[ttd] too late, too late, too late, can't stop me now | cass

11:42 pm, May 2004
Bellefeuille Tower, Beauxbatons

He was running; why was Jaspar always running? For the least athletic wizard to probably ever cross the threshold of the Académie de Magie Beauxbâtons, Jaspar sure did get a lot of physical exercises. Perpetually late and unbelievably distractable, the seventh year darted to and from every class. He ducked around corners, weaved through schoolmates, and nearly faceplanted at least twice a day. He sprinted to get away from bullies, rushed to turn in homework assignments just in time, and dashed to dinner before all the good seats were taken. It was an endless endurance challenge, and it wasn't like any of it paid off. The skinny wizard was pushing six foot three and had a serious lack of muscle.

It must have been the middle of the day because Jaspar was running from the library to Care of Magical Creatures, and he was going to be late. Down four flights of stairs, across the chateau, and to the classroom, Jaspar was panting when he reached the second floor. He slid through the doorway of the Soins aux Créatures Magiques classroom just before it closed, but he was late. Jaspar stood with his back to the door, facing down a room of peers all staring at him, and he pushed out an awkward chuckle, but it sounded more like an out-of-breath cough. "Oh, blasted-blast-ended skrewts," he huffed under his breath as he felt the warmth rising in his cheeks. The teenager tried to make himself as small as possible as he slinked toward an open seat.  The stool wobbled and then skidded as he pulled it closer to the workstation.

"What're these?" He asked the student next to him as he sat down. "Ah, never mind, it's on the tag," The Bellefeuille reached for the string that held the label to the jar and read the name out loud. "Doxy Eggs," Jaspar knew for sure that he was late to class because while his expertly honed powers of deductions had led him to answer his first question, the student had no idea what they were supposed to do with said Doxy Eggs. Turning to face the student next to him, Jaspar noticed (but completely accepted) that they weren't wearing the same uniform he was. Strange. "Do you know what we do next?" He asked as a little bead of sweat ran down his forehead, and he wiped it with his sleeve. Please don't say we eat them; please don't say we eat them.

@Cassandra Nichols

Someone was late. Cassandra felt the eyes turn to the door and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Two seconds before, everyone had been staring at her, because her uniform was all wrong. It was the girl's uniform, she hadn't grabbed her old boy-mode clothes by mistake, but it was still somehow all wrong. She couldn't place it until the new arrival swept to her desk (oh, joy), the blue of his robes brushing against her black and red. Cassandra's face scrunched up. What the hell?

What are these? asked her deskmate, in some accent that she didn't quite recognize. North of England? "Oh, I should know, should I?" Cass shot back, trying not to reveal that she had been sitting at this desk for five minutes and hadn't bothered to read the label on the jar yet.

Five minutes, right? Wait. How long had she been sitting here?

She must be tired from practice, that must be it. Cassandra rubbed at her eyes, stared down at the desk with the doxy eggs then over to the blue-but-not-Ravenclaw wizard sitting next to her. That's why class wasn't making a lick of sense. She was just tired. Or someone on the Slytherin team had drugged her. One of the two.

Now all she had to do was deflect until the clocktower bells rang, and she could sprint back to Gryffindor Tower and figure out what the hell was going on.

Do you know what we do next? "Eat 'em," Cassandra said without thinking, deadpan. She looked at the boy for a second, face serious, before twisting into a laugh. "Course not, idiot. We're turning them into pixies." Yes, that was the assignment, wasn't it? Easy Transfiguration. She must have learned how to do it, otherwise why would that be the assignment written on the chalkboard?

When his classmate responded, Jaspar felt even worse for asking than he did for showing up late. He should have been on time, should have been paying attention, and shouldn’t have said a word. Despite the rising blush in his cheeks, and the fact that he usually would have stuck to himself for the rest of the lesson, Jaspar spoke again. He asked what they were supposed to do next, and the answer made his jaw drop. And then the witch beside him began to laugh, and Jaspar realized she was kidding. Phew, that was a close one.

For a second, he thought maybe this lesson wouldn’t be so bad, and then she called him an idiot, and he looked away with embarrassment. Even though he was pretty sure this class was usually taught during the day, Jaspar found himself looking out at the night sky through the windows. Weird Jaspar forgot he probably shouldn’t say anything and fumbled over an apology instead.  “Oh, sorry,” he said, speaking more to the clouds passing over the full moon than to the student next to him; Jaspar took a silent breath.

