[Day School]It's Not That Easy Being Green - Or Chocolate[Inigo, Ceinwen]

Inigo grinned and exclaimed, "Aw, brilliant! I've been doing a bit of reconnaissance, it'll be nice to have an actual map of the neighborhood!"

He then realized that his teacher was still standing there, and was now looking like she was beginning to regret her decision. Inigo smiled sweetly as he backpedaled, "By which I mean this looks like an interesting project, and we'll get right on this, and I'll even write you a report of which tools were useful and which ones weren't so you know for next time. So you just go back to teaching the ickles, and we'll be back by lunch."

To be fair, the only "reconnaissance" Inigo had done had been perching on the highest point he could climb to on the playground and looking around with his Omnioculars, occasionally recording funny bits of stuff he'd seen. The teachers occasionally threatened to confiscate them, since it might be considered a violation of people's right to privacy, but Inigo had managed to keep them out of sight enough that he still had them thus far. They were in his schoolbag, tucked away where they were hard to spot, and thankfully Inigo had thought to bring them today.

Once the teacher had gone, Inigo watched as Charity played with the assortment of tools that the teacher had given them. While the mathematical compass didn't look like it would  be all that useful as far as measuring the map, it might come in handy for making it if there was a roundabout nearby or something. What Inigo was most excited about was the thought of getting to explore the neighborhood (mostly) on his own. Charity was coming, sure, but he liked her, and she wasn't an adult who wasn't going to tell him he couldn't climb on things or something. She was Charity.

When Charity had had a look at the tools the teacher had given them, Inigo stood up dramatically and struck a pose, declaring, "Onwards, old chum! We must patrol the streets of Gotham - er, London!", before dashing off towards the door, giggling like... well, like a schoolboy. He was headed outside, and Charity would hopefully be able to keep up.

Charity shot the teacher an apologetic glance as she gathered up her things and hurried after Inigo as fast as her little legs would take her. She was quick for someone her size, but her size was not particularly big, so she was falling behind quickly. Once they reached the outside world, Charity set the box down and looked around at the streets then back at the house they met for school in. "I guess we should start here and measure the school building first." She pulled out the measuring tape and set it to working while she checked the orientation on the compass to make sure that the red needle did, in fact, point north, "What scale map are we doing? If we want to go the whole three blocks in all directions, we probably want to stick to like three feet or five feet in a square..."

Charity fussed at the academics, dreading what was going to happen next. Inigo liked learning as much as the next person, but he was especially exuberant about unsupervised learning in which they might potentially learn things that weren't intentionally put in their way. Like that the creek that ran through the school's neighbor's yard did have newts, but not frogs and was not, in fact, mostly water but some kind of goopy muck. Also, newts, when released into the classroom, only upset the girls. And Benjie, for some reason. They had been released into the world at large and were expected to measure and record to scale the neighborhood surrounding the school - which was a small, recently built patch of wizarding homes so they wouldn't be too out of place - but who knew what kinds of trouble lurked only blocks away from the school.

If anyone could find it, it was Batman. Charity wondered if he was hoping to stop a house robbery or something. Her imagination was a bit wild with potential and she was already trying to work out how best to convince Inigo that whatever he was plotting was a bad idea. For what good it would do.

Inigo grinned and declared, "I AM THE NIGHT!" as he dashed immediately towards one of the nearby houses, already looking for a way up so that he could get a better view of their surroundings. While Charity was busy actually doing the assignment, Inigo was looking for adventure. He wanted to make sure he knew every nook and cranny of the area they explored by the time they were through, so that he'd be able to know where to look for criminals, or where to lurk when he didn't want to be seen.

After a moment, he realized he'd been asked a question, and turned back to Charity, thinking for a second before answering, "Scale? Oh, uh... I mean, we have a whole pad of graph paper right? Let's do a block a page, and really dig in. That ought to make the teacher happy, right? And that way we won't be able to get as far... but it'll be good practice for anything else we might decide to do!"

Charity nodded her agreement and eyeballed the street and the graph paper. "If we do a block on two pages, we can probably manage five feet a square." She explained to the air. She realized that Inigo's voice had come from elsewhere aside from nearby and she scanned the area until she spotted Inigo hovering near a neighboring building looking contemplatively upwards. She blinked at the box, willing it to tell her what to do, then grabbed the well-loved measuring tape and picked a corner of the school house and measured the length then the width, found the direction it was facing, and sketched in the box labeled in her minuscule, tidy handwriting The School.

