Hiding somewhere safe (bianca)

[noel]

Noel backed up against the wall as one of the Slytherins came just a little to close to her. Second later she ducked away from his hand kicked his leg out from under him and ran. It was the only thing she could do at the moment. If he caught back up with her she was doomed. She didn't have a clue as to why he was picking on her this time. It was a normal routine after getting out of classes around lunch time. She never really had lunch as she was running like the wind away from some stupid person that decided it would be fun to try and beat her up. It did usually end up with the other party in the hospital wing more often than herself which caused the Slytherin Head of house not to like her so much. She'd gotten maybe to detentions after all was said and done for such things.

Alas today she was not going to be so lucky. He caught up with her second later and dragged her to the floor. He was towering over her and lucky she rolled away before his punch met with any part of her. However it wasn't far enough away for him not to kick her in the side. She tried to roll again but it was no use as he was not straddling her. If she could scream she probably would but she couldn't. However she curled up into a ball and thought of another way to get out of her prediciment. It didn't take her long to wiggle her way out and stand back up and disappear down the corridor. She slid to a stop in the DADA room seconds before the boy caught up with her. She was out of breath and bruised but luckily not bleeding this time.

The DADA classroom door closed and locked on its own behind her as she sank down into the desk that she normally used. This was her first class after lunch anyways so she'd like usual just be early.

[Dimitri Mikhail Zolnerowich]

Oh Gods and Demigods above.. talk about bad days! That new colleague of theirs? Bad, bad news. Very bad German. Eh- news. What an unpleasant man, spoiled the entire atmosphere. Dimitri had hardly been able to swallow a bit at breakfast and lunch hadn't been much better, so in the end he'd just grabbed something off the table, put it on a plate, and he'd gone to his classroom early. His own, quiet classroom that he knew. He'd have to be in there in half an hour or so anyway, it couldn't hurt to be a little early.
Swinging the door shut behind him, he hummed under his breath - off key, because Dimitri can't even carry a tune to his grave. It was only when he sat down in the chair behind his desk, putting the plate down, that he realised he'd mostly gotten eggs. Ew. He hated eggs. Oh well, he could pick out the few scraps of toast there were and then chuck the rest in the bin.
He could go without lunch, either way. He was fine. As Dimitri munched on the single piece of toast he could find, he resolved to have a huge plate of dinner. Maybe he'd even try a dessert. He didn't like dessert, usually. There, toast gone. Now to get rid of the eg-

"Oh- ёпта!"
The moment he got up to throw away the remainder of the food, Dim got the scare of his life. He hadn't realised he wasn't alone! Dimitri hadn't expected any students to already be there, lunch was still happening, why was Noel even in here, when had she gotten here?! "Merlin, I'm sorry- I didn't see you," he breathed stammering and ran a hand through his hair with a sigh as his heart beat slowed down a little again. Good gods..
Slightly weak in the knees, he got up to throw his eggs in the bin nonetheless, like he'd been planning to, then paused. "You like eggs? I hate them," he said, offering the plate to Noel on a whim. He felt positively sick and incredibly stupid - especially for momentarily forgetting, in his utter shocked surprise, that she couldn't even answer him because she could not speak.
He was cocking up majestically.

Now he had calming down a little, though, he started to focus on things a little more clearly - and then he frowned. "Are you alright?" he asked, cocking his head and looking Noel over.
It didn't make sense. She was here too early, looked like she'd just been in a scuffle, and looked distressed in general - this wasn't right. "Did something happen?" He wasn't being very astute today, was he? Could today get any worse at all?


Translation of ёпта - a Russian exclamation of surprise, can be loosely translated as 'Jesus (you scared me)!'

[noel]

Noel wasn't usually this early to DADA. Part of her was still calming down about the whole ordeal she'd gone through just to get to the classroom in the first place. It took her seconds to notice her Professor come into the room. Of course he didn't notice her. That wasn't something that wasn't rare actually. Noel was silent. She never made a sound because well she had not been blessed with the ability too. That didn't, however mean that she was not a brillant witch. She was ironically at the top of her class in most of her classes. It was regardless of her lack of being able to speak. Most hated her for that but most didn't have to work as hard as she did. She couldn't do spells or enchantments as easily as most fore she had to learn things a rather hard way and do it without speech. No one seemed to care about that and her teachers at least some of them helped her through and had been for the six years that she had graced the school.

