The Strangest Tree I've ever seen (Blake)

Wandering the grounds had been the first thing Oliver had thought about when he arrived on that rustic little boat to the castle. He'd never understood that about Hogwarts, why were the boats necessary? Not that he minded, of course! In fact, these boats were very unique and he found it quite interesting, but why was it needed? How had it started? Nevertheless, after being sorted and spending quite a few classes sitting alone and trying to pay attention to the rather young professors, Oliver set himself to go exploring.

His feet took him to many strange places, having gotten himself into an argument with a man on a portrait. It was a ridiculous argument too, nothing special nor worthy arguing about, but it had been fun to yell at the bearded wizard and make him feel uncomfortable. Oliver wasn't a terrible person, however, he was a bit of a trouble but his intentions were only playful. Somehow he had found his way outside the castle, which was far more interesting than the inside, and other students rushed past him in a way that told him they were either late to class or had just played a prank on a some of their friends.

He wasn't looking as he walked, paying little attention to the rest of his surroundings, his bright blue eyes fixed on the rushing students. "I wonder if they've ever played any on the professor." he thought out loud; he had a tendency to do that. "Probably have. Oh, I wish someone in my year does this!" His feet lowered themselves to the ground, and he somehow realized he was now sitting down on the green grass. As the students faded from his view, he looked down at his bookbag and took out some parchment, ready to attempt doing homework.

Swish!

His head swung around as the sound came again. Is that a tree? His eyes fixed on the branches, which were swiftly moving about and causing the swishing sound. Too small for the tree, Oliver decided to stand back up again and heard towards it, leaving his attempted schoolwork behind. Something much more important had come up! He couldn't miss this opportunity! He had to see that tree up close.

Blake was wandering the grounds, alone. Something he had become more applicable to since the good weather had settled in. The 'alone' part was mainly due to the fact that Aoife and Hunter seemed to be spending a lot of time together. Which besides not approving of their friendship Blake just couldn't stand Aoife's company and often found himself making up excuses to leave when she was around. Today it was that he had a book to return to the library. A pretty plausible excuse, but he needed a good one seeing how flimsy his other ones had been. He really needed new friends, he thought moodily to himself. But instead of heading to the library, Blake headed directly for the grounds, the good weather was too good an opportunity to miss. As it was always raining in England (well it seemed that way), Blake always promised himself that he'd enjoy the sunshine whenever he was given the opportunity. His mood was beginning to lift as the sun beamed in his face and the warmth spread throughout his body, bringing a smile to his face.

Blake walked past the lake as it seemed too crowded for his liking and continued on its bank, just letting his feet lead the way. The crowd became less dense and dispersed the further he walked from the castle, until suddenly when he looked up he realised he was virtually alone.

He took in his surroundings and soon knew why. He had come to the threshold of the 'whomping willow'. Stupid name he had always thought, but now that he was viewing the magnificence of it so close he understood why it was given such a title. The tree had millions of gigantic branches that where wailing in every direction. Blake had never been this close to the tree before as when he was a first year he was warned about it. Obviously some first years didn't take the caution as seriously as he did. Blake rolled his eyes as he watched a kid not much younger than himself approaching it. As the kid kept walking Blake began to wonder if he was going to ever stop. Blake made the quick decision to make sure the kid knew what he was getting himself into, he groaned to himself as he hoped the kid wouldn't need rescuing.

"Hey!" He shouted at him, wondering if he could even hear him over the sound of the enormous branches travelling through the sky. Blake began to jog, trying to catch up to the boy before he reached the clutches of the tree. "What are you doing?" He shouted after the boy incredulously, wondering why someone would ever want to get that close to the clutches of the tree.

