TERM 6 - Clouds - Stone Circle - Hunter VanDerberg, Layla Blackwood

Let's see? Where to study? Hunter had just escaped the castle, eagerly making his way toward the grounds. In all honesty, he rarely studied, but he felt that he needed to start making more of an effort if he wanted to keep up with the rest of the first years. On the bright side, it was still nice enough outside that he could find a nice spot somewhere on the grounds to go through his schoolbooks. He shifted his books into one arm and decided to wander through the covered bridge that led toward the quiddich pitch. As he emerged on the other side of the bridge, he caught sight of the strange stone circle that he'd walked past on several occasions.

Nobody else was there, so he stepped toward it and lowered himself to the ground, leaning back against one of the stones. He set his books beside him and pulled his Charms textbook into his lap. His eyes skimmed the first two pages, but he quickly found his attention slipping, and he turned his eyes toward the sky. It was a cloudy day, and he grinned as he picked out the shape of a giraffe among the white, wispy tresses strewn across the blue. He knew that he should keep reading, but this was much better than studying, so he kept searching the clouds for shapes.

Leila knew better than to finish her homework, but the day was to beautiful to be inside, she thought she'd go to the stone circle, she didn't want to see her cousin Zinnia, still mad at her for not letting her sleep.

She walked down the stone steps to the stone circle where she saw a familiar boy, smirking she walked up to him and say "I see your doing your homework eh Hunter."

A sound to his left startled him from his thoughts, and he turned to see Leila, the girl he'd met in potions, approaching him. He grinned up at her as she reached him, sarcastically pointing out the fact that he was most certainly not doing his homework."Oh, hey Leila!" he said in a friendly voice. "Well, I did read a whole two pages of charms," he informed her, as though that was some great accomplishment.

"I'm not much for studying. My attention span is unfortunately short," he admitted, pushing his books out of the way so that Leila could sit down if she wanted to. "But I try my best. What are you up to?" he asked her.

Leila smiled at Hunter and sat down next to him "Well i guess you and me are one track mind cause i came here to do my homework too" Leila looked at the sky and pointed to a cloud "Hm a spaceship."

Looking up, Hunter tried to pick out the cloud Leila had identified as a spaceship. He followed the path of her eyes until it landed on one cloud in particular. "I would have thought that one looked like a fish," he admitted. "But now that you say it, I guess it could be a spaceship." He grinned and scanned the sky for a few more minutes.

"I always do this at home," he informed her, glancing over at her. "Me and my brother would go out in the field and tell our parents we were doing homework." He laughed a little, remembering it. "We never actually did our homework. I was home schooled, so it didn't really matter."

Leila smiled, thinking of her brother back home, I wonder how he's doing, "You have a little brother?" Leila looked at Hunter's cloud and said "Hm, maybe it is a fish, so where are you from?"

"Older," Hunter corrected her easily. "Jack's a year older than me. And the twins, Lyra and Lynette, they're nine." Hunter smiled thinking of his family. They were close, and it was strange being away from them. "My family has a farm in Asch, Netherlands," he told her. "How about you?"

Leila nodded as she pursed her lips, "I have a little brother, his name is Maxwell, but we call him max, he's a great prankster, i cant wait to see what he'll do here at Hogwarts", Leila looked at the sky once more, thinking of the time her brother put paint bombs into her dads study. She giggled at the thought, "So you live on a farm in the Netherlands, cool, do you have sheep's?, sheep's are my favorite animals."

"I doubt the twins will wind up at Hogwarts," Hunter told Leila when she described her brother to him. "It probably isn't common to have more than one wizard in a muggle family, is it?" He laughed as he pictured Lynnie or Lyra in the castle - they'd have a field day exploring the place.

"Yeah," he responded, grinning, when Leila asked if they had sheep on his farm. "We have all kinds of animals, but we have sheep, too." He was instantly reminded of Aoife when Leila said sheep were her favorite. "My friend Aoife loves sheep, too," he informed the girl next to him.

Leila nodded understandingly "I have four cousins in Hogwarts, Zinnia, she's in Slythein with me, Lyrica, but we call her Lyra, she's in Hufflepuff, and the Twins Abby and Violet, Abby's in Gryffindor, and Violet is in Ravenclaw. My cousin Zinnia is a muggle born, and my cousin Lyra is a Half blood from her mothers side, you see her mother was a muggle."

Leila smiled at Hunter "Hmm, Aoife? what name is that?"

Hunter listened as Leila described her cousins. She had a lot of them, and they all went to Hogwarts! One of them was apparently a muggleborn, like Hunter. "It must be nice to be surrounded by your family," he said to her. "I'd get used to this place a lot faster if my brother was here with me."

