On yet another one of her little strolls on the grounds surrounding the castle, Olly had made her way back to the front gate again. She looked up at one of the boars on the pillar she was standing in front of. What was it with those boars? And they were winged too. She would have to read up on that some time. Because that seemed just really impractical in her eyes. Winged boars. Weren't they way too big to be able to fly? And not exactly aerodynamic either. So why would a boar wants wings? She could only assume it was a symbol for something. A metaphor of some sort.

She would not be passing this part of the grounds when going running in the morning, though.

It was a dead end. Obviously. The path only led to the gate. And she couldn't exactly get past it. So she would have to turn back around. Therefore, no. She wouldn't be visiting the Front Gate again anytime soon. Unless they were leaving the grounds. Which wasn't going to happen anytime soon, either probably. Siiigh. Those boars though. She really was kind of curious about them now. Had they always been there?

Finally locating the grounds - you know, maybe she would go and speak to the headmistress about moving to Hufflepuff. It seemed so much more accessible - Charlie put exploring in front of sketching and slid her pencil behind her ear. She didn't follow the path for long before she cut across the grass, and pillars in the distance caught her eye. Maybe there was something sketchable there? Or maybe there was more explory things to do in that direction.

Altering her step slightly, Charlie made her way towards it, only to see a girl turning around as she neared it. "Is there anything that way?" Approaching the girl, Charlie indicated the gates with her head. She thought it would be best to ask. Just incase there was nothing and she made a pointless trip.

And looked like a fool. The pillars were totally sketchable, though.

Rather lost in her thoughts, Olly was slowly making her way back up the path to go back inside. Or at least that had been the plan. However all of a sudden there was somebody talking to her. Asking her a question. Why did people here think she was the person to ask about what was where in Hogwarts? Or anything really. Why did they think talking to her at all was a good idea. She definitely didn't think so.

Raising her eyebrows at the girl for a moment, Olly glanced behind her over her shoulder. "Boars. There are boars." Was her final answer which she gave with a shrug of her shoulders, looking back at the girl indifferently. Anything else? Could she walk past the girl and back into the castle now? Olly regarded the girl for a few seconds silently before she started moving again, clearly trying to end the conversation with that.

Charlie's brow wrinkled as the girl started moving again, and it took a few moments for her to become animated again. When she did, she turned, sped up her pace, and caught up to the girl. "Winged boars," she corrected, almost automatically. "Possibly a reference to the less prefered form of Chrysaor, from Ancient Greek and Roman mythology, although it is possible that there is another meaning behind the creature." She would have to look it up in more depth when she got back to the castle and chanced a eight sickle entry to the library. Maybe one of the professors would know, even.

BUT less of being a know-it-all. Maybe she was in the right house after all. "What I meant was is there anywhere to go down this end of the grounds, or is it just a dead end?" And the girl had come from that direction so she should totally know. Or maybe Charlie just didn't recognise where she wasn't wanted.

Olly briefly considered quickening her pace when she realized the other girl was following her. However, in the end she simply stopped to stare at her. WINGED boars. "Why did you ask me if you know already?" She said, narrowing her eyes at the girl in obvious irritation. Like, it wasn't enough for her to ask her a question. No, she'd asked her a question she already knew the answer to.

What was it with girls at this school?

So not paying attention to her speculation on why the boars were there okay she totally was but shh, Olly was about to simply walk off, not really sure what she was doing here anyway. The other girl didn't look like she needed a second person to engage in a conversation anyway. Plus, Olly really had better things to do. Oh but then there was another question directed at her. "If you want to leave, then yes there is." She said quite cryptically with a small smirk playing around her lips.

Was that it? Could she go now?

"I asked you because I meant something else. But that's my fault." You know, for being utterly confusing and not specific enough, evidently. Charlie frowned at the irritated expression on the girls face, inwardly asking whether many people were like this. Or was she herself just an irritating character? So being homeschooled she hadn't known many people, but her sisters friends had seemed to like her. But maybe they were all strange, and just put up with her.

Noticing that she was about to walk off, again, Charlie tried to keep pace with the girl, rather than having to catch her up again. "So, that's only the exit, right? And we're not supposed to leave except for scheduled Hogsmead trips, and ends of term." She was fully aware that she was getting on the girls nerves, but really couldn't understand her problem.

And she wanted to know if there was anything past there.

Olly simply nodded in reply to the girl's Apology. Really, what else was she supposed to say? Yeah? You're right? It had been her fault for phrasing the question weirdly in the first place so there. Plus, Olly REALLY didn't want to prolong this conversatioN any more. Actually, she hadn't wanted to HAVE this conversation in the first place so whatever. Not saying anything was probably a good way to END it, yeah? It was definitely a start.

UGH! Okay, so the giRl was STILL there. And STILL talking. Brilliant.

