The rowan will not carry two loads.. [open]

[waldemar]

Word count: 854
Text: "Pihlaja ei kahta taakkaa kanna." (Translation: "The rowan will not carry two loads." An adage expressing the Finnish superstition that one may predict how much snow the next winter will have, from the amount of berris on the rowan tree.)
Wearing: Surprisingly, not that much. Waldemar is used to the cold and rejoices in seeing snow, he's merely wearing his uniform (with boots in stead of shoes) and an average cape.

He was sitting in the charms classroom. To be honest, it was one of the subjects Waldemar liked, especially the way it was treated in this school. At home, his parents had been far more careful (almost too careful) with him and his brother practising charms, but here they were allowed to try as often as they could. Of course, Waldemar had noticed that here were no expensive vases or crystal mirrors to shatter - that probably had something to do with it.
They'd only been halfway through class when Waldemar's attention had been caught by something. At first, it was just a vague movement in the corner of his eye (he thought it was someone scribbling fervently, quill moving, or someone levitating their quill with a hand that was a little shaky), but then he noticed it wasn't the sharp, forced movement of a quill on paper.
It was snow. Snow on the windows, obscuring the view on the outside world slowly, yet decidedly.

This was a memorable moment to Waldemar. No, really. He'd been here for about a month now and though he had slowly gotten used to the place, he had not managed to feel at home yet. But now there was snow. Not the quantity he was used to, but there was snow. (And, of course, he could hope, right? Maybe there would fall loads more. Oh, he hoped so!) Throughout the class, he kept glancing out the window every once in a while. The snowflakes accumulated on the glass and the chill slowly crept inside. Vaguely, Waldemar noticed some girls cringing and shivering, complaining about not having brought a sweater to class, yet he revelled in the cold. It seemed to revive his bones and the feeling of not belonging here, at Hogwarts, slowly melted away as the blanket of snow grew thicker.
He hadn't even noticed he had started to miss his home so. Of course, he had known he missed it, but the effect the snow had on him surely showed his homesickness had been worse than he'd thought at first glance.
Who cared, though - it was snowing!

Glad that charms was his last class of the day, he practically ran fro the classroom and outside, not stopping by the dorm to pick up any warm clothing. He didn't need any.
More students obviously shared his love for snow, for when he came outside, there was a gigantic snowball fight going on. Students levitating balls of icy slush over to their enemies as stealthily as they could, others building snowforts with actual turrets.. Waldemar would've liked to join, but not now.
Now, for him, the snow was something.. personal. It stirred something inside of him and suddenly, he very much longed to be alone with the snow for a bit.
Manoevring through snowballs being thrown and slipping students, he eventually reached the lake and smiled a little wider as he could see it was slowly freezing over. It was only a very thin layer of ice, he was sure he could melt it by breathing on it, but it was thick enough to support a thin layer of snow over the entire lake, hiding it, as it were.

Ankledeep in white icecrystals, he started walking around the lake. He felt a little silly for doing so, but he just tried to pretend he was at home. He knew he would not see his home for a long time (and to him, any time was a long time now). His parents had also decided he would stay at school during the holidays. Waldemar was fine with that, he still had catching up to do and besides.. if the snow would be like this throughout the holidays, it wouldn't be so bad. Snow, a lake.. it was almost complete, then wasn't it? All he now needed was a substitute forest to wander and get lost in.
Waldemar glanced at the Forbidden Forest, which lay only about a hundred steps to his left. He had been told it was dangerous, but weren't all woods dangerous? Sure, it looked rather dark and he'd been told there were centaurs in there and they were not usually amiable creatures.. Longing, he looked at the shadows between the trees for a moment, though then refrained from it. He was homesick, but he was not stupid. Not stupid enough yet, anyway.
So he turned his eyes back to the lake and walked a little further until he was under one of the willows that surrounded the vast body of water. Looking down into the water, he could see his own reflection, as the willow's thick, old branches stopped the snow from covering the thin ice layer on this particular spot.

After glancing back at the school for a short moment and listening to the yells and screams of students engaged in what seemed the ice fight of the century, Waldemar looked back at the lake, his back firmly against the gentle tree he was leaning against and pretending, if only for a moment, to be back at home - thus forgetting his surroundings completely.

