Open RP: Kate Goes for a Walk

[runkaterun.livejournal.com]

((Following the events of her conversation with Sawyer (which, admittedly, isn't finished yet)))

Kate gets quiet when she's mad.
The normally life-filled sounds of the corridors and stairs and rooms of the subterranian wing of the castle usually filled Kate with a mood of pleasant irony... a silent small joke on the decades and centuries of dark Wizards who had called Slytherin thier home. Evil, she surmised, seemed to prefer silence and brooding contemplation and hidden grottoes where small groups can conspire inconspicuously... but whoever had designed the long corridors and hollow spaces in the bedrock beneath the school had instead turned the entire place into an echo factory.
And normally, she'd love it.

But today, the stairs rising from the dungeons seemed restless to her, too filled with echoes of dripping water and the faraway sounds of footsteps on smooth stones. It drove her a little mad to be surrounded by so much random sound when all she wanted to do was think... to be alone with her thoughts and away from him.

So she climbs quickly, almost jogging as she reaches the hallways of the first floor, breaching quickly into the entrance hall and through the doors onto the grounds. Sitting heavily on the steps, she sets to retying the laces on one of her shoes... but stops almost immediately to just breathe, head propped up on an arm splayed awkwardly across her knees.

Comments

[peter-hegemon.livejournal.com]

Peter had taken to walking the grounds to clear his head. As long as it wasn’t at night he wasn’t reminded of his childhood home, and the fresh air was a welcome relief from the hours he spent in the library, pouring over books in preparation for his first class. He hadn’t realized how used to open air he had become in Ribeirao Preto until he tried to cut himself off from it entirely.

As he was making his way back inside from one of his walks, he noticed a brunette sitting unhappily on the steps. Curious, and ever aware of his need to learn more about the student body, he stopped. Choosing a place on the step far enough away to seem inconspicuous, but close enough to see and here clearly, he sat on the steps and pulled a book out of the bad he was carrying with him. Pretending to read, he peered over the top of his book and watched, waiting to see what would happen.

[peter-hegemon.livejournal.com]

((BTW, Peter is definitely not as good at being subtle as he would like, so feel free to have Kate or any of the other characters playing notice him watching, if you so desire))

[runkaterun.livejournal.com]

Through middle school, Kate had always been the one the mean boys gravitated toward... the kind that pulled her hair when she wasn't paying attenion to them, who threw pencis at the back of her head in class, who whispered nasty things to her and told crude jokes about her mom as she walked home... the sort that didn't know how to deal with hormones and prepubescent love through any means but insitinctual, knuckle-dragging behavior.
It seemed sometimes that she still attracted that kind of guy. Only now, they'd sit down the bar from her and stare at her rack until they were drunk enough to come up and offer to turn her frown upside down. The sort that would get angry and violent if she said no, they couldn't fuck her. The kind that she always ended up spending the night with, only to leave the next morning with thier wallet and thier pride, and no real damage done.

So when the guy started staring at her from behind his book, small warnings immediately went off in her head. Carefully, she didn't let on that she knew, relaxed a little, listened to something one of the two girls who had sat down on either side of her said, waiting for him to approach.

[peter-hegemon.livejournal.com]

((Sorry for the delayed response. Big storm=dead internets))

Peter listened to the conversations the brunette had started. She was another one who didn’t seem to have a problem with unloading her inner troubles on perfect strangers. He wondered if it was something in the water at Hogwarts. Or maybe that was just another part of being ‘normal’ that he didn’t understand.

He didn’t think she had noticed him watching, and so he contented himself with continuing to watch and listen, for the moment. He knew he should approach: collecting information about people was all well and good, but networking was more important. And he would, he told himself. But after he had learned a little more.

[lizzyswan.livejournal.com]

'Kate, dear... do you know him' Elizabeth asked, caustiously. She didn't even no Kate, but the boy seemed intimidating; Elizabeth wasn't usually intimidated by anyone. 'He keeps looking over,' she said, with a slight worry in her voice.

[peter-hegemon.livejournal.com]

Peter cursed inwardly. His observation was apparently not as subtle as he had hoped. He missed being back home, where he had the influence to find out almost anything about anyone of note. He knew how to play that game. He didn’t, apparently, know how to spy. And he certainly didn’t know how to make small conversation with people who weren’t head of states. But he’d have to try, now that he’d been seen. He stood, trying to assume an air of casualness, and walked over to the three girls.

"Hello," he said confidently. "I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation."