Something Missing ((Cleo))

[Hebe Bang-Bala R7]

There were just days when the whole substance of the world seemed to clash with your being. When you weren't sure whether it was you out of joint or just the incomprehensible stupidity of the entirety of life. Everyone else still rushed past, a part of that illogical world. They didn't feel the oddness. Why was it you, here, now, at this point in your life? Why was this what you were living right now? Why weren't you somewhere else? Why were you you? Why did things have to have happened as they did? Why hadn't something else happened? Was there someone who really understood it all? Hebe couldn't understand it, most likely never would understand it either. All you could do was to ignore it.

It felt as though something was missing today. Something vital... well it couldn't be vital since she was still here, but something fundamental to her being able to happily keep her nose to the grindstone. Something missing that would allow her to ignore the fact life didn't make sense. Hebe scowled a little at the world in general around her as she contemplated the chess board she was setting up in front of her. There was nobody else to play with but it was a game of logic and that was what counted at the moment. Each black piece was carefully laid out, almost tenderly placed onto its respective position. Whoever had last played with these pieces had suffered a humiliating defeat. The scratches all over the pieces showed it. And the appropriate surliness of the footsoldiers. The injured but difficult air of the aristocracy. Hebe wouldn't usually play with a set of school pieces, but there was nothing wrong getting them to trust her. With a wave of her wand each one was cleared of their 'battle-wounds' and their surfaces became highly polished so that her eye stared back at her as she inspected them.

These men... and woman, since it wouldn't be a good idea to forget the queen, were in keeping with Hebe's mood today. One of the rooks was missing. Presumably not entirely smashed to pieces but somewhere it had been misplaced. On hands and knees, Hebe searched around the cupboard she'd taken the chess set out of for the missing piece, but it was nowhere to be found. Well. Improvisation then. It wouldn't do to start off at a disadvantage. Even though she didn't have anyone to play against. Hebe rummaged in her bag for a minute and brought out some parchment and her drawing materials. She sketched and lightly shaded the other rook of the chess set from as many angles as she could, embellishing some of its plainer features with detail on her drawings before the piece of charcoal she kept around for drawing was transfigured into a piece of granite. An ordinary pencil turned into a chisel and Hebe was ready to start. Using her drawings as a guide, she started to sculpt a new rook. She'd need to fix this granite as exactly that somehow but for now she was quite happy in her task. It was something to focus on, and that was what she'd needed. She might wear a frown of concentration on her face and look as though she was disapproving of the younger students shrieking over something in another corner of the Lounge, but for once she actually felt satisfied as she could only be when her mind was fully occupied.

[cleo]

Cleo sauntered down the hall way with her lips turned into a full pout. She wasn’t exactly angry… but she was far from being pleased as well! The weather outside was far from pleasant and all her friends were either busy or had seemingly dropped off the surface of earth. And to make the day perfect she had broken a nail in the morning and had been forced to clip all her other nails shorter as well. Cleo had been forced to spend a full hour shaping her nails into an acceptable condition. And then on top of everything else Filch has slammed her in detention for littering the school hallways. In all reality Cleo had merely set off a couple of Filibuster rockets to see how quickly the first years would catch onto the fact that it wasn’t a real dragon in the hallway. Cleo had been forced to scrub the floor of three hallways! Really now, who would be cheerful and on top of happiness after that?

Blowing on her slightly red fingers Cleo noted absent-mindedly that perhaps wearing jewels while washing floors was not the smartest move. But hey, you had to take care of your appearance at all times! And Cleo hadn’t really been given a chance to change her clothes before the detention began. And Cleo wouldn’t spoil the whole point of her outfit by taking of the decorations bringing out it’s beauty, would she? Of course not. Oh well. The jewels – a couple from the few real stones Cleo owned – looked as good as ever so no harm was done. Picking up a tune that had been stuck in her head all through detention Cleo started to hum it even if she didn’t know all the words.
“Wish you were here
Me oh my countryman wish you were here
Wish you were here
something, something, something
And I miss you like hell,
And I'm feeling blue.

I've got feelings for you babe.
Do you still feel the same
From the first time I laid my eyes on you
I felt joy of living
I saw heaven in your eyes, in your eyes

Something, something, something,
something, something
Every second's like a minute, every minute's like a day
When you're far away. Wish you were here
Something, something.
Baby wish you were here,” Cleo sang out as she pulled open the student lounge door and stepped in the clicking sound made by her heels immediately changing as she stepped from the stone hallway to the carpet floor of the lounge. Only to stumble and fall as something small and hard was left under the heel of her left boot. Grabbing hold of the arm of a passing Slytherin Cleo merely growled at him at his annoyed glance feeling silently grateful that the boy didn’t stop to say anything more. Or maybe he had just seen Cleo among Kris. Lately Cleo had discovered that Slyths pulled back a little bit more around her, just like this guy. Even though the fact that he had been younger than Cleo most certainly helped too.

Managing to regain her balance Cleo crouched to find out what had been left in the middle of the floor only to bother innocent by-passers. And found a black chess-piece. A rookie. The question what it was doing before the door was an interesting one on it’s own as it appeared to be one of the pieces from Hogwarts chess-sets. Not that Cleo was a very big fan of chess. “Oh, shove it,” Cleo snapped at the chess-piece who appeared to be glowering at her as she picked the small fellow up. A quick glance over the room showed Cleo Hebe being busy with transfiguring something before a chess-board so Cleo made her way over. “Were you the one to banish this rookie to the door?” Cleo asked dropping the chess-piece she had stepped on onto the board as she glanced closer at what Hebe was doing, “Nice. I never got the point how to deal with rocks and metals and other hard materials in Transfiguration.”

