Cleanliness is Godliness, and God is empty `OPEN

[callum]

Callum wandered aimlessly through the corridors. It was a dreary Saturday afternoon, and he had already finished all of his weekend homework on Friday. It appeared that not all of his classmates had decided to do the same, as there were groups of students wandering together, either sitting on the floor or with their rucksacks on and heading to the library. Callum didn't understand why it took everyone so long to do their homework. He had Arithmancy homework and an Ancient Runes essay, all done in the same day. Ancient Runes he almost thought to be a joke, as there were very few classes that he found easier.

Regardless, he always stopped himself from questioning why it took everyone else so long, as his mother had always taught him that it wasn't polite to, in his mind, remind everyone of how much more intelligent he was than literally everyone else. Unfortunately, on occasion, he did slip up and accidentally offend someone. It felt like either people really liked him, or really disliked him. He wasn't sure if there were many people in between, but it didn't concern him much. As long as he had a few friends was all that mattered to him. Besides, going to school was for getting good grades, not to be Mr. Popular. (Although he couldn't deny that it would be nice...)

Callum continued to wander the corridors, and on occasion stopped to speak to a few of the portraits. He walked with a straight back, and if people didn't know him, they may think that he looked a little... arrogant. He wished that he could be arrogant, really. It seemed like such a simply lifestyle.

As he continued on through, minding his own business, all he heard was cackling before he felt like a lot of what he instantly knew was ink being poured all over him... the cackling no doubt belonging to Peeves.

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[tanith]

Tanith made sure that she was never left with nothing to do on Saturday afternoons like this one, where it was too drizzly to lurk around outside, sneaking cigarettes and reading. She was never one of those students who finished all their homework on Friday night, not because she was always out at parties and being sociable on Friday nights, but because she had learned rushing it left her with two whole days of weekend with bugger all else to do. So, she instead divided her weekend into manageable chunks. This chunk (early Saturday afternoon) was spent searching for reference books in the library before getting stuck into essays. Usually, she had found it was best to find free classrooms to do said essays - unfortunately the library at the weekends was surprisingly busy, filled with cramming first years who she was loathe to share tables with. It never normally took long to find a deserted unlocked classroom on weekends (although she steered clear of them on evenings when they were apparently used for couples to get it on unseen by teachers).

This afternoon, she was doing just that - looking for deserted classrooms to study, not in which to get it on - when she stumbled into a corridor where Peeves the Poltergeist was lurking. Inwardly she groaned, picking up the pace and hoping to be left unscathed by one of the ghoul's hilarious jokes. Unfortunately, she wasn't so lucky. Tanith supposed it could have been worse, she'd seen plenty of first years been dangled by their ankles while Peeves serenaded them, or blasted in the face with gunge. She had merely had her stationery stolen, levitated out of her satchel and spun over the heads of the various other wandering students in the corridor, quills ink and all. Setting her jaw, Tanith grimaced, waiting for Peeves to get bored and pass on to another student. It was pointless to try to hex him or bargain, this only spurred him on, she had learned that much from six years at the school. Besides, it wasn't that much of a scene, just a few tittering passer-bys and - Tanith redoubled her cringeing as Peeves tipped a fresh bottle of stolen deep blue ink over a passing Ravenclaw boy.

"For fuck's sake" Tanith grumbled under her breath, wandering over to the boy in question as Peeves spun off amid loud cackling. The rest of her stolen implements were strewn all over the corridor and she picked them up quickly, digging at the same time in her jeans pocket for a monogrammed handkerchief to hand to the Ravenclaw. Up close, she recognised him now. Callum McCoy. Being in the year above him, it was not as if they knew each other very well, but he was often in the library at the same time as her, and they occasionally nodded at each other. He seemed pleasant enough, although she wasn't sure whether he even knew her other than by face, and he deserved, at least, a handkerchief when she had indirectly drowned him in ink. "Bloody Peeves" She hissed, shoving the rest of her stationery into her bag rather haphazardly, before mumbling an instinctive "Sorry. I could -" she gestured awkwardly with her wand - "Scourgify that off?" Perhaps that was inadvertently presumptuous, offering to help an older student with spellwork? She could never tell what the proper boundary was between politeness and being presumptuous, especially with people at school she hadn't yet decided she disliked.

[hope that's okay? i noticed they were a year apart so i wasn't sure if they'd have spoken in class etc]

[callum]

Callum stood there in a state of shock for a while, feeling the ink drip down him. He flicked his wrists irritably, sending some ink flying. for a moment, he forgot that he was a wizard. He just stood there, feeling somewhat embarrassed, as the corridors weren't exactly empty, and he could hear a couple of kids laughing at him. He could feel his cheeks burn red, but luckily no one else could see it. Although Callum was very confident about his intellect, he wasn't as confident about his appearance and therefore this was not a very good situation for him to be in; and although he had a good sense of humour, he had a hard time finding what happened to him funny.