She began measuring the yard briskly, hoping that her running about would attract Inigo's attention to the task at hand; it'd be helpful if one could measure and the other figure the scale and draw. However, Charity didn't feel right pointing this out because it felt too much like trying to order Inigo around. That just wasn't okay. She was certain that whatever he was up to, it would help with the assignment. Didn't it always? Charity was very glad for the time she'd spent mucking about with tape measures; she wasn't as expert with it as the men in the Preparation Room by any means, but she felt that she had to be a little bit less clumsy than most girls of her age would be. And she hadn't pinched herself with the measure not once!

The good thing about sidewalks and yards were that they stayed pretty standard, so it was quickly becoming a matter of measuring the spaces between buildings and how far back each individual building went on this block. Math, math, measure, measure... Charity devoted herself whole-heartedly to the task at hand and her mind finally let go of the idea that Inigo was up to something. How could he be? She had her orders, and Charity was carrying them out. Honestly, she'd been assigned worse tasks; this one was kind of fun because she could creep into the bushes and (less than artistically) include sketches of gardens and shrubbery.

In the next-door neighbor's rosebush, Charity found a bird's nest. She watched the birds for a little while, whistling cheerfully at the chirping baby birds, then crawled out of the bush and added a tiny bird's nest inside of the crayoned-in rose bush in front of the neighbor's house. She turned to measure towards the backyard and froze, backing away slowly, "Inigo! Inigo!" She called, suddenly remembering her workmate, "There's an ant's nest down that yard! I can't measure there - there's bugs!" She protested impotently from the sidewalk.

Charity's cries fell on deaf ears at first. Inigo was slightly overwhelmed with the excitement of being "off the leash", and was zipping around this way and that, pulling his Omnioculars out and doing his best to scout around, looking for interesting things they might want to specifically include on their map. Her suggestion about making the map two pages per block was met with an absentminded "Yeah, sure, do that," as he continued to try to sniff out whatever secrets this wizarding neighborhood was hiding. Not that they weren't supposed to know said secrets, mind you, being magically-inclined children, just that Inigo had a driving desire to find all the cool spots he could for their map.

When she began talking about the ants, though, Inigo finally turned towards her and rushed over to see what was wrong, the tone of fear in Charity's voice making Inigo's protective instincts kick in. After all, what sort of Batman would he be if he ignored a genuine cry for help? After a quick look at the yard, though, he chuckled and took the tape-measure from her, saying, "As you wish, Charity. I'll take care of it. How about I measure from now on, just in case of bugs, and you can worry about scale and stuff? You're better at that kind of thing than I am, anyway. And this way you don't have to worry about running into any bugs."

He then measured the requested yard, making sure to be careful not to step in the anthill. While he wasn't afraid of bugs like Charity was, he didn't exactly fancy putting his foot in an anthill and getting bitten all up and down by the little buggers, either.

Relief poured off of tiny ten-year-old as she handed the tape measure over to Inigo so that he could measure while she stayed in the relative safe-zone of the sidewalk. At least here, the horrifying spectacle of bugs would be easier to spot and she could generally guarantee that she wouldn't get as much dirt on her. She circled on the sidewalk, tugging the garish green plaid golf hat closer to her head nervously to ensure that the ants hadn't followed her, then collected the basket and checked the map thus far, awaiting Inigo's input.

As they moved along the block, Charity followed along on the graph paper and scratched math (repeatedly dividing by five did not seem to be an issue for Charity), occasionally pausing to allow Inigo to do what Inigo tends to do while Charity got creative with the crayons or kept an eye out for scary things like... well, most anything, really. Charity was a very small person and everything else was very large. Then again, even small things could be scary. Germs and dirt were terrifying - they could mess up or kill a grown person, and Charity was very much not a grown person. She knew that all of this was silly. There was nothing to be afraid of here; if there were, the teacher probably would not have let them go outside. And there were no obvious signs of anything to be afraid of currently, so she stood her ground and focused on the assignment at hand.

(invited to join in by Jennifer)

There was a loud *CRACK* and Ceinwen jumped in surprise at the strange noise, looking all around, wondering where on earth it had come from.  It couldn't have been the two small children over there with the measuring tape, they were too young to Apparate; in fact there was nobody else around and she was exactly by a day school.  Maybe somebody had just Disapparated instead.  At about this time Ceinwen suddenly realised that she was no longer at the Station Stay, and was not one hundred percent certain of her surroundings.  A few seconds after that, she realised that she had just Apparated there.  Even a few more seconds passed and... she still had no clue where she was.  But she must have come here for a reason.