With his tree-hugging tendencies coming up, Oliver was entranced by the magical tree! It was so big! It was so amazingly strange and beautiful! It was so unlike anything Oliver had seen before, but then again, what kind of trees was he supposed to see in London aside from regular ones? This tree was insane! There were so many things Hunter wanted to do with that tree; He wanted to photograph it, draw it, sing to it, take out a good book and sit by it, bring his mother over to Hogwarts and watch the stars with her, play around with Matthew and his father. So many possibilities! So many thi-

One of it's enchanting branches drew in closer and closer to Oliver, so close that the boy's skin didn't fail to rip and sting as he realized maybe this wasn't a friendly tree. In fact, this tree had just attacked him! Oliver jumped back, his legs carrying him as fast as possible to be away from the suddenly violent tree. He touched the source of the stinging, a semi-emergency, just a thin 3-inch long slash across his cheek. It wasn't so bad, he could live with the stinging, but he should probably head to the nursery now.

"Well, that's a nice way to warn people!" Oliver shouted at the tree, still emotionally hurt by the idea of violent plants. He suddenly heard someone calling, calling out to him, and he turned around immediately. Behind him was a boy, with short brown hair, and elongated face and blue eyes like Oliver's. Well, blue's a common eye color! "I was trying to be friendly." Oliver admitted, his hand rubbing the marked cheek and the other hanging uselessly by his side. "Stupid tree didn't need to be like that." Oliver added, looking up at the boy who seemed only a year older than him.

Blake had just caught up to the boy, who seemed so lost in his little world that he had failed to hear or maybe just didn’t adhere to any of his warnings. It was his own damn fault then if he got hurt. But as soon as the tree’s branches came crashing down in their direction, Blake couldn’t ignore the damage that could be done. “Watch out!” But too late the damage had been inflicted. At least the boy had come to his senses and seemed to realise that getting as far away from the tree was the best option. Finally! Blake felt something swishing over his head and he ducked just in time. The tree was now attacking him! He quickly followed in the steps of the younger boy, until they were out of reach of the tree’s evil branches which were liable to do anything. Why would it attack? It’s not like they were trying to hurt it.

Who tried to be friendly to a tree? Blake raised his eyebrows at the boy’s comment, but refrained from opening his mouth. He couldn’t think of anything nice to say about trees so he stayed silent, which he thought was the best option. He was trying to become more tactful in conversations and therefor being nicer. Well, to people that deserved it and this little guy was just after being attacked by a tree that he thought he could befriend. Yep, it seemed like being nice and friendly was the best option.  “You might need to get that looked at?” Blake said, gesturing to the boy’s cut as he could see some blood tinting the boy’s cheek.

“I’m the guy that tried to save you, Blake by the way.” Blake tried to make light of the conversation as the boy looked like he might cry and Blake really couldn't deal with that. "So you like trees, huh?" Blake asked, trying to make conversation with the boy. He shoved his hands in his pocket as he didn't feel the most comfortable talking about trees.

Oliver's blue eyes began to cloud with tears, but he wasn't about to make a clown of himself and cry in front of a much older, and therefore cooler, guy. He was probably one of those kids who wore leather jackets and played all the best pranks and smoke cigarettes. Oliver wasn't sure if he wanted to be one of those....Actually, he was pretty sure he didn't. Feeling something dripping from his cheek, Oliver ran the palm of his hand over the cut and saw the smeared streak of blood. "Yeah, I should." He whispered, more to himself than the boy. So Oliver just stood there, feeling pathetically rejected by one of the most majestic trees he'd ever seen in his short life, and trying his best to not be the cry baby he was back at home.

Pulling back his tears, Oliver smiled at Blake. Blake! What a surprising name for such a cool looking guy! It sort of fit, though. He could see his name being Blake, because he had that awesome hair going on and the mischievous look. "I'm Oliver." He replied, not bothered to state the obvious and introduce himself as the tree-hugger who had gotten slashed for his stupidity. "Don't you?" He asked when Blake wondered if Oliver liked trees. Which, of course he didn't. He loved trees. "I think they're pretty cool! They have all these wicked branches and they live for a very long time! And they provide oxygen and all of those necessary things. And you can do so much with trees!" There he was, getting excited about them all over again.

