Makeshift Chemistry || Open

It was no surprise that Hadley Greer’s parents did not attend Parents Weekend. For one, her mother was dead as a doornail for over seven years now and her father? Well her father was the one who had killed her. Sure, there was a step-father that she had to contend with ever so often, but she hardly saw him as anything more than a legal guardian. He fed her during holidays...that was about the extent of their relationship. 

Sitting up in the branches of one of the trees in the Forbidden Forest, Hadley had nothing to do but consider all the strange oddities that surrounded the students as of late. In all honesty, she couldn’t decide how she felt about the eccentric show that the parents of the students were putting on this weekend. It was almost as if every one of them was peacocking for the other parents. ‘Look at my new boat!’ ‘Listen to what the Minister said to me!’ ‘Have you heard the wedding plans for our daughter? Let me tell you!’ It was disgusting really; they paid so much attention to each other and showing one another up that they hardly even paid their children any attention. The Slytherins were perhaps the worst. It was no wonder that their children were all turning up as fucked up as they were. Haddie reached up and put her finger in her mouth, chewing on the skin that was on the outskirts of her cuticles, trying to get it to lay flat against the rest of her finger. 

Finger still locked between her teeth, she looked up, trying to determine exactly what time it was. Perhaps somewhere in the early afternoon range, certainly not early enough for the stars to be up. She would have to wait quite some time if she wanted to see any of the celestial bodies tonight. It was then that she heard it: gentle humming that was coming from underneath her. Immediately, her head snapped down, blonde hair falling down with it as she stared at the ground, searching for the source. It was then that she laid eyes on the culprit.

Evan Rosier. Hadley had watched him many times, he was an interesting fellow. She couldn’t figure him out though. There was something about him that put her on edge and yet at the same time, urged her to know more. Of course, there was the normal distrust of the male gender that plagued her when she saw him, but she was willing to look past that for now. After all, she had managed to put it out of her mind when she had seen Zeke Maxwell the other night, why not now as well? Slowly and deliberately, she bit down on her finger, managing to take of the skin that was bothering her and feeling a light tickle of blood in her mouth. Sliding her way out of the tree, she landed on the balls of her feet, barely making a sound. Hadley raised her head, watching as the boy continued to walk down the path, obviously headed toward something.

What was it about the Slytherin Boys and their obsessions with the clearings in the Forbidden Forest these days? She wondered idly. He stopped, took off his sweater, and Hadley could do nothing but stare at him, her head cocked to the right in interest. She moved a bit more forward, staying near the trees until she realized what she was staring at. It looked as if he was digging something up...or attempting to bury something by digging a rather large hole, ”Doctor Rosier? That’s rich,” She said, standing near the edge of the little fenced off area that he had created. Her light eyes slowly scanned the dirt, then moved up his trousers, across his chest and finally settled on looking at his face. Curiosity killed the cat; but thankfully for Hadley, she was no more cat than Evan Rosier was a pretty princess, ”Where’s the body?” She asked, no humor in her voice.

There they stood: The doe-eyed Evan and the ever half-cocked Hadley, staring at one another. In all honesty, they were perhaps the strangest oddities that Hogwarts had seen as of late. Certainly the odd-balls in the Slytherin Common room. She bit down on her lip, turning her head a bit further to the right as she examined the way that his eyes reflected the light. They were the color of the sun going through a glass of whiskey on a summer’s day, like golden honey dripping off a honeycomb. Stuck in what appeared to be a state of envious interest, Hadley’s face was slightly scrunched up as she mentally ogled over his eyes. That was, until she caught the faintest sound of a whisper pass through her ears. His statement confused her for a moment, partly because it seemed to get lost in the small amounts of wind that were circling them and partly because she was pretty sure that he had just spoken of bones. Caught off guard, she stood by the side-lines of the fence, rocking back and forth on her feet, her green eyes refusing to leave his brown ones. However, she recognized the glimmer in his eyes. It was passion laced with a delicate amount of obsession and she herself had seen it reflected in the mirror many times before; it consumed her daily. Her passion was not for the dirt - as Evan’s currently seemed to be - but for the stars above. They were beautiful to her, the most pristine beauty that she had ever laid eyes on. 