"Thinking, thinking, thinking," she murmured under her breath.  She eyeballed the children, who were two lawns away, and then quite obviously turned her back on them to hide what she was about to do.  She took her wand and laid it on the palm of her hand and said quite clearly, "Point Me."  The wand spun around in a three-quarters circle and pointed decidedly off to her left, which meant that was north.  She looked that way, stared complacently at the sky for a minute or two, and then determined that it wasn't helping her at all. Very well then, Plan B.

"Excuse me! Young children!" she hollered and began hobbling over, in the middle of the road, to where the two day-school students were still patiently measuring... something.  "Hello! Good day! How are you?"

When he heard the loud *CRACK* that Inigo recognized as a wizard Apparating, the young hero wannabe spun to face the source of the noise. At first, he was tense, ready to react at a moment's notice to whatever this new person would do, but then he realized that he was being paranoid, and that it was just some little old lady apparating near the day school. Maybe someone's Gran, here to bring one of the other kids biscuits or... or maybe not. The old lady looked lost, like she had no idea why she was standing in front of a day school, and when she started heading for them, Inigo met her halfway, saying, "Are you in trouble, miss? What's the matter? We're doing all right ourselves, just doing an assignment for school. I'm Inigo, and this is my friend Charity. Are you one of the other kids' gran? I know I don't recognize you."

For now, the school assignment would have to wait. This person needed help, and Batman always helped people when he could. He may have not been a complete boyscout like Superman, but that didn't mean that Batman would turn his back on a little old lady who looked like she could use some directions.

Charity jumped when she heard the air-slap sound made by something apparating not too far off. Clutching the map tighter, Charity cast her eyes around looking for the source of the sound and halfway expecting to see a startled-looking goat. Charity was a fast thinker, though, and they were nowhere near the farm. The goats just didn't have the range for that sort of thing, and that meant it was... that older lady that Inigo was bee-lining towards. Charity fussed over the map project, collecting the supplies back into the basket, and followed behind as quickly as her short legs could take her. She assumed a position just behind Inigo, peeking out from behind him.

Charity was dressed in a hodge-podge of well-made wizarding clothing from several eras all thrown together and topped with a green plaid golf-hat. The clothing resembled the sorts one would expect a child of a wealthy wizarding family to have worn - between two to twenty decades ago. Despite her ripe age of ten years old, Charity was the size of the kindergartners in her class and had very large, sparkling blue eyes and a wide open honest expression. She somewhat matched Inigo's equally eccentric dress, although his clothing was more thrift-store wear. Charity waved at Ceinwen with an uncertain smile as Inigo introduced her. "We're okay now, thank you ma'am. There were some bugs over there -ants." Charity explained with a small shudder, "But Inigo says that he's not afraid of bugs. He's not afraid of newts either, not even if they're crawling over muck."

Charity wasn't afraid of newts. She was, however, somewhat neurotic about muck.

"Please, ma'am, the teacher knows we're outside." Charity assured the adult, assuming that this was the next question, "When we finish all of our regular work, she gives us extra and today she's asked us to make a scale map of the neighborhood." As an aside to Inigo, Charity added, "I think she's going to be glad that we're going to Hogwarts next year because I'm beginning to think that she's running out of work to ask us to do. It's the third day in a row she's picked something out of the muggle curriculum guide."

Charity redirected her attention to Ceinwen, "It's very kind of you to inquire, ma'am, how have you been today?" She set the mapping basket down and clasped her hands behind her back, smiling happily. As much as she wanted to finish her school project (because they'd been told to), she was equally glad to have a distraction. After all, this would keep them from getting too far or losing track of time and missing lunch.

"Hello young man, no I'm not in trouble," Ceinwen smiled at the dapper young fellow coming forward to meet her.  She rather approved of the dress robe, though it seemed slightly over-large.  The striped pants were a bit much but Inigo appeared to have a papier-mâché flower pinned to his The Batman shirt.  (Ceinwen always tried to stay hip with the new fads.) All together it was sort of a Bohemian look, and the youngster was able to pull it off quite nicely.  A split second later Ceinwen registered that the dress robe meant the young man was a wizard -- and that meant the young woman coming after him was too.

