AN:/ This is a fluffy one shot with heavy potential to continue if there's interest! Perspective shifts with each paragraph section.
Paper Ships
Streams of sunlight broke through the clouds of dust, onto the back table of the quiet library. Books were littered all across, some even spilling to the seats surrounding from lack of space.
The quiet scratching of quills, turning of pages and tired yawns filled the stuffy air. As well as tepid cursing.
"Sodding useless, the lot of you." Rose Ashwood glowered into her book. Irritated, she cast it across the table and reached for the next in her queue.
"Ow!"
Rose blinked, and peered around her piles of book curiously. That was odd. Books didn't usually make remarks of protest (other than that one insomnia fueled night during OWLs back in Fifth-year). She shuddered at the thought.
Deciding that nobody had actually spoke, Rose stretched tiredly in her seat and resumed reading.
After a few minutes, she was lulled into the trance of relaxed reading and sighed contently.
"Are you going to apologize, or not?"
Blinking in surprise, Rose peered over her textbook and met the gaze of a rather irritated bespectacled girl who was sitting on the far end of the long table.
"Sorry?" Rose said slowly, raising a brow in confusion.
The girl huffed and tossed the heavy book that Rose had chucked back across the messy table.
"You hit me with your bloody book." She scowled, pushing her thick frames back up her speckled nose in a huff.
Rose frowned, eyeing the large book, before returning her gaze to the girl in disbelief.
"Well. Why didn't you say anything then?"
The girl raised her brows. "I did. I said ow."
Rose paused.
"Right." She said slowly, and dropped her eyes back to the text before her, getting comfortable in her seat and plainly ignoring the girl's irritated sighs.
After the third sigh of annoyance broke Rose from her focus, she calmly lowered her book and looked across the table.
Instinctively, she raked her eyes over the girl's appearance. Slytherin, surprisingly. The girl seemed incredibly soft spoken - a hell of a lot more than Rose anyway - and could have easily been pegged for a fellow Hufflepuff.
Eyes flickering up from her robes, she scanned the girl's face and decided she was familiar. Seventh-year maybe. The Slytherin girl had wide-framed lenses that only added to her quiet appearance, placed before startling aquamarine eyes and thick, dark lashes.
The girl sniffed and turned a page, and Rose's eyes swept up to her dark ebony hair. It was laced delicately in two endlessly long braids, wound so tight that Rose had to wonder if they were even comfortable.
Rose snickered inwardly to herself. She knew a tight ass when she saw one, and this girl looked to be the primest of examples.
"Do you mind not gawping at me, it's rather distracting." The girl said loudly, without looking up from her book.
Rose just smirked into own and said nothing as she pondered the intriguing girl before her.
An idea popped into her head, so she quickly scrawled a lazy note. Rose crumpled it up, tossed it in the air and feigned a look of innocence as it went soaring through the air.
xXx
The crumbled paper landed cleanly in her lap. Frowning in confusion, Jane plucked it up and hastened to unfold it.
A scratchy, nearly indistinguishable scrawl could be read and said,
I like your braids.
Brows furrowed, she looked all around her before catching the eye of the smirking Hufflepuff across the long table, who nodded to her.
Heavily frowning now, Jane adjusted her frames from force of habit and tentatively spoke.
"Thanks?"
The tanned girl tilted her head with a soft smile, and returned her gaze to her heavy book, propping it up slightly and sinking down into her seat.
Well, that was peculiar.
Why was this random Hufflepuff sending notes to her? Jane was sure she'd seen her before, but they didn't really know each other. She didn't even know her name!
With a pang of guilt, she realized that maybe that was the point in the innocent little note.
Jane cast an unseen glance to the other girl, who was now frowning lightly into her book, head propped on her hand.
The girl had short, choppy brown hair that tapered off to one side. It was rather spikey and untidy, giving her a distinct bad-girl impression. Jane's eyes flickered to the only other feature within view: her hands, that were tightly clutching her book. Jane noted the trimmed, bare nails and yellowed nicotine stain on her index finger.
A left-handed smoker, she decided.
The girl's sharp honey eyes were still frowning as they gazed intently into the pages before her - oblivious to Jane's scrutiny.
Deciding that the Hufflepuff now looked rather put out, Jane grabbed a strip of parchment and set out to write a small note in return.
Waiting for Madame Pince to hurry past with a toppling tower of textbooks, Jane cast a quick conspicuous look around her before quietly muttering a charm under her breath and setting the paper afloat.
A small ship, crashing through invisible waves soared across the length of the table and anchored to a halt just before the other girl's downcast gaze.
Her honey eyes snapped up to the paper model, then tipping her book back, peered at the cover. Parroting Pirates. She grinned widely, snatching the note and eagerly opening it - after sending an apologetic smile to Jane for having to desecrate such beautiful magic.
Jane grinned back, albeit a little shyly and watched as the girl unfolded the note and laughed.
xXx
Ahoy.
That was it. One word.
Rose chuckled, deciding she may have misjudged the Slytherin girl. Propping up her large book as a sort of shield, she hastened to work - determined to outshine the girl's spectacular work and send her something even better.
It took a little longer than she cared to admit, but Rose was rather pleased with herself in the end, as she cast the finishing charms to her own, and rather large, note.
Rose lowered her book and allowed the small badger to leap over it as it lumbered across the table, pausing to sniff a few textbooks on it's short journey to the Slytherin girl.
The girl looked up from her text in surprise, smiling softly as the paper badger trotted dutifully towards her, bearing a note in it's mouth.
