Mad World Mods (madworldmods) wrote in madworldrp, @ 2007-08-21 15:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | gideon prewett, heliotrope willis |
RP Log: Gideon and Heliotrope
LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY howitworks)
Who: Gideon Prewett and Heliotrope Willis
Where: Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour
When: Early Afternoon Monday, August 20, 1976.
What: Gideon helps Heliotrope with a colour charm for her journal.
Rating: PG cause I hate G?
After settling her large shopping bag on the extra chair at the table, Heliotrope pulled her journal out of her purse and set it on the table next to her little bowl of ice cream. She took another bite of her single scoop of mint chocolate chip before smiling gratefully at Gideon again.
"I really can't tell you how much I appreciate your helping me," she said and patted her journal affectionately. Its cover looked like it had been attacked by dueling painters who couldn't decide if it should be red, orange, brown or black. Heliotrope actually felt her cheeks go a little warm. She lowered her voice then. "I'd be really embarrassed to show up at school with my journal looking like this. And that awful Mulciber called me a ...foul name over the journals. It was probably foolish for me to think everyone would be civil in writing."
"Some people will never be civil," Gideon said conversationally. "Regardless of the medium." He smiled, though, shaking his head.
"And it's nothing. Really. I like charms," he assured her. "I've been tinkering with mine. Nothing major, of course, but things like colour and size. So what colour did you want your journal to be," he asked, looking down at it and its many colours. "If you were going for a Halloween theme, it's very festive." He smiled again to show he meant no harm in his comment. He really did think it looked fitting for Halloween.
Heliotrope grinned. The journal really was ready for All Hallows Eve. "I was going for a nice Gryffindor red, actually. I got a little over excited when I started to get the hang of it and then it started going orange in spots," she explained. She took another bite of ice cream and savoured the cool mint. She only really ever had ice cream when she visited Diagon Alley, so it was special. Then she got her wand out of her purse just in case Gideon wanted her to give the colour change another try. "I was thinking maybe I didn't have the right gesture for the spell."
Gideon nodded as he listened, licking his lips a little in thought. "It's possible. How about you show me more or less what you did and try to change the colour now, and we'll go from there," he suggested. He wouldn't be able to help her if he didn't know what she might have been doing wrong, after all. Plus, he wasn't going to just do it for her. She wouldn't learn anything that way. Help her, yes, but not do it for her.
Heliotrope nodded and took a deep breath. She didn't bother to look around and see if anyone was watching her, because that would only make her more nervous than she already was. Unlocking doors she could handle. A drying spell was okay too. She could even manage sticking charms and light cleaning charms. So a colour change charm couldn't daunt her forever! With a lot of forced control she used the swish and flick technique while saying the charm clearly. She was pleased that a few of the brown spots on the journal turned orange, but obviously she still had work to do.
"My mum used to tell me I should articulate as clearly as possible, but I feel like I am," Heliotrope said. She gave Gideon a sheepish smile. It wasn't as though he didn't know how much trouble she had mastering spells. At least she didn't feel embarrassed at her friend knowing how inept she was. He wasn't some stuck up prat after all!
He closed his eyes a moment, bringing his fingers to his lips in thought. He replayed the spell and her movements a few times before looking at her again. "What about your intent?" he asked. "Articulating the words is great and important, but so is intent. Sometimes it's more important. It also helps if you relax. Let it just... flow instead of trying to force it. If you think too much on getting it right it can mess it up. Am I making sense?"
"But I really want it to work!" Heliotrope said, not exactly protesting but trying to explain again. She had the intent! Didn't she? She pursed her lips. Maybe she was just over thinking this. "Okay, I think I understand... I can be over thinking this and forcing it without really letting my intent come through."
She took a bite of ice cream, using her left hand to hold the spoon and nearly dribbling it down her front. She licked her lips and wiped her mouth with a napkin. "Alright... I can relax," Heliotrope said, though she was trying to convince herself more than Gideon. Then she looked at her friend with slightly wide eyes. "...How can I relax when I'm worried that nothing's going to happen?"
Gideon have a little shrug. "Just trust yourself and trust that it'll happen. But it might help if your wand work were better," he said, grinning. He pushed his chair back, got up, and walked around behind her. He then bent down and covered her right hand with his.
"Like this," he instructed, moving her hand and wand through a short series of movements. "See the difference in movement?"
"Ooh! Wow, that's really different from what I've been doing," Heliotrope said. It was like a light had finally come on in her brain over the Charms section. She had to use her whole arm, but not just pivot from the shoulder like she'd done in first and second year. But she would also have to be careful not to lock her elbow or forget to move her wrist. Suddenly she felt self conscious of her lack of coordination, but she felt like she had the general idea. "Okay, I think I can try it this way."
