Salisbury Plain ((Gavin))

[Melody Bang-Bala G6]

Maybe the reason some wizards regarded Muggleborns as inferior was because of Stonehenge, Melody mused as she waited in the rapidly swelling queue. Take a place of great magical mystery and power, so old its origins were blurred even in wizarding memory, let Muggles see it and feel the power for themselves, and what do they do? First of all they ransack it and cover the ancient stones in graffiti. Then they install ticket barriers and a rope round the circumference, the plains are swallowed up by concrete and coach after coach spits out tourists to view the stones in communal cacophony through their camera screens.

Melody was here at Stonehenge to do her History of Magic summer work. She'd managed to stay awake through Professor Binns' drone to hear what it was, and being a diligent student was one thing she could still take pride in. So here she was, on a fact finding mission. Write forty inches about an ancient site that holds an important place in wizarding history. She could do that. She might even have fun doing it, if she cheered up a bit.

Melody wasn't particularly welcome at home anymore - her family just couldn't understand that magic could alter your memories, so as far as they were concerned a confession meant guilt, even if Melody had come home with a piece of parchment that said she was exonerated. So she had taken off for the summer, with her bike, her broom and a Muggle tent, travelling round the country as she pleased. It was actually quite fun - there was a feeling of freedom, light-heartedness and anonymity to the whole thing. The broom was currently disguised as a bike pump - she could do magic outside school now she was 17 - but she had to renew the charm at the end of each day, and the pump did tend to become a bit bristly if she left it for too long.

She'd got here nice and early to try to catch the site when it was quiet, but in the summer months that was bound to be pretty futile. The family ahead shuffled through the turnstile and it was Melody's turn to negotiate with the surly woman in the ticket box. Not much further and she was through, past the ice cream sellers, past the people handing out Babel fish audio guides, and onto the gravel path motorway around the stones.

As soon as she found what she was looking for - a patch of springy, dry turf set back away from the main rope, not in anyone's way - Melody sat down cross-legged and took out her sketchpad (a Muggle one, of course, to blend in) and a pencil. Professor Binns might not be the greatest admirer of aesthetics, but she had all day and it would be helpful to put some diagrams and sketches in. She would just choose the best ones to copy onto parchment. Minutes passed, hours, and the sketchbook filled up with grey images.

She was just sketching a scene of giants fighting amongst the rocks against a dark grey setting sun when she realised someone going past had just taken a good look at her face, rather than just a curious glance at the sketchbook. She'd been ignoring anyone staring at the sketchbook (some tourists had even taken a picture), but someone looking straight at her instead had spooked her. She liked to think she could hide in plain sight in the Muggle world, where her face hadn't been splattered over the pages of the Daily Prophet with derogatory captions attached. No one should be giving her a second glance here.

Melody stood up quickly (ow, the pins and needles!) and strode after the person who she thought had looked at her as if he recognised her. It was a teenage boy, and she realised that she recognised him. A Hufflepuff, Gavin Armstrong: in her year and classes, not one of her tormentors. But he might be here with a friend who was. Realising that, now she'd followed him, Gavin had seen her again and recognised her, Melody reluctantly concluded that she couldn't now pretend she hadn't seen him. So she greeted him instead, hesitantly.

"Hello," she said awkwardly. "Are thoo with a group of yous?" It was an anxious question. A group of wizards or witches was exactly what she didn't need right now.

[Gavin Armstrong H6]

“It’s fine, if you’re too busy I can just go myself. I’m just not comfortable leaving my homework to the last week of summer. I will go again with you then though, and if we make any good observations I will add them into my essay. Have a great weekend.” Gavin wrote the note to his school friend Sita ((hehehe)) who would not be joining him that day on a trip to Stonehenge like he wanted her to. Gavin really didn’t want to go alone, but he needed to get it done for History of Magic extra credit and couldn’t really count on any of his friends to go for sure. A lot of them said they planned on going but planning and actually going were two very different things. “Looks like it’s just me, Alexander” Gavin said to his pet turtle as he attached the note onto the borrowed owl and set her loose out the window. He really did need to get an owl of his own but Hogwarts only allowed one pet and Gavin had never left Alexander home without him. For now he would just have to continue to use his friends owls through the summer and school owls through the year and when he graduated he would be free to have as many pets as his heart desired.

Minutes later Gavin was aboard the tube which would take him to the train station and the trip would ultimately end at Salisbury Plain about noon. Gavin stepped off the bus with all the other tourists and munched happily on the lunch he had packed as he inspected the stones, trying to think what on Earth he could write about. Sure there were your typical historical events he had read about in his book, but that wasn’t what he was observing today which was the assignment. Maybe that right there is a scratch left over by Ulgar the Ugly? Or maybe it was just where some muggle had scraped their diamond ring... As he mused Gavin found himself people watching the crowd to see how they reacted to the historical sight, which they all simply found bemusing. That notch right there was certainly from Belthazar the Blasted when he was trying to tackle Garth the Unbearded to the ground and the muggles were all trying to fit their heads into it for photographs.

As he walked by Gavin noticed someone really familiar but he couldn’t figure out why. She was sitting there sketching but as Gavin walked by, trying to figure out if he knew her she started and he quickly walked away so she wouldn’t think he was spying. “Great job Gavin, make poor strangers think you’re staring at them why don’t you” he thought to himself as he inspected the stones again. Obviously she wasn’t a stranger though seeing as she followed him over, looking at him too and suddenly it clicked she was in his classes, though she hadn’t always been, it was Melody Bang-Bala. He hadn’t quite recognized her outside the magical world where people from school were expected to pop up here and there. She approached him in a friendly manner and he smiled at her, though a little uncomfortable having not recognized her until she had obviously known him. “Hey, nah it’s just me. My friends bailed, they don’t want to come until the last possible second and I just can’t write that fast, you know? I don’t work well under pressure. Are you on your own too? It’s pretty well muggle central here today, eh?” He responded as cheerily as he could, trying not to let his frustration with his friends creep into his voice. ((There I tried to give her lots in his reaction to be emo about while still keeping it true to his good nature ))

[Melody Bang-Bala G6]

Melody visibly relaxed when Gavin said that he was by himself. His friend Sita Mehadi had a nasty glare and Melody had been on the receiving end of it a number of times. Being known as a bad person was a sure way to get on the wrong side of most Hufflepuffs, so it would have been an uncomfortable experience if all of Gavin's friends were here.
"Aye, Ah'm on me own," Melody confirmed. "To tell t'truth, I prefer it when it's Muggle central. Ah'm recognised too much to get any peace or quiet walking down Diagon Alley." She paused awkwardly as she realised that what she had said could come across as rude, implying she resented Gavin being there. Which she might have done, but he'd been nothing but nice so far so she was willing to reconsider. "But Ah dunnot mean thoo," she blurted. "Thoo's not spat in me face or anything."

"Are thoo here to do t'History essay as well then?" Melody asked, careful not to use the word 'magic' in her conversation when there were so many Muggles to overhear. "There's so many places we could choose from, but Ah thought it'd be easier to find enough information on Stonehenge. Forty inches is a lot to fill if thoo're writing aboot summat obscure. Even so's Ah was sketching to try to fill some space!" She clutched her sketchbook to her chest protectively. "Ah'm sorry to babble," she said self-consciously. "Ah've not talked to anyone for a while. Ah'm on a camping trip for t'summer - Ah've gone nomadic!" she explained, smiling to show that she didn't mind. Smiling felt good, actually, so she smiled again more brightly. Gavin had such a friendly face that she felt almost relaxed and easy talking to him.

“What are thoo going to write about, then?” Melody asked. “Ah promise not to copy! Ah'm going to write mostly about t'giant battles, but with summat about how we used to use it for Astronomy as well. Can thoo imagine havin' our Astronomy lessons here?” Melody chuckled. “Ah dunnot think Professor Sinistra would like it much. It must be quite spooky in the dark.”

((Sorry it's mostly talking - out of practice and short on time!))

[Gavin Armstrong H6]

Gavin was aghast when Melody said he never spit in her face, who would ever spit in anybody’s face? How was that even a possibility that ran through her head? And how is he seen as a “decent person” just for not doing it, she certainly wasn’t setting the bar terribly high to be sure. When he realised he was making a face at her he tried to relax it a bit, how could he explain to her that spitting is just not something he would ever do? Especially when it wouldn’t change what was clearly going on in her life, and it sounded awful at that. Of course Gavin knew things had been awful for her, not living under a rock he was sure to hear things here or there about her; but he never paid it too much heed seeing as the source was never directly involved in the gossip. Well, he didn’t really live under a rock, but he sort of did, did Hogwarts count as a rock seeing as it was made of stone? In London he didn’t live under a rock but with the Hufflepuff dorms being under the school did it count as him living under a rock? And is that why he could not imagine spitting in this girl’s face?

When Gavin snapped out of his reverie of rocks and spitting he realised Melody had asked whether or not he was doing the essay and was apologizing for babbling. “Are you kidding me?” he asked her, “You have seriously got to be joshing me. I am always apologizing for babbling, people stop to ask me the time and 5 minutes later I have told them the time, the date, and my whole life’s story! I just can’t seem to stop thinking is the problem and the thinking gets my mouth moving and that just leads to a lot of blah blah blah if you know what I mean. Sometimes it gets me into trouble to be honest, talking a lot about what I am thinking before I have fully thought it through because sometimes I say things that I later realise shouldn’t have been said. But sometimes it’s great because people say they appreciate my honesty and straightforward nature even if it takes a lot of words to come out. See, babble. Anyways, I am working on my essay and yes it long but I am sure I can find things to fill it. I do find writing easier than talking to be honest, because like I said I talk and talk until I run out of breath and sometimes the words just don’t come out right, you know? But with writing you can write all the words that will come out of your quill and then you edit it right down and seem way more eloquent than you are in real life. I suppose writing is real life too, right? You know what I mean. Astronomy here would be cool, maybe spooky but if we could just apparate it wouldn’t be so bad but that’s silly because not everyone knows how, including me I don’t turn 17 until this year, and you can’t apparate from inside Hogwarts anyways. I have no clue what I am going to write about to be honest, I was kinda hoping inspiration would strike, so to speak. Anyways, sorry, talking, see what I mean?” Gavin finished off with a sheepish grin and really did take a deep breath. He wasn’t at all kidding about talking until he ran out of breath, and he always spoke so fast his mother called him a “marathon orator”. Well, not always really but anytime he got excited or just didn’t think to stop himself really.

((Totally beat you with all the talking! But that’s just Gavin’s way... and you have seen enough of my videos to know he comes by it honestly lol))

[Melody Bang-Bala G6]

Gavin was making an odd face at her and for an awful moment Melody thought that he'd only just realised who she was and that he was trying to think how he could give her the cold shoulder without making her angry or something. That would be a shame, she was really enjoying talking to him - she couldn't remember when she'd last had such a friendly conversation with someone she didn't know (or really, with anyone she did know). Melody began to look a bit crestfallen at the thought that Gavin was about to make an excuse and hurry off, but then he started talking. And talking, talking, talking.

Melody's eyes widened in wonder and she began to laugh. She tried to stifle it but she couldn't help it, and it came out somewhere between a chuckle and a giggle. She'd never heard anyone spill that many words into a breath. By the time Gavin ran out of breath she was grinning from ear to ear.
"Wow!" she said, after a short stunned silence (only short because she thought he might start again given half a chance, just to fill the silence). "I've never heard anyone talk that much. You must be where the phrase about talking the hind leg off a donkey came from," she said. "Although," she said, wrinkling her nose, "that's a very odd phrase isn't it? It's not as if talking is dangerous. Unless you're a spy or it's World War Two and the person you're talking to might be a German in disguise..."

Melody's dad enjoyed a good World War Two film, with battleships and submarines and all, and that was where this slightly odd comment came from. There were an awful lot of World War Two films - in fact Melody wasn't sure whether anyone had even made any films about anything else until about 1955. But it meant that she was very familiar with the slogan 'Careless talk costs lives'. Melody wondered whether Gavin had any idea what she was talking about - after all, World War Two had been a very Muggle thing. Wizards hadn't bothered intervening, what did it matter to them if one bunch of Muggles killed another? Muggle lives had been held very cheap. And perhaps that hadn't changed to this day. Melody thought wizards were slow to learn from history.

" 'Ave thoo got Muggle family?" Melody asked Gavin, clearing the shadow that had passed over her face as she tried to dispel the gloomy thoughts. "Ah suppose thoo'll think Ah'm a bit odd talking about Germans and World War Two if thoo 'aven't. Anyway, Ah prefer writing too, nowadays. Ah feel a bit exposed when Ah'm talking - Ah didn't used to feel that, mind. See, there Ah go complaining again. Ah'm sorry. Ah'm enjoying talking to thoo, to tell t'truth ," she confessed.

"So what do thoo think the giants built it for?" Melody asked. "We always talk about how vicious they are, we never consider what their culture used to be when they lived without any interference from wizards. Don't thoo wish thoo had an Invisibility Cloak?" Melody asked Gavin, "So's you could get up close to the stones? They're so far away. But thoo can walk over the old 'burial mounds'," Melody said. "Remains of giants' campfires with a few human bones and some buried loot, most of 'em more like," she said. "They 'ad to put all sorts of enchantments on Hengar the Horrid's remains before letting the Muggles have the place though." She grinned at Gavin "History of Magic's quite interesting when you read it in a book, but Ah do find it difficult to concentrate in class..."