And then he realized he had no idea how to turn them into pixies. And that was just about the most horrifying thing that could have occurred to him right then. He couldn’t ask her what to do; he just couldn’t, so instead, Jaspar opened his textbook and flipped through it. He squinted at the pages, but he couldn’t read any of them. The letters looked normal at first, the pictures and diagrams easy to understand, but the more he focused, the less he understood. “Pixies.… right….” He muttered and slowly turned toward her, daring to sneak a glance as he spoke again.

"Because that is something we should know how to do...."

The boy looked like Cassandra had murdered his firstborn child. She laughed again, she couldn't help it. For God's sake, he was blushing so easily! It was too fun, too easy, and he -- and she was sure of this, though why she was sure Cass didn't know -- he wouldn't be threatened by a boy flirting with him, because he didn't know Cass had ever been a boy.

Why was she so sure of that? Wasn't he in her year? Cass looked around the classroom again -- something was off that she couldn't place. It was night outside. That was -- was that right? Cass glanced out the window again -- there were stars around the moon, in a nearly perfect circle. Hm. "You're adorable what when you're flustered," she said instead, flipping her textbook open.

"Course we know how," Cass said, squinting at moving text in her own book. Cassandra looked up, waved her hand. The doxy eggs hatched, one by one, turning into pixies. Not real pixies, though -- tiny little Tinker Bell girls, like from the movie Cassandra would watch sometimes when the neighbors babysat her as a kid. Tinker Bell tinkled before flying off into the room. Okay. That was wrong. It was right, somehow, but it was wrong.

"Huh," Cassandra said, the air starting to feel heavy. That was the trick of it, wasn't it? Dreams seemed real until you realized you were in one. But now that she had noticed, it would fade, fade until she was awake or deep enough in another to forget this realization.

"So, what's your name, dream boy?" Cassandra turned and asked, staring at her companion. He wasn't anyone she had known, she thought -- weren't dreams supposed to take from your own subconscious? Or was Professor Trelawney actually onto something? "Is this your dream, or mine?" Cass asked. "I think it's yours, my uniform isn't --" she glanced down, smoothing down the skirt -- "er, blue."

Adorable? Had this girl just called him adorable? Jaspar's throat felt immeasurably dry, but his palms were beginning to sweat. No one called Jaspar cute; he was average-looking with awkward tendencies and undoubtedly not adorable. He must have been dreaming — or dead, poisoned most likely — because this wasn't real life. Jaspar took a breath and looked over at her again, course we know how, she'd said, and he blinked. He didn't know how to turn them into fairies and come to think of it, Jaspar wasn't even sure he had his wand on him. Had he left it upstairs? He couldn't recall.

The witch beside him waved her hand, and Jaspar watched the little tinker bells flutter out of the eggs; that seemed ordinary, right? Still confident that he had no idea how to do the spell, Jaspar mirrored her movements and tried to ignore the fact that the little tinker bells seemed to be laughing at him. They covered their little mouths and whispered to each other, giggling, and he felt the blush rising in his cheeks again.

Dream boy, oh he was sure he must have been dead now. Jasper swallowed the lump in his throat and moved away from her. His hand reached across the table as if to turn off some alarm on the nightstand. "All the uniforms are blue..." he muttered, finding her question odd as muffled sounds moved around him. His dorm mates were getting up for breakfast, but Jaspar wanted to stay in this dream a little longer — in this world where beautiful witches called him dream boy, and they didn't need wands to do magic. It was lovely here, but it was already fading. "Who are you?" He asked, but like the textbook, the more he tried to focus on her face, the fewer details he remembered.

/end

The boy flushed, and Cassandra laughed again. Her laugh, she noticed through the dreamy fog, was an echo of the little Disney pixies -- just a tinkle of a tiny bell. She laughed again when he tried the enchantment, and his cheeks turned a ruddy red.

All the uniforms are blue, the boy said. "No they aren't," Cassandra said, gesturing to her red and gold Gryffindor robes. They changed, Disney-like, as she gestured, into a blue gown, shimmery and light. "Well, okay," she said to that, looking back up at the boy. The edges of his face were getting fuzzy now -- she must be waking up soon. Cassandra fought to stay in the dream long enough -- "Cassandra," she said, before the fog enveloped them both.

There were bells, and cotton candy fog, and a blue dress of gossamer silk, and the morning chatter of the Gryffindor girls dorm. Cassandra floated towards it lazily, buoyed on by a hundred little blonde girls in green dresses.

When she woke up, she remembered a flushed face and a blue uniform. There was a nagging irritation in the back of her head -- the boy hadn't given her his name.

[out]