Callum tried to wipe excess ink off of himself, and when the laughter died down (mainly because of Peeves spraying all of them too), he heard a faint swear. Cal took off his glasses in order to see who it was, and he recognized her as a pretty Slytherin girl. He wasn't overly familiar with her, but did know her name was Tanith. He believed her last name to be Malfoy, but mainly because the last name was well-known. He could be wrong, but he highly doubted it - he wasn't wrong very often. He felt his cheeks burn even brighter, as being dumped in ink was only made worse by a pretty blonde girl witnessing the entire thing. However, he noticed that she was shoving things back into her rucksack, making him believe that the ink had initially been hers. She seemed somewhat awkward when she approached him, and he didn't know how to take it.

"No, I'm capable of doing that myself thanks," Callum replied, simply. He turned his wand on himself and cleaned himself off. It worked practically perfectly. He hadn't meant for his tone to seem like he was being short with her, but it seemed like that. "Was the ink yours?"

He had yet to pick his backpack up from the floor, hoping that maybe he could initiate good conversation with her. Besides, it wasn't every day where a pretty girl talked to him. Callum then realized that he still had a straight face on, so he smiled at her in hopes of seeming more inviting. He put his glasses back on his face so he could see her better.

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[tanith]

Before the Ravenclaw had replied to her awkward offer of a quicknpainless Scourgify, Tanith noted that his backpack was still discarded on the ground. Pensively she nudged it with a foot before hoisting it off the ground, shifting her own heavy satchel to the other shoulder and offering it to McCoy. It was heavier than she had expected and she momentarily regretted the gesture as her knobbly knees quivered under the weight. "Here" She mumbled, supposing it was probably something to do with Callum being a good student, a typical Ravenclaw some would say, branding them geeks. Tanith didn't mind those who spent a lot and effort on their weight, being amongst the branded 'geeks' herself. In fact she had found in the past that Ravenclaw work ethic made their students amongst the more tolerable of Hogwarts teenagers, next to sticking to one's own house. Well, ahead of Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors at least. Although it was best, of course, not to lump all students of particular houses in together like this, because some people (a lot of people, Tan found) were arseholes regardless of where they were sorted.

And with that in mind she briefly regretted her offering of help, however meagre it was, at McCoy's response. "No, I'm capable of doing that myself thanks" - Tanith had learned from six years in Slytherin (and sixteen with her mum) the art of the passive-aggressive, and being a little paranoid, this sounded like an archetypal passive agressive way of telling the person in question to piss off. In response, Tanith shrugged jerkily. "Fine" She murmured, stowing her wand back in her jeans pocket. She was grudgingly impressed by his own quick spellwork in cleaning himself off, and repeated her shrug at his next question, brushing it off and picking at a stray ink-stain on her top. "Yeah. S'ok though, I have more."

There was a brief pause then, and she shifted from foot to foot, wondering if this was her cue to leave the conversation, and the injured-by-ink party, well alone. After all, if she'd been the one doused in someone else's ink the last thing she'd want is some git watching in amusement. Not that she was amused in the slightest by Peeve's tricks at the best of times. Carefully, she folded her offered handkerchief and then stuffed it back in her pocket, gesturing to the corridor splitting off to the left. "Peeves tends to linger around here on Saturday afternoons. The fifth and sixth floor are usually clear though, at least until Sunday mornings." There, polite advice. She wasn't sure why she had offered it, when it made her sound like some Peeve-stalker, apart from the fact that she felt a bit sorry for McCoy, and the smile, after his apparent shortness, had come as a surprise to her. Belatedly, she responded, attempting to force her own lopsided grin into an open and friendly smile.

[callum]

Callum watched as Tanith picked his rucksack off the floor. He noticed how she seemed to find it heavy. It wasn't hard to tell: her arm didn't remain straight, and it appeared as if her knees buckled ever-so-slightly. He couldn't suppress a small laugh at her struggle as he accepted the bag from her. It wasn't that Callum was strong - in fact, he was far from it - but he was very much used to the weight of his bag. He prepared himself before accepting it from her and swinging it onto his shoulder. Unfortunately, due to his amusement, Callum swung a little too hard, causing the backpack to have too much momentum when he put it onto his shoulder, which caused him to lose balance and almost fall over.

His laughing stopped pretty much instantly out of even more embarrassment. He fiddled with one of the buttons on his cardigan and merely muttered, "Thanks."

Callum was going to initially make fun of her for not being able to hold the bag, but he pretty much assumed by this point that his argument had become quite invalid.