[vendetta]

go ahead and make me cry
i'll be all right

Vendetta felt a small smile grace her pretty lips, making her look happier than she had looked in a while. She sat patiently in lesson, her deep green eyes looking out of the window longingly. It felt as if she were n a daydream, and she wasn't afraid of being caught because the teachers said nothing to her, because they want replies which she can't give them. Maybe one happy thing came out of that mess. But she wouldn't let her mid drift off to her unfortunate past, it was snowing for God's sake! In all truth, Detta had never seen that much snow in her life, and she just couldn't wait to get her fingers in it. Not that she's be throwing snowballs, but it just looked so soft, and so pretty that she couldn't resist the absolute need to touch it. Truth was, she had never seen snow, apart from on TV. Living in the UK prevented that, because everyone knew how little it actually snowed there, so this was a big deal for her, her first experience and she could enjoy it as much as anyone.

A deep breath escaped her lips when the lesson was finally finished. She was a good student, but she was also excited, and could not concentrate on anything to do with fact. She stuffed all of her books in her bag, with her head down as always, her soft blond hair falling over her shoulders, hiding her face and neck, but most importantly the scar. Her pale fingers grazed what was her journal. She never went anywhere without it, because she loved writing down what she was thinking, merely because there was no other way for her to speak those words. And so, she would do it outside, in her first experience of snow. She licked her lips, and pulled all of her hair over one side, before heading out of the room, to go and grab her jacket, because she might get cold, because what she's seen, the weather would be quite chilly. She put on her brown coat and pink scarf, and headed out with her journal and pen in hand.

As the cool air hit her face, she couldn't help the grin that covered it. It was a toothy grin, that she hadn't smiled in in a while. It felt good, and the sheer freshness of the air on her skin made her feel alive, as if every particle of the air mixed in with every particle within her, and she felt kind of cold, but she loved it anyway. Staying out of laughter's way, she made her way the long way round. She wanted to stay out of hearing range merely because she didn't want to bring her moods down for not being able to laugh with people. She wondered if they would like her more if she could actually speak with a voice. Vendetta believed they would, and that made her somewhat sad, because she'd still be the same person, except with normal people problems, not ones that classified her as a freak. She sighed, and saw the cloud come out from her lips. She knew she'd do that to herself, like she did everyday. She was moaning about it in her head, and it was sure as hell not helping one little bit.

She could feel her cheeks redden from the cold, and she was glad that her hair cascaded down past her ears, keeping them warm. She had no gloves on, but that was good, because she could write better. She clutched her leather bound journal to her chest, and made her way to the lake quickly, wanting to see what the lake looked like now, that there was so much snow. Vendetta bent down for a second, and touched the snow. It felt wonderful and so soft beneath her fingers, but also frighteningly cool. The Hufflepuff stood up, and heard the snow crunch beneath her boots. Then, her eyes caught sight of the lake, magnificent in all the white, as if aglow. It looked cold and inviting, and Vendetta walked towards it without a sound, not running, but walking fast. When she reached it, she knelt down, toughing the top of it softly, where ice had settled and shivered at the cold. Detta stood up, meaning to sit by her tree and just write what she felt about the snow, but apparently it was occupied. She hoped that she could run away before the boy saw her, because she didn't think that she could go through a day of bullying on something as beautiful as this.

[waldemar]

Word count: 489

At first, he did a fine job ignoring the students a few hundred feet away trying to freeze each other to death with friendly games and ambushes, but somehow, after a while, the yelling, screaming, laughter became too loud and harder to ignore - Waldemar sighed. He longed for silence so intensely, it seemed almost unreal. He just wanted the sound of snow falling on snow and water freezing to ice. It was a sound, and he knew it was, a sound he was all too familiar with, but with the students' voices upsetting the air, there was no way for him to hear it.
Pulled from his thoughts, he glanced around for a moment, spotting another student not too far away. How long had he been here? Had all the other classes ended already as well? After a short look at his pocket watch, Waldemar determined he had been standing under the tree for at least half an hour. His eyes wandered off to the girl again. She was a Hufflepuff, that much he could see by her uniform, though then again he thought Hufflepuff's were supposed to be friendly and sociable and pleasant to be around, so why was she alone? Well, either way, he didn't give it much thought. If Hufflepuff's were pleasant people and he needed to make some friends, he might as well give it a shot, right? At least she seemed to like the view on the lake as much as he did, else she would've been throwing snowballs at her fellow students.

Quietly, as he could see she was engaged in writing something (a letter, a journal, an essay?), he walked towards her. Well - as quiet as you can be in the snow, that softly crunched under his boots and sounded more melancholic that he remembered. Then again, he was being rather homesick.
It didn't take him long to reach her at all and stood next to her, not behind her. He didn't want to scare her nor did he want to give the impression he was reading what she was writing over her shoulder - that would be rude. A little nervous, but hiding it better than he could've hoped for, he told himself that she was a Hufflepuff, that she was probably nice, though another voice in his head objected 'so if this once doesn't like you, you can forget about being social - these are supposed to be the nice ones'.
Waldemar cleared his throat softly to announce his presence, nodding at the empty space next to her, under the tree. "Do you mind?" He was still working on making the formality in his voice disappear, but it wasn't working very well. He still sounded like some sort of pompous pureblood who wanted to pass, not someone who wanted to try and make a friend. His accent was, also, still rather heavy, and probably gave away he was not from around here.