Blake looked around awkwardly trying to not look at the kid as he looked like he might have a mini breakdown. Blake wondered if it was more to do with the tree attacking him than actually getting hurt. He seemed to have high expectations of tree's when it came to making friends. He was obviously setting himself up for disappointment. Blake pretended to be interested in a funny looking cloud as when he cocked his head to the side it looked like a dinosaur. Well kind of. "Would you look at that." He muttered to himself, not having to feign interest anymore.

When he turned his attention back to the boy he had managed to compose himself. Well thank God for that. "Do you want me to take you..?" Blake asked, letting the question hang in the air, he hoped his offer sounded sincere but it probably didn't. He was enjoying the weather and didn't want to have to walk the boy all the way to the hospital wing when it was the kid's own fault! One of Victoria's healing spells really would have come in handy right about now. Of course, if he took out his wand the boy would probably think he was about to attack him or his beloved tree and that may have caused more whimpering and tears. Best leave the wand in the pocket he concluded.

And now the kid was smiling at him. Great, well it was definitely better than crying. Blake smiled back at him, a little uncomfortably as he didn't know why they were smiling but he kept the forced grin on his face. "Nice to meet you Ollie." Blake said, immediately making up a nickname for the first year. He wondered if it would annoy him and decided to stick with his proper name for the moment. Just in case. "Well yeah I do like trees, I suppose." Blake said hesitantly. He had never even thought about it before. But they did give them oxygen so they had to be good. Maybe not cool, but essential to life so whatever. "You ever tried climbing them?" He asked, remembering his own experiences, some good and some not so good.

Blake sensed the boy getting overly excited again and didn't want to have to listen to interesting facts about trees next so he quickly moved the subject on. "So what house you in Oliver?" He asked, not remembering having seen him around before or maybe he had just never noticed him.

"To the Hospital Wing?" Oliver finished the sentence the boy had left lingering in the air. He didn't think it was that bad a cut, maybe just a little spell would do. But Oliver didn't know any, and his mother had always cured his cuts and scrapes, so he was clueless. "I don't think it'll be necessary. But thanks!" Oliver offered another smile, this time smaller as the one smile Blake was giving him seemed fake. Fake was never good, and maybe it was because Oliver had smiled like an idiot. But that was his thing! He always did that! He liked smiling and no one should make him stop doing it. So that's why he turned the big smile back on, more for his own sake than Blake's.
"Ollie? No one's ever called me that before." Oliver nodded, happy with the nickname. The one and only nickname he had ever had was "love" by his mother, and he shared it with Matt so it wasn't exactly a personal thing. So he was glad someone had come up with a new one! "Of course!" Oliver replied. "That's what my brother and I did back home!" Who doesn't like to climb them? If they're not giving you life, tress are giving you fun! "Hufflepuff, sir!" He said with a proud smile.

“Yeah until you fall and break your neck or something.” Blake muttered to himself. He had a bad experience with tree climbing when he was younger, something he put down to his fear of flights. Something which he was also working on and needed to be overcome if he ever wanted to fly a broom and make the quidditch team. Something he had been aspiring to since he had first heard of the sport, even though he didn’t know what it entailed. Now he knew though and he wasn’t any less daunted by the by task, just more determined to achieve his goal, especially now that Aoife and Hunter had made the team. The fact that Aoife had made the team was a joke to Blake; obviously they were accepting any old useless people now. Although the fact that she could fly probably did gave her an advantage over him he realised. And now that she was beater he hoped she could channel some of her anger into the games and help combat some of her anger issues.

“Don’t tell me you were actually going to try and climb that thing?” Blake asked, slightly horrified at the thought. His expression soon turned to humour at the thought as the boy was so puny and the tree enormous. He had to give him some credit though. “So do you have many friends? That are trees I mean?” Okay, Blake might have been going too far with the whole tree thing now, but he was finding it amusing and there wasn’t anything better to do.