"Well goodness, if I'd known you were wizards I wouldn't have hidden my Compass Spell," she laughed. "School assignment, is it?  Is it a wizarding school? Ooooh!" she said suddenly and clapped her hands together.  "Then we must be in Chateoil!  Wonderful!  I still haven't the foggiest idea who I was coming to visit but at least I know where I am now! And I'm very well Miss Charity, thank you for asking as well."

Now quite pleased to have figured that out, she examined the little girl's clothes with equal interest.  There was an equally attractive gypsy look to this, but the clothes seemed to fit her better and were in somewhat better shape.  Not that she was surprised; girls were much more sensible about taking care of their clothes, while boys were willing to play in muck no matter what they had on.  If anything.

"Muggle curriculum, is it?  Oh I did enjoy Muggle Studies when I was in school," Ceinwen reminisced when Charity told her what the assignment was. "Of course that was Hogwarts, dear, over in Scotland, across the pond if you will. The school wasn't near a city like Beauxbatons, here," she indicated the day-school building, "it was in the middle of the moor.  Couldn't tell you exactly where, and shouldn't anyway.  Big secret, that.  Beauxbatons always was the most sensible, I always said.  Durmstrang doesn't even have a direct mode of transportation, you just Portkey.  I was going to visit them once but that was when the War broke out.  The second one, you know."  She sighed wistfully, and then resumed, "Well then, a scale map of the neighborhood?  I lived in Chateoil for a year, I can probably help you out with that!  Let's see here.  I suppose we'll need someone who speaks English then," she murmured, tapping her chin with a long elegant finger and looking around, still not seeing anyone outside except herself and the school-children.

Inigo did his best to stop himself from laughing. She was old, and apparently somewhat senile, so it was expected she was somewhat lost. She had just apparated, after all. Once he was certain he could open his gob without laughter coming out, he explained, "Ma'am, you're not in France. This is London, England. In fact, we're speaking English right now. This is a day school, and a lot of us lost our families to the Death Eaters in the Second War, Charity and myself included. But, yes, they have some assignments from the muggle curriculum. Apparently this school was started in part via funds from the muggle government, so we have to follow some of the Muggle rules, or at least try to. I remember there was some Muggle official coming to do an inspection a while back, so they sent a man from the Ministry down to make sure all of us weren't going to spoil things, and to handle the Muggle official."

He then said, "But anyhow, you said you went to Hogwarts? What's it like? Charity and I start there come fall, but I'm curious. What's it like, being Sorted? And what house were you in?"

Charity nodded, confirming, "It's a day-school. Because a lot of people died in the war, you know, and a bunch of them had kids. The school was made so that suddenly single-parent homes - or, for most of them, emergency foster parents - could keep on their regular schedule and not have to worry about home-schooling suddenly acquired kids. So they do elementary curriculum up until Hogwarts, and then they send us on to Hogwarts. It's all really easy stuff, isn't it?"

She didn't really want to go into the differences between students unless Ceinwen actually asked. Charity always felt a bit guilty when that came up because a lot of the kids were orphans and not only did she have a parent, but she also sometimes wondered if her uncle, who was a Death Eater, had killed anybody's family aside from her own. She would be horrified to find out that Inigo, say, were orphaned because of her disowned, insane uncle.

"I floo powder in from Ireland." Charity explained to Ceinwen, "So I don't know the area very well, but it is definitely London. I do have cousins that go to Beaubaxtons and eventually I want to go and visit Chateoil. I'm not supposed to go during school, though." She was trying to be helpful because Charity was always trying to be helpful, but nobody had ever told her what to do when a strange old witch wanders up and thinks that she's in France. New territories and all that. "But I think most people around here work during the day. We can go and ask the teacher, if you like. She was doing reading with the little kids when we left - they were reading Sam the Sorcerer Gets A Cat. It's a cute book, but it's short so they ought to be done soon. If they aren't already."

"Well, of course this is London, Master Inigo," Ceinwen patted his head. "I know when I'm speaking English. Besides, if we were in France we'd all be wearing funny hats and we would be calling our wands 'bread.'  I may not know much but I lived in France for five years." She squinted at the school building and took advantage of the moment of clarity she was feeling.  "A day school for... oh.  Oh I am sorry to hear about that, dears.  I lost my husband and my brother in the first Wizarding War, and I did what I could to protect my hometown in the second one. Of course," she glanced at Inigo again, "when i said the Second War a moment ago, I was referring to the Muggle one, not the wizarding one. Hmm." She pondered for a moment.  "I have been through rather a lot of wars, haven't I.