[vendetta]

go ahead and make me cry
i'll be all right

Detta had never really thought about the meaning of her own name, but thinking about it now she knew what the word meant really, in terms of a non-name. It meant feud, and she asked herself was she in any relevance to it. Maybe her parents knew from the minute she was born that she would have to fight with all of the world to be accepted, appreciated, have a feud that may result in all kinds of consequences. The girl slumped her shoulders, and pushed away the thought. Sometimes people used her muteness to their own advantage, though she could not figure out how they could be so cruel. Just because she could not defend herself in words, didn't mean that they had to go around mouthing her off, but this was always going to happen, weather Vendetta actually liked it or not. She sighed, watching the puff of smoke form a cloud before her nose.

She felt a snowflake fall on the tip of her now red nose, and she looked at it almost cross eyed. Then she just smiled and put her fingers to the cold tip, making the snowflake melt. Then, seeing that person just there, Vendetta ignored them, knowing that if she approached them, or tried to communicate they would shoo her off. If he didn't know that she was a freak already, he would find out. She walked to wards a tree further off, just out of view, and she hoped that the person had not seen her. She rested her back against the tree, and slid down, so that her shins were almost tucked under her, but her bum was touching the ground. It was the most comfortable way for her to sit, but most importantly write. She got her journal, and put it upon her knees, breathing heavily and shivering as a breeze passed through her, and she felt alive, well, more alive than she had in a while.

Vendetta touched her pen to the paper and wrote;- Dear Journal, but before she could write anymore, she looked up at the sky, almost day dreaming. Her mind was soaring other worlds that she had made up in time, and so she didn't notice the presence that approached her, with a soft crunch of now. So, when she heard the clearing of the throat, her head whipped, and she looked up to see the boy that she saw before stand next to her. As a reflex, she clutched her journal to her chest, she had done that since she could remember, she just felt like she had more privacy in that way. However, the shock was startling on her face. Now she was sure that he hadn't heard what kind of freak she was. He green eyes looked at the boy, he was tall and had dark hair, and his accent implied that he was not from around here. She let out a breath, and shook her head at him, to say that she didn't mind him joining her. She looked at him,t hen her gaze shifted to her journal.

Her hand was shaking as she, once again put the pen to paper. She would warn the guy, so that he could run before he decided to bully her like everyone. I don't speak. I know I'm a freak, so if you want to make fun, leave now, unless you understand hand gestures. She knew that she was being really harsh, merely because she did not know the guy, but she really couldn't go through any sort of discrimination against her today, she was just in too perky a mood, but she knew that it couldn't last. She just hoped that he wasn't as mean as other people. Vendetta pushed the book through the air to wards the boy so that he could read the words, and looked into the distance, not wanting to see his expression, hoping that if he thought she was a weirdo that he would just give her her journal back and go away, not saying anything, but was anything ever that good? After such a long time of crap, she couldn't hope for anything better.

[waldemar]

Word count: a mere 395 - sorry!

He almost felt guilty as he had obviously startled the girl. "Oh, I am sorry. I didn't mean to scare you," he said, trying to smile in a way that was friendly, but not sure if he was succeeding. He was glad to find that she didn't mind him sitting next to her. Waldemar was, however, thoroughly surprised when she put a piece of paper under his nose.
'I don't speak. I know I'm a freak, so if you want to make fun, leave now, unless you understand hand gestures.' He read it and nodded. "Well, I- I don't know where you got the idea that I would make fun of you, but.. no." Waldemar shook his head and smiled a little. "I'm afraid I'm not, eh, familiar with sign language, unless you'd be willing to teach me, that is."

Surprising himself, Waldemar chuckled hoarsely. "And here I was thinking I had problems communicating." He smiled apologetically. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that, it's just.. English is.. difficult - but now I'll never complain again." Bravo, Waldemar, you just managed to insult the girl, probably.
Blushing, he leaned against the bark of the tree and scoffed at himself. "I'm sorry - I didn't mean to insult you.." He sent the girl next to him half a smile, hoping she wouldn't be mad at him, but then kept his mouth firmly shut, glancing at the lake and thinking of home, trying to be silent and not to disturb her. He noticed his trousers were wet and getting cold, but somehow, that direct skin-contact sort of cold remembered him of home, so in a strange way, it was comforting, soothing almost.