Noel prided herself on understanding others when they didn't think she did. For instance Professor Zolnerowich was shocked at seeing her in the classroom. Least when he finally did realize she was there. Something had him off today but that was merely because she could read him so well. She knew the signs for many of the spoken languages as she had tried to learn them all in her spare time. On top of that She had listened to many langauges when no one in the family cared to figure out where she was in the first place. It was one of the reasons why she was in Ravenclaw in the first place. However had it not been for his shocked body language she wouldn't have figured out what he said so easily. He spoke Russian rather fast and it was hard even in too words for her to understand him.

"It's alright." She signed to him rapidly before remembering that she should probably not sign so rapidly. "I am not fond of eggs either. I'm also not really hungry." Okay so she was hungry but she wasn't going to let him know that. On top of that she never ate what the house elves made afraid that even they would poison her like the ones at home tried to do. She hadn't run away because well, she didn't know where she could go. It was better to have a roof over your head even if the people that lived under treated you almost as if you didn't exists until they wanted something from you. She started to sign that she was okay but stopped herself knowing it was no use to try to lie she wasn't very good at it. Most of the time her eyes gave her away.

"A group of Slytherins thought it would be fun to watch one of their own beat me up is all. Its nothing that doesn't happen almost every day." In all honesty it happened only three times a week. It could be worse.

[Dimitri Mikhail Zolnerowich]

[Yoho! I don't wanna be a party pooper, but I can't imagine how Noel'd be fluent in more than two (perhaps three if she's talented) languages and their signs. She may have time to study at home, but teaching yourself new languages will only get you so far without help - also in school she already has to do loooads of extra work to learn those wordless spells etc (especially if she wants to be at the top of her class) so she wouldn't have time then. I get that she's a very smart girl, but she's still young, lol, and especially Russian is damn tricky stuff! ]



Dim wasn't in the classroom this early usually either, really. He would be somewhat early, just to make sure the classroom was set up, but today, he was exceptionally early. He felt a little stupid for allowing Sascha to ruin his day in such a way that he had left the table - he knew he was going to have to deal with the grumpy German at some point, just like he dealt with Kettleburn (who he didn't like that much either for obvious reasons).
He wasn't sure how he felt about students being in the classroom before the space was ready for whatever he was planning. He liked to prepare his classes in peace and quiet, by himself, and although he didn't mind Noel much, the idea that students could just enter classrooms at will sat uneasy in his mind. After all - there could be creatures or things in there that could do quite a bit of damage when handled incorrectly. Maybe he was going to have to lock his classroom from now on..

That wasn't the issue now, though. He had other matters on his mind right now. Dimitri hadn't meant to speak Russian, but it was in unguarded moments like these that his control slipped and his tongue inevitably favoured his native language over his later-acquired English.
The first time she signed, he blinked a moment, having to switch from sign to English to Russian. He had really tried to work on his knowledge of sign language during the Christmas holidays, but he was a man of words and not of bodylanguage, which made it hard for him to remember, especially with no one to practise with (he hadn't asked Noel, of course, he wasn't going to make her spend Christmas with a teacher!). He was glad Noel slowed her movements down soon, though, and couldn't help but smile a little as she said she didn't like eggs either. "Disgusting things," he said, pulling a face as he dropped them in the bin - where they belonged! "Don't know what possessed me to pile them on a plate like that."

Turning back to the desk, Dim pulled out a number of jars and a couple of goblets they were going to need for that day's class - poison detection by means of spellwork. Dimitri knew there were also other ways of detecting poison, but you could never really know too many ways, right? It was on the curriculum, anyway.
Meanwhile, he glanced at Noel to see what she was saying. He missed a few words, but he caught the gist of the message. "Well-" Sitting back down in his chair he crossed his legs and looked at her briefly. "Care to tell me who they were so I can land them in detention?" He didn't expect Noel to tell him, to be honest. She looked too shaken. She wouldn't want to risk another beating. Still, something had to be done about this - she couldn't run and hide in empty classrooms forever. Noel was going to have to learn to stand up for herself.

[noel]

(its okay i was meaning to say that she knew russian semi-perfect (still has trouble at times), english, and french...perfect but had trouble with the others and hadn't learned them very well...like she knows one or two signs from them lol. didn't make it clear. made it a little more clear in this post a bit of a modification.)

Noel really could only sign three languages and the rest well they were a bit hard to even remotely try to sign. She could hear them and know a bit of what they mean but otherwise she was sorta at a loss only knowing one or two. Though languages she worked on mostly when no one cared to pay attention to her. She couldn't speak but she could at least try to understand those that could. She of course signed in English the best as it had been her first language. Then French because her mother made her. Russian she had taken on because she thought it was rather interesting but she still messed up a few times when signing and even when trying to understand it. She cocked her head to the side as the Professor threw his eggs away and shrugged with a smile at the last thing he said about them. She'd eat eggs just not scrambled as they were. She didn't like eggs made that way it just seemed odd and disgusting to her.