"Aoife's Irish," Hunter informed the girl. "You've probably seen her around, she's a first year too. She's a tiny thing, red hair, kind of loud. You can't miss her," he laughed as he described his friend. He was glad that he'd made a few friends so far while at Hogwarts. He wasn't sure if he'd fit in with the kids here, but so far everyone seemed to be pretty nice. Well, except for Professor Elldir, but he didn't count since he was a professor.

Leila nodded "Yes, It's good to have them around, well sometimes." She smirked thinking of Zinnia. "Oh she's Irish that makes sense, you see i'm from Scotland, so i don't really hear the name allot, yes I've seen her around, big ball of energy if you asked me."

"Yeah, I'd never heard of it before, either," Hunter agreed. He glanced back down at his charms text, trying to absorb a few sentences of information. He responded as his eyes skimmed the page. "Scotland, huh?" he asked. "I've never been there. Never left Asch, really, until I came here. D'you like it there?"

Leila nodded, she looked up to the sky and smiled "Oh yes, i love the mountains and valleys, the rivers and lakes especially the castles,those are my favorite." Leila sighed softly suddenly missing her home country. "What do you like about the Netherlands?"

"That sounds nice," Hunter said. "We have castles in Netherlands, too, but I've never been to see one before." He'd seen pictures of them, of course. It just wasn't practical for his family to visit them, as there wasn't one near and there was too much work to be done to bother travelling about the country.

"Well, my family's farm is on a big, hill. There's plenty of hills at home but ours is the best. In the winter, we can sled almost all the way down to town!" Hunter told Leila enthusiastically.

Leila smiled softly at Hunter "It sounds lovely, i love the winter, it's my favorite season." Leila laid down on her stomach and said "So Hunter do you have anymore friends besides Aoife?."

"Autumn's my favorite," he informed her, giving up on his charms book and flipping the cover closed. "But Winter is a close second, because of Christmas." Then, Leila asked him about his friends.

"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I've met a lot of people since I've gotten here. But Aoife's probably my best friend. And Willow, she's in Hufflepuff." Hunter thought for a moment about the other people he'd met, but didn't think he could call anyone else his friend just yet. Not really. "I met an older boy in my house, too," he said. "Ryland. I got stuck in a staircase, and he pulled me out." Hunter shrugged as if getting stuck in a staircase was no big deal - of course, it had taken him a while to come to that mindset.

Leila plucked the grass on the ground as she heard Hunter talk about his friends, she looked up from the ground and said "Your so lucky, i haven't made any friends while i've been here."

"I didn't make them right away, Hunter told her kindly. "I was so sure that i wouldn't fit in because I'm muggleborn. I was so glad to find out that I'm not the only one. At least you had your family all here with you. Aren't you friends with them?" It turned out that both Aoife and Willow were muggleborn as well. Both were better at magic than him, though.

Leila looked to the ground "Well... To be honest, we're not besties, we just get along with each other, Lyra is more solitary, Zinnia dislikes anyone who comes near her and Abby & Violet are more to themselves." Leila adjusted her hair, which was loosely hanging over her face, behind her ear.

"That's a shame," Hunter said, frowning. He couldn't imagine not being close to his family. "Do you not have any siblings, then? Just your cousins?" he asked Leila. Making one last attempt to get through another paragraph in his text, he flipped open his charms text again and tried to read a few more sentences. "What do you think of classes?" Hunter asked the girl. "Which is your favorite? I like potions best."

"Well." Leila said as she fixed her skirt "I do have a little brother, but ever since he turned 10 being with your older sister just isn't that cool anymore." Leila sat up and folded her legs as she saw hunter reading his text book, "The classes are alright, i love potions as well, you know Hogwarts has a potion club, have you signed up for it yet?."

"Oh, I see," Hunter said when Leila said her brother didn't like to hang out with her much anymore. He supposed if he had an older sister, he wouldn't hang out with her too much. But then again, he did spend time with the twins, and they were girls. "Will he be coming to Hogwarts next year then?" Hunter asked curiously.

A potions club? Hunter hadn't realized. "That's really cool!" he said enthusiastically. "No, I haven't signed up. But maybe I'll look into it. I'm not sure though, since I'm taking a lot of classes." He hoped he would have time for something like a potions club.

Leila lowered her head as she nodded, "I guess so, unless if he's a squib, but i highly doubt it." She said while scrunching her nose. "I understand, my cousin Lyra is in potion club, and she just loves it, she told me to sign up but i dont know."

Leila said her brother would go to Hogwarts if he wasn't a squib. The trouble was, Hunter wasn't all that sure what being a squib meant. "Erm... I don't mean to sound clueless or anything, but what exactly is a squib?" Hunter asked the girl curiously. Wizards had so many strange words for everything! He felt as though he'd never get used to them. "You should definitely sign up," Hunter told her. "If you have the time for it, of course. It sounds like a lot of fun!"