidding though. She smiled the smile of a sociopath patiently explaining their crimes. Perhaps she could pull this off so well because she would not mind if she had killed her father. She had no reason to WANT to kill him, but she doubted she would feel very guilty if she did. She just didn't really care, one way or the other.

She was not worried about the effects this would have on Vivianna. In fact, she hoped V spread it somewhere else. Nothing was better for a reputation than bad-ass rumors. Henri was almost hoping this would become a commonly circulated rumor.

She smiled placidly. "The norm - I've never liked it."