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Felixir · 09-29-2017, 12:11 AM

Abey wasn't sure what the worst thing about this whole audition process was, but the part where he had to wait outside for his name to be called was probably WAY UP HIGH ON THE LIST. An anxious person by nature, the concept of auditions - of putting himself out there, centre of attention, opening himself up to be laughed at or rejected or even totally ignored - had turned him into an anxious mess for days. Weeks? MONTHS. YEEEAARRRRSSSS.

... Okay, weeks.

And yet, there he was, because Abey actually had DONE acting before, actually, before Hogwarts. It had just been a local muggle drama club for kids back home, something to build up his confidence before Hogwarts, but he'd loved it all the same. But for the production they'd done back then, the selection process hadn't been nearly as terrifying as proper auditions, and since then... his anxiety had only really worsened. For reasons.

Perhaps a million times while he was waiting, Abey had tried to ditch the auditions, but each time he only got about halfway down the corridor before coming straight back again. Because he DID love acting, it made him feel good and he liked being able to do something and ALSO he never ever ever felt more confident than when he was pretending to be someone else, especially a confident someone else. Or... maybe perhaps that was the only time he ever felt confident... BUT THE POINT WAS that he just... really really didn't want to keep running away from ALL the things that scared him ALL through his life.

Sometimes it was good to run away, like... running from monsters, for example, but when the thing that scared him was only really just a less good part of something he loved to do, and he avoided doing it anyway... maybe in the short term it made him feel more comfortable, but ultimately Abey always ended up feeling upset because he was missing out on good things too.

So, in the end, Abey had stayed, determined to see this through. Determined to at least get through the audition because then at least he could say that he'd done it, even if his voice trembled and his hands shook and he spent every second feeling like he was going to throw up - all of this before the audition had even started.

Until finally, it was time, and Abey - like all the students before him - headed into the Room of Requirement (the appearance of which was almost enough to have him turning tail and running away yet again). Reminding himself over and over again that it would only last for a few minutes before being over, that it would only be the very friendly (and not at all scary) Myers that would be in the room, Abey headed up onto the stage, stood dead centre, and looked at the professor.

........ And just sort of... stood there. What now? What was he supposed to do? ... Just start, right? That... that would make sense. He just needed to... start... talking...

But even as he stood there, the anxiety continued to take over, until it felt less like a wave that was battering him and more like a whirlpool that was dragging him down and drowning him and stopping him from focusing on anything other than how scared he felt and making him feel like he couldn't breathe. Abey tried hard to take deep steadying breaths, and to focus on the contents of the single page of an old script that he had folded up in his pocket (the one from when he had played a PRINCE in his old drama club, the one he had begged his mama to find and send to him so that he might have a familiar scene to audition with) but his mind was going blank and he couldn't remember how it started. He pulled the page out of his pocket, all fumbling fingers, and unfolded it just to try and kickstart his brain, but with his anxiety and the state he was getting himself into, the words were even more of a jumbled mess than usual, all jumping up off of the page of twisting into each other and flashing and fading and hurting his head. In a moment of frustration, he screwed up the page, balling it up in his hands.

The panic was rising, Abey's breathing was getting faster and faster and he didn't know what to do. He could feel his eyes starting to sting with tears and quickly turned his back to Myers so that he wouldn't see if he started to cry.

Now facing the entire wrong way, all Abey could see was the curtain at the back of the stage. Red. Gryffindor red. Abey was a Gryffindor, and Gryffindors were strong, and brave, and they could do all sorts of things, even - especially - the things that scared them. Even when they were terrified and the world was ending and crumbling down around them, or at least when he felt that way. He took several deep breaths, looking at that red curtain, using it to ground himself and to remind himself that it was okay, this was okay.

The urge to just apologise and leave once he had composed himself was still strong, but there was something in Abey that told him to carry on, that little defiant voice that refused to be silenced; the defiant voice that was really actually Abey, determined to break through the anxiety and the fear that was trying to take over.

Just pretend, he told himself. You're not scared of this. You're not scared of anything. You're not Abey. You're a terrible, frightening warlock. Remember? The warlock that used to frighten you when mama told you the story? Well, he doesn't frighten you anymore. That's you... that's who you can be. Confident and arrogant and not worried about a single thing. You can be him, now.