[Hebe Bang-Bala R7]

Hebe didn't notice Cleo's presence until the other Ravenclaw addressed her, at which point, while not raising her head, she did move her gaze upwards so she could see the other girl's face. That didn't work very well since she was sitting down and Cleo was standing up as well as wearing heels, but she didn't give in, nodding in thanks to her dormmate for returning the chess piece before returning to her sculpting. "Thanks," she said shortly; though she wasn't feeling any irritation towards the girl her mannerisms were never particularly graceful. "Ah cannot say Ah was; Ah'd not be part of such sacrilege. It can ruin a chess piece for ever, can subjecting it to abuse such as that. On the other hand, it is a way of teaching them their place if you just cannot win one game. Hurling them across the room is a good way to cow them into submission Ah suppose." Hebe peeked out from behind her rook and reached out for the other one, holding it tightly so it didn't get any ideas.

"Hmm," she murmured discontentedly as she looked at all the scratches on it, not feeling particularly inclined to mend them right at this moment in time. "Not particularly responsible though, Ah must say. Ee well." she sighed, smiling at Cleo momentarily. "Pull up a chair," she suggested, chipping away a small block of granite to reveal a detail and blowing the stone dust off. "Ah've quite a liking fer changing the material of things and the suchlike meself," she added. "The world is far from perfect so's Transfiguration tends to come in useful." Hebe leaned back for a moment, although that wasn't very easy in the upright chair she was sitting in, pondering the sketches she'd made earlier and considering whether she actually wanted to put all of these details in. "So how goes the world for you and your nails?" she asked, glancing at Cleo fully for the first time. She didn't get along too badly with the other girl from her dormitory, and she hadn't meant the question as rudely as it might sound. Cleo was far from being only to do with her nails. She was in Ravenclaw for a reason. "You dunnot exactly radiate contentedness," she suggested as she returned to constructing the replacement rook that was no longer needed anyway.

((Ah'm sorry this is short, uninspired and t'all. Ah just 'ope thoo can do summat wit' it fer now and promise to do me best to 'elp the plot along next time. ))

[cleo]

((Me? Advance the plot! Oh, goody! Oh, wait is there a plot? How can I advance it! I don't know how!))

Cleo received a curt thank you from Hebe. Not perhaps the most polite way, but it was too the point. And this was by far more preferable to long over-blown thank-you speeches. Cleo herself didn’t tend be overly vocal when expressing her thanks either. Why bother? A simple thank you was far more pleasant. The charm of simple things. “Sacrilege?” Cleo commented with a slight smirk over Hebe’s choice of words. She must be very passionate about chess. Well, chess was all about tactics and if you liked tactics, then why not? It wasn’t as if anyone were handed armies to play with. But still Cleo had a feeling that she wouldn’t want to obey Hebe as she observed how the other girl clutched the chess-piece Cleo had brought back. Cleo almost felt a surge to jump to the chess-pieces protection which in itself was already silly. But still Cleo had an inkling feeling that she wouldn’t want Hebe to be her general. She didn’t really leave a very heart-warming feeling to you. Then again who was Cleo to say this? She wasn’t overly friendly or warm either, so was this one of the cases where kettle called the pot black? Most likely.

“If an army doesn’t win, then I would blame the general before the rookies,” Cleo commented with a calm glance towards Hebe as she floated a chair over for herself from a near-by chair, “It’s a two-way deal. In order to win and take care of your own skin you must make sure your soldiers are happy and in top shape. So if you want to win the chess game next time, rather tell your chess-pieces to learn and overcome your mistakes the next time. Loosing a game is an easy obstacle in a chess-game. Loosing a real army would be a disaster that you can’t make up for. Maybe that is why real battle-field generals seem to have gone extinct?” Cleo took a seat on the other side of the table crossing her legs almost defiantly as she tied her fingers and placed her chin on it while leaning her elbows on the edge of the table. Cleo observed the chess-board for a moment. She wasn’t exactly close friends with Hebe. They were hardly friends at all, but that might be because neither of them were easy to approach and neither of them had made an attempt to befriend the other. Something Cleo was willing to over-look so she could get a closer glance. Was Hebe cold or did she just leave that kind of an appearance because she was shy? It might be some sort of a protection barrier for her.

“Transfiguration has it’s uses. Though McGonagall is boring. Practice makes perfect supposedly, but who is perfect? No one,” Cleo commented easily. Transfiguration was her best subject. DADA was too and Cleo had advanced greatly in that subject after starting to hang out with Kris and having received a first hand experience of quite a number of curses and jinxes at the beginning of the year. “But there’s nothing bad to say about Charms either. Even pretty facades can be useful in their own way.” Cleo scowled darkly as Hebe mentioned her radiating irritation and agreed with the statement with a brief nod: “True, I’m not overly happy. Was in a detention with Filch just now and I must admit that washing floors is most definitely not a job for me.” Cleo glanced at her hands and almost absent-mindedly turned her ring a little so the stone on it would be precisely on top of her finger, “And I do have to remake my nails tonight. Or was there a hint in your words that I’m poisoning you all with nail-polish fumes?” Cleo asked with an arched eye-brow glancing at Hebe calmly.