“Hufflepuff, really?” Blake asked a bit incredulously as he thought the boy was possibly too brave for the house. What sane person approached the whomping willow out or their own free will, and then went as far as trying to befriend it. But then it dawned on him, where else would you put a tree hugger? Oliver was definitely a  turn up for the books in his opinion, all the other Hufflepuffs he knew were so much quieter whom he had come across wandering the corridors lost or in the library. Whereas here was this little guy out looking for an adventure. Blake returned the boy's smile with a genuine one of his own.

“Did that happen to you?” Oliver asked, having caught was he supposed was just Blake talking to himself. He couldn't imagine tress hurting anyone in such a way, but it was a common thing apparently. He'd fallen only a few times, but it wasn't such a big deal when the tree was not guilty. Oliver had stepped on the wrong branch, but the tree had done nothing. Turning to look at the tree behind him, however, Oliver could see it hurting anyone for no reason at all. Stupid, mean tree.

Oliver's face turned bright red and his shoulders reached his face. "Not climb it...no." He admitted. "I was trying to hug it." He was a little embarrassed, of course, because here was this super cool boy trying to figure out why on earth Oliver was trying to be nice to a TREE, and Oliver was just making himself look even weirder. Besides, this tree was huge. HUGE. "I guess it didn't need one, though." Oliver relaxed and smiled a little. The burning on the scratch was no completely forgotten, though the blood was drying up and he didn't really want to go to the Hospital Wing.

"Not all trees are approachable, as seen just now. But most of them are nice." Oliver replied before realizing no one else had asked him that before. He decided to elaborate. "I mean, it's like with people. Some people are angry at the world and they push everyone away, that's not very nice because no one should ever be lonely. And then others, like myself, take anyone and everything because there's a lot of unused love in the world that needs to be used on everyone." He was probably boring Blake to death, but he wanted to make sure his point was clear.

"My grandfather was in Hufflepuff, too. It's not so unusual, really. He also likes tress if you were wondering on asking that." Oliver smiled. He really couldn't see himself in any other house; he had a little bit of every house, really. He liked books and learning, he knew what he wanted and didn't miss an opportunity to grab it, he was brave most of the time, and he was accepting and kind. But mostly, he was just Oliver. The Oliver who liked trees and birds and blue cupcakes and chilly mornings and hot chocolate and who enjoyed, most of all, to look up at the sky and find dragons and dinosaurs in the clouds.

"Well not the breaking my neck part, more so the something part." Blake replied, reservation in his voice. He didn't know if it was the best idea approaching and now continuing on the conversation he was even more unsure about it. But the kid didn't look like he was going to give up and he was staring at him with these big brown eyes and seemed to be hanging onto every word as if his story was riveting. Man, this guy did like trees.

Ok, he definitely was a tree hugger. Blake was starting to regret coming to help the boy, it was obvsious he was beyond help. At least now he was beginning to see reason and agreed that the tree was evil. People should listen to him more often.

"Maybe it does though and that's why it's so angry." Blake said, trying to act serious and hold back his fit of giggles. He really hoped the boy didn't believe him and got it into his head to try and approach the tree again.

Blake idly wondered if the boy's grandfather was a nature loving hippy too. He refrained from asking though, the boy seemed so innocent and intent on seeing only good in the world he probably would think it a viable question. No fun there.

"So have you made friends with any of them other exciting Hufflepuffs?" Blake asked in an over exaggerated tone, but he was trying. He had plenty of interaction with the Hufflepuffs, which were mainly girls. He could see Oliver being a bit of a ladies man when he was older and if he ever got over tress. Seeing as he appeared to have plenty of self confidence and seemed pretty deep and in tune with himself and nature and the world blah blah blah. All the stuff that Blake couldn't really give a toss about. But the boy was actually growing on him. With his odd social skills and innocent demeanor he was kind of hard not to like and want to help.