He couldn't resist, and, after a few minutes, turned to his taciturn companion again. "What'd you say you're more fond of - winter or summer?" Waldemar knew he was making that empty sort of conversation that hardly meant anything, but he couldn't help himself. He wanted to talk to her, but was afraid to insult her or start on a subject she didn't like.
For one, he was wondering why she could no longer speak, or if she perhaps never had been able to, but it would be more than impolite to ask her directly, so he was testing the water. Was she even interested in talking to him, or was she just tolerating him?

[vendetta]

go ahead and make me cry
i'll be all right

Vendetta merely smiled at his apologetic face at him scaring her, but she didn't mind. The expression on her face said 'It's ok.' Detta didn't want to see his expression at the note, and she had expected him to flee the second he found out that she was mute. Her expression turned from sweet to shocked all at once, and she looked right at his face. She just shrugged a shoulder and looked down at the making fun bit, because why wouldn't he? Everyone else did, and she was kind of used to it by now, that it was a huge shock when someone actually not laughed at her inability to speak. She was glad that she was wearing a scarf, merely because it his her scar, and if he saw that he's probably laugh. Detta sighed, she was so paranoid that she didn't even consider him not laughing at her for one second, though he seemed serious and out of place also.

Vendetta's deep eyes probed his. He actually wanted to learn sign language. This boy was so unexpected, and maybe he would not make fun of her. She looked down at her paper, and wrote. He would have to deal with conversation that way, he'd get bored soon and flee. That's what was expected, because sooner or later he'd just get fed up of her not being able to say a word. 'I wouldn't mind teaching you, only if you're willing to learn. It's easier than it looks.' She smiled as she passed him the note, her writing was a pretty cursive font, and she wrote fast. All those years of experience. At his next words, Detta looked kind of hurt, her face twisting into that familiar expression while she sighed. "And here I was thinking I had problems communicating." and then to make things worse, "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that, it's just.. English is.. difficult - but now I'll never complain again."

She wouldn't cry, but she knew that it was too good to be true. She looked away, hoping he'd just leave and not speak anymore. Everyone eventually found a way to laugh at her, and this was one of the most hurtful ones, pretending to be nice then insulting her. She hid behind her soft and snow covered blond hair, trying not to let him see how much he actually upset her, but she wouldn't be first to leave, at least she had dignity. She hated the silence, so she'd stick to her thoughts. She opened her journal to the page which she started, and looked to see if he was watching. Glad to see that he wasn't, she shifted so that he couldn't see what was written, but then changed her mind. What would she write? That once again she was being laughed at, by a person that actually seemed nice and, like her, not entirely able to fit in, merely because where he was from, but maybe she was wrong, maybe he was the top of the social chain, she wouldn't know.

Vendetta wondered why he was still there, and then he spoke. She looked up at him, with clear eyes and shrugged. She wondered how she could tell him that she liked summer better than winter. She picked up a handful of snow, and pointedly looked at it, shivering as if to say that winter was too cold, hence she preferred summer. Though winter was definitely more beautiful, but she looked more at climate, and how it affected her. Snow scared her, merely because it can hide your tracks the moment you walk past, but it was soothing also, with the lovely pale colours, which were too cold for her liking but she foundt hem really pretty. Vendetta's mind shifted to the boy, and she found her page again. 'I'm Vendetta.' She wrote, it was only polite to introduce yourself. She smiled at him slightly as she passed him the paper once again.

[waldemar]

Sorry for the wait!

She seemed like a pretty nice girl, though very shy, Waldemar thought. The last thing on his mind was making fun of her or making her feel uncomfortable and he smiled a she agreed teaching him sign language. Yet, the words that had escaped him, that he hadn't meant to be hurtful, seemed to wound her deeper than he had hoped. He winced at her expression.
"I didn't mean it like that, I wasn't laughing at you," Waldemar quickly said, almost so quick he stumbled over his words. He just wanted to apologise to her. "I wouldn't laugh at such a matter," he added, trying to find her eyes and make her see he was being sincere. "I really do want to learn sign language." He did. Waldemar liked learning and this seemed interesting plus she seemed very nice. So why not? It could hardly damage his social abilities, could it now?

Waiting for her answer, he remained, hoping she'd forgive him for his unfortunate mistake. Because, indeed, he wasn't as unable to communicate as her, but English still felt so foreign to him and he often made mistakes, especially in colloquial situations.
'I'm Vendetta.' Waldemar happily mimicked her smile, guessing this showed she had forgiven him, and held out his hand. "George," he replied.