Sighing Olly glanced back over her shoulder again as if she needed to consider the girl's question before answering. Which she didn't. She just wanted to Make the girl wait a little. For absolutely no reason at all. Just because. "Yeah." She finally said, her eyes on the girl again. "That's what I hEard too." About the leaving. Though, something the girl haD said caught her attention. "D'you know when the first Hogsmeade weekend is?" Since they were talking and all, she could just find out something for herself too. So thAt this conversation wasn't a total waste and all.

Charlie, determined to prove that she wasn't as horrible as this girl seemed to believe, was going about it in the most irritating way possible. She fell into step beside the girl, and continued to try to keep it up as she walked. What could she have possibly done to annoy her so much? Charlie honestly couldn't answer.

"What if you just want to leave? Like, if you just want to get out?" Charlie wasn't saying she was going to want to leave and drop out of Hogwarts, but what if she didn't like it, or she got too homesick? Were they allowed to leave then? Or were the gates just... locked? What if they couldn't escape? Okay, so maybe escape was the wrong word, but STILL. Anyway. "Erm," she titled her head to one side, looking the girl in the eye. "I think it's soon. Maybe next weekend?" That sounded right, she thought back to the sign she'd read in the Common Room, inwardly glad that the girl had asked her a question. She was breaking her down! Now she'd think that Charlie was super helpful and stuff.

Want to get out? Olly threw the other girl a curious look then, did not however slow down, however. "Where would you go?" Because THAT was the real question wasn't it? Even if it was possible to get out the castle, it wasn't like there were a lot of places you could go, right? Huh. Well, there was Hogsmeade. But that was just the OBVIOUS place to go and they'd find you right away. Because if you left they'd come looking, right?

The school was sort of responsible for you, yeah?

Oh, but Hogsmeade. Olly didn't even know WHY she'd asked the girl about the Hogsmeade weekend. They did have a sign in their Common Room somewhere and she could have just looked there. Or asked Elodie or something. But no, she'd had to go ahead and prolong the conversation unnecessarily. Great, just great, Olly, well done. "Mhm." She hummed vaguely in reply, her eyes back on what was ahead of her. Not the girl next to her. Olly didn't even know what she wanted to do in Hogsmeade anyway.

"I don't know," Charlie mumbled under her breath, looking away from the girl. "Home, maybe?" And by home she totally meant Poland: there was no way that she was going back to her father and his lovey-dovey girlfriend and their perfect life in Leicestershire any time soon. She'd rather...

Well, she'd rather stay here.

Even though she WASN'T homesick. Nu uh. Lies.

The fact that the girl had asked about Hogsmead was taken by Charlie as a sign that she was interested in going there, which made Charlie feel more positive, and like the girl was not hating her anymore. Maybe even warming to her? That would make her feel better, in all honesty. "Do you know what there is in Hogsmead?" Apart from the sweetshop her father had warned her to not spend too much money at.

Setting down the telescope one the ground (gently, of course), Adi proceeded to set it up. He could hardly wait to get started on locating the constellations, stars and planets Professor Airey had listed. In addition, he also had his star chart.

"Time to get started!'' He decided to get started with Andromeda since it was first on the list. The little badger consulted his star chart because he obviously needed it to find the constellation. And so the search began.

Adi moved the telescope around, checking in the direction the star chart indicated. He could see various other objects in the sky but he paid no attention to them for the moment. Andromeda was most important right now.

Finally-

"Found it!'' Adi double checked. Yep. The star chart confirmed it was indeed Andromeda.

Time to get looking... It shouldn't be that hard, right?

Seeting down the telescope onto the ground Nerida set it up. It would be so cool to find one of those constellations, stars, and the planets! She had the list of the five stuck in her pocket. And was ready to find which ever one come first.

She decided to first see if she could find the star. Since it was first.... That made sense...
"Andromeda...Where are you?" She moved the telescope around checking slowly and carefully... There were a lot of stuff in the sky.

Continuing to move the telescope around she spotted something that could be Andromeda... Not sure, she started to rummage through her bag looking for her star chart... She had put it in here right? Finally she found it pulling it out she smiled, it was!

"Yes!! Found it!'' Nerida said after double checking to see if it was really the star. Yep it was, Andromeda.

It was a nice night. Yes it was. For what, one might wonder. To stargaze.

Anya Phillips, finally having some time to herself, grabbed her telescope and decided to get started on her celestial body scavenger hung project thing. She set it up near the front gate and looked up. Now... what could she find today...?

She gazed through the lens before...

"Andromeda." she whispered under her breath. Better known as the Chained Lady.

She smiled at her discovery and continued to look through to see what she could find. After a few more minutes of quiet stargazing, she packed up her things and headed back to the castle.

