Roar, Gnash, Roll and Claw {Open}

[errinailishe]

Plip. Plip. Plip. Plip.

There is absolutely nothing wrong in taking advantage of the absence of others. After all, this sort of thing happens frequently enough. Burglars do it; Hermits do it; Teenagers are notorious for doing so. But what about those of us who have difficulty with such an absence? The lone sheep is more easily picked off by the hungry wolf; There is no existing ‘I’ in ‘Team’; The actor cannot succeed without an audience. There are those who thrive when unaccompanied, but there are also those who flounder. So what can a lonesome, dependant-on-the-company-of-others do when faced with this absence?

Plip. Plip.

Outside it was pouring, inside it was a freezing and upon one of the luscious couches in the Gryffindor common room, a certain fifth year was beginning to get antsy. First of all, where was everybody? And second, well, where was everybody? She couldn’t quite remember the last time she had seen the commons to void of living human creatures. Certainly there was a cat or two lurking about, chasing shadows and mewing from one of the dorm staircases, but felines were hardly worthwhile company. They didn’t exactly speak in a comprehensible language made of syllables and sentences, complete with syntax and expression. They also didn’t truly listen when you tried to read to them either. Sure, their ears could perk this way and that, but their attention was always on something invisible to human senses. What’s more, this particular fifteen year old wasn’t partial to those of the animal persuasion. That is to say, those that weren’t human, or even slightly similar.

Plip. Plip. Plip. Plip.

Beside the couch, on a dark, wooden end-table, sat an half empty glass on water which the girl was dipping her index finger into. She would then slowly remove it, letting the accumulated droplets fall, one by one, back into the glass. It was fidgety thing to do, but she couldn’t help it. It was rather difficult to concentrate on not concentrating on how there was no one left in the common room. She could not say that she liked it, not at all, but at least she had something to do. In her lap rested a slim, hardcover book with a large, colourful picture on the cover. It was very obviously a children’s book and Errin Ailishe was doing an excellent job at pretending to be engrossed in it. The crack in its spine was testament to the amount of times it had been opened and read. It was a rather clever book really, or perhaps it was more accurate to claim that the author had been clever.

It was called Where The Wild Things Are and while it had been originally meant for wizard children, it hadn’t quite sold as well as the author had hoped and so he edited a few things, drew pictures that wouldn’t move, and tried selling it to a muggle publisher. It went without saying that the muggles took to it like a fawn to a salt lick. Of course, as a storybook for the wizarding community, it wasn’t especially interesting. It involved the usual plot of a misbehaving boy sent to his room, who then creates his own world with fantastic monsters who bow to him like a king. Eventually he gets bored and charms his room back to how it was originally, without large, leafy trees or terrible monsters. In the wizarding world, such things were possible, so the story wasn’t really all that imaginative. As for the drawings, also created by the author, they did move, just not as vividly as most other children’s storybooks. It was, quite frankly, the work of an amateur wizard-author, and obviously not impressive. These exact same reasons were the cause of its extreme popularity on the muggle side of the spectrum.

Errin enjoyed it mostly because she could relate to Max, the protagonist. So what if it was a book meant for children, for muggle children at that. Max was ready to look at life from a different perspective and when that perspective got tiresome, he had no problem returning to normal. Secretly, the fifth year had plotted out a sequel to the book, in which Max misbehaves in a different way, creating a different world and sticking with it for a longer while. It was a great way to get her mind off the empty common room and the fact that she was still alone. However, she had read through the book already twice in that one sitting, and was growing tired herself. She reached for the glass of water on the end table, placing it to her lips, and drank down the entire thing. Running the back of her hand across her mouth, she replaced the glass and removed the book from her lap in time to hear the familiar sounds of someone attempting entry to the Gryffindor common room. For one reason or another, she leapt onto her feet, onto the cushions of the couch and faced the entranceway.

”And now,” she cried. ”Let the wild rumpus start!”