Fourth Floor: Study Hall

[Wilber Winterbottom]

In close proximity to the library lies the study hall. Whether you are a first year or a seventh year, a Gryffindor or a Slytherin, a boy or a girl, this room is the best place to go for your studying and homework completion needs. If you ever find yourself stuck on something or have no clue what you're doing, you can always ask those who you are studying with for help or the professor that is overseeing the study session.

Scattered around the room are groups of desks that make it perfect for you and your friends to collaboratively work together. Average-sized oil lamps have been strategically placed on the desks to create a calm, comfortable environment. In a neat pile in the centre of the desks are extra quills, bottles of ink, and spare parchment should you need it -- just remember to leave the quills and ink at the table and only use what you need for parchment. Under the windows a long bookshelf containing a copy of textbooks for each class can be found, which you are welcome to use during your time in this room.

[sweetpinkpixie]

Aurora Ackerly.

That was the name of the latest addition to her tutee docket and who she was currently waiting for with stacks of materials dedicated to various subjects laid out in front of her. The name was familiar enough, though the Slytherin was lacking any sort of visual correlation to go with it. After seven terms at Hogwarts, one really would have thought she was more familiar with her fellow students but she kept her circles finite and hadn't felt much of a desire to branch out beyond that which came along naturally.

Pulling a sparkly slate green scrunchie out from her bag, Sage leaned back in her seat and worked on pulling her long box braids up into a messy bun to pass the time. It was probably just about time for her to take them out and give herself an extensive head spa and then maybe it was time for a healthy dose of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and Scalp Treatment to straighten her hair for a bit.

Bun successful, Sage glanced up at the clock and sighed to herself. It really was her own fault that she had arrived so early and was such a stickler for punctuality. Aurora ought to be along soon enough but Sage did have enough time to read a couple more pages or so of The Will, The Word, and the Wand : A Compendium of British Wandlore she had borrowed without permission from dad and thus she pulled that from her bag and began to read.

[Lottiepot]

Aurora had managed to last five years at Hogwarts without having to employ a tutor, a miracle really that she had somehow scraped her way through middling grades and had passed all the appropriate lessons to be able to progress to NEWT level. The problem now being that not only were the lessons about to get harder but she was edging that bit closer to graduation and she wouldn’t be able to ignore the very real possibility that she wouldn’t be good enough to achieve her dream.

Sixth year hadn’t started all that well with distractions in the form of foreign emotions playing on the forefront of her mind that acknowledging Cooper’s idea of finding a tutor at school didn’t seem like a terrible idea anymore. Or at least it would give her an excuse to have to hide herself away (in the LIBRARY, a rarely explored land). No one had mentioned the name of her tutor when she had asked a member of faculty, nor did she put any thought into who it could possibly be other than that it was obviously a seventh year which was probably why the second the sixteen year old turned the corner at the arranged meeting point her face drained of all its colour.

She might’ve attempted an escape plan had she not accidentally walked into an empty desk and made a racket whilst contemplating her next step. Ordinarily she would’ve laughed at herself and swiftly moved on but this time her pale face turned beet red as she wordlessly slipped into the seat opposite.

[sweetpinkpixie]

Sage was deep in a section comparing French wandlore practices to those found here in Britain when the sound of a table scraping its way across the floor disrupted her. Seeing as she had been in the middle of a sentence, a flicker of annoyance furrowed her brow and her jaw set while her head turned towards the source...and found a dainty looking blonde who looked like she was just about to face a Hungarian Horntail by herself without a wand or any other means of defending herself. If this was an indication of how the girl viewed tutoring then the Slytherin sure had her work cut out for herself. Ravenclaw embarrassed that they needed academic assistance, perhaps? Sage supposed she could relate - after all, pride was her worst vice.

"Never mind it. That desk does have the tendency to leap out at anyone who passes by," she assured with more than a bit saucy flair to her voice as she returned her bookmark to her book and returned it to her bag. "I assume you're Aurora then? I wasn't sure what you wanted to focus on so I brought along everything," she inquired as she turned her attention back to the Ravenclaw and was immediately bombarded with intense déjà vu and she was not a fan. Not at all. "Ah, so it's you," Sage acknowledged slowly and with the slightest tilt of the head to one side as she judged considered this girl silently.

[Lottiepot]

Pride gone and a heat filling her cheeks, the Ravenclaw ignored the comment about the desk. It wasn’t like a moment of clumsiness usually elicited such a reaction from her. Aurora hasn’t particularly wanted to enlist the services of a tutor in the first place. Not because she was shy or embarrassed but because her time was often monopolised by all the activities that she insisted on plus socialisation plus somehow squeezing her homework in. Finding the time to be tutored had seemed like an impossible task and yet here she was..

..instantly regretting her decision.

