LILY! (thefirefly) wrote in thesocieties, @ 2010-07-05 19:52:00 |
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Lily was disappointed. She’d checked her private journal entry again for the fifteenth time in the last fifteen minutes and still no one had responded. Maybe private-to-self hexes really did work. Or mayyyyybe people didn’t want her to know they could read it because they hoped she’d write down her super top secret plans, and that’s why they weren’t writing back. And actually she kind of did want to use one to write down something really secretive, but she had to be absolutely sure no one, not even Professor Birch, would ever see her secret, even if she lost her journal. So not knowing whether or not privacy wards worked was killing her. Maybe Albus would know. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL Safely ensconced in his own bedroom, Al looked up from the diagram he was sketching and spared a thought for whether he could get away with ignoring Lily. He suspected it would be just as impossible as usual, and there was no use developing a sense of optimism at this moment. He glanced back down at his graph paper and at the pencil lines already smudged across it. Distraction couldn’t hurt. He pushed back from his desk, tipping in his chair, and yelled back, “NOT NOW! I’M BUSY!” He always said something like that. Lily was not going to be deterred. Grabbing her journal, she bounded towards his room. “BUSY DOING WHAT?” she called back. “I hope you’re not NAKED in there because I’m coming in.” “I’m BUSY,” Albus reiterated, putting an extra scowl to his loudest voice, but he leaned back further, testing the chair’s tipping point, to reach for the doorknob. He debated in that half-second whether to try to hold his bedroom door shut or to just open it, but he settled for the latter, as it was the least likely to cause him to fall out of his chair, and Lily would end up in his room either way. He twisted the doorknob and the door swung open. “What is it?” “You don’t look very busy.” She crossed the threshold and thrust her journal at him. “HERE. I want you to read it.” Al raised his eyebrows at her, and he took the book but didn’t open it. He knew he said a while back that he’d read things she wrote for practice if he had time, but he hadn’t expected her to take him up on that offer. Or to remember at all. Suddenly, this situation didn’t seem very benign. He ran a finger along the spine of the journal but narrowed his eyes at Lily. “Why?” Al was like the most difficult brother ever. Besides James because he was difficult, too. She was about to explain to him that it was her journal, duh, and she wanted him to read it to see if he could read through her privacy hexes when her eye caught sight of something on Al's desk. “Hey, what is that you’re drawing? Can I see? I didn’t know you liked to draw!” “It’s not a drawing. It’s a diagram.” Al rolled his eyes and pushed his papers toward her. He did kinda want to show off the work he’d done, even if Lily couldn’t properly appreciate it. Forgetting his wariness, he flipped through the pages of her journal absently. “Don’t touch. It’s a diagram of my next anemometer.” “Same thing,” she said, picking up his diagram anyway. “What’s an anemometer again? I can’t remember.” “It measures wind speed, and I asked you not to touch it!” He tossed the journal aside to grab his papers back from her. “Look, but don’t touch.” Lily rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t going to wrinkle it or copy it or anything,” she said, offended. “What are you going to do with your anemmie thing? Fly a kite?” He shook his head and set his diagram back on his desk, smoothing them out flat just in case she did wrinkle it. “Anemometer,” he said, emphasizing each syllable before giving her a Look. “I’m going to measure wind speed with it. Obviously.” “For why? Flying kites?” Al looked heavenward for guidance and sighed deeply. “I can fly kites without having to measure the windspeed first. Kites don’t take scientific knowledge. You just have to figure out the direction of the wind and a general estimate of wind conditions.” “Then what’s the anemometer for, mister scientist? Nevermind, I don’t want to know. I need to know about journals first. Are you going to help me or what?” He glanced over at the journal he had cast aside. “Help you what? Read it? I kinda thought you already knew how to read.” Lily’s face hardened into a glare. “You don’t have to be mean, Al. Of course I know how to read. I wanted to know if you can read my privacy hexes. The ones that are private to me. Lily.” “I can’t read them if they’re private to you,” Al said, making a face. He picked up the journal and held it out to her. “Question answered. All done.” “YOU DIDN’T EVEN TRY! ALBUS! PLEASE! This is IMPORTANT.” “Fine.” Albus opened Lily’s journal and flipped through the last few written pages slowly, reading out loud phrases and sentences every so often. “I’m pretty sure I’ve read all of this, even if I didn’t respond to it,” he said. “Dog walking, dictionaries, the time you thought I was being hazed, etc., etc. I don’t see anything new.” While Albus read, Lily studied his face, looking for signs that he was lying or that he’d stumbled upon something she’d written about him, particularly the part about her jumping on his bed. He would totally care if she was in his room unsupervised. She might crinkle his ammemie paper. “Do you ever write private journal entries?” Al shut the journal. “Yeah. But it’s stupid stuff, not private stuff. Like ‘Rain, rain, I love rain. Rain, rain, don’t go away.’” He snorted at how ridiculous it sounded, true as it was. “I don’t see the point of writing down secrets.” Lily didn’t either until recently. “You never had a secret you just had to write down and if you didn’t you would burst?” “No.” For as automatic of an answer it was, it was still true. Al was perfectly secure keeping his secrets in his own head. “I’ve never felt that way.” “Probably because you’re boring and don’t have a life.” He was sitting in his room drawing wind things, after all. “No offense,” she added. “Probably,” Albus agreed, keeping his face as straight as possible and fighting the urge to laugh. He opened up Lily’s book again. “So have you written a lot of private secrets in here, then?” “No. Not yet. I didn’t know if it was safe. I’m not STUPID. Why? Do you want to know? Because I’m not going to tell you!” “All right,” he said easily, examining a couple more pages before closing the journal again. “I was just asking. I don’t actually want to know. You’re the one who brought it up.” Lily frowned, her feelings a little hurt. “What do you mean you don’t want to know? Aren’t you curious? It’s a really good secret.” He shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of curiosity. If you want to tell me, you’ll tell me. If you don’t want to tell me, why would I try to make you?” So he did want to know. He was such a liar. Lily could just tell. “Okay, whatever. I don’t know. I’m not going to tell you anyway, so you can’t make me. Do you want to go fly kites? You can use your anemmie thing. If it’s not just imaginary still.” “I wasn’t going to make you,” he said, rolling his eyes. He passed the book over to her. “Yeah. Sure. Let’s go. My old anemometer is broken, and this one’s still in the planning stages. But we can figure out the wind on our own.” Now Lily rolled her eyes. “Because it doesn’t take scientific knowledge to fly a kite, I know. Okay, let’s go.” |