{the visible world is only light on form} donna

There was something to be said about crawling onto window ledges. He really should’ve outgrown this by now but he honestly couldn’t resist the views form the towers.

He usually favored a spot by the Ravenclaw towers in particular that was a lot more secluded and a lot more accommodating to his current frame but he’d spotted a good vantage point while flying and he... really could not resist.

Propping himself onto the closed window was definitely not as easy as it had once been and his back was going to kill him with any extended time of being hunched over like this but - success! Now he just needed to sketch the view and scamper off before anyone noticed him. He loosened his school tie a bit, shrugging off his cloak and making a little back pillow with it as he settled in a little more comfortably.

Donna had bundled up perfectly for the weather, with scarf and jumper and warm socks under her trousers, though jogging six flights of stairs had her regretting her preparedness now. (Her preparedness for the weather and not for Herbology; she’d left her dragonhide gloves in her trunk -- though she had the entire free period to fetch them, she and her roommate had grand plans to stop by and see the hippogriffs.

Hagrid would have some dead animals on hand, right? Surely.

It wouldn’t do to just barge in on a professor and ask him for dead animals, but Donna liked to show up with treats whenever she visited any of the magical creatures she’d studied in his class. She was of the opinion that they made her more popular, among the animals, which was a perfectly natural thing to want to be no matter what her brother said about it. (Merlin’s whiskers, Donna, this has gotten well past weird.)

She was shaken from her reverie by the sight of one of her yearmates, his large frame hunched near a window; she would have paid him no attention had it not been sort of hilarious. “Oi,” she said, “Danvers, didn’t your mum ever tell you if you do that you’ll get stuck that way?” She pulled her hat off, tossed her head to get her hair to resettle (hopefully in a dishevelled but carefree and cool way) and frowned at him. “Wotcha?” she added curiously -- what was he writing that he had to write it in a window like this? Did he have a girlfriend or something?

In all his musings he never thought he'd actually get caught. Bloody hell but did West remind him of Amelia. The comparison was both complimentary and insulting, though he'd keep both thoughts to himself. No need to antagonize the Gryffindor just yet, afterall. He also had to resist the urge to roll his eyes and lament his completely impossible luck with Gryffindors. His interactions tended to range pretty wildly in terms of overall pleasantness but they all had one thing in common: any and all engagements required work. Issie was, probably, the only exception to this. But she was off snogging Phillip into the sunset these days so she didn't have time for her bestest friend anymore. Traitor. Though even he could admit that Phillip was a good looking bloke.

And he treated his friend as the princess she was so he was content to let them be obnoxious.

Right, back to Donna West. What was she saying? "I'm writing in my diary." he deadpanned, reasonably sure the sarcasm would go over the girls head, but not really caring what she thought he was doing. So long as she didn't catch on to what he was actually doing. Gryffindor's tended to skirt around the finer points sometimes. Convenient in some ways, and inconvenient in others. Worse case he'd hex a few people if they bothered him about "writing in his diary" psht. He knew quite a few very, shall we say, unpleasantly painful charms. He wished he had a shiny thing to distract her with or maybe a snack. Actually. "Sugar quill?" he offered, holding out the bribe out for her to take, blue eyes going wide and innocent. He could just... not directly respond to questions. Then again most people knew not to take things from a Slytherin. In this case the sugar quill was perfectly tasty but he did have an ulterior motive here.

Not that she knew that but everyone was always so suspicious of the innocent snakes. Not that he could ever qualify as innocent.

Writing in his diary? Merlin, what a girl. Donna narrowed her eyes suspiciously; what on earth was he hiding? Would it always fall to her to clean up Hogwarts’s corridors? Probably.

She folded her arms -- “Well, tell it to your diary, not to me.”

He held out a sugar quill and gave her a puppy look; “No, sorry, my mum taught me better than that,” said Donna automatically -- she did not like his attitude, she decided. In her dealings with Slytherin boys she’d largely decided she didn’t like their attitudes; she’d sat through a number of lectures from professors or her older siblings about how judgment based on house was half of why they’d had the war in the first place, but there wouldn’t be so much judgment based on house if the Slytherins had a little more moral decency, was all.

And obviously she wasn’t taking candy from some weird boy -- who did he think she was? -- she cocked her head and added, “So what are you doing? Not a mail order form for the Weasleys, is it?” she said. She’d gotten people to admit to a lot of things just by being needlessly specific in her baseless accusations; it was her greatest asset both as an elder sister and as a Prefect.

It figured that he’d get a suspicious and paranoid Gryffindor. “Suit yourself.” he said, shoving the quill in question straight into his mouth. No need to waste a perfectly good sugar quill.

“Would there be a good reason why I would be ordering from the Weasleys?” It seemed an oddly specific inquiry. No way was he admitting he was drawing a very specific scene from the towers. He knew better than to give someone the truth, really. See a fake diary he could prove was fake so there would be minimal harm done to his reputation. Not that he thought drawing was a girlish pursuit or anything but, well, he didn’t need to share that secret with a Gryffindor he didn’t know.