It wasn't the scene he was going to audition with, and as far as Abey knew, it wasn't actually a scene from a play at all, only an old story for children. But it was the only thing he could think of. There wasn't really a lot of speaking in it either so... well........ time to make it up. Of course, that would only show that he couldn't remember the lines if he needed to, and was probably no good for the play, but now all Abey wanted to do was get through the audition, and not run away, and that was what he was going to do.

For just a moment longer, Abey stood where he was, his back to Professor Myers, but in those few seconds, his entire posture changed. Where before he had almost folded in on himself in an attempt to make himself as small as possible, he now straightened out his back, lifted his head high, and pushed back his shoulders. Abey fixed the curtain at the back of the stage with a piercing glare, like he was seeing straight through it.

Except now, he wasn't Abey. Because he wasn't pretending to be a warlock, he was the warlock. The crumpled up paper in his hand was no longer a script, but a heart.

Slowly, he turned back around, at first moving only his upper body, looking back over his shoulder, before following suit with his feet. The intense look on his face almost seemed to darken his features, probably because it was such an unlikely expression for the real Abey to ever make.

"I have brought you down here..." he said, speaking slowly and deliberately, and keeping his eyes fixed on the only other person in the room. "To show you... my greatest treasure." He held out his hands, cupped around the crumpled up 'heart', and looked down at it as he did so, ignoring the persistent hammering of his own very real heart still in his very real chest.

"This..." he continued, still holding out the 'heart', and impulsively moving forward, and placing it on the edge of the stage, before straightening and slowly backing up again, a slight look of distaste on his face. "That... is your weakness." He pointed at his audience, a sudden, almost threatening motion, and held the pose for just a moment... before slowly breaking into a smile, and clutching at his own chest with one hand, where the hammering had not yet slowed. "Without my heart, I am strong. I am not weakened. Nothing can... distract me." Here, he raised his voice suddenly, triumphant and almost aggressive. "I am rich! I am powerful! I have everything that I have ever wanted, that I could ever want."

He fell into a poignant silence - because even while he was acting and pretending and in character, even then, Abey felt a little scared and a little sad, not about his total mess of an audition but at the idea that someone would think of love as bad and weak, would choose to not feel it just so that he could be rich and powerful... and surely it must be not only scary but also sad to see someone like that, even if they didn't feel sad about it at all, which the warlock certainly didn't - and looked straight ahead.

"The one thing..." he said, after a lengthy silence, and held up one finger to illustrate the point he was making. "The one thing I do not have? I am not loved." He did his best to look disgusted, and sneered. "I do not care for love. But my servants... I heard them mocking me, pitying me... they say... they say that the one thing I do not have is the love of another. Of any other." His gaze remained fixed and piercing, perhaps frightening depending on one's perspective, but then a smile crept onto his face.

"But you," his voice became softer as he spoke, and he put his hands behind his back, standing up proudly once more, because his pride was the most important thing here. "You will love me."

He smiled again, but bowed his head slightly, so it might have looked sinister, if he managed to do it right.

"And then I will have everything."

Aaaaaaaand....... scene?

As Abey had basically been making the whole thing up as he'd been going along (difficult especially when he couldn't remember a lot of the details in the first place and had probably got the whole thing wrong) he supposed it was really up to him when the scene ended, and there seemed as good a place as any.

At the merest thought that it could finally be over, Abey instantly broke character, and moved his hands so that he was back to wringing them in front of his chest again. The nerves felt like they were flooding back, but Abey knew, really, that they probably had never really properly gone away. He'd continued to feel totally nauseous throughout the entire thing.

"Um..." His voice trembled slightly, but then it had done so for the first half of his audition too, seeing as it wasn't really something he was able to just talk himself out of very easily. "That wasn't, um... really from a play, but I... um... It's Babbitty Rabbitty too so, I... I don't know, I just sort of....... panicked....... I'm sorry."

But you know what? Even though he still felt anxious and shaky and sick and EVERYTHING... Abey felt... a million times better, because he had done the audition, he hadn't run away or anything.

Except for right now. He was absolutely running away right now.

"OkaygottagoProfessorbye."

And then he was gone, leaping down and sprinting for the door, forgetting the balled up script page and leaving it abandoned at the edge of the stage.

