#calypso.write

[opes-magnas]

『dear youth,』- Part 01

Welcome to the first part very unplanned fanfiction (?) series, ‘dear youth,’  that we are definitely writing to get rid of our writers’ block. A part of this series will be released everytime we’re not at our best, or want portray some of our concerns, or just want to give our readers and ourselves a light read. Enjoy!

i.

The room glowed in a comforting deep orange. Eleanor Williams was softly caressing the spine of a book about Jupiter's moons in her grasp as she sat in a cozy corner alongside her two best friends, who like wise had their noses deeply buried in their books. The Slytherin observed as one was in confusion, devastated, distraught even, as he gazed intently into his copy of 'The Dream Oracle'. Divination gave James O'Carroll a massive headache with a cherry on top, and right now, he looked as miserable as his grades. Eleanor then shifted her eyes to the other one, Althaea Farley, who look quite miserable as well. The poor pure blood was stuck trying to understand the magic of the muggles- about something they called the Internet. Althaea's face looked as blue as her uniform. Eleanor was sure she was on the verge of dropping Muggle Studies as an elective (she tried to convince her earlier, but Althaea would not listen). A small smile appeared on her face as she recalled the incident that took place a few days ago.

'Ella! You've got to help me, please!', Althaea was clutching onto Eleanor's shoulders, fingers digging deep into her collar bones. Eleanor saw this day coming, for it was an inescapable trap - one that all humans, magical or not were fated to fall into. 'I gave you access to the Internet, what do you want now?!', The muggle-born said as her mouth perked up into a smug smile, knowing all too well where this was going. 'You've got to tell me the name of this man in this organisation called K-Pop!'

There it was.

To clear all things up, Eleanor was not a hardcore fan of the genre, but found herself bopping to the songs once in a while. And as it took the muggle world infectiously, the wizard was likely to follow and being the only muggle-born in her circle, Eleanor knew she had to deal with a crazy Althaea who she opined behaved very unwisely for a Ravenclaw. The system was flawed, huh. Now, she had a picture of a random man in slick black hair shoved up in her face. 'I MADE A COPY OF HIS FACE USING A FREAKY MACHINE.'

'His name is Na Jaemin. And you used a printer.', she said. Althaea suddenly stopped in her tracks. Her eyes stared around the edge of her paper and she  mumbled the word 'Printer' over and over. That's how she learnt new things. Her eyes found focus again and she stared into Eleanor's eyes and said in all seriousness -

'His smile does wonders on my stress.'

Eleanor couldn't wait to get herself out of that conversation. 'Oh yeah, it has magical properties.'

'YOU'RE TELLING ME HE'S A WIZARD?!', Althaea's eyes burned with curiosity.

Big mistake. Gosh Ella knew she conjured up a demon for herself by letting Althaea discover the Internet.

'Ella, Ella!' Eleanor was snapped back to the familiar corner in the library. She found her eyes fixated on Althaea, the smile she had earlier intact.  Discomfort evident in Althaea's face. Her fingers were smudged with ink from all the writing she was doing, a small well forming into her fingers from holding her quill for too long. She finally decided to break the silence after feeling a stare coming in her way. 'I almost thought you were Peter.', she said, remembering the underclassman who was very sappily head over heels for her. If it weren't for his crappy personality, she would've found him cute.

'You were smiling creepily while staring at me, um, for about three minutes now.', she said looking at Eleanor for an answer.

'Creepy? I was clearly threatening you.', Eleanor said, trying to explain herself in a way that didn't make her seem like she was an idiot.

'Uh huh, whatever you say Ella.', Althaea said as she went back to writing her essay with misery. Yeah, that was an idiotic move, Eleanor realised. She decided to finished reading up about Europa. Her O.W.Ls were almost here in a few months, and as much as she hated studying, she wanted to do her best to become an Auror.

'Na Jaemin's smile is cute. Her best friend's smile is creepy. Gosh.', she muttered before melting into the pages of her textbook.

ii.

James, at this point, was just considering bullshitting through Divination.

He had already dropped out on Ancient Runes, and knew this was his last straw. And if you can't succeed well in something, might as well make it fun for the worthwhile. He remembered how Peter's friend Justin Brown had it worse. The Gryffindor was letting Peter off for his illegal Galleon-to-Muggle money business with a warning, when he found out that the poor 4th year could barely keep up with Divination, Transfiguration and History of Magic. Imagine being that worse off.

Oh wait, he was last year.

'I cannot believe you don't know the wand movements for these charms!', Eleanor chuckled. James was frustrated. He decided to pay attention in Defence Against the Dark Arts for once, and Charms completely slipped past his mind. 'Shh!', James pressed a finger on his lips. 'Don't let Thaea listen! She'll never quit otherwise. Can't you just help me? James was sure of the chaos he would bring upon himself if he ever told Althaea. The endless scrolls of essays, memory cards, being locked up in the library for hours, and perhaps the worst thing - an extremely stressed Althaea, which lead to further worse consequences than what the former listed would do on his free time.

'Alright, alright. I'll help you.'

James sighed in relief. Hopefully he'll pass this year. This year was barely anything. Next year, he'd face the O.W.Ls that would shape his entire future. And he would do anything to make sure that future didn't involve him on the streets.