Hadley had no intentions of crossing the lines that he had enforced with fencing, she wasn’t that stupid. ”You’re defensive about his gender.” She noted, finally looking away from him and into the small pit of dirt that he was digging himself in to. Slowly, she sat down in front of him, crossing her legs and putting her elbows on her knees as she watched on from her new position. She wasn’t going to offer to help - she had no interesting in getting dirty - but she wasn’t about to walk away. For some reason, she was drawn to what the boy was doing, ”Hadley.” She breathed her name as she looked up at the sky again, watching as some of the clouds moved past them. It was going to be a relatively clear night, which would mean that she could watch the stars for as long as she saw fit. It was perfection. 

Sitting there like the quiet observer that she had always been, Hads watched carefully as Evan began to dig deeper, obviously getting more into what he was doing as time went on. She closed her eyes slightly, letting the sun warm her pale face as she listened to the sound of the shovel hitting the dirt. Over and over again; it was almost therapeutical. However, once the boy started to sing, her right eye snapped open and she watched him more carefully. He was strange. She couldn’t figure out if she enjoyed his company yet. He was a bit...talkative and forward for her liking. Then again, he was in the woods digging up an old body, so Hadley figured that he didn’t often find people that would entertain conversation with him. 

”Have you found the-” She couldn’t remember if they were called something other than horns, so she reached up and placed her hands upon her head, trying to convey that she was speaking about their massive horns, ”Yet?” He seemed to have found something and she leaned forward over the fence, her blonde hair brushing the dirty ground. Evan seemed to have hit the jack-pot for whatever he was looking for and she watched as he began to tug on it. Interest again peaked, Hadley leaned a little further, trying to figure out what exactly it was that the Slytherin boy was trying to dig up. If he needed to get it out of there, she would consider helping him. As long as he didn’t sing any more.

Hadley suddenly felt as if she had missed something: even though she was sitting there, fully absorbed in surveying him and the situation at hand, he had almost completely lost her in his train of thought. She leaned forward a little bit, surveying the strange blonde boy, trying to figure out where exactly he had lost his mind. She was quiet when in public, but at least she didn’t lose the subject of her sentence in the clouds, ”Who?” She asked, looking up where he was, at least until she realized that he had begun digging again. For some reason, she didn’t want to miss a single second of what he was digging up. Sure, she was no archeologist or even remotely interesting in what the earth had to offer, but she couldn’t help but see the obsession in his eyes and instantly feel hooked, ”Why would you give them anyway anyhow?” She scoffed slightly at the idea; he seemed attached to the bones, and she couldn’t imagine him willingly giving up what he had sought so hard to uncover, ”That seems...counterintuitive.”

She watched him carefully, watched as he seemed to be deep in the depths of his mind, perhaps thinking about something long-ago past. Or perhaps he was imagining the life that this strange being had once had. Hadley wasn’t sure that she could get a good read on him. She had heard things over the years. He was the strange one, these days. No one much cared for him, nor did they make an effort to talk to him anymore. It was as if everything that he had ever known had dropped off the face of the planet. Something that was even more intriguing to Hadley, ”You’re very strange.” She breathed, not even sure that the words had come out of her mouth. It was a statement of fact, one that she could absolutely relate to. She had always been the weird girl of Slytherin, the one with deep-rooted daddy issues that no one cared to delve into. Although the were all but strangers standing out in the Forbidden Forest, Hadley felt as if there was some sort of connection that was inside them.

When he spoke next, it almost seemed like a shout in the silence of the forest around them. Sure, Hadley was aware that he was barely talking above what he had before, but it sounded amplified when they were so close and he was so...excited. She squinted slightly, trying to find the apparent beauty that he was seeing reflected in the piece of history in his hands. It was huge, that much was certain, but Hadley had no idea from which part of the body it might have come. It could have been anything for all she knew. Biting down on her lip slightly, she turned and watched as he put it onto the ground and began to measure it. 

She leaned forward, moving so that she was now lying on her stomach, propping herself up with her elbows on the ground and her hands on her cheeks, watching Evan carefully. It was so fascinating to see the gears turning in his head, although she was fairly certain at this point that a few of them were malfunctioning, ”Was that a joke?” She asked, her voice dry and slightly confused. She couldn’t imagine the boy trying to be funny at a time like this...however, the more that she considered the possibility, the more that she realized that was exactly what she should have expected from him. Hadley reached out with her fingertips and began to brush them over the bone, trying to get some of the dirt to come off, ”It’s beautiful.” She lied, slightly gritting her teeth. There was nothing beautiful about the ugly bone that now sat in front of her. It looked as if it needed a good cleaning. Perhaps that was why she loved the stars so much; they were always pristine. There was nothing that anyone could do to soil them with the earth. But this? This was...disgusting in her eyes.