09-29-2017, 12:11 AM	#23 (permalink)
Felixir Forum Manager Book Club Mod Alley Proprietor Banshee Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Posts: 50,157 Hogwarts RPG Name: Charlie Upstead Gryffindor Fifth Year Hogwarts RPG Name: Aurelio Kaiser Slytherin Third Year Hogwarts RPG Name: Alexei Petrov Slytherin First Year Hogwarts RPG Name: Yves Flamel Slytherin Sixth Year Hogwarts RPG Name: Achilles Zacharias Ravenclaw Third Year Diagon Alley Proprietor: Ezekiel Ransom-Kruus Ollivanders x12 x12	Audition Lovely™ \| Captain Hurted \| Ariana's Bane \| Resident Antagonist \| Unparalleled Delight Abey wasn't sure what the worst thing about this whole audition process was, but the part where he had to wait outside for his name to be called was probably WAY UP HIGH ON THE LIST. An anxious person by nature, the concept of auditions - of putting himself out there, centre of attention, opening himself up to be laughed at or rejected or even totally ignored - had turned him into an anxious mess for days. Weeks? MONTHS. YEEEAARRRRSSSS. ... Okay, weeks. And yet, there he was, because Abey actually had DONE acting before, actually, before Hogwarts. It had just been a local muggle drama club for kids back home, something to build up his confidence before Hogwarts, but he'd loved it all the same. But for the production they'd done back then, the selection process hadn't been nearly as terrifying as proper auditions, and since then... his anxiety had only really worsened. For reasons. Perhaps a million times while he was waiting, Abey had tried to ditch the auditions, but each time he only got about halfway down the corridor before coming straight back again. Because he DID love acting, it made him feel good and he liked being able to do something and ALSO he never ever ever felt more confident than when he was pretending to be someone else, especially a confident someone else. Or... maybe perhaps that was the only time he ever felt confident... BUT THE POINT WAS that he just... really really didn't want to keep running away from ALL the things that scared him ALL through his life. Sometimes it was good to run away, like... running from monsters, for example, but when the thing that scared him was only really just a less good part of something he loved to do, and he avoided doing it anyway... maybe in the short term it made him feel more comfortable, but ultimately Abey always ended up feeling upset because he was missing out on good things too. So, in the end, Abey had stayed, determined to see this through. Determined to at least get through the audition because then at least he could say that he'd done it, even if his voice trembled and his hands shook and he spent every second feeling like he was going to throw up - all of this before the audition had even started. Until finally, it was time, and Abey - like all the students before him - headed into the Room of Requirement (the appearance of which was almost enough to have him turning tail and running away yet again). Reminding himself over and over again that it would only last for a few minutes before being over, that it would only be the very friendly (and not at all scary) Myers that would be in the room, Abey headed up onto the stage, stood dead centre, and looked at the professor. ........ And just sort of... stood there. What now? What was he supposed to do? ... Just start, right? That... that would make sense. He just needed to... start... talking... But even as he stood there, the anxiety continued to take over, until it felt less like a wave that was battering him and more like a whirlpool that was dragging him down and drowning him and stopping him from focusing on anything other than how scared he felt and making him feel like he couldn't breathe. Abey tried hard to take deep steadying breaths, and to focus on the contents of the single page of an old script that he had folded up in his pocket (the one from when he had played a PRINCE in his old drama club, the one he had begged his mama to find and send to him so that he might have a familiar scene to audition with) but his mind was going blank and he couldn't remember how it started. He pulled the page out of his pocket, all fumbling fingers, and unfolded it just to try and kickstart his brain, but with his anxiety and the state he was getting himself into, the words were even more of a jumbled mess than usual, all jumping up off of the page of twisting into each other and flashing and fading and hurting his head. In a moment of frustration, he screwed up the page, balling it up in his hands. The panic was rising, Abey's breathing was getting faster and faster and he didn't know what to do. He could feel his eyes starting to sting with tears and quickly turned his back to Myers so that he wouldn't see if he started to cry. Now facing the entire wrong way, all Abey could see was the curtain at the back of the stage. Red. Gryffindor red. Abey was a Gryffindor, and Gryffindors were strong, and brave, and they could do all sorts of things, even - especially - the things that scared them. Even when they were terrified and the world was ending and crumbling down around them, or at least when he felt that way. He took several deep breaths, looking at that red curtain, using it to ground himself and to remind himself that it was okay, this was okay. The urge to just apologise and leave once he had composed himself was still strong, but there was something in Abey that told him to carry on, that little defiant voice that refused to be silenced; the defiant voice that was really actually Abey, determined to break through the anxiety and the fear that was trying to take over. Just pretend, he told himself. You're not scared of this. You're not scared of