Quest For A Friend [PV|Finnegan]

House Modron’s common room stretches out into a broad, half-cavernous hall. Tunnels and caverns branch off from the common room; the two largest lead to the dormitories, while smaller passages trail into dead ends, passages blocked by cave-ins, or doorways that seemingly lead to nowhere. Many a first year has ended up lost in search of the bathrooms.
Dark timber beams brace the stone walls, and narrow windows cut into the cliff let in thin streaks of light. The ceiling glows with floating candles, paper lanterns, and strings of tiny enchanted lights draped across the beams.
Fireplaces are built into the stone walls at intervals, each hearth framed by carved mantels cluttered with candles. Seating areas are spread throughout, filled with armchairs sunken with age, sofas lovingly patched to keep usable, sturdy oak tables scarred with initials. Much of the furniture was clearly purchased, brought from home, or maintained by past students.
In a corner of the room sits the Hope Chest, a dark wooden trunk containing lucky relics left by each Modron graduating class. Bronze buttons, a necklace made of cheap plastic, a favourite book; it is a treasure trove of once-beloved lucky charms that were left behind.
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Ilse Van Aalsburg
6th Year Penwick student
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Student, Modron, Sixth Year

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Post by Ilse Van Aalsburg »

Time: 19:23
Date: Nov. 10, 2025


It had been two months since Ilse Van Aalsburg first stepped foot in Penwick School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When she wrote home, she always mentioned how beautiful the place was and how content she was. But in truth, she wasn't. It wasn't easy being the only Dutch student in the whole school, and she found almost every day filled with challenges. While she did get consistent grades, and did well with schoolwork, she found communicating with her peers extraordinarily hard. She had learnt Welsh in the months before arriving at the school, but it was hard learning the language, even though two months passed in a blink of the eye. Apart from the language barrier, Ilse had no friends. Nobody had wanted to approach the Dutch girl for what she was--a foreigner in their eyes, and Ilse hadn't the courage to seek out friends herself. Most unlike her, she would later reflect. The only leisure she had at all was spending weekends with her younger brother, curled up in a corner of the library, or in an empty classroom or on the grounds.

The particular Friday, after she had come back to the Modron quarters, changed, and immediately rushed out to bag a good seat in the common-room. Ilse sunk into one of the plush couches by the merry fireplace. It was Friday, and she knew she had two full day to complete her assignments, so she decided an evening of lounging around doing nothing more than reading, or, making progress in making friends, was an evening not wasted. She watched the flames dance in the pile of wood nested in the fireplace, and sighed, before pulling out her book and began reading. But her eyes didn't follow the words much, and she looked up every-so-often, trying to find a familiar face amongst the chattering students, excited for their weekends.

@Finnegan Connor
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Finnegan Connor
6th Year Penwick student from Cardiff, Wales with a 25.00cm Chestnut and Phoenix Feather wand.
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Student, Floranti, Modron, Sixth Year

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Post by Finnegan Connor »

It had only taken a week or two for Finnegan to strut around the common room like he had been at Penwick for years. The transition from Hogwarts had been a sharp and unexpected one, though he could hardly say he missed his old school much. Except for Quidditch perhaps, but then it had been the very act of dropping out of Quidditch which had allowed him to join as a fifth instead of a fourth year. Summer had been a blur of knuckling down and sucking up knowledge like a sponge, so much so that the actual homework he had been given so far felt like a reprieve.

The only real hurdle had been getting past the statue of the hound and into his new house. Those times he had been denied access, he'd simply resorted to studying in the hallway until he could join in after some other student. Maybe the hound was keeping him out on purpose, because he had not missed a single assignment all year and had made a fair number of new acquaintances because of it.

The common room was starting to fill up by the time he entered, his ears still ringing from his last class. In truth he wanted nothing more than to go to his dormitory and lay down for a while, but there was one 5"10-sized problem with that idea called @Kasimir Damon-Cowles. That boy was the living embodiment of the black reputation House Modron carried and unfortunately happened to be in the same dormitory as him. Which was why he never went to his dormitory until bedtime, when at least a few others would be there too. Better to keep his head down and mouth shut, he thought, which wasn't easy for him to do, but he had learned to recognize the face and shape of capital T Trouble by now.

And so it was that he sank into the sofa opposite van Aalsburg, a slender girl from his class who seemed to prefer sitting at the back and not draw any attention to herself. Three months into the school year, everyone had been happy to oblige. In the wizarding world, reading a book was the equivalent of wearing headphones in the muggle world, the universal signal for 'do not disturb'.

He would have honored that if she hadn't looked up from her book, meeting his gaze by accident perhaps, but meeting it regardless. "What are you reading?" Finnegan asked, not wanting to seem like he had been mindlessly staring at her.

@Ilse Van Aalsburg
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