What Have We Here? | OPEN

Aria sulked a bit as she made her way into the common room. There was no one else to be seen.

"'I want you to wait for me in here,'" she quoted, mimicking Arsen's voice perfectly. "'Stay out of trouble.'" The girl let out an exaggerated whine of protest.

"I've never even been in trouble!" Aria kick fitfully at the carpet, then looked at her surroundings. Her discontent quickly evaporated. There was lots of green. Aria liked green. And silver. And - ooh, windows!

She skipped over to one of the windows, cupping her hands on either side of her face as she leaned forward to peer out. There was water on the other side! The girl took a startled half-step back. Tentatively, she reached out a fist and knocked lightly on the glass before quickly snatching her hand away. That was a lot of water! Aria didn't really like water...

"Oh!" Aria exclaimed happily. A grindylow had swam into view, pausing to give her a nasty look. The girl pressed both palms against the window, watching the creature with delight. She followed its progress with her eyes, leaning the side of her face into the glass as it disappeared.

Aria pouted. "Come back..." she murmured plaintively. Turning away from the window, the girl sulked once more. "I don't like being alone!"

Charlotte, although still a little down from the rather frank and blunt break up that she had just had, needed to find some company and she decided that she would go down to the Slytherin common room to see if her head of house was around to talk to.

As she muttered the password and entered she locked eyes with a girl that she had never seen before and she smiled softly at her. She said she didn't like being alone...huh...maybe they could both cure their need for a person to talk to.

"Uhmm hey there."

Charlotte spoke quietly, but she was sure that she could hear her.

"Are you okay?"

Aria's head snapped up, mismatched eyes sparkling with delight at another's appearance. Clapping her hands together, she skipped over to the other girl.

"Hello!" Aria exclaimed, then shook her head. "I'm okay. There's just nobody here." Her vague gesture of the common room turned into an accusing point at the window. "That's a lot of water! Who put so much water outside the windows? What if the windows break? They won't break, will they?" Aria's brow furrowed in concern. "I don't think I know how to swim... there was a creature swimming out there. He was cute, but he went away."

She looked back at the girl and gave a light gasp, grinning. "You have the pretty eyes, too!"

Jet walked into the common room from the boys dorms, having just taken a shower, and was only wearing some dark dress pants, but he had a plaid button down shirt in his hand.. His chest was toned with muscle he got from the manual labor he'd done in the Muggle world. His hair was still wet, so he had a white towel over it. "Hi." He said with a smile. He pulled on his shirt but left it unbuttoned looking from one girl to the other. "How are you ladies?"

"Hello!" Aria cheerfully returned the boy's greeting. Her mismatched eyes studied him curiously. Was that how all boys looked under their shirts?

"I am well, thank you," she recited the response she'd been taught, then helpfully informed him, "You have a towel on your head."

Jet smiled winningly. "It seems that I do. It's because my hair's wet." He pulled the towel onto his shoulders and showed her. "See?"

Aria gasped as he revealed his wet hair, shooting a panicked glance at the window. "It's not because one of the windows started leaking, is it?" she asked anxiously. "Someone put a lot of water out here!" The blonde gazed warily at the windows, taking a cautionary step further away.

She couldn't have explained her dislike for water. Having been alive for only a few days, Aria's experience with it was limited, but she had loathed it from the onset. Showering was horrible for the girl, and she wouldn't even consider the possibility of a bath.

Having maneuvered herself so the boy was between herself and the 'enemy', Aria peeked around him, as though expecting the glass to have sprung a leak.

Jet looked down at her, cowering behind him, and let out a startled laugh. "That's the lake. We're underwater here." He turned toward her, noting her fear of water that was sketched across her features. "But don't worry about it, those windows are charmed so the water stays on the outside." He cocked his head at her. "And my hair is wet because I just showered. I don't want to be dirty." He shrugged. "But its drying, so I guess that's something."

He glanced down at her. "What's your name? I'm Jet."

"Oh... That's good," Aria said, then wrinkled her nose. "I'm sorry. Showering's awful, isn't it? They should make dry showers, without the water."

She gazed back up at him, blue and brown eyes studying his face. "I am Aria," she replied. "You are tall. You must be really old."

Jet laughed a little nervously. There was something... off.. about this girl. "Uh. No, not really. I'm a fourth year, if that means anything..." He bowed and took her hand. He kissed it, for good measure, meeting her eyes through his bangs. "Nice to meet you, Aria."

"I'm a fourth year, too!" said Aria. "I'm short, though."

She watched curiously as the boy took her hand and pressed his lips to it.


"You kissed my hand. Why?" she asked. "Is that not what dating people do? Do you like me?" Her brow furrowed slightly. He had only just met her. Arsen had known her all her life and he didn't like her. How could this boy know one way or another, yet?

Jet laughed again. He liked this girl... but perhaps not that much. "Dating?" He asked with a chuckle. "No, I do that whenever I meet a particularly beautiful girl." he practically purred. He let go of her hand and straightened up. "And while I like you, you aren't supposed to date someone you don't really know yet. You should become friends with them first." He held out his hand. "Friends?"

((OOC: What can i say? Jet's a bit of a ladies' man.))

"Ooooh," Aria nodded slowly. "I am beautiful, then?"

She considered what he said. "That makes sense," she declared. The girl looked at his outstretched hand curiously, tilting her head to look at his palm before glancing questioningly up at him. She tentatively put her hand in his, giving him a smile.

"I'll be your friend," Aria agreed.

Jet squeezed Aria's hand in his and brought it up and down twice, before letting go. At her confused look, he smiled. "It's called a handshake, and it's how people say hello to people who aren't as beautiful as you."