She watched silently as he got things ready for the class. She knew that he didn't really like students in the classroom before he got there but she couldn't help the fact that it was a safe haven for her and she could if need be just run out and find him should something try to attack her while in the classroom. She wasn't completely helpless though many thought she was some fragile little flower. Funny enough through they beat her up and pushed out of their lives. She had a few friends maybe but most of the time those she knew weren no where to be found. Least not when she needed them most. He sat back down and asked her to tell him who it was that was trying to beat her up and that he'd give them detention. Regardless of any pain that she was put in she wasn't a snitch. She wouldn't just hand out names but then again this happened more often then not. She was just afraid of what might happen if she told him who it was and word got out that she'd told because it would. She was after all the only one who could say anything about it in a sense.

"I'm afraid they'd just hurt me worse if I told you. I don't want that to happen." Even her signing betrayed the fact that she was slightly afraid. Okay more than slightly. She took a deep breath and put her head down. She really didn't even know why people thought it was fun to see her in pain. That and because she couldn't scream they got away with it. It worried her most of the time. She had no way of figting back. She could use her magic but that would only get her into more trouble then they would get into for beating her up in the first place. She put her head on her desk hiding the tears that were starting to fall. Her side really hurt at the moment but she was hiding it. It wasn't bleeding so it would heal. She didn't look back up for a long time. When she finally did she had tears stains on her checks but she wipped the remaining ones away. She sat there and took deep breaths calming her nerves.

"I don't like hurting others but when they hurt me. I try so hard not too cause they end up i the hospital wing and I end up with detention. I...I just wish people would see past the fact that I can't talk." The last bit seemed even in her signs to be a bit angry but not defeated. Noel was never defeated. She'd endure things until the day she died it was just custom for someone in her family to do so.

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[Dimitri Mikhail Zolnerowich]

Dimitri could speak Russian, French, and English pretty well. In fact, Russian and French being his native languages (French a little less so as it was only his mother's language and not his father's, but he had lived there for years), English was the language he spoke the least well. He always called it his luck that a lot of the English vocabulary resembled French due to the Renaissance - got to love it when people started preferring Latin over their own language. Apart from parts of the vocabulary, English had been a right disaster to him in the beginning. Russian came to him naturally, but even if it hadn't, the cyrillic alphabet was as near phonetic as modern languages got. English wasn't even near phonetic. Who had ever come up with some Great Vowel Shift rule which made 'beard' sound different from 'heard', which nonetheless rhymed with 'bird'.
Still, after living here for a couple of years now, he was doing reasonably well, also trying to read mostly English books rather than Russian ones, etcetera. He was conscious that he would probably never shake the complete accent, though - the rolling r, the dark l, the sh-sounds that were just a bit too far back on his palate. Well, at least people understood him - and that was more than Noel could say. Literally.

It wasn't personal that Dimitri didn't like students in the class too early on. He just needed time to prepare things on his own pace and didn't always do well with students watching him move around. Besides, students cooped up in classrooms for too long was never good - it made them restless and bored, which made his job a hell of a lot more difficult, too. As soon as the weather got better, he hold himself, he'd organise some outside seminars..
The preparations were over with soon enough and, sitting back down with a quiet sigh he set to work trying to make sense of what Noel had to say. He was getting better at it, but sometimes a word slipped passed him. Not this time, though, or if it did, it wasn't a very important part of her 'speech'. Also, her body language rather made the gist of the message pretty clear. "What makes you think we'd let them go that far?" he asked her. "They'll have a detention as a warning and if that does not stop them I suppose I'll have to contact Dumbledore about possible exclusion from the rest of the year, making them double a grade, or expelling them completely." He was a little confused by the girl's fear. Sure, pain was no fun, nor was being threatened, but it wasn't as if students ran the school - teachers did.

He got up, pacing a little and wringing his hands. Dim knew she had started crying - he had never really handled crying very well.. At his own school, girls hadn't even been allowed to enroll to begin with and boys displaying such weakness had to count themselves lucky if they were only made into a display of public discipline (and weren't expelled or worse).
"There is a difference between hurting people and defending yourself, Noel," Dimitri eventually said with a bit of a thoughtful look on his face. Did her fellow students really dislike Noel because she couldn't speak - or was she just an easy target because she could make no sound? Did it matter what the reason was?
"Now.." his voice grew a little quieter. "Do I need to get you to the hospital wing?" He had seen she was in pain - and he was pretty sure her answer would be a 'no'. Either way, this girl was going to have to learn that she needn't solve everything by herself, no matter how stubborn she was.