///---

'How do you not know the locking spell?!', Eleanor said exasperatedly. It'd been almost two hours since the pair sat down in the Gryffindor common room. James was sat down on the floor by the couch facing the fireplace, eyes closed as he tried to recall the spell he learnt last week. The wand gripped in his left hand had barely produced any sparks the whole time.

'You know, you sound like Althaea right now.', James clicked his tongue. 'This is just too confusing to remember! Why do the spells have to be in Latin?! What happened to those rhymes?!'

Eleanor closed the book in her grasp and placed a hand on James' shoulder. She pat his back as she tried to think of words to comfort him. 'There's a reason 'buttock' shouldn't be used in the same sentence as 'lock'.', she said after a thought.

'That doesn't even make sense!'

'No no, you don't understand, I'm connecting the dots. This is why spells mustn't rhyme.', Eleanor said as she joined her fingers together.

'You're not connecting shit.'

'I've connected them.'

James stared into his friends eyes before he broke into a hysteria. He grabbed his tummy, and turned to his sides. Eleanor was actually surprised to see his eyes brim up with tears. Was it really that funny? Maybe her best friend was going insane.

'I'm a screw-up.', James stated. 'Even you're sick of me.' Something dropped in Ella's stomach. It wasn't laughter after all. 'James-', she started.

'Why's James crying?'

And when I tell you James squealed. The Gryffindor turned away immediately, wiping his tears away. Ella was too shocked to respond. She was torn between respecting James' wishes and genuinely trying to help him, which included having to tell Althaea about him. She chose the latter.

'He's afraid he's going to fail this year.', she began in a small voice. 'Can't get charms right.'

'Ella! I told you not to tell!', James croaked out. 'Thaea, I'm fine, you don't need to worry.', he got up from the floor with a sigh. His ears were a deep red from crying. And embarrassment.

'Wow James, Do you think of me as a person who's just not going to worry? Why didn't you come for help? I thought we were friends.', Althaea stated.

'We are, but you're going to worry and stuff me with books! And then you'll start talking about how unprepared you are, how you barely do any studying in the hours you're at the library and make me feel worse, and a thousand times more unprepared!', James couldn't control his thoughts anymore.

'Oh James! I'm sorry I make you feel that way,', Althaea said, blood rising to her cheeks out of embarrassment. 'I can always change my teaching methods! Come on, I'll help you out.', Althaea tried to reason. She settled down on the couch by the fireplace and opened the textbook Eleanor had previously abandoned.

'Well? Come on.'

////----

'OK James, you're actually doing quite well! Now tell me what the Box Blasting Charm is.' It was weird to see Eleanor be this helpful to anybody, and it made James' heart utterly thankful. But that didn't quite mean he knew the spell of course. James' eyes shifted to see Althaea gazing over in expectation.

What was that darn spell?

Althaea stood up suddenly and cleared her voice.'Ayo, Ay, this one for the boys with the boomin'...'

James and Eleanor could do nothing but stare in silence. Althaea Farley? Muggle Music? Nicki Minaj? Please, this was not her. This was the demon Eleanor unleashed.

'FINISH THE LYRIC BITCH'

'Sy-system.', James was still in quite in shock. 'System, system, Cistem Aperio! That's the box blasting charm!', he continued with a smile creeping in from both sides. He got the spell right!

'There ya go!', Althaea exclaimed. Eleanor on the other hand, was thrown into a fit of laughter. Her high-pitched cackle rang through the walls of the common room and made up for the traumatic moment the trio had just witnessed.

James was sure he'd pass that year.

And back from his flashback, James scurried on with his essay. He was supposed to write an interpretation of his dream for Divination, mostly because Professor Trelawney seemed awfully serious about failing him that semester.

'What do you reckon me becoming Head Boy in my dream means?', he nudged Althaea, just wondering if he'd get an actual response for once. She was writing down another essay for Muggle studies. Never the quitter, James thought. Althaea turned her head around to face James. 'Doom.', she deadpanned.

'You're probably right.', James nodded as he wrote it down in his essay. 'Doomsday at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,', he whispered, 'for all the students realise the facial prowess of James O'Carroll.' Thea chose ignorance. Eleanor rolled her eyes. 'Why am I your friend again?', she asked.

'That's not a question related to studying, and therefore I'm not obligated to answer that.', James replied as he scribbled down more praises about himself on the parchment. Hey, he did say he was going to bullshit through the subject.

'Who said we're not allowed to ask questions not related to books here?', Eleanor asked, 'I should be allowed to ask whatever I wish.'

'This is a library, the realm of the books and the smart ones. We'd seem like idiots if we spoke of puny friend stuff!'

'I don't think you have to worry about that, you seem like an idiot either way.', Althaea interrupted whilst refilling her quill with more ink before getting back to writing her essay. 'Good one, Thaea!', Eleanor wheezed.  

'You too, Williams.'

///////-------

if you’ve read till here, hi i love you <3 tell us what you think of this nonsense hehe

general writing taglist (ask to be added / removed!): @kaavijournals (hbd sweetie <3), @hazelandsunshine, @47crayons, @artbyeloquent​, @writing-is-a-martial-art​, @the-writing-avocado​, @shinesundark​ 

(also please tell us if you do not want to be tagged in this series as it’s halfway between an og series and fanfiction!)