Feeling good ((Ivy))

[laurap]

Laura smiled as she jogged towards the Hufflepuff common room. The weather outside was fairly pleasant so Laura had went jogging. Now she was moving back to the common room, eating an apple. She had stumbled, fell and ripped the knee of her jeans, but for some reason Laura was still happy. Besides the knee she had scraped didn’t hurt.
Singing quietly Laura told the password and climbed into the common room. She had had a fun day outside and now she could perhaps curl up with a good book. Moving up towards her dormitory, Laura pulled her wand out. The jeans wouldn’t be repaired anyway, so she could cut the short. Pulling out her wand Laura muttered a charm and watched with a grin as her jeans shorted and the pieces of clothes that weren’t necessary anymore disappeared.

Laura decided that it was better and entered the dormitory to find a good book perhaps and to leave her wind-blouse in it. She had had it along with her just in case. Laura looked up to see Ivy already in the room, so she smiled at the other…friend? Laura wasn’t really sure if she could call Ivy a friend. At the very least she was a very good acquaintance.
“Yellow, Ivy,” Laura greeted, moving to her bed, and dropping her jacket onto it. She had never been famous for being very tidy, but she usually managed without others in the dormitory yelling at her, “How are you doing, today?”
Noticing that the wind had made a mess out of her hair, Laura stepped in front of the mirror and started unbraiding her hair, to brush it again while looking at Ivy via the mirror.

[Ivy Tunstall]

The late afternoon of a glorious summer's day was starting to give way to an equally sunny evening. Ivy was inside, her legs stretched out on the luxuriously long bed of the third year Hufflepuff girls' dormitory. On days such as this, it seemed wrong to still be at school. She would have rather been there to help in her neighbourhood, help look after the children on the community outing. But then again, her bed at home wasn't this long, and neither was her room this big. And most importantly, she didn't have such good friends there. Nokomis namely. Nokomis was a very important friend. This summer would be different anyway. Her father wouldn't be there for her. She didn't know what she was going to do. Ivy sighed as she put the blue flower she had been embroidering to one side on her bedside table and swung her legs round so that she was sitting upright on her bed.

At this point Laura entered the room. She looked as though she had been doing some gentle exercise, her hair slightly dishevelled, and was wearing some jean shorts Ivy didn't think she'd been wearing earlier on in the day. Ivy smiled at the fellow third year as she was greeted. "Hey," she replied, standing up as she did so to look over at her amicable dormmate. "Today... well I suppose it's been a bit quiet and uneventful. Had a chance to think of home. Which isn't always a good idea. I need more things to do." Ivy smiled at Laura's back. "Quidditch has been keeping me going but now I don't have so much work to do I actually have some free time on my hands." Ivy rummaged in her trunk to bring out another shade of thread and, picking the embroidery back up, commenced to sew again.

[laurap]

Laura had to agree with Ivy. With the exams and tests and tons of homework – it didn’t leave anyone much free time. And they had quidditch practice on top of everything else, which didn’t help lighten their daily schedules. Even when quidditch was more fun than a duty like homework was.
“I know what you mean,” Laura agreed with a smile picking up her brush and starting to comb her hair. Pulling through her hair to get the tangles out impatiently, Laura started to braid her head once again with practiced ease. She almost never wore her hair loose. Finishing the braid Laura turned and picked up her cat from her bed. “Had a nice nap, Nofretete?” Laura murmured to the cat petting it as she walked towards Ivy’s bed.

“I don’t want to be pushy or anything, but why is thinking of home a bad thing? You don’t have to tell me anything, if you don’t want to, but I would be willing to listen,” Laura smiled to Ivy calmly. She herself was rather shy and it had helped in making her a good listener.
“Oh, you are embroiding!” Laura gasped with surprise, trying to get a better view. She herself had never been able to do any handicraft herself, “It looks very pretty. Are you doing it for some special reason? Oh, that reminds me – are you coming over to paint in professor Hardy’s classroom?”

[Ivy Tunstall]

Ivy nodded as Laura showed recognition of her own sentiment and moved her legs so they dangled over the bed to make room for her dormmate to sit since she was heading in this direction, cat and all. She smiled at Laura and patted the space next to her to indicate she was welcome to sit down, before pushing the needle with the luxurious purple-blue embroidery cotton on it through and checking the eye to make sure nothing was getting twisted. She smiled happily up at her friend's unhidden surprise at the embroidery and turned the flower to let Laura see, eager to show her work to someone that seemed interesting in what she was working on.

"Yeah," she said as she withdrew the piece of work and checked the embroidery circle to make sure it was still secure and tight before recommencing work on adding colour to the white fabric, "well I'm blocking everything in here with this colour, you see, and then I've two more shades of blue to go before I can start work on the stems and leaves. It's already quite pretty on this side even though I've got a way to go to finish it, but look here" - Ivy turned the embroidery over so Laura could see the underside, which had a regular pattern save for a few places where she had knotted off threads that she'd allowed to get too short to finish off well - "I mean I do try to keep things neat but it nevers looks as good as the front." Ivy smiled once again at Laura before turning the piece of work over yet again and carrying on with her sewing. "Not my design, of course," she added, "I can't draw, though you can draw of course. I wish I could but this is just my form of a colouring book. Someone else draws the picture and tells me what colours to use, I do as I'm told and make it look pretty." Ivy shifted on her bed as she nodded again absentmindedly at her statement. "This one isn't for anything actually, I'll probably just frame it and put it up somwhere." Ivy looked around her bed, at the wall behind it which was already adorned with a good few of her creations. "I do a lot of embroidery, I suppose because I like to have something for my hands to be doing, and it's just a hobby and something I can do. I can make Christmas cards and bookmarks and needle holders and all sorts of things."

Ivy blushed and clammed up immediately she realised how much she'd just said. She frowned and looked at Laura awkwardly. "I'm sorry," she said, "I hadn't realised, I must have been boring you. You asked about my home, didn't you?" Ivy regarded Laura worriedly as she contemplated what to say. Did Laura not know...? Ivy liked her fellow Hufflepuff third year but she didn't much want to go into it right now. "Don't you...?" she started disjointedly and then stopped. "Well, home's a bit lonely, and thinking of it brings regrets so it's usually best if I don't." Ivy smiled resignedly at Laura before brightening up to ask, "Professor Hardy's classroom? What's that? Isn't she the duelling professor? Oh, yes, the one who wants her classroom repainting." Ivy smiled at Laura. "Well I'll come if you're going," she said with a shrug. "I reckon I can paint as long as I don't have to draw anything."