Stargazing. All right, she could do this. There was nothing to it really, right? Well...nothing except a lot of things. Like accounting for the slow rotation of the earth. And knowing where to even begin to look. Luckily for that part at least, she could use her textbook. She had taken down some notes on the types of constellations and other amazing things she could see in the sky at this time of night, and in this season, and in her location, and she found that Andromeda was one.

She set up her telescope and aimed it at the sky. So she was looking for something galaxy-ish....right? That meant, spiraly and super sparkly...if you were closer anyway, which she sort of was since she had this handy dandy...

Oh! she exclaimed to herself when she saw something that looked like it could it. She fine tuned the focus on her telescope and brought it in a bit clearer. She checked her text a few times just to be sure, but she was about 80...90% sure that this was what she was looking for. She marked down Andromeda in her notebook and looked at it a bit longer before she packed up.

Ooooh, she had made the girl feel uncomfortable. Smiiiirk. Aw, she wanted to go home? "Oh but Hogwarts is home, no?" There was a hint of sarcasm accompanying her tone, as Olly first looked at the other girl to see her reaction before allowing her eyes to drift off to a random tree they were passing. At least that's what everyone was saying right? Olly herself didn't completely feel 'like home' yet but whatever.

That would come soon.

Or not.

Hogsmeade. Somehow they had already exhausted that topic of conversation. At least in Olly's opinion. Mainly because it seemed like the other girl had absolutely no idea about it either. So she'd have to ask Elodie later or something. That would definitely be a more...fruitful talk. "Shops." She replied vaguely with a shrug of her shoulders. That sounded plausible, right? Probably. Yeah.

Adrienne smiled as she looked up at the sky through her telescope. She was beginning to get the hang of this, this stargazing thing, and she had to admit it was pretty relaxing. And interesting; she loved reading myths and connecting them to the constellations that she saw in the sky. Although, she had to admit that most of the constellations up there didn’t look anything like what they were ‘supposed’ to look like. Still, it was fun.

Now she was supposed to be looking for... Andromeda, right? Wasn’t that supposed to be a chained woman? Adrienne shook her head. How the Greeks managed to see all of these things in the stars was beyond her. It was fascinating, though. She peered through the lens of the telescope, her right eye squeezed shut and her left eye darting about, trying to find the constellation. Her telescope was pointed in the right direction, she was pretty sure of that, but she wasn’t seeing the weird-shaped cluster of stars anywhere.

Oh. Was that it? Yeah, it had that distinctive sort of triangle bit in the middle and all the weird branches coming off the corners. Adrienne made a few notes in her book before noticing slowly that the boar statues... they were watching her. With a shudder, she closed things up and headed back inside. Weird creepy pig-things.

Unfortunately, Andromeda couldn't be found in the Courtyard because it was hidden behind a tower of the castle. This meant that Tora had to find Pegasus again in this new spot before she could begin searching for the galaxy. Not that she minded, she loved searching the stars. Her Astreglobe pointed her toward Pegasus and once she had the constellation in the sight of her scope, she used it as a pointer to find the fuzzy patch that was the Andromeda Galaxy.

Of all the items that she had to search for in this assignment, this was her absolute favorite. It was still a little difficult to see even with the school telescope, but the excitement of being able to peer all the way to another galaxy made her grin ridiculously.
Or not ridiculously. It was the mystery of space at work here.

She tried to focus in a bit more on the galaxy, twisting the knobs on the sides of the scope to adjust it. It got a bit sharper, but not much. Maybe one day she could use one of the great telescopes to look into the other galaxy. For now, she would content herself to just peering up at it with her telescope. Her eyes crinkled from smiling so big, which was hard since she was still trying to look into the eyepiece of the telescope. She moved on from Andromeda to search the sky randomly. In doing so she remembered that she still had one more object to find... She checked her watch and figured she had enough time to search for it before she should really get to bed. She gave a silent goodnight to Andromeda and packed up her scope to move to her next vantage point.

The breeze was fresh as Sarah walked out to the grounds with her telescope. She had the list in her hand and she looked through it. Those five were all possible to see tonight. She walked and walked untill she came to the gate. She was going to cover the grounds systematically, starting from the gate.

Sarah looked up and did a bit of searching. She was not use to maneauvering telescopes so well yet.. last year they used that eyes with that spell that required drops... Wait.. was that Andromeda.. what one f the Ptolemy's wrote about? Sarah removed her telescope and saw that she could still see part of it. It must be Andromeda. She marked it down. Great going

She had found one for the night so she lay on her back and looked up.. time for creative star gazing...

After finding her own random constellations, Sarah sat up. She would try again another night for the rest. She headed back to the castle with her things in hand

Ever since they'd been assigned this star assignment, Caleb had been reading up on his Greek mythology. It was all sooooo COOL! It was just fun to read about the stories that inspired the constellations and all that, as well as the silly muggles who thought the Earth was flat for the longest time and all that jazz. Astronomy was quickly becoming his favorite subject! Who would have thought?