"Ireland is also a wonderful place to visit," Ceinwen responded to Charity, "but Wales will always be my home.  You know, I remember now, I was coming to London to visit my cousin, but it must have been in one of my most senile moments.  She hasn't been around in years either.  So I suppose since I'm here, perhaps I could help you out anyway.  I'd hate to waste a good Apparation -- I have so few of them left, you see," she added in a pig's whisper with a twinkle in her eye.

"Let's see.  Oh, no dear, that won't be necessary," she said to Charity again, "I don't need to see anyone else now that I'm here.  We can leave your teacher be... I bet you two were anxious to get out of there for a while anyway, especially if you're too smart for them," she grinned.  "And, oh, what else - yes, Master Inigo, I can tell you all about Hogwarts. I was a Hatstall," she said proudly. "But I ended up in Ravenclaw.  I'm a bit of a smarty-pants myself, you see.  Or I was, before the dementia started.  Still, while I'm still kicking, I'm not going to just lay around in bed all day. Hmmmm..." she stared off into space for another moment, and then pulled herself back together and said, "I'm sorry dears, you had several questions.  Ask me just a few at a time and I'll answer what I can.  But let's do it while you're still measuring - I want you to get your assignment done.  Which part of the neighborhood have you already finished?"

Ah. So she was senile, but not so senile that she didn't recognize that she was senile. That was good enough, Inigo supposed, as he answered, "Well, we'd actually just gotten started. At first, Charity was doing the measuring, but then there was an anthill, so now I'm using the measuring tape. Charity doesn't like bugs, you see. Admittedly, I was a bit busy exploring at first. After all, if we're going to make a map of the neighborhood, we ought to get everything we can, right? We're not supposed to go further than three blocks away from the school, but the teacher didn't specify a minimum distance. Just that we needed to be back by lunchtime if we wanted the school to feed us.'

Now that the lady had been seen to, at least somewhat, Inigo resumed his task as she suggested. The magical measuring tape certainly made things easier, since the self-extending tape meant all he had to do was put it against a surface, and the tape would tell him how long it was. Admittedly, it would've been nice if the tape would actually go the entire length of a building all at once, but he imagined that something like that wasn't the sort of thing the typical Do It Yourselfer owned, and it seemed to have just come out of the teacher's husband's tool chest.

"It's good that you're out and about, though. I think I read something about the brain being like your other muscles, and so if you keep it active, it'll not wither away so fast. I imagine you've probably heard more than enough about that, though, yes? So, what was your favourite class at Hogwarts, ma'am? I'd be interested to hear what it was like when you were our age," probed the young wizard before calling a measurement to Charity.

Charity nodded and drew in the new length of the building, "Which muggle wars? We had a list we were supposed to remember last year - and the implications they had on the magical communities, of course. There's an awful lot of wars. People really like fighting each other, I think. It seems like a silly waste of time to me - especially the Wizarding ones. A silly waste of time and a bad waste of life." Charity thought back to the six aunts and uncles she would never know and her grandparents, all lost to the wand of a would-be warrior. Blood purity, peh, Inigo's father had been muggle-born, and Inigo didn't suffer for it. He was just like all the other wizarding kids in the school except he sometimes when on rants about vengeance and keeping the streets of Gotham safe, which Charity figured must be the muggle bits. She wondered a little if other kids born of muggle or muggleborn parents went on rants about Gotham. She guessed that she'd see when they got to Hogwarts. Maybe there'd be a lobby for putting part-muggle friends for when they started ranting about saving Gotham city (or, one day when Inigo had a bad fever, Metropolis).

"I don't like fighting. It scares me a lot. I think I'd just run away if someone was fighting." Charity told Ceinwen. She strolled next to her while Inigo rushed around measuring things and braving the dirt, germs, and bugs of the outside world that so terrified her, "Or something. I think it's scary and someone might get hurt. And I am small, so it'd probably be me."

Her eyes sparkled at the idea of hearing about Hogwarts and what it had been like, "Yes, what was your favorite class? Do you know any stories about the history? I love history! They teach us a watered down version at Dayschool to not upset our sensibilities - I heard the teacher say that once. It's funny, really, because being upset is part of being a kid, isn't it? I can't wait to go to Hogwarts, though, and learn real magic! Not just the silly stuff that I can't control like when I was chased around the house by parading brooms and the time that a cooking spell went awry and the kitchen cleaned itself up."