Especially not one who’s spurned his sugar quill offering.

“What brings you up... this way?” he added, feeling oddly uncomfortable but refusing to admit to why he had squashed himself in a spot that was not able to accommodate him.

Benjamin ate the quill himself, which made Donna think maybe he hadn’t done anything untoward to it, but she wasn’t about to be sorry for her caution. He didn’t seem to be ordering something from Weasleys, so she shrugged and said, cagily, “You never know.” She didn’t want to tell him outright he was acting outrageously suspicious, but he was. Hunching like a bat or something, in a window, on his own, berk.

There was no point in antagonising him, though -- and, in any case, she had already clashed with Slytherin Quidditch players this year and wasn’t keen to get written up as some instigator of inter-house squabbling. (It would be undoubtedly deserved, but what a pain.)

Why were all the Slytherin players so bloody tall, anyway? It was infuriating -- Donna liked to think she could stand her own in a fight, but it was hard not to be intimidated by a seven-inch height difference. She wasn’t frail by any means but she also wasn’t six-foot-whatever. It wasn’t fair; her sister Chloe had gotten to hit five-ten at least.

He tried to flip the question onto her, and Donna answered readily, “I’m going back to my dormitory, I forgot something there.”

The sugar quill was, quite frankly, delicious. He supposed he couldn’t really blame the Gryffindor for being cautious. Not when Slytherin house produced murder wizards at a frankly alarming rate. He sympathized, sort of, as much as a pure blood wizard in his robes could. It wasn’t actually much. Ben was the sort of person who didn’t really care about the state of affairs in the wizarding world so long as those close to him were safe and happy.

Everything else was just ... white noise to him. Cold thinking, for sure, but he just couldn’t find it within himself to stick his nose where he didn’t think it belonged. Involving himself in things that disinterested him just wasn’t his way. Which was why having Gryffindors constantly down his back got so bloody annoying. He resisting the urge to sigh, knowing, that if he showed how done he was with this whole interaction he’d just escalate the girls curiosity.

He toyed briefly with the idea of hexing her. He didn’t much care about the consequences stemming from doing so, really. A slap in the wrist, really. He was a good student, kept to himself and out of most of the drama, so he felt entitled to a good deal of wiggle room as far as acting out was concerned.

So what were his options here? Well he wasn’t really in danger of her finding out why he was hunched up on his perch. He’d long since closed his sketch pad and if she tried to inspect if all she’d see were Quidditch plays. If she tried really hard, well, most of his stuff was pretty heavily warded. She could thank his mother for the ingrained sense of paranoia. He supposed some things were just hereditary. He probably shouldn’t bait her into finding out exactly how warded, though. Best avoid that.

So how to throw her off the scent?

The tall boy continued to chew on his sugar quill, generally trying to cloak himself in innocence. Maybe if he didn’t ... say ... anything? “That’s... nice.” He drawled, attempting to keep his voice level and pleasant. He could be polite. Sometimes. Er. Yea best to just not speak. That was a solid plan.

This was a waste of her time -- if Danvers wasn’t doing anything unseemly or impolite, it really wasn’t any of Donna’s business, much as she sort of wanted it to be, and he looked like he was not paying very much attention to her anyway. Not that he looked like his head was just empty, mothball-ridden and cobwebbed, but he was distracted. It made her sort of want to wave one hand in front of his face, but she resisted the urge and stuck her hands in her pockets, still squinting suspiciously at him.

Maybe he did have a secret girlfriend or something -- Donna was desperate to know who, of course, but chances were she didn’t actually care.

“Well, don’t patronise me,” she said irritably, as though she hadn’t started all of this by telling him what his mother should have taught him. “If you want to sit around writing in your diary sucking your quill looking like a creep, I guess don’t let me stop you.” She swept her head around, swishing her hair, and raised her eyebrows at the response, and shrugged and left him there, hunching back over his little book.



OUT

She really was an irritable little thing wasn't she, he thought, as he continued to snack on his quill. At this point he really was doing it to annoy her. That and to keep himself out of trouble by opening his bloody mouth. He did that, sometimes, and though he didn't regret it per-say it always left him feeling vaguely guilty. He wasn't sure why she'd initially reminded him of Mel, probably the Gryffindor brashness and straightforward manner, but truly they seemed like polar opposites now. Mel was brash and rude, to be certain, but she always carried herself with a level of baseline friendliness he was coming up short on here.

He was fairly certain West just really disliked Slytherins. He'd never interacted with her before and so had little to go on. Maybe she just disliked him personally, in that singular way people just disliked other people sometimes.

"Have a nice day!" he yelled out to her retreating back, his lips curving up into a victorious smile, as he leaned back onto the window sill. It was nothing personal but, well, there was only three people at Hogwarts he'd been willing to share his sketchbook with, and only two of them even knew he liked to draw. It should amuse him more that they were both Ravenclaws. His gaze flickered out towards the horizon, enjoying the scene, as he opened up his sketchpad. He took another quick glance around, assuring himself he was alone, before he continued to sketch.

OUT