[thd] make you mad • • c l e m

Hogsmeade was bustling this Saturday afternoon. Villagers were moving about their weekend business seemingly happily. The village was graced with little bursts of sunlight as the puffy white clouds moved slowly overhead; many students were out today enjoying the decent weather. In one area of the little town, however, there was a small group of people who didn't seem to be enjoying much at all. Rather than playing or shopping or chatting, these people were holding angry placards and talking about "reverse racism" and "societal backlash". They'd organised a rally right here in Hogsmeade.

Marin was freaking out a little.

It only seemed to be a small rally, but a rally for pureblood rights? Right here in Hogsmeade? He'd only come here to buy a couple of new quills and when he'd stepped outside of his favourite stationary store, the teenager had stepped right into a group of organised protesters. Now he wasn't sure which was was out. The pureblood protesters were currently complaining about the bad reputation Voldemort had given them and the way that society didn't treat them so nicely anymore. Marin felt majorly uncomfortable about the whole thing as he tried to navigate his way outside of the small crowd. He held the brown paper bag containing his new quills inside close to his chest. A droplet of sweat trickled down the back of his neck. Marin had been a fool to come here without Wini, he thought. If she was here, she'd know what to do right now.

Suddenly, the Hufflepuff prefect caught sight of someone he knew from a distance and almost burst with relief. He had some serious flashbacks to the events of the summer, when he'd seen Clementine in a similar position. She was a relief at that time too. "Clem!" he called weakly, politely pushing through the crowd to get out.

Well, this was... alarming. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in a yellowing September, and Clementine's attitude had been easy-breezy -- until she'd come across a small cluster of people in black, very traditional wizarding robes talking about the backlash that purebloods' prejudice against muggleborns had caused for them. She didn't feel bad. Not one bit. A large number of people in her life were muggleborns, and amidst the chaos and shrieking, she had to blush thinking about one boy's precious, dimpled smile in particular. And what his hair felt like, and what he smelled like, and his deep, muddy-green eyes, and the warm sweater she still had in her trunk that she'd kind of stolen but he'd let her hang onto anyway. She had other friends who were too, of course, he was just the first person who'd come to mind.

And Clementine also knew purebloods who didn't exactly care about bloodstatus, but who had families who did, and that... wasn't much better. Clementine was a halfblood witch and even she had experienced some upturned noses in her day. It wasn't fun to endure. What with how much she enjoyed some aspects of muggle culture, too, like the music, the clothing, and the alcohol, she just... couldn't understand. She didn't understand anything about this culture. There was no such fucking thing as reverse racism. It was a crock of shit.

Having come out of the clothing store across the road with some new denim in hand, Clementine frowned. Had someone shouted her name?

She saw the top of someone's head towering just slightly over the majority of the clump of people and her eyes lit up in recognition; before she knew it her feet were carrying her that-a-way to rescue Marin. Poor guy. She felt so bad for him sometimes. He was so nice. A little weird, and a little awkward, but very sweet. She bulldozed fearlessly through the mass and gripped his wrist firmly, leading him back out the way she came. "C'mon," She yelled, rolling her eyes when they'd cleared all the people. "Jesus Christ. Do people have nothing better to do these days?" The retort was chock-full of bitter acid, and she gave him a once-over, narrowing her eyes in the process. "You okay?"

One thing that was great about being so tall was that in situations like this, Marin didn't get lost in the sea of bodies. He couldn't imagine anything worse than being trapped in a crowd unable to see anything. He thought about this sometimes with his smaller friends, like Wini. At the concert they'd gone to, he'd been able to see clearly over the sea of screaming fangirls whereas she'd been about the same height as the rest of them, so she'd had the view of the backs of people's heads a lot. Of course, Marin had then put her up on his shoulders despite the fact that he had almost no muscle mass at all, but thankfully it hadn't ended in disaster. For a brief moment, Marin imagined Wini falling from his shoulders and getting injured as she face-planted on the ground. Oh, no. He didn't like that.

Marin didn't really like being touched without warning, but Clementine grabbing his hand and pulling him out of the crowd had been a blessing rather than intrusive. "Yeah I wasn't with them," he said quickly, a little breathless. He knew she probably knew that, but he thought he'd say it just in case. Marin looked over his shoulders, an unsure expression on his face. The whole thing made him mighty uncomfortable. "I'm okay," he said, feeling a little awkward. It was nice that she'd asked, he thought. It made him feel like he mattered. The moment Marin had that thought, he dismissed it as wimpy. Silly head, he thought.

The Hufflepuff started walking, not really wanting to stay with this crowd of people. He prepared something to say while they walked so he didn't seem so awkward. "Oh, have you been to that new place? What is it? Cleo's house of Dreams?" the place had only opened up a week ago, but people could apparently go there and check out realistic crafted fantasies of being in fields or at concerts or whatever. It was clever magic, kind of like a pensieve but not based on a memory. The shop was only temporary - more like the gallery for a travelling show rather than an actual shop.

