♥ 6th Floor Staircase - 6th Floor ♥
The two of them traveled in silence down a couple steps before the girl turned to look at her and gave a nervous giggle. What was up with her? Maia tilted her head to one side in a curious manner, waiting as patiently as she could. Finally, she began. It didn't start out well.
"Well, my roommates aren't the nicest of people, but I had dealt with it for years so it wasn't that big of a deal anymore, you know?" That was... a rather odd way to begin. Maia had to wonder why she was saying that. Perhaps the cricket incident hadn't been so accidental, after all. Is that what she was trying to say? Her eyebrows drew together in slight confusion, wondering where this was going.
"They were like two peas in a pod when they first met, and left me alone for the most part." She still didn't quite understand why she was starting off with this, but the little Ravenclaw could definitely understand the feeling. Her roommates weren't the worst in the world, but they certainly had taken a greater liking to each other than to her when they'd all first met. Maia had been quite disappointed when she'd first met them. She'd been so excited, finally ready to get out into the world and make friends who weren't all cowed by the shadow of the matron, but the more she'd tried to befriend them, the more displeased they'd become, and she'd eventually given up. They'd been the ones who had taught her that not everyone wanted to be friends with
you, but you could still be friends with them!
"Anyways," the girl continued, moving on from her musings to get to the heart of the story,
"this morning I forgot to feed my pet toad her breakfast."
Maia blinked in surprise.
"You have a toad?" She knew that Hogwarts students were allowed to bring a variety of pets, the most notable of which were toads, cats, and owls, but toads had gone out of fashion years ago, as far as she'd heard, and she hadn't met many who actually had them. They seemed rather unpleasant. Then again, who was she to judge? She had a spider.
"Yes, I have a toad." The storyteller confirmed with a sigh, as if she got this sort of question a lot and was tired of it.
"She is sweet, if a little slimy." Yet another surprise. Upon hearing that the pet was a toad, Maia had automatically assumed it was a male one. It was a silly assumption to make, in hindsight, and she gave a brief laugh at her own nonsense.
"So I went back into my room to grab the box of live crickets I keep for her." Ah, in come the crickets. Maia smiled, ready and waiting for the story.
"When I got to the room however, I heard my roommates talking about me, making some gross accusations about my family and I." It was looking less and less like an accident, the more the girl talked. Family was a big thing for most people. It was one of those things she'd learned after starting to talk to people outside the orphanage. Never insult someone else's family.
"So let's just say I wasn't kind when I confronted them." To be expected.
"I didn't yell or do anything violent, I just said some things that probably made them feel like the terrible human beings that they are." The hatred practically rolling off the girl was almost making her uncomfortable. You know what they said, sticks and stones may break your bones, but words... wait no, that wasn't the right expression.
"After I had my say, I slipped on the doorway" how does one randomly slip on a doorway?
"with the box of crickets in my hand. That box went flying through the air and landed on my roommate's hair, spilling everywhere." She couldn't help it. Maia laughed. The image was just so funny, crickets hopping everywhere, her roommates going crazy. It wasn't a particularly harmful thing to do, either, mostly just funny.
"I have an extension charm on the box, so there were a lot of crickets in there." Ah, that explained the description of them as an army.
"The crickets soon overwhelmed them, but I didn't stick around long, wouldn't want them to think I did it on purpose or anything like that. I hid in the common room until they came out of the dorms looking like they were used as a Dragon's toothbrush." Maia was full on laughing now. She could imagine them right now, though she didn't know who this girl's roommates were. From her descriptions of them she mainly imagined two very angry brunettes, their hair poofed up in a tangled manner, make-up smeared, screaming bloody murder. Revenge or not, that had to have been funny to witness.
Maia couldn't say if she thought the girl had done the right thing. To be fair, it really could have been an accident, though if that was the case, she would honestly suggest that the girl not go into quite so much detail to an authority figure, because that description made it sound quite intentional indeed. If it wasn't an accident though, was it right to fight back in that way? Spiting people with your words, then humiliating them. She herself would never do any such thing. A tiny sense of pride that blossomed in her chest at the thought that she'd certainly never done any such thing to Mary-Jane was quickly punctured by the reality that she'd never retaliated because she was scared witless by witch. At least this girl had the guts to act. In any case, it felt like such a childish kind of retaliation, throwing a box of near-endless crickets on your enemy's heads. Then again, if all conflicts were solved this way, the world would be such a peaceful place.
~Aaand the winner is decided by the one with the most powerful crickets!~
She was still giggling as the other girl continued her story, also smiling slightly.
"When I finally went back upstairs to the crime scene, it was horrendous," for a brief moment, Maia thought she was talking about what she'd done to her roommates, but she quickly cured her of that notion,
"I felt so bad for the crickets, they didn't have a choice. They were so young, had so much to live for." A distinctly fake sob had Maia's cheeks turning red with laughter.
"I cleaned up the mess and vowed to never endanger the lives of my crickets in the way that I had ever again." She finished.
Of course, this lovely eulogy to the brave army of crickets had to be put into perspective.
"Then what about your poor toad?" Maia choked out the rhetorical question between her laughs, knowing she wasn't being totally clear about what she was trying to say. She struggled to find some extra words to supplement, but she couldn't stop laughing at the image that relentlessly popped into her head of that room in disarray. The laughter made her feel good. It felt like it was cleaning her blood of the remnants of the bad mood she'd been in. She hopped off of the end of the staircase bouncily, continuing to walk without a particular destination in mind.
"And what will happen to you when you get back tonight?" Even if the girl ran now, the victims-come-potential-perpetrators were her roommates. They had a curfew, and she was stuck with them for the next year or so. If they'd shunned her before, it could only get worse, couldn't it? The girl had to have some kind of a plan in place.
Characters interacted with:
Alice Bishop -
@Hyanna