Wrinkling her nose slightly, she brushed off more of the dirty, ”I think I should like to meet a minotaur.” Hadley breathed absentmindedly as she watched the boy’s expert hands moving across the measuring tape.

Hadley was completely oblivious to the fact that she was making the poor boy uncomfortable. Her fingertips moved over the edge of the bone and she lowered her head so that she could see just how wide it actually was, ”Cool it,” She groweled, slightly put off by the strange face that he was making at her. She raised both of her eyebrows at him, brushing away a few more bits of dirt from the underside of the bone. Although she couldn’t necessarily relate with the unique beauty that Evan was probably seeing, she could see why he felt as such. Or at least, that was what she was telling herself over and over again in the back of her brain. She looked up at him, watching his eyes for a moment before retracting her hand and placing it in front of her, where it was no longer in his path. Instead, she took her fingertip and gently began to draw patterns of circles into the ground that was beneath her, ”How long are they normally?” She asked absentmindedly as she began to draw a picture of a man in the ground. She gave him fangs instead of teeth and then part of the body of a horse. Of course - being a drawing in the dirt, it was shit, but it kept her mind and hands busy for the time being. 

She was slightly surprised at his comment; for being so interested in the decaying skeletal structure that was before them, he had no interest in ever meeting the animal that had once occupied the bones that he studied so reverently. Haddie on the other hand, was always curious what other creatures could be like; she wondered how humans had become the most dominant of the species in the world...when these other animals - such as the large minotaurs - were so hulking and dangerous. She could only imagine that humans made themselves smarter and learned more quickly than the others, which perhaps made them even more dangerous than the vicious ones, ”Humans are rude and nasty creatures, too. Honestly just as bad-” She sighed slightly and looked over at the tree roots that were at the base of the area in which they sat, ”Except, humans shower. So I suppose they’re not as dirty.” Hadley said as she rolled over so that she was on her back, staring up into the trees. The bits of sunlight were peeking through the canopy and she longed to climb up into the trees and feel it, but she stayed there. 

She sensed movement and watched from the corner of her eye as Evan moved away from the pit and stationed himself on the ground near her. For the few brief moments that she had spent with him, it rather felt as if she was talking to a bone. She couldn’t expect any sort of response. However, she almost liked it that way. He seemed...almost unnatural. A welcome change to the monotony of Slytherin students that she had come across as of late, ”What are you going to do with it?” She asked, nodding toward the oddity that now sat in-between them.

Evan started spouting off information as if it was his job and the blonde Slytherin found herself momentarily stunned into silence. Her eyes scanned the bone, wondering just how old this creature could have been and how he came to escape the fights that would have resulted in his death. She supposed that there always had to be an alpha of the world; someone that was stronger and smarter than everyone else. Or perhaps he was the type of creature that sought to keep to himself and stay out of fights of that kind. There were so many possibilities, ”That’s weird.” Hadley answered, shaking her head at his explanation. When had Evan gotten like this? She wondered briefly. At one point, she was sure that he had seemed like a normal child...and now? Well, Hadley assumed that she had lost track of him over the years, he hadn’t exactly been on her ‘radar’ as of late, ”How long do they live?” She asked, finding that the only way to have a coherent and interesting conversation with Evan was to indulge his world of bones and minotaurs. 

Hadley bit down on her lip, knowing that she was perhaps talking more than she normally did. For some reason, she felt it necessary to fill some of the silence that had settled between them pair of them, whereas normally she would have been the one to remain silent. For once, it seemed as if the tables had been turned and she was the one being made uncomfortable. ”Of course, metaphorically. Right?” She agreed, although she wasn’t entirely sure if his statement regarding the cleanliness of humans was directed at her or more at himself. However, she nodded at his intentions with the bone, quite possibly thinking that was the only logical course of action with a bone as large as this, ”Don’t you think it should go to a museum or something?” She questioned, shrugging her shoulders. Honestly she had no idea what people did with skeletons such as these.

Hadley was no stranger to seeing people that were messed up; she saw it when she looked in the mirror every day. She was plagued with her mother’s murder, the anger that she felt for her father, and it manifested itself in her obsessions. Evan, too, seemed on that path...dangerously close to the edge, if there was such a thing. It was then that the dreadful words escaped her lips, and it was out of her power to stop them, even though she knew that she shouldn’t have said such a thing, ”What happened to you?” She breathed, barely above a whisper and matching the tone that he normally took. She didn’t take it back though, made no movement to say something else, just sat there, as if she actually expected poor Evan to answer her.