OOC: Ollie has blue eyes

"The something part? Did it leave scars?" Oliver wanted to know more. "My father once told me that the best people have some kind of scar, and if you have them then that must mean you're a great human!" He was proud of Blake for being brave and adventuring with the trees, but he felt bad that there was a big possibility that he had been scarred by them and that would probably be the reason why he wasn't fond of them. "Of course, if you don't have them that's fine!" Oliver said again, without paying much attention to what he was saying. He already thought of Blake as a superhero, so the boy wouldn't need to see scars to believe anything he said.

When Blake said the tree might need a hug, Oliver smiled and turned back to the Willow. "Maybe." he said, "You know, trees remind me of people." His eyes turned to Blake again, and decided it was best to not approach the tree for a while. After all, he wouldn't want to get himself killed! "I could see you as a tree, for example." Oliver smiled shyly. He didn't know what to tell Blake because he was very cool and Oliver was awkward and strange!

At the last one, Oliver sighed. "I haven't yet made any friends." he accepted. "The people in my common room are mostly girls and girls are icky. They wear that red or pink stuff on their lips and then expect boys to like it." he said as he remembered some of the older Hufflepuff girls who wore something called lipstick and make up. "They look like clowns most of the time." he muttered to himself, afraid of offending Blake in the given case that he had a lady friend who wore make up. "I prefer to hang out with interesting people! People with fun ideas and a prank list and maybe a few pets."

OOC: No clue where I got brown eyes from :PMaybe I'm colour blind   

"Well no." Blake said realising that the kid wasn't going to give up on more information. "I did break my arm though." Blake said feeling that the bit of information was going to disappoint. "And I was stuck in a cast for six weeks." He added feeling the need to impress. Then he mentally chided himself, why did he feel the need to impress the kid who hugged trees? Or maybe he just didn't want to let him down. Blake was getting seriously confused by the different emotions little Ollie seemed to be bringing out in him. First he thought he was odd and now he was trying to show off in front of him and he was even calling him Ollie to top it all off! "Do you have any scars?" Blake quickly asked trying to divert his own attention away. He then regretted it wondering if he was going to have to listen to some long spiel from the child about how it wasn't the trees fault or something.

"Ok, well I don't need a hug." Blake said laughing, wondering if he was going to compare him to the whomping willow next. "What tree am I?" Blake said slightly reluctantly after a few moments of silence. He didn't know if he should be encouraging the weird behaviour.

Ok, well maybe not a ladies man anytime soon, Blake thought to himself kind of disappointed. Blake burst out laughing at Ollie's next remark about clowns. "Yes they do." He said in agreement. "And clowns are kind of scary." He said as his thoughts drifted and he thought of Aoife's new look, he still hadn't made up his mind on that one though. Lipstick seemed like it might suit her, much to his inner self trying to disagree. "And who might they be?" Blake asked raising an eyebrow. The boy just said he had no friends, who did he have in mind if that was the case then.

"That's terrible!" Oliver said when he heard about Blake's arm. He couldn't imagine any tree being so terribly horrible to any one, let alone someone as cool as Blake. "I have a few." Oliver pointed to his face, where the blood had stopped flowing and was now most likely a dried red streak across his cheek. "It probably will just be a super thin line across my face when it heals. Might not even be visible." he added, thinking a broken arm hurt much more than a cut on a cheek.

Oliver took a long look at Blake. From what he gathered, Blake was the suffer in silence kind of person, very independent and he most certainly did NOT take crap from anyone. What kind of tree would this super awesome boy be? "I see you as a Redwood. They're found in America and China and are often thought to be a symbol of ambition and strength." Oliver concluded Blake was a warrior of his own kind, but he wouldn't say this fearing the older boy might think him weird. More than he already did!

He laughed awkwardly when Blake asked about his incredibly interesting list of non-existent friends. "Uh, well right now.....no one." he admitted. "I don't think there's a lot of friendly people in my common room, which is where I am most of the time." he said before thinking of the very few people he'd met so far. "Well, there's this girl. Ariel. She's very fun and I like her quite a lot." she was the only one who met his expectations so far.