“If by ‘you’ you mean Aurora then yes” she answered quietly, staring down at the blank parchment she had just removed from her bag and laid down in front of her. Losing all ability to form words was rare but there was nothing that she wanted to say at that moment, nor anything she could say to dissipate the tense air between the pair that wouldn’t make it infinitely worse.

“Potions. That’s all I need help with” she replied to Sage’s comment about not knowing what to bring rather defensively. Even if she did need any assistance elsewhere, she would much rather suffer in silence now.

[sweetpinkpixie]

Ah, so this was how they were going to play this situation.

If their paths had crossed under any other circumstances, Sage would be confronting this girl about what had made her look like she was smelling some very potent mooncalf dung and then bolted from that compartment doorway fast than anyone could even utter the word mooncalf. Well, perhaps that wasn't true as there were a handful of other situations where she would have held her tongue but it did not deeter from the point that she was doing so now. "Hmm," she hummed coolly as she finished setting up her spot at the table for tutoring. "It is nice to have a name to go with the face. And not that you asked, but I'm Sage and in spite of things assure you that I am dedicated to helping you improve your scores and confidence in those subjects that require a bit more finesse."

She could check the petty and the judgements, for the most part.

"That's not exactly what I was told but I have no qualms with focusing on Potions," she nodded as she stood and searched her piles for her old notes to use for reference. "Now is it an all encompassing struggle or more theoretical or the brewing process that you feel you struggle with the most?"

[Lottiepot]

Had anyone ever told Sage she was intimidating? it would be pretty obvious by the pale expression on the Ravenclaw’s face who was typically very proud of her eye contact abilities but who had not looked at the Slytherin directly once. Almost like she was a basilisk and Aurora was too scared to move.

A frozen Aurora who did NOT deal well with confrontation so it was a very good job that Sage hadn’t started anything of the sort.. yet. “I know who you are” she tapped her quill on the table in the same rhythm that her leg was bouncing nervously. “I mean I’d been given your name already and assured you were a good tutor” she defended herself quickly lest she take anything to heart and Aurora unintentionally find herself at the receiving end of a hex.

There was a brief frown that flickered onto her face upon being told that the Professors had obviously been speaking behind her back about her poor grades (which weren’t THAT bad). “Potions is the most important to improve if I want to become a creature healer and it’s just that I find it difficult to keep my concentration during the brewing process sometimes or to remember what ingredients do.” So everything. “I’m just kind of.. well.. I’m stupid.” she admitted, eyes mildly watering as she stared down at her desk, a combination of embarrassment and this whole situation she had found herself in.

[sweetpinkpixie]

She had been told this before, yes. In fact, the moment her Sorting had been completed and she had plopped herself down at the Slytherin table. The source of the compliment coming from none other than the very individual that was the source of tension between herself and the Ravenclaw, in fact. Though Solomon had not said it outright, his eyes and posture had been more than enough to relay the message.

Sage's brow arched and irritation flared in her cheeks, turning them a slightly rosy hue, as she resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the tone Aurora was spitting. She couldn't help but think how childish this all felt and had thought that they were both content to ignore the erumpent in the room but apparently she may have been too generous in such assumptions. "And I was being polite by introducing myself," she pointed out coolly while turning her attention to her things on the table to arrange them a bit more or else risk glaring at the blonde. "Thought that would have been better than for me to not introduce myself and risk looking rude and presumptuous instead of professional."

No hexing in the library. Books deserved better than to become causalities.

As Aurora's defensive tone continued, it became increasingly difficult not to roll her eyes but she was also determined to get through this without throwing her own attitude and shade into the scene - if for no other reason than Solomon had assured her that his best friends were cool and great and right now Sage wasn't getting either. Grinning (not literally since she forced her face into a state of harsh stoicness) and bearing it all for now, Sage pulled her Potions texts and old study materials forward and nodded as Aurora explained.

And then she actually rolled her eyes and may have even groaned softly under her breath.

"Listen, I'm not great with the warm and fuzzy kind of encouragement nor am I the sort to default to it soooo this is going to be incredibly direct and blunt," she warned, and from what she had been told this girl and the curly haired one did that plenty enough so Sage was merely making up for the deficient. "If you are going to talk about yourself in such self-defeating ways, then it isn't going to matter how good a tutor I am or how much we go over the material. The fact that you have agreed to tutoring shows you are willing to put n the work to improve but that sort of talk is just someone focusing on the negatives and looking for a reason to make excuses," she said somewhat forcefully as she turned to look at Aurora with a stern look save for her eyes which were softer than her words reflected. "Calling yourself that word isn't going to help at all and struggles don't define your potential. Consider there a "taboo" spell on the word. We aren't using it here because you aren't that, capeesh?"

Sure, she didn't know this girl at all save for name, house, year, some other very surface level information, and that the Slytherin was still ticked about the train but much less so now, but the point still stood.