"All right," he said, straightening up. He moved to the side and motioned to the journal. "Care to give it another try then?" He suddenly felt like he might be putting her on the spot so he quickly sat back down again. The last thing Gideon wanted was to make her nervous after all. Plus, that would just make it all worse so far as experience told him.
"Alright..." Heliotrope tried to relax her arm. She made a few practice movements with her wand again, trying to get as close as she could to replicating what Gideon had just shown her. Red she thought. She tried to see the cover a bright crimson in her mind's eye before she finally cast the spell on her journal again. This time the cover started to slowly become a nice cherry red from the spot she'd pointed her wand.
Heliotrope sucked in a sharp breath, excited that it was working! She'd done it right! But then the magic stopped abruptly, leaving an uneven circle of red no bigger than a galleon on the journal's front cover. "Well damn," she said matter-of-factly and exhaled the breath she'd been holding. She looked up at Gideon and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, a small smile forming on her lips. "It's better than sparks!"
Gideon applauded her efforts and smiled. "That's good! I think you just need to keep your focus to get the entire book red," he said encouragingly.
"I wouldn't care if it was just polka dotted, so long as I did it myself!" Heliotrope said, trying to be pragmatic about things. She beamed at her friend and took another bite of her ice cream, which was melting a little faster than she'd wanted it to. "I'm going to have to do a lot of practice with that technique to make sure I can do it every single time. I think it might help my other charms too. I have this theory that my journal won't grow a personality until it's properly personalised. I've tried giving it a name, but even calling it Gunther hasn't seemed to make it act like more than a journal."
Gideon laughed a bit, shaking his head. "Everyone and their journals with personality. Honestly, I think I'd be just fine if my journal showed no signs of a personality. I'd much rather it do nothing than be as... aggressive as some seem to be." And it was true. He had far too much to worry about than whether or not his journal would be attacking his face in his sleep. "But good luck with that! And it very well might not develop a personality until its personalised. The theory makes sense," he said, nodding.
"I'm not keen on it becoming aggressive either, but it would be nice if it would purr for me. I think it'd actually pick up some of the troll phrases I've been trying to teach it! I've mostly just been trying the word for 'now' so that it can tell me when it wants to be written in," Heliotrope said. She then made a low sharp grunt and looked at Gideon expectantly. "That's not too different from a purr, don't you think?"
He pursed his lips, thinking on the question a moment. "I think so, yes," he said after a moment. "Maybe not a kitten's purr. Possibly a larger cat's purr. Like a tiger. I think they purr." He paused a moment before nodding.
Heliotrope grinned and nodded along with her friend. She then gestured at her journal again. "So is the charm for making things private as complicated as all that?" she asked. She took the time to actually take more than one bite of the hill of ice cream that hadn't yet turned to mint chocolate soup.
"From what I can tell, the journal does it for you. You just have to inform it that the entry is private, but I'm not entirely sure how. Possibly with the intent that what you're writing is meant only for yourself or for a group of people or something," he said. He hadn't exactly tried it out, but that it could do such things he had figured out. It helped that he'd seen certain parts of entries that didn't get replies from others, which he took as charmed from the majority.
"That sounds like it's going to be tough to get the hang of," Heliotrope frowned a little as she thought about how exactly she'd practice. Obviously not with anything truly private. She stirred the melted remains of her ice cream around in its bowl and gave her journal a furtive glance. But she couldn't really feel down about that. It was a minor inconvenience in the scheme of things and she seriously doubted she'd have any club-only business to discuss with the other members of Students for Troll Rights that she couldn't save for meetings. She smiled at Gideon again. "Did you want to do anything else besides help me with charms and watch me eat ice cream?"
Gideon blinked, looking down a moment. "Well, I didn't really have anything planned, and I already had ice cream before you arrived... If you're free, though, and you wanted, we could always walk around Muggle London and see what's going on in the city," he said.
"I don't feel so bad for eating in front of you then," Heliotrope said. She really did feel a little relieved. She put her journal and wand back in her purse and thought about a trek through Muggle London. She felt like she ought to try to visit Meghan before she went back home, and her mum and dad wouldn't exactly approve of her straying too far from Diagon Alley. But her curiosity was piqued. "That could be fun!"
"All right," Gideon said with a grin. "We can go whenever you're finished with your ice cream." He didn't know what they could do in Muggle London, but an excursion there couldn't hurt. Besides, it was a nice enough day, and it wasn't like they couldn't leave whenever they wanted if it got boring or something. Really, he thought the day was turning out to be a good one, and the week was starting off good as well.
Heliotrope nodded in agreement and drank the rest of the melted ice cream from the little bowl. She wiped her mouth on her napkin and got up to throw away her garbage in the nearby garbage can. When she
stepped back over to the table she grabbed her shopping bag. "Ready when you are," she said with a smile.
Gideon got to his feet again, smiling back. "Ready," he said. He then held the door open for before following her out into the street. Together they headed to the Leaky Cauldron and out into Muggle London.