Jet smiled a dazzling smile and nodded. "You're really beautiful. There aren't that many girls in this school that can rival it." He bowed to Charlotte, a small smile on his face. "She is one, though, I'm afraid."

Aria grinned. So that's how it was! She had learned something new - she would have to tell Arsen all about it.

This boy seemed nice. He smiled a lot. Arsen didn't really smile, that Aria could recall, though he had been teaching her a lot of stuff. Maybe Arsen didn't know how to smile?

She glanced over at the other girl.

"Of course, she is!" Aria declared, as though that were blatantly obvious. "She has the pretty eyes, like Arsen an... like Arsen." The girl put an index finger under each of her eyes, pouting and shaking her head sadly.

"I don't," she stated. "They don't even match."

Charlotte watched the two interact and she smiled softly, it was nice to see that they were getting along and she snapped out of the daydream that she had been in to smile softly at the boy who had just come into the conversation.

"Hey, sorry, I must have spaced out for a minute there..."

She merely hugged her picture to her chest, having no arms free to shake his hand with Charlotte nodded her head at him.

"I'm Charlotte, Charlotte Math- I mean Smith."

Charlotte still couldn't get used to her new last name, she just didn't seem to be able to make the change between her old one and her new one however much she wanted it to. Eyes widening as Aria mentioned Arsen Charlotte hung her head.

"You are too kind Jet, and you too Aria." Charlotte smiled

Aria blinked in confusion. "What is 'spaced out'?" she asked when she failed to come up with a possible meaning for the phrase.

"I have a last name, too, now!" Aria declared happily. "I am Aria Black. Karma said we can be sisters." She bit her lip as she recalled that she still hadn't asked Arsen about that, then gave her head a quick shake. She wasn't going to ask Arsen - it was her name!

Once more, Aria felt lost. 'Too kind' made little more sense than 'spaced out'. Kind was good, but wouldn't too kind be bad? But Charlotte Math-Smith was smiling, so maybe it wasn't. Aria's brow furrowed. It seemed like she didn't understand anything, but Arsen didn't give her a chance to ask any questions. How was she to learn anything that way?

"I don't understand," Aria said finally. "Is 'too kind' good or bad?"

"Spaced out is when people get lost in thought... like they were thinking about something, and it distracted them from what's going on around them." Jet offered kindly.

His face blanched at the mention of Karma, but he covered it up with another laugh. "She let you have her last name? That's nice of her."

He cleared his throat and smiled again. "Too kind is what people say when they think what you're saying is nice, but they don't really agree with it." With that said, he smiled at Charlotte. "And it's not being too kind to call you beautiful, as I call them as I see them, and you are very beautiful."

The blonde gave an enthusiastic nod. "I like Karma very much," she stated seriously. "And she doesn't think I'm annoying. Everyone else does, though. I think it's because I ask too many questions." Aria pouted. "I don't know very much."

Jet smiled down at her. "Don't worry about it, Aria. Most things people think are annoying are just misunderstood." He shrugged. "Most things are misunderstood."

He sighed, his gaze becoming pensive. "Misunderstandings are what fuel wars and hurt and everything wrong in the world."

Charlotte bit her lip, she felt bad that she was using too many colloquial phrases that Aria didn't seem to understand, maybe she was a transfer from another country or something? Maybe that's why she didn't really understand.

"Uhm sorry about that, I need to think before I open my mouth, I don't make much sense sometimes."

Feeling a rather sharp stab rub through her chest as she looked at her wrist, the bracelet was still there. She made a note to give it to James he could have it.

"I...I think im just going to put this picture upstairs, unless any of you guys want it?"

Charlotte turned it around, it showed a dark blue canvas, representing a sea, the stars in the sky shined brightly and she had put in the moon and some cliffs in the background, in the background were two small figures, her, and Cobie.

"I think I'm going to go to bed, long day, it's here if you want it."

Waving to the two students Charlotte smiled softly: "Bye Jet, bye Aria. See you around."

Aria considered what Jet had said seriously, giving a slow nod. If things were misunderstood, she could see how that would be annoying. Her brow furrowed slightly.

"Is there a lot wrong with the world, then?" she asked.

Aria smiled and shook her head, deciding against saying that most people didn't really make a whole lot of sense to her. She hoped they would, some day.

The girl looked at the picture, gaze zeroing in on the two figures. She looked back and forth between the picture and the other girl. "That is you, right?" she asked, intrigued. "Did you make this picture? Ah... I didn't know you could do that." She'd been meaning to ask about the paintings, actually. This one was different, though. It was stationary. Aria decided she liked it very much.

She tentatively took the picture. Arsen had told her she wasn't to take things that weren't hers, but surely if they were being offered it was a different story?

"Thank you," she said politely. Aria really didn't understand how a day could be long - well, longer than another, in any case. Every day was 24 hours, which was 1,440 minutes as well as 86,400 seconds. Considering how many seconds were in a year, that wasn't very much at all. "Sleep well," Aria told the other girl, waving back. "See you."

Isobella pranced into the Slytherin Common Room. Sometimes it made her wonder because she was in Slytherin.

My mother would be proud, wouldn't she? It doesn't matter- I was raised by Muggles. Now they're afraid of me.

Her suitcase floated up the aisle. "Excuse me?" she asked a blonde girl. "Could you point me to the dormitories?"

Aria blinked in surprise as the newcomer addressed.

"Dormitories?" she repeated. "Oh, where we sleep. Um..." She hadn't actually been told where the girls dormitories were. There were two doorways apart from the one leading out to the corridor and Jet had just come out from one of them. Charlotte had gone into the other. As Aria's understanding of it was that boys and girls do not stay in the same dorms, that meant the door the boy hadn't come from and the one the other girl had gone into must lead to the girl dormitories.

She hoped.

"It should be that door," Aria answered, pointing to said door.