He didn't move, however, as he didn't want to be the first person to end the conversation. Callum wasn't afraid of Slytherins like most people were... it would be the same as people judging him because of who he was. It just wasn't fair. Sure, he would judge those who were mean to him, but Tanith had yet to do anything of the like. He was honestly just grateful that she hadn't laughed at him or just left by now. He had heard the sound of his tone when he had said he could do it himself. It was just that he couldn't help his tone - it was just the way that he talked. He decided to not press upon the issue in fear that he would be overdoing it. He assumed that by just leaving it and not apologizing, they could just move on and forget about it.

Callum couldn't help but notice how precise and dainty all of Tanith's movements were. He could tell she was feeling awkward, and he almost just said goodbye politely, but then she continued talking. She continued the conversation. How could it be that a pretty blonde girl would willingly continue conversation with him? Usually the only girls who went out of their way to speak to him had mushroom-like haircuts or glasses that made them bug-eyed, or had questionable body odour.

Callum listened to her advice and smiled.

"Well, you see, I wouldn't usually go along Peeve's warpath intentionally. I just don't really pay attention to my surroundings, you know? I'll just walk around, sometimes getting lost in my head, making mental notes on what I have to do for the day, what kind of homework I have," Callum paused momentarily in thought, "Well, not that I have any homework right now, I've already gotten it all done, as you could imagine. Anyhow, I've been told numourous times about where Peeves usually hides out, but sometimes I don't really feel aware of where I am."

Callum stopped himself from continuing further, as he realized that he was rambling. He noticed her smile and couldn't help but notice what a friendly smile she had. How many people in Slytherin had pretty smiles? He doubted very many - Slytherins weren't very well known for their looks.

Callum looked down at his feet awkwardly, unsure if she had even heard a word he had said due to the pace. He took a deep breath, and then looked back to her and said, "Well, if Peeves usually lurks around here, then what brought you here?"

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[tanith]

Tanith couldn't suppress a small, but not unkind snicker as McCoy fumbled with his schoolbag. She had been feeling pretty flustered and embarrassed after struggling with the weight herself, and could feel her pale face burning unpleasantly hot and becoming pink and blotchy as McCoy seemed to find this evidently pretty funny. Seeing him do the same thing though seemed to sober him up pretty quickly, and she soon felt less embarrassed about it. The snicker didn't last long though, and Tanith quietened it sharpish when McCoy pulled at his cardigan though, evidently embarrassed herself, and felt slightly bad for her snort of laughter. Just as McCoy (unbeknownst to Tan) was observing her movements, she too recognised his. They were similar to her own self-conscious, awkward movements. Seeing the similarity seemed to convince Tanith that perhaps McCoy was the quiet, unassuming type, although it didn't lead her to make any further assumptions about whether this made him potentially a nice person or not, being inherently wary of others. It was only passing small talk between them, after all. Inspite of that, she couldn't resist offering what could be seen as a polite, light joke, nodding to his bag.

"Perhaps for your spine's sake you ought to take notes in the library instead of borrowing half the shelves" The joke was of course, based on what she assumed to be weight of books in his bag, but she realised belatedly it was perhaps a bit of a pathetic excuse for a light, polite joke. She had never been very good with comedy. At least the grimace/smile appeared to have made the grade though, well, in that McCoy didn't look completely bemused by it or make an excuse before hurrying off in the other direction. Instead, quite the opposite, as her tentative push in the direction of a conversation seemed to have prompted a long ramble on his part. She held back a smirk, listening to his long speel with eyebrows slightly raised. It was certainly an... interesting way of seeing things, and she had definitely expected either a 'mind your own business' or just a vague shrug in response, but certainly not his pensive musings on wandering. "Mm it's easy to get lost" Tanith agreed slightly noncommittally, not bothering to specify whether this was in reference to either getting lost in one's thoughts as Callum had mentioned,or getting lost thanks to the changing staircases and chameleon decorations that Hogwarts posessed, and that she was ashamed to admit she still had difficulty keeping track of even as a sixth year.

The rambling didn't bother Tan though. In fact it was another noted similarity to her own disposition. She usually tended to keep either completely clammed up and silent, or ramble off on tangents that tended to scare off her conversational partners. She had yet, being slightly socially inept to find a happy medium, and perhaps McCoy was the same. When he did finally quieten down though, and turned the question back on herself, Tanith shrugged. She briefly entertained the idea of coming up with lies to make herself sound more exciting, but smalltalk was taxing enough without keeping up with little-white-lies. "I was looking for classrooms to study in. The library's too busy and these are usually free. I have a lot of homework" Well that was mostly true, apart from only having a little homework left to do, and partly looking for somewhere quiet to read.

[callum]

Callum had heard Tanith's quick snicker, and although he had done something somewhat similar to her earlier, he still felt a little put off by it. Honestly, he was sort of used to girls laughing at him. He was a little hypocritical in this aspect, and Callum wasn't aware of it whatsoever: him laughing at others for failing at something, but when people did it to him, he felt flustered and angry. It wasn't that he was feeling angry at her, persay, but he wasn't feeling happy about it either, no matter how quick her snicker had been.

"Oh, these books aren't borrowed, they're mine," Callum said in a matter-of-fact tone. "I wouldn't want to run the risk of the library being out of the book I'm looking for - that would just put me back. It's much easier to just own the books I need."

He said it in a way that made it seem like everyone owned practically a library-worth of books. He didn't know that there were people out there who didn't have shelves and shelves of books at home. In fact, he thought people only used the library to look up really old books that they couldn't find in stores, just as he did. He also didn't seem to realize that not everyone's families were willing to put out that kind of money for books. His family was just pleased that he was intelligent and therefore they were willing to fund his education. The rest of them were just dumb as rocks.

"What about your common room?" Callum suggested. "I don't know about the Slytherin common room, but I know that the Ravenclaw common room usually isn't too bad. I, myself, find the library rather loud sometimes. I don't know how they get away with it."

Callum paused for a moment, pensive. "You know, if you need help with your homework, I'm sure we can go outside and I can help you with it. I'd suggest bringing you to my common room with me, but I'm not sure how my House feels about bringing in others. I mean, this is, of course, all under the assumption that you'd like my help - would you?"

He couldn't help but notice that Tanith was being rather quiet, and he hoped that he wasn't bothering her or boring her. He was tempted to ask if she just wanted to leave her alone, but that itself seemed to not be a question that could be politely asked, so he refrained and just waited for her answer.

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[tanith]

Tanith's gaze was once again drawn to Callum's heavy bag when he mentioned that he owned all the books it contained. Although his tone held no smugness, and the insinuation that everyone should own their own plethora of reading material was almost imperceptible, Tan caught it. She couldn't have missed it - she'd been to enough soirees with her parents over the years to pick up when someone was referring, however unconciously, to wealth large or small. Despite noting this, Tanith didn't hold the comment against Callum in her briefly summated estimations of the Ravenclaw. Books seemed a tame and sensible thing to buy lots of after all, and was easy to swallow when one was used to boasting about houses in Nice and diamond necklaces. "I tend to keep my books in my trunk" She offered by way of response with a shrug, mildly surprised at herself again for keeping the conversation moving however small the gesture. "That way I don't run the risk of breaking my back."

Well, there was that, but the less sensible response was that she had a hidden weakness for the library books. Yes it was nice to have her own copies at home and at school for nightly and weekend reading, but there was something indescribably pleasant about the smell of the yellowing pages of Hogwarts library books that made her feel somehow content. However contenting the smell was though, she had made sure today to take only a few copies out, so her schoolbag was not quite as backbreaking as McCoy's.

At his question about the Common Room, Tanith shrugged somewhat evasively. "S'alright in there. It gets busy in the evenings, and it's a bit dark to get a lot done, being under the Lake and whatnot." Again there were other reasons, although this was close to the truth. As well as that though, she had reservations about doing homework so often in the Slytherin Common Room, perhaps a little paranoid about being teased, or worse, an overzealous first year knocking ink all over her work. She nodded along rather emphatically to the Ravenclaw's comment about how unbearably noisy the library can get. "I think Pince is going deaf. Or senile" She carefully chose not to go on about the state of the noisy library too much, worried about looking like a geek, although from what she could surmise from their conversation so far Callum was perhaps equally devoted to his studies. Ravenclaws tended to be moreso after all. Quite rightly she thought. It was a school after all, not a playground or a place to meet prospective spouses.

She was still thinking this over to herself at McCoy's question, and, bemused for a moment, Tanith blinked. She was sure he'd just offered to help her with her homework, and wasn't sure whether to be pleased - this was perhaps a friendly gesture, she often saw people doing work together on the lawns when the weather was nice - or insulted, because perhaps it meant that he thought she was some sort of wandering idiot who couldn't do it by herself. As it was, her wary nature overruled and she seemed firstly to think it was the latter. "I don't need help" She replied, involuntarily sharply. Then, realising how impolite it sounded, she felt her face grow slightly pink and prickly in spite of herself. "I mean -" Tan corrected "It's a Transfiguration essay and I'm usually .. alright at that. But I wouldn't mind studying alongside you" She nodded, hoping this was a satisfactory answer. She was used to working alone, and was quite happy with that set up, but McCoy's offer was surprisingly.. nice, and had caught her off guard.