Hard to Breathe

Sometimes Ellery found Hogwarts a bit crowded for her liking. Since deciding not to continue on with quidditch, she craved the open sky more and more every day. Like now, for instance. Her little butt sat on a bench in her school's courtyard and her big brown eyes gazed up at the two whitest clouds she had ever seen. Maybe not ever, but she appreciated how brilliant they were against the blue, blue sky. Breathing in, she felt the crisp and cooling air fill her lungs. Ellery closed her eyes and thanked whatever power in nature decided today would be a sunny one. She let out the breath she didn't know she'd been holding while she opened her eyes.

Ellery looked around at all the students milling about. Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Slytherins... She enjoyed seeing houses mingle. While she felt pride in being a Gryffindor, she sometimes really hated the people in her house. Or maybe Ellery just hated people and since she hated people, she always felt that Hogwarts was a bit too crowded for her liking. Having realized her thoughts came full circle, Ellery grinned to herself. She enjoyed the connections she could make and she enjoyed just sitting and thinking.

What Ellery found to be most enjoyable since starting her sixth year, was the fact that her brother was able to send her some of her favorite muggle books. Being muggleborn, Ellery had loved books growing up. Suddenly finding that one has magic and therefore must be sent off to live with the aunt who is also a witch that one never knew she had was something of a roadblock for Ellery. She hadn't read muggle books in years and the fact that she could just restart her passion for these unmagical novels was a blessing.

Ellery read all the time. She wasn't one for friends it seemed, and she didn't mind that. The people she knew were people like Ducky, a boy in her house that she found endlessly annoying, and others that didn't annoy her as much, but she still found pretty annoying. Now she read a classic that she knew her grandmother loved, called Pride and Prejudice. Sarcasm was an art that Ellery enjoyed as much as literature, and finding all the sarcasm in Elizabeth Bennett's story was quite fun.

So Ellery sat in the courtyard, breathing in the cool air, and reading a classic muggle book that thankfully distracted her from all the people around her.

Ever since Christian had stopped playing Quidditch, Apollo had been all the more interested in it. His main claim in regards to that was the fact that it irritated his brother to no end, but it would be untrue for him to deny the fact that he had been working on improving the safety and workings of the brooms and equipment. To be quite honest, he had not managed too much yet. But in working with broomstick specialists and the like, things had been slowly getting better (or they appeared to be doing so anyway). So his behind-the-scenes attempts at helping people from experiencing his twin's pain was a rather redeeming factor for the Slytherin.

Still, it was kept from his Hufflepuff counterpart, if only to save face - not the best face, considering, but quite worth it, he felt. After all, there was a reason their parents had more or less chosen sides between the two of them. He would never have admitted it, of course, but there were times when the snarky snake wished he was actually Christian instead. And by "there were times," he really meant "all the time." So that was a bit of a problem. An internal conflict, if you will.

Nevertheless, his work continued, and Apollo was out on the Grounds to test out a new broom, Daphne's preference of the younger twin weighing heavily on his shoulders. It went decently well, he decided, stopping now and again to jot down notes - The attempted cushioning hinders the speed of the broom - but finally concluded that he had everything that was requested of him. So he picked up his journal and quill, stuffing them into his shoulder bag, then grabbed the broom, heading back through the courtyard.

First years, the little balls of annoyance that they were, had decided to run out of the castle right as Apollo was walking towards it, and one of them accidentally snagged their wand on the sling of his bag, pulling it off of his shoulder and onto the ground in front of the brunette who was sat there reading.

"Hell," he muttered under his breath, watching as the top fell open and his materials rolled out at her feet. Apollo frowned but moved to pick everything up. At least it wasn't snowing, he mused. It would have all been ruined.

When he glanced up, though, he caught sight of the book in the girl's hands. He had seen that one before, in the hands of a little Hufflepuff. It wasn't a wizarding novel, if he had to guess, though that was based on the fact that the Hufflepuff in question had been from a Muggle family. Still, from what he knew of it, the book was some stuffy romance novel, and those were not the sort that Apollo found reason to be interested in. "Pray tell," he began sarcastically, speaking loudly in hopes that he could catch her attention, "what on earth has convinced you to read such swotty, romantic gibberish?"