anything. You're not Abey. You're a terrible, frightening warlock. Remember? The warlock that used to frighten you when mama told you the story? Well, he doesn't frighten you anymore. That's you... that's who you can be. Confident and arrogant and not worried about a single thing. You can be him, now. It wasn't the scene he was going to audition with, and as far as Abey knew, it wasn't actually a scene from a play at all, only an old story for children. But it was the only thing he could think of. There wasn't really a lot of speaking in it either so... well........ time to make it up. Of course, that would only show that he couldn't remember the lines if he needed to, and was probably no good for the play, but now all Abey wanted to do was get through the audition, and not run away, and that was what he was going to do. For just a moment longer, Abey stood where he was, his back to Professor Myers, but in those few seconds, his entire posture changed. Where before he had almost folded in on himself in an attempt to make himself as small as possible, he now straightened out his back, lifted his head high, and pushed back his shoulders. Abey fixed the curtain at the back of the stage with a piercing glare, like he was seeing straight through it. Except now, he wasn't Abey. Because he wasn't pretending to be a warlock, he was the warlock. The crumpled up paper in his hand was no longer a script, but a heart. Slowly, he turned back around, at first moving only his upper body, looking back over his shoulder, before following suit with his feet. The intense look on his face almost seemed to darken his features, probably because it was such an unlikely expression for the real Abey to ever make. "I have brought you down here..." he said, speaking slowly and deliberately, and keeping his eyes fixed on the only other person in the room. "To show you... my greatest treasure." He held out his hands, cupped around the crumpled up 'heart', and looked down at it as he did so, ignoring the persistent hammering of his own very real heart still in his very real chest. "This..." he continued, still holding out the 'heart', and impulsively moving forward, and placing it on the edge of the stage, before straightening and slowly backing up again, a slight look of distaste on his face. "That... is your weakness." He pointed at his audience, a sudden, almost threatening motion, and held the pose for just a moment... before slowly breaking into a smile, and clutching at his own chest with one hand, where the hammering had not yet slowed. "Without my heart, I am strong. I am not weakened. Nothing can... distract me." Here, he raised his voice suddenly, triumphant and almost aggressive. "I am rich! I am powerful! I have everything that I have ever wanted, that I could ever want." He fell into a poignant silence - because even while he was acting and pretending and in character, even then, Abey felt a little scared and a little sad, not about his total mess of an audition but at the idea that someone would think of love as bad and weak, would choose to not feel it just so that he could be rich and powerful... and surely it must be not only scary but also sad to see someone like that, even if they didn't feel sad about it at all, which the warlock certainly didn't - and looked straight ahead. "The one thing..." he said, after a lengthy silence, and held up one finger to illustrate the point he was making. "The one thing I do not have? I am not loved." He did his best to look disgusted, and sneered. "I do not care for love. But my servants... I heard them mocking me, pitying me... they say... they say that the one thing I do not have is the love of another. Of any other." His gaze remained fixed and piercing, perhaps frightening depending on one's perspective, but then a smile crept onto his face. "But you," his voice became softer as he spoke, and he put his hands behind his back, standing up proudly once more, because his pride was the most important thing here. "You will love me." He smiled again, but bowed his head slightly, so it might have looked sinister, if he managed to do it right. "And then I will have everything." Aaaaaaaand....... scene? As Abey had basically been making the whole thing up as he'd been going along (difficult especially when he couldn't remember a lot of the details in the first place and had probably got the whole thing wrong) he supposed it was really up to him when the scene ended, and there seemed as good a place as any. At the merest thought that it could finally be over, Abey instantly broke character, and moved his hands so that he was back to wringing them in front of his chest again. The nerves felt like they were flooding back, but Abey knew, really, that they probably had never really properly gone away. He'd continued to feel totally nauseous throughout the entire thing. "Um..." His voice trembled slightly, but then it had done so for the first half of his audition too, seeing as it wasn't really something he was able to just talk himself out of very easily. "That wasn't, um... really from a play, but I... um... It's Babbitty Rabbitty too so, I... I don't know, I just sort of....... panicked....... I'm sorry." But you know what? Even though he still felt anxious and shaky and sick and EVERYTHING... Abey felt... a million times better, because he had done the audition, he hadn't run away or anything. Except for right now. He was absolutely running away right now. "OkaygottagoProfessorbye." And then he was gone, leaping down and sprinting for the door, forgetting the balled up script page and leaving it abandoned at the edge of the stage. __________________ Days of Potter 2023:___________________________ Which Bertie Botts Flavour Are You? You are Chocolate!