It was a great night for stargazing, even if it was FREEZING, so he cuddled up in his thickest jumper and his Slytherin scarf, took his telescope out and headed to the grounds. He found a nice clearing near the front gate of the school and decided to lay there. It was the least-muddy-looking place he could find, at least.

After admiring the pretty stars for about 10 minutes or so, he realized he was staring RIGHT at a constellation. But which one was it again?? He quickly pulled out his star chart, located the constellation he was looking at, and quickly made a note on a spare piece of parchment - Andromeda. She was in the Perseus story! He remembered that one!

Smiling to himself, he gazed at the stars a few more times before it got just too chilly to stand being out there any longer, and he headed back inside.

"Doesn't feel that way," Charlie mumbled under her breath. And if this girl was one of the people who insisted it was, she was wrong. And possibly ruder than already thought. She was actually the first person who'd said such a thing to Charlie, but nevertheless, it didn't make it any less annoying, or untrue. "How long have you been here?" You know, at school. Not at the gate.

Maybe she should have made that clearer.

Shops. Oh, how helpful. Rolling her eyes slight, Charlie raised one eyebrow as she turned to look at the girl. "What kind of shops?" Persistent, much? Stubborn, much?

Ella really liked this particular homework assignment because she got to be a scientist. And as any scientist would, the blonde had come prepared with everything she'd need to test out some of her ideas. She'd borrowed a pot to boil water, a plate, some bread, cheese, and butter, and had her wand and notes too. See? All ready to go. She'd even brought her gloves and goggles along just in case cause you could never be too careful.

First thing she did was find a rock that was warming in the sun. This would be her makeshift stove for her experiments and she decided to test the boiling water idea first. It was lucky that it was so clear out today too because that meant she'd have a better chance harnessing the sun's power, right? Right.

Setting the pot down on the rock, the blonde removed her wand and began to fill it up. Her idea was based around the idea that water could be boiled if needed when lost on like...an island or something but she could still test to see if water from her wand would boil and apply those results, yeah? Yeah.

Minerva had decided she was going to go to the front of the grounds to do her homework. The sun would be the brightest there.. Well that's what she was telling herself at least. As she walked towards front gate Minerva thought about what she was planning on doing. She couldn't help but chuckle a practical use. Well she wasn't sure if it went in those lines, but knowing Professor Airey he would see the need for it once she explained.

Coming around the corner Minerva saw someone already there. Oh she didn't mean to interrupt but the closer she got she realized it was her friend and captain Ella. "Hey Ella, doing some homework?" Well she assumed she might be doing the same homework Min was just there. "Oh what are you going to use the spell for?"


She set down her bag and pulled out her cauldron. Setting down the cauldron she pulled out her chocolate frogs and unwrapped them and stuck them in her cauldron. Glancing at Ella she smiled, "Not sure what you are doing, but get ready to have a little snack once I'm done." Of course Minerva would think of ways to use the spell for chocolate. It wouldn't be a great thing without chocolate involved.

After the pot was filled with water, Ella bent down and fished through her bag, looking for the magnifying glass attachment. She knew she had it in there somewhere it was just a matter o-Min! "Hey! Yeah, Astronomy." And AH-HA, there it was! The blonde held up the magnifying glass sheepishly before fixing it to her wand. "I'm gonna boil water." Not the most exciting thing but her next experiment would be better...and tastier.

"A snack?" A chocolate snack? YUM. The blonde grinned at her friend and nodded, thinking any snack with melted chocolate was okay in her book. "Best of luck." Y'know, with her testing and such. Now it was time to work.

Glancing up, the blonde squinted at the sun and was pleased that it was bright, especially because it was quite cold out recently. She moved her magnifying glass around a bit before she found the right angle and then said clearly, "Solis Focus!" The ray of light was directed right at the water in the pot and now all Ella had to do was wait. Wait and hope that the water would boil like she thought it would.

Boiling water, well that sounded like a great way to use the spell. Minerva smiled, "If I would have known you were doing that I could have stopped by the kitchen and grabbed somethings to make soup." She laughed a bit, "Good luck with it." Min didn't want to bother her while she was working.

Looking back at her own cauldron she opened her bag to find the magnifying glass. Now where was it. She moved her books and things around. Honestly since she had put that expansion charm on the bag she couldn't find anything. Moving things around she wasn't sure if she had even brought it. Great would she have to go back to the room. Oh wait there it was. Pulling it out she attached it to her wand.

Watching as Ella did her spell Min hoped she would have boiling water soon. Turning back to her own project she lifted her wand and pointed towards the cauldron. "Solis Focus" Now she watched hoping to have melted chocolate soon. Of course she had went to the kitchen and grabbed some strawberries and pretzels to have with her chocolate. They were in that bag... somewhere.