"Course you weren't," Clementine affirmed Marin with a nod. She'd have smiled, too, but it didn't quite seem appropriate due to the vibes and the context of the situation. It was all a little unsettling, even for someone usually unbothered like Clem. She was relieved when he started walking and fell into step next to him. Clementine wasn't a particularly fast walker unless she was on a mission, and Marin was quite a bit taller than she was, so she had to work a little to maintain being in-stride with her Hufflepuff counterpart. She watched her feet go as he spoke, and she listened intently. For some reason, she was made to feel like she should pay extra attention to Marin. She got the feeling that not everyone listened to the things he had to say. Clementine knew she was guilty of doing that to her friends sometimes.

Cleo's House of Dreams, she thought. "No, haven't been." She answered him definitely, remembering that one girl a year ahead of her had mentioned something about it. "I heard that one girl took a really weird potion and went in there and hallucinated drowning, though. Like... in the middle of the ocean," She said this with a disbelieving laugh coloring her voice. Even Clementine couldn't imagine hallucinating that badly. Talk about a bad trip.

"You wanna go in there? It's kind of like our thing now, illusionism, isn't it?" The blonde cracked a crooked smile while she looked at her friend and jabbed him gently in the ribs with her elbow. She was sort of afraid he'd snap in half if she did it too hard, so she was meticulously careful. "We should go in. Maybe it'll be a trip, but maybe it'll help us forget about the whiny purebloods, yeah?" Characteristically, she rose an eyebrow and hardly waited for his answer before she was beelining to the tent, which was settled right in the middle of the park.

Drowning in the middle of the ocean? Marin's eyes went a little round just imagining it. Suddenly he was a little less excited about the prospect of trying something like that. Clem, however, seemed to have the opposite idea. Typical. Marin had brought it up as a talking point but now it looked like they were heading there.

Marin entered the tent a step behind Clementine. It seemed normal enough; vials lining the shelves, couches to sit on. "Hey, check this one out," he said, holding up a small, mishapen vial with the words Weird Sister's Concert hastily scribbled on the thin paper sticker around the middle of it. Could something like this really put him in a concert? Would it be realistic? After going to his first concert over the summer break, Marin felt like a bit of an expert on the topic.

Maybe it was their thing.

He was a little nervous and a little skeptical, but Clementine seemed to be into it so, as usual, he went along with it all too. The woman at the counter gave him a friendly smile. She didn't look creepy at all, and that kind of put him at ease. "Two of those?" she asked him. Marin exchanged glances with Clem before nodding. The pair was taken to a little booth with couches and given a vial each. The woman asked them how old they were before she sat them down and made sure they didn't have any medical conditions that might make the whole thing a bit confronting. Marin did his best to hide his nerves as the woman disappeared and he found himself alone with Clem again. "Okay," he said, more to himself than to her, as he copied Clem's actions and drank the drink.

"Oooooh," Clem responded positively almost immediately to Marin's suggestion. There were probably like thirty-nine thousand other vials in there, but the Weird Sisters sounded like a fun one to try out. It was inexpensive, too, which was appealing. Clementine's family was middle class, but they weren't made of money and they were certainly of the opinion that their children should earn at least some of their own money. It made her feel less guilty for spending it on stupid or trivial shit when it was her money and not her mum and dad's. The Weird Sisters weren't her favorite. Clementine found she enjoyed muggle music more almost always, but they did have the advantage of being able to use magic in their performances. That did tend to give them a leg up at times when they were short-musicianed or having technical difficulties or anything of the sort.

She plopped down onto the couch with Marin and made a tense little grunting sound while she adjusted to it basically trying to eat her -- she wondered how old it was. Probably pretty old, if she was sinking into the crack with no effort at all. "Here we go," The blonde pep-talked her friend confidently and knocked the vial back the way she would a shot. It didn't taste like anything until a minute after, and then she swore she could taste marijuana smoke in her mouth.

Yup. Definitely a concert. The sensations were proving accurate thus far.

The noises of the music faded slowly into her ears and the picture seemed to gel into existence as well. "Hey," She laughed, "This is pretty cool." She looked to her left to make sure that Marin was there and okay, and he seemed to be. "Didn't peg you for the concerty-going type, Marin. You must have lived it up this summer." The comment was well-natured. Maybe it would make him feel edgy and cool. Who didn't like feeling edgy and cool?

It only lasted for a song before the noises and the smells and the tastes dissolved and they were back in the booth with the monster couch. Clementine supposed that the length of time one could be in one of these hallucinations was part of the gimmick and how they made money. "Not bad. Short, but not bad at all."

Marin laughed genuinely. There was a touch of nervousness in his laugh, but anticipation and a little excitement too. To his right he could see Clementine and a few other concert-goers. To his left were other random people. Marin kept staring around at the space they were in rather than watch the performance. His mind went to the technicalities of it all - how did they craft it so realistically? How much could he move through the space? Marin and Lionel had spent a bunch of time together last year after he and Wini had had their fight, and now that they were both prefects he was glad to think he and Lionel would probably be hanging out some more. Marin made a mental note to talk to his Slytherin friend about all of this.

The image faded before his eyes and Marin blinked as reality came back into focus. He was a little sad that it had passed so quickly and he nodded when Clementine said basically the same thing. "I might come back here," he said, stepping out from their booth and taking one of the flyers on the counter.  Marin checked the dates that the place was here until, wondering if he could bring Lionel next weekend or something. Thirty nine days in total, he read. So that left... maybe a week and a half more. The teenager didn't say much, but fell into step with Clementine as they headed back towards the town.