Rose grinned, remembering what she had written.
Woof? I'm terribly sorry, but I have no idea what a badger actually sounds like. I hear they're a bloody menace though. And much more frightening than snakes.
The Slytherin girl giggled as she read, the sound carrying harmoniously over to Rose who found herself laughing along with her.
xXx
Hastily, Jane propped up her own book and began to create her own responding papered creature.
The Hufflepuff had sent her a badger, so it seemed only fitting to send her own house mascot in reply.
Grinning, Jane tapped the snake with her wand and watched it slither away across the table with a note which read:
Hiss. A snake would definitely win over a badger any day - who, by the way, make all sorts of (probably) un-translatable noises (one of which is also a hiss).
The Hufflepuff grinned, writing a hasty reply and raising a challenging brow to Jane as the note came soaring into her hands.
Wanna bet?
xXx
The two girls giggled quietly as their paper animals circled each other - now more or less just resembling ragged scraps of paper, after a rather savage battle.
The badger lunged, pinning the shredded snake against the table, who in turn took a large papery bite out of the badgers neck and ripped it clean in two.
"That's not fair, I was winning!" Rose cried in protest.
Giggling at her victorious wreckage, the Slytherin girl grinned proudly and poked the now still badger.
"Told you the snake would win."
Rose pouted for all of two seconds, then sat up brightly.
"Rematch?"
xXx
Twenty minutes later, the girls had erected new paper creatures and thus, were preparing for battle.
"Badger is definitely going to win this time. I can feel it."
Jane scoffed, casting a few extra charms on her life-sized paper cobra. "Nope. Snake will hold the champion title down for sure."
The Hufflepuff grumbled. "Not my bloody fault I'm terrible at Transfiguration. In fact, I think I should get bonus points for pulling this off at all."
Snickering, Jane replied, "Shouldn't I get the bonus points for being good with Transfiguration, then? It's not my fault you made such a scrawny badger!"
The other girl cracked her knuckles and narrowed her sharp eyes in preparation.
"I'm going to kick your scaly arse, just you wait."
Jane grinned. "You're on."
They carried on with their ridiculous activity, shrieking as they wielded their paper creations in a fierce battle to the death.
xXx
"That's cheating! A snake wouldn't actually punch a badger, you cow! I don't even know how the hell you managed that, by the way."
Pausing from a long, peaceful afternoon of re-shelving books, Madam Pince stilled and strained her sharp ears when a loud voice suddenly wafted through the silence.
"It's only fair! A badger wouldn't very well trap a snake in a headlock either, now would it?"
Furiously stalking down the aisle, Madam Pince jutted her beaky nose all around the library and quickly found the source of the noise. Though she was most outraged by what she saw.
"Avery! Ashwood! What on earth do you think you're doing?" She shrieked as she took in the sight of the shredded paper littered all across the table.
"This is library, a quiet sanctuary for peaceful learning, not a place for inappropriate tomfoolery!"
Looking abashed, Jane looked downcast and mumbled an apology.
"Hmph!" Madam Pince fixed her beady eyes upon Rose, who looked extremely un-apologetic and had the nerve to smirk. "Well, Ashwood? What do you have to say for this blatant disrespect of my library? Hmm?"
Rose shrugged, looking quite smug. "Badgers are better than snakes?"
Fuming, Madam Pince pointed a shaking finger at the girl and screeched, "You will clean this up right now and then kindly GET OUT OF MY LIBRARY!"
Whirling around, the seething librarian stalked back to her post and resumed her quiet, calming work in peace.
xXx
Rose smirked, and watched the woman walk away before flicking the paper wreckage away with her wand. The Slytherin girl grinned sheepishly and followed as they strode through the quiet room.
"Best get the hell out of here before Pince has a bloody conniption fit." Rose muttered as they made it to the library's exit, then turned to face her new friend with a large grin. "I'm Rose, by the way. Rose Ashwood."
The Slytherin girl smiled widely, two deep dimples appearing amongst the light dusting of freckles on her cheeks. She held out her hand to Rose.
"Jane Avery."
xXx
Rose smirked as she shook her hand slowly.
"Pleased to meet you, Jane Avery. We'll have to do this again some time." She said with a lopsided grin, before striding away - presumably in the direction of the Hufflepuff common-room.
Jane listened to the echoing foot steps as Rose disappeared down the corridor, then blinked down into her hand and grinned impossibly wide.
Clutched in her palms, was a tiny badger looking ridiculous with a winding snake for a scarf - as they steered the small paper ship together. Upon a second glance, Jane spotted a separate note.
I like your laugh.
Grinning at the note and creation, she laughed loudly, turning it over fondly in her hands as she inspected the beautiful work of magic.
Jane looked up and down the hall and quickly spotted Rose's head poking round the corner.
Rose seemed to have been waiting for that very reaction, because she grinned impishly at Jane, before turning heel and leaving her own echoing laugh in her wake.
Jane looked fondly at her paper ship and it's crew mates, before turning down the corridor and walking quietly back to the dungeons, all smiles and dimples.
xXx
Unbeknownst to the pair of them, the girls had an exceedingly common trait with their papered creations.
Because much like a paper ship, they were doomed to fail before even setting sail;
and try as they might, they were destined to sink.
AN:/ I hope you enjoyed it, and I'd really, genuinely love to hear your opinions, likes, dislikes, all of it.
Reviews make me ecstatic! Seriously, I get